Antifeminists tend to be very hung up on blame. According to antifeminists, feminists blame men for all their problems, and feminist men are masochists who enjoy guilt.
My personal experience of feminism ain’t at all like that. I’ve met a handful of feminists who blame men for everything; but the vast majority of feminists I’ve met don’t waste their time with that. Which makes perfect sense. Blaming men would be unproductive for feminism, for several reasons:
- It makes some women and many men who might otherwise be indifferent to feminism – or even willing to listen to feminism – defensive and angry. In this way, blame creates enemies and reduces potential converts.
- It wastes time by paralyzing many pro-feminist men in a useless mire of defensiveness and guilt (trust me, there’s nothing as boring as an hour spent with a guilt-ridden feminist man).
- It blurs the distinction between the Alan Johnsons and the Jerry Fawells of the world (not to mention between the Anita Bryants and the Susan Faludis), by assigning people blame according to their genitalia rather than their actions.
- It deflects attention from the real powers-that-be. If we’re going to blame anyone, I think it makes the most sense to blame the real rulers – CEOs, high political mucky-mucks, Network executives. People who have real power to change society. Remember, although the vast majority of society’s ruling class are male, the vast majority of men aren’t in the ruling class.
That isn’t to say that men shouldn’t be blamed for the ways in which they personally perpetuate male dominance (by not treating daughters and sons equally, by abusing wives/lovers, by holding a female coworker to unfairly high standards, by refusing to do a fair share of housework, by telling sexist jokes, etc…). And it’s true that men do these things far more than women do. Still, some individual women do some of the same things, and some individual men do none of them. Any blame cast should be a matter of individual’s actions and not their genitalia.
If we do make blame a matter of genitalia rather than individual action, that significantly reduces the motivation for individual men to reform or change their actions. If they’re equally at fault no matter what they do, what’s the point?
Judging individuals based on their genitalia, rather than their actions, is not just wrong; it’s antifeminist. It would be like beating people up for pacifism.
I don’t feel guilty for being male. What would be the point? My guilt wouldn’t improve anything. Although I’ve benefited from being male in a male-dominated society, that’s not my fault. The system was in place a hundred generations before my birth; how could I be to blame?
So if we don’t have blame, what’s left? I would say, responsibility.
Although not all men perpetuate sexism, virtually all men benefit from sexism. Virtually all men have in some way gotten gains that we don’t deserve, at the expense of women. And that means that even though we’re not to blame, all men have a special responsibility to support feminism and fight sexism – because we owe women for our unjust gains.
(Ditto, by the way, for White people and anti-racism).
Blame is silly and counterproductive: it gets hung up asking “who made this mess?” Responsibility is productive: it says, “time to clean up this mess.”.
>What hit me in the face is how, in a way, it was supplanting a woman’s voice with a man’s voice.
Whoops. No supplanting intended.
I meant to say something like, “See those themes Q Grrl develops about the dynamics between the privileged and the underprivileged, and the misunderstandings and strong emotions generated on each side? I think she’s really onto something. MLK observed many of the same things.”?
But the post was already pretty long, so I gave it the pithier introduction of along the lines of “That’s nuthin’; check this out!”? It was a throw-away line, and an inartful one. I didn’t mean to suggest a competition between Q Grrl and Dr. King; my apologies.
But that’s just what feminist theory posits.
Q Grrl, there are different theories within feminism. I am not speaking from a specific theory either, I am only speaking my mind. From my own experience.
What happens repeatedly in these types of discussions with men is that men only see the dichotomy of blame-guilt. They never translate it as blame-social responsibility
But that’s exactly what I meant, social responsibility.
In telling women that it is useless to blame men b/c the men will feel guilty, all social responsibility falls back on women to make their complaints palatable to men’s safety zones and ego needs
I’m sure that has happened, I’m sure you could read that kind of attitude into some comments made here, but *that is not what I’m talking about all*. I couldn’t care less about anyone’s ego and safety zones, or about making ideas more palatable to people who disagree. That’s not my kind of idea of political discussion. I have no problem calling people who want a legal ban abortion a mass of hypocrite soulless fundamentalist bastards, and I have no problem wishing to the people who support or find excuse for torture that they may experience it themselves. Even the far left sometimes is too conservative for my tastes. If I was worried about palatibility of ideas, I wouldn’t even bother having any. I’m not a moderate.
I am not a man, in case you thought that was my bias. My bias is my personal experience in life as a person who happens to be female, and it has taught me, very clearly and directly, that women are just as capable of embracing and finding excuses for attitudes that damage other women, as long as they can find their spot of privilege and safety in the whole system. See again the legal anti-abortionists, those who go on and on about their own traditional lifestyle that they chose as if it was the only valid one for women, those mothers that call their daughters sluts for daring to do the things their brothers can get away with and even be encouraged to do, etc. etc.
At the bigger level the women with this sort of attitudes may have internalised a system that wasn’t originally built for them in the first place, I can understand that argument, historically it is perfectly valid. But today in modern societies such as in the US or Europe they are not being forced by men to reinforce mysoginy, and many of them are definitely enjoying the privileges that come from reinforcing traditional fixed gender roles, privileges I wouldn’t want for myself – I could never even wish to write columns oozing with mysoginy and regressive ideas even if I got paid a million dollars a paragraph – but they’re still objectively privileges.
So, all I’m saying is, there are different degrees of responsibility even in reinforcing and upholding mysoginistic, homophobic, regressive and fundamentalist notions of sexuality and society. Those responsibilities are not limited to men. Notions are not gender-divided. Culture is a more flexible human product than that.
So, at individual level, I’m going to hold directly accountable those individuals, women or men, who do reinforce the notions that damage those who refuse that system; and at the bigger social level, I’m going to still make distinctions based not on gender, which is something no one chooses for themselves, but on actual behaviour and ideas, again. Those who do embrace those notions may be more often men than women, though my personal experience contradicts that, but that’s anecdotical; the wider system of support for those notions has evolved historically for the privilege of men, true; but precisely because of that, I find it just as inexcusable if not more inexcusable for women who do support those notions to do so, just because they like to fit in that system and profit from it and think everyone else should. In my experience, a mother treating her daughter like she was worth half her brothers hurts twice as much than if it was coming from her father. Because if it was her father doing that, she could always clearly see he’s a man and what the fuck does he know about being a woman. But from a mother, it’s like a knife plunged right into your stomach, and it’s going to be a lot harder to rebel against and understand and overcome and make your peace with it in a way that doesn’t keep hurting you. That’s why I refuse to consider gender as the first and more relevant kind of identity, I don’t belong to the same group with those women, and I’m going to find like-minded people among men as well as other women. That’s why I don’t associate privilege with being male per se, exclusively or a priori. I don’t want to be a male, and I don’t want that kind of “privilege” arising from mysoginy because I refuse the entire system it’s built on, and other men do, too.
I know no one was saying the exact opposite, but there can be a fine line sometimes between refuting traditional views of roles based on gender, and ending up reinfocing the very gender-based categorisation that is precisely at the root of those views.
I refuse to let the fact I’m female colour every aspect of my views, in my experience, the biggest divide that cut across all societies and the first form of group identity is not female/male, but things like rich/not rich, powerful/not powerful, spoilt idiots/not spoilt idiots, arrogant fuckers/not arrogant fuckers, tolerant/intolerant, openminded/closeminded, etc. etc.. In my experience, those kind of distinctions cut across the gender divide in a massive way, and I’m not going to ignore that because it’s just been impossible for me to do so. I have nothing in common with a spoilt, rich, arrogant, cryptofascist woman who writes columns in defense of notions and politics I despise. Whereas I can share a lot with a guy who despises the same things I do and shares the same values I have. Are there areas where we cannot completely identify because I’m female and he’s male? Not more than things that make it impossible to completely identify with anyone else simply because no one has exactly the same life experiences and backgrounds and personalities. Even with my best female friends that happens, it’s normal, it’s what makes interaction with other people interesting, provided there is some common ground. Gender itself is not enough of a common ground to me, when all others things are so much more relevant.
Because of the historic and ongoing discrimination against women, we do have to analyze men’s action as class actions. Because the nature of discrimination against women is systematic and often state sanctioned, we can’t look at individual men and make political changes or theories from that information. We have to look at the overarching systems and paradigms that keep women down, or raped, or murdered
Personally I believe we also have to be totally honest and see that there are many women who totally support and embrace that system and do benefit from it too, in their own view of benefit of course, which is not mine, because I would and could never want to be part of that mentality in the first place. But not all of them are being forced or kept down or paid off with bribes to do so. Again, a mother who teaches her daugther the notion that rape or harassment is something you can go “asking for” by “dressing provocatively” is as complicit in that mentality as the men who use it as an excuse for themselves. I’m sorry but I’m not that generously inclined to one entire half of mankind just because of sharing the same chromosomes – I’m going to hold those women as fucking responsible as they truly are. They’re not victims, they’re perpetrators. This is not a battle of the sexes for me, it’s a cultural matter.
Of course if we’re talking countries and societies were discrimination against women is sanctioned by law, then it’s another matter because those women have a lot less cultural and practical choices in the first place and treating their daughters like worthless property of men is something they themselves had to endure. It still doesn’t excuse it, buy it is different from the same thing happening in a wealthier and more culturally open society with a different history in which feminism did actually emerge as one of the biggest cultural phenomen of recent times. I have lot less excuses for the women who live in these societies and yet cling on to their own old comfort zones they carved out for themselves and want to impose that on anyone else too and turn back the clock a hundred years or more. The abortion debate is a very blatant example of what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, it’s not just men who fanatically support the reactionary fundamentalist view. It’s also all those women who are really quite content and satisfied in treating other women like cattle, because they cannot conceive not everyone embraces their lifestyle and views. I’m not part of any of their battles, because they’re not mine, and they’re not part of my idea of what feminism should bring about, because if it was up to me, I’d damn well remove even the freedoms they have thanks to other women, and men’s, efforts for social progress, and literally send them back a few centuries and then see if they’d still like to speak about how feminism has damaged society. I hate these people, based on their ideas, it doesn’t matter to me which gender they are. I appreciate the people who fight against those ideas, no matter what their gender is.
I don’t believe I’m saying anything controversial or anything that excuses mysoginist men, quite the contrary, I’m just not willing to see everything through the gender divide because it’s not the only or biggest factor which determines what views and attitudes people end up embracing and reinforcing.
One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness”? that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses.
Exactly what I’m talking about… with all due differerences between racism and mysoginy and being black and female, but that’s exactly the mentality I’m talking about.
I’m wondering, though, Q grrl, did you really assume I was a man and was saying the things you thought I was saying, or was yours just a general comment on the whole issue directed at the men who do dismiss these issues?
I’m only asking, because I didn’t particularly enjoy getting misunderstood and having a series of “YOU MEN” thrown at me when I’m not a man and I’m not supporting any of those views you were criticising – though it was amusing in a way. More ironic than you could possibly know.
If it was only a misunderstanding, no problem, but man, that was freaky…
“What are you men? Fucking *children*?”
“That’s always been the problem with you. You don’t really give a shit about power.”
“Women are, once again, supposed to do all your work for
you while you leech off of us.”
“You aren’t? You aren’t responsible for your actions of selling women bloggers out…complaining about how to spend Daddy’s trust fund.”
————————————————————————-
I completely agree with the many of the statements that have been posted about feminist anger and men examining privilege and men as a class. And some of the statements that I disagree with above are thought-provoking and well argued. But these quotes from the two recently banned posters are nasty and verbally abusive. In my humble opinion–okay, opinionated and pushy, not so humble : ) –verbal abuse should not be tolerated in feminist arenas or elsewhere. I don’t fault Ampersand for banning them at all.
Call me “civil” if you must. I’m off to fight the patriarchy.
You know, Dorothy Stang, an American nun who worked with and defended the rights of peasants in Brazilian rainforests for 37 years was recently gunned down by thugs, her body riddled with bullets as she stood reading out of the Bible. She worked with the poorest of the poor fighting those determined to establish exploitive fiefdoms which robbed the people of their hopes for any sort of future, let alone sustainable future.
Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan feminist, is responsible for the planting of 30 million trees in Kenya and other areas. For her resistance to the exploitation of the earth, she recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, but she was also beaten up, she was also imprisoned. For what. Protecting the earth. Protecting the air. Protecting the children, the people.
What was the sex of the people who riddled Dorothy Stang’s head with bullets as she stood reading the Bible? What was the sex of those who repeatedly threatened her work in defense of their exploitive kingdoms? What was the sex of those who beat Wangari Maathai? What was the sex of those who imprisoned her?
We don’t even think twice about it. We know they were all men.
That’s what male power is and does in the world. It is terrorism on a large scale that incites both large scale and small scale fear in everybody, which keeps women and children in our places. These considerations of male power are what you, mn, and you, Emma, are not factoring in to your analyses. And they are far too central to be omitted.
Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff (Heart)
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins
These considerations of male power are what you, mn, and you, Emma, are not factoring in to your analyses.
Fair enough, I admit it can be seen that way, though I see it differently.
I also keep a distinction between the bigger picture at political level and my own personal experience.
In the bigger political picture, I also factor in all the males who were persecuted, tortured, detained without trial, desaparecido’ed, silenced and oppressed, exterminated in concentration camps, by other males. Explain that to me through the male/female privilege divide now. All the people currenty being denied any basic human rights in Guanatanamo are males. As long as they are in there, I don’t even care what their views on women or gays or religion or the law are, because everyone is entitled to basic legal and human rights irrespective of their views, which we can deal with after those basic rights have been respected and people are taken down from the hooks in the ceiling and can actually go back to functioning like humans and perhaps be properly charged and tried, or released if there are no charges to start with. In terms of political concerns, that is my primary one, human rights. Which happen to include women rights specifically, but not be limited to them. I am also concerned by the rise of religious fundamentalisms, racism and xenophobia, reactionary mentalities, the excesses of consumerism and corporate impunity, economic colonisation and exploitation, disregard for legal principles and abdication of accountability for governments – all trends that do affect both men and women in a million ways. Trends that do have a tendency to affect men and women of the lower classes more than those of the upper classes; men and women of poorer nations than those of wealthier ones; men and women of certain ethnic groups rather than others, and so on and so forth.
So the way I see it is, I tend to factor in more factors than one, but I would understand why it may look differently.
mn: In the bigger political picture, I also factor in all the males who were persecuted, tortured, detained without trial, desaparecido’ed, silenced and oppressed, exterminated in concentration camps, by other males. Explain that to me through the male/female privilege divide now. All the people currenty being denied any basic human rights in Guanatanamo are males.
I think you’ve answered your own question. All of these persecuted, tortured, detained without trial, desaparecido’ed, silenced, oppressed, exterminated in concentration camps, men, were, as you say, terrorized by other men. Not by women.
Men terrorize men and men terrorize women. What is rare is for women to terrorize anybody, and when they do, they are acting as agents of men and men’s institutions.
Of course everybody is entitled to human and civil rights, that is not an issue. And of course there are many kinds of oppression. Nevertheless, the situation is that men oppress other men AND women in all the ways you list, they also rape women, and prostitute women, AND men, when the reverse is almost never true. When you begin to talk about all of these many impressions and the way some men suffer, it is not going to do to not to be very clear about what sex is doing what to what sex.
Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff (Heart)
The Margins
http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins
Cheryl, the difference is, I just don’t *reduce* all those issues to a matter of sex. Because the fact Augusto Pinochet or Saddam Hussein were males tells me nothing about their actions; if their being male was the first determining factor, then they wouldn’t have had so many male, as well as female, opponents.
It’s not just “some” men who undergo the consequences of abuses of power. Some forms of abuses (rape, harassment, domestic violence, gender discrimination) affect women a lot more than men, and that’s what mysoginy does; some other forms of abuse affect men more than women, or both equally, because they have nothing to do specifically with mysoginy. Exploitment, injustices, denial of rights, political persecution, unlawful detainment, etc. they arise from something much wider.
If the perversity of those abuses was down to being male, then we should posit that in a society where females replace all those men in power who do abuse it, there should be no perversity and no abuse. Like anything, in theory, it is possible, but I somehow doubt it. I believe in equality, not utopia. Perversity and violence is a trait of human nature and the traits of human nature are not something neatly sliced up between males and females. Wish it were so, it would make it a lot easier to get through life. Specific behaviour is not something we can assign a priori to an entire gender as its defining characteristic, based only on observation of which gender displays it most often. If I believed in that, I’d be President of Harvard. Or at the very least, sell a lot of books on Evolutionary Psychology. But I’d rather sell watermelons down the road than do that.
I don’t think much of generalisations about women, and for the same reason, I don’t think of much of generalisations about men, either.
If sexism is a cultural construct, it means it is not ingrained in gender chromosomes, and that means, I will approach it as a cultural matter.
Which does not mean, ignore which sex is doing what to which sex, but, simply, not try and forcefully fit in every form of domination though that pattern, because things seem more complex to me. There are many women who perpetrate and support systems of discrimination and abuse and violence, be it specifically mysoginist or of a more general political or economic or social nature; there are many men who pay the consequences of those systems too. I’m not going to ignore that and reduce everything to sex, because there are so many other factors at play in society and often they are even more significant in creating divides. That’s all.
That’s my own personal view and set of priorities. Doesn’t mean I consider the views of others worthless, I can respect them, but they just don’t work for me and do not reflect my own experience and beliefs, that’s all.
It is not a generalization, MN, to describe what is done to men and women by men and to say that it doesn’t work in reverse. This is a statement about male power. That is a description of facts as they exist in the world.
It’s fine to talk about all the things you are talking about, so long as the dynamics of male power are factored in, always. I have not suggested that everything or anything be “reduced” to sex; I have said that any analysis which omits consideration of what sex is doing what to whom and what sex is not is a flawed analysis. And I don’t think there is ANY biological or genetic component to male violence. I do not believe men are “naturally” anything — more violent, more aggressive, more predatory, more visual, and so on. I think men are violent, aggressive, predatory, because it works, it maintains male supremacy. And in order to eliminate all of those many oppressions you list, first you must deal with male supremacy and its violence, aggressiveness, predation, because all of it starts right there, both male dominance over men and male dominance over women.
