I really shouldn’t take the time to post today, but I’ve got to clear some of these links off my desktop! Some of them I’ve lost the source of; my apologizes to anyone who I should have hat-tipped but didn’t.
By the way, if there are any links you’d like to post, or anything you’d like to discuss, that doesn’t fit into the other threads on “Alas,” then feel free to post it in the comments here.
In no particular order:
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Ex-Gay Watch has some interesting information about the swell folks behind Defend Maryland Marriage (who I posted about yesterday).
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Hey, cool, Jill at Third Wave Agenda just called “Alas” one of her favorite blogs. Thanks, Jill! The only problem is, now adding Third Wave Agenda to the “Alas” blogroll may look like payback for flattery, when actually I’ve been meaning to add it since I first noticed it a couple of days ago. Well-reasoned and passionate – a recipe for kick-ass feminist blogging. I recommend that y’all check Jill’s blog out.
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A mini-debate between me and Elizabeth Marquardt at Family Scholars Blog about her famous “hooking up” study.
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Heart, who is like me a veteran of the Ms Boards, has been posting to disagree with me and other skeptics regarding the “become a prostitute or lose unemployment benefits” story on this “Alas” thread. It’s an interesting discussion. There’s also some discussion of it on Heart’s website (Note: Heart’s website is women-only. Any male “Alas” poster who posts on Heart’s website will no longer be welcome to post on “Alas”).
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RadGeek argues, persuasively, that the Founding Fathers did so intend a separation between church and state.
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Natalie at Philobiblon discusses “the school slut” and the book Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut by Emily White.
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Bouncing off a comment Kip left on “Alas,” Pinko Feminist Hellcat discusses classism and “personal responsibility.”
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A good Ellen Goodman article points out that finding “common ground” in the abortion debate, as the mainstream presents it, usually means pro-choicers giving up on our principles in exchange for no compromise at all from pro-lifers. Via Jill at Third Wave Agenda, who adds good comments as well.
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Amanda at Mouse Words argues that porn is not inherently degrading to women (although many specific examples of porn are). I pretty much agree with Amanda’s views, although I do think some kinds of porn – rape porn and child porn, specifically – should be censored. (I’m not assuming that Amanda disagrees with me on that).
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In the news: “A National Institutes of Health study suggests that the region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior is not fully formed until age 25, a finding with implications for a host of policies, including the nation’s driving laws.” And whether or not people should get married young, I’d add. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I found this story – sorry, whoever I’m not crediting!)
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I’m planning to order my next batch of checks from these people. I’m torn between the variety pack, the anatomical theme, and the insect theme.
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College paper article about a recent bell hooks lecture
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The Bush administration has pressured PBS into pulling an episode of “Postcards from Buster,” because the episode included some children whose parents are lesbians. The article describes some past episodes of the series: “One episode featured a family with five children, living in a trailer in Virginia, all sharing one room. In another, Buster visits a Mormon family in Utah. He has dropped in on fundamentalist Christians and Muslims as well as American Indians and Hmong. He has shown the lives of children who have only one parent, and those who live with grandparents.” So apparently queers, and queers alone, are the only people Bush considers beyond the pale to show as part of a family on TV. Via Jack Bog’s blog.
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Basic Rights Oregon is suing to prevent Measure 36 – the voter-approved Constitutional Amendment preventing Oregon from recognizing same-sex marriages – from being put into the Oregon Constitution. I’ll be blogging more about this in the future, but for now I’m posting it here to preserve the link.
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Another terrific feminist blog added to the blogroll: Pseudo-Adrienne’s Liberal-Feminist Bias.
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The New York Times describes some of the ways folks in Chile preserved their freedom before divorce was legalized last week: “The most creative schemes involved civil annulment, which required the separating couple to persuade a court that the original marriage had not met legal requirements. So marrying couples frequently left an escape hatch, in case things didn’t work out. Witnesses to a wedding, for example, would sometimes deliberately misspell their names or give an incorrect address. Or a couple might marry in a jurisdiction in which neither lived. More than 5,000 annulments were granted annually; the beneficiaries included President Ricardo Lagos.”
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A CLASP policy brief (pdf file) sums up the social science research regarding if married parents are really better for kids. (Short summary: Yes, kids of married parents tend to have better outcomes, but not 100% of the time, and there are other essential factors too). Both this and the previous link were via Family Scholars Blog, by the way.
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Another totally excellent Ornicus post defending hate crime laws. He harps on something that always bugs me – 90% of hate crime law critics clearly have no idea what hate crime laws are or how they work.
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Jeremy Wagstaff provides an interesting statistic on spam email: “The index goes back to November 2002, with a value of 66.67 — i.e. about 67 spam messages for every 100 valid emails. Now the index is at 782.12. That’s 800 spam messages for every 100 valid ones.” Hat tip: Kip.
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Damnum Absque Injuria, an anti-feminist blogger, reviews the “male privilege checklist.” What a shock – he don’t like it.
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This student’s paper on the Morning After Pill is good reading, especially if you’re looking for a basic summary of the scientific issues involved.
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Someone on a men’s rights forum suggested this link as a one-stop summary of what men’s rights activists are complaining about. So, in case you were wondering…
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This pamphlet written by Mary Schweitzer in the run-up to the 2004 election is still very worth reading, especially for her thoughts on the economic situation in the US. (Mary Schweitzer wrote this recent “Alas” guest post).
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Very interesting debate about affirmative action and black law students.
Ah… the desktop looks much cleaner now.
Good to see you CrysT.
Just so you know, you’ve been missed by well, you know, the heretical band of feminists…. :-)
Caterina, you too…where have you been hiding?
“”Feminism seems to spend so much time on burning heretics and pushing itself to the margins. Never mind those enemies; it’s these bastard so-called “friends”? we have to kill.”?
———this factoid brought to you personally, by Robert
Are you for real? You certainly have shown you don’t know your history….Criticizing you, is like setting a human being on fire. Get over yourself, already.
Boy, am I glad I didn’t take you seriously if this is what was your underlying belief from the beginning of your participation on this thread! And this type of ignorance is what needs protecting. Well, “good” feminist men, whomever you are, you certainly have your work cut out for you there. Why don’t I just pick up a rock, give it to you and you can try to sqeeze blood from it, instead? Or why don’t you busy yourself with some jousting, or fencing or whatever, and leave the feminism to the women folk.
Heart:
The argument that rape and other violent crimes happen to women and therefore I should be a feminist is a strong one. I just don’t see men being polite to women, or men being rude to women for that matter, as connected with violent crime. We weren’t talking about rape; every single person here agrees that rape is bad, that’s not in debate. I haven’t seen any feminist in this debate propose tactics which I believe would prevent sexual violence.
I’ve never met anyone I would classify as a “male supremacist”. I have met two men in my life who made disparaging remarks about women. Those men were out of line, but they weren’t brutal. And certainly none of the men in this discussion have behaved in a way that remotely merits that kind of language. Some may be mildly sexist, and even that I think is as much in interpretation as in intent.
I’m not remotely complacent about rape. I’m pretty complacent about men choosing to disagree with women on occasion though. And I’m positively grateful that men sometimes help women out when women are in trouble. I see all this discussion of rape as hugely changing the terms of the debate, quite honestly.
I think this is the major problem with regarding “raising your voice” as being on the same level as serious violence. I appreciate that you’re only calling these things abusive if they’re part of an ongoing pattern in a relationship, and I agree that they are not good ways to treat people. But I can’t make sense of the idea that any man who falls short of absolutely perfect in all his behaviour at every moment is as bad as a rapist. I also don’t think that holding that kind of idea is likely to be helpful to rape victims or in prevention. That’s what I reject, not the no-brainer that rape is a terrible crime.
Jake: “Because you are writing from a completely different point of view than those people. Because to Robert (for example) the things you are saying don’t jibe with what he knows and the way he thinks. ”
But now you sound like you are apologizing for him, rather than challenging each other. As humans, and as social creatures, we are trained through social systems to continually approach different points of view and different, strange, and challenging ideas and language. Chemistry and physics were particularly challenging for me; but there was a social imperative that I at least give them a stab, certainly if I wanted to graduate from high school. If I read between your lines, you don’t really feel the social imperative to do the hard work of learning a new language, so to speak. And, as a feminist, I have to ask why that social imperative is missing. Why is it easier for men to ask that we bring all the answers to them, preformed and ready for spoon feeding. I will guarantee you that very little else in your life was learned this way. You had to study, puzzle things out, struggle with concepts outside of your lived experience. What makes feminism different?
Robert: to be honest, I find you disengenous. (sp?) You like to think that you are asking questions, but as I said earlier, your questions are rhetorical in nature, as you have already pre-determined which answers you will “hear” and which ones you won’t.
I’m a revolutionary socialist. Almost any time I mention this, when in a group that doesn’t consist entirely of revolutionary socialists, I’m asked to explain how I can hold such beliefs, how I can be a socialist after what happened in the Soviet Union, what socialists think about racism, sexism, etc., and there are endless additional questions following from my answers to those questions.
I live for opportunities to answer those questions.
How did I become a revolutionary socialist? Well, I’d run across a few references to socialism that seemed appealing, but couldn’t really find anyone to answer the questions I had until years later, when I met some revolutionary socialists, and grilled them on their beliefs. Their answers convinced me.
I had, from time to time, met people who claimed to be socialists, but who would simply get angry if I asked about their beliefs. They didn’t convince me of anything — how could they?
The burden of proof is upon those with radical opinions. Is it fair? If everything was fair, there wouldn’t be radical opinions.
Hmmm. Well, you’re talking about something that people aren’t already participating in and trying to convince them of its veracity. Men already live within patriarchy and are the systematic expressors of women’s subordination. So, I don’t have to convince them that sexism is real. It is and they are practicing it. What I have to do is say, over and over again: my voice is valid.
I saw a lot of feminists behaving in ways that I would not want to behave, and saying things that make no sense to me. You argued, reasonably enough, that I should be a feminist because of all the ways that I benefit from feminism. I agree that I have benefitted, but I still do not want to assume that every male action or speech is automatically sexist, patriarchal or even abusive. If I have to hold that kind of view to be a feminist, I’m not a feminist, even if that means I don’t deserve to benefit from feminist achievements. Does that make it clearer?
I would find it pretty hard to respect someone who had abused a fellow human being. However, I don’t count simply being born male in a patriarchal society as intrinsically abusive.
Perhaps so, but you discuss it in terms of a habitual abuser throwing his victim an occasional bone. Others have talked about (post 46) “a typical piece of male privilege disguised as “helping”? a woman”. That’s not the type of kindness I’m referring to. I’m talking about real, genuine kindness.
I believe the best about everybody in my life, because I feel that’s an important moral principle.
I am not prepared to consider a bunch of men I’ve never met as abusers or even potential abusers simply on the basis of their commenting in a blog discussion. I am not going to accuse, even mentally, someone of abuse without very good evidence.
I’m neither a leftist nor a socialist, and most certainly not “male-identified”. I don’t know what “Weather-sympathizing” means; I’m British so it’s a given that I have to talk about the weather a lot, but I doubt that’s what you mean.
That, however, is a fair characterization of my attitude. I don’t think gender matters all that much.
I simply do not believe the contention that civility is a male-defined, patriarchal standard. Call it courtesy, call it respectful dialogue, if you don’t like the word ‘civility’. It’s a fundamental human principle to treat others with respect, and I really don’t think that’s gendered.
This, at least, I find reassuring. Thank you.
My politics are my own. They are influenced by some male thinkers and some female.
So if you’re not white, male, straight and ablebodied, then the burden is on everyone else to convince you of your own priviliage and entitlement as a member of the status quo class. Because clearly here, it is the feminists here that hold the “radical” opinions and those that disagree with them are status quo.
Well, duh.
There’s a difference btwn explaining your beliefs and banging your head into a wall. Maybe those “socialists” just got headaches.
Chemistry and physics were particularly challenging…You had to study, puzzle things out, struggle with concepts outside of your lived experience. What makes feminism different?
Chemistry teachers don’t generally yell at students, call them names, say that they’re disingenuous for asking questions, imply moral failure, or refuse to communicate when a student gets stuck on “what’s an isotope”. When other chemistry students also don’t understand the question, chemistry teachers don’t yell at them for enabling the slow learner in her anti-chemistry bias.
That’s what’s different.
I’ve had a few very good “teachers” of feminism, people who taught me a lot. I haven’t seen a lot of that here, with the exception of Heart. If your position is “I shouldn’t have to teach this, you should already know it” – well, that’s fine, and your prerogative. If your position is “I will teach you, as long as you treat me as an avatar of truth and question nothing,” well, no, thanks. Questions are the paving stones on the road to illumination; I’ll find a teacher secure enough in their knowledge to permit questions from the unlearned rabble.
Ok.
Sorry if you took what I was saying as an apology for Robert. I find his manner in this thread to be counterproductive at best, purposely insulting at worst. It seems to me that Robert has no desire to learn the language in which you are speaking, but I could be wrong and he may not have the ability. I don’t know him well enough to tell.
