About a year ago, I blogged about the deluge of right-wing hate mail received by Margaret Cho, “mostly criticizing Cho for being fat, Asian and female, traits that are considered grievous flaws by some right-wingers.”
I stand by that post. But I can’t stand by an assumption I made while I wrote it. At some level, I smugly assumed such an outpouring of blatant racist misogyny would only come from the right. I didn’t think about it (if I had thought, I would have realized I was being ridiculous), but I thoughtlessly assumed it.
I am reminded of this today because Michelle Malkin, an Asian-American, right-wing pundit, has put quotes from some of her hate mail online. (Link via comments at LTF). A few samples:
* * *
Surely you are a big put-on. Did some minor Republican operative purchase a mail-order bride and train her to do this?
* * *
Malkin, you’re a dumb fucking whore. You’re a philipino piece of shit who should be wiping my ass. Go back to the massage parlor. Sucky sucky long time. How dare you thing you have any right to express any opinions in this country. You’re a joke. Go back to nursing school. Whore.
I don’t want to make this “all about me.” The main issue here is obviously the racism and sexism that still exists and boils up with what I can only call stunning assholishness when a woman of color who speaks her mind is combined with the ease and facelessness of email.
But it’s also important that lefties (and especially the feminist, anti-racist left) be aware of stuff like this, lest we fall into smug, easy assumptions, as I did a year ago. There’s no shortage of vile, racist, woman-hating assholes on the left.
I figure no matter what group we’re part of, there are always going to be some nutballs who make the rest of us look bad. The presence of assholes seems to be part of the human condition, or something.
There are a lot of assholes in the world. Sphincterhood knows no party.
I appreciate your intellectual honesty in making this post, Amp.
Hello tak sobie chodzę po stronach i zostawiam po sobie komentarze :)) Hmm yyy fajnego masz bloga Pozdrawiam :) przepraszam że nie pisze po angielsku ale jakoś nie chciało mi sie tłumaczyć zreszta jest już poźno i nie mam głowy do tego. Miłego tłumaczenia :)) pozdrawiam cieplutko i zapraszam do siebie : bursztynka.eblog.pl
I’m overcome by the irony of the anti-filipino racists finding their mark in an anti-japanese/anti-arab racist.
Interesting logic from the asshole who called her “self-hating” and then proceeded to make hateful racist comments in her direction.
Question tho – I am white. Is it okay if I simply call Michelle Malkin a racist? “Self-hating”, how would I know?, so that’s inappropriate. But if a white person wrote the stuff she’s written, wouldn’t it be fair to label them racist?
None of this is either to suggest that she in any way “deserves” any of those emails. For one thing, all three combine their racism with misoginy in a way that makes it impossible to separte the two, and I can think of no writings by Michelle Malkin that I would label “misoginist”. But also, to condemn a racist base on her race rather just her individual idiocy goes beyond the original idiocy in a spectacular way.
I mean, at least the idiot racist misoginists who flame Cho are not contradicting their own stupid points.
I think there’s a difference between being a racist and believing in policy positions that have a negative effect on someone.
Malkin believes there was more justification for FDR’s internment than most people do. That doesn’t mean she hates the Japanese. I believe in strongly enforcing voter registration laws; that doesn’t mean I’m anti-black or anti-military.
In general I think it’s counterproductive to assign emotional motivations like “racism” to someone without a compelling reason to do so. Of course, YMMV.
Anyone spending time on the comments threads at Eschaton will soon find that progressive/liberal commenters there contain a fraction of sexists. Racism isn’t something I’ve spotted there, but then the current lefty political atmosphere seems to react to racism more disapprovingly (in speech at least) than it reacts to sexism.
Robert-
I do not see being a racist as an “emotional motivation”, it is rather an objective description of where one stands. A policy can be racist regardless of what is in the heart of the person esposing the policy. When a person esposes enough racist views, eventually there reaches a point where it is legitimate to call that person a “racist” even though, again, I am not a god and cannot see into her heart. Michelle Malkin has crossed that line. Internment is harly comparable to voter registration laws, and that book is, by itself alomost enough for me to conclude the term “racist” applies to her. But that is not all. I have read a lot of her collumns, and virtually all she talks about is keeping out immigrants.
How she intergrates herself into her worldview, I have no idea. For all I know, she loves her family and ancestors, has many Mexican and Arab friends, and has high self-esteem. But if all that were true of a white person who had written all the stuff she has, I would call that white person a racist, at least as an objective description, regardless of what was in their heart. And wouldn’t it be racist for me not to apply the same standard to Michelle Malkin?
You can do that if you want, Decnavda, but you just end up transforming “racist” into meaning “has lots of policy positions that I disagree with.” Which is fine, but weakens your discourse. Whatever.
As for Michelle herself, she is strongly pro-immigrant. She is also very anti-illegal immigration. The two are not contradictory. I hold the same positions, pretty much, so I suppose I am also a racist in your worldview.
On leftist sexism; Go check out this: http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog/2004/12/chicks_up_front.html
If we can find people that will pass the test set by conservatives to get labeled “racist” they will just raise the bar higher. Look at people who defend the KKK by saying it’s just “white pride”, and not racism. Whatever.
Robert-
You can do that if you want, Decnavda, but you just end up transforming “racist”? into meaning “has lots of policy positions that I disagree with.”?
Um, no.
I stronly disagree with people who want to ban sodomy, triple military spending, repeal corporate taxes, and end welfare for the poor. I would not call of these offending positions “racist”. Malkin’s positions are racist because the negative effects not only disproportionately effect non-white people, like ending welfare, but because they specifically target non-white people, such as they way it is easier for a homeless Canadian to legally enter the U.S. than for a working-class Mexican. (Although considering our respective welfare states, I have no idea why a homeless Canadian would want to come here. The weather, I suppose.)
Amp, while your admission is admirable, you opened up another assumption door: why are all of Malkin’s critics automatically left-wing? I can see her taking a beating from dittoheads who plain don’t like anyone who’s not WASP. Or from libertarians. The first and last comments you cited didn’t even talk about politics.
Another possibility: they were plants from her own PR people, used to drum up sympathy. Just a thought. Been done before.
All that aside, grr. She makes me mad.
You have a conservative saying “this is racist”, and so your reaction is to say “no matter what, a conservative will never say something is racist.”
I guess I’m a little confused. On the plus side, my add-em-up is “1 + 1”, so I’m pretty sure this comment will see the light of day!
I agree very much that a policy can be racist regardless of if the person offering the policy is non-racist or racist.
What I wonder is, why do you feel a need to take the second step, and decide if the person is racist or not? Seems to me that it doesn’t matter, so we shouldn’t speculate about that.
I think they did talk about politics; “whore,” in context, is a variant on “sellout.” Which is why she was called a whore so much more than Ms. Cho was – leftwingers criticize a right-wing person of color by calling them a sellout, but right-wingers don’t criticize left-wing people of color that way.
Yes, anything’s possible. But it makes no more sense for me to assume that these emails are plants, than it would make for me to assume that the emails to Ms. Cho were plants. In both cases, it seems to me the more likely truth is that they’re genuine.
Amp-
I agree that labeling the person is less useful than labeling the policy. But there is still utility in clearly establishing what social faction a prominate player is in.
Bill O’Reilly claims to be political independant and gets upset when someone labels him a “conservative”. But if a less madea- aware freind asked me about something O’Reilly said, would it be wrong of me to explain, as part of the context, that O’Reilly is a conservative? I realize that “racist” is a much more emotionally negative term than “conservative” (rightly so), but I an REALLY tired of having to call racists “politically incorrect” or something just to not hurt the delicate feelings of these racists. It seems like some sort weird parody of being PC, “we’re so liberal we don’t even fight for our liberal beliefs” sort of thing.
“Malkin’s positions are racist because the negative effects not only disproportionately effect non-white people, like ending welfare, but because they specifically target non-white people, such as they way it is easier for a homeless Canadian to legally enter the U.S. than for a working-class Mexican”
This statement itself contains assumptions that could be construed as racist (although not by me). Why are you assuming that a Canadian is white, but that a Mexican is non-white?
The laws don’t specify racial origin. The laws specify national origin. This may have some connection to the fact that our national relationship with Mexico (hostile-neutral) is different than our national relationship with Canada (friendly-neutral), or there may be a difference in the problems with illegal immigration from the two countries. (If one country generates 1% of the illegal immigration traffic, and the other country generates 99% of it, I would expect a differentially tougher law.)
I don’t think differential effects prove racism any more than differential outcomes prove ability. Causality is complex and the world is nuanced. Welfare reform – just as one example – has proved both beneficial and harmful, depending on how you frame the question and whose standards you use. (George Will just did a good essay on this, chiding welfare reform triumphalists for oversimplification.) Deciding that a position is racist, in my view, ought to be a very complex and difficult call to make – not a simple assertion that it must be so. YMMV!
I make the jump to call Malkin a racist because she doesn’t just espouse racist policy, she goes a whole new level. She rewrites history in order to directly justify the entirely racist policy of internment in order that she may indirectly justify contemporary proposed racist anti-arab policies. And this is a cornerstone in how she builds her public persona. So maybe she’s personally a great, love all races type person, but her public persona is a racist asshole.
