In a comment on my post announcing the publication of “For My Son, A Kind of Prayer” at The Good Men Project (TGMP), AMM wrote:
I visited the place a year or two ago and read a number of the articles, and they tout a version of masculinity which, underneath all the verbiage, is basically just a “kinder, gentler” version of the same old male privilege. I remember that he-who-must-not-be-named (but whose initials are HS) was an honored contributor, which IMHO does not speak well for it, but was entirely consistent with the rest of what was there.
This made me think that, first, especially when posting the announcement on this site, I should have given an explanation for why I agreed to let TGMP publish my work, since I share AMM’s reservations, or at least I have similar ones, about what the site is all about. Second, it made me think that I should post the entire poem here so that people who will not go to TGMP will have a chance to read it if they want to. (The entire poem is below the fold.)
The short explanation as to why I agreed to have my work published in TGMP is that Noah Brand, the site’s still relatively new editor-in-chief, solicited me directly. (A longer explanation is perhaps a post unto itself about what it would mean, from a feminist/pro-feminist/feminist-friendly perspective, to put men’s experience at the center of discussion.) Noah is the founder–one of the founders?– of No, Seriously, What About The Menz? (NSWTM), which appears on Alas’ blog roll. I read the blog occasionally, and while I find the comments troubling, troublesome and sometimes offensive, I think that the posts embody a discussion of men and masculinity that is both necessary and fruitful. NSWTM is, obviously, not a space where women’s issues are front and center; nor could you accurately call it a male feminist/pro-feminist space, given that the people who comment there are often openly hostile to feminism. Nonetheless, it is in its mission a feminist-friendly space, and I think it is important and worth respecting that they are trying to have a discussion among and about men that is inclusive of all men, from a variety of perspectives, who want to engage in a respectful and thoughtful way.
Which does not mean that I think NSWTM succeeds in this regard–my own experience is that it often does not–but that I respect what Noah Brand was and is trying to do there and that I respect the fact that he is trying to do the same kind of thing over at TGMP. Something he said recently in an interview on The Jane Dough is worth thinking about:
Women face forms of oppression and a constant barrage of microaggressions that men do not, no question. But there are also several decades and at least three waves of feminist thought and activism to help them engage with those problems. Men face different problems, different microaggressions and stereotypes, and we’re still working on finding the language to talk about those. Feminism has the right tools for the job, but has been historically reluctant to engage with men’s issues, and the thing calling itself the Men’s Rights Movement is about as useful as a land war in Asia. (Emphasis mine.)
While I find Noah’s formulation at the end of this quote kind of awkward, I do think he’s right about this: to the extent that feminism has, rightfully, reasonably, placed women’s experience at the center of its analysis, the feminist “toolbox” will not automatically fit men’s experience, and so men need to find a language that will name our experience accurately and that will open up the kinds of analysis and transformation that accurate naming makes possible. There’s no way to know ahead of time whether TGMP will be the place where that language truly begins to take shape, but I think it’s important to be part of an attempt that is as big and as public as TGMP is. That’s why, when Noah solicited me, I agreed to send him some of my work.
And now, here’s the poem. Please remember that it does contain graphic descriptions of sexual violence against both men and women:
For My Son, A Kind of Prayer
…for they know
Of some most haughty deed or thought
That waits upon his future days…
—William Butler Yeats, “A Prayer for My Son”
Just before his mother
pushed him through herself
hard enough to split who she was
wide enough for him to enter the world,
I touched the top of my son’s head;
and after he was born,
the midwife—her name,
I think, was Vivian—
held my wife’s umbilical cord
in a loop for me to cut, which I did,
freeing our new boy’s body
to enter the name
we had waiting for him;
and then Vivian laid him
against the curve of his mother’s body,
giving him to the breast
he would for years
define his world by;
and once that first taste of love
was firmly lodged within him,
she bundled him tight,
placed him in my arms
and, while I sang his welcome
in a far corner of the room,
turned to assist the doctor
sewing up my wife’s
birth-torn flesh.