I don’t feel as if I’m asking you to bring me answers preformed and spoon feed them to me. But as long as there is somebody here with far more knowledge than me, I’m going to ask questions. I remember learning Geometry in much the same fashion, and one day there came a tipping point at which Geometry, until then totally alien to me, suddenly came into focus and made sense.
It’s possible that I don’t currently have the knowledge necessary for that tipping point to come any time soon, but that isn’t stopping me from trying to get there. As I’m not in school and don’t have the opportunity to take classes in the basics of feminism, I’m trying to make the most of what is available to me. Believe me, I’ll be asking people to recommend a course of reading that will introduce me to that subject. Do you think that I’m not “giving a stab” at understanding the POV that I have seen on this thread?
I don’t know where between the lines you find that I “…don’t really feel the social imperative to do the hard work of learning a new language…” It seems to me as if, in my first exposure to these concepts, that I am starting the work. That’s probably another example of where I don’t understand the language that you’re using (but at least I know enough to know that I don’t know). Are you saying that I shouldn’t be asking these questions? That I should be learning all this through a self-study program? I don’t know any Americans that learned Chinese that way (as an example). The language that you are using both to communicate and interpret what others are writing seems very, very different than any language that I know.
But now you sound like you are apologizing for him, rather than challenging each other.
Honestly, Robert is the last person with whom I would try to mutually challenge wrt feminism. I believe that I could challenge him, but I have a hard time seeing him challenging me. Until this point I wasn’t aware that it was my duty to challenge Robert. In fact, there seem to be conflicting views on this point in this thread & I have not yet formed an opinion on which I think is correct.
I simply don’t have the knowledge required to engage you on the issues in the terms that you desire. If that makes me not worth the effort, so be it. It doesn’t stop me from trying.
“It seems to me as if, in my first exposure to these concepts, that I am starting the work.”
Yes, you have. And it is appreciated.
“Questions are the paving stones on the road to illumination; I’ll find a teacher secure enough in their knowledge to permit questions from the unlearned rabble. ”
Most people, and that even includes [gulp!] Evil Feminists, really minds a sincere question. What very few people like is the sort of disingenuous questions that, as Q Grrl has pointed out, Robert (and possibly others here as well: I’m too tired right now to go trawling back over the thread to clarify) is asking. Questions that are not designed to honestly elicit information but rather to provoke a reaction–usually anger–in ones target and also to make that target look “wrong” or even “bad” or “evil” in the eyes of others. And most of us who have seen Robert in action here have very little doubt that this is in fact what he’s doing now.
When men ask me honest questions about feminism, I’m happy to respond. However, that rarely happens, and what I normally get are hostile challenges, designed to both discredit feminism and to “teach” me the “error of my ways,” wrapped up in the form of a question. And, I might add, one of the most common tactics used by these guys is the apparent politeness disguising the fact that what they are doing is, in fact, an attack (and I thought that was a *GIRLIE* tactic!!! Sheesh!).
The anti-feminists who are taking part here have no real interest in a dialogue: what they are after is simply a chance to “prove” how right and good they are, and to crow to each other over how evil and bad feminism and feminists are.
I hope Amp realises that he has the respect of most of us here, but there are also times when he puts his foot squarely in it, and this thread has been one of them. I’m sorry, but fake politeness of the type the antifeminists dish out is in fact not polite at all, and I’m damned if I can see any reason to pretend it is. Of course, this is Amp’s blog and he has the right to say what is acceptable or not, but that’s a separate matter and in no way means that in Real Life, Alsis was more at fault than the feminist-baiting posters she was responding to.
I’m really sorry that you feel that way, Crys, but I guess there isn’t much I can do about it. If you’re determined to feel besieged and surrounded by enemies, no amount of protestation that I’m not your enemy is going to get through.
Tarn, yes, I think that everything that happens between men and women, corporately, and between men and women individually, takes place in a societal, cultural, political context in which men have more power than women do, in all sorts of ways, and for this reason what men do to women, individually and corporately, is always going to have meaning beyond single act, beyond the meaning it would have if we lived in a world in which men and women enjoyed equality. And maybe if I use a little different example it would be helpful: if a white middle class man strikes a white middle class man, well, that’s unfortunate because it is violent and destructive, and we can condemn it on that basis, but its meaning is shut up to that one act and whatever might have precipitated the act in the lives of the two men. If a white man strikes a black man, the violence has a little different meaning– doesn’t it? Because then the issues of racism factors in, the spectre or the shadow of racism, and that ups the ante a bit, makes it a different kind of violence with different ramifications and a different meaning. If a man of any color strikes a slave, a man he legally owns, again, that violence is more than simple violence between male equals. And we can broaden the examples to include all sorts of violations: a white man screaming at a slave is something different from a two middle class white guys screaming at each other. A white man watching Birth of a Nation is different from a black man watching Birth of a Nation (for those who don’t know, this was a hideous piece of racist propaganda, circa the 1920s or so). A slave abusing alcohol in the presence of his master is a little different from the master abusing alcohol in the presence of the slave. A poor person mocking a rich person is different from a rich person mocking a poor person. A person who is not disabled mocking a disabled person is behaving destructively in a way that isn’t true if the situation were reversed.
And all of the above is true because of context, because of how power plays out amongst people and groups of people in the world. And the same is true for women and men– the way men treat women is shadowed, colored, by men’s greater power in the world, always, all the way to the daily interactions in the homes and lives of heterosexual couples.
Individualist, in your initial post you said that what women have said here about their lives has no connection with your reality, or something along those lines. When I challenged this, reminded you of what the reality of women IS in the world, you then suggested that your earlier statement was shut up to the back-and-forth about rudeness and civility here and that what women here have said about rudeness and civility, I guess, isn’t connected with your reality. That doesn’t make much sense to me, I’ll admit, but it’s all good, I am nevertheless glad to hear that you are concerned about women’s plight in the world and that you agree that feminism is an appropriate response to our plight as women.
And I think my response to Tarn above is also responsive to your comments about abuse, what it is and isn’t. Nobody has ever suggested that anybody ought to be perfect anywhere, anytime. By the same token, our inability to achieve personal perfection is never a defense for abusive behaviors of any kind.
Catarina, long time no see, I was just thinking about you the other day and wishing you’d drop by the Margins. :-) Thanks for your good words, yours too, Emma, Morri, good to see you CrysT, as well, Morrigan, everybody, whoa, the gang’s almost all here. ;-)
Heart
Well, Robert, she didn’t put herself on a burning stake now, did she? So, who really feels beseiged on this thread? You do, b/c you’re the one who is engaging in extreme hyperbole here, comparing this to the witch trials….lol, what drama!
There’s nothing on this thread I haven’t seen or experienced in discourse many, many times, so I don’t feel beseiged at all.
Like CrysT said, if you can work up enough indignation because you are excluded from ONE internet space, if you can compare criticism by women to the “burning times”, you’ve have a good day indeed, plus you need to get a grip on reality.
“It seems to me that you aren’t making sense to those who have said so. Why? Because you are writing from a completely different point of view than those people. ”
Yes, but there’s an additional factor at work. Society, the way it’s designed, favors those who don’t hold that “completely different point of view”. It favors those like Robert. His belief systems are validated by the greater society in many different ways, some obvious, some not, every day, like the belief systems of men(most particularly white men) are. And consequently most men see that “validation” and come to think of it as their birth right. It’s part of a sexist society that it favors one sex over the other, in this case men. That seems obvious on its face to many pro-feminist men, but on some level, they buy into the sense of that birthright given to them b/c of sex, race and other things.
“Because to Robert (for example) the things you are saying don’t jibe with what he knows and the way he thinks. I’ve read some comments here that don’t make sense to me. ”
Again, society rewards his opinions and what he thinks jibes with them on a daily basis, part and parcel of a patriarchal society. He believes that if it doesn’t jibe with him, not only is that his opinion, but he’s right b/c men(most particularly white men) in our society can’t be wrong, about anything, even issues that pertain largely or exclusively to women. Men are always the experts. Women are always irrational. So even if it’s a subject like feminism, which based on his comments he knows nothing about, he’s the expert until *proven* otherwise. Of course, no proof will ever be good enough to change his mind, b/c most men don’t believe they have to about anything in a conversation with a woman.
“A major reason that I haven’t told anyone here that they don’t make sense is because I am trying to understand what and why you are saying it while Robert (for example, again) is trying to argue why what you are saying is incorrect. ”
Exactly. And who wants to engage with a person who argues with you as being incorrect, on a subject he knows very little about? Yet, there’s this expectation that women are supposed to do so.
“The burden of proof is upon those with radical opinions. Is it fair? If everything was fair, there wouldn’t be radical opinions.”
I’m new to this board so I find this interesting. One thing I assumed when I came here was that this was a feminist blog, where feminist views would be respected. Ampersand certainly has made a name for himself in the Blogosphere as a profeminist man so I’m surprised to hear that it rests with we feminists to prove our arguments in this space.
At the moment it appears there is a conflict between so-called civility and feminist views. As a feminist when the argument comes down to someone espousing anti-feminist views however civilly, and a feminist losing patience with that person, probably after hearing those arguments for the 50,000th time, my sympathies are going to lie with the feminist.
CrysT describes what most of us experience all the time in debates about feminism:
“When men ask me honest questions about feminism, I’m happy to respond. However, that rarely happens, and what I normally get are hostile challenges, designed to both discredit feminism and to “teach”? me the “error of my ways,”? wrapped up in the form of a question. And, I might add, one of the most common tactics used by these guys is the apparent politeness disguising the fact that what they are doing is, in fact, an attack (and I thought that was a *GIRLIE* tactic!!! Sheesh!).”
I would expect a harder line to be drawn against an anti-feminist and a little more leeway given to women, who after all, suffer because of this rubbish every single day of the week. The day patriarchy takes a day off is the day I’ll feel like being polite to anti-feminists or giving them a generous reading as Ampersand recommended. I don’tsee any of them giving a generous reading to women who told them that their views on separatism were incorrect. In fact amongst some of the posters here there appears to be very little respect for feminism or feminist women.
Well, Robert, she didn’t put herself on a burning stake now, did she? So, who really feels beseiged on this thread? You do, b/c you’re the one who is engaging in extreme hyperbole here, comparing this to the witch trials….lol, what drama!
I did not make any comparison to witch trials. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
if you can work up enough indignation because you are excluded from ONE internet space, if you can compare criticism by women to the “burning times”, you’ve have a good day indeed, plus you need to get a grip on reality.
I was the first person on this thread to explicitly state that Novalis was off base, and that women were entitled create their own private space where men were not permitted. How is this me being indignant at being excluded?
As noted, I didn’t say anything about “the burning times”, so I don’t know what you are referring to here.
Robert you said: ‘ Feminism seems to spend so much time on burning heretics and pushing itself to the margins”
You need to bone up on your history, methinks.
And yes, you had one post that said women-only space is o.k. But what about the rest of your actions here? You seem hell-bent on discrediting feminism any which way you can… at least that’s how you’re coming across.
I was actually referencing the intra-church heresy wars. I can see how someone would interpret that as being about witches, though. Poor phrasing on my part; my bad.
As for me discrediting feminism: how? If thinking, and saying, that a particular member of a movement is acting poorly discredits the entire movement, then it’s a wonder any group bigger than the local Elks club holds together. Your movement – being composed of human beings – has its share of jackass behavior, same as everybody’s. If you are going to insist that every jackass behavior be defended to the death, then you’re doomed. The supply of jackass behavior exceeds your ability to figure out justifications for why each particular brand of jackassery is actually feminist canon.
Is feminism discredited every time Susan Sarnoff gets a traffic ticket? Is road safety part of the patriarchy’s hierarchical power structure? Not every transgressive behavior by a woman is an undermining of the old order and part of the rebirth of a new glorious egalitarianism.
Sometimes its just someone being a jackass.
“If you’re determined to feel besieged and surrounded by enemies, no amount of protestation that I’m not your enemy is going to get through. ”
Robert, unless I am very much mistaken, you yourself have said here that you are a sexist. That to me is an admission as repugnant as those of racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, et al. are–and why others, including apparently some people who post here, seem to classify it as “lesser” form of bigotry is also beyond me.
If you are a sexist, then full stop you ARE my enemy. Not in the sense that I’m going to come after you in any physical way (so please, all you anti-feminists, stop that hair-pulling & garment-rending in its tracks) or anything like that. But I don’t have to pretend you’re some sort of nice guy when you’ve come out and admitted to holding morally repugnant beliefs.
I love it when anti-feminists tell us we’re doomed.
So will Robert get banned for his outrageous mischaracterisation of feminism or should we just politely ignore him?
You know Robert, it’s actually very rude for an outsider to try to police the behaviour of a member of another group, especially under the guise of saving that group from itself. Maybe you need to bone up on a few etiquette lessons yourself.
Actually, Robert when it comes to showing why feminism is still so very important and necessary, you’re definitely an asset.