“but I an REALLY tired of having to call racists “politically incorrect”? or something just to not hurt the delicate feelings of these racists”
How about in order to be accurate?
The fact that somebody thinks the racial paradigm through which you view life is lame or wrong does not make them racist; it makes them in disagreement with you. “Politically incorrect” has unfortunately taken on a lot of freight, but the underlying meaning of it is right; the people you’re talking about reject your political worldview (whether they’re conservative, liberal, or falangist) and are thus “incorrect” from your POV.
Why not just call them “people who disagree with me/us” and let it go at that?
(And you can refer to O’Reilly as “a blowhard”).
You’re right about the first quote, Amp — I got really derailed by how graphic they got in describing her whorishness. I stand by my opinion of the third one, tho — it just looks like a really graphic take-off on the “All Asian Women Are Whores” theme, and could be written from any side (I’m guessing: mullet). Especially when he said she had no right to express opinions in this country….
now that I think about it, what did he mean by that? That the Philippines has women that can speak their minds but not America, land of the free?
And can we apply the same logic to Ann Coulter?
(darned first ammendment.)
“She rewrites history in order to directly justify the entirely racist policy of internment in order that she may indirectly justify contemporary proposed racist anti-arab policies…”
Interesting. Got any examples of her rewriting history?
I’m sure you can provide lots of examples of her presenting history, along with her opinion about the history, but this is a new criticism, at least to my ears. I’d love to see examples.
By the way, it’s difficult to justify calling internment an “entirely racist” policy. If it was entirely racist, it would have applied to Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans throughout the entire country. It didn’t; just to the west coast, where there were towns and regions which were majority Japanese. In the midwest and east, where the smaller Japanese minority was isolated and surrounded by non-Japanese, there was no internment. A few Japanese moved east to get away from being interned; that wasn’t a practical alternative for most.
It would be unarguable to call internment a “xenophobic” policy – it was certainly a policy born of fear of the different, not a rational assessment of risks and resources. If it were racist, though, then there are contradictions between racism and the policy that would have to be explained that, to date, I have not seen explanations for.
And my respect for Robert has just unexpectedly increased. Quick applause, and then down to business:
Agreed. Similarly once presented with overwhelming evidence that a policy is indeed racist, all the evidence cannot be poofed away with a single poorly researched, non-peer-edited book with a clear agenda. Legitimate historians over years and years of work have come to the conclusion that Japanese Internment was a policy that was arrived at thanks to anti-Japanese racism that was accentuated thanks to war, and not a sound wartime policy. Yet here comes Malkin who wants you to just completely ignore all of that because she wrote a book.
As for racial profiling – a clearly racist policy, as any objective study shows that racial profiling doesn’t work. (Amp, the best things I read about this come from this site, so if you remember when you wrote one of them to help out, much appreciated) But if you know of any objective study that finds that racial profiling does work, you’re more than welcome to introduce it to prove me wrong.
And due to the horrors of cross-posting:
Try reading this.
#1 and #3 quotes seem undecipherable for political leanings. #2 quote is probably made by a Democrat or Libertarian or Constitutional Party (far-right, thinks Republicans are wimps), since the post refers to “minor Republican operative”. The #3 comment about “whore” is not much evidence, as a sizable percentage of US servicemen that served on bases in the Philippines sought the services of local whores, and their idea of Filipino women is “whore”. As usual, that was the main objection that Filipino people had to US bases – the bad behavior of US servicemen. And “LBFM” is service slang for Asian women, whether prostitutes or general public.
Midwestern Japanese were interned.
Also, the whole thing of not interning all Japanese means it’s not wholly racist is laughable. If there were a national policy that sought to imprison all black people in California and Louisiana, would you say it wasn’t wholly racist because it didn’t affect blacks in 48 states?
Raznor, that’s a good critical review of Malkins’ book. It doesn’t show her rewriting history, however. Maybe you’re using “rewriting history” in a sense with which I am unfamiliar. The core of her argument was that FDR had reason to think that Japanese-Americans were being recruited by Japanese intelligence. I don’t know how well she makes that case, because I haven’t read her book yet. This review doesn’t particularly demolish it, however, in the end declaring agnosticism – “…we know nothing at all about how the few men who did have access to the tens of thousands of decrypted cables actually used them…”
NancyP, I have searched in vain for a source saying that midwestern Japanese were interned. Every source I have says it was the west coasters only. If you know of a source I’d like to see it. Thanks.
“Also, the whole thing of not interning all Japanese means it’s not wholly racist is laughable. If there were a national policy that sought to imprison all black people in California and Louisiana, would you say it wasn’t wholly racist because it didn’t affect blacks in 48 states?”
No, because in that case there isn’t a competing motive.
In the case of the internment, there are several non-racist motives in competition with “racism” as the reason. Nativism, strong political pressure from agricultural entities in the western states, concerns about national security, xenophobic fear of large groups of “others”, a few other things.
If those things are not the real motives, and “racism” is, then we would expect to see a pattern of internment that swept up all or almost all Japanese. We don’t see that. Instead, we see a pattern of Japanese being interned where they were in competition with powerful economic interests, where they were demographically significant and perceived as threatening to a white majority, and where they were close to potential landing zones for a hypothetical Japanese invasion, and thus of use as saboteurs or agents.
This doesn’t mean that the reasons given for interning the Japanese weren’t invalid; they were. It doesn’t mean that fears of Japanese-American disloyalty weren’t almost entirely unfounded; they were. It doesn’t mean that the internment wasn’t a great crime; it was. It simply means that there was a complex of reasons, xenophobia and nativism strong among them, rather than an primitive construct called “racism” pushing everything.
Did what we think of as “racism” influence the decisions of the Democratic policymakers who pushed the internment camps? Almost certainly, yes. That it was not their sole or primary motivation (xenophobia being a related, but distinct, concept) is equally certain. If that weren’t the case, events would have unfolded quite differently.
Okay, instead of “rewrites history” let’s say “reinterprets history, without objective cause, so that it may better suit her political aims”. I prefer “rewrites history” as it’s easier to say. And “reinterprets history” alone doesn’t quite cut it.
We cross-posted there, but you make a good enough point. I didn’t mean “entirely racist” as “solely racist” though, I meant it as “clearly racist”. However, all confusion could be eliminated if I simply eliminate the word “entirely” as it is not necessary for my argument.
I participated in several threads regarding Malkin’s book, and whether she was “rewriting history” or not, it’s clear that she is trying very strongly to justify a policy that has largely been seen, albeit in hindsight, as indefensible. As in, most people now realize that the Japanese internment was unnecessary, harsh, and motivated at least in part by racist assumptions that predated by decades the invasion of Pearl Harbor. For instance, did you know that many Japanese Americans were not citizens — a fact held against them at the time — because the Japanese were not permitted to become naturalized? Furthermore, Germans (like my grandparents) never faced any suspicions of any nature at the time merely because they were German. (Not to say that Germans who were suspected of engaging in espionage were not singled out, but it wasn’t assumed that because you were a German-American that you had pro-German sympathies.) I generally loathe Vox Day, but he has the ultimate smackdown on Michelle Malkin’s revisionist version of the Japanese internment — if you don’t trust criticism coming from a liberal, maybe you’ll trust it coming from a card carrying conservative. Michelle Malkin is “rehabilitating” the misbegotten and unspeakably cruel and stupid policy (did you know that rounding up Japanese Americans significantly reduced the output of American food production? — many were California’s most productive farmers) in order to justify a similarly cruel and stupid policy aimed at Muslims. Is she personally racist? I haven’t a clue — I do know that she complained mightily after being searched at an airport (why are they going for people like me?) . Now why would Michelle think that “people like her” should not be searched? But back to the issue of her policy choices — I do know that she is advocating racially/ethnically based classification as a means of designating whether one is “suspect” or “non-suspect” and in advocating such a policy, I believe that she may legitimately be called racist.
I’m reminded a little of the posts about the use of language at http://desfemmes.blogspot.com.
People use “left” as if it meant something very specific and clear, when it doesn’t. There are a couple of different definitions for what “left” and “right” actually mean, although I think most usage leans at least towards something consistent with what I understand to be its historical origin: it came from the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly during the French Revolution. Advocates of more equal distribution of power to the “lower” classes sat on the left; advocates of privilege for the elites sat on the right.
But saying that someone is “on the left” or “on the right” is saying very little about what that person actually believes or does. There are all sorts of questions that leaves unexamined about what a more equal distribution of power would actually be, and how to achieve it. Liberals, social democrats, marxists, anarchists, and many other sorts of political philosophies get lumped together as “on the left,” even though there are sharp differences between them.
On top of that, individuals hold inconsistent ideas in their heads. All of us do, even those of us most dedicated to achieving consistency. Despite arguments against racism and against sexism that date back to the beginning of socialist movements, that made it clear that they were inextricably linked to the class system, there were those who considered themselves socialists who expressed racist or sexist ideas — despite their blatant inconsistency. And when you use the catchall expression, “the left,” you’re going to include a lot of people who don’t particularly concern themselves with achieving a consistent set of ideas about politics.
On top of that, it’s not at all clear where the people who wrote those comments to Malkin were coming from. They may have thought of themselves as “left,” or they may have not. All that’s clear is they were asshats.