I don’t remember what song I chose,
and it’s been a decade at least
since I’ve told anyone
about my son’s first moments
as my son, but they’ve come to me here,
in this urologist’s waiting room,
because I picked up from the coffee table
the copy of The Nation
another patient must have left behind,
and the first article my eyes fell on,
“Silence=Rape,” by Jan Goodwin,
introduced me to Shashir,
six years old and gang raped
in the Congo. When they found her,
she was starving;
and when they found her,
she could neither walk nor talk;
and so they stitched together
the parts of her the men had ruptured,
fed her, gave her clothing;
and that night she slept
for the first time since no one knew when
in a bed that was not
the bush the militia left her to die in;
and maybe the tent walls
shaping the room she lived in
when Goodwin learned she existed
had come to mean for her
a kind of safety; and maybe
that safety was fertile ground,
where words for what the men had done to her,
dropped like seeds from the mouths
of those who rescued her,
could begin to take root.
From what Goodwin wrote,
I cannot tell.
I have not been gang raped,
but a man much older than I was
when I was twelve
forced his penis into my mouth,
seared the back of my throat
with what he poured out of himself
and sealed into silence
everything that took me
fifteen years of pushing
till who I was split wide enough
that who I am
could speak his first true words.
Mr. Newman? The nurse,
white, blond, about my age,
calls my name,
one of the few she has not butchered,
sitting as I am among the men
of my neighborhood,
where names that would twist
the tongue of any English speaker
are common. I put Shashir’s story down,
though Goodwin’s piece
is about more than her:
Maria was seventy
when the Interahamwe
tied her legs apart
like a goat before slaughter;
and the women Goodwin leaves nameless,
most of them killed by infection,
their labia pierced and padlocked
when their rapists were finished—
this narrative is theirs too.
I put the magazine down,
still bearing those women with me,
and rise towards the door I need to walk through
so I can place in this doctor’s hand
the left testicle I found a bump on
three days ago. A few
of my fellow patients
glance up as I pass,
one of them smiling,
nodding his head,
as if to say, Don’t worry.
It’ll all work out.
I smile back, grateful
for his small empathy,
noticing as I do so
that the flag pin on his lapel
and the name of the newspaper
folded over in his lap
place his origin in,
or at least his allegiance to,
a country now making headlines
for stories like Shashir’s;
and of course such things
don’t happen only
“over there;” and of course
not one man in this room
has ever done enough,
could ever do enough,
to make them stop happening;
and as the truth of that,
the guilt of that, punches me
in the stomach, this place—
where our penises are just penises,
and our balls are glands,
nothing more—
becomes in my imagination
where we are supposed to be,
a kind of purgatory
pregnant with poetic justice.
The door shuts behind me.
The nurse turns a perfect about face,
tossing over her shoulder
one last grin and Please, follow me,
before leading the way in silence
to a room dominated
by a four-color poster
and a plastic cross-section
of the flaccid human male genitalia.
The poster, I notice,
includes the foreskin; the model
does not—something
to ask the doctor about—
but when he arrives,
my only thought
resembles a prayer.
I have not prayed in decades,
and gave up the god I prayed to
soon after I stopped,
but while he snaps
his latex gloves on,
and I let my pants
fall to my ankles,
my underwear
to just below my knees,
and as I watch him handle
what in my wife’s language
are called my tokhm
or “eggs,” the scenario
I’ve been trying not to conjure
gnaws at the edge of my calm.
Without gonads, who would I be?
It’s probably nothing,
the doctor nods sagely,
stepping back,
removing his gloves.
I pull my clothing up,
tuck in my shirt. Still,
he continues while I’m
fumbling with my zipper,
let’s check it again
six months from now. He smiles,
offers his hand for me to shake,
which I do, and moves on
to the next man in the next room.
I head back out the way I came,
where my friend smiles and nods again,
lifting his hand in a farewell
I answer with my own nod and smile,
the reprieve I’ve just gotten
predisposing me not to assume
the worst of anyone, though that assumption
was once my only refuge,
the way I imagine
Shashir burrowing into silence
as the life she’d survived her ordeal
to enter.