“As for me discrediting feminism: how? If thinking, and saying, that a particular member of a movement is acting poorly discredits the entire movement, then it’s a wonder any group bigger than the local Elks club holds together. Your movement – being composed of human beings – has its share of jackass behavior, same as everybody’s. If you are going to insist that every jackass behavior be defended to the death, then you’re doomed. ”
Hmmm….jackass….intelligent, stubborn, strong creature…abeit male. Almost perfect.
ah, now I get it, it’s your job to be the “jackass detector” for a movement you know nothing about, that opposes something(sexism) you apparently believe in?
“The supply of jackass behavior exceeds your ability to figure out justifications for why each particular brand of jackassery is actually feminist canon”
This sentence makes no sense at all, except to shine a spotlight what you’re really doing here.
Robert, unless I am very much mistaken, you yourself have said here that you are a sexist…If you are a sexist, then full stop you ARE my enemy.
Yes, I acknowledge that I am sexist. It was my impression from most feminists that I’ve spoken with that pretty much every man is. Is that impression mistaken? QGrrl says that every action by a man in patriarchy is sexist. So, obviously, I’m sexist. Right?
It seems like a bit of catch-22 here: if I admit I’m sexist, I’m the enemy. If I say I’m not sexist, I’m an anti-feminist in denial. But feminism doesn’t say that men are the enemy, so don’t say that it does. And don’t point out a logical contradiction in something a feminist tells you, because that’s patriarchy. (Pause here for my head to explode.)
Are you maybe using sexist in a way that has multiple meanings? (For example, if you’re using it to mean misogynist, then yeah, I’d be your enemy if I was a misogynist, by definition. But I don’t use it to mean misogynist. So that would resolve the contradiction without my head having to explode and making a mess all over Amp’s nice neat site.)
So will Robert get banned for his outrageous mischaracterisation of feminism or should we just politely ignore him?
How have I mischaracterized feminism? I’d really like to know. Do you really think people should be banned for mischaracterizing things? If so, half of Amp’s readers would be gone for mischaracterizing things that I’ve said.
Being politely ignored would be an improvement in behavior on the part of some people calling themselves feminists.
You know Robert, it’s actually very rude for an outsider to try to police the behaviour of a member of another group, especially under the guise of saving that group from itself.
Well, that’s not what I did, so I’m not too worried about it.
You know what’s interesting? I made a comment about someone’s behavior. I didn’t call for them to be banned, or declare then anathema to me, or say that we should get them, or even use rude language about them. I just said “this is bad behavior, I don’t like it.” I expressed an opinion.
And the reaction has been extraordinarily strong. I don’t have authority over Alsis. I’m not in charge of this blog. I have no knights who hang on my every word to rid me of bothersome clerics (yet). In short, the only power that my words here have is whatever power the readers choose to assign them. And from the reaction, people choose to assign them an enormous amount of power, citing my maleness as the reason.
Isn’t that, itself, profoundly sexist behavior? A man says “x”, and a woman says “not X, and I don’t care what you think,” and that’s the end of it; nobody has power, nobody has to listen. But instead of saying “he’s an xist jerk, let’s move on”, there’s this huge kerfuffle, this huge assigning of power to me simply because I have a dick. “A man said x, we have to DO SOMETHING!” Is maleness that totemically powerful? I wouldn’t think so, but apparently I’m wrong.
Just asking.
Actually, Robert when it comes to showing why feminism is still so very important and necessary, you’re definitely an asset.
Hooray, I’m helping!
This sentence makes no sense at all, except to shine a spotlight what you’re really doing here.
What I’m really doing here is avoiding my boring work.
A woman acted badly. The local feminist consensus quickly became “that kind of bad behavior is actually an important feminist ethos! Civility is the patriarchy’s tool to oppress us!” Etc.
My point was that women (just like men) will behave badly enough that if the reaction to a woman’s bad behavior is “wait, that’s feminism in action!”, then soon enough feminism will just be a catalog of bad behavior. Which would be regrettable.
And now my boring work really becomes un-further-avoidable, and so I bid you adieu for the moment. I’ll try to respond to any direct points made but it may be a while.
Littleviolet, several people have suggested to me that when you posted on Ms, you went by the name Lucky, LuckyNickle, or variations of those names. Is that the case?
My feeling is that during your sojourn through exploring feminism, most feminists will all become part of ahem, your catalog of bad behavior. Not all, because you’ll need that one or two of them, to serve as the “good” feminists that justify your sexism. I believe that’s the point of your um, personal journey, but you’ll probably do more good than harm to the movement.
“In short, the only power that my words here have is whatever power the readers choose to assign them. And from the reaction, people choose to assign them an enormous amount of power, citing my maleness as the reason.”
well, poor thing, imagine having to deal with this 24/7 and not just a few minutes here and there on a blog thread.
“Isn’t that, itself, profoundly sexist behavior? ”
No. If there were power behind it, maybe. But notice, how when a relatively insignificant perceived slight happens to you, suddenly it’s profound? But I guess this is just your way of trying hard to get to the point that you’re the victim of sexism, as a man, and women aren’t. Because women have tried to explain to you about sexist dynamics, for two days now, and your focus was on telling us how wrong we were. yet when you perceive sexism, it takes on a profundity that wasn’t there before?
Why do you need authority over a woman and a blog anyway? Most every man here has defended you, even the owner of this blog. It’s the women who’ve been told to be “civil” or held to men’s standard of what civility is. We’re the ones who are supposed to be patient with the men here no wonder how sexist they act, because apparently it’s our job to educate you, again not our decision.
And *that* is what you feel compelled to comment on?
My comment was directed to Ameprsand, not radfem.
You know, Robert, it is exactly the sort of condescending, patronising tone you’ve taken in your last couple of posts that gets the response to you from feminists that you’ve got. And it is exactly that air of smug self-righteousness (sorry if that sounds rude, blog owners, but those are the only words I can think that accurately express what I feel about this) that makes plain that your presence here is NOT to communicate or to participate in dialogue, but to wallow in your own sense of moral and intellectual superiority. And to be fair, it isn’t ONLY Robert who takes on these tactics, but it seems to be common amongst the antifeminists in general.
If you really were interested in communicating, you might just for a second drop the hateful feminist-baiting and try to express something, ANYTHING, honest. But no, to give up the nasty undertone and the chance to express your contempt for feminist women is something that you can’t bear to do even for a short time.
I’m really tired of the antifeminists here berating feminist women for their “bad behaviour”, particularly when a fair number of those selfsame antifeminists actively participate in behaviour that is specifically designed to get such a reaction. I personally find that sort of baiting technique not only “bad behaviour” but pathetic and cowardly as well. Especially when it is followed, as it so often is, by protestations that they were only trying to engage in honest debate or other such patently bullshit pretense. At least most of the feminists I’ve seen, not only here but in general, are upfront and honest and don’t descend to such ridiculous tactics: they say what they mean to your face…..or as much to your face as they can, given this is an online forum.
To me, that is *far* more respectful–and yes, even polite–to your opponent than engaging in that sort of false, superficially-polite-while-really-engaging-in-insult crap that that antifems have been showing here.
No, that isn’t the case.
Thanks for satisfying my curiosity, Littleviolet.
* * *
Sheena, I think you’re asking why I asked about something so unsubstantive, when there are so many substantive issues to comment on here. (Sorry if I’m misunderstanding you.)
First of all, I’m feeling a bit defensive. When I feel defensive, I don’t think as well, or listen as well, as I do at other times. For me, what sometimes works is to shut up and try to listen more, and maybe things will begin to look different to me with a bit more time and distance. (Already, I wish I hadn’t posted some things in this thread.)
Second, lots of people here are reporting seeing things I just don’t see. And it matters to me that the people disagreeing with me are feminists. I don’t mean I’ll automatically agree with anything a feminist says, but I want to give things serious consideration. Maybe I’ll never see what some posters here see, but maybe I will. It seems to make sense, again, for me to shut up and listen for a while.
Third, it’s my perception that many of the posters here are not going to give anything I write the benefit of the doubt, but will instead seek the most negative interpretation of what I write. It’s possible I’m mistaken about that. But, mistaken or not, the result is that I’m not very motivated to post here about anything that really matters.
So that’s why.
Q Grrl:
I’m trying to convince people that the class system exists — and that sexism exists, that racism exists, that homophobia exists, that imperialism exists, and that all these things must be fought together, and that it’s possible to fight them all together. And that a genuine socialist system, without these problems, is possible.
The fact that something is real doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require an effort to convince people that it’s real.
Radfem:
Not quite. The problem is that if you believe something, and someone else doesn’t believe it, you have to convince them of the truth of your beliefs. This may well be unfair; it may well be the case that people really ought to know these things already. But when they don’t, do you really expect them to spontaneously figure it out on their own? Do you expect your enemies to convince other people to be your allies, if you choose to remain silent?
The trouble with the socialists who wouldn’t discuss their own politics was that they preferred to wallow in sectarianism, rather than actually do the hard work of convincing people of their ideas. That, by the way, is why I’m not crazy with referring to the Weathermen as some sort of archetypes of revolutionary socialism. They were a small group of paranoid conspirators who gave up on collective struggle in favor of planting bombs as some sort of imagined shortcut. With an elitist and “heroic” model like that, I’m not surprised they were sexist as well.
littleviolet:
That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry if that was unclear. I consider myself anti-sexist, or feminist, or profeminist — whichever term you prefer. I became a socialist, in part, because I understood opposition to sexism and the oppression of women to be an intrinsic part of the revolutionary socialist project.
There’s no one monolithic, universally accepted account of feminism. Nor of socialism, nor of many other systems of ideas. So in a space for discussion of feminism, I would expect people to try to prove their arguments for the view of feminism each holds. There are non-feminists in this space; unless you’re going to insist they shouldn’t be here, I think it’s our obligation to argue with them, as well as with each other.
I can’t just walk into a meeting of socialists, and, when asked a question, answer, “It’s all in Lenin. It’s not my job to explain it to you.” It is, in fact, my job to explain my ideas, since I can’t assume that anyone else has got exactly the same ideas I have. Different people come to different conclusions after reading the very same texts.
I’ve argued with Robert in other threads, many times. Others who’ve been here longer have argued more often with him. I thought there was quite enough firepower directed at him already, and so I took up this other question, about our responsibility to respond to arguments. It seems this has been taken as a tacit endorsement of Robert’s sexist ideas, so perhaps I made a mistake. If so, I apologize. I fully support the creation of separate spaces for oppressed groups — including, of course, women. I’m sorry if that was not clear.
Robert,
It seems like a bit of catch-22 here: if I admit I’m sexist, I’m the enemy. If I say I’m not sexist, I’m an anti-feminist in denial. But feminism doesn’t say that men are the enemy, so don’t say that it does. And don’t point out a logical contradiction in something a feminist tells you, because that’s patriarchy. (Pause here for my head to explode.)
The difference between being sexist, and being a sexist (perhaps better described as pro-sexist) is substantial.
I am sexist. Amp is sexist. You are sexist. In my personal feminism, virtually every participant in this discussion is sexist (some are undoubtably less sexist than others, having spend far more time and energy on becoming anti-sexist). No one who grows up under patriarchy is free of sexism. (as a small side note, in my opinion the sexism of women is somewhat different than the sexism of men, since women are differently positioned within society, but the sexism of women is not some sort of counter-balance to the sexism of men. Specifically, the sexism of women is not anti-male. Everyone’s sexism is about maintaining the patriarchal system of male domination and the oppression of women.)
I can admit to being sexist, and that does not make me the enemy (it doesn’t necessarily make me not the enemy, since talk is cheap, and admission of wrongdoing is irrelevant compared to ceasing wrongdoing).
What you have declared yourself previously is not sexist in this sense. What you have declared yourself (as I understood it, and it was a fairly explicit declaration, so I don’t think my understanding can be that far off base) is pro-sexist and anti-feminist. You have declared that you believe that achievement of a feminist transformation of society would be bad and wrong.
If you deny that you are sexist, then you are problematic because you aren’t recognizing how you have been influenced by patriarchy or what part you may play in maintaining patriarchy. If you admit that you are sexist, that doesn’t earn you any real points, but it at least opens up the possibility that you might be a feminist ally. If you declare yourself sexist and proud of it, then it is hard to see in what way you are not declaring yourself an enemy to feminist and feminism.
There is no absurdity here. That you are now attempting to downgrade your previous claims to be an anti-feminist into a pro-feminist admission of sexism, and are then using that to argue that feminists are irrational (don’t care if they engage in logical contradictions) is exactly the sort of tactic that makes some people feel that you are often arguing in bad faith.
Also, the fact that you are not opposed to women-only spaces does not mean that you are a particularly desirable ally for feminist supporters of women-only spaces. For one thing, no allies are needed here. The opponents of women-only spaces who have written here have no power to prevent women-only spaces from existing, so the supporters of women-only spaces have no need to seek allies. For another thing, there are plenty of people who support women-only spaces, either specifically or because they support exclusionary spaces in general, who are in no way allies of feminists or feminism. So the fact that your politics align with some feminists on this issue may be interesting, but it does not in any way need to lead to a belief that you are a possible ally. For instance, your explicit anti-feminist position in previous threads pretty much rules you out as a feminist ally in any meaningful sense.