I’ve only been paying attention to blogs for the last couple of weeks, really, and one thing that’s been bugging me is that a lot of “left” blogs, those with very sharp, sarcastic styles especially, regularly make sexist jokes. There’s a lot of inappropriate “humor” regarding Ann Coulter, for instance.
Second, about the Japanese internment and racism: individual bigotry is, I believe, the deliberately cultivated product of policy — the policy isn’t simply the result of bigotry. There’s mutual reinforcement, but it’s not a chicken-and-egg problem. The US wanted to expand its power in Asia and the Pacific Rim, and Japanese imperialism was a barrier to US imperialism. So, for decades, there’d been rising tensions between the US and Japan, and those in power deliberately cultivated anti-Japanese racism. US war propaganda prominently featured caricatures of Japanese people; posters warned of the “yellow peril” and described the Japanese as barbarians, as aliens, as inhuman.
I’ve been told by people who lived through WWII in the US that the “war on fascism” was talked about much less than the war against Japan, and that war was described as a war between two races. That’s the context of the internment camps: it wasn’t simply a neutral matter of policy, but part of a deliberate program of promoting anti-Japanese racism.
an excellent antidote to Malkin’s pile of poorly researched crap is Richard Drinnon’s “Keeper of Concentration Camps”
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2097.html
while xenophobia & nativism were strong factors at work, Drinnon quite clearly shows that racism was also a powerful & primary factor at work – both as a motivating force in individual’s actions (such as Dillon S. Myer, who the book is largely about, as well as folks like Secretary of War Stimson, FDR himself, etc.) as well as outlining the ways in which racism functions as a structural aspect of American society, one tightly linked to & in many ways derived from similar attitudes toward & treatment of other minority groups (e.g. Native Americans)
here’s an interesting quote from then Atty-General Biddle writing to FDR:
The present procedure of keeping loyal American citizens in concentration camps on the basis of race for longer than is absolutely necessary is dangerous and repugnant to the principles of our Government. It is also necessary to act now so that the agitation against these citizens does not continue after the war.
to say something is racist is not to simplify it or to deny its complexity or the existence of other factors.
as for internment in the Midwest: there were two camps in Arkansas – one in Denson (Jerome Camp) and one in Rohwer – here’s the University of Arkansas Archive collection on the subject
http://libinfo.uark.edu/specialcollections/manuscripts/japaneseamericans.asp
back to the original topic: Amp is completely right when he says
There’s no shortage of vile, racist, woman-hating assholes on the left.
but, like JennHi above, i can’t really see how you know that the folks attacking Malkin are “from the left” (which is also, as Foolish Owl points out, a pretty ill-defined group) – calling someone a “sellout” is not an exclusively leftist insult – and “whore” certainly isn’t either
lastly, i appreciate Amp’s candid admission of the errors of assumption (which, as we all know, makes an ass out of you & Umption… poor Umption) – but really, putting such moments aside, was there anyone here who really thought that “the left” was free of such ugliness?
of course, if it wasn’t for “the left” we probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation…
Uh….Robert, you lost me here. Can you please explain to me how “nativism” and “xenophobic fear of large groups of ‘others’ ” aren’t de facto racist?
Probably not.
hmmm… i’m not sure why Robert thinks he can’t expain to you why xenophobia & nativism aren’t de facto racist, La Luba
but if we want to be excruciatingly technical:
xenophobia doesn’t necessarily have to be based upon race – it can be understood more broadly as an irrational fear of foreigners &/or strangers – but it can also apply to anything foreign &/or strange
and nativism is often about race (as with reactions against Irish, Italian & East European immigrants) but it can also be based upon religion (as with anti-Catholicism) – one could probably even argue economics as a relevant framework for understanding some manifestations of nativism (e.g., tendencies in the labor movement to reject all foreign made imports)
that said, there are no pure expressions of any of these concepts in the real world. racism, xenophobia & nativism intersect often because they operate according to similar sociocultural logics – each goes to reinforce the other, so it’s no surprise that we find them enjoying each other’s company so frequently
still, i think they’re useful as distinct concepts
another .02 from the jamjar
You know, I’m not surprised.
Check out Des Femmes, Body and Soul, and Rox Populi for discussions of misogyny on the left–and the smackdowns we got for pointing out that calling someone a bitch, a pussy, or anything else was not the way to show yourself as a progressive or as an ally to women.
So no, I’m not shocked by the misogyny or the racism. I some folks, in declaring themselves progressive, can spew all kinds of bigoted tripe and think themselves immune from criticism.
I agree with Sheelzebub: I’ve had all too many conversations/arguments with supposedly “progressive” types who were just as or more sexis/racist/homophobic/classist/you name it than a lot of the Right-Wingers they thought they had the moral high ground over. In fact, I think this is a big problem within the Left in general–especially the misogyny.
I also agree that a lot of the more bigoted Lefties also try to use their claimed progressive status as some sort of immunity from criticism.
You should see the arguments at dKos on women’s rights lately.
There are a *lot* of people who think that the answer to the DNC’s dilemma of wanting to maximize voters while there being rather a bit of conflict over the matter of abortion is to a) give up defending choice because b) it’s a losing proposition and c) it won’t be a problem because women can just keep their legs shut.
There was a 400+ post thread, the latest of several heated debates, and while some of the regulars were in evidence, there were a number of newly-revealed chauvinist pigs, who went on to use extremely sexist language defending their position, about women being emotional and irrational and all.
Additionally, overall, the atheist Libertarians are typically very sexist as well – it’s from them that I hear the most “no woman will ever be president in this country, that’s just the way it is,” (or equal pay happening) and pimp/ho talk (with much praise and love of GTA), and the use of “pussy” to mean “coward” and “cunt” to mean “utterly contemptible being”, in person as well as on the net.
This is true whether or not they are Authoritarian Libertarians (“Republicans who smoke dope”) or Consistent Libertarians (“leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone” aka “meolibs”) though I don’t find very many of the latter when pushed hard.
Addl thoughts – Being an ex-conservative, this creates a strange oscillating tension for me: on the one hand, I was raised to believe that The Norm for Human Nature was male dominance, though it did not take – I ground my teeth and rebelled in silence, but despaired because all the males I knew were MCPs whose insecurity was the norm by which all humanity was to be judged, and both males and females in my community preached the natural submission of women – so I was a failed female by their standards, interiorly even if outwardly compliant.
Thus it is a refreshing thing to find *any* non-sexist, egalitarian males, and to find so many (by comparison) on the Left a “brave new world” moment (the original) – but then here’s the rub: I’m not surprised really that so many are the same sexist racist thuds that are seen on the right, because the Meolib is a real phenomenon; the individual whose ox has been gored by the Right [cough*howardstern*cough] or who has realized that they will never achieve Yuppiedom the way things are stacked, and who’s to blame.
At the same time, this is unacceptable, and needs to be worked on. Allies who don’t share the most fundamental principles – respect for human persons – but only a common enemy, will turn on you and destroy you the moment the common enemy is less of a threat.
We need to shame and convert the bastards on our side, or neutralize them: it is the shame of the Right that they refuse to do so with their Limbutts and Coulters, and a weakness that will bring them down by exposed hypocrisy, unless we follow their lead and slime along in their trail at their level…
There are a *lot* of people who think that the answer to the DNC’s dilemma of wanting to maximize voters while there being rather a bit of conflict over the matter of abortion is to a) give up defending choice because b) it’s a losing proposition and c) it won’t be a problem because women can just keep their legs shut.
To be honest, I’m not much interested in going over to Kos, et al and defending my right to have my reproductive rights recognized by the Democrats. As I’ve said repeatedly here and elsewhere (sometimes in posts that got chewed up, unfortunately), I’m interested in why feminists keep appealing to these men for understanding instead of striking out on their own.
I can’t believe at this late date that the attitudes expressed above are really a surprise to anyone whose been watching the track of the Democratic Party over the last twenty-odd years.
Alsis, I’ve tried talking to a lot of women, who were quite happy to claim the label “feminist” as well, like that as well, and have been amazed at how unwilling they are to admit to themselves that a lot of the guys around them really don’t like or care about them very much.
Well, CrysT, I have a feeling this subtopic is going to fall on deaf ears, like it nearly always does. :( Maybe we can talk about it elsewhere, when you’re not busy with your papers and such. :/
As someone who was born out of wedlock and adopted soon after birth, I’m curious as to why bellatrys would equate me with people who dump on women.
Please don’t use “bastard” as an insult. I don’t want to be associated with testosterone-poisoned commenters.
Aaron V, I myself, save for a legal fiction and the hypocrisy of the churchstate, am a bastard by the legal definition.
I am also one by the poetic definition, and not infrequently describe myself as, quote, a cast-iron bastard, to preempt the time wasting of people who otherwise tend to go “don’t you think that’s rather harsh?” or “you’re mean!” over and over again.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and folded his hands and stoped where he was, listening, waiting while a very sick woman tried to gather her faculties.
“First off, tell the dowager she’s a right damn bastard.”
It was no time for a translator to argue. Mitigation, however, was a reasonable tactic. “Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji has heard our suspicions regarding Tamun and received assurances from me and Gin-aiji that we have not arranged a coup of our own. She addresses you with an untranslatable term sometimes meaning extreme disrepute, sometimes indicating respect for an opponent.”