Outside, the wind
rips the hood
away from my head;
snow-gusts slap me
back and forth
across my face;
and I am reminded how quickly
beauty turns cold, how easily
death wears friendship’s face.
I want to know
how a man who loves his children
does not see their faces
in the eyes of the girl
whose vagina he is opening
with a bottle or a bayonet;
I want to know how their voices
woven into that girl’s screams
do not paralyze his hands
or keep his penis soft.
My son will never know Shashir,
but he will know men
who could’ve been,
who’d gladly be,
among the ones
who violated her;
and he’ll know women,
and other men like me,
whose bodies carry
violation within them.
One day, he will be forced to choose
where his allegiance lies.
These words are for him
on the day of that decision.
I kind of wondered why you were posting there, but I trust you and figured you had your reasons. As you did.
Thanks, Mandolin. The comments I’ve been getting on the poem over at TGMP–though there have been only five or six–have been interesting, and instructive, especially the one or two that have been deleted without being posted. (I get the site notifications even though I am not expected to moderate my own posts.) One way in which all the “share this” or “like on Facebook” links are useful is that I get to see just how small a voice the negative comments are in comparison. Not that the negative comments, trolling or otherwise, bother me per se; but it is gratifying to know that people are reading, being moved by and passing on the work.
I know Noah a little in real life (he lives only a few miles away from me) and quite like him. I have high hopes for TGMP improving with him on board.
Say what you want about GMP but I think the place is a rather useful space. It has served as a place where those of clashing thoughts and beliefs can (for the most part) come together in hopes of finding some common ground. And frankly I think that bothers some people who are too quick to write the place off. It’s done a lot more for men that the vast majority of the other sites I’ve seen in a while.
To me specifically its been a place where I can actually talk about why I am hostile to feminists and feminism sometimes (because frankly a good bit of that hostility is justified, even if it can be counterproductive) without people waiting to shut me out.
Danny, you do realize that there is a more than a bit of a conflict between “this space is for finding common ground” and “this space is a good place for me to express hostility, justified or otherwise, towards feminists and feminism”?
I also have a great deal of respect for Noah Brand, and hope that he improves GMP beyond its current decline into trying to be an online version of Men’s Health or GQ. NSWATM succeeds as a place for its bloggers to talk about men’s issues in a way that is both masculist and feminist-friendly, although it fails dismally at the much harder task of being a place for commenters to do the same.
Mythago:
Danny, you do realize that there is a more than a bit of a conflict between “this space is for finding common ground” and “this space is a good place for me to express hostility, justified or otherwise, towards feminists and feminism”?
That’s why I said, “talk about” hostility, not express it. As in talk about where it came from, talk about how to address it, and lastly address it. If addressing hostility isn’t an attempt at common ground then what is?
Contrary to what some may say there is good to be had in the comment section of the GMP posts (and compared to this time last year I’d say the place has been improving).
Danny, do you believe talking about why you are hostile and being hostile are mutually exclusive sets? As for your rhetorical “what is?”, why, actually addressing common ground is addressing common ground. If everyone agrees that limiting the draft to males is unfair and should change, that’s common ground, even if we disagree on the reasons it’s unfair or how to fix the problem. “Let me tell you why I think feminists all suck” is not actually addressing common ground. It’s using a discussion about common ground as a pretext to vent. I think you know that.
Indeed NSWATM is improved, and there is good in the comments. The question is, as ever, how much rubble are you willing to dig through in the hopes of tripping over a diamond? O
Danny, do you believe talking about why you are hostile and being hostile are mutually exclusive sets?
Being hostile means just lashing out, talking about why one is hostile can actually contribute to resolving it.
If everyone agrees that limiting the draft to males is unfair and should change, that’s common ground, even if we disagree on the reasons it’s unfair or how to fix the problem. “Let me tell you why I think feminists all suck” is not actually addressing common ground. It’s using a discussion about common ground as a pretext to vent. I think you know that.