That, anyway, is my take on it…
The distinction I mentioned in my last post also seems to be some of the source of confusion over Heart’s statement that all men have commited acts of abuse against women, which several people translated into “All men are abusers.”
Being an abuser is a category of being, not a characterization of actions. What Heart did was to characterize actions, not categorize being.
Robert, this relates again to your complaint that if you admit you’re sexist that makes you the enemy, and if you deny you’re sexist, that makes you the enemy in denial.
If I deny I have commited abuse, that almost certainly means that I am unwilling to admit to my active position within patriarchy. If I admit that I have commited acts of abuse, that earns me no great points. If I admit that I have commited acts of abuse and demonstrate an understanding of how one goes about stoping from commiting acts of abuse (and demonstrate that I am taking steps to carry that understanding into practice, and preferably to attempt to teach others how to do so as well), then I can potentially be thought a feminist ally. If I declare that I have commited acts of abuse, and that I don’t care, or I enjoyed it, or I plan on doing it again because it is effective, then obviously I am not a feminist ally.
Furthermore, if I declare that I may or may not have committed acts of abuse, but that I am oppossed to them, but if I also oppose all of (or most of) the feminist methods for attempting to combat abuse, then, again, I am not a feminist or a feminist ally.
If there is anyone who considers me an ideological, philosophical, or other class of opponent/enemy, then I beg them to read this comment, as it lays out exactly what I believe. I would not ordinarily make this philosophy-dump here, but there has been so much vitriol and misunderstanding that I offer it up in the hope that it may clarify matters for at least some people.
What you have declared yourself previously is not sexist in this sense. What you have declared yourself (as I understood it, and it was a fairly explicit declaration, so I don’t think my understanding can be that far off base) is pro-sexist and anti-feminist. You have declared that you believe that achievement of a feminist transformation of society would be bad and wrong.
Thanks, Charles. I appreciate you taking the time to spell that out for me. Now I know exactly what it is that you think, and so I can address it in terms that I believe will have meaning for both of us. I don’t recall my exact earlier words, but I do recall that they were very brief; please consider this an unpacking of them.
I believe as a philosophical position that the transformation feminists have in mind is not the transformation that we would actually get. I base this on the fact that societies aren’t designed; they evolve. Lots of people try to move them in various directions, to implement or de-implement things; these efforts inevitably have consequences neither foreseen nor desired by their originators, because human interactions are complex and contingent at a level far beyond the reach of any group of human minds to predict. The side effects of any particular intentional transformation very often are of vastly greater magnitude than the intentional act. Uncontroversial example: not a single one of the almost universally decent, peaceful, loving Russian communists who wanted to overthrow the tsar and institute revolutionary socialism foresaw or desired that the most violent elements of society would take the opportunity to seize control of the nation, but that’s what happened. Within a very few years all of the decent and peaceful reformers were brutally killed, and the thugs were running things.
In hindsight, a person might be forgiven for preferring the established thugdom of the tsars – which at least had some checks and balances on it, and was a known, predictable evil – to the prospect of a new thugocracy. In foresight, that person would be considered a monarchist reactionary who hated the poor and was opposed to sharing the wealth of society.
I believe that some feminists (probably not very many) are not seeking a transformation of the hierarchies of human society; they are seeking a flat replacement of patriarchy with matriarchy. Since this keeps all the deficits of a hierarchical system intact, adds the enormous transaction costs of a revolution, and diminishes my personal standing, I stand frankly opposed to anyone who has that as their project. I can’t predict the side effects, but assume them to be negative, on the grounds of the second law of thermodynamics, so that factors in as well. So in that very narrow sense, it is entirely fair to describe me as anti-feminist; there are some feminists whose goals I find abhorrent, so I am anti- them.
I believe that other feminists (the majority of those I have ever had encounters with) do in fact seek a transformation away from a hierarchical mode of society and towards a more egalitarian model. In principle, I have little objection to this goal (some quibbles about what is actually egalitarian; nothing people of good faith couldn’t hammer out). In practice, the obstacles are significantly more real. A major part of the difference here is one of the things that make me a conservative: a belief in a universal human nature that is not particularly angelic. I think hierarchy and dominance are part of this universal nature. I do not approve of hierarchy and dominance, I do not think they are good things – but in the absence of the Millenium, I think they are inevitable fixtures of humanity, not artifacts created by a particular culture or set of cultures. Cultural values can and should mitigate these negative aspects of nature, and these aspects will express themselves through cultural means. Which means that cultural is vitally important, and not to be lightly toyed with by reformers, earnest of purpose and pure of intention, but – as fallible humans – basically ignorant of the fallout from their actions.
So I end up viewing egalitarians – feminists, socialists, anti-racists, etc. – as being well-meaning, decent people whose most basic values I consider myself to share. I just don’t think their projects are accomplishable in the same fashion that they do. That does not mean that no progress can ever be made, or that we should just give up and start keeping slaves, beating women up, and creating laissez-faire economies by brute force. Transformational efforts, however, seem in my experience and from my reading of history to have more negative effects than positive effects; furthermore, the transformations they seek almost always seem to mutate in the hands of other power-seeking individuals. It’s easy to change who is king; changing the institution of monarchy is much harder. We can pass laws to give black people the right to vote; changing the hearts of millions of non-blacks is much harder. And so on.
So, it’s entirely fair to call me an anti-feminist – in the sense that there are things that feminists want to do that my reading of history tells me are Really Bad Ideas – and so I oppose them. I’m not in opposition to the goal, I’m in opposition to the proposed mechanism to reach the goal. I don’t think it’ll work. I think it’ll hurt more than it helps. I think the end result will be that the worst people end up with more power. I think the easiest way to work a great evil is to join the side of Good and lead a new crusade.
Which brings me to sexism. As you note, we’re all sexist in one way or another, and I agree with the basic premise that sexism is about upholding the patriarchy. Which is real; it exists, and the feminist description of it is the most accurate that I have seen, particularly that of those academic feminists who strip their analysis of emotion and act as purely descriptive social scientists. (I had the good fortune of taking my sociology requisites from a woman of unabashedly left-wing politics who had an absolutely uncanny ability to disengage her preferences from her observations – made her a heck of a thinker, and of course very persuasive, since I knew her ideology wasn’t the source of her data.)
Where I think you and I differ is that you believe (I think – correct me if I’m wrong) that we can replace the social fabric; we can cut out the sections marked “patriarchy”, stitch in a patch marked “egalitarian utopia”, and make things better. I don’t think that can be done; I think the fabric starts to fray and unravel and very soon you’re left with little tatters of what used to be, and no way to fix them. We don’t have access to the loom, in other words. We can make incremental small changes that begin in the self – and that’s about the only thing we can control. Bigger transformations are not within our wisdom to successfully pull off.
The changes we can make are the changes in our own lives. I have almost no power to make Larry across the street treat his daughters with respect. I can treat my daughters with respect. I can’t transform society; my sterling example might have a modest effect on Larry if we all get very lucky, but more probably not. I’m going to have a much larger effect on my son, but he will still go his own way. I am a little tiny blue thread, not the weaver of the pattern; it’s within my power to become more blue, or maybe a little thicker, or maybe more tightly connected to the other threads around me, but I cannot change the weave, and if I try, I’ll end up doing a lot of damage to the fabric I’m part of.
So what ought I to do? Well, straighten to the best of my power the crooked timber of which I am made. (Whoops, metaphor switch. Hope you had your seatbelt on.) It’s not going to do me or my children or the people around me any good to try to be non-sexist in your definition; instead, I need to be non-sexist in my definition. I need to treat my wife with love and respect, rather than trying to quixotically re-engineer an entire institution so that it is more intrinsically fair. (I have it in my power to treat my wife with greater respect; I don’t think I can do the other thing.) I need to teach my son to respect women’s personhood and that a woman’s body is her property, not his. I need to teach my daughters to strive and achieve and seek out their goals. I need to teach all of them how to love one another.
These are the things that I can do. I’m not going to devote my life to a crusade against gender roles; that, in my world view, would be a complete waste of time. So, I’m a sexist in the sense that hey, if gender roles stay basically what they are now, or change for the better, great. It’s not a big deal; something will fill the social space that “gender roles” occupy, and the something in that space now isn’t monstrous and can be made incrementally better. Smashing the “something” and pouring in something new is almost guaranteed to be worse than the something we have now. So, no thanks. So, I’m a sexist, and not really concerned that this bothers other people; those people are operating from premises that I don’t find functional. It would be illogical to attempt to change myself in order to become less functional, so I don’t. I don’t disagree with your logic; in fact, I endorse it. If your premises were correct, then your conclusions would be the only conclusions that could be held by decent people. I think your premises are mistaken.
But these things don’t mean that I hate women. They don’t mean that I’m drunk on the power of my mighty phallus. (It’s cold in this basement, that should probably be my mite-y phallus.)
So that’s the stuff I don’t want. What about the stuff I do want?
I want a society where men and women are equal, within the broad boundaries of individual attainment and personal choices. It bothers me greatly that women are told “oh, you don’t want to be a mathematician” and steered away from that career path; it bothers me not at all that some women say “math sucks” and choose a different life path.
I want a society where women’s voices are heard in the same way as men’s voices. It bothers me greatly that men put down a woman’s voice and ignore her words; it bothers me not at all that men listen to a woman’s voice and say “that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard” because it is the dumbest idea he’s ever heard. (And if he’s wrong, she’ll do it herself and make him look a fool.)
I want a society where men and women are free to relate to one another on terms that both have consciously endorsed and agreed to. It bothers me greatly that women grow up thinking there is only one way for them to function in a family; it bothers me not at all that many women would choose that way of functioning if they had perfect information and infinite choice.
Sorry about the length of this disquisition. I hope it is of at least some utility to someone who actually wants to understand where I’m coming from.
Heart said (post #222):
“If a white man strikes a black man, the violence has a little different meaning”“ doesn’t it? Because then the issues of racism factors in, the spectre or the shadow of racism, and that ups the ante a bit, makes it a different kind of violence with different ramifications and a different meaning. ”
I don’t think I was very clear in the distinction I was trying to make. To take your example above, the distinction I’m arguing for is one that takes something like the Rodney King beating, or any violence explicitly motivated by racism, as different from say a white man hitting a black man due to an argument over a parking space. The second incident of violence seems qualitatively different from the first; although racism may well be playing a part in the second, describing it as a racist assault would be incorrect and misleading.
In the case of abuse, I’d class explicit abuse as falling into the ‘Rodney King’ category as violence with a specific and highly condemnable motive, whereas the use of abuse in the sense that can justify ‘all men have abused women’ seems to fall under the second category. Whilst I absolutely agree that power imbalances shade the meanings of actions I do also feel that it is worth preserving the distinction between explicitly racist or abusive or homophobic acts and acts whose meanings are altered due to their occurence within the context of racism or patriarchy or heterocentrism.
For example, although I think that words like homophobia or racism scale effectively, in that they can be used to describe both societies and individual acts, I don’t agree that abuse can. Whilst homophobia makes sense to use more widely, I’d be very reluctanct to use terms like gaybashing to describe acts that are homophobic more by virtue of societal heterocentrism than their own essence. Although patriarchy is a different kind of oppression and so there may be a better case for using abuse more widely, I’d feel that abuse should be subject to the same distinction as gaybashing.
Given that a lot of my argument is about a semantic distinction I’ll try and make it a little clearer why I think it’s an important one. My first reason is just that there are certain acts that I think deserve special moral condemnation, abuse being one of these, and applying abuse more widely dissipates the force of that condemnation- if abuse is something all men do to women then it’s much less damning to label someone an abuser. Secondly; the remedy for social injustices such as those stemming from patriarchy is going to be radically different from the actions that can help reform individual abusers and conflating the two categories of abuse seems unhelpful from the perspective of trying to change either. Thirdly; equating actions driven by clear and culpable intent and actions whose meaning derives from social structures the actors may be unaware of or incapable of avoiding really confuses issues of intent, culpability and guilt. Judging people -and I find it hard to see any interpretation of ‘all men have abused women’ that isn’t judgmental- on the basis of their participation in social structures they are only very weakly responsible for and may in practice be unable to avoid feels too much like guilt by association or judgment based upon group identity. Sometimes forcing people to address their group memberships is really helpful- as in the case of things like privilege checklists or exercises- but it doesn’t feel appropriate in the case of abuse. Finally, I think my discomfort over the use of abuse is related to my feeling that it’s a way of defining groups of people according to a political logic, and that that the logic of that definition seems too dichotomous (hierarchical binary oppositions looming in the distance and all that) and too reductionist.
Hey Amp, for the record I just think you’re hitting a part of the learning curve that you didn’t expect.
Also, if you need clarification, read carefully not just the content of Robert’s messages, but yes, the tone. Especially, and I can’t stress it enough, how he responds in tone, insinuation and content to the feminist posters here who are female, and how he responds to Charles. I know he will come back and say, well, Q-grrl is just an asshole and baiting, but I’m not. We know that. What Charles said does not differ significantly from what has already been said.