Heart
But Cheryl, that’s exactly where we disagree. I don’t believe all kinds of violence start right there with male dominance, meaning, I don’t believe that’s the primary factor at the root of *all* kinds of discrimination and inequality, including those that are not directed at women *and* do not have anything to do specifically with mysoginy.
Yeah of course, if we explain everything that’s wrong in the world with patriarchy, and say everyone lives in a patriarchy anyway, then even those women who mistreat their daugthers, or sons even, or say, their colleagues of both sexes, are simply women who internalised patriarchy and therefore it all comes back to males and their endless dominance. I just don’t think so. It is essentially a reductive model, in my opinion. If I happen to work for a woman instead of a man, I can get along fine with her but I cannot ascribe that to being a woman, just the fact she’s a cool person to get along with. If I do not get along with her, and she makes unreasonable demands of me and treats me like I’m her slave, I cannot ascribe it to her having supposedly internalised patriarchic modes of domination rather than her simply being an asshole. It’s exactly the same with a man.
We do agree that behaviour is not genetically or biologically determinated by gender; but there is also a tendency to apply a similar deterministic reasoning about gender and social-cultural mentalities and behavioural traits, and that’s what I’m wary of. I do not believe in projecting one single pattern over individual and social behaviour, because it doesn’t sufficienty explain all those other individual and social factors that make for differences in behaviour.
Or take a neutral example of inequality. The Duchess of York certainly enjoys more privileges than an Afghan farmer. What does her being a woman and his being a man have to do with it? Nada. I don’t hate the Duchess for being born a Duchess; I will base my opinions on what she does with that privilege and what kind of a person she is; I may then consider the institution of aristocracy an outdated anachronistic one and wish its end, without hating every single member of it regardless. But it’s not male dominance that granted the Duchess those privileges in the first place.
Do I have to be happy that Margaret Thatcher was one of the most powerful leaders in recent times becuase she’s a woman? I’m not, because her being a woman tells me nothing about her politics which I despise. I’d rather be happy that Zapatero won in Spain because he’s more of a feminist than her, and has done more to promote women in politics than her, along with other issues. In Scandinavian countries, many more women are in politics than anywhere else and principles of equality are more accepted and implemented at social and political level and they benefit everyone, men and women with children, single parents, gay couples of both sexes, students, health care, etc.. There’s a different culture of politics and society, and it’s not just a higher presence of women in politics that does that, it’s a continuous process. Societies that are less competitive and less oriented exclusively towards profit and screw-everyone-else are happier places to live in for both men and women. It’s a cultural thing, not a gender thing.
For me, my background and my origins and my own experiences are more importan than my gender. I am not going to have solidarity a priori with all women just because we’re women, and be suspicious and resentful towards men just for being men, when life has shown me that both men and women are capable of being total assholes, bullies and pricks, and I don’t believe the explanation for that is as simple and neat as the existence of patriarchy and internalisation thereof. In some cases, it is, in many other cases, it’s not. I cannot draw such a neat gender-based line between good and bad aspects of human nature and human society, and fit everything through that model. It isn’t true because that model doesn’t apply to everything.
I have said that any analysis which omits consideration of what sex is doing what to whom and what sex is not is a flawed analysis.
Fair enough, I agree when it does apply to situations where sex is indeed the most relevant factor, but my own personal corollary to that is, any (social, political, cultural) analysis that fails to give the necessary importance to other factors that are often far more relevant than sex is also a flawed analysis.
At least, in my own view, a non-flawed analysis would incorporate an acknowledgement of the complexities of both human nature and human society and all the different factors that do interact in many different ways. Among those factors there is sex, but it is not the most important one, because what differentiates me from the Duchess of York or Margaret Thatcher or Ann Coulter or Condi Rice on the one hand, or Juliette Binoche or Sofia Coppola or Flannery O’Connor or Beth Orton or Bjork on the other, is not sex. And those differences – of wealth, power, political opinions, talent, character, looks, vocation – are far more relevant than sex. I do not want to be any of those women, but I’ll admire some of them (the latter group) and have no interest and appreciation for others. It’s exactly the same with men. I have more admiration and interest for David Bowie and Nick Drake than Britney Spears and Celine Dion. What does that have to do with males and patriarchy? Nothing. If I saw everything through the prism of sex and domination, I wouldn’t be free to enjoy what I really enjoy and be like I really want to be.
Maybe this is because I first studied feminism as part of literary post-modernism and I always saw it connected to theories of deconstruction. I personally like that approach, that challenge to fixed identities. I personally believe it is a good approach also on the political level, not just the theoretical one.
Of course there are many different kinds and strands of feminism, and everyone has their own biases and interpretations to bring to their own appreciation of feminism too, I have mine just as anyone else’s. I may not be a real feminist in the view of other people with a different approach to feminism, then again I’m not a real woman in the view of other people with a different approach to gender, I am not a “real” many things, but I just do not subscribe to any notion of “real” anything decided by someone else. I know I’m real and I know I’m a person and I am me, and I do not want to let anyone, man or woman, define for me what I am or what I should think, and I do not intend to let any single theory define me and my views, either. I just take what I appreciate from different approaches and different cultural and political ideas and make my own mix. I like it better that way. That’s what works for me. Something else works for others, cool. Just as long as we can communicate, it’s more interesting that way.
Jeez, can I go on and on or what. Now I have to go out and get the papers…
Well said, mn.
A few thoughts:
Or take a neutral example of inequality. The Duchess of York certainly enjoys more privileges than an Afghan farmer. What does her being a woman and his being a man have to do with it? Nada.
But this example obscures the reality of male supremacy. The proper comparison is not the Duchess of York with an Afghan farmer, but the Duchess of York with the Duke of York, and the Afghan farmer with his wife. Who fares better? The Duchess or the Duke? The farmer or his wife? And why is that?
* I think how you are understanding the position I am taking is reductive, but the position isn’t at all reductive. My view that male oppression of women is the central oppression does not negate how that oppression “intersects” with other oppressions. I am just saying that confronting oppressions which are actually centered in sexism without simultaneously confronting the sexism which gave rise to them is counterproductive. When we confront homophobia, we have to also confront the sexism which is at the root of the homophobia. When we confront racism, we have to confront the white male supremacy which is at the foundation of the racism. When we confront classism, we have to look at the way women’s unpaid labor on account of sexism informs analses of class, and so on.
* You say a lot in your post about who you are and are not expected to “like,” and why you should not be expected to “like” women if they are assholes and why you like men if they are progressive and why you should not be expected to be in solidarity with women and so on. Here’s the thing, though: political analyses do not turn on the likeability, or not, of individuals. They turn on interrogation of power, on power relations, on who has power, on who doesn’t, and again, on who does what to whom, and why and whether or not it works both ways. As Portia said once, and it was excellent, “I don’t have to like you to want you to be free.” I am in solidarity with all women in resistance to sexist oppression, but that doesn’t mean I personally like all women or dislike all men. My solidarity is a political statement; a confrontation of gendered power and my resistance is in the hopes of deconstructing male power which is at the core of so many oppressions.
Maybe this is because I first studied feminism as part of literary post-modernism and I always saw it connected to theories of deconstruction. I personally like that approach, that challenge to fixed identities. I personally believe it is a good approach also on the political level, not just the theoretical one.
I think it is an interesting approach to literary theory, but it isn’t any sort of politics. I think we certainly need to deconstruct white, male, heteropatriarchy, but that isn’t the project postmodern literary theory has applied itself to; instead it has applied itself, not to the deconstruction of male power or notions of manhood, but to the deconstruction of understandings of “woman,” such that the very ground women must stand upon to confront male power has been eroded and deconstructed as a result, with the category “man” left untouched. To deconstruct the meaning of “woman” without deconstructing the meaning of “man” is simply same shit different day, with dire consequences for women; it’s a lot of things, but it isn’t politics.
Heart
And those differences – of wealth, power, political opinions, talent, character, looks, vocation – are far more relevant than sex.
Sex influences how far wealth, political opinions, talent and character will get you; how important your looks are; and what vocations are open to you. The fact that other differences do exist and are important is not excuse for pretending gender isn’t.
Cheryl, long reply, split in three for hopefully less visual damage –
1) The reason I picked the Duchess rather than the Duke of York, and the male Afghan farmer rather than his wife, as terms of comparison is very simple and obvious to me: the difference in privileges between the Duchess of York and the male Afghan farmer is far bigger and more relevant to their actual conditions of life than the difference in privileges between a) Duchess of York and Duke of York and b) male Afghan farmer and female Afghan farmer.
Those differences are what really *can* have a much bigger effect on people’s lives than sex. They do not just intersect with it. They can, often, be more important differences.
Money, social status, class, education, cultural background these things can play a much bigger role than sex or gender. (And then of course, individual differences, but that’s another story).
Usually only rich people say money doesn’t matter that much…
The Duchess of York does not have any less privileges than her own male equivalent. There is something nearly outrageous in putting her in the same category with the Afghan farmer’s wife just because they’re both women.
The Afghan farmer’s wife does on the other hand have significantly less privileges than her male counterpart, to put it euphemistically. I for one cannot pretend that is not also significantly related to their cultural-political context, social class and economic status, and not only or primarily down to sex – because if they had been Dukes and Duchess of York, they bloody well wouldn’t have been living in a theocratic oppressive mysoginist society in the first place, would they. And they wouldn’t have got bombed for something they didn’t do either, how about that.
Of course, we can forcibly remove the Afghan female farmer and Duchess of York from their actual social and economic background, the actual conditions they grew up and live in, and bring them on a plane where we focuse on the only, only one thing they have in common: being female.
That is what I call reductive.
No, I do not think analysing the extent of sexism in homophobia, or racism, or classism, or even fascism, is wrong or reductive at all. I never implied that.
I think it is reductive to want to see the entirety of those phenomena as *caused* by sexism. And that’s what it seems to me you’re doing. And that’s what I am disagreeing with.
Because I just cannot see the male/female divide as the only, or always the primary, *root* of social and political problems. Mysoginy, sexism, discrimination, violence against women are often a *consequence* rather than a source of those problems. They are definitely a source of oppression, but they can also be a result of other kinds of oppression, they can be a mix of different kinds of oppression, they can be part of a loop of oppressions. It depends on what actual injustices we are talking about. I cannot boil it down to one primary factor that’s above and at the root of everything else.
Not to mention social interaction is not all about power/oppression either. But that too is another story and maybe irrelevant to this discussion.
2) The “likeability” thing was about personal differences, and identities, and actual views and actual behavour and actual cultural manifestations, not a sort of premise or substitute for political analysis.
Of course I don’t have to like you to want you to be free. I don’t even have to know you, to want you to be free. I totally agree with that.
My point in bringing up “I dislike Ann Coulter” is simply, Ann Coulter is not a priori, just based on her gender, part of my solidarity impetus for women’s rights – because her views are very much supportive of both sexism and other forms of discrimination. Of course I will give her my most unlimited solidarity *if and when* she gets unlawfully detained, thrown in Guantanamo, harrassed or raped or beaten up or done any other injustice, sexist or not, for which I will have solidarity with anyone, anyone, who is unfairly treated and abused. That goes without saying. Principles of justice work like that. People who are unlawfully detained, people who are kidnapped by terrorists, must get unconditional solidarity for that, regardless of their views and whether we like them or not. Regardless of their gender, too.
Now, though I personally dislike Coulter and her views, I actually do get annoyed when people refer to her physical appearance and make lousy sexist jokes about it. Like she’s too thin, she is obviously a frustrated sex-deprived bitch, she is not a real woman, she is not feminine enough, blah blah blah, based entirely on her looks. Because that is sexist. Because in that moment, she is the subject of sexist jokes, and there are other ways to express personal dislike and even hatred, than that. I would certainly be as annoyed even when a male is being picked on or ridiculed for being “not manly enough”, for being a “sissy”, for not being a “real man” – regardless of what his views were. So I can can definitely see your point there about likeability/solidarity, and I do agree with it. But I am not going to see only that moment in Coulter’s life and see her life only as a person of the female sex. I am going to see the rest of it too. So when she herself is propagating sexism and racism and warmongering hateful creepy opportunist nonsense, she’s not getting my solidarity at all.
If I gave gender precedence over the actual views of people in relation to gender, that’d be not seeing the forest for the tree. IMO.
I do have solidarity with victims of all oppression, and that is a larger category than victims of sexist oppression only, and takes precedence because it does include sexist oppression, but *is not limited to it* because not all forms of oppression are sexist in origin or in manifestations.
So, it’s not that I do not have a political analysis or do not know what the premises for one are – it’s that, my own premises for political analysis are different from yours. I can appreciate much of your analysis but I cannot embrace it as a whole because I do not share its basis as a whole.
3) I didn’t say post-modern literary theory was politics itself, I said I believe it is a good approach also at the political level, as, for me, there are aspects of that theory I like and bring into my political views, in general.
You say that within that theory only the “meaning of woman” has been deconstructed while the “meaning of man” hasn’t. That’s a simplistic, categorical statement and it’s absolute piffle. The challenge to identity is a challenge to all fixed identities, for all genders, and not only for gender. Postnmodern literary theory is not even one precise theory per se, it is a vast, international, interdisciplinary, loose set of a lot more complex theories that hold a lot of different and dissenting voices within them, and many feminist ones too. Of course, like postmodernism, feminism has many voices within it as well.
The beauty of it is, no one voice, in feminism and postmodernism alike, gets to say who’s the only one “real” voice, because no one can claim that absolute power, because if they did so, they would bring down the entire premises they are working on. That’s what I like about it. Deconstruction is an indestructible mechanism.
But seriously, post-modern piffle aside… That’s why I said I am not embracing any particular theory as a fixed whole, I’m not interested in fixed theories, I take what I like about many different approaches and theories and political ideas and make them my own. I certainly am not identifying my views with postmodernism – such a massively huge non-thing contradicting itself all the time… – and could never do that. I liked some of the approaches and premises I studied within some postmodern theories, and how they interacted with feminism, and how they reflected my experiences, and my other political views. That’s all.
Mythago –
Sex influences how far wealth, political opinions, talent and character will get you; how important your looks are; and what vocations are open to you.
Not always. In many cases it does, in many cases it doesn’t, or, is not the main factor that does. In my experience, my life, my society, my reality, it’s wealth, or lack thereof, that has certainly been far more relevant in influencing all those things.
There’s nothing like not having something, to know how much it counts.
The fact that other differences do exist and are important is not excuse for pretending gender isn’t.
I didn’t say isn’t relevant, only that it’s not always the primary relevant influence, and often, other factors are.
All said above already, anyway. I couldn’t possibly make it clearer that I’m not denying the influence of gender, only, exactly like you said!, saying that other differences to exist and are (well, can be, depending) more important. That’s all….
The reason I picked the Duchess rather than the Duke of York, and the male Afghan farmer rather than his wife, as terms of comparison is very simple and obvious to me: the difference in privileges between the Duchess of York and the male Afghan farmer is far bigger and more relevant to their actual conditions of life than the difference in privileges between a) Duchess of York and Duke of York and b) male Afghan farmer and female Afghan farmer.
And the reason I called you out on this is that this is a male-centered view. It invisibles the realities of the women in both instance. The Duchess of York is as likely as any other woman on the planet to have been raped, molested, sexually assaulted, objectified, sexually harrassed, sexually exploited. She will have been raised all of her life with the message that as a woman she is inferior to men. When you compare her with a male Afghan farmer, you make all of this invisible and reduce your own “analysis” to matters of wealth and class, eliminating any analysis at all of sexism. You also make the greater suffering of the Afghan farmer’s wife compared with her husband invisible because you don’t even mention it. Your focus is on a poor third world man versus a rich third world woman, which misses the sexist oppression of BOTH the rich woman and the poor woman, which is what your particular politics unfailingly does.
The Duchess of York does not have any less privileges than her own male equivalent.
Onlyl a man would say this or think it. The Duchess of York — any rich woman — is as likely to be violated on the basis of sex (raped, incested, molested, assaulted, sexually harrassed) as any other woman. She has also heard messages all of her life that women are not as smart/strong/good as men, that women live to sexually service men, that prostituting women is a necessary “outlet” for men, that hate speech in the form of pornography isn’t hate speech at all. These affect ALL women regardless of class standing and they do not affect ANY men, again regardless of class standing, in the same way.
You say that within that theory only the “meaning of woman”? has been deconstructed while the “meaning of man”? hasn’t. That’s a simplistic, categorical statement and it’s absolute piffle.
Postmodern “feminism” has dedicated itself to the project of deconstruction of the meaning of the word “woman” and has pretty much paid not attention to similar deconstruction of the meaning of the word “man,” and that’s what I was getting at, to wit, Judith Butler, et al.
The challenge to identity is a challenge to all fixed identities, for all genders, and not only for gender.
That’s the theory. But the postmodern heroes s0-called were far and away all male, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, et al, their standpoint is male, they are male-centered and the outworkings of their theories in academia favor men, not women, which is why we even have the term “postmodern feminism,” which is, in any event, an oxymoron.
From the standpoint of politics, the only identities which ought to be challenged are those identities which are functions of power: male, white, het. To challenge the identities of women, lesbians, minorities of various kinds is counterproductive because it removes the foundation they are standing upon in their confrontation of male power. If the word “woman” doesn’t mean anything anymore, then how do I confront male power over me? If the word “man” doesn’t mean anything anymore, then who exactly has it been throughout history who has made war, made genocide, raped, incested, battered, exploited and destroyed the earth? Who were those folks? I think they were men, and let’s not hasten to “deconstruct” their “fixed identity,” lest they be tempted, as they always are, to attempt to vault themselves out of power methodologically, as MacKinnon puts it, leaving us without words to use to give voice to our own oppression, all the while the oppression continues and the machinery of patriarchy grinds on.
Heart
“The Duchess of York does not have any less privileges than her own male equivalent. ”
You might want to check up on British succession law.
that is correct: the Brittish title system is still remarkably sexist, and not even for any good reason.
the hereditary positions (baronet and above), when granted to men, bestow honors and title rights upon their wives and children.
When awarded to women, their husbands and sons get bumpkis.
Lord Whazzisface of Ovathere’s wife is Lady Whazzisface of Ovathere.
but Dame Whodat’s husband is just some guy.