And I also know that “Let me tell you (at least part of) why I’ve had such a hard time finding common ground on issues with feminists.” is a step in the right direction to finding it. Sure I could just sit and complain all the time but that’s just counter productive in the long run. But talking about where that hostility came from and actually working to overcome it, well that’s worthwhile isn’t it?
Indeed NSWATM is improved, and there is good in the comments. The question is, as ever, how much rubble are you willing to dig through in the hopes of tripping over a diamond? O
Personally I’ve improved quite a bit over the last year or so and part of that is thanks to NSWATM as well as GMP. So while I don’t know how much rubble I’d be willing to dig though, I do know that the diamonds I’ve found so far are worth it.
Or would you rather I just remain hostile or something?
I didn’t realize anybody was telling you to stop visiting, or posting, at whatever blog you please, Danny. I thought we were talking about why others might find particular blogs less conducive to “finding common ground” that you do. But if you want an excuse to be hostile, I’m sure you can find one without my help.
I didn’t realize anybody was telling you to stop visiting, or posting, at whatever blog you please, Danny.
???
I thought we were talking about why others might find particular blogs less conducive to “finding common ground” that you do.
I thought so too. You have your reasons for going to certain places and I have my reasons for mine.
But if you want an excuse to be hostile, I’m sure you can find one without my help.
Who said anything about you helping me be hostile? But anyway I’m trying to move past that. Gets all self destructive and stuff.
The Good Men Project has “improved” in what sense? Being feminist-friendly is not the site’s purpose. And there’s no reason it should take any attitude other than neutrality (or even indifference) to feminism. The site is about men and men’s issues, not women’s.
I’m glad to hear that. But your original point was that people who say “fuck this noise” are not really doing so because their tolerance is different than yours; you were saying that they what they are ACTUALLY and truly upset about is the fact that those spaces are productive:
It has served as a place where those of clashing thoughts and beliefs can (for the most part) come together in hopes of finding some common ground. And frankly I think that bothers some people who are too quick to write the place off.
I have to say that on the whole working-on-hostility front, suggesting that people who find a space hostile are secretly just mad that it works is counterproductive. And it isn’t much of an advertisement for those spaces.
I have to say that on the whole working-on-hostility front, suggesting that people who find a space hostile are secretly just mad that it works is counterproductive.
The only way that would be counterproductive would be if it were somehow shown that none of the people who found said space hostile were secretly mad. But that is not the case here (which is why I quantified that original point above). Now are some people who have legitimate grievances with GMP? Sure. That doesn’t mean that all grievances are legitimate.
The only way that would be counterproductive would be if it were somehow shown that none of the people who found said space hostile were secretly mad.
Please explain how this works. Because, really, I’m not following the argument of “You’re just jealous! And unless you can show that every single person I’m accusing isn’t jealous, I’m right!”
It would be a matter of knowing for a fact that some of the criticisms are illegitimate. For example one criticism I heard about the place was that it was run by MRAs…despite the fact that as far as I know not a single one of the main editors or the founder ID as such. And that’s before a self identified feminist became editor in chief (and of course there is the presumption that if one is an MRA they must be hateful).
So its actually more of, “Oh that’s why you hate this place!? That’s not even true, you’re just jealous.”
But let me ask, are you trying to say that all the criticisms of GMP are correct?
I don’t even know “all the criticisms of GMP”, so how could I possibly say whether or not they are correct?
You offered your opinion that the mere fact that certain sites (like NSWATM) are common ground is upsetting to some. Your evidence of this is that nobody has shown there ISN’T somebody who feels this way. On reflection, though, I am sure that you have a point: there are plenty of self-identified antifeminists who think the mere existence of common ground is an affront, and have said so.
When somebody says that they dislike GMP because they believe it is run by MRAs, I am inclined to accept that’s why they dislike GMP, even though they may be totally wrong in their belief.
On reflection, though, I am sure that you have a point: there are plenty of self-identified antifeminists who think the mere existence of common ground is an affront, and have said so.
Not just self identified antifeminists but yeah.