Ilsidi’s mouth drew down in wicked satisfaction. “Return the compliment, paidi.”
“Captain, she says you’re a right damn bastard too.”
Sabin almost laughed, winced, and grabbed her head with a hand that shook like palsy.
[from Defender, C.J. Cherryh, 2001]
And testosterone is not to blame for the abuse of power by the empowered towards the disenfranchised: that is a cop-out, and moreover junk biology of the quality of Time magazine’s usual “science” features.
PS: the spam-blocking measures of this site have an unattractive habit of eating longer comments beyond recovery. This does not usually happen with Haloscan, even when spamblocking is employed.
Third parties in the non-parliamentary USA national system are the parties of the disaffected, the way to register protest in the face of an absolutely hopeless situation. The major impact third parties can have would be if a large identified subpopulation of voters with common interest, sufficient in size to swing elections, left one or both of the major parties. Eg,mid-term elections, if the two major parties were strongly pro-war, and a draft was instituted, and 20% of the voting population (mostly draft-eligible or parents of draft-eligible) left to vote for an antiwar party. The antiwar party would lose in the mid-term election, but one of those two major parties would likely make a major policy shift to anti-war status, to try to capture the straying vote. In other words, write off winning the first election with the new third party but hope for about 20% of the total vote. The problem is that you have to have the issue, the oblivious major parties, the clear differentiation between your party and the major parties, and extremely good and credible candidate who does not make mistakes, a truly outstanding campaign manager, the money and manpower and willingness to run a campaign that will be effective enough to get 20% of the vote (a huge accomplishment). In other words, a perfect storm. Possible but not likely. That’s why successful national parties (ones that eventually win nationally and replace one of the two major parties) are likely to arrive about once every 150 years.
And, of course, it’s much more important to expend the majority of one’s energy explaining why it can’t be done, eh ? Not figuring out some way to get it done. That way you’re never the one who has to stick her neck out and risk looking like a fool.
And I swear, if I hear one more politics-as-weather metaphor, I’ll puke. I’m sorry I didn’t major in English. I could probably get at least a B Paper out of this recurring, at least somewhat self-fulfilling belief in our own helplessness to change history.
Business as usual in feminism, I’d say. I’ll pick any day of the week the old guy who shakes his fist at the world over the “good” feminist in my own age bracket who can’t even tell who she should shake her fist at. :p Or pretends she can’t tell. I don’t think modern feminist leaders are stupid, but they do suffer a serious dearth of guts.
“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.” –Susan B. Anthony
Oh, and on a related note, Fathers 4Justice has now landed at Portland Indymedia, looking to align fathers rights with environmental rights and animal rights, no doubt, as it announces its arrival on U.S. soil. Though its true parallels to feminism would be more likely the “Wise Use” movment or those well-publicized cases of “frivolous” lawsuits that prove we don’t need tort law. [rolleyes] Give me strength.
Amp, I mentioned to someone over there who didn’t understand my irritation at Indymedia being used to promote a father’s rights group that he could read up here as to why. Hopefully this won’t lead to a plague of trollery against you and the bloggers you linked to. But WTH. If I’m going to annoy liberal feminists with my skepticism about liberalism, it’s only fair if I annoy Lefty men with my skepticism about fathers rights. :/
F$J–the same group that harassed and threatened court staff, stalks judges and hassles their families at home, and assaults MPs in Britian? Little wonder, with all those antics, that they aren’t being taken seriously.
Good topic, and I hope to read more of bellatrys’s dynamic writing around here.
Regarding Crys T’s “amazed at how unwilling they are to admit to themselves that a lot of the guys around them really don’t like or care about them very much.”
and Alsis’s “I’ll pick any day of the week the old guy who shakes his fist at the world over the “good”? feminist in my own age bracket who can’t even tell who she should shake her fist at.”
This is probably one of the most frustrating things I encounter in my feminism, the lack of many progressive women’s honest appraisals of the deeply anti-woman attitudes of most progressive men. While watching an ad for some white man/black man buddy cop movie, the thought occurred to me that one thing black men & white men, conservative men and progressive men can all agree on is that women sure are sexy eye candy hoes.
I used to subscribe to The Nation magazine but don’t anymore because for about half the year of 2004 they ran an ad for prostitution tours to Costa Rica and Thailand. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand, and 15-year olds can be hookers in C.R. where child prostitution is such a big problem organized sex tourism to the country is illegal. When I asked The Nation to remove the illegal, sexist and racist (why not tours to legal Netherlands or Germany?) ads, a Nation ad salesman told me it was a matter of free speech, their lawyers said it’s all a-okay, and they have a policy not to bend to special interest pressure. These progressive men should extend their belief in basic human rights to the brownskinned girl children in impoverished countries instead of selling their bodies to wealthy liberal Western male readers willing to ignore their own sexist and racist privilege.
ps: that Susan B. Anthony quote is one of my most favorite quotes.
Sorry. :o
I was trying to make the point, somewhat clumsily, Samantha, that if mainstream feminism wants me to act in women’s interests, they shouldn’t leave me to the mercy of the men that don’t act in women’s interests. Left to my own devices (no pun intended), it wouldn’t have been my first choice to vote for Nader . I would have voted for a Woman’s Party candidate. But no Woman’s Party exists, and as far as I’m concerned, the good intentions of people like Steinem and Smeal are useless as long as they are happily roped to a party that espouses predatory values which act to make life hell for women.
Nader’s platform rarely, if ever, adresses feminism (Amp had a really funny cartoon about that once). I would have less impatience with the Smeals and Steinems raking him over the coals for this if I thought the men they put up year after year for my approval were any better. I would have less impatience if there weren’t a double standard that flays a man outside the Democratic fold for far lesser sins than the Deans, Roemers and Reids, who are mysteriously immune from any feminist scrutiny.
In a better world, I wouldn’t have to choose between a sometimes boorish, sometimes clueless male who nonetheless manages to articulate views that overlap with my goals for feminism and a male who sweet talks the feminist movement and picks its pockets while constantly practicing beliefs that undermine all women. But that’s the choice I’ve got, and I’ll take the boor who has my back over the sweet-talker who stabs me in the back any day of the week.
sphincterhood knows no party
true, but there is a tendency by each side to a certain triumphalist pride in the relative enlightenment of their own consituents, so this is a welcome reminder.
thanks, Amp!
(p.s.) should “URI” be “URL” in the comments field?
I think that part of it is that the left is supposed to be for equality for women. And that is an easy thing for anybody to say, but to practice it seems to be much harder. Look at the problems that women had with the lefty organizations of the 60’s & 70’s. The leadership (nearly all men) didn’t want to abdicate any of their power to the women in the movement. They still don’t. And their resentment at women who want to share in the leadership & decision making filters down quite easily. I believe that it is very difficult for most men to look at the power they have and willingly give up all or part of it to women because the can’t see that anything outside of themselves is responsible for their power.
That, I think, is where feminism needs eloquent and persuasive people most – showing those lefty men that they are not solely responsible for their relative position in both the economic & political spheres. But that could just be me.
I’ve loved this thread thus far.
Y’all should move to Iowa, where registered Dems outnumber Repubs. Their collars are blue, but their necks are red. Racism and sexism are an unfortunate way of life here, regardless of political affiliation.
[ding ding ding ding !!]
Jake, you can have half my bowl of pinapple chunks. I’m giving the other half to Samantha.
BTW, I know of at least one Lefty rag that breaks the sexism mold, at least enough to merit a plug. That would be the Multinational Monitor. Quite a few woman writers and a larger share of economics issues affecting women than I’ve seen elsewhere.
I found this essay sorta by mistake today and I can scarcely believe I haven’t found it/read it before. It’s too perfect for this topic not to post.
An Open Letter to Men Who Say They Believe in Freedom and Equality
by Nikki Craft
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/ohBROTHER/openlettereng.html
(excerpt)
Men – liberals, leftists, activists – our brothers, where have you been? Your absence from our meetings has been conspicuous. Perhaps it is easier for you to see the atrocities in Vietnam, Iran, Chile and El Salvador than it is for you to see the atrocities committed against women in your own homes and streets. Perhaps it is easier, for those of you who are white, to understand the plight of your black brothers than that of women.
When there was talk of removing Aunt Jemima from the syrup labels, “Amos and Andy” from TV, and the story of “Little Black Sambo” from elementary school libraries, we heard no screams of censorship from you then. It was you who justified forced busing as a necessary inconvenience “in order to achieve racial equality.” I believe it was even you who worked for acceptable standards in advertising and movies which would prevent stereotyped roles of blacks in insidious, hateful, racist ways. But you will tolerate no such solutions for women.
Despite your understanding of class and corporate greed and your criticisms of capitalism, you move swiftly and articulately to defend the rights of men who degrade and mutilate women’s bodies in the name of sexuality, profit and entertainment.
CrysT:
I also agree that a lot of the more bigoted Lefties also try to use their claimed progressive status as some sort of immunity from criticism.
Argh — I HATE HATE HATE that!
And it seems to be especially a problem with sexism. Some men seem to have this idea that by declaring themselves part of the radical left, they earn the right to hit on every woman they encounter.