You would think with the English love of inventing words for things, they’d have addressed this long ago, and made new terms that, while not gender neutral, would be gender equivalents.
well, can be, depending
Nobody disputes this. It is a non-point. Nobody has claimed that gender is ALWAYS the absolute #1 most significant factor in anything. You claimed, or seemed to have claimed initially, that gender is NEVER the #1 factor in determining privilege. Which, frankly, it is. From the perspective of the Afghani woman, how much money she has, how educated she is, how noble her birth, etc., is irrelevant. She is a woman. If she is a Saudia Arabian woman, she cannot drive, vote or run for public office–things even the lowliest male laborer can do.
Sheena – You might want to check up on British succession law.
Ehhh… you might want to check on real life and the calendar as well. In real Britain, in 2005, if you’re born a Duchess or Princess, then you are living just as wealthy and privileged as anyone else in the royal bloody Family and definitely in more wealth and privilege than a farmer in any country, including yours, nevermind Afghanistan.
Royal succession has no impact whatsoever on that. Royal succession only has impact on royal succession, not wealth and privilege in society at large. Whatever title you carry, you have inherited massive property and massive riches that no else, outside the aristocracy, is born into, except, well, the sons and daughters of the massively rich.
How much clearer does that point have to be?
mythago – Nobody disputes this. It is a non-point. Nobody has claimed that gender is ALWAYS the absolute #1 most significant factor in anything.
“Men are rapists, and you are letting them get away with it.. etc.”
“Men terrorize men and men terrorize women. What is rare is for women to terrorize anybody, and when they do, they are acting as agents of men and men’s institutions.”
“In order to eliminate all of those many oppressions you list, first you must deal with male supremacy and its violence, aggressiveness, predation, because all of it starts right there, both male dominance over men and male dominance over women.”
So yeah, well, I think that what I am indeed disagreeing with is not a straw man or a non-point, but a claim that all forms of violence start right there with male dominance. With gendered power. Which is inherently sexist. Even when its manifestations are not sexist, even when its manifestations, sexist or not, are being endorsed, supported, propagated, practiced by women. It’s always back to being male, because males detain all power everywhere.
I am arguing with that, and with the diminishing of the importance of other factors, social and individual, because for all the acknowledgements, they do get diminished by those kind of statements.
Such as when people pretend not to notice the point in bringing up a Duchess as opposed to a farmer…
You claimed, or seemed to have claimed initially, that gender is NEVER the #1 factor in determining privilege.
It may have come across that way, but nope, I definitely did not claim that. And I spent several posts and thousands of words to illustrate my point in all its nuances, “not always”, “definitely but not necessarily the primary factor”, etc. Maybe that was too boring, what can I say… :)
“If the majority do not do it, then a minority does it, so it is not shockingly generalised. It is the very same as terrorism and terrorism support among Muslims.”
Bullshit. The majority of men may not literally rape, and they may give lip service to the idea that rape is bad, but put before them a specific case of a woman who has been raped and ask for opinions, and you’ll find a generalised idea that rape is either something women “ask for” or otherwise somehow are responsible for themelves. In the abstract many men may denounce rape, but in reality, most either don’t give a monkey’s or actually think it’s ok.
And the percentage of women who are raped during their lifetimes show that rape IS a pretty fucking generalised phenomenon.
“Please note I am in no way diminishing the impact of rape.”
From where I’m sitting, yes you most certainly ARE.
“But I cannot hold all the males with whom I share much in terms of views and values and so on, “accountable for the climate that makes such behaviours possible”, because it’s not the climate they, like me, live in, or support, or share.”
But men all get benefits out of it, don’t they?
This is responsibility-dodging, pure and simple. “Oh noooo, it’s not Nice Guys, it’s those Bad Men over there, go bother them about it!” It IS the Nice Guy before you, and the Nice Guy who lives next door as well. Just like it’s y0u and me who are responsible for letting racism continue because, let’s face it, it’s too much of a hassle to REALLY put it on the line and actively fight it.
“I’d rather keep a clear distinction between collective responsibilities of all us members of society, collective responsibilities of people who do directly endorse or condone or stay silent about racism or mysoginy or homophobia, and individual and group accountability of people who do act racist, mysoginy, homophobic and do commit rape or harassment or abuse.”
Well, I’d like to see society as a whole taking some responsibility for the way in which the individuals it produces actually treat each other. When some guy decides rape is good idea, he’s doing so not only because he personally is a slimy fuckwit (which he is), but also because he knows that a fucking huge section of society will approve of his actions. And another huge chunk may not actually approve, but will at least bend over backwards to offer him excuses for his behaviour.
I always hear about how “most men abhor rape”, but the fact is because to them the word only encompasses attacks done by strangers on “innocent” (read: a woman who fits into a specific category of age, conventional attractiveness, degree of sexual experience [preferably none], general likeability, etc.–and if you don’t score high enough, hey, you ain’t rapeable) victims. So male “rejection” of rape is subject to so many limitations that most rapes aren’t covered by it. In taking this attitude, men are ACTIVELY creating the situation in which rape is seen as acceptable & is therefore perpetuated.
“If that social “responsibility”? is the meaning in which you intend “accountability”, then we basically agree – but I prefer to keep the linguist and conceptual, distinction otherwise all kinds of responsibilities, from cultural efforts to direct accountability to individual blame, can overlap into one big collective generalised guilt, and this is not fair or right to facts.”
Listen: you can only act with strict “fairness” when the people who are in opposition are on a level playing field to start with. If they aren’t then “fairness” is only going to help the side that already has the most power.
As for “right”: right exactly for WHOM? I don’t think there are many situations at all in this world where you can say that a thing is absolutely, unequivocally “right” for all parties concerned. Maybe with certain laws of nature (and even then I’m sure there are scientists out there who would tear their hair out over my saying that), but certainly not with relations between humans.
Maybe if all men DID feel guilty, they might be moved off their complacent, privileged backsides in order to alleviate that feeling, and something positive might actually get done. Instead, we feminists are forever having to listen to poor little Liberal guys, crying their bleeding hearts out over how Nice they all are to us and how we Just Don’t Understand them, and why. oh why can’t we just see how wonderful they are and be FAIR to them??????
I’m tired of supposedly pro-feminist people tut-tutting whenever men are actually held to account for their male privilege.
“At the bigger level the women with this sort of attitudes may have internalised a system that wasn’t originally built for them in the first place, I can understand that argument, historically it is perfectly valid. But today in modern societies such as in the US or Europe they are not being forced by men to reinforce mysoginy”
Because of course, the social acceptance a woman gets for being feminist is exactly equal to that she would get by reinforcing misogyny, isn’t it? And of course, women are in NO WAY still educated into traditional gender roles. Girls are never treated any differently to boys, and are never pressured into adopting attitudes or behaviours that might encourage them to accept misogynist mentalities. Of course not, that’s all behind us now……………..
“I’m going to still make distinctions based not on gender, which is something no one chooses for themselves, but on actual behaviour and ideas, again. Those who do embrace those notions may be more often men than women”
Is it just me, or does the above completely miss the point of feminism altogether???
“So the way I see it is, I tend to factor in more factors than one, but I would understand why it may look differently. ”
With all due respect, in reading your posts, it seems to me as if you are trying to work in all factors BUT one. And also, to imply that feminists in general are unable or unwilling to work in more factors than gender when examining social problems is simply incorrect.
“In real Britain, in 2005, if you’re born a Duchess or Princess, then you are living just as wealthy and privileged as anyone else in the royal bloody Family…Whatever title you carry, you have inherited massive property and massive riches that no else, outside the aristocracy, is born into, except, well, the sons and daughters of the massively rich.”
In Real Britain in 2005, having a title has long since stopped going hand-in-hand with being rich. Yes, the actual Royals are doing pretty damn well, but not everyone with a title is rolling in it. Also, are you implying that Sarah Ferguson is just as privileged as Elizabeth, Charles or Charles’s sons? Now that they’ve divorced, she isn’t even as privileged as her ex! I’m betting that most of her money now comes from the commercials and such that she does in America. Which she never would have had the chance to do, incidentally, if she hadn’t happened to marry a very privileged man. Anyway, please enlighten an ignorant Republican (NOT, I stress most vehemently, in the US sense of the word!!!!): was Fergie actually “born” a Duchess? I thought she got that title from marrying Andy?
Anyhoo, I’m betting there are many, many millionaire commoners in the UK who have a hell of a lot more dosh than most titled aristos. And I bet they wield a lot more power in influencing policies, as well.
The bottom line is that I’m not here to soothe male egos and make them feel good about themselves or that they’re accepted by women, you know. And I won’t. If you’re a man, rape & sex tourism ARE your damn responsibility. I can’t force you to go out and do anything about them, but don’t insult me to my face by going on about how “it’s nothing to do with you” when it IS.
Anyway, who the fuck IS responsible for rape & sex tourism, if not men? Martians? Sasquatch? El Niño?
Crys T, you’re arguing with an imaginary “mn” straw man who is diminishing the impact of rape, is denying men have any responsibilities whatsoever, is sucking up to the Niiice Guys to soothe their ego, very likely for some covert interested reason (by the way, message to Brotherhood Of Nice Guys: where’s my paycheck?) or just out of being completely brainwashed by the fact of living in a patriarchal society, and discussing with Feminism itself as opposed to individuals with their own view of things.
I guess I’m only one of those “supposedly pro-feminist people tut-tutting whenever men are actually held to account for their male privilege”.
You even mistook for a man.
Of course the irony of all that has escaped you completely.
Now, believe it or not, I was not here to tell others *they* should not have their views, anymore than I’m going to tell a Muslim they should convert to Judaism, or a Christian they should become an atheist; I was simply expressing my own reasons why I cannot *completely* share particular views from people I was arguing with.
Of course if I have views of my own, I’m likely going to hold at least some of those views as valid, and thus say things like, that’s not right or fair to facts in my view, that’s not true in my experience, that’s too categorical, this other factor like wealth can in my experience and view of life be far more important than gender, etc. etc. – otherwise I wouldn’t bother having my own views in the first place. I would just embrace the views of others. You may think that I am doing precisely that, you may think that I am apologising, excusing, ignoring, not factoring in sexism and patriarchy and discrimination against women. Fine, what can I say by now? There’s nothing I could add to knock down that straw man that I haven’t already said. I thought I wasn’t embracing any binary thinking, or either/or logic, or denying anything outright, but simply taking in more factors and the complex ways they interact, and speaking from my experience. But what do I know? That’s probably just a cop-out. Dodging responsibilities. Refusing to see things clearly. Etc.
Yes, I must have missed the point of feminism and I must be denying all its premises, because feminism speaks with one voice and it is the one you are speaking. It is certainly not mine, because I am not Feminism. I never said I was a spokesperson for anything other than my views, so I have no problem renouncing any definition for myself or my views, I’m not interested in that. I will let you define what I should think, because you’re telling me my views are being defined by what others think, or by concerns for other people’s egos, and you know better.
There’s so many levels of irony there, I wouldn’t even know where to start.
So I hereby retract any statement that might have given the impression that I believe there is something “right” or “wrong”, or “fair” or “unfair”, or “true” or “not (always) true” and that I have any ability to distinguish one from the other. What do I know. If I was a man, the assumption I had that ability to form my own opinions and bring my own experiences in such a discussion would be down to me being privileged and insensitive to rape and discrimination; since I’m a woman, it’s likely down to me being insensitive to rape and sexist abuse and discrimination (go ahead and assume I have no experience and concern about that either) because of having internalised the male dominance mentality and being so preoccupied with Defending Niiice Guys. Yup, that’s exactly what I was doing, that was the entire point…
After all, who am I to tell anyone what *I* think. Never again.
In Real Britain in 2005, having a title has long since stopped going hand-in-hand with being rich.
Oh well, if you say so. We must have very different notions of what “being rich” means. Again, what do I know.
One last thing – Anyhoo, I’m betting there are many, many millionaire commoners in the UK who have a hell of a lot more dosh than most titled aristos. And I bet they wield a lot more power in influencing policies, as well.
Of bloody course, but my point in choosing aristocracy as a term of comparison in discussing privileges is that for aristocracy, privilege and wealth is assigned by birth, not from profit. For the hundreth time, the point of bringing up Duchess and Duke vs. Afghan farmer couple was a token example of the obvious, banal, self-evident difference in privileges and wealth as a factor that can have a much much more impact on people’s lives and conditions of life than sex. It is not at all a denial of the importance of sex and how it affects those conditions of life, privileges, opportunities; only that, the higher up you go in the social and economic scale, the less the sex difference is such a factor; the lower you go, the more it usually becomes a predominant factor. That has been my experience.
So the point was simply, the difference between female aristocrat and male farmer is bigger than both the difference between female and male aristocrats (yes the Duchess married the Prince, she was a part of the aristocratic entourage even before that, and like anyone in that circle, her life is enormously more privileged than mine or the farmers, and no, it sure isn’t down to selling books in America, besides, she wouldn’t have been able to sell her autobiography in the millions if she hadn’t been part of a social circle of especially privileged celebrities that the tabloids and public likes to read and gossip about, because frankly, her life itself isn’t all that interesting) and the difference between female farmer and male farmer. Which is far bigger than the difference in privileges between female and male aristocrats, but not as big as wealthy aristocrat in rich country/poor farmer in a country ravaged by wars and poverty and tribal rivalries and systematic oppression of women.
I don’t put oppression of women second to everything else; I put it alongside other factors, because it seems to me those factors do influence how that oppression and discrimination takes place and how it manifests itself. I do not think feminism in general, or feminisms, or the feminists who I was responding to, were denying those other factors. But I got the impression they were reducing them too to the tautology of male dominance. I was not obscuring realities of male dominance; I just cannot obscure realities of wealth and privileges of other kinds than gender especially when they seem to me to play even a bigger role.
I was not expressing all of my views on the matter of privileges or on feminism or on women or men or rape; just responding to statements I found too categorical.
There, I fell once more into the delusional belief of being capable of telling anyone what I myself think, gosh, I really never learn…
“You even mistook for a man.
Of course the irony of all that has escaped you completely.”
No, I didn’t: I had read your posts where you explicitly said you are a woman and had taken that into account. I may use “you” at the end of my post in the universal sense, but I in no way intended that to mean, “You, you male mn person” but “whatever man may happen to be reading this”.
“I was simply expressing my own reasons why I cannot *completely* share particular views from people I was arguing with.”
You were arguing as to why we shouldn’t hold all men to account for things such as rape and sex tourism. I was arguing with your argument. That doesn’t mean I “think you’re a man”, it just means that I disagree with you.
“Now, believe it or not, I was not here to tell others *they* should not have their views, anymore than I’m going to tell a Muslim they should convert to Judaism, or a Christian they should become an atheist;”
Well, believe it or not, when *I* argue, especially on topics such as this one, it’s not just to exercise my grey cells, it’s to explain a point of view I believe in (in this case, quite passionately) and, hopefully, to change at least someone’s mind. Not always the person I’m addressing directly, necessarily, but I don’t see the point in arguing just for arugment’s sake.
“I thought I wasn’t embracing any binary thinking, or either/or logic, or denying anything outright, but simply taking in more factors and the complex ways they interact, and speaking from my experience.”
Re-reading a lot of what you’ve written, you seem pretty bent on minimising or in some cases outright dismissal of gender as an important factor in societal discrimination. I disagree. Vehemently. That doesn’t mean I’m setting up “straw men” or whatever else, it means that I don’t like the points you’re making and that I see things in a very different light.
“Yes, I must have missed the point of feminism and I must be denying all its premises, because feminism speaks with one voice and it is the one you are speaking.”
Feminism may not be monolithic, and it may encompass quite a range of views, but you can’t have a feminism that sees gender as irrelevant, and also ignores the different socialisation of females and males. Which is what I got out of the quote of yours I was responding to, where you said that you judge people based on their behaviours rather than their genders (which seems to say that the relative positions of power each gender holds in society is irrelevant to behaviour) & that in your experience, women are more likely to hold sexist attitudes than men (which seems to say that socialisation is not important to the ways in which we think).
“I hereby retract any statement that might have given the impression that I believe there is something “right”? or “wrong”, or “fair”? or “unfair”, or “true”? or “not (always) true”? and that I have any ability to distinguish one from the other.”
You know, I really don’t know how to reply when people respond to my arguments in this way. My gut reaction right now is telling me this is a prime example of High Drama and that I should treat it with the scorn such displays merit. But then again, people I respect have occasionally accused me of being cruel when I’ve done so.
I really don’t know what you want from me here. You make some statements. I don’t like them and respond with my honest opinion. Maybe somewhat angrily, but hell, we’re all adults here (or at least that’s my assumption), and I expect people who enter into debate on controversial topics to anticipate at least some sort of strong response. As far as I know, I haven’t engaged in namecalling or personal attacks. The only crime I see myself guilty of is not accepting your arguments. Well, sorry, but that isn’t going to happen. And I’m also not going to dissolve in a puddle of self-loathing & capitulate just because you’re laying on the guilt trip.
We can go on and on about how we should judge individual people by their actions, but that won’t changethe fact that as a group, men have privilege.
Whites have privilege, and I’m not going to go on about how we must judge people by their actions and how it’s horrible to point out that yes, Whites benefit from racism. Same for gender.
I mean, yeah, there are poor Whites out there, just as there are poor men out there. But a Black person, or a woman, or a Latino in the same circumstances have more crap to deal with. A poor man isn’t to “blame” for the entire culture, but he doesn’t have to worry about the same things a poor woman does. He is not going to get sexually harrassed or sexually assaulted. He has far more freedom of movement than a woman does, who is exhorted to avoid certain areas, going out at certain times of the night, and avoid certain situations for her own safety.
You can compare a male factory worker to the Duchess of York, but it’s spurious. Compare him to his female coworker, his female neighbors, or his wife. No, he isn’t evil, but you know, I’m getting really tired of having to reassure people that I don’t think men are evil. He’s not evil, but he has more power than a woman in his class and circumstances.
Yes, if a male factory worker say, raped Fergie, he’d be strung up. But if if he raped the working-class woman next door, nothing would happen. And if another aristocratic male raped Fergie, you’d see her get blamed and pilloried. It’s disingenuous to assume that upper-class women have institutional power–they have revokable privilege accorded to them by the men in their lives.