I don’t even know “all the criticisms of GMP”, so how could I possibly say whether or not they are correct?
I would think that you wouldn’t but it seemed like you were trying to say that they were all valid. But then you say this, “When somebody says that they dislike GMP because they believe it is run by MRAs, I am inclined to accept that’s why they dislike GMP, even though they may be totally wrong in their belief.”
In that particular case that is something that can be shown to be totally (or at least mostly) wrong though.
@11 Copyleft:
For a site about “men and men’s issues” to take an attitude of “neutrality” about feminism is a little like an Earth Science website being neutral about whether the Earth is round vs. flat.
You must be using a different definition of “feminism,” then. A site about men’s issues has no more need to address feminism than it does to address air pollution or electoral reform. They’re topics of interest, perhaps, but hardly central to the purpose of the site.
Copyleft:
Only if it wanted to stick its head in the sand. To the degree that feminism–agree with it or not–has an awful lot to say about men’s issues, for a site about men not to address feminism would be willfully to ignore an intellectual, political, cultural, social movement that has had profound influences on how we understand gender. Indeed, the only reason there is such a notion as “men’s rights” or even “men’s issues” is because feminism has made gender–as a social construct, as a script we all follow (or don’t)–visible in ways that it never was before. A site about men’s issues certainly does not need to be feminist, but to be neutral or indifferent about feminism is to be neutral or indifferent about the movement that created the space that makes a men’s issues site–like TGMP or NSWATM or even the most hateful MRA site you can imagine–possible in the first place.
@20 (Richard Jeffrey Newman):
Actually, I think it is women’s increasing freedom and equality — which is to say, feminism being put into practice — that is really driving the “men’s rights” and “men’s issues” discussions. The issues being discussed are all, in essence, about dealing with challenges to and reductions in male privilege and male dominance.
Which is why I don’t waste my time in discussions with anti-feminist men. We do not disagree out of ignorance, we disagree because we have opposing goals: they wish to maintain male privilege and dominance, I wish to dismantle it.
AMM:
The issues being discussed are all, in essence, about dealing with challenges to and reductions in male privilege and male dominance.
I think you’d be only partially right about that. There is a more to the changing state of men than just a list or privileges.
Actually, I think it is women’s increasing freedom and equality — which is to say, feminism being put into practice — that is really driving the “men’s rights” and “men’s issues” discussions.
Part of the drive behind them is increasing the freedom and equality of men (I think that should be more of the drive mind you). Yes that goes hand in hand with the freedom and equality of women but there is certainly more at work that is driving the discussions of men’s rights and men’s issues.
Well, no.
It is quite possible to accept some of the main premises of feminism (the existence of male privilege) and still be at odds with many other aspects. And of course it’s common to disagree with specific individuals.
For example:
Issues of how much men should give up. And when. And how fast. And how to apportion those losses between groups, or between individuals. You may agree on the fact that men are privileged, but disagree about the AMOUNT of that privilege, and how to fix it.
Issues of how much women should get. And when. And how fast. And how to apportion those losses between groups, or between individuals. You may agree on the fact that women as a class are less privileged, but disagree about the AMOUNT of that loss of privilege, and how to fix it.
and of course, the big one:
Issues of how to split things. If I’m a white straight male and I give up 1 pound of privilege: how do you divide that extra privilege between POC, gays, and women? How do you account for the multitude of privileges I didn’t list?
Feminists–like everyone else–suffer the human malady of self interest. It’s simple to believe that they can talk well about privilege; it’s more difficult to believe that they can fairly apportion the gains between feminism and everyone else.
@23 — gin-and-whiskey wrote:
This is still defense of male privilege. This is men trying to see how much of their privilege they can hold on to in the face of women’s increasing equality.
If the slaveholders of the South (USA) had gotten together and responded to the rising abolitionist sentiment by saying, “OK, we’ll compromise. We’ll free half our slaves, if you stop bugging us about the other half,” would that make them no longer pro-slavery?
Privilege doesn’t work that way.
(For some reason, I have a vision of you saying, “if I have 10 Schroedinger equations, and I give you 5….”)