“I can’t just walk into a meeting of socialists, and, when asked a question, answer, “It’s all in Lenin. It’s not my job to explain it to you.”? I can’t just walk into a meeting of socialists, and, when asked a question, answer, “It’s all in Lenin. It’s not my job to explain it to you.”? It is, in fact, my job to explain my ideas, since I can’t assume that anyone else has got exactly the same ideas I have. Different people come to different conclusions after reading the very same texts.”
Except that’s not analagous to what happened here.
A better analogy would be if a fat cat capitalist turned up to one of your socialist meetings. demanded answers, told you your tactics were mistaken and would doom the movement, denied his class privilege and ignored reasonable answers when they were given, shouting that he didn’t understand and that you had a “communication problem”. You’d probably get frustrated. You might even tell him to get lost and you’d probably think that his behaviour was evidence of his class privilege.
I find it really offensive that you have characterised this thread and the women’s responses in it in this way. Read the thread again. Men have had their questions answered over and over again. There is plenty of food for thought here – how about Heart’s and Bean’s description and examples of patriarchal reversals.
If you are going to divest yourself of your patriarchal privilege the first thing you have to do is not set yourself up as the example for feminist women to follow “It is, in fact, my job to explain my ideas” which is unbelievably patronising and secondly to actually listen to and respect what women are saying with regards to sexism.
Would an avowed racist be tolerated on an anti-racist board run by a white person.
Would we wonder about that white person’s agenda if he was?
“So, I’m a sexist in the sense that hey, if gender roles stay basically what they are now, or change for the better, great. It’s not a big deal; something will fill the social space that “gender roles”? occupy, and the something in that space now isn’t monstrous and can be made incrementally better.”
So because gender roiles don’t treat you monsterously, you blithely declare them “not monsterous?”
Of course it’s “no big deal” to you. As a straight white male, you’re not being oppressed by the heterocentric white patriarchy. No suprise there. But to try to invoke “history” as some monolithic apologia for incrementalism is beyond disingenuous.
Slavery was not abolished incrementally. The French and American revolutions didn’t happen incrementally. Were these unalloyed good? Of course there was the convict lease system and Jim Crow, the killing of aristocrats in France, but on the whole both revolutionary changes were overwhelmingly positive for the oppressed people of France and the American South. Considering the mass genocide and environmental havoc it sparked, it can certainly be argued that the American Revolution created a worse situation than existed before. But that’s not an argument I’ve ever seen a white American conservative make. Would you say that aparthied should have been overthrown incrementally? That the majority population of South Africa should have wated for several more generations before becoming free?
It’s natural enough that somebody who directly benefits from the ststus quo would go through so many gyrations top try to defend it in the name f “incrementalism” (i.e., no discernable change in our lifetime). Conservatism has always been about protecting power and privilege against the incursions of the oppressed. But considering that so-called “conservatives”? in the United States are the heirs and beneficiaries of a revolution, it always makes me smirk to watch them defend incrementalism.
I’ve made two posts, neither of which got posted to the discussion. Are you just not allowing anybody to rebut your buddy?
Well if you do decide to allow feminist rebuttal to Robert’s apologia for the status quo, I prefer that my first atempt tp post be the one that gets posted.
Molly –
As the notice says, “If your post fails to appear, it may be that your post is being held by our spam-blocking software until an ‘Alas’ admin approves it. Please be patient, and we’ll approve it eventually.”
I messed a little with the software last night (attempting to ban a poster from another thread), and somehow the result was that 20-odd legitimate posts ended up in the “waiting for approval” area, including your posts. I approved all the posts as soon as I woke up this morning.
I certainly feel that you’ve legitimized my third reason for not posting much (in comment #240).
littleviolet
That’s pretty much true, and it sounds as if my posts have done more harm than good. So, I’m going to shut up now.
Um, Molly, I had posted to several threads today; they didn’t show up until very recently. I don’t think it helps that there’s a spam trill linking to his drug website.
So because gender roiles don’t treat you monsterously, you blithely declare them “not monsterous?”?
No. I declare them not monstrous because they aren’t monstrous. We don’t execute girls who get raped. We don’t stone adulterers. We don’t throw acid on the faces of women who decline to marry the men their fathers pick for them. We don’t have fathers selecting partners for daughters. Gender roles in our society are bad and for many people very oppressive, but they aren’t monstrous.
There’s a distinction between monstrous and bad. Monstrous rises to the level where we do have to do something. Slavery was monstrous. Bad, we try to make better, but we don’t throw out the whole thing. Anti-semitism in Germany in 1941 was monstrous. In the US in 1992 it’s bad. It would be worth overthrowing German society in a violent revolution in 1941; it wouldn’t be worth it in the US.
Oh, it would help if the drugs were free…. my body *aches* today. Bummer.
A few outliers aside, no one in the feminist movement is proposing violent overthrow as a method of reforming patriarchy and gender roles in the USA. What your analysis seems to ignore is that violent overthrow is not the only possible way of achieving change.
Most of the changes made by the feminist movement over the last 120 years were achieved non-violently, and with hindsight are almost-universally agreed to have been changes well worth making. The same thing is pretty much true of the civil rights movement. And of the Deaf rights movement. And of the disabled rights movement.
So, contrary to what you’re claiming, feminism and other movements for freedom have a strong track record of being able to achieve positive, substantial change without resorting to violence. There’s no reason to think that it’s impossible that feminism will continue to achieve non-violent, worthwhile changes.
And I agree, the suffering here in the US caused by sexism and patriarchy doesn’t rise to the level of the Holocaust. However, it’s ridiculous to imply that suffering must rise to Holocaust-like levels before a movement for change can be justified. Perhaps you only meant that suffering needed to rise to such levels before widespread violence in pursuit of change is justified; but in that case, your logic is obviously completely inapplicable to a basically non-violent movement like feminism.
I didn’t mean to imply that violent revolution was the only mode for major change. It was just the example in that case.
“Gender roles in our society are bad and for many people very oppressive, but they aren’t monstrous.”
Which is pretty much what conservatives of the mid-19th century said about the “peculiar institution” of the South: that it had its excesses, but on the whole wasn’t bad. That to end it suddenly would tear at the fabric of Southern society.
“Slavery was monstrous. Bad, we try to make better, but we don’t throw out the whole thing. ”
And “not throwing out the whole thing” was precisely why they created the convict lease system (for the purpose of re-enslaving freed black people), and Jim Crow (for the purpose of keeping freed black people “in their place.” Indeed, the post-civil war south (by which I mean the century following the civil war) was a monument to conservatism: replace one form of slavery with another, which for some (the leased convicts) was actually worse. Conservatism mandated that black people not be freed, so thje legislatures of the South set out to make sure they weren’t.
Again. the distinction between “bad” and “monstrous”? institutions is entirely subjective: it’s all a question of who is or isn’t being oppressed by it, and who is making the declaration. That you state your own criteria, based in your own subjectivities, as if they were the law of the universe tells me something about you. It tells me that you’ve gone through life with very few (if any) serious challenges to the core truths of your existence, and it’s left you unequipped to view such challenges as having serious merit.
Admittedly, I haven’t read every post in this discussion and know I’m a bit of a Jane come lately, but I wanted to reply to Robert’s last post.
You said “societies aren’t designed; they evolve. Lots of people try to move them in various directions, to implement or de-implement things; these efforts inevitably have consequences neither foreseen nor desired by their originators, because human interactions are complex and contingent at a level far beyond the reach of any group of human minds to predict”
A woman-only board is just what you describe- an experiment by some to create a new weave of society. See how it looks, feels & works. Explore how any hierarchical/ dominance paradigms which you feel are inherent to society might evolve when women are in control.
I think you’re right in that whatever is created from that alternate weave won’t end up replacing, in whole our current weave. But it’s value is that it shows us the possibilities of what could be. It helps identify potential problems and and gives us some specific, alternative patterns that we can identify as admirable and try to work into the current weave accordingly – person by person.
When scientists want to create some groundbreaking technology they’re encouraged to “think outside of the box”. Manufacturing companies (like automakers) routinely hire outside/ novice engineers and throw design competitions to get totally fresh perspectives for new products. They know they cannot rely on their resident engineers to be sufficiently detached from current paradigms to come up with something totally revolutionary. How many prototypes do they come up, year after year – that never, ever make it to the assembly line? But parts of them do. And some of those parts /technologies have revolutionized the world (or are on the brink of doing so).
And when those companies go to test out their new designs, they don’t take them on the Interstate. They take them to a closed test track. Do you get personally offended because the public isn’t allowed to take those futuristic prototypes for a test drive on that track? Even though some elements of those prototypes are bound to make it into next year’s model, which will be on the road with you, and which will therefore affect your life? Look at women only boards as the same thing.
But probably more importantly, women-only boards allow women who don’t have a lot of experience in taking control of their own destiny to gain the skills and self confidence they need in a supportive environment to do so.
In your example of what you can do to bring about a more egalitarian society, you understandably are thinking entirely of yourself. You can respect your wife/daughters. You can teach them how to strive and achieve and your son to respect them. But. This is still a prime model of patriarchy. This is still you, the father trying to dictate the thoughts and actions of the women in your life. It’s still you that’s in control. It’s you GIVING them what you feel is desirable for them and not them deciding for themselves.
The only difference between you and your neighbor Larry is the lesson plan. You’re not really doing anything to encourage your daughters to think for themselves. To come up with their own way of achieving in the world. Because you have no experience being a woman in this society you can only teach them the methods which you have found to be successful in your life, as a white male operating in a world that is geared to reward white males.
Those methods probably won’t work for them. If it were as simple as teaching our daughters to mimic their successful fathers, we’d have more women in positions of power. The fact that we don’t proves that other methods are needed. And women-only spaces are a proving ground to work out some of those methods.
You can see this in the studies that show graduates of all female schools and colleges are generally more successful in their careers and proportionally hold higher positions of power in society than women who were educated in co-ed schools.
I’m not trying to downplay the things you feel you can do to help build a more egalitarian society for your daughters. Those things are all very important. And it is just as (if not more) important for men to modify their behavior to bring about any of the social change egalitarians desire. But when you say this:
“I want a society where women’s voices are heard in the same way as men’s voices. It bothers me greatly that men put down a woman’s voice and ignore her words; it bothers me not at all that men listen to a woman’s voice and say “that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard”? because it is the dumbest idea he’s ever heard. (And if he’s wrong, she’ll do it herself and make him look a fool.)”
You’re perpetuating the status quo. You want women’t voices to be heard in the same way as men’s. In other words – mimicing men. Feminists, on the other hand, simply want women’s voices to be HEARD and men to LISTEN to what they have to say. And in order for a woman to be able to “do it herself and make him look a fool” she has to have developed some level of self confidence in her personal strength. Which is very hard to come by in mainstream society. No matter how much you respect your daughters and tell them that they’re strong and deserve to be heard – all it will take is one Larry, or Larry’s son to tell her differently and all your hard work will go out the window. That’s where women only spaces are crucial. They give women the foundation & strength they need to be able to stand up to the Larry’s of the world and tell them to F* OFF!
I’ve caught up a little bit and it looks like I may have confused Robert’s take on women-only spaces with Novalis’. Apologies.
Thanks for saying that MustangSally. I have really enjoyed this conversation.
The linguist in me was caught by, “Feminists, on the other hand, simply want women’s voices to be HEARD and men to LISTEN to what they have to say”
I’ve read in books about lanhuage and relationships of how when women tell men about what’s going on in their lives, the men start coming up with solutions to the problems the women are speaking.
But that’s not what women want, men telling them how to fix their problems, they just want the men to listen to them and really hear what they are saying. The advice given to male partners was to stop trying to fix and give advice to their female partners and instead just listen and give minimal feedback (uh huh, that’s awful, right) to let her know she has your full attention.
I agree with Deborah Tannen when she blames some communication breakdown of simple gender differences, but I think she misses how sexism largely influences these communication problems and determines styles of speaking. While I think there are some basic dialogue differences causing rifts in this thread, I also think they don’t exist outside gendered language and gendered relationship dynamics.
“equity feminist”
“gender feminism”
Those are familiar terms, but from where???
I like your posts, Samantha and MS. And what Qgrrl said on the Robert/Charles dynamics and tone, vs the Robert/feminists was so right on.
In a nutshell:
“Gender feminism” = any feminism that acknowledges gendered inequities.
“Equity feminism = “feminism” that pretends no such inequities exist.
Sorry, I meant to say:
“Equity feminism” = “feminism” that believes that men are the only victims of gendered inequities.
Q Grrl,
Yeah, I noticed that aspect (a man (me) saying pretty much the same thing to Robert that you and several others had said draws a completely different response and is treated as being reasonable and interested in conversaton) of Robert’s response to me too. I kinda expected it. Maybe it can be put down to the fact that I hadn’t said anything insulting to him before that post, but I don’t really think so, particularly since I did suggest in that post that he was arguing in bad faith and that he had already expressed elsewhere the fact that he was specifically anti-feminist, which are some of the accusations that others had levelled against him as well.