While I can remember a very few times someone who joined my socialist group had to be sharply critiqued for saying something racist or homophobic, the person always was horrified at their own behavior when the mistake was pointed out. But tell someone they’re being sexist, and all too often, they accuse their accusers of being some kind of prude. I can remember several times we’ve had to kick out new members who wouldn’t stop behaving in a sexist manner, but I can’t remember needing to kick out anyone for any other form of oppressive bigotry.
For added fun, some of the people kicked out for sexist behavior like to go around complaining of our totalitarian interference in their personal lives. Yeah, “don’t hit on women at meetings — it’s sexist,” is Stalinism all over again.
Some women have told me they avoid political activist groups of mixed gender because some of the men seem to use politics as just another means to hit on women. Sadly, it’s because this is a widespread problem.
It seems to me that the so-called “sexual revolution” was mostly very sexist, and mostly a triumph of the porn industry. “Free love” has been advocated by radicals for a long time, and I do think there was some progressive content to what gets called the “sexual revolution,” but I think it’s far outweighed by the reactionary sexist content of it. But, many on the left seem to take the “sexual revolution” as homogenously progressive — particularly weekly newspaper columnists, which isn’t surprising given how dependent weekly papers seem to be on ads for prostitution and pornography.
It’s difficult for me to look at the sexual revolution, particularly abortion, and see it as anything but an incredible boon for a large subgroup of men.
In 1950 if you were a man and you got your girlfriend pregnant, you had to either (a) marry her, (b) desert her and live with the accompanying social opprobrium and shame, (c) get her to have a dangerous, illegal and usually humiliating abortion. Regardless of the choice you and/or your partner made, men were seriously bound by the consequences of their sexual behavior. There were no easy outs. (See the Michael Caine version of “What’s It All About, Alfie” for a horrifying fictional glimpse into the life of a player pre-Roe.)
Once abortion was both safe and legal, the pressures to do (a) were pretty much eliminated outside the most rigorous of individual moral codes. Which translates into a major shift of reproductive responsibility off of the shoulders of men and onto the shoulders of their partners – abortion provides an “easy” out for men who don’t desire responsibility or family. “Gee, that’s too bad, honey. Want me to drive you to the clinic, or are you going to go alone?” You don’t have to marry her, you don’t have to run to Mexico, you don’t even have to feel bad if you don’t want to. Anyone who tells you different is some nutjob who wants to control women’s uteruses.
Although this has strengthened the hand of the cad, I think it may have also pushed some men into the dad category. I know that if I had been born in the late 40s instead of the late 60s, my own sexual impulses would probably fall in the Bill Clinton range – how you doin’? And then when the numbers caught up to me and the levee broke and I knocked up some sweetheart, well, then I’d have knuckled under to matrimonial bliss. But as a child of the abortion era, the knowledge that indiscriminate sexual actions would very likely lead to the death of my offspring vastly curtailed my sexual life. So, LTRs instead of one night stands, women who weren’t comfortable with abortion, and marriage before pregnancy instead of after.
Worked out OK for me. Not sure how well it’s worked out for a lot of women out there.
Samantha, thx, and if you’d like to use my little icon that I made to signal a blown raspberry at egregious sexism on dKos comments, please feel free. (Not just Samantha – everyone who wishes may download Mr. Two-Heads if they like. He’s ancient Egyptian – they weren’t all dead serious, excuse the pun, back in the days of the pharaohs.)
Another disturbing phenom was how many “liberal” male commenters always go “but i’d still like to fuck her, she’s hot!” after talking about how much they hate Malkin’s ideas and personality. It says a lot about a lot of modern societal sexual disfunction, I think. And it reminds me of stories from ’60s radical relatives, about how many of them, and the leaders at Antioch etc, were in it to get idealistic girls to sleep with them.
The good news is, after Echidne and Jeanne d’Arc and I and others started making an issue of sexist language on a regular basis, we got slammed for being humorless feminists by our allies. (Even real progressives, not just “meolibs.”)
Then, they started thinking about it.
About what it said about us, for being coopted by the right’s own attitudes towards women. About the latent homophobia that Echidne has pointed out repeatedly, and the true insult to men contained in it, to assert that true manhood consists of being able to stick things in others, swords or phalluses, without and against their will, and “men” and “not-men” are absolute categories, the defining human ones, depending on whether one is the sticker or the stickee…
(…they’ll think its a movement…)
Now, all kinds of people, male and female and trans, are speaking out against routine sexism, reprimanding it and twisting it about, praising or condemning those who possess the “ovaries” instead, real or honorary, as a way of pointing it up.
(…you can get anything you want…)
There’s still a long way to go – but it was amazing how fast we went from being a threatening aberration, to being a real, powerful minority voice. It happened because we wouldn’t apologize, wouldn’t be “nice,” and didn’t back down when people got snitty with us.
(…at Alice’s restaurant…)
I don’t know how often I’ll be by – I’m overstretched bad now with my own blog, site, dKos and – ahem! – RL, but I’m glad there are so many communities out there. (I remember how funny it was that so many assumed that Amp was female, simply because this is a woman-friendly blog. I used to always get assumed to be male, before I became moderately infamous, in that “but women aren’t fans!” sort of assumption…)
(…excepting Alice!)
Wow, Robert, I guess there were no foundling homes, no overwhelming numbers of street kids, no magdalene homes, no couples who came together and broke up and left kids with whatever relative would take them – or else I guess you don’t know much about inner city life in the US and Europe over the past hundred, two hundred, two thousand years…
Back in the day – when Men Were Men and Knew Their Duty – guess what, there never was such a day. Infanticide was not something that died out with the Romans. And the number one suspect in a murder has *always* been the spouse – that’s what you get when divorce is illegal. Why do you think there was such a push for legalized contraception and decriminalization of abortion? Because – well, because it was just like it is now in the Spanish-American countries where Men Are Men And Women Know Their Place, and abortion is illegal: they have *more* abortions than countries where it isn’t criminalized, and more women die from them.
Because Irresponsible Male Sex, including the formerly non-existent crime (because it isn’t a crime in the old dictionaries and law books) of Spousal Rape, is *not* something that was rare until the Sexual Revolution. People *died* of syphilis all the time. They passed it on to their naive wives, who passed it on to their children, “nice” decent Christian families in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Child prostitution was rampant in those days – something that Hugo talks about in his social protest novels – because of the belief in England that sex with a virgin would cure the pox – and because a virgin child wouldn’t *have* the pox yet, either.
And syphilis is an *ugly*, ugly disease…
Reading the whitewashed fantasy of the mythic American past may be comforting as a Kinkade wall painting – but it doesn’t match up to the newspaper reports, the diaries, letters, and court records for the past centuries.
Nice, bella. I also like the ASSumption by Robert and the other historical revisionists of this type that once men married, they didn’t cheat. Yeah, that’s a good one.
Oh, and since I plugged the Monitor earlier, here are just a couple of their good stories by/about women:
Winona LaDuke on GMOs in Minnesota-
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/04012004/april04corp4.html
Pam Martens on the sexual harassment culture of brokers:
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02april/april02interviewmartens.html
Well worth your time. Trust me.
Bellatrys, I don’t see much, if any contradiction between what I wrote and what you wrote. (Some/many) men behaved badly ten thousand years ago, fifty years ago, today; they’ll behave badly fifty years from now and ten thousand years from now. (Assuming we haven’t transformed into beings of pure energy.) (I call dibs on the solar flux!)
Legal and safe abortion has undoubtedly saved many womens’ lives, and that should certainly be entered in the ledger. It has also freed many men to live lives of sexual irresponsibility and enhanced a culture in which women’s bodies are commodities to be purchased and consumed, rather than the carriers of human souls to be cherished and partnered with. That needs to go into the ledger too.
Of course there was irresponsible male sex before the sexual revolution. And if we roll back the sexual revolution and go back to gingham dresses and horse buggies, there will still be irresponsible male sex. The question isn’t the existence of the phenomena, the question is its prevalence and whether we can trend it up or trend it down.
Alsis –
This is the second or third time you’ve felt the need to stoop to personal insults to address, or avoid addressing, something I’ve said. From my knowledge of the kind of person Amp is, he would much rather have a forum with multiple viewpoints, including some he finds hostile, offensive or inexplicable – so long as the holders of those views are able to express themselves in respectful ways. I don’t know Bean, but I assume that s/he is in agreement with Amp on that, since its their forum. As a “minority” voice in this forum, working under those terms, I’ve tried very hard to be as respectful as possible in relating to people who have very fundamental differences with me – more so than I would be on my own blog, probably, or on fora where I felt myself to be an owner rather than a guest.
To my great pleasure and edification, about 97% of the other participants here at Amp & Bean’s playhouse seem to make a similar effort. You don’t seem to make that effort, when it comes to me. Perhaps I’m getting under your skin, unintentionally, in some way that makes civility more difficult to manage. I do have that effect on some people. Other than not holding the opinions I hold (which isn’t going to happen), is there some modification I can make to my style of communication which will make it possible for you to relate to me productively, instead of throwing names at me? Because that would be great. You’re clearly very intelligent and very well-informed, and I would learn a great deal from a discourse with you. Unfortunately, at present, it doesn’t seem like that discourse is an option.
Maybe I’m missing something, but how would you know if the comments came from people on the left? Right-wingers hate pretty much everyone, including themselves (see Ms. Malkin’s comment about herself), and they give no ground to minorities or women just because that person is considered right-wing themselves.