In the previous post, everything from “well, no” down to the first ellipsis should have been block-quoted. (For some reason, the tags got ignored.)
Can this blog get a “preview” button?
Fixed!
Grace
I think I remember that we once argued on this site, seemingly endlessly, about the definition of privilege and whether it can be sliced and diced the way G&W is talking about. I agree with AMM, that it can’t and that thinking about privilege that way is, actually, a way of reinforcing the validity of privilege itself, as opposed to talking about rights or entitlements or perks or benefits or any unfair distribution of what-have-you that results from privilege. Whether you agree or disagree with something like affirmative action, for example, to ask how we will know when its compensatory goals have been achieved–which is another way of phrasing G&W’s points–is to deny neither the imbalance it was created to address nor the privilege that originally created that imbalance; and to try to invalidate the question by suggesting that it does either of those things is to ignore the complexity that is involved in undoing the effects of privilege on a society-wide basis–which does not mean that people won’t use the question to try to invalidate affirmative action, but critiquing that is different from critiquing the need to ask the question in the first place.
I know someone else on this site linked to this post on privilege, but I think it is apt here as well.
Why is that so difficult for you to get?
Here, I’ll use myself as a hypothetical example. Imagine this to be true:
Although I obviously have many privileges, I don’t work to address them all, by any means. Instead, I focus about 95% of my charity and pro bono work on poverty, most particularly food banks (who get essentially all of my charity) and housing (who get basically all of my pro bono work.)
If you asked me to devote some time or money to “helping feminism in general,” I would probably say no. That has nothing to do with a desire to desperately refuse to provide any charity or pro bono work, or to “hold on what I have.” I just wouldn’t think that your issues deserve a share of my limited amount of help. It’s important, sure. But I don’t think it’s objectively AS important as what I actually do: hungry homeless people as a class are far worse off than women as a class.
“But wait,” you may say. “It doesn’t have to be a tradeoff. You can give an extra two hours a year to my cause celebre. You can give an extra hundred dollars per year to my charity of choice.”
Well, no. So long as your issue is lower-ranked than my issues, then your issue, from a logical perspective issue deserves NONE of my time or money. And unfortunately, from most semi-objective points of view, general American feminism isn’t, by and large, a top ranked issue w/r/t saving lives, keeping people from starving or under their roofs, etc.
So right there you have a simple example. Assume that our interaction were limited to you saying “support feminism by giving $10! to my women’s rights group!” and me saying “no,” (or some similar exchange.)
Then what? Well, based on your posts, it sounds like you’d walk away, smugly secure in your belief that my refusal stemmed from male privilege, greed, etc. It would certainly be easier for you to think that, and more convenient. But you’d be wrong.
As Amp has posted many times, it’s perfectly fine for individuals to make their own choices about where they spend their time. If you want to focus on “stop malaria” or on “preserving the last vestiges of oral knowledge in the Ozarks about how to properly smoke-cure a wild hog and make nettle jam,” that’s yours to decide. That’s also mine to decide.
You wouldn’t be a pro-hunger racist just because you focus on the rights of women in the US, even though you would probably acknowledge that the vast majority of US women are better-placed than hungry POC people in the rest of the world. Right? Same in reverse.
What I find is the anti-feminists are actually more anti-gynocentric feminism. There are multiple versions of feminism and it’s not a monolith, there are those who use it to practically mean egalitarianism (which I think a few here are doing), some to mean women’s rights alone, and probably a few that want female dominance but I don’t see many of those except for radfemhub. The anti-feminists I’ve seen tend to see feminism as harmful in it’s execution, not it’s overall belief, there are issues with VAWA harming men for instance (check the recent TGMP Noah Brand article in the comments for a full description).
From what I can tell a feminist inspired law could come into effect, but implemented in a way that is harmful to men regardless of intention. But I myself realize this isn’t representative of all feminists, but I think many are generally anti-feminstactionthatcanharmmen vs actually anti-feminist. The majority I see are actually pro-equality and share many ideals with the egalitarian-feminists that I see who simply want everyone represented fairly, all rights and social issues to be address both for women and men.