Robert,
Please don’t take the above as an affront. Just think about it. If you decide I’m totally wrong, fine, but I think would be worth your time to give it some thought.
I found your unpacking of that statement (which Bean quoted above) interesting, but kind of bizarre. I’d never taken you for being that much of a quietist before. Are you really that cautious toward all social change movements?
I’m also still unclear on how a “[man] who admit[s] [his] sexist socialization and think it superior to the alternatives presented” can also be one who says “I want a society where men and women are equal, within the broad boundaries of individual attainment and personal choices. …. I want a society where women’s voices are heard in the same way as men’s voices. …. I want a society where men and women are free to relate to one another on terms that both have consciously endorsed and agreed to.”
Don’t you think that your (all of our) sexist socialization specifically impairs your (our) ability to have such a society? Don’t you think that the type of socialization you intend to help your daughters have is a) different from your socialization and b) better than our socialization and c) feminist?
About your Russian revolution example, I think you’re missing Amp’s point. Using an example of how violent revolutions can often go horrible wrong really doesn’t tell us anything useful about a movement that does not advocate violent revolution. You need to use an example of a non-violent movement for social and political change that goes horribly wrong to show that it can happen, and you really need a lot of them to make a convincing case, particularly since the counter-examples for non-violent social change movements (ones which you would be hard pressed to say did more harm than good) are legion (and Amp just listed a bunch of them).
Thanks bean and Molly, I had mercifully forgotten about Christine Hoff Sommers, lol. She was the one who wrote “Who Stole Feminism?” and the “War Against Boys. I read her first book, about the time that Susan Faludi wrote her book, “Backlash”.
Yeah, that definition for equity feminism fits. Oooh, it reminds me of some past discussions with anti-feminists.
Samantha, I’m not familiar with Tannen but I’d like you to expand on this if you don’t mind: “While I think there are some basic dialogue differences causing rifts in this thread, I also think they don’t exist outside gendered language and gendered relationship dynamics.
If I understand you correctly, I don’t agree. Yes you can see the differences in communication styles playing out in this thread but I don’t see how you can do anything BUT see how those same differences play out in the larger world, and serve to perpetuate the status quo.
OK, so most people accept that men and women communicate differently. But the inequity appears when men refuse to not only speak to women in their own “language” if you will, they refuse to even try to understand it. Instead, they demand (and since they’re in the position of power, they can) that women learn the language of men and communicate in the manner they prefer if they want to be paid any attention to whatsoever.
A truly egalitarian solution would be for each sex to learn the communication style of the other. Women have had to learn and speak “male” for millenia in the interest of self preservation. So the way I see it, it’s now the men’s turn to learn to speak “woman”.
I 100% agree with you, and that’s what I intended when I wrote.
I didn’t mean gender differences “don’t exist” like they’re not real, I meant that in this thread we can’t attribute differences solely to differing communication styles without considering gender because the words written here don’t exist outside gendered power dynamics.
I think Tannen wrote her popular language & gender books for men and women and this led to her downplaying the role of sexism in dialogue differences. What she attributes to “cultural miscommunication” between speakers of different genders is not the simple difference between tomayto and tomahto but a rule-structured, gendered power dynamic playing itself out in speech. She tells men they should listen to women more and tells women that men are raised to be the problem-fixers so try to understand, but she ignores the sexual politics underlying the roles played by men and women in conversations.
Tannen will note scientifically that men interrupt women a lot without addressing why men feel entitled to speak over women’s speech or why they think what they have to say at a given moment must be more important than what a woman is saying just then. She doesn’t attribute such verbal domineering to sexism though it is strongly influenced by sexism.
Does that help?
Please don’t take the above as an affront. Just think about it. If you decide I’m totally wrong, fine, but I think would be worth your time to give it some thought.
Charles, I did give it thought, yesterday as well as today. I was as respectful and as civil in my tone as I could manage for quite a while; then, it became absolutely apparent that some of the women on this thread were not going to give me a fair reading, and were going to aggressively characterize anything I said in the most negative possible light. That being the case, screw it; I’ll just write plain and save the energy.
You, on the other hand, haven’t yet played the mischaracterization game. There’s still some possibility that you and I can actually communicate. So why aggrieve you unnecessarily? In other words, Q Grrl is going to be aggrieved regardless of what I do, so her preferences are nonoperative in terms of me trying to communicate; you haven’t shown that mental inflexibility.
As an example of what I mean by mischaracterization, I refer you to the quotes that Bean dug up. (Thanks, btw.) She refers to those quotes as “Robert proudly called himself sexist”. Then in the quotes, I say “I’m not “proud”? of it, nor am I ashamed; I am what I am.” So Bean’s characterization is that when I say X, I mean not X. To the best of my knowledge, this means that either (a) Bean did not read my quote and is assigning it meaning on the basis of other information, (b) Bean did read my quote and is indirectly saying that I am lying about not being proud, (c) Bean cannot understand written English, or (d) Bean read my quote, understood it, believes that I am telling the truth, but for reasons that I do not know, chose to characterize it falsely. That’s been pretty much the pattern in this entire thread, and basically, I lack the ability to meaningfully communicate with people who do any of these four things, so I’m not going to try.
All that said, you did not say something to me that was similar to what others have said.
Don’t you think that your (all of our) sexist socialization specifically impairs your (our) ability to have such a society? Don’t you think that the type of socialization you intend to help your daughters have is a) different from your socialization and b) better than our socialization and c) feminist?
To a degree, our socialization does impair our ability to have that society. Getting that society isn’t the only goal, however. We also have to live together, and there are aspects of sexist socialization which uphold women rather than tearing them down. (As part of my sexist socialization, I was trained very thoroughly that violence against women would not be tolerated.) The type of socialization I work on with my kids is indeed different than mine (same as what I got was different than what my dad got). It’s better, I think, although not by a whole lot. As for “feminist” – well, which feminism? I don’t think that the kind of socialization advocated by the most vocal strains of feminism are going to be an improvement.
It’s not social change that’s particularly perilous; it’s transformational social change. There’s a big difference between generation X having 10% of women working outside of the home then generation X + 1 having 15% of women working outside of the home, versus generation X working on farms and small businesses and generation X + 1 working in corporations in huge cities. Feminists who say “the culture that says its OK for male bosses to slap their female secretaries on the ass is wrong and needs to be altered” are advocating an incremental change; feminists who say “the entire way we work, raise children, form families and have relationships must be radically altered” are talking transformation. The movements that Amp described were generally incremental movements. We didn’t go from black people as slaves to black people as Secretary of State in one standing jump. There was one major transformation, which had enormous costs but which was worth it, on balance. Then there were decades of incremental change.
Where’s a violin when you need one?
“We also have to live together, and there are aspects of sexist socialization which uphold women rather than tearing them down. ”
If your sexist training prohibited you, or other men from committing acts of violence against women, why is rape so prevalent in our society then, or do you believe that rape has nothing to do with sexism. While until recently, was it treated as a joke, certainly as a “private matter” and not a crime. Why was marital rape legal for so long?
Sexism is good for women. Bad for men. Eliminating sexism in increments is okay. Eliminating it in larger ways is perilous. The men get to make all the calls about all the statements above, and if women have any problems with that, then they’re uncivil, egregious and inflexible….
And, of course, despite the fact that men get to have the final say on all matters, male privilege is a laughable myth……………………………
Robert:
feminists who say “the entire way we work, raise children, form families and have relationships must be radically altered”? are talking transformation.
But essentially no one is talking about methods for bringing about sudden transformation of all society (forced re-education camps, the dictatorship of the feminist vanguard, whatever) . Saying “It all has to change, and it has to change as soon as possible,” is not the same thing as meaningfully advocating the immediate overthrow of the existing system. Radical feminist demands have pushed society gradually in positive directions for the past 2 centuries, they will continue to push society in positive directions. We may wish that we could push society one hell of a lot faster, but I think feminist theory itself points out the flaws in violent revolution as a method of achieving that end (You can’t build anything except the master’s house using the master’s tools).
And what radfem just said on sexism upholding women (although, of course, as several people have mentioned already, women do get bennies for complicity with the sexist system, but that is not the same thing at all).
And can I just voice my outrage over the view expressed above that a system that has resulted for countless women in mental torture, physical beatings, mutilation, rape and murder isn’t “monstrous”?
I know many men have the delusion what feminists are always on about when we talk about the evils of sexism is nothing more serious than being called “honey” & “baby” by strangers, or having our bosses expect us to make coffee at the office, but for many, if not most of us, the traumas have been far, far greater.
And, for the record, I don’t even care at this point if I’m crossing the politeness line, because Robert’s smugness has gone beyond the pale: How fucking DARE you tell us whether the consequences of sexism are “monstrous” or not?? How the FUCK would you know, anyway? Do you know my life? Do you know the lives of ANY of the women here? Then how dare you presume to make an ignorant pronouncement like that?
You owe every one of us an apology.
Samantha – thanks, that makes much more sense.
Robert, I won’t deny there are some aspects of our sexist society that do benefit some women. But 1) not everyone buys that particular brand of sexism. As radfem pointed out, it’s apparently just as common to socialize men that violence against women is perfectly acceptable; and 2) usually those benefits come with larger strings attached that aren’t so beneficial. Chivalry is one of those things. Studies have shown that men who consider themselves “chivalrous” and don’t hit women, for instance are also more likely to believe women are less competent than men and that they should remain in more traditional gender roles. A golden cage is still a cage. It’s the price we women are expected to pay for a man’s protection.
Feminists would agree that it is noble and desireable to never tolerate hitting a woman. But removing the sexist element of that ethic doesn’t automatically equate to advocating “violence against women is OK”. It just removes the gender specificity of the ethic. In other words – any violence against anyone weaker than you should be intolerable. Not just against women. It’s not OK to beat your kids, or torture small animals, or beat up your elderly senile grandfather or the bum down the street, either.
Some would even take it further and say no violence is ever OK, no matter the target.
Crys T, do you believe that a) violent revolution has ever been an effective or appropriate solution to problems of oppression, b) that it would be an effective or appropriate solution to the oppression of women in the US today, c) the appropriateness of violent revolution as a response to oppression has any connection to the degree of severity of the oppression?
In other words – any violence against anyone weaker than you should be intolerable.
That ethos is questionable. Does it mean that if a woman is stronger than me, violence is OK? But assuming that ethos is good and desirable, I still don’t know how to instill it in a child. I do know how to instill the ethos “don’t hit women because women are special”.
How about the ethos:
“Don’t hit other people except in self defense, or if absolutely necessary in defense of another.”
That seems pretty simple, and is a reasonable extension of the even simpler, “Don’t hit people.”
That solves the problem of it being okay to hit people who are stronger than you (whether or not they are women).
Adding in the “Don’t hit people weaker than you are,” may be valid as well.
Were you planning on teaching your kids, “Its okay to hit boys,” anyway?
Why you shouldn’t hit girls who are stronger than you falls into the same set of rules as why you shouldn’t hit boys who are stronger than you.
Since the “Don’t hit girls because their special” runs directly counter to the idea that girls (and women) are fully capable human beings, don’t you see that while you are trying to train your son in the part of sexism that you think is positive, you are also teaching him the part of sexism you agree is negative (or at the very least, you are undercutting your ability to not teach him that part). Do you agree that you have as much responsibility to teach your son to support gender equality as you have to teach your daughters to fight for their own equality?
The movements that Amp described were generally incremental movements. We didn’t go from black people as slaves to black people as Secretary of State in one standing jump. There was one major transformation, which had enormous costs but which was worth it, on balance. Then there were decades of incremental change.
And you consider the incremental nature of that change to be laudatory?
In other words, you’re actually advocating for the kind of conservatism that will oppressive laws and institutions in place for generations to come?
Come on, Robert. That is the inescapable conclusion of your advocacy here. And yet when you’re called on it, you try to weasel your way out of it, claiming that us hysterical women are putting words in your mouth.
And of course, when a woman says it, you pointedly refuse to respond. Except to scold her for her bad manners in calling a spade a spade.
And make no mistake: by applauding the generations of Jim Crow as good responsible conservatism, you have staked out precisely the position I just named.
The 14th amendment provided for implementing legislation which didn’t actually get passed until 1964. By not passing that legislation, the congress of the United States doomed generations of Black Southerners to the ravages of Jim Crow. They had a chance to grant the freed Black people full citizenship, but instead allowed racist institutions to ossify. When you make these unsupported declarations that “history”? bears you out as a conservative, and that transformational change is inherently evil. But real history is full of examples of the disastrous effects that come from missing opportunities to transform.
The problem with conservatism is that it militates against any and all discernable change. A conservative can look into history and say that past injustices are bad. But being a backward-looking philosophy, it tends to blind its adherents to present conditions they themselves aren’t suffering.
And you consider the incremental nature of that change to be laudatory? In other words, you’re actually advocating for the kind of conservatism that will oppressive laws and institutions in place for generations to come?