It’s evident to me, given the intellectual level of the discourse, that the writers were right-wingers. The key words they used, the amount of anger present, the name-calling and belittling are all standard right-wing stuff.
Why would you think that liberals wrote those comments? Do they come with an FBI background check to assure the identity, and political leaning, of the writer?
Maybe I’m just missing something.
Samantha, where in The Nation did you see prostitution tour ads? Bizarre. I subscribe too, and the travel ads I see are eco-tourism and educational. I admit, I don’t read the classifieds, since I am not looking for a job.
alsis38, go find your charismatic candidate willing to run in a third party national race and lose the first time around. Send Oprah to policy boot camp. After all, Ahnuld successfully made the transition from entertainment to politics. Oprah is more popular, and she’s not stupid.
I was kind of thinking of fielding LaDuke next time out, with Lyn Stewart as veep, perhaps…
How to publicize LaDuke, who is reputed to be dynamic, but has had very little mass media exposure? Any Michael Moore-like filmmakers to do a “sleeper hit” documentary on her? Any major muckraking or citizens campaign she can get involved in? Now? She needs to be a household word BEFORE the major parties’ primary candidates start taking the stage. In other words, star status by mid-’07. Otherwise the mainstream news will just ignore her.
Larry, in a lot of cases, at least on other boards like Eschaton, such comments were made by the regulars. If they were wingers, they’re wingers in deep-cover mode, ‘moles” who have spent months building up convincing anti-Bush, anti-privatization, anti-corporate personas.
So we have an intense Deaniac by the handle Progressive, who just called Zephyr Teachout a “cunt,” and got slammed by almost a dozen other posters for it.
It would be nice to believe that “all the evil is bottled up inside the dragons,” but that is the MO of the Right, and not the Great Way.
Speaking of which —
Robert, I see, not unexpectedly takes the usual conservative tack of ignoring the data that conflicts with his storyline. (Things like the enormously high percentages of poor people involved in the sex trade in 18th and 19th c London and Paris, the vast numbers of abandoned babies at foundling homes, etc etc – I suspect he also believes that homosexuality was a rarity until the 1960s…after all, you don’t find it in Victorian novels any more than you find mention of VD. –Wait, what do you mean, you do? Who’s this Joseph Conrad guy and that Dr. Doyle fellow?)
This is why I am no longer a conservative Christian any more – because objective facts and intellectual integrity were more important to me than Party alliegance, in the end.
Robert, i’d be interested to hear what you’re basing this contention that there was a significant trend upwards of irresponsible male sexual behavior during or after the so-called “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s
i’m also curious as to why you seem to be attributing the legalization of abortion to said Revolution, instead of to the struggle for women’s rights, to which it should be properly attributed
All very good points, Nancy. Still, it’s of no matter if the mainstream media ignores a woman candidate despite her best efforts. It’s of no matter if they try to make a freak show of her (which, come to think of it, already happened to LaDuke in 2000. At least one account I read of the rally she spoke at here in OR expressed amazement that a mother would be so bold as to –gasp !– hit the campaign trail with a young child in tow). It’s not even of any matter if well-meaning [sic] liberal or Leftist men want to look down their nose at the thought of any woman presuming to elbow to the front of the line. Or if they want to snicker at NOW for having the audacity to –gasp !– endorse a woman candidate. (The reception of Mosely-Braun, anyone ?)
The idea should be to run women for the office and keep running them for office, until the “freak” tactic of journalists and pundits vanishes of necessity and people get used to seeing women on the trail. To say that “well, nobody’s ready for a woman candidate except for maybe one like Bea Buchannan or Condi Rice” is to do the work of male chauvanists for them. I don’t want feminism to go into battle with its head down, as if poking male presumption in the arm with a fork once in awhile were something to be ashamed of. Same with labor interests and other supposed “special interests” that have been weakened over the years by being increasingly subsumed into the Democratic Party and the priorities of its corporate masters. We deserve better than that shit. There are way more of us than there are of them.
Come to think of it, there is a Labor Party in the U.S. now. I was checking out their website yesterday. They are not yet interested in running candidates for high office, and you don’t have to be in a Union to join. Why can’t a group like NOW do something like that, at least to seriously test the waters and establish a distinct agenda ? Would the fucking sky fall in ? Would men laugh ? Big deal. They laugh at us now, behind our backs. Nothing else explains the fearmongering that led millions of women dutifully to the polls for the DLC Shithead du Jour in the last two elections– followed by said DLC Shitheads and their cronies kicking women in the teeth whenever they had a chance to hang onto their power, or to enhance it. Nothing else explains the fact that we’re all supposed to be on the edge of our seats with excitement right now over a supposed duel to the death over leadership of the party– A duel between a guy who hates legalized abortion and a guy who sort of doesn’t want to talk about it and who likes the idea of a national identity card.
Hmmm… A possible/probable return to state-by-state access laws + a possible move toward a national identity card…
Whoopie.
If this is how our “friends” continually reward feminism for its unswerving loyalty to the Democratic Party…. Blecch. Blecch on stilts. [scowl] This clubhouse stinks. Let’s walk out and let the fuckers do their own fucking laundry for a change.
It has also freed many men to live lives of sexual irresponsibility and enhanced a culture in which women’s bodies are commodities to be purchased and consumed
You missed the part about women’s bodies being a commodity *before* abortion was legal, I take it. (Not ‘available,’ but legal. Abortion has always been with us. Ovid wrote poems about it.)
The core problem, before or after any sexual revolution, has been the notion that the job of policing and mandating good male behavior rests entirely with women. It’s exactly the cause of the mentality that the sexual revolution let men run wild–if women are no longer forced to “civilize” men, then men will be uncivilized. Why should men accept the blame for their actions if they can blame women?
Bellatrys –
I don’t think I’m ignoring any data. In fact, I’m in agreement with you, by and large, about the conditions you describe. The connection you’re drawing between prevalence of 18th century sex work and a legal change in 1973 and its effect on male behavior, I’m not quite following. Nor do I see the connection to how much homosexuality there was before 1960. Perhaps you could expound on this connection. Otherwise, it might be more productive for our discussion if you waited for me to actually display ignorance before you condemn me for it. As far as I know, you have no data on which to base an opinion concerning my level of knowledge concerning human sexual history.
One of the hallmarks of intellectual integrity is the willingness to make a presumption of good faith being held by one’s opponents or partners in debate and discourse, and to maintain that presumption until there is data to contradict it. For example, I assume that someone who holds positions contrary to my own holds them from their own analysis of data, or from their own genuine feeling, rather than out of malice or ignorance, until I have good reason to believe otherwise. I mention this since you said that intellectual integrity was very important to you.
Jam –
I freely concede that I don’t have strong data. Just a perception, from reading and viewing mass culture of the various eras, and from fairly extensive discussions with my older relatives. There are a lot of cultural markers that people of a certain age are familiar with, that have become nonoperative. (Just as an example, when I was nine years old, I knew what a “shotgun wedding” was. My nine-year old son has no clue.) That seems to indicate a fading of a cultural belief that if a male impregnates a female, he is expected to marry her (and may be coerced by other societal elements if he fails to volunteer). During my own sexual coming of age, I know that my peers and I were very cognizant of pregnancy and its risks – and that ten years later, we were collectively significantly more casual about it. Ten years post-Roe and twenty years post-Roe there definitely seemed to be less concern on our part about our end of the deal.
I’ve always heard the legalization of abortion framed as being part of the women’s movement, as well as being part of the sexual revolution. The pill + Roe is how the sexual revolution was always framed to me; women can take the pill and not worry much about babies, and Roe provides an escape route in the cases where the pill fails.
Mythago –
I didn’t say that abortion created the culture of women’s commodification. I said it enhanced it.
“The core problem…[is] the notion that the job of policing and mandating good male behavior rests entirely with women. It’s exactly the cause of the mentality that the sexual revolution let men run wild”“if women are no longer forced to “civilize”? men, then men will be uncivilized. Why should men accept the blame for their actions if they can blame women?”
I quite agree. Men should be responsible for their own actions, just as women should be.
However, there is a difference between “should” and “is”. Children should respect the rights of others, whether they are correctly trained to do so or not; however, where they are correctly trained, the outcome will be much better on average than where they are not correctly trained.
Men and women are born uncivilized. It is possible to self-civilize – through trial and error and effort, to achieve that which can otherwise be achieved through the creation of incentives and disincentives by other people. However, the incentives and disincentives still have an effect, regardless of the moral truth that individuals remain responsible for their action. Changes to the incentives will result in changes of outcome – regardless of whether people should behave in a certain way regardless of the incentives they have.
There’s certainly been a decline in the use of the phrase “shot-gun wedding.” I’m not convinced that means that men were always expected to marry the women they got pregnent in the past. (And fwiw, I know a couple who had a “shot gun wedding” in the ’90s, although they don’t refer to it that way.) I’ve talked to female relatives about how things worked before the sexual revolution, and they don’t depict it as being quite as simple as you seem to suggest.