In defense of the GMP it stopped me becoming anti-feminist, I had an unlucky string of luck only meeting radfems who were extremely bigoted but did so subtly, my ignorance was starting to believe that is what feminists were but then I found quite a few egalitarian feminists on the GMP who actually gave a damn about boys, men along with women, people of colour, etc. To see egalitarians were amongst feminists did a lot to open my eyes to all of these issues and the importance of talking about specific groups if you have greivances for instance. I’ve seen a lot of comments ignored, then reworded by someone else to focus “feminists” to “some feminists” which then were taken well, even agreed upon. I do this where I can to bridge the understanding between people because a legitimate concern can be buried under mass generalizations (which often trigger defensiveness and are ignored a lot).
As I expected, there’s no enlightening the anti-feminists. But the discussion, such as it is, has been enlightening to me.
What I’m realizing is that one reason anti-feminists are anti-feminist is that they simply cannot conceive of a world in which there is no (unearned) privilege at all; that is, in which inequality, oppression, and exploitation are not the basis of all relationships. Given that, being sexist is a matter of survival: if your only alternatives are to either have the upper hand over women, and be in a position to oppress them (or not) as you wish, or else for them to have the upper hand over you and oppress and exploit you as they wish, then who wouldn’t want to be the one on top?
I guess that, underneath half a century of cynicism, I’m still a flower child at heart, because I still want to believe that it’s possible for people of whatever race, creed, sex, or category, to relate in cooperation and without oppressing anybody.
[T]hey simply cannot conceive of a world in which there is no (unearned) privilege at all; that is, in which inequality, oppression, and exploitation are not the basis of all relationships.
Well, I have to admit that I find the first proposition pretty difficult to conceive of as well. If you have earned privilege in a system, even near-consensus on what constitutes earning is going to leave you with dissent, and the dissenters will be systemically underprivileged relative to the near-consensus group. And near-consensus is an unrealistically optimistic prediction; more likely, you’ll have majority consensus. Disagreement and difference will magnify. And that’s in itself a best-case, utopian scenario where no human beings desire unearned privilege for themselves; humans being animals, a certain level of selfish willingness to be on top without it being meritocratic is pretty much a built-in. The pretty koalas don’t feel guilty about accepting the extra mating opportunities they get for having lustrous fur (or whatever it is that gets koalas going). I can certainly conceive of a system where unearned (by whatever definition) privilege is looked down on, worked against, minimized by social policy and culture…but having none at all seems a big stretch.
That said, I can easily conceive of the second proposition (I think we can have that now, in fact) but don’t quite see the identity to the first proposition that you appear to be asserting. You can have relationships that aren’t based on oppression etc. without getting rid of all unearned privilege in the world; oppression etc. may well color or seep into those relationships, but the relationship can be founded on mutual esteem, trust, love, attraction, convenience, whatever. But I might be misunderstanding what you mean here so if I’ve gotten it wrong, never mind.
“I still want to believe that it’s possible for people of whatever race, creed, sex, or category, to relate in cooperation and without oppressing anybody.”
Me too… but what does that have to do with feminism?
What you’re missing is that many anti-feminists are taking a stance against inequality–specifically, the inequality of female privilege (and pedestals). Egalitarianism is a noble goal, and some feminists embrace it too. But others do not–and they deserve vocal criticism when they cross that line.
Copyleft:
This question, rhetorical or not, demonstrates that you do not know as much about feminism as perhaps you think you do. As I understand it, and to the extent that one can generalize about a diverse and argumentative school of thought, feminism does not seek to overthrow patriarchy and establish matriarchy; it seeks to dismantle patriarchy and in its place, build a structure of free and equal participation.