Men were tortured in Abu Ghraib, and it was an outrage. And it is an outrage. Women were tortured and raped, and there was nary a peep uttered by anyone. These women, unlike the men who are supposedly as oppressed as they are, had honor killings to look forward to. A raped woman, or a woman who was even thought to be raped was less than dogshit, she was a shameful embarrassment, she brought dihonor to her family. She can lookforward to being killed or, if she is very lucky, being ostracized. The men who were sexually assaulted and humiliated have no such worries. They will have to deal with the same trauma as the women, but they will not have to fear for their lives.
A raped woman here isn’t killed–ususually–although it’s not uncommon for her to be threatened and harassed. If she’s poor, everyone gets in touch with their inner capitalists and claim she’s a golddigging whore, and if she’s rich, everyone gets in touch with their inner Marxists and scream about the injustice of her seeking justice, how she’s a rich bitch, ad nauseum. And of course, these nice guys will tell us nasty feminists that we are apparently not fans of “innocent until proven guilty” even though we are criticizing the attitudes towards women, not the freaking jury system.
Judge people by their actions? I’m not seeing much action, frankly. Point out to these nice guys that using misogynist epithets aren’t okay, and we’re being oversensitive, irrational, and uptight. We shouldn’t get on their cases, after all, because they’re progressive, and they’re our allies. We’re hurting their feelings–but it’s somehow silly to point out that these terms hurt us. True allies would stop and think about what was said to them, and change their behavior. True allies actually give a shit about what we think and how they come across. Instead, we get lectures about how we’re attacking nice guys and how we’re being mean and unfair (because it’s perfectly kind and fair to use anti-woman slurs and dismiss the concerns of women). But when we point it out, we’re being hysterical, and it’s not considered.
I mean, I’m sorry, did I miss all of these progressive men back us up when we took our “allies” to task for bandying about misogynist terms? Did I miss the hordes of Nice Guys who called our supposed allies to the carpet when they insisted on ignoring the existence of women bloggers? Perhaps I was sleeping when the progressive men in this country went out of their way to fight for female political representation in Congress. I must have been hallucinating when these allies who talk a good game shrugged off the fight for reproductive rights as divisive and unimportant, when they declared that it was something we should just stop worrying about because faking to the right will get us elected. Whoever “us” is. It’s not a group that includes women, apparently, since our issues and our rights aren’t that important.
I’ll judge individual men by their actions, but I’ll also acknowledge that as a class, men have privilidge and power, and don’t go out of their way to fight for those of us they claim to be allied with. Individual actions aren’t doing much good when my supposed allies as a group sit on their asses and whistle Dixie, and expect a fucking medal for saying rape is bad, and protesting that they aren’t like those Bad Men Over There.
mn: I haven’t read the rest of the thread, but saw where you were concerned that my post was about *you* being, perhaps, a man. I was using your post as a jumping off point — I try not to frame my arguments about specific posters — as I am fond of the class analysis.
:p
Your post simply let me tie together some disparate thoughts I was having related to the last two weeks of threads here.
“my point in choosing aristocracy as a term of comparison in discussing privileges is that for aristocracy, privilege and wealth is assigned by birth, not from profit.”
But you chose the Duchess of York to illustrate this point, and the fact is that she has whatever power she does mainly through a marriage to a powerful (relatively, anyway) man. Also, aristocracy does NOT automatically assign one wealth these days, and it hasn’t since the pre-War years. Why do you suppose all those 60s British rock stars were buying up stately homes left and right? Because their titled owners could no longer afford to keep them up, mainly. Not that I’m weeping over the poor dispossessed aristos–I honestly couldn’t give a toss.
“like anyone in that circle, her life is enormously more privileged than mine or the farmers,”
More than the farmer’s surely, but not *necessarily* more than yours. You may not be the daughter of some self-made millionaire parents like, say, Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne, but they were born into ordinary lives, so you could have been. And if you had been, you would now be living with a fuck of a lot more privilege than most titled people. (God, why I am in the position of sounding like I’m defending these titled types???!?)
“and no, it sure isn’t down to selling books in America, besides, she wouldn’t have been able to sell her autobiography in the millions if she hadn’t been part of a social circle of especially privileged celebrities that the tabloids and public likes to read and gossip about”
Which she never would have entered into to if she hadn’t married a specific MAN, who was a fairly prominent part of an extremely patriarchal institution.
“So the point was simply, the difference between female aristocrat and male farmer is bigger than both the difference between female and male aristocrats”
Well, I’m more than a bit confused as to why you felt that this point wasn’t well-understood by the vast majority of feminists (yep, even the Bad “Radical” Ones) for a long, long time now? One would have to have a pretty simplistic view of feminism to say something like “all men are more powerful than all women”.
And what that has to do with whether men should take responsibility for rape is beyond me.
” But I got the impression they were reducing them too to the tautology of male dominance.”
The problem is that in this thread we are not talking about poverty, or racism, or power inequality in general–all of which cannot be discussed without reference to other factors than male dominance. What we are discussing here are RAPE and SEX TOURISM. Now, in both of these, male dominance is THE primary factor. Not the “only” factor, but it is the biggest, most significant, most- important-by-miles-and-miles factor. There’s just no way around that one.
Well, I posted early yesterday and it isn’t there still. This is a test…
Heart
As to what you’re saying here, mn, about people mistaking you for a man, you wrote this a few posts up:
Of course there are many different kinds and strands of feminism, and everyone has their own biases and interpretations to bring to their own appreciation of feminism too, I have mine just as anyone else’s. I may not be a real feminist in the view of other people with a different approach to feminism, then again I’m not a real woman in the view of other people with a different approach to gender, I am not a “real”? many things, but I just do not subscribe to any notion of “real”? anything decided by someone else.
Heart
Crys T, that bit of High Drama was not a “guilt trip” but simple sarcasm.
I had understood you were addressing me in the “you men” in your first reply, and all the other general you’s you were addressing, which left me a tiny bit peeved because of the patronising. It is so boring to have to repeat myself over and over to reply to responses to *things I haven’t actually said*. That tends to signal to me the other person is not really interested in what I’m actually saying. Hence, sarcasm.
I do not expect you to embrace my argument at all, for gosh’s sake. I think I spent far to many words already denying I want to convince anyone. And like I said also to Cheryl, I do not despise or refuse or discard outright all the views in the comments I was responding to, as there’s many things in there I appreciate and even agree with, I do not embrace all the premises as a whole. I though I’d made that abundantly clear.
What I would expect, or rather, simply appreciate, is not to have some of my claims completely misunderstood, reversed or sliced down to simplistic straw men for me to respond all over again. That is what’s been going on and is still going on. I never ever said or implied even remotely, for instance, that I want or see or embrace “a feminism that sees gender as irrelevant, and also ignores the different socialisation of females and males“.
If you genuinely got that impression, then it may be also that I have expressed myself very badly, cos it’s not what I meant at all. If it was, I would have said so straight away.
In fact, if I held that kind of ridiculous view, I wouldn’t even be on a feminist-oriented discussion board in the first place. I wouldn’t even be remotely interested in anything to do with feminism. Why would I even *pretend*?
Because of course *denying* that gender has *any* relevance is denying all feminisms and all reality. But that’s honestly not what I was doing, and it’s a shame if it came across that way. I don’t know what else I can add to make myself clearer. I refuted that straw man, because that’s what it is, a few times already up in previous comments.
Now, that particular quote you mention about “judge people based on their behaviours rather than their genders” sounds to you like I’m saying “that the relative positions of power each gender holds in society is irrelevant to behaviour”, but I wrote a lot more than that to explain what I meant. And to simplify and sum up again, all I meant is, at personal level, I’ll “judge”, so to speak, evaluate, take in, the behaviour of people itself without putting gender as necessarily the first or foremost *explanation* for their actual behaviour. At social level, I’ll definitely take gender in, and other factors too, *depending* on which social behaviour and trends and contexts we’re talking about. But this is a simplification, what I wrote is right there in far too many comments already and with more specific examples.
You thought I was saying “women are more likely to hold sexist attitudes than men” – but what I actually said was “they *can* be *just as* likely”, meaning, I have in fact encountered many examples of that. No, I didn’t mean by that “that socialisation is not important to the ways in which we think”, of course it is. That is a given, it’s fact. It starts before we’re born. But again I think I wrote more things already, including the “Ann Coulter example”, to try and explain as best as I can what I meant. Given that factor of gendered socialisation, I *also* have to look at how different people of the same gender act and believe and support different things. See the AC example above for what I thought was a clearer illustration of that point, in my view.
No sarcasm here, nothing more to add. I’m perfectly happy to disagree and be disagreed with, absolutely, that is taken for granted as far as I’m concerned, I do not want to change anyone’s minds; I just would prefer it to be clear what is actually being disagreed upon, and that my own disagreements are not in a either/or, total consent/total denial fashion.
Q grrl: oops so that was you and not Crys T, sorry to both for the confusion, I’d lost track by then…
I do understand what you were doing now, thanks for clarifying.
Cheryl: that’s funny, it never even occurred to me that by saying “I’m not a real woman in the view of other people with a different approach to gender” it could be read as if I was suggesting I was a man. I was thinking of expectations about “real womanhood”, “real feminineity”, which are not exactly my cup of tea.
Okay, I posted yesterday, this thread shows that there is one post that is still not visible, I’m posting now and I apologize if my invisible post shows up making what I say here redundant. argh.
mn: You say that within that theory only the “meaning of woman”? has been deconstructed while the “meaning of man”? hasn’t. That’s a simplistic, categorical statement and it’s absolute piffle. The challenge to identity is a challenge to all fixed identities, for all genders, and not only for gender. Postnmodern literary theory is not even one precise theory per se, it is a vast, international, interdisciplinary, loose set of a lot more complex theories that hold a lot of different and dissenting voices within them, and many feminist ones too.
Here’s the problem, mn, and it’s the problem with the entirety of your approach to feminism. Postmodernism is useful to politics when it challenges “grand narratives” of white, male heteropatriarchal privilege, when it challenges privileges which inure to that “fixed identity.” But it is NOT useful at all to politics, it is destructive to women when it is used to challenge “woman” as a fixed identity, and particularly when it is men who get behind this particular challenging. Because in order for women to do what women are doing here, pointing out to you the blind spots you have with respect to male privilege and women’s subjugation, we have to stand on some sort of common ground. And if we are told that we don’t have a “fixed identity” because notions of gender should be “challenged,” then we end up with the kind of arguments you’ve posited there, that we’ve got to evaluate every individual person, find out whether that particular individual with a penis might have raped an individual with a vagina and if so, then we can hold *that one person* accountable for *that one act*, but that’s as far as we can go.
If we continue with your line of reasoning, we would not be able to assert that one fourth to one third of all women have been raped or sexually assaulted by men in our lifetimes, which is true — and close to 90 percent of women have been sexually harrassedby men in our lifetimes based on a recent study I read — because, says you, we’ve got to challenge these “fixed identities,” meaning, I guess, that even though the people who raped or assaulted had penises and those who were the victims had vaginas, it’s a good idea not to talk about that part.
When as womena re writing about so eloquently here, the fact is that the peopel with the penises end up with privilege because so many of them rape, assault and harrass and the people with vaginas end up traumatized, to greater degrees or to lesser degrees, including the Duchess of York.
The problem with your example of the Afghan farmer and the Duchess of York is that it makes invisible the situations of the wife of the farmer and the Duke of York. Both the wife of the farmer and the Duchess of York grow up learning that to be a woman is to be prostituted, to sexually service men, to strive to be fuckable, to be in danger from men, to be not as good as men, to be objectified in pornography, and so on.
I think it is you who are being reductive, and especially about the effects of the above, because your inference throughout is that if people have money, class, wealth, then they’re just fine and dandy and sexism doesn’t touch them. But a woman with millions of dollars and titles and all sorts of wealth and privilege, if she was incested all of her growing-up years, if she was raped, if she was told from the time she was born that because she was a girl, she was no good, a slut, a harlot, if she escaped all of the above and just looked around, as a little girl and saw that the heads of the nations and the colleges and the corporations and the religious instititutions were all men, she is *oppressed*. Doesn’t matter how much money she has in the bank. She is going to be oppressed in disabling ways or she will be oppressed in ways which allow her to function, but she does not escape her oppression via class status, or whiteness, or money, no matter what. But MEN DO. And one way men do is, by enjoying the benefits of what is inflicted on women. Which is what YOU are pretending about or ignoring here.
Postmodernism has been a male endeavor by and large– Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, et al were all men. And it has been and is being used by men (and women) in ways which end up participating in the oppression of women. And that is not “piffle.”
Heart
“It is so boring to have to repeat myself over and over to reply to responses to *things I haven’t actually said*. That tends to signal to me the other person is not really interested in what I’m actually saying. ”
In every post I’ve responded to of yours, I’ve included your own words. Now, maybe I haven’t interpreted them the way you want me to, but please don’t throw around accusations like the above. In case you were unaware, I am not obliged to agree with you, and maybe I feel your arguments lead to conclusions other than the ones you’re seeing.
“I think I spent far to many words already denying I want to convince anyone.”
Then why the anger/sarcasm over my not accepting your arguments? Why, in fact, argue at all if you have no interest in influencing anyone’s opinion?
“I never ever said or implied even remotely, for instance, that I want or see or embrace “a feminism that sees gender as irrelevant, and also ignores the different socialisation of females and males”.
Then why go to such pains to point out that you judge people “on their behaviours, not their actions”? Why the lectures on how “other factors exist” and explanations of how, you, personally include so much more than “just” gender in your analyses, etc.? As I said, yeah, if you’re looking at the question of why WOC in Country X are earning Y% less than the median wage, well, you’ve got to lo0k at more factors than sexism. But when you’re talking about rape in general, trying to insist that “hey, there’s more to life than male dominance” looks an awful lot like flinging red herrings about.
“You thought I was saying “women are more likely to hold sexist attitudes than men”? – but what I actually said was “they *can* be *just as* likely”, meaning, I have in fact encountered many examples of that. ”
Yes, you’re right, I admit that I was remembering wrongly. However, that still misses the point as to WHY women might be just as likely as men to hold sexist beliefs. Which is a major theme in feminist thought. And if anything, this is an example where male dominance is CLEARLY the most important factor to consider, so I’m still confused as to why you’ve offered it as somehow illustrating a different pov.
“at personal level, I’ll “judge”, so to speak, evaluate, take in, the behaviour of people itself without putting gender as necessarily the first or foremost *explanation* for their actual behaviour2
Ah, come on: yeah, if we’re talking about their ice-cream buying behaviour, ok fine. But here, in this thread right now, we are talking about RAPE AND SEX TOURISM BEHAVIOUR. Gender and male dominance ARE the deciding influences, and I’m sorry, but to suggest anything else is simply bonkers.
“I just would prefer it to be clear what is actually being disagreed upon, and that my own disagreements are not in a either/or, total consent/total denial fashion.”
It seems to me that your main purpose here is to say that we can’t *always* attribute *every* behaviour or attitude to sexism/gender. The problem for your arugment is that no one here has ever suggested we could. In my opinion that is the straw man YOU have set up. Once again, what we are talking about here and now is (all together now, with feeling) RAPE AND SEX TOURISM and the responsibility men should be expected to assume for them. Not “Every Single Aspect of Human Behaviour Till the End of the World, Amen”.
And to come into a conversation that has been clearly, from the article that triggered it, been labelled as a conversation on SEXISM and MEN’S RESPONSIBILITY only to suggest that, hey, y’know there’s other stuff besides gender that makes people do what they do seems, I’m sorry, rather blatantly beside the point. Yeah, there’s other stuff *in the world*, but when we’re talking ABOUT SEXISM, it *is* ABOUT GENDER.
Okay, I understand what you are saying now, mn, about being or not being a “real woman.” I just think that comment is what might have led people to understand you to be male.
I have now written two long posts responsive to many of the points you have made here and they have not shown up so far. Hopefully, at least one of them will soon.
Heart
Crys T, you are such a shameless apologist for the aristocracy, tsk… I don’t know why I bother…
But you chose the Duchess of York to illustrate this point, and the fact is that she has whatever power she does mainly through a marriage to a powerful (relatively, anyway) man.
Fair enough. But she wasn’t a working class gal either, before her marriage. She came from the same circles.
Also, aristocracy does NOT automatically assign one wealth these days, and it hasn’t since the pre-War years. Why do you suppose all those 60s British rock stars were buying up stately homes left and right? Because their titled owners could no longer afford to keep them up, mainly. Not that I’m weeping over the poor dispossessed aristos”“I honestly couldn’t give a toss.
Heh, me neither… But at the level of the Duchess, Princes, it does stil assign massive inherited wealth. My point was to take an example of wealth *and* social privilege assigned by birth, nothing more, nothing less.
“like anyone in that circle, her life is enormously more privileged than mine or the farmers,”?
More than the farmer’s surely, but not *necessarily* more than yours.
Crys, please, I mean, obviously I don’t have experience of life as Duchess, but I have experience of life as me. I can assure you her life in terms of money and access to related privileges has been necessarily and definitely more privileged than mine. No, really. You’ll have to take my word on that.
You may not be the daughter of some self-made millionaire parents like, say, Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne, but they were born into ordinary lives, so you could have been. And if you had been, you would now be living with a fuck of a lot more privilege than most titled people. (God, why I am in the position of sounding like I’m defending these titled types???!?)
Yeah, shame on you…
True, from what I gathered, the Osbournes were working class too. But my parents were not the Osbournes, and they never made anywhere near that much money. It could have been much much worse, there’s *always* someone far worse off than you, but unless you’re the Sultan of Brunei, there’s also always someone far better off than you too.
For me, that kind reality always tended to hit home very strongly. Sometimes, being a female itself, regardless of wealth, is the main factor. Soemetimes it isn’t. I went to school also with wealthier and more privileged kids than me. With the girls, I could also touch the difference in terms of mysoginist and sexist attitudes in our different backgrounds. I’m sure it’s not always so, by far. But I do believe wealth tends to have an impact also on the gender divide.