Not laudatory; necessary. And yes, I am. You couldn’t impose the modern state of race relations on 1866 America overnight. And most people would say that the current state of race relations isn’t all that great and ought to be a lot better; few if any of them believe we can get there tomorrow. I don’t see why this would be controversial. Big social changes take time.
That is the inescapable conclusion of your advocacy here. And yet when you’re called on it, you try to weasel your way out of it, claiming that us hysterical women are putting words in your mouth.
I would appreciate you providing an example of me claiming that.
And of course, when a woman says it, you pointedly refuse to respond. Except to scold her for her bad manners in calling a spade a spade.
I would also appreciate an example of me scolding a woman’s bad manners for pointing out the logical conclusion of my position. So far you are the only person to do so, and your manners seem fine.
And make no mistake: by applauding the generations of Jim Crow as good responsible conservatism, you have staked out precisely the position I just named.
But I haven’t applauded it. I’ve said it was necessary. Is it helpful to describe my position as desiring something that I, reasonably plainly, describe as a necessary evil?
By not passing that legislation, the congress of the United States doomed generations of Black Southerners to the ravages of Jim Crow. They had a chance to grant the freed Black people full citizenship, but instead allowed racist institutions to ossify.
This assigns far too much power to the Congress. The racist institutions were still enormously powerful, both in the north and the south. It was not possible for Congress to pass the laws of 1964 in 1866; almost no white people then had the view of racial issues that we have today.
When you make these unsupported declarations that “history”? bears you out as a conservative, and that transformational change is inherently evil.
Please point out where I have said that transformational change is inherently evil, or that history bears me out.
I have said that it is perilous. Is peril evil? I have said that I draw inspiration for my views from my own reading of history. Is that the same thing as claiming that history is on my side?
But real history is full of examples of the disastrous effects that come from missing opportunities to transform.
From a tendentious point of view, perhaps – if you think that to say “blacks and whites should be equal” will make it so in the minds of a hundred million people. I don’t think we can really know what could have happened, although speculation is often a lot of fun.
The problem with conservatism is that it militates against any and all discernable change.
Which is why conservatives are currently trying to implement a vast raft of changes in law and policy.
It is true that conservatism is skeptical of any particular change, as a philosophical starting point. Is that bad? Too much skepticism is certainly problematic, but a little bit is gold.
A conservative can look into history and say that past injustices are bad. But being a backward-looking philosophy, it tends to blind its adherents to present conditions they themselves aren’t suffering.
This is absolutely true, and a cogent warning for all conservatives. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons that I spend a fair amount of time and energy seeking out the viewpoints of people who are not conservatives.
Me:
And make no mistake: by applauding the generations of Jim Crow as good responsible conservatism, you have staked out precisely the position I just named.
Robert:
But I haven’t applauded it. I’ve said it was necessary. Is it helpful to describe my position as desiring something that I, reasonably plainly, describe as a necessary evil?
For whom was Jim Crow “necessary.”? In what way was “necessary?”? Whom did it benefit? Please be specific.
How was it “necessary”? for the United States Congress to put off passing the enabling legislation provided for in the 14th amendment for nearly a century? Whom did this delay benefit? Please be specific.
Me:
By not passing that legislation, the congress of the United States doomed generations of Black Southerners to the ravages of Jim Crow. They had a chance to grant the freed Black people full citizenship, but instead allowed racist institutions to ossify.
Robert:
This assigns far too much power to the Congress. The racist institutions were still enormously powerful, both in the north and the south. It was not possible for Congress to pass the laws of 1964 in 1866; almost no white people then had the view of racial issues that we have today.
In the above passage, I only assign to the Congress that power provided for in the 14th amendment ““ which Congress chose to leave toothless for nearly a century, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts.
The states claimed a “states right”? to maintain segregation, and to prevent black people from voting, which the 14th amendment had clearly taken from them. And Congress did nothing, even though it was specifically empowered to act.
Me:
But real history is full of examples of the disastrous effects that come from missing opportunities to transform.
Robert:
From a tendentious point of view, perhaps – if you think that to say “blacks and whites should be equal”? will make it so in the minds of a hundred million people. I don’t think we can really know what could have happened, although speculation is often a lot of fun.
I’m not so concerned with their minds, as with the evil which existing institutions empower them to commit.
This is what white people typically don’t get about racism, and what men typically don’t get about sexism: these things aren’t just abstractions in people’s minds. They are also sets of institutional practices against classes of people. The existence of racist and sexist institutions influences the mind at least as much as people’s minds drive institutions. The existence of privilege creates expectations, and normalizes evil. Often, people’s minds aren’t changed about evil institutions until they’ve lived without them for some time. Segregation is certainly a case in point.
Me:
The problem with conservatism is that it militates against any and all discernable change.
Robert:
Which is why conservatives are currently trying to implement a vast raft of changes in law and policy.
Many of the changes in law and policy they want to implement are socially reactionary. Especially the ones which are specifically anti-woman and anti-gay. Real conservatism would be much more inclined to err on the side of maintaining traditional civil liberties. Not this lot. Which is why I often refer to the neoconservative movement a la Gingrich et al as “so-called conservatives.”?
Charles:
How about the ethos:
“Don’t hit other people except in self defense, or if absolutely necessary in defense of another.”?
That’s a fine ethos. I got that one as a child too.
The problem with it is that it doesn’t protect females, which was the purpose of the “don’t hit girls” rule.
Do you agree that you have as much responsibility to teach your son to support gender equality as you have to teach your daughters to fight for their own equality?
Not really, no. I think I have a responsibility to teach him to treat all people with respect.
But I don’t really believe in gender equality in the sense that I think you believe it. I believe in legal equality, and that women and men all have the same basic set of human rights and duties. So that’s what I have to teach him.
Equal rights doesn’t mean equal treatment, however.
Radfem wrote:
Believe it or not, Christina Hoff Sommers actually did pretty much argue that rape has nothing to do with sexism. From her book Who Stole Feminism?, discussing what an “equity feminist” believes:
And that’s how Christina Hoff Sommers thinks.
Molly:
For whom was Jim Crow “necessary.”? In what way was “necessary?”? Whom did it benefit? Please be specific.
Jim Crow was not necessary. The passage of time and the changing of hearts and minds was necessary.
How was it “necessary”? for the United States Congress to put off passing the enabling legislation provided for in the 14th amendment for nearly a century? Whom did this delay benefit? Please be specific.
It was necessary because there was no power to do it then. The delay benefited white people who were able to continue to take advantage of black people.
In the above passage, I only assign to the Congress that power provided for in the 14th amendment ““ which Congress chose to leave toothless for nearly a century, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts.
OK. So it’s 1866 and Congress passes all the laws you wanted it to pass.
Then what happens? Who enforces the law?
Laws are the codification of the political will of the state, which is exercised through force and the threat of force. If there is no one who will enforce the law by force of arms if need be, then the law is void. Pot is illegal in every state of the union. Know anybody who has trouble getting it? Without the will, a law means nothing.
A weakened Union had no ability to impose such a sweeping change. It had the legal authority on paper, but not the political will or consent of the population. There were people in the North willing to fight and die for the Union. There were people in the North willing to fight and die for the cause of ending slavery. There were no substantial numbers of people willing to fight and die for the cause of bringing black people into a state of equality with white people.
So they’d have passed the laws, and the South would say “well, we’re not gonna do it”. And that would’ve been that – except that the real power of the Congress would have been weakened through the widespread flouting of the law it had made.
I’m not so concerned with their minds, as with the evil which existing institutions empower them to commit.
If minds don’t change, then neither do institutions. Sure, institutions create patterns which influence how people think. But without people, there are no institutions.
The problem with conservatism is that it militates against any and all discernable change…Many of the changes in law and policy they want to implement are socially reactionary.
So by “any and all” you actually mean “non-reactionary” ?
I’ve answered your questions. Will you do me the courtesy of now answering my questions? Specifically, the ones where I asked you to provide examples of my behavior that you described?
But Amp, she’s got a point. She’s not right – her description is not a complete description. But the part that she is describing is true.
Let’s assume that every single aspect of socialization changes to what you’d want to see: a society of men raised to respect all women, total gender equality, no more patriarchy, etc.
There would still be a lot of rape, because there would still be a lot of men who didn’t socialize properly. Failure to socialize is a root cause of crime, which is what CHS was getting at. Right now the party line is that it’s the patriarchal culture that encourages men in rape, that tells them that it’s ok to treat women that way. And unlike CSH, I think there is a lot of truth to that view.
But that can’t be the whole story. Why is there burglary? Why is there shoplifting? Why do people rob banks? We sure as hell don’t have a theft-culture; the patriarchy sure as hell doesn’t tell young people “hey, you know what would be cool? come rob us rich people of our stuff!” People who don’t properly integrate a respect for other people’s property steal; people who do, don’t. (There are exceptional circumstances – you and your logs to avoid freezing to death – but I wouldn’t worry about leaving my laptop in your house overnight, because I know that basically you are socialized to respect the property of other individuals. And also, laptops don’t burn well.)
So even without a rape culture, we’re still going to have rape, and lots of it. As noted here by practically everyone, it doesn’t “matter” in some sense how much rape there is – whatever the amount, it’s too much. So just fighting the patriarchy isn’t going to get you home. You also have to take into account CSH’s view about socialization. She’s part of the answer, just as you are.
Me:
For whom was Jim Crow “necessary.”? In what way was “necessary?”? Whom did it benefit? Please be specific.
Robert:
Jim Crow was not necessary. The passage of time and the changing of hearts and minds was necessary.
As was demonstrated in the generation following passage of the civil rights and voting rights acts, what is often necessary for “hearts and minds”? to change is the forced elimination of evil institutions they’ve become accustomed to.
When Congress finally passed some enabling legislation to the 14th amendment, the “hearts and minds”? of white Dixie were firmly entrenched in racist institutions. It wasn’t until a generation of young people had grown up without them that we got to see the “new South.”? The white Southerners of the 60s largely saw it as another example of Yankee aggression, even if Lyndon Johnsos was the one to ramrod it through congress.
Me:
How was it “necessary”? for the United States Congress to put off passing the enabling legislation provided for in the 14th amendment for nearly a century? Whom did this delay benefit? Please be specific.
Robert:
I.It was necessary because there was no power to do it then. The delay benefited white people who were able to continue to take advantage of black people.
There was plenty of power to do it. There were federal courts, federal marshals, federal troops. The South, you may recall if you studies history in school, , had just been severely defeated in a devastating war. If the Federal government had declared their laws unconstitutional (which they clearly were), they had no power to resist.
A near perfect example of a missed opportunity- an opportunity for the United States to live up to its own self-aggrandizing propaganda, for once.
Me:
I’m not so concerned with their minds, as with the evil which existing institutions empower them to commit.
Robert:
If minds don’t change, then neither do institutions. Sure, institutions create patterns which influence how people think. But without people, there are no institutions.
Then people who see evil institutions must change them by any means necessary. Which would include opposing those people who wish to maintain evil institutions. If we waited for a perfect consensus, for every evildoer to have some mystical epiphany, there would still be chattel slavery.
Me:
Many of the changes in law and policy they want to implement are socially reactionary.
Robert:
So by “any and all”? you actually mean “non-reactionary”? ?
a)Reactionary, by definition, means militating against change.
b) As I said above, I don’t consider neocons of the Gingrich variety to be real conservatives. They claim the label as a means of legitimizing themselves. But they’re really just radicals of the right.
Robert:
I’ve answered your questions. Will you do me the courtesy of now answering my questions? Specifically, the ones where I asked you to provide examples of my behavior that you described?
Maybe later. But I give you credit for having some intelligence. Certainly enough to grasp the principles involved without needing to be spoon-fed the specifics. At least, if you wished to grasp them. And right now, I’m simply not in the mood to go reading through the entire thread again to provide you with those examples.
So for now, I’ll leave you to think about it.
Robert:
“But that can’t be the whole story. Why is there burglary? Why is there shoplifting? Why do people rob banks? We sure as hell don’t have a theft-culture”
Oh you don’t? The land base of the United States is almost entirely founded on theft.
Where’s a good laughing emoticon when you need one?
Robert,
If what you are saying is true, why don’t we see a lot more people who have not been socialized committing, oh say, cannibalism?
I think that cannibalism is a lot more akin to rape than shoplifting.
Pot is illegal in every state of the union. Know anybody who has trouble getting it? Without the will, a law means nothing.
[groan]
Sorry for the drift, Folks. But I can’t resist. Just one example here. Plenty more available for those who have even minimal knowledge of how a search engine works:
http://www.counterpunch.org/gardner08282004.html
If what you are saying is true, why don’t we see a lot more people who have not been socialized committing, oh say, cannibalism?
Because cannibalism does not bring any gratification to the perpetrator, save for an extremely small number of people.