It is true, according to my mother and grandmother, that a guy who got his girlfriend pregnant might be expected to marry her. This was generally the case if they were in a relationship that was recognized by the community and if they were of similar social status. If, however, she was “trash” (because she was poor and he wasn’t, because he was white and she wasn’t, because she had sex with a guy who wasn’t her long-term, communally-recognized boyfriend and was therefore a slut), then he had no obligations to her. Depending on her family’s support and resources, she could have an illegal abortion, she could be sent to a home for unwed mothers and put her baby up for adoption, or she could have the baby in the community and be shamed forever. All of these options had risks and consequences for the woman. None of them harmed the guy in any way.
It seems to me that what has changed is not so much that guys face fewer consequences as that they don’t have to divide women into girlfriends (who you shouldn’t fuck until you’re ready to marry) and trash (who can be fucked with impunity because they don’t matter anyway.) And honestly, that seems like a good thing.
Bean said, “Thank fucking N.O.T.A. that shotgun weddings are so rare these days as to not be common knowledge among young children. Want to ensure a fucked up (beyond belief) family and a fucked up kid? Force the parents to get married regardless of what either of them want ““ at gunpoint if necessary. ”
No kidding. I don’t understand people who hold the simultaneous view that marriage is a “sacred institution” yet bemoan the fact that people are no longer forced into it at gunpoint. Good grief.
Shotgun weddings do not represent a social good in and of themselves. Indeed, I would agree with previous posters that generally speaking they are very bad deals for everyone involved.
Similarly, prisons are bad places. There are not many good outcomes from prison. The people in them are not happy and are at great risk of violence.
Shotgun weddings, like prison, create their social benefit not from their direct function, but from their influence on the behavior of people who do not fall into their orbit. “I don’t want her pappy to make me marry her; I better (a) wear a rainjacket (b) leave her alone.”
I didn’t say that abortion created the culture of women’s commodification. I said it enhanced it.
Then, again, I disagree. Whatever get-out-of-responsibility-free card men get is more than balanced out by freeing women from every sex act (consensual or otherwise) risking motherhood. If men could require women to abort, that would be much different.
Making women responsible for men’s behavior burdens women doubly and isn’t all that effective. (I can pick up a shrieking five-year-old and put him in his room, but try that with a husband who insists he’s going to the bar whether you like it or not). It’s also a disincentive for men to behave well. You may recall the Monty Python skit lampooning the idea of blaming everybody else for one’s criminal behavior–“It’s a fair cop, but society is to blame!” If a man can blame women for failing to control him, that’s not an incentive for him to behave well.
Robert, if you don’t want to talk to me, don’t talk to me. You wouldn’t be the first person to think that I’m a crank, and you won’t be the last. It’s no skin off my nose either way.
Robert wrote:
I’ve always heard the legalization of abortion framed as being part of the women’s movement, as well as being part of the sexual revolution. The pill + Roe is how the sexual revolution was always framed to me; women can take the pill and not worry much about babies, and Roe provides an escape route in the cases where the pill fails.
I’m not sure what the point is here. Is it that the pill and Roe did nothing for married women ? That the sexual revolution, or at least these two aspects of it, were only for single women ? If so, I disagree. Married and/or monogamous women, too, might like to be able to have sex without so much anxiety about ending up with nineteen kids, or having to have nineteen abortions. My understanding is that the women’s movement –and its hard-won achievements– was/is supposed to be for all women. Execution has not always lived up to ideal, but still…
Oh, and before anyone wants to jump on me, I’m not saying that women should be forced into taking the Pill or having abortions if they don’t want to, just so they can fit into my personal ideal of what feminism is. That seems to be a frequent, perhaps deliberate assumption of anti-feminists, so I’d like to head that one off before it gets started.
If Qgrrl or someone else wants to pop in with their take on what the sexual revolution might have meant to queer women, I’m all ears.
Of course shotgun weddings would only really encourage the woman to use protection and abstain from sex, because the man can, if he’s motivated enough, just skip town when the shit hits the fan.
The woman cannot run from the pregnancy unless she gets an abortion.
so all it effectivly does is control women, which is why sexual revolutions are important for woman rights in society.
Perhaps I can make my point more clear by putting it in personal terms.
It is 1960. I am a basically decent heterosexual male, and I do not believe that a fetus has any rights or personhood. I am aware that abortion is dangerous, illegal, and expensive. I am aware that many women have men in their lives who will attempt to require certain behaviors of me if I impregnate those women. Accordingly, I exercise caution and prudence in my sexual dalliances. I make a conscious effort not to impregnate any females. This effort is neither universal nor perfect. In the case of a pregnancy with a large subset of my mating pool, there are significant consequences to me, and I act accordingly.
It is 1980. I am a basically decent heterosexual male, and I do not believe that a fetus has any rights or personhood. I am aware that abortion is safe, legal, and affordable in comparison with pregnancy and childbirth. I am aware that very few, if any, women have men in their lives who will attempt to require certain behaviors of me. I know that the state may attempt to require me to assume some financial responsibility for offspring, but I also know there are strategies to avoid that outcome. Accordingly, although I do not go out of my way to impregnate women just for giggles, nor do I devote significant resources or conscious effort on avoiding it. The bulk of what energy I do devote to the question is aimed at avoiding the relatively small number of women who are seeking pregnancy. In the case of a pregnancy with a large subset of my mating pool, there are no significant consequences to me, beyond the potential loss of a partner who becomes upset that I don’t give a shit that she’s pregnant, and I act accordingly.
1960 is not better than 1980. In 1960, I am not behaving as a paladin of the realm, unbesmirched in conduct and surrounded by a radiant halo of pure holiness. I am, however, responding differently to a different set of incentives. These incentives were created by social and technological change. No moral question has changed; no moral values have been invented or destroyed; the issue of my responsibility remains unaltered. Only my incentives have changed, and with them, my behavior.
Alsis, I do want to talk to you. I just want you to argue with me, instead of calling me names.
Uhh… women still have men (because women need men to protect their uterus obviously, which is a logical fallacy that justifies you being insulted btw) to enforce certain behaviours on these, ahem, “basically decent heterosexual” men (BDHM) during the 80’s, and the BDHM has to avoid women with over protective parents and women who won’t have an abortion as well as women actively trying to conceive.
And you’re still ignoring the STD variable, a BDHM in the 60’s wouldn’t care that much about a condom for reasons other than avoiding pregnancy (which they’d care less and less about the drunker they were) but a BDHM in the 80’s care alot more about STDs because while pregnancy can be remedied by abandoning the woman or abortion, AIDS will kill him.
Oh and “sticks and stones will break your bones, but valid arguments still need to be countered even if they are preceded by a personal insult” (though I personally found mocking Jake in the other thread for his spelling when his arguments were so stupid was just mean and unproductive, it sends people like him into a whiney defense mode which just isn’t as funny to read).
Sue me. :/
Phil, I read that comment 3 times and I still have no idea what you’re talking about.
Is it that the pill and Roe did nothing for married women ?
Interesting how that point always gets skipped over, innit? As if married women were uninterested in planning their families or knowing much about sexuality. Control of one’s body, one’s sexuality and one’s fertility were feminist issues very early on. It wasn’t just Helen Gurley Brown devotees who wanted to be able to make love without making babies.
Perhaps I can make my point more clear by putting it in personal terms.
Robert, I am sure this is not what you meant by your explanation, but what I got out of reading it was: Women are responsible for men’s sexual behavior because they, women, can get pregnant. That men need the fear of an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy complicating their lives in order to control/limit their sexual behavior, to make them act responsibly. That men are not able, or willing, to control their sexual behavior without the danger/threat of pregnancy. And that best way to insure that women continue to make men behave in a responsible fashion is to limit or restrict women’s access to birth control and abortion? Personally, my opinion of men is much higher than that. ::g::
Mousehounde, observation is not endorsement.
I am beginning to suspect that one reason feminism is so marginalized in society is because its practitioners reject the articulation of any observation not comforting to a particular worldview or set of beliefs.
Other belief sets have tried that strategy. It doesn’t work very well.
NancyP, from April til September The Nation ran an ad for http://www.bendricks.com
An antisexism group I’m involved with organized some letter writing and call-ins about it in September, and this is a portion of the response left on my voicemail by “Leigh” at the Nation:
“I worked with the lawyers and we looked at what the legal age of consent is in Costa Rica and in Thailand and 15 years old is the base age I think in one of the countries and the other one is 18. This company is above board, they’re a travel and tour company and it has been verified what he is doing is legal and they’re operating legally, so based on that there’s no reason to keep him from expressing himself.
The one thing that has happened is the advertiser has decided not to run right now so he’s no longer running in the magazine of his own accord.”
For several months they ran this ad, and even though several concerned people expressed the serious wrongness (and illegality despite the near-universal ignorance of laws against prostitution) of Bendricks.com, Leigh wanted to make clear that the sudden withdrawal of the ad had nothing to do with feminist letters and calls and was just coincidental happenstance. The official record has to be that feminists have no power and can affect nothing at The Nation, but the group is still considering the removal of the prostitution tour ad a minor victory.
Phil, I read that comment 3 times and I still have no idea what you’re talking about.
60’s Basically Decent Heterosexual Male has Robert’s dad with a shotgun acting as a deterrent to male promiscuity, 80’s Basically Decent Heterosexual Male has robert with a shotgun acting as a detterent to male promiscuity i.e. angry dads with shotguns have not been eliminated due to one sexual revolution and a 20-30 year space of time.