“So the point was simply, the difference between female aristocrat and male farmer is bigger than both the difference between female and male aristocrats”?
Well, I’m more than a bit confused as to why you felt that this point wasn’t well-understood by the vast majority of feminists (yep, even the Bad “Radical”? Ones) for a long, long time now? One would have to have a pretty simplistic view of feminism to say something like “all men are more powerful than all women”.
No, that’s not what I meant, I was only responding to the notion that with that example I was obscuring modes of patriarchal dominance. Which I don’t think I was doing, only highlighting modes of wealth dominance, so to speak.
But of course, that is a matter of disagreement itself.
And what that has to do with whether men should take responsibility for rape is beyond me.
I didn’t think the discussion was entirely about rape per se, but about privilege(s), gender, etc.
“? But I got the impression they were reducing them too to the tautology of male dominance.”?
The problem is that in this thread we are not talking about poverty, or racism, or power inequality in general”“all of which cannot be discussed without reference to other factors than male dominance.
Ok, fair enough, I do not disagree with that in substance. I disagree with the priorities in analysing patterns of dominance, so to speak. Depending.
What we are discussing here are RAPE and SEX TOURISM. Now, in both of these, male dominance is THE primary factor. Not the “only”? factor, but it is the biggest, most significant, most- important-by-miles-and-miles factor. There’s just no way around that one.
Agreed. But I did not want to talk specifically of those issues, also (but not only) because that is where it is obvious we all largely agree here. What I specifically disagreed with, premises or conclusions, I already tried to explain above. At this stage, I really don’t know what to add.
I mean, fuck. Here you have a 64 year old male “career counselor” telling 8th grade girls (that’s 13, 14 year olds) that they might find stripping fulfilling as a career choice and that for every two inches of boob, they can make an extra $50,000 a year.
THAT’S WHAT IT IS TO GROW UP GIRL UNDER MALE SUPREMACY.
Ya know. That’s what happens to girls that doesn’t happen to boys. And thanks to all of this wonderful sexual liberation and sex positive-ness we have in feminism so-called, we’ve got this crap spewed from podiums at career conferences, but we’ve ALWAYS had it, it’s always been there, it’s ubiquitous, it’s relentless, it’s everywhere, i.e.: “You girls? You are made to sexually service boys. Now get busy making yourself as fuckable as possible.” That is the message girls hear from their earliest moments of cognizance.
And that is the message boys never hear. They hear that they are the ones for whom an entire class exists, that they are to be the recipients of sexual servicing on the part of that class.
That affects girls and women. In ALL of its various manifestations. It completely disables some of us. It causes us to do all sorts of self-destructive things. It causes us to destroy our lives, to waste our l ives. And that is true without respect to race, class, whether we are lesbian or bi or het, disabled or not, no matter WHAT.
Argh.
::::Heart pounds head on wall::::
Heart
Forgot the link:
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2005/01/14/students_told_stripping_is_career_choice/
Heart
Sorry, this Sunday was a day of celebration for my family/friend group, so had non-online activities keeping me busy all day. When I woke up this morning I approved your posts, and a couple of others that were waiting.
If I knew what words were in your posts that keep on getting them moderated, I’d remove those words from the “moderate these words” list. But I can’t figure it out.
“obviously I don’t have experience of life as Duchess, but I have experience of life as me. I can assure you her life in terms of money and access to related privileges has been necessarily and definitely more privileged than mine. No, really. You’ll have to take my word on that.”
That wasn’t my point: you were saying that Fergie lives a privileged life due to her birth. I was saying that it was due to her marraige to Andrew, which conferred privilege onto her, and also that there are many commoners (e.g., Ozzy & Sharon) who are richer and more privileged than Fergie. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve had my share of aristos for today……….
“I didn’t think the discussion was entirely about rape per se, but about privilege(s), gender, etc.”
???? Look, please take a look at Amp’s post which started this thread, and then the first posts that followed. THAT is what we are all arguing about. Not “life in general” or “patterns of dominance worldwide”.
“I did not want to talk specifically of those issues, also (but not only) because that is where it is obvious we all largely agree here.”
Well, everyone please excuse me for sounding irritable, but come ON: you don’t plonk yourself down in the middle of an ongoing argument and throw out a load of unrelated (or only distantly related) points, then expect everyone to know what the hell you’re on about. WE were talking about sexism and men’s responsibility. If that doesn’t interest you, why respond in the first place?
Cheryl, I appreciate your response and I’ll try not to drag this on too much:
If we continue with your line of reasoning, we would not be able to assert that one fourth to one third of all women have been raped or sexually assaulted by men in our lifetimes, which is true ““ and close to 90 percent of women have been sexually harrassedby men in our lifetimes based on a recent study I read ““ because, says you, we’ve got to challenge these “fixed identities,”? meaning, I guess, that even though the people who raped or assaulted had penises and those who were the victims had vaginas, it’s a good idea not to talk about that part.
That would be crazy, and is not, in any slightest way, what I was suggesting when I mentioned that I liked some of the postmodern approaches in challenging fixed identities. That challenge is to things like that “real womanhood”, “real feminineity”, the Victorian style notions of gender roles. Notions, cultural attitudes – not *actual* identities and *actual* sex.
Challenging anything rigid in culture is a good thing, also in politics. See with gay marriage. Challenging the idea that marriage is a fixed institution and determined by male/female sex.
It does not transpose on the level of challenging, ie. denying, actual sex of actual persons and the actual behaviour of actual persons of one sex vs. the other.
I mean, I never heard any philosophical deconstruction of meaning transposed to denial of actual victims of rape.
So what you’re doing there by saying “if we continue your line of reasoning”, is attributing to me ideas I never implied and which I do not think can be implied from what I said, because by “identity” I only meant at the cultural social level, of interpretation, of assignment of meaning. Not of actual hard, physical realities.
Now again I am not a spokeperson for postmodernism, there is not even one “postmodernism” as such, but your impression that postmodern theory does that crazy thing with denying real facts, not just challenging cultural stereotypes, it’s not been my perception of postmodernist writers or artists or related theories at all, feminist postmodernist women theorists and writers included (they don’t count? they were sell-outs to men?), and if there is anything like that in that vast postmodern sea, I haven’t come across it and it’s certainly not among the things and concepts I said I liked.
Hope that’s clearer.
The problem with your example of the Afghan farmer and the Duchess of York is that it makes invisible the situations of the wife of the farmer and the Duke of York.
Well, I think focusing on their being female without *really* taking in their other differences makes invisible the actual situation of the Afghan farmer, both male and female.
Both things should be focused on at the same time, at the very least.
Both the wife of the farmer and the Duchess of York grow up learning that to be a woman is to be prostituted, to sexually service men, to strive to be fuckable, to be in danger from men, to be not as good as men, to be objectified in pornography, and so on.
An Afghan woman who grew up under the Talebans gets a much stronger version of all that, to put it euphemistically, than the Duchess. The Duchess grows up to learn that she, exactly like her husband, can snap her fingers and have someone bring her tea. The Afghan farmer has to make the tea herself for her twelve children and two husbands, or else get beaten up. To simplify in a sort of flippant way. Point is, I think there are significant differences in their experiences of being a woman. They are also very very much relevant to how they actually live.
If this looks like I’m dismissing gender completely, I don’t know what else to say… It’s a reality that Afghan women lived (live) in a horribly mysoginist society. It’s impossible to deny, or dismiss. I’m not doing that. But it seems to me there’s another elephant in the room. Why not take in both at the same time?
I think it is you who are being reductive, and especially about the effects of the above, because your inference throughout is that if people have money, class, wealth, then they’re just fine and dandy and sexism doesn’t touch them.
That is dangerously close to straw man. In fact, it is. I believe I wrote, above, something like, wealth, class, education, etc. do have a strong impact on how people live their lives and tend to have an impact on how gender discrimination is manifested. Not always, not so categorically, not so exclusively.
Then why the anger/sarcasm over my not accepting your arguments? Why, in fact, argue at all if you have no interest in influencing anyone’s opinion?
I don’t know? That’s a question I would never even think of asking, so I don’t have the answer. I do not equate discussion with attempts at influencing other people or expect them to embrace my points of view. I usually appreciate discussion in a different way.
The sarcasm, irritation, was at misreading my arguments, not “not accepting”. Like the quote you said you remembered wrongly.
“I didn’t think the discussion was entirely about rape per se, but about privilege(s), gender, etc.”?
???? Look, please take a look at Amp’s post which started this thread, and then the first posts that followed. THAT is what we are all arguing about. Not “life in general”? or “patterns of dominance worldwide”.
No, but Amp’s post did seem to me to touch on privileges and gender and responsibies in general:
And I first posted in this thread responding to statements of collective responsibility as guilt. “You men do this, and you other men, let them get away with it”.
I cannot have this discussion all over again. I realise it looks to some of you as if I’m being deliberately obtuse and denying basic premises of feminism, I have thought about it, I genuinely don’t think I’m doing so, but I may be wrong. I really have no more time for discussion, so I will not reply to any further comments, as there is not much I could add right now.
mn, I won’t say all postmodern feminists are sellouts. I will say that they have not been helpful to feminism at all which is another thread for another day and another venue.
And no, I’m not going to focus on the Afghan farmer. I’m going to focus on his wife and his daughters and his granddaughters and his mother. And I’m going to focus on the Duchess of York, not the Duke or the Prince or whomever. And on the 8th grade girls scheming ways to get boob jobs so they can make an extra $100K a year stripping for men. And prostituted women. And raped women. And incested, harrassed, sexually exploited women. And women under the Taliban. And women debilitated by sexism of every kind.
Because not enough women are engaged in that project such that we are beginning to see women get free in large numbers. Because everybody thinks, like you, mn, that we should all be thinking about “individuals” and not blaming men and not holding all men accountable.
That challenge is to things like that “real womanhood”, “real feminineity”, the Victorian style notions of gender roles. Notions, cultural attitudes – not *actual* identities and *actual* sex.
This is NOT postmodernism.
This is feminism.
And I’ll be damned if I’ll start talking logical fallacies with you, mn. Maybe if I had several weeks to go back through your posts and point yours out to you, but ya know, I’d rather have a root canal, that’s not my idea of good times.
It’s been real.
Heart
“Because not enough women are engaged in that project such that we are beginning to see women get free in large numbers. Because everybody thinks, like you, mn, that we should all be thinking about “individuals”? and not blaming men and not holding all men accountable.”
Word.
To me, it’s not enough to ask “Who’s more privileged: Fergie or a rural Afghan woman ?”
You have to ask, “If Fergie and the Afghan woman suddenly changed positions, what would become of their expected roles ?”
“Who would each be subordinate to, and what punishments would she suffer if she failed to live up to the expectations that would come with the role ?”
“Which sex has the power to change these roles, enforce the rules, or to waive selected privileged women on through should that scant, fortunate handful claim the right to ignore them ?”
“Who is the final arbiter as to whether other sorts of privileges can override considerations of gender ?”
“Who decrees, designs, and metes out punishments for supposed trangressions against the supposed natural order ?”
In fact, you don’t even need as polarized an example as is represented by Fergie vs. the Afghan peasant woman. Hell, you could swap me with the peasant woman and the questions would still be relevant.
Err… I generally agree that gender is a large factor in the oppression of even privileged women, as Heart and such were saying, though, like mn, I don’t think that all oppression is an expression of gender oppression (note to mn: I think you’ve gotten a bit sidetracked and are thinking too much about a Grand Theory of All Oppression Everywhere (in which I actually don’t detect all that much disagreement) and not enough about more specific issues like sex trafficking which your co-disputants are more concerned with).
But… on a more parochial diversion, aren’t men told to be fuckable too? I mean, I thought that a lot of men complained about their lack of fuckability, and there was a brisk business on the how-to-be-more-fuckable advice industry for both genders. Like such oppressors as Mythago writing fuckability advice for males.
So….ive spend all morning at work reading this whole thread and i have to say, im at a loss here. First off, i mostly lurk here, i find all of this intellectually fascinating and enjoy reading well versed and articulate people discuss important issues like this. Im not nearly at the same level of knowledge or writing or debate as most of you, so i tend not to actually post, but i dont know if i can let this go.
I can get behind the concept of “male privilege” , but i still take exception to the notion that I am supposed to assume personal responsibility for sex trade, rape, telling women they should be fuckable and the other terrible things described above. Here we go again with the “nice guy” routine, but I dont rape or oppress any women, if i saw a woman being beaten or raped, id probably pull a “training day” and run over there to stop the person, at the very least, id run for help. I dont encourage that kind of behavior in my friends and if i did know anyone who did anything like that, they wouldnt BE my friend any more.
So how does me accepting blame or responsibility for all those things that are done by other men who have far more power in the world that i could probably hope to achieve at this point do anything for anyone? Reality might be that men as a group are responsible for a vast majority of all those things, but i feel like if i were to somehow lump myself in on it, what happens is now im no better than anyone who HAS done those things, or HAS covered up for a friend. Where is my incentive to help and discourage such activity if i can never escape what OTHER men have done for all of history.
I’ve had more female bosses than male, dated more “minority” women than white, have rich, poor, gay, lesbian and black friends, dont approve of the war in iraq, didnt vote for the president or anyone who supported the war, dont own an SUV, dont threaten or beat or rape anyone. So how the hell am I supposed to accept that somehow im part of the problem JUST because im a white guy? Everyone has a fair shake with me and i dont concern myself with how they grew up, what color they are, who they sleep with, or how much money they have.
But i read through all this and i get the sense that its not enough. That i dont do enough. I guess i could join peace corps or something, but maybe what im doing is the best way to change things for me. We all touch the lives around us and maybe being a role model for the ideal way to treat people is just as helpful as the crusaders who march civic buildings and get arrested. There has to be room for both somehow.
I get the sense that people like fannie and paige and maybe a few others cant ever let go of the anger they have about being women in a male run society. And if thats the case, can we ever solve and move on from any of this?
“I dont encourage that kind of behavior in my friends and if i did know anyone who did anything like that, they wouldnt BE my friend any more. ”
But have you ever initiated a conversation with them about rape and how women are socially (exlusively) controlled by rape? How long do you think that conversation would last? If you have adolescent males in your life, do you stress what rape is and how a woman’s bodily integrity should be honored in the same way a male’s is?
… and trust me. You’ve got friends that have raped.
“I’ve had more female bosses than male, dated more “minority”? women than white, have rich, poor, gay, lesbian and black friends, dont approve of the war in iraq, didnt vote for the president or anyone who supported the war, dont own an SUV, dont threaten or beat or rape anyone. So how the hell am I supposed to accept that somehow im part of the problem JUST because im a white guy?”
Why not? I accept that responsibility for racism JUST because I’m white. Even though I consider myself completely anti-racist, as well. Have I *knowingly* ever hurt a POC? No, but that doesn’t mean that through my actions and ignorance I have never contributed to the racism they suffer. And I know this is true because I can remember many of the things I said & did before I realised how racist they really were. And I know there were times when I was silent in the face of other whites’ racism out of fear for my own position. So, if a person of colour were to tell me I had to take some responsibility, I’d know good and damn well that I had to.
At some time in your life, you’ve done something–a sin of commission or omission–that has helped contribute to the sexism and misogyny of this world. And for that, you have to own up and accept your responsibility. Full stop.
And I hate to say this, but your paragraph above does remind me of the “but some of my best friends are Black/Jewish/etc.” 70s crypto-racist jokes we’ve all been hearing our whole lives.
“Where is my incentive to help and discourage such activity if i can never escape what OTHER men have done for all of history.”
Errr, because it’s the RIGHT THING TO DO? And we shouldn’t base our actions on what we personally will get out of Being Good, but on doing the thing that is correct for its own sake?
“I get the sense that people like fannie and paige and maybe a few others cant ever let go of the anger they have about being women in a male run society.”
But why SHOULD we “let go of” our anger? Really, just so that males don’t have to be made to feel bad when they witness that anger. And that isn’t a good enough reason. Also, I’d like to add that the attempt to divide the women here into Good Feminists vs. Bad Feminists has been noted and disapproved of.
“And if thats the case, can we ever solve and move on from any of this?”
Why are you assuming that we can’t “move on” due to women’s anger? Why not assume that we can’t move on because men are refusing to accept responsibility for sexism and its privileges? That makes a lot more sense to me.
But have you ever initiated a conversation with them about rape and how women are socially (exlusively) controlled by rape? How long do you think that conversation would last? If you have adolescent males in your life, do you stress what rape is and how a woman’s bodily integrity should be honored in the same way a male’s is?
… and trust me. You’ve got friends that have raped.
Comment by Q Grrl … 2/21/2005 @ 12:04 pm
Q Grrl, you cant say i have friends that have raped any more than i can say i have friends that havent. I have friends who I am as sure as i can be that have NOT raped anyone. If i ever found out anything that lead me to any other conclusion, you can be assured i would be relentless in pursuing the truth, just as i would if i found out they were anti-semites or white supremacists. And i would cast them aside because i dont need friends like that.
I suppose of course, your definition of what constitutes a rape might be different than mine, for better or worse, but i reject your generalization of me and my friends. NOT all men rape and NOT all men would put up with or cover up for those that do. I am going to take the high road and assume that the few male friends i have are not criminals, simply because many men are, any more than i would expect you to tolerate me assuming that all your feminist friends are all lesbians or all black people are criminals. I realize a generalization is simply that; a generalization that doesnt preclude the fact that i might happen to be an exception, even still,
Im not sure though i understand what you mean exactly by socially controlled by rape (i guess i dont pay enough attention to what i read here), so i think its safe to say that ive never explictly had a conversation with any of my friends about raping anyone and why they shouldnt. I wouldnt think about it because i assume they dont want to rape anyone either. Again though, thats a trust thing i guess. I would consider it to be something akin to preaching to the choir and accomplishing little other than head nodding and “totally, i know what you mean”
But for the sake of the discussion, tell me how i should conduct that conversation and ill see what i can do. Perhaps I’ll learn something.
But this is the kind of thing that concerns me. It sounds like i need to be “pro-active” to the point of pre-emptive with all aspects of life, constantly questioning the motives of everyone around me and making sure that I didnt get put ahead of anyone else for any reason. At what point do i get to look out for myself and make sure that I’m fullfilled and happy in life? Or should i give up that notion as some kind of reparrations for thousands of years of oppression under a system that i didnt invent and as far as im concerned, dont participate in?