Robert,
As to Bean describing your statements as proudly declaring yourself a sexist, even though she was quoting you saying that you weren’t “proud” of it, I believe that her usage of the word proudly was correct. Even though you are not “proud” of it, your declaration of it read to me as being proudly declaring. If I proudly declare that I am queer, that doesn’t mean that I view my queerness as being an accomplishment (which is what I take your “proud” to mean). It merely means that I am firmly not ashamed, and that I will not allow myself to be cowed by the fact that others think I should be. That is exactly the tone of your statements, and I think the correct term for that tone of speach (or writing) is proudly. I would say that your reading of her description of your words falls into the category of incivil as Amp defines it (not taking a reasonably charitable interpretation of others statements), not to say that you are anything like alone in that sort of incivility in this thread.
As was demonstrated in the generation following passage of the civil rights and voting rights acts, what is often necessary for “hearts and minds”? to change is the forced elimination of evil institutions they’ve become accustomed to..,When Congress finally passed some enabling legislation to the 14th amendment, the “hearts and minds”? of white Dixie were firmly entrenched in racist institutions. It wasn’t until a generation of young people had grown up without them that we got to see the “new South.”? The white Southerners of the 60s largely saw it as another example of Yankee aggression, even if Lyndon Johnsos was the one to ramrod it through congress.
Precisely.
It is 1870. Estimate the percentage of white southerners who would see civil rights laws as an example of Yankee aggression. My personal estimate is 85 to 95 per cent.
It is 1970. Estimate the percentage of white southerners who would see civil rights laws as an example of Yankee aggression. My personal estimate is 60 to 70 per cent.
You can’t fight 19 people out of 20. You can fight 7 out of 10, because there are now 3 of you, and the odds are 7:3 instead of 19:1 – about an eightfold improvement in your chances. You now have a chance to win. And you might not even have to fight, because the 19 were very willing to fight the 1, but the 7 are a lot less happy to take on the 3. Not out of fear, but out of a sense that perhaps the tide of history had turned – that an old way was no longer going to be able to hold, and that even conservatives had to give way. And in the end, some did literally fight but not very many, thankfully; those that did were basically terrorists and didn’t have broad support, and so they got squelched by a Union a hundred times more powerful. Most of those who did fight, fought in non-violent ways, or relatively non-violent.
How much time would you estimate it takes for the persuasive powers of “soft culture” to radically change the hearts and minds of, say 25 per cent of a recalcitrant, defeated enemy – without risking ripping the country apart with another war? If I was taking on the project and knew we were talking about southerners, who are the most stubborn dumb bastards on the face of the planet, I’d ask for a century – just four generations, enough so that there isn’t anyone left alive with a first-hand memory of the slave days. (Most men will not fight for an order they never knew.)
You mention Federal troops, but those troops were human beings who didn’t much care for black people. To end slavery, maybe, OK; to save the Union, sure; to make sure black people got a fair shake? There are people who won’t fight for that now when “fighting for it” means picking up a phone or writing a check. What makes you think that a hundred years back, people a hundred times more racist were more willing to lift a hand for blacks?
It takes a long time to change those attitudes. That they have changed to some extent is a major blessing, which makes a lot of positive changes possible. Like, finally, making good the promise of the Constitution for the citizens of the nation regardless of their color.
Robert,
Turning to the question of the history of Civil Rights in this country:
Had there been sufficient will among Northerners to enforce reconstruction in the South, then 100 years of racist tyranny might not have happened. Had there been a stronger movement in favor of the transformation of race relations by any means necessary, then there might have been sufficent will. As it was, there was sufficient will to elect congresses which successfully rammed strong legislation (and the 15th amendment) past repeated presidential vetoes, and there was nearly sufficient will to impeach the president for failing to enforce those laws. If the US had had a parlimentary system at that moment, then the government would have acted on that will far more effectively., and an effective reconstruction might have been enforced. All of these shortfalls in the will of Northerns are things that I would count as regretable, because, as Molly said, thaey led to a lost opportunity to push a moment of transformative change further.
Now, you can argue that an effective reconstruction would have created even greater racist hatred among Southern whites, and that that would have produced results even worse for black people than what actually happened (once reconstruction ended), or you can argue that white resitance to an effective reconstruction would have led to brutal oppression of white Southerners by the reconstruction governments that would have been worse than the brutal oppression of black Southerners that actually happened, but arguing as you have been, that it was necessary that Jim Crow happen is not really arguing anything other than what happens happens. It isn’t really an argument for conservativism or for gradualism, it is just an argument that oppression happens, and every step that happens isn’t a step toward greater equality and justice. That is, in fact, an utterly uncontroversial argument. I don’t think anyone will disagree that the redeemer governments, the clan, lynching, Jim Crow all happpened, and that there is nothing we can do to change that.
Now, what you originally said was this:
We didn’t go from black people as slaves to black people as Secretary of State in one standing jump. There was one major transformation, which had enormous costs but which was worth it, on balance. Then there were decades of incremental change.
Its context was that you were arguing that civil rights was not scary transformational change, but only incremental change, and therefore not an example of transformational change being okay (except of course, that in that case you agree that it was).
Now the thing that I think you are being challenged on, but not really answering is this: Do you think that it would have been worse if the transformational change at the end of the Civil War had gone further, if, for instance, the voting rights laws of the 1860s had been enforced and allowed to stand by the Supreme Court, if the Supreme Court had not declared segregation constitutional, if the North had done more to prevent white terrorism from destroying the integrated reconstruction governments?
Another problem with your description of the situation is that there weren’t decades of incremental change, so much as there was a short period of brutal reactionary transformative change (the redeemer governments, the clan, and the imposition of Jim Crow), a long period of relative stasis, followed by a few decades of incremental change, marked by sudden transformative changes in the 60s. Do you think the transformative changes of the 60s were worse than furhter incremental change would have been?
Now, obviously all of what happened happened, so it must in some trivial sense of the word have been necessary, but do you think it was the best way that things could reasonably conceiveably have gone?
It merely means that I am firmly not ashamed, and that I will not allow myself to be cowed by the fact that others think I should be.
I believe you are correct. Bean was using proud in a different but entirely legitimate sense than I was using it. I withdraw the comment with apologies.
Robert,
Sorry, we cross posted. Never mind pretty much all of that last post.
Do you think the transformative changes of the 60s were worse than further incremental change would have been?
In some ways.
I disagree with your chronology, to a degree. I acknowledge that it’s not a smooth trend line, but there wasn’t really a long period of stasis. There was a lot of history in there, and most of the important parts of it aren’t anywhere near any history books. They’re in the intergenerational changes among every individual family in the South, black, white, and in-between. There were some very complicated changes going on, and they look like “stasis” to history because history wasn’t there.
Putting that aside, I also think that the transformational change you’re talking about (the passage of civil rights legislation) wasn’t all that transformational. In fact, I think it ended up deforming what would have been a greater reconciliation between racial communities, if things had progressed without direct governmental intervention. Not because of white resentment (although that may have played a part) but because of the paternalistic impact of the government on the black community since then. Sometimes paternalism is necessary on the part of the government, of course, but I don’t think it was at that point and I think it did a lot of harm.
I am very glad to see the positive changes that we have seen, even in my own lifetime, but I can also see how much further along we could be.
My final comment on the reconstruction digression.
Robert:
You can’t fight 19 people out of 20. You can fight 7 out of 10
But there was no need to fight 19 people out of 20. The white population of most of these states was more like 6-8 out of 10, tops.
Did you even see how you didn’t count the black population as people in the above argument?
You’re not rescuing her successfully.
Look, suppose a baking class was turning out awful cakes. And the problem is that they’re using salt where they should use sugar, and that they’re baking at 800 degrees instead of 350 degrees.
Then Christina Hoff Sommers comes in and says “the problem with these cakes has nothing to do with salt! We must look elsewhere!”
Now, even if Sommers is correct that we must look elsewhere – that is, we won’t completely fix the problem unless we also turn the ovens down to 350 degrees – that in no way mitigates the fact that anyone who says that using salt where the recipe calls for sugar in a cake recipe isn’t part of the problem is delusional.
It doesn’t matter how many other things Ms. Sommers is right about (and it’s not like I’ve claimed she’s wrong about those other things). For her to claim that there is no relationship between rape in our culture and gender shows that she’s delusional.
Of course they were people, Molly, but they weren’t the people with power. Nor were they in a position to be the people with power. Newly freed slaves were not equipped either materially or educationally to be involved in a struggle for dominance, which is what would have been required.
You are a person in possession of a huge amount of personal capital, both material and non-material. You may have worked very hard for that capital, or it may have been more or less a gift; probably a mixture of both. However, it is a virtual certainty that you have more of it than your mother has. It is almost certain that she in turn has more than her mother did. And so on.
It took my mother’s family four generations from immigration to become prosperous, established people who in the event of a social struggle would have the means and the ability to participate productively, rather than having to keep their heads down and work for a living. That’s from immigration – not slavery. That’s starting with a baseline of literacy and the knowledge of how to function economically as independent entities.
The black population of the south could have been used as troops in a war, that’s about it. A war that nobody wanted to have, and so they didn’t, thank God. As time passed and the capital available to blacks increased through their own effort, so did their ability to fight (peacefully) for their own rights. It really started to perk in the early and mid 20th century, when you started to have a core of blacks with college educations, and a larger group that were literate.
Is said that was my last comment, but I just couldn’t allow this to slide.
Neither were most of the white people of the South at the time. Most of them were small farmers, mechanics, or sharecroppers. Semiliterate at best. Only the plantation elite could be characterized as having power in the south at that time. And early in reconstruction, black people in the South were running for elected office – and winning.
For all your backpedaling, it was still immensely telling that you framed the question as “fighting 19 out of 20
people
.” So now you say, in essence, that while the black population were people, they just didn’t count as people in any meaningful political sense. But even that ignores significant aspects of the actual history.
I find it interesting that you frame a question of co-existence as a struggle for dominance. That was essentially how the white reactionaries of the time saw it: the only paradigm they could imagine was either dominating the former slaves, or being dominated by them. Co-existence just didn’t compute. It’s this dominance paradigm, this belief that difference must be framed in terms of “superiority” or “inferiority,” and form the the basis of dominance and subordination, which is the philosophical root of institutional racism and sexism.
All I can say to this is that you don’t know my background, my financial status, or my family history, and I don’t feel inclined to discuss them here. So I would appreciate you not stating your conjecures as facts.
FoolishOwl:
Actually, I don’t think that’s quite accurate.
It’s more like if a fat cat capitalist turned up to a meeting-place which is owned by a socialist, but intended by the meeting-place-owner to be a place where fat cats and socialists could meet, talk and debate.
In that context, I think it’s allowable for the fat-cat to say “I still don’t understand,” even after a few reasonable explanations. After all, for many people absorbing a different world view can take dozens of reasonable explanations, or more.
Of course, the socialist is in no way obliged to keep on explaining to the fat cat; saying “I’ve given you reasonable explanations, enough is enough” is perfectly reasonable. However, for the socialist to say “get lost” to the fat cat, given that this was a meeting place designed to allow both fat cats and socialists, is bizarre.
There are spaces designed to be socialist-only – or, leaving our analogy behind, feminist-only – and that’s good. But this is not one of those spaces. Let’s not forget that, please.
Nope, Amp you’d be the fat cat capitalist or at least his friend. You’re a man, you benefit from the oppression of women whether you like it or not. Now, if you were prepared to police men on their sexism rather than feminists on their rudeness here it might be easier to believe that you were pro-feminist. As it is I remain to be persuaded.
I’m glad you’ve answered my question though. I though this was a feminist blog. As it isn’t I’m wondering why all those other feminist blogs are linking to yours when you are willing to provide a space for sexists to vent their prejudices. After all they’ve got the rest of the world to do that.
Most women have to negotiate with sexists on a daily basis. This blog doesn’t appear to be offering anything alternative to business as usual.
Lets just be very clear. You tolerate sexism but you won’t tolerate rudeness. As you’ve said a few men have been banned for rudeness. You’re allowed to have those priorities but I’m not sure if feminism is a good description for them.
MustangSally, your argument in favour of women-only spaces (260) makes a lot of sense to me. I also think there’s something in your arguments about why Robert’s education methods may not be as effective as he thinks. I think you overstate your case, mind you; most women I know are not such frail flowers that all their self-confidence would evaporate if one asshole happened to be rude to them. Anyway, food for thought.
Qgrrl (246) accuses Robert of responding differently to female posters compared to how he responds to Charles. This isn’t very clear to me, but anyway. It’s certainly the case that I’ve had a much better reception as a woman criticizing some of the feminists here than any of the men have. Heart even gave me several thoughtful and considered responses even though I’ve admitted to being pretty unimpressed with a lot of her basic premises. I’m very grateful to Heart for that insight. I just feel like if men were given the same benefit of the doubt that I got, the discussion would be more productive.
It’s not a feminists versus non-feminists distinction. That I could understand. If someone said, there’s no point my talking to you because you don’t accept feminism, fair enough. Or even if they got angry with me for not being a feminist. But instead the feminist men are getting as much negative feedback as the non-feminist men (and more than the non-feminist women). I don’t see the value of that.