Difficulty of getting a woman an abortion has been replaced with fear of getting STDs in a social climate that is more accepting of sexual promiscuity.
Assumption that women can’t control their own uterus’ is sexist and asking for an insult.
I personally find “al cuntrees in the world employ only female prison guards, and the internets are lying if they say nething else!!!1” more amusing than “OMG, you are all unjustly ad homo neming me!” and thus mocking jake for the former rather than the latter in a different thread was IMHO, a better way to string out the former before the inevitable fall back to the latter.
now if you don’t mind me, I’ve got a shark to jump, this is a nice blog and I shall continue to spend way too many work hours lurking here. (it would be a much better blog if a preview function could be reactivated)
If you are a basically decent heterosexual male, you will not want your female sexual partners to suffer the pain, expense and emotional trauma of going through an abortion. You will care about their feelings and their health. If you do not, you are not decent.
In addition, you will be anxious because you can never be 100% sure that your sexual partners will NOT choose to carry any pregnancies to term, and you have diseases to worry about.
You have set your scenarios in a hypothetical world where pregnant women are by definition powerless and their feelings meaningless to their male sexual partners. This is possible, but any man who finds his sexual partners’ feelings meaningless is not “basically decent.” And you deny any modicum of agency to the young women involved. Does having birth control and abortion available not affect women’s behaviour as well? Isn’t it possible that we too decide to take the risks of sex, or not? I’m not sure why you choose to frame this as a man’s decision exclusively.
I’m also not convinced that your “basically decent” young man couldn’t have found ways to get out of the shotgun wedding (assuming your basically decent young woman even wanted said wedding, which you don’t mention).
What I meant about the sexual revolution: basically, I think acceptance of free love (i.e., sexuality is independent of marriage, sexual relations should be between equals and without coercion) is progressive.
Insisting that women who won’t have sex on demand, or who object to unwanted advances, are “uptight” or whatever the choice of words is, isn’t progressive.
My suspicion is that the porn industry basically latched on to the social changes that came through the successes of the feminist and gay rights movements, somewhat like mosquitos at a picnic. The times I’ve seen mainstream porn magazines, it surprised me how much outright sexist content it had, along with an infantile reveling in other sorts of bigotry — and yet still crowed about its own “liberal” attitudes.
To some degree, I agree with Robert. Anything that lowers the consequences of sex is going to increase the amount of “irresponsible” sex people have, to some degree. Incentives matter.
That doesn’t mean that anything lowering the consequences of sex is bad; in the case of abortion, I think the benefits of reproductive freedom (such as, well, freedom) more than justify the consquences.
It seems to me that since the 50s we’ve had not only the sexual revolution but also a less-highly-publicized responsibility revolution. Men are far more expected to pay child support now than they were in the 1950s or any time before; bigotry against bastard children is far less acceptable than it once was.
Furthermore, birth control is now far more widely accepted (and legal) than it used to be. Whatever irresponsibility-encouraging effects abortion has on men has, in my opinion, been more than mitigated by these other changes.
I also think that you (Robert) dismiss the effect of child support laws far too easily, as if such laws are always meaningless or easy to get around.
According to a study by Chien-Chung Huang (Social Service Review, June 2002, p 275-301), data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that states with strong child support enforcement have lower non-marital birthrates, even after controlling for differences in income, religion, schooling, family structures, etc. “Improved child-support enforcement reduces nonmarital births by 9.9 percent and increases marital births by 7.2 percent. The estimated proportional improvement in nonmarital birthrates for women age 20 or older, white women, and African-American women is 17.4, 3.8, and 13.4 percent, respectively. The increase in marital birthrates for these groups is 7.4, 6.9, and 3.8 percent, respectively.” (This is a much larger measured effect on the unmarried/married birthrate than welfare was ever shown to have, by the way).
So fi the concern is providing men with incentives to either not have sex or to use birth control reliably, then stronger child support laws seems like a viable policy approach.
So if the concern is providing men with incentives to either not have sex or to use birth control reliably, then stronger child support laws seems like a viable policy approach.
I’ve read some Lefty men’s critiques of strong child support payments (ie– deadbeat dad laws) from a perspective of privacy rights. Is that simply a Libertarian vein starting to creep invariably into any far-Left discussion/view ? Or is it just good old-fashioned patriarchy, or both ?
In some cases, I’ve also heard men frame it as being an issue of class and race:Like drug laws, stringent laws around child support are an unfair burden on certain classes of men, and the rules are being too heavily applied to a less powerful subgroup of society.
Makes me twitchy, probably on more than one level, because I’m not sure how I feel about that approach as a feminist. No proper bleeding-heart likes to hear that she’s unfairly burdening the poor, not the rich, etc etc… :o
In a nonsexist world, child support applies to mothers as well as fathers.
acceptance of free love (i.e., sexuality is independent of marriage, sexual relations should be between equals and without coercion) is progressive
Except that ‘free love’ wasn’t always that way, in theory or practice, in the 1960s that the semi-cons wail about. Playboy started with the idea that marriage was a trap for men and sex should be independent of a wedding ring, but never made the next step of considering whether women, too, might find the whole buying-the-cow analogy oppressive. Cynthia Heimel has a number of essays about how the idea of free love and hipness ended up being one more way for men to coerce unwilling women to have sex with them.
And this is the only version of ‘free love’, sadly, that many people can imagine: either predatory swingers, or we go back to hoop skirts and bonnets. Sad.
The child support system has gotten a lot better in recent years, to my general approval. It used to be fairly easy to evade (just move out of state) but now there are lots of intrastate compacts. Right now Colorado and California are coordinating to put through a change order on my wife’s support order, for example.
The anti-hoop skirt bigotry in these comments is unacceptable. Hoopophobia destroys lives.
Preview plugin appears to work just dandy, btw.
And this is the only version of ‘free love’, sadly, that many people can imagine: either predatory swingers, or we go back to hoop skirts and bonnets. Sad.
Heh. I find unmarried monogamy has worked pretty well so far. If I wanted children, I might feel differently. Even in this day and age, so-called illegitimacy places baggage on a child that he/she doesn’t ask for. But marriage in that case really would be for the sake of the kid, not for my own. I’d probably still be enough of a pain in the ass to say that a girl child should have my surname and that a boy child should have the surname of my partner. Just to shake things up a little.
I don’t want to be married because I feel that the institution carries too much baggage. I think that merely the societal expectations of what “husband” and “wife” are supposed to mean creates a lot of mores and “ideals” that I feel better just not buying and bringing home. Plenty of miscommunication and debate is still possible, never fear. :D Just not as much as I think there would be between us in marriage.
Of course, I think a lot of Lefty men would have a problem with the “monogamous” part and clearly –from the various pro-life threads hereabouts– Righty men have severe problems with the “unmarried” and “no child” part. Both sides would propose that I’m getting something that I haven’t really rightfully “earned.” Well, too damn bad.
I’m going with not as many nutballs as one might think. And racism in the lefty blogosphere exists. I just get tired of pointing that shit out day after day on their blogs. B/C I can write comments, and get no acknowledgement whatsoever. Or denial. “Progressives” truly think they can’t be racist. And I don’t deal well with that.
I agree with Mythago’s last comment. I wonder if Heimel was the source of that half-remembered quote.
Just to be clear: I’m not *against* monogamy. It seems to be the form of sexual relationship most people prefer, which I prefer for that matter. I’m against constraining everyone to monogamy only, especially when it’s the “get married early and stay together until you die — no divorce and no remarriage” form of monogamy. Different strokes for different folks.
I just get tired of pointing that shit out day after day on their blogs.
Yeah… :(
B/C I can write comments, and get no acknowledgement whatsoever.
I’m not a WOC, but I still love that stanza from an old Michael Franti album that says:
“Being kicked in the closed mouth
Or smiling with no teeth
Both of them choices, yes
But it’s still impossible to eat
‘Cause even in the most radical of groups
Mostly you will find
That when you stray from the doctrine
You’ll come upon hard times…”
Or denial. “Progressives”? truly think they can’t be racist. And I don’t deal well with that.
FWIW, I don’t blame you. :(
Robert, I am willing to listen if your experience with wearing hoop skirts is a positive one, but otherwise, I am proud to be hooply incorrect.
Ampersand, is there any numbers evidence that the availability of penicillin caused a wild upsurge in sexual promiscuity? Becaues syphilis was the AIDS of its day, and it was epidemic at the beginning of the century to the point that the US govt spent a lot of money on education to try to get WWI soldiers not to have sex, or at least to use condoms if they were going to, with iffy success, at least with the “Just Say No!” part. (Thus the Right’s hypocrisy in re condom distribution – they won’t allow it for the developing world, because it’s morally wrong to encourage people to have sex – but they have no problem with the military trying to protect its training investments…as long as they pretend not to know it’s going on.)
And before that, for at least 300 years, “the pox” was a grave public health problem – yet that didn’t stop anyone in Europe or the Americas from screwing like bunnies, whether they knew they were infected or not. (Early hand-sewn animal-product condoms didn’t work very well, and were sarcastically called “armor against love, gossamer against disease” back in the day.)
Lexi – that doesn’t mean you’re not having an effect. The memes are getting out there, whether they’re being immediately acknowledged or not. Consciousness-raising takes time, like filling a bathtub…