Ill press on here at the risk of getting in over my head.
“Why not? I accept that responsibility for racism JUST because I’m white. Even though I consider myself completely anti-racist, as well. Have I *knowingly* ever hurt a POC? No, but that doesn’t mean that through my actions and ignorance I have never contributed to the racism they suffer. And I know this is true because I can remember many of the things I said & did before I realised how racist they really were. And I know there were times when I was silent in the face of other whites’ racism out of fear for my own position. So, if a person of colour were to tell me I had to take some responsibility, I’d know good and damn well that I had to.
At some time in your life, you’ve done something”“a sin of commission or omission”“that has helped contribute to the sexism and misogyny of this world. And for that, you have to own up and accept your responsibility. Full stop.”
And that means what? maybe thats just not what im getting. At some point in my life, maybe i did and maybe i didnt. Maybe i didnt even know that i did. Who really knows. Certainly not you. So i should accept responsibility and do what? Speak up when i see it? I think i do at this point in my life. Not say things that are derogatory towards women and minorities? Im pretty sure i dont do that. Should i quit my job and give it to a woman? or move out of my appartment and give it to a black person? What is my “responsibility” in a system that i didnt invent or approve of? How are you taking responsibility for it? By posting here? Well here i am too.
And as 70’s cliched as it is, that doesnt make it any less true or any less of an illustration of my main point, which is that i dont consider any one man to be better than any woman or minority or gay person and that obviously given the choices ive made in my life, it must not be an issue for me. Or i would find jobs where i DIDNT have female bosses that i respected and looked up to, or dated women who werent KKK Calendar material.
As far as my “incentive” based on some of the things ive read here, it sounds to me like no matter what i do, certain people in the world will never let me get out from under the shadow of what OTHER people have done at OTHER times and in OTHER places. I believe in equality and rights and all the good crunchy stuff that life should be made up of, but if nothing i do is goign to change the fact that i have to “accept responsiblity. Full stop.” and “blame” for the rest of my life, regardless of what progress is made or what ive done to help or harm things, then fuck it.
Im not a masochist and that kind of thing makes me feel like, at best and most ironically, a second class citizen in the movement to make everyone free and un-oppressed. It makes me feel like my help, however small it might end up being in the grand scheme of things, isnt wanted or appreciated or valued in any way. Fuck, just by being here and reading this, I do more than most people. At least i have an awareness of whats going on. I guess red cross you guys are not. I dont know how to make the kind of donation that you are asking, and i certainly have no desire to make it in the face of scorn and eternal blame for something that isnt my fault.
Well, for starters, if 1:4 women are raped there are a hell of a lot of guys that are affected by this. Assuming that you and your friends are heterosexual, it would seem to me that the social control of women through rape is hugely significant to the intimacy that you share with the women in your life. I’m heading off to home (i.e., computer-less-ness), but maybe tomrrow I can touch briefly on what I mean by “social control through rape.”
As far as discussing things with your friends, I was thinking of taking it one step further than preaching to the choir. Talk about how your are planning on raising your sons or nephews, grandsons, younger cousins, etc. Talk with each other about how you assume that none of you have raped … and then see if someone admits to a squicky situation where he’s just not *sure* how the woman might have interpreted it. Ask your friends how rape informs their sexuality — from its vast portrayal/suggestion in mainstream media to its frank display in pornography. Ask your friends if they can envision a male sexuality without rape as a cultural backdrop.
… and then just see if a conversation develops.
“I am going to take the high road and assume that the few male friends i have are not criminals, simply because many men are”
Yes, well it’s exactly this sort of high-minded assumption that lets so very many men get away with rape. “Oh, not Good Old Bill! I’ve known him for *years* and he would *never*……….” when in fact, yes, Good Old Bill *has*. This is Feminism 101 for most of us here, but I will assume that it might be a new concept to you: female victims of rape have to fight to be believed–and many of us never are, in fact–so your being generous with your male friends by assuming what they are or are not capable of is actually helping to contribute to the mentality that makes so many of us women suffer.
And this is another well-worn topic: “I suppose of course, your definition of what constitutes a rape might be different than mine, for better or worse” Well, you can take a more relaxed attitude towards definitions because rape is something that will never, ever affect you in the same way as it will a woman. I’m really trying not to lose my temper over yet another man thinking he even has the right to a definition of rape apart from what women tell him it is, but I’m losing the battle. You don’t have that right. Rape is what we say it is–and if we have conflicting ideas amongst ourselves that is between US. It’s up to you to take the broadest definition possible and act accordingly.
“any more than i would expect you to tolerate me assuming that all your feminist friends are all lesbians or all black people are criminals”
What you are doing here is trying to equate an idea about a dominant group with ideas about subordinate groups, and that simply does not work because the mechanisms that create stereotypes about dominant groups are very different to those which create stereotypes for subordinate groups. And even if those stereotypes are unfair or incorrect, in no way are their consequences of equivalent seriousness.
“i think its safe to say that ive never explictly had a conversation with any of my friends about raping anyone and why they shouldnt. I wouldnt think about it because i assume they dont want to rape anyone either.”
That would be an extremely dangerous assumption to make. I have to wonder though what your response would be if a mutual female friend were to come to you in confidence to tell you that in fact Good Old Bill (or Steve or Bob) HAD raped her. Would you believe her?
” At what point do i get to look out for myself and make sure that I’m fullfilled and happy in life?”
This leaves me speechless……………..or at least without any speech that isn’t mostly expletives. What else can one say to the notion that our hearts are supposed to bleed just because YOU might be feeling uncomfortable right now? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…………………I’m supposed to realise that the recognition that women are human beings has to be put on the back burner just because David P. isn’t getting his happy, fulfilled life????
David, MOST people on this planet have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of a fulfilled and happy life EVER. The fact that you can even think of one as your birthright shows the level of privilege that you’ve got. To expect us to suffer for you because you’re seeing that in order for social justice to occur, you might not be able to indulge in your dominance and get all “fulfilled”, well………..sorry, ain’t gonna happen.
Well, if we assume that about 1 in 20 men commit rape – which seems like a reasonable guess, based on the (very limited) best research that’s been done – then probably we all know rapists. Maybe not our best friend; maybe a male co-worker we’re friendly with, or a nephew or uncle, or a less close friend.
But odds are that some man – or men – you know have committed rape at some point in their lives. And I’d be willing to bet that all of these men have friends who would say of them, “I’m as sure as I can be that they have NOT raped anyone.”
Acknowledging that reality doesn’t mean forswearing male friendships forever, or viewing all your male friends as guilty until proved innocent. (After all, it also seems safe to say that most men have never raped.) But rape is a real problem, and we have a responsibility to try and act in ways that make it better, not worse.
Discussions of rape do come up – if you never had Kobe come up in conversation in the last 12 months, then you’re a luckier man than I. Listen for assumptions made in those conversations. Do people assume that a guy who can get laid without raping, would never rape? That’s a false assumption, and one you can speak out against. Do people assume that rape is an incredibly uncommon act that only freakish or monstrous men commit? That’s a false assumption you can speak against. That’s not all, but that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
You could also include men-against-rape charities when you make charitable contributions. (I’m not saying that alone is enough, but it doesn’t hurt).
Think about what elements of society make rape more likely to happen more often, and try to resist them. (Here are my thoughts on the subject). Try to resist traditional ideas of “masculinity” which put pressure on guys to get laid or question their manhood, and find ways of objecting to that pressure among your own friends and circle. Try to do what you can, in your daily life, to raise women’s status in society (for instance, are you ever in the position of recommending people for jobs? If all else is equal, recommend women for male-dominated jobs).
Etc. I’m not going to catalog every possible thing you could do, because the list is infinite and my time is not. Even if these particular things don’t apply to your life, there’s something you can do which would apply. But don’t take the attitude that there’s nothing more you can do than be a nice guy who doesn’t himself rape; keep your mind open to the idea that there is more you can do, and see what opportunities you can think of given a little time and that open mind.
any more than i would expect you to tolerate me assuming that all your feminist friends are all lesbians or all black people are criminals
Assuming a woman is a lesbian is like assuming a man is a rapist, or that an African-American person is a criminal? How….revealing.
but if nothing i do is goign to change the fact that i have to “accept responsiblity. Full stop.”? and “blame”? for the rest of my life, regardless of what progress is made or what ive done to help or harm things, then fuck it.
In other words, David believes the only reason to end sexism and work for social change is so that women will laud him and decide that he’s a good guy. It’s not an end in and of itself.
Y’know, personally, I don’t care if black people point out that I have had white privilege. I don’t especially want them to decide that we’ll all pretend centuries of racism never happened. Racism is wrong, and I have a moral obligation to end it, and whether or not I am blamed (fairly or otherwise) for racism is irrelevant to that point.
THANK YOU Crys T! The thing I hate most about many of these conversations is the idea that whites or men or especially white men actually giving something up is beyond the pale. Blacks and women and especially black women have been giving up their life chances, their senses of self,etc,etc, for centuries, but god forbid he feel bad for a bit. And even if he did give his job to a woman, he’d have an easier time getting another one, so I don’t get his complaining.
Also, I hate the idea that sleeping with a person of color makes you non racist or something. It’s sex, dude.
David, MOST people on this planet have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of a fulfilled and happy life EVER. The fact that you can even think of one as your birthright shows the level of privilege that you’ve got. To expect us to suffer for you because you’re seeing that in order for social justice to occur, you might not be able to indulge in your dominance and get all “fulfilled”, well………..sorry, ain’t gonna happen.
Comment by Crys T … 2/21/2005 @ 1:58 pm
EVERYONE has that right. Isnt that the whole point of all this? Im not asking to make millions at the expense of third world countries or anything. You arent considering what (i think) the point of my comment was, which is to say that what does “taking responsibility” mean for me? Earlier people were saying that Amp should have given up his radio spot just because hes a guy? Why? He clearly does some good here with his blog and knows his stuff. What if, heaven forbid, he was the best person for the job that particular day?
What if what i do at my gig is because im the best one for the job? Maybe im the best because im a male and thus had some unnamed hardships eliminated for me somehow. Or because my father did. I cant control that now. So at what point do i get to stop stepping aside for everyone else that was or is wronged and get to just live my life.
As far as the rest of what you said goes, it IS feminist 101 and id be stupid if i said i didnt know what you meant. Ive read enough of this site in the last year to know better than that. Blind trust in my friends or anyone else is dumb and i certainly dont have that. My only excuses are A. Im not a very good feminist obviously and B. not very good at thinking ahead when i write something. But, im still reasonably sure that they havent raped anyone, mostly because they are even worse at dating than i am so when they DID get a girlfriend or go out on a date, i got to hear all the details. But as youve been kind enough to provide a rough outline of the kinds of things i might want to discuss with them, ill give it a shot.
And for the record, if a female friend of mine did say that one of my other friends had raped her, i certainly wouldnt shrug it off. I like to think that i would treat it as seriously as it was and try to figure out if it were true and what to do about it.
10 things men can do to prevent gender violence.
I think that if you stopped and thought about it, David, you’d realize that this is a false duality. No one is suggesting, I think, that you should quit your job or not accept any good thing that comes to you in life – even though you (and I) have our jobs, and other good things in life, due in part to male privilege.
However, there is space inbetween “stepping aside for everyone else” and “just living life” that should be explored. That space is living your life, but also taking responsibility to use what opportunities you have to make it more possible for other people – especially people who aren’t as privileged as you, or I – to just live their life, too.
There’s (probably) no one on this thread who is totally exempt from this. Everyone who lives in a first world country benefits from the exploitation of third world labor; everyone who is middle or upper class benefits from classism; everyone who is white benefits from racism; everyone who is male benefits from sexism. We can’t refuse all the benefits, because we get many of them regardless of if we want them. But we can try and use our lives to reduce imperialism, classism, racism, and sexism in the ways we can.
but if nothing i do is goign to change the fact that i have to “accept responsiblity. Full stop.”? and “blame”? for the rest of my life, regardless of what progress is made or what ive done to help or harm things, then fuck it.
In other words, David believes the only reason to end sexism and work for social change is so that women will laud him and decide that he’s a good guy. It’s not an end in and of itself.
Comment by mythago … 2/21/2005 @ 2:28 pm
This was a sort of stupid thing to say but i feel obligated to try and defend it slightly. I dont need praise from men or women. I wouldnt mind people thinking that im a “good guy”. What i was expressing was a frustration that if my help, as a man, isnt wanted then there was no need for me to make any attempt to be on the “front lines” of anything or engage in any conversation about it because it will never be good enough for anyone and im better off just hanging back. fuck me trying to help, not fuck people being free.
“EVERYONE has that right”
Where did you get that idea? I mean, it may be laudable and all that, but it’s so far away from the reality of the world as to be meaningless to the vast majority of humans. Only a person with a lot of privilege could really *expect* it to happen.
“You arent considering what (i think) the point of my comment was, which is to say that what does “taking responsibility”? mean for me?”
Well, for a start you could stop getting defensive when it’s suggested that you have in fact in some way helped to contribute to sexism and therefore are responsible for it. Not going on about how it was “OTHER men” who did it would help, definitely. Because that would require you to sit down and really analyse what male privilege means and how it works and is perpetuated.
“What if what i do at my gig is because im the best one for the job? Maybe im the best because im a male and thus had some unnamed hardships eliminated for me somehow. Or because my father did. I cant control that now.”
No, but you can recognise that you are reaping the benefits of an unfair system at the expense of other human beings. And you can take steps to make it clear that you believe that is unacceptable.
Damn….pressed wrong buttons my mistake and cut off my own post!
“So at what point do i get to stop stepping aside for everyone else that was or is wronged and get to just live my life.”
Why do you feel that it’s right for you to just get on with your overprivileged life when you apparently do accept that it’s as good as it is because of unfair advantages given to you? Why do you feel that it’s wrong of us to expect you to make amends and not merely go on reaping the benefits of your ill-gotten gains??? To give you an example, would you expect the African people of South Africa to have just calmly accepted that, hey, the current white people on the scene weren’t *all* the originators of apartheid, so well, gee whiz, wouldn’t it be like *really unfair* to expect them to give up all that lovely privilege?
“im still reasonably sure that they havent raped anyone, mostly because they are even worse at dating than i am so when they DID get a girlfriend or go out on a date, i got to hear all the details.”
Uhhhhh-HUH. Well, that sure sets my mind at ease. But how do we know that they aren’t operated on some male-defined version of what constitutes rape?
“if a female friend of mine did say that one of my other friends had raped her, i certainly wouldnt shrug it off. I like to think that i would treat it as seriously as it was and try to figure out if it were true and what to do about it. ”
Well see, I wouldn’t have to waste time in “figuring out if it were true” or not: after all, even the frigging FBI said that only something like 2% of rape allegations aren’t true.
Julian, I went over to your link to learn how, in your opinion, Mythago thinks that men can make themselves fuckable (and btw, Mythago, you are a way entertaining writer!), and you know, I don’t think Mythago was at all telling men how to be fuckable. I think she was telling men how to go about connecting with women for the purpose of establishing relationships with them. There’s a difference, ya know, argh. The point I was making is that girls learn early that they are the kind of people destined to be fucked by men and that their happiness and success in life depends on it. Boys don’t understand themselves to have to work towards fuckability because maleness does not equal fuckable-ness. To be male is to be the one who fucks, to position oneself in such a way as to have access to those who are fuckable, i.e., women, and that has historically had to do with men cultivating physical strength, wealth, position, privilege, power, so as to be able to add a woman to his list of conquests, possessions, and accomplishments. In other words, boys learn to succeed in the business of life, and if they do, they will be able to negotiate ownership of a woman. And girls learn that TO succeed in life, they have to be fuckable enough that a man who has achieved success wants to negotiate their ownership. And yeah, this is crass and banal and depressing and unromantic and unsexy as all hell, but then, so is male supremacy, when you are willing to take a good look at it. Because sex between fuckers and the fuckable is, in general, not the kind of sex most people are really looking for, when you get right down to it. It’s good for a tickle for a nickel and not much more. And I noticed, consistent with what I’m writing here, that a lot of Mythago’s advice went to the problem of men not wanting women they perceive to be not-so-very-fuckable. It wasn’t about men making themselves sexually desirable to women; it was about men needing to lower the fuckability bar of potential girlfriends instead of evaluating potential girlfriends on the basis of their fuckability. Gah.
I will relent a bit and say that on a good day, I allow myself to think that feminism has begun to balance the scales a *bit* this way; to wit, “Queer Eye,” and the metrosexual phenomenon, the older women/younger men trend, etc., which seems to evidence a little adjustment in the sense that women’s tastes and preferences factor in more than they did before, but that’s not hard, given that they barely factored in at all before, not to mention they didn’t factor in AT all through millennia in which women were bought and sold and traded as chattel and were given no options at all as to partners (and that is still the case today in many parts of the world.)
David P., for what it’s worth, I think half the battle, for men, is simple awareness. I feel exhausted myself reading your post in which you sound kind of overwhelmed by the immensity of of sexism contrasted with your own limits as one human being. I think that the more men think about the kinds of things which all of these eloquent women have written in this thread, the more they consider what has been said here, the greater the likelihood that they will begin to have influence in their own circles without even thinking about it, without consciously trying, and that’s where the real power is.
There are a few good male writers and feminist allies I think are worth a read: Jackson Katz, John Stoltenberg, Robert Jensen, Stephen Ducat. You can do google searches and come up with lists of their books and in some cases websites. If you simply *read* these men — not with this overwhelmed feeling of, “What am I supposed to do, I’m only one person” — but just being open to what they are saying without feeling obligated to anything at all, just letting yourself consider what they write, then my belief and experience is that the next step will be apparent to you. Men can make a huge difference in the world just by speaking up around other men. At the end of this post is a list of things men can do from Jackson Katz’s website. These things are not all that odious and they don’t take a lot of time. Katz’s books and videos for men and boys are part of the libraries of many domestic violence shelters across the country. He does good work.
I am not much a believer in self-sacrifice; we’re not here on the earth to sacrifice ourselves or to do things we don’t want to do, we have one life and it isn’t a dress rehearsal. My experience is, though, that awareness comes first, and then deep thought and consideration, and then activist work follows naturally from these, and when this is so, the work doesn’t feel at all like sacrifice. It is exhilarating. It gives life meaning. It is enriching and nourishing and satisfying. New relationships and friendships emerge from it. Working for justice and freedom for all people, working to end sexism, is exciting work when it is undertaken by those who really believe in its value, for all human beings, men and women.
10 THINGS MEN CAN DO TO PREVENT GENDER VIOLENCE
Approach gender violence as a MEN’S issue involving men of all ages and socioeconomic, racial and ethnic backgrounds. View men not only as perpetrators or possible offenders, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers
If a brother, friend, classmate, or teammate is abusing his female partner — or is disrespectful or abusive to girls and women in general — don’t look the other way. If you feel comfortable doing so, try to talk to him about it. Urge him to seek help. Or if you don’t know what to do, consult a friend, a parent, a professor, or a counselor. DON’T REMAIN SILENT.
Have the courage to look inward. Question your own attitudes. Don’t be defensive when something you do or say ends up hurting someone else. Try hard to understand how your own attitudes and actions might inadvertently perpetuate sexism and violence, and work toward changing them.
If you suspect that a woman close to you is being abused or has been sexually assaulted, gently ask if you can help.
If you are emotionally, psychologically, physically, or sexually abusive to women, or have been in the past, seek professional help NOW.
Be an ally to women who are working to end all forms of gender violence. Support the work of campus-based women’s centers. Attend “Take Back the Night” rallies and other public events. Raise money for community-based rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters. If you belong to a team or fraternity, or another student group, organize a fundraiser.
Recognize and speak out against homophobia and gay-bashing. Discrimination and violence against lesbians and gays are wrong in and of themselves. This abuse also has direct links to sexism (eg. the sexual orientation of men who speak out against sexism is often questioned, a conscious or unconscious strategy intended to silence them. This is a key reason few men do so).
Attend programs, take courses, watch films, and read articles and books about multicultural masculinities, gender inequality, and the root causes of gender violence. Educate yourself and others about how larger social forces affect the conflicts between individual men and women.
Don’t fund sexism. Refuse to purchase any magazine, rent any video, subscribe to any Web site, or buy any music that portrays girls or women in a sexually degrading or abusive manner.
Protest sexism in the media.
Mentor and teach young boys about how to be men in ways that don’t involve degrading or abusing girls and women. Volunteer to work with gender violence prevention programs, including anti-sexist men’s programs. Lead by example
Copyright 1999, Jackson Katz. http://www.jacksonkatz.com
Reprint freely with credit.
Heart
“EVERYONE has that right”?
Where did you get that idea? I mean, it may be laudable and all that, but it’s so far away from the reality of the world as to be meaningless to the vast majority of humans. Only a person with a lot of privilege could really *expect* it to happen.
Comment by Crys T … 2/21/2005 @ 2:43 pm
You’ll have to forgive me then. I guess ive been playing too much Knights of the old republic II in the last few days. But isnt that the whole point of “equality” and all that? Everyone deserves a shot at being happy, everyone deserves not to be oppressed?
I dont expect that everyone can realize that goal now in this world, but i expect that THAT is the whole point of getting rid of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc etc.
thanks for the link Amp.
” isnt that the whole point of “equality”? and all that?”
Ah well, you don’t know me, so you aren’t aware of just how much the whole “equality” thing bothers me.
See, I believe that you can only treat people equally when they’re all already on an even playing field (damn, I’ve gotta get to bed soon–I’m *positive* that I’ve already written this at least once today….maybe even on this thread!!! Oh gawd…….). Because if they aren’t–and of course in real life people aren’t–all you’re doing is reinforcing the imbalance of power. Because, for example if you are in Wales and have 2 people with conflicting desires/needs in front of you, an English-speaker and a Welsh-speaker, if you believe in “equality” you will have to treat them both the same. However, in the real world, English has about 300-to 400,000,000 first-language speakers and is spoken by at least 200,000,000 more, while Welsh has got about a million all told. You can’t even make a useful comparison of them in terms of social power. So it would be plain senseless to treat a speaker of English as if they were coming from anything like the same position as a speaker of Welsh. They aren’t, and treating them as if they were will only result in obscuring the real imbalance that exists.
And insisting on “equal treatment” for English in Wales will just mean that space and resources will have to be given over to support a language that in reality has massive presence worldwide as if it were in the same position as Welsh. Which is just plain silly. The truth is that sometimes, you just gotta stick up for the Little Guy. Even if it means that your treatment will be “unequal”.
That’s why there’s no such thing as “reverse discrimination” and why affirmative action is not “bad”.
I’m sorry if this example is obscure for many of you, but I am sleepy and it’s the best one to come to mind, seeing as it is an important part of daily life here.
What i was expressing was a frustration that if my help, as a man, isnt wanted
It’s not about your “help,” though I didn’t hear anybody say No Men Need Apply–you did catch that THIS BLOG is run by a man, right?
As Crys T said: “…you can recognise that you are reaping the benefits of an unfair system at the expense of other human beings. And you can take steps to make it clear that you believe that is unacceptable.” That’s not ‘helping.’ It’s looking at own sexism affects your life and the choices you make.
For example, you confidently state that your friends tell you all about their dates, so you know they don’t rape. Yet you then turn around and say if a female friend told you she was raped, you’d want to “find out if it were true.” Why do you accept what your male friends say as 100% true yet feel the need to doubt your female friends?
Why do you accept what your male friends say as 100% true yet feel the need to doubt your female friends?
Just playing devil’s advocate, but possibly because the first example is watercooler/beer and pretzels gossip, and the second is an accusation of a criminal act.
I remember absolutely ripping a stripp off of a guy friend for talking about how his sister (20) was being “molested” by her boyfriend (his best friend)… it turned out he was uncomfortable with his best friend being in any way sexual with his sister (siblings and parents have gender, not sex ;-) This isn’t to say that there weren’t issues and challenges in the relationship in question, but to use words like molesting or rape is a very serious statement and should not be used lightly.
“possibly because the first example is watercooler/beer and pretzels gossip, and the second is an accusation of a criminal act.”
Yeah, well then my reaction would be to take the gossip with a grain of salt and treat the criminal accusation with the seriousness it deserves. Because, contrary to what many men seem to believe, coming out as a victim of rape is a horribly traumatic experience for a woman, and especially if she’s willing to go to a male friend for help, it’s extremely unlikely she would do so if she weren’t telling the truth.
You all have to stop thinking that those bad US TV dramas where women fling rape accusations about out of malice or in order to punish men for minor trangressions have any basis in reality. Those programmes are much more about male paranoia and misogyny than they are about what happens in real life.
In real life, women are much more likely to SUFFER from making an accusation of rape than they are to get any sympathy at all, so why the bloody hell would they do it lightly?
I’m not saying that rape isn’t traumatic, or that accusations shouldn’t be taken seriously. I’m saying that there is big difference in how someone should react to gossip vs. accusation of a criminal act… and you’ve hit it on the head, the first should be trivial, the second very serious.
But “finding out if the accusation is true” is a very logical part of handling any accusation, it’s not nessecarily just a question of “men are always good, women are always evil misleaders”… although I cannot deny that there is a subsection of men in our culture who happily accept that as the status quo.
I think what I’m trying to do is to seperate the logic part of how the two situations are reasonably handled from the emotional part of how the two situations are handled. There is a very valid reason why we “doubt” the one and “not doubt” the other, and it’s not all about trust or male power… it’s about the seriousness of the situations.
“I remember absolutely ripping a stripp off of a guy friend for talking about how his sister (20) was being “molested”? by her boyfriend (his best friend)… it turned out he was uncomfortable with his best friend being in any way sexual with his sister (siblings and parents have gender, not sex ;-) This isn’t to say that there weren’t issues and challenges in the relationship in question, but to use words like molesting or rape is a very serious statement and should not be used lightly. ”
and
“I’m saying that there is big difference in how someone should react to gossip vs. accusation of a criminal act…”
points to the foundation of our rape culture. Wookie, these statements really piss me off, but I don’t think you did it intentionally (so this isn’t personal!).
You’re actually creating a false dichotomy, between what *men* call molestation and when women accuse men of rape. Yeah, *men* should never use words like “molestation” or “rape” lightly — not because it treats the situation lightly, but because it gives them the false belief that they know what the fuck they are talking about; or that they can mutate what these terms mean for women. A man erroneously using “molestation” is his fucking fault — NOT THE FAULT OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN RAPED.
Also, why is it “gossip” when men talk about the reality of their sexual experiences, but when women talk about the reality of their sexual experiences it is an “accusation”? Why? This is a general question to everyone, not just to you Wookie. These are the fundamental issues, really. That men’s sexuality can be summed up as beer and pretzels talk, but for so many women their truthful talk about sexuality will reveal lived experiences of molestation and rape. Why is it that men *don’t* talk about rape, in general? Why do we need the Kobe trial to prompt men into discussion of rape? Are men so confident that women will be seen as accusatory (rather than truthful) that there is no need for discourse amongst men regarding rape?
How can David P claim a right to personal happiness when the Congo is rife with state sanctioned rape? where women are kidnapped, raped (repeatedly and brutally), infected with HIV, and then left to struggle to the nearest medical aid… where is their *RIGHT* to personal happiness. Oh yeah. They’re black and they’re women. But meanwhile David P can compare his *right* to personal happiness to a fucking video game.
Talk about a disconnect from reality.
Again I ask, why is anyone surprised the women are angry. Scratch that: RAGEFUL.
But “finding out if the accusation is true”? is a very logical part of handling any accusation, it’s not nessecarily just a question of “men are always good, women are always evil misleaders”… although I cannot deny that there is a subsection of men in our culture who happily accept that as the status quo.
Fine, but I don’t think that a man who would decide that his female friend whom he values so much because he is such a nice guy is being non-sexist. He doesn’t have to get a gun and kill the guy she said raped her; but he could oh, I don’t know, be a friend. As in listen to her, and provide moral support. Which isn’t, by the way, telling her, “hold on, I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not,” or “I’m sure you think it was rape” or some such crap.
If a female friend came forward and said she was mugged, would there be any urge to find out if it were true? If his male friend said that his ex was stalking him,k would he decide to find out the veracity of the claim before commiserating?
Your example of your friend’s accusation wasn’t quite the same–it was the woman’s brother who flipped out, not the woman herself.
I’m not about to check the veracity of my friends’ version of events. If they say something happened, I’ll be there for them. It’s quite telling that the standards for believablity–and the support one is willing to give a friend–depends on the gender of the friend and whether or not it’s rape.
I don’t know whether people have a right to happiness or not, but I do feel pretty confident that the rights of Congolese women are being violated and abused, not respected, Q Grrl. It seems odd — at least to me — to cite violations of rights as showing that rights don’t exist.That would seem to render rights, as a normative concept, meaningless. Do you really think the fact that women are raped and abused means that they have no right not to be?
I’m not looking for feminism to create a niche in patriarchal concepts of government and rights so that I’m more comfortable. I’m looking to create new paradigms of thought/social relations/governing.
How can *YOU* look at the reality of these women and say that David P has any rights at all? Because he doesn’t live in the Congo? Because he isn’t one of the soldiers raping these women? Because he lives under a different government? Why are these concepts meaningful and the rape of these women isn’t? … because it isn’t meaningful, it hardly makes a blip on the radar. The US can go in and bomb the fuck out of Iraq to save its citizens (read: men) from depraved leaders, but when the atrocities happen to women, what then? It continues of course.
How do you see rights as normative? Rights are highly subjective: as long as those who hold power agree that you can have them, you do. So, yeah, rights don’t exist. Unless you are white, heterosexual, male. Then they are guaranteed. So that’s not really a right. It’s a privilege.
Okay, I guess we have different paradigms. I’d say Congolese women have a right not to be raped, and that right is being violated and abused. I’m neutral on whether David P has a right to happiness. You say no one has any rights at all. I guess my paradigm folllows patriarchal traditions. To be more specific, it follows the traditions of Western legal and philosophical thought.
And I don’t really think we ever invaded Iraq primarily to save its male citizens. I think we did it for a variety of reasons (get the oil, show the Syrians and Iranians and such that we “mean business,” hope that democracy would take root in Iraq, then spread all over the middle east, paranoia about weapons of mass destruction,, Republicans wanting to achieve political domination over Democrats with a political war, give friends reconstruction contracts, AND outrage over abuses of male and female citizens). I don’t think human rights was the highest thing on the list, and if human rights were virtually the only factor, as in the Congo, then I don’t think we’d have ever invaded at all.
“But “finding out if the accusation is true”? is a very logical part of handling any accusation”
Well, both Q and Sheelzebub have already made very good points regarding this, but dammit, the attitude behind the above statement pisses me off so much I have to weigh in too.
Nobody is asking David to assume the position of judge, jury or executioner towards his male friends if a female friend accuses one of them of rape. All we are asking is that the female friend be given the same sort of support and, dammit, fucking BELIEF in her as a person as David apparently extends to his male friends.
But I see the first reaction men have to an accusation of rape–even an imaginary one made only to illustrate a point–is to question its veracity. In a way that it wouldn’t even occur to them to do if one of their friends came to them with stories of mugging, robbery, or even assault. I mean, seriously, would ANY of you men decide you had to “find out if the accusation is true” if a male friend came to you and said someone he knew had ripped him off or physically attacked him? Somehow, I’m doubting this very much. I think you’d immediately fly into support mode for that friend. The only time I can see it NOT happening would be in a case where past experience has shown you that this male friend is prone to lies or exaggeration.
But when the case is a woman saying she’s been raped, all of a sudden her truthfulness is in question. This makes me think that’s because you feel you have reason to doubt women’s truthfulness in general, as if we were, like the hypothetical male friend above, already established as liars or embellishers of the truth.
And you know, that fucking blows. Seriously.
Well Crys, it’s all about bodily integrity, isn’t it?
If a woman can’t even own that, how can she own her own truth?
I mean, if all men see is an objectified body, how the hell are they going to let someone else define how that body has or hasn’t been used? Truth is irrelevant when society won’t even grant bodily integrity. I mean, too, all those women spreading their legs in porn shots — that’s more real and truthful than the words that come out of a woman’s mouth, ya’ know? Porn shots bring a dick up. Rape “accusations” tend to be a downer.
Actually, some of the men here – myself included – haven’t said anything of the kind. And some of the people saying that it’s appropriate to allow for the possibilty that accusations of rape are not always true – such as Sheelzebub and Wookie – are women (iirc).
EDITED TO ADD: Actually, Sheelzebub didn’t say anything of the sort. My apologies, I had a brain fart. And although it’s been my impression that Wookie is a woman, I don’t know for sure – I frequently get people’s sex wrong on the internet.
It’s happened more than once that female friends who have told me about being raped, and I didn’t doubt their stories. Why should I? (There was one case in which I later had doubts, because she later recanted her accusation.)
If Al came to me and said “your friend Bob ripped me off?” Yes, I’d question that – maybe not immediately while talking to Al (I’d just try to be supportive), but I wouldn’t just accept Al’s word as unquestionable truth.
Well Amp, in a way that’s nice. But it doesn’t erase the historical use of rape against women and men’s historical use of disbelief/discrediting to ignore having to do one damn thing about it. It’s not about individual acts between men and women. It’s about rape culture, and repeated and proven behavior on the parts of men. Despite the occassional good guy.
Or the occassional woman whose words apparently support men’s inaction. Good grief — why do you have to bring up what women say when you could just as easily point to the collosal complacency men have year after year after year shown?
I don’t think there are enough violins in the world to play for all the poor put-upon white men on this thread. But let’s get a small orchastra to strum away….
“I’ve had more female bosses than male, dated more “minority”? women than white, have rich, poor, gay, lesbian and black friends, dont approve of the war in iraq, didnt vote for the president or anyone who supported the war, dont own an SUV, dont threaten or beat or rape anyone. So how the hell am I supposed to accept that somehow im part of the problem JUST because im a white guy? Everyone has a fair shake with me and i dont concern myself with how they grew up, what color they are, who they sleep with, or how much money they have. ”
LOL. Talk about excuses, excuses…This is a very familiar mantra. I can’t be a racist, sexist, because I have BLACK friends. I have FEMALE friends. I date more MINORITY women(which means diddly squat b/c I’ve met some overt racists who’ve married WOC)
As a woman, I just love it when men use their friendships with me, to excuse their own tendacies to deny that they benefit from sexism.
———————————————————-
“David, MOST people on this planet have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of a fulfilled and happy life EVER. The fact that you can even think of one as your birthright shows the level of privilege that you’ve got. To expect us to suffer for you because you’re seeing that in order for social justice to occur, you might not be able to indulge in your dominance and get all “fulfilled”, well………..sorry, ain’t gonna happen”
Thanks CrysT. Poor David’s discomfort is worth more than everyone else’s oppression. Gee, how nice.
——————————————————————–
CrysT, Q Grrl, and Heart, thanks for your patience and hard work trying to get through to these men. If they weren’t feeling so self-entitled, they might actually listen to what a woman has to say about sexism or racism without jumping in with self-pity and a ready list of “buts…”
“Actually, some of the men here – myself included – haven’t said anything of the kind. And some of the people saying that it’s appropriate to allow for the possibilty that accusations of rape are not always true – such as Sheelzebub and Wookie – are women (iirc).”
Well, if Wookie is a woman, I simultaneously offer my apologies for assuming she was a man, and express my dismay that there are women apparently buy into the male mindset so completely.
And I’ve re-read Sheelzebub’s post, and honestly can’t see where it is she’s saying what you claim. Unless it’s in a different post, I’m just not getting it.
Thirdly, yes, I know every single man here didn’t say these thing, but I also get sick of having to qualify every little thing I say, especially since I *know* from both a lifetime of personal experience & extensive study that those attitudes are very widespread amongst men–even liberal lefty men. I’m tired of making a tiny percentage of males look like a substantial subgroup, you know?
“If Al came to me and said “your friend Bob ripped me off?”? Yes, I’d question that – maybe not immediately while talking to Al (I’d just try to be supportive), but I wouldn’t just accept Al’s word as unquestionable truth.”
Yeah, well maybe that was a bad example to use, but you know what? It’s really fucking hard to come up with an example that men can understand that parallels women’s rape experiences, because there just IS nothing. Even saying, “What if Jim came to you, having been obviously beaten up, and said Bill did it” isn’t anywhere NEAR the same thing. Claiming someone ripped you off (and yes, I know it was my example) is massively different in all its ramifications–especially the social penalties the victim will have to pay versus those the wrongdoer will have to pay–than rape is. So yeah, a person might take making a false accusation about such a thing a lot more lightly than a woman would take making a false rape accusation.
And as to your friend who later recanted her rape accusation: I can think of half a dozen very good reasons for her doing so which don’t include that the original accusation was a lie. Any woman who’s been raped knows that telling others about what happened often just makes things worse.
And with male “friends” like the ones we’re seeing here, I think it’s pretty clear why that might be.
I brought up what people (not only women) said on this thread because I thought the specific post I was responding to was talking about what people said on this thread.
I’ve argued against male complacency – and for men taking responsibility for trying to fight rape culture – on this thread and in many other places. I don’t feel that every single post I write has to be about that and no other topic.
However, at the same time, I’m not a radical feminist. I’m a liberal/socialist feminist. So I think it’s partly as a result of my ideology – not just my sex – that I think totalizing statements about what “men” do, as if all men have a single collective groupmind controlled by the penis, are not only illogical and inaccurate but also tend to encourage, rather than discourage, sexist thinking.
So that’s why I think it’s worthwhile to object to totalizing statements about men.
Note that there’s a big difference between talking about “all men” and “men” versus talking about “men as a class” and “most men.” I think that it’s better to avoid the former, and necessary and needed to do the latter.
I’m not saying that this is an important issue, or that there aren’t a hundred more important issues; but then again, it’s not like this is something I spend a lot of time writing or thinking about. If you read “Alas” regularly, you know that the vast majority of my posts relating to feminism are anti-misogyny, anti-anti-feminist, and anti-homophobia.
Word, CrysT.
The men’s feelings once again supercede women’s realities. Sigh.
To be honest Amp, I’m too angry (in general) to give you a generous reading. I’m sorry. I’ll come back to it when I’ve calmed down.
I will pipe back in to say that I, too, am sick of having to qualify my statements. We’ve been over this for several weeks now. If you feel it’s an individual attack, fine. By now you know that it isn’t and to keep insisting that it is implies that you aren’t listening. You’d rather focus on yourself than on what happens globally to women’s bodies. Or at least that’s how it comes across.
“I brought up what people (not only women) said on this thread because I thought the specific post I was responding to was talking about what people said on this thread.
I’ve argued against male complacency – and for men taking responsibility for trying to fight rape culture – on this thread and in many other places. I don’t feel that every single post I write has to be about that and no other topic.
However, at the same time, I’m not a radical feminist. I’m a liberal/socialist feminist. So I think it’s partly as a result of my ideology – not just my sex – that I think totalizing statements about what “men”? do, as if all men have a single collective groupmind controlled by the penis, are not only illogical and inaccurate but also tend to encourage, rather than discourage, sexist thinking.”
So feminists by calling men on their privilage as a class WITHOUT using the pre-approved style and syntax of how to refer to them this way, is encouraging sexist thinking? Wow, then we should be quiet or else sexism might get worse!
—————————————————————-
“So that’s why I think it’s worthwhile to object to totalizing statements about men.”
That’s what I thought. It’s for our own good.
———————————————————————————————-
Note that there’s a big difference between talking about “all men”? and “men”? versus talking about “men as a class”? and “most men.”? I think that it’s better to avoid the former, and necessary and needed to do the latter.
——————————————–
So it’s a syntax issue then, not a matter of addressing privilage? Men’s discomfort over syntax choice once again trumps sexism.
————
I’m not saying that this is an important issue, or that there aren’t a hundred more important issues; but then again, it’s not like this is something I spend a lot of time writing or thinking about. If you read “Alas”? regularly, you know that the vast majority of my posts relating to feminism are anti-misogyny, anti-anti-feminist, and anti-homophobia.
——————————
So are mine. So are CrysT’s, alsis’s Heart’s and Q Grrl’s, here. These things may be discussed as discrete topics on threads, but the commentary and analysis here on how this discourse has played out, also deals with these same oppressions, abeit in a more probing, more uncomfortable way to our “allies” and “friends” than they would like.
Comment by Ampersand … 2/22/2005 @ 10:52 am
or better yet:
How is it that rape happens globally to women, has a “totalizing” effect on every single woman that has ever been born, and individual men still want to talk about themselves in the face of this? How freaking egocentric, politics be damned.
Point is Amp, that while you’re sitting here talking about the differences between your politics and mine a woman is getting raped. Or a girl. And is has *nothing* to do with you. And everything to do with the fact that the universal c*nt is in fact universal in a way that would never be acceptable to men who feel there is something wrong in implying: “all men have a single collective groupmind controlled by the penis”.
Your penis controls ******me******. Why can’t I say that it controls you too?
Do you just not get that?
I had a brain fart and misread one of Wookie’s two recent posts as being signed Sheezlebub. I’m not sure how I did that, but I’ve edited my above post to make my error clear.
Yes, so can I. That’s why I said I “later had doubts,” not that I later decided for sure that the original accusation had been false.
Bah. It ate my post.
Look Amp, we’ve been over this for weeks now, so I don’t feel that I have to qualify my language here anymore. If you keep insisting that we’re talking about individual men here, then that’s just a red herring.
you say: ” So that’s why I think it’s worthwhile to object to totalizing statements about men.”
yeah, and meanwhile rape is the ultimate totalizing statement about women. So guess which one I’m gonna pay more attention to?
You don’t want men to be defined by some penis beehive thinking mode, but ya know? women are defined by that. Especially b/c the penis is used as a weapon against women. So hell-fuckin-yeah, I’m judging all of you by your penis. If *you* don’t like that, don’t get mad at me. Don’t ask me to change. Change the freakin system. I certainly never assigned that kinda “worth” to your penis.
And I don’t mean that penis as a weapon as a methaphor.
If I had a choice between a gun to my head or a penis… I’d go for the gun everytime. Everyfuckingtime.
OK, Amp, I’m confused. My post said the opposite of Wookie’s post. Basically, that if you’re not a cop getting a crime report, if your friend has come to you saying she was raped, “[trying] to figure out if it were true” isn’t particularly supportive; nor does it bolster David’s protestations that he’s not being sexist. I don’t see men being greeted with this kind of skepticism; they are given unconditional support.
Sure, people lie. But I wouldn’t withdraw my support of a friend just because I couldn’t figure out if they were telling the truth or not. This is only a litmus test that has been applied to women and sexual assault/rape.
I did ask a couple of rhetorical questions about David’s statement:
If a female friend came forward and said she was mugged, would there be any urge to find out if it were true? If his male friend said that his ex was stalking him, would he decide to find out the veracity of the claim before commiserating?
I didn’t say outright that if it was a man, he’d be believed, but you know, I’ve seen the double-standard (skepticism for women, support for men) in action far too many times.
Radfem:
People on the internet frequently use this style of argument – rephrasing what someone has just said, and then attacking the (unfair, distorted) rephrasing rather than the original statement. It’s a fun way to make points, but I think it also tends to make arguments more about acrimony and scoring points than about anything real.
Of course, what you said isn’t what I said.
1) I didn’t say my criticism was only of “feminists.” I object to totalizing statements made by anyone – more often than not, the people I’m objecting to are non- or anti-feminists.
2) Saying it’s about “syntax and style” is an inaccurate way of putting my argument. I’m not talking about syntax and style – I’m talking about meaning.
The phrase “all men are to blame for rape” or “the men here say X” has a very different meaning from the phrase “men as a class are to blame for rape” or “most men here have said X.” The former phrases mean that all men do these things.
I’m not saying that this is wrong because of “style and syntax”; I’m saying it’s wrong because it’s inaccurate and it encourages essentialist thinking.
I criticized something Crys said; I did not suggest or imply that she should be quiet. To conflate the two very different things is mistaken, and would make criticism and disagreement impossible.
” rape is the ultimate totalizing statement about women”
Q, I may just burst into tears right now. That is so fucking true and you so fucking rock for being able to get it so exactly right.
“I’m judging all of you by your penis. If *you* don’t like that, don’t get mad at me. Don’t ask me to change. Change the freakin system. I certainly never assigned that kinda “worth”? to your penis.”
I have to agree with this one, too. It really is annoying not ever being able to make a statement about a privileged class as a whole without having someone piping about “hey, not ALL of us are like that”. Yeah, that may be true, but you know, tough: a lot of the time saying “most men” believe/say/do a particular thing creates the impression that there is a subgroup of men large enough to warrant attention that *don’t* do this thing. And a lot of the time, that is just inaccurate. Not incoincidentally, saying “most men” also allows any given man who happens to be reading the chance to decide that he himself is *not* one of “most men”, that he is somehow one of the “different”, possibly “better” men….which is very often not the case. In other words, all the constant qualifying just lets men let themselves off the hook.
Well, I thought you said that totalizing statements about men were wrong, but you could use them if you used the words, “most men” or “men as a class.” That’s syntax differences.
What’s the difference btwn “men” and “men as a class” except that the latter might make men here, our allies of course, breathe a bit easier when it’s used in discourse? Hence my comments about syntax over substance.
Your example:
“The phrase “all men are to blame for rape”? or “the men here say X”? has a very different meaning from the phrase “men as a class are to blame for rape”? or “most men here have said X.”? The former phrases mean that all men do these things.”
NO, it doesn not!!!!! It’s the same thing. It’s just that you as men can’t distance yourself as easily from the “men” as you can “men as a class”
“men” is am I included here in any way, for any reason BESIDES actively engaging in the behavior discussed?
“men as a class” is read, oh gee, since I’m an ally to feminism, I’m not part of this class.
—————————————————
“I criticized something Crys said; I did not suggest or imply that she should be quiet. To conflate the two very different things is mistaken, and would make criticism and disagreement impossible. ”
CrysT hits the points and her points directly so much so, it’s almost scary. “Conflating” the two might make criticism and disagreement impossible…for men. Criticizing and disagreeing here for women, while allowed, is ALREADY very difficult unless the women here are wearing well-insulated helmets.
I think totalizing statements about what “men”? do, as if all men have a single collective groupmind controlled by the penis, are not only illogical and inaccurate but also tend to encourage, rather than discourage, sexist thinking.
And the result of this philosophy is that pretty much ALL men exclude themselves from what “men” do, you know? Everybody says it’s all the other bad guys who do whatever, not them, or in the case of a woman, not the men in her life.
As to that 1-in-20 figure, and I know you acknowledged the limited amount of research, but if 1 in 3-4 women has been raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime (and the number is actually likely much greater), then it’s not 1-in-20 men, I don’t think, I think it’s many more than that.
And do you take that same approach to rape, Amp? Does the following work for you:
I think totalizing statements about what “white people”? do, as if all white people have a single collective groupmind controlled by white skin, are not only illogical and inaccurate but also tend to encourage, rather than discourage, racist thinking.
Because all that approach does is get white people busy excluding themselves as racists, when, in fact, all white people ARE, to some degree, racist and complicit. Just as all men are, to some degree, sexist, and complicit, whether they acknowledge that they are or not.
Heart
And as to you believing a friend who insists he didn’t rape a woman, well, that’s what men do, you know, and yes, that’s a totalizing statement, but if men do anything, it’s that– they have the backs of their male friends.
And that is why we still live under male supremacy. Until men begin to believe women and not their male friends, kneejerk, women will continue to be raped and men will continue to walk.
Fuck.
Heart
That’s a danger. But it’s also a danger when the constant totalizing statements about men make it easy for mainstream people to dismiss feminists as man-haters (nearly always inaccurately).
In the end, I think the truth is what’s most effective. And the (imo) truth is, all men benefit from a misogynistic, male-centric, rape culture; all men are responsible for trying to change that culture. Telling men that turns them off, but I’ve found that it is possible to get them to listen. On the other hand, saying that all men should be blamed for rape, regardless of how they lead their life, isn’t truthful and is very rarely going to be a helpful way of getting men to listen.
What the research means is so open to question. I don’t know if you followed my link, but it led to an argument that 1-in-20 is in fact a HUGE, TERRIFYING number of men, a this-is-a-national-crisis number of men.
Anyhow, to answer your point, I don’t think that’s an unbelievable discrepancy; it requires thinking that the average rapist rapes about five different women in his lifetime, which seems possible to me.
But all of this is hugely speculative. I said 1-in-20 because that’s what the research I’m aware of (by a feminist woman) says, but this is a horribly, unjustifiably underresearched area.
I don’t think white people and men are exactly analogous. I’d argue that patriarchy non-uncommonly hurts men too, sometimes in very significant ways. For example, a wimpy boy who is beat up every day in school, for years, until he learns to loathe himself utterly has been hurt by patriarchy – and there are boys like that in every single grade in every single school. Do some women have it worse? Yes, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.
In contrast, few if any white people, however much they hate racism, identify with blacks, or have black loved ones, are hurt by racism in such a direct manner.
(To clarify, I’m not arguing that men are “equal victims”; nor am I suggesting that using “PHMT” as an excuse for ignoring the larger and more important problem of how patriarchy oppresses women is acceptable.)
Well, I agree that all men are to some degree sexist, and complicit (and all whites racist and complicit). However, I don’t think that saying all men are to blame for rape is the same thing as saying that all men are “to some degree sexist, and complicit” in patriarchy. And saying “all the men here have said X,” when in fact that’s not true, isn’t the same thing as saying “all the men here are to some degree sexist, and complicit,” which is true.
You keep on saying that the problem with my approach is that it leads to men (or whites) making excuses. It does, but as far as I can tell, that’s true of every possible approach, yours included. But in my experience my approach is more likely to lead to a dialog about patriarchy, male violence and a male-centered society, and less likely to lead to men stomping out of the conversation complaining about man-hating feminists blaming him for all the world’s problems.
By the way, I really don’t see a huge difference in approach between how you talked to David (#162) and how I did (#153, 157 and 158), although yours was better-written and better-thought and the sort of thing I’ll try to emulate. We even cited the exact same “ten things” list. You didn’t tell David that he, personally, is to blame for every rape; and I suspect the reason you didn’t tell him that is that you didn’t think it would have been an effective way to get through to him.
Umn.. who is the “you” in this statement? If it’s me, can you tell me what specific statement of mine you’re referring to?
Frankly, I suspect there’s a big reason that so many “nice” guys get so vehement about how no male friend of theirs could have raped a woman. The big reason is because the “nice” guy would have to contemplate some unpleasant things about men as a class. The “normal” guy next to the “nice” guy might have a very different idea of what constitutes rape than the woman who suffered at his hands. Face it, most “nice” men don’t want to open that can of worms. It’s too scary for them to admit that the culture trains men to be so self-absorbed and obsessed with their own desires that they could, in fact, have forced a woman to have sex without even thinking of such force as anything other than “natural” or whatever. Narcissism, in other words, doesn’t count as a “personality disorder” in the scenario of who gets to initiate sex, or stop it. It’s just “normal,” business as usual. Blecch.
” in my experience my approach is more likely to lead to a dialog about patriarchy, male violence and a male-centered society, and less likely to lead to men stomping out of the conversation complaining about man-hating feminists blaming him for all the world’s problems.”
Well, I hate to point out the obvious, but there’s also the unavoidable fact that you, when you are dealing with these don’t-wanna-hear-it type men, are facing them as a person with a penis. Which I, just for example, am not. Maybe, just maybe, THAT is the fact that is winning them over to your “approach”. Because you know, in my experience, even when women phrase things in a very gentle, generous way, at the slightest hint of any criticism or even suggestion that things might be somewhat, well, unbalanced, most men immediately fly into fits of hysteria.
Most men don’t want to hear anything women have to say unless it’s one great big ego massage. That’s a sad fucking fact of life, Amp, and all the honey instead of vinegar in the world won’t change it. The only thing that has EVER worked, even marginally, in my experience is hitting them over the head with fact after fact after fact. Because sometimes, after the wounded shrieks and “Well, I NEVER!!!s” have died down, some of them, just occasionally, have a CLICK! moment.
If all we do is dilute every damn thing down till it’s meaningless (“Oh no, only *some* men, darlings, not *you* here of course…..You’re ace!”), men will continue to let themselves off the hook till the end of time.
And, BTW, you may not have meant what you said to come across as “PHMT”, but, well, it does. After hearing the incredibly heartless, unfeeling attitudes you Good Guys have towards your female “friends”, I’m not in the mood to be sympathetic to any poor little boys. I’m much more worried about their poor little sisters, who are apparently going to have to face yet another generation of having their bodies and souls ripped apart by rape–and doubly so, because it’s never *just* the attack, but the hell you have to go through after it–because yet another generation of “Nice Guys” just can’t be bothered to really think about what it is they’re doing.
“But it’s also a danger when the constant totalizing statements about men make it easy for mainstream people to dismiss feminists as man-haters (nearly always inaccurately). ”
A danger? Shrug.
Women have enough strictures on their voices and platforms for their voices that the last thing I’m going to worry about is being called a man-hater.
News Alert: I. AM. A. MANHATER.
How could I not be?
Your lack of “comprehension” regarding our diction implies that I should be a MANLOVER despite:
-everything I have ever experienced
-my constant assessment of my surroundings and actions to ensure that I don’t get raped
-pornography the tells me endlessly that men are WOMANHATERS
-the fact that there is no moral equivalent to “good guy” b/c a “good girl” doesn’t imply anything about a woman’s moral fibre — it implies everything about her sexuality. [i.e. while “good guy” looks neutral, “good girl” is heavily laden with social imperitives]
-the way my words of truth can be dismissed simply b/c a man doesn’t get it
-the fact that tonight, when I watch TV, I will see multiple examples of women’s rape and murder and this is called entertainment
whatever, I could go on forever.
Why is it so *awful* to hate men? All men?
especially in the face of culturally, politically, and philosophically sanctioned hatred of women?
Gimme a fucking break.