Grace
Copyleft:
There is something I have never understood about this argument. Or, to put it more accurately, there is something I have always found disingenuous and willfully ignorant about this argument that makes it difficult for me to take at all seriously: Granted that the “pedestal” you refer to and all of the other things that “egalitarian-oriented” antifeminist men call “female privilege” both exist and can do real harm to men. Nonetheless, each of those so-called privileges originates in patriarchy/male dominance; they each exist in one form or another because the position they put women in facilitated and facilitates the manhood competition among men–and just so that we can keep the focus, for the moment, on men, antifeminist, feminist or otherwise, I am deliberately leaving aside here the ways in which each of those “privileges” did and does real harm to women. In other words, if you really oppose those “female privileges,” and if you are really interested in rooting them out, then you need a social, cultural and political analysis that does not shy away from acknowledging that male privilege is not simply a mirror image of “female privilege,” but rather that from which this so-called female privilege emerges.
(Slight editorial changes made for clarity and grammatical correctness)
As I understand it, and to the extent that one can generalize about a diverse and argumentative school of thought, feminism does not seek to overthrow patriarchy and establish matriarchy; it seeks to dismantle patriarchy and in its place, build a structure of free and equal participation.
I don’t think that anti-feminists, at least anti-feminists willing to impute good faith to feminists, dispute that. I think that the source of contention is that there is a very large contingent of philosophical, theory-of-government, theory-of-organization type thought, that holds this goal to be laughable.
Such derision is not necessarily feminist-specific; I don’t happen to think that a society which is non-hierarchical in GENDER terms is impossible, for example, so I’m not one of the people who would be disbelieving. But to use a parallel, there are socialist/leftist types who say that they aren’t working to replace one economic elite with another, they want a non-elite system of democratic blah blah blah. And when I hear their plans, I don’t think “gee, what a wonderful ideal”, I think either a) “Holy Christ what a stupid jackass” or b) “this person is trying to pull one over; they’ve got a new elite in mind.”
I think a lot of anti-feminists are thinking “yeah, right” about the whole dismantle-patriarchy-replace-with-unicorn theme; they think the feminists are either lying or stupid, because they don’t believe a non-archy is possible.
(I believe that a non-archy is possible, in gender terms. But there’s going to be kyriarchy of some kind. There always is, always has been, always will be. Making it non-gendered may well be a very good idea; certainly, it gives women an overdue chance to get in some innings at the world-ruling game.)
I have no doubt that the goal of eliminating unearned privilege is an unattainable one. I believe that imposing power hierarchies and “us vs. them” dichotomies is inherent to human nature, and that while specific manifestations of inequality are culturally imposed, the drive towards establishing unequal societies is inherent in all of us. This drive to oppress can be suppressed and surpassed on a local level – but unless you have total control of the education of every human being born, then it will emerge again and again.
But I am also in the belief that just because the battle against unfairness and injustice cannot be won, it does not mean that it should not be fought. The world of cooperation and no oppression that AMM wishes for may never come to pass, but we can certainly be a lot closer to it than we are now. And the way to achieve that is to keep on pushing for it.
I tend to avoid anti-feminist gathering spots, so I don’t know whether Robert is right that there are many among them who are simply suffering from a crisis of faith, or perhaps they’d just rather be on the winning side than go with their conciousness. But that’s just outright stupid – that’s sort of like saying “we cannot attain immortality, so there’s no point in practising any type of medicine”. We may not be able to cure death, but we can certainly improve both the quality and duration of our lives. The same holds for oppression – it may not be curable, but we can certainly reduce its impact, and improve everyone’s quality of life as a result.
“we cannot attain immortality, so there’s no point in practising any type of medicine”
What if the medical efforts to attain immortality involve mining radioactives from virgin ecosystems, killing thousands of innocent people yearly in the attempt?
I agree that even unattainable ideals can be worth working towards – indeed, that can be an extremely noble and ennobling effort. But sometimes – and by no means does all, or even most, feminist effort fall into this category – the side effects of the pursuit of the unattainable are real casualties.
Awareness of that fact, I think, does drive some resistance among people of good will to utopian movements like some-types-of-feminism. I think efforts at promoting equality of economic opportunity are good things; if you come preaching Marx at my kids, I’m going to kick your ass. It’s not because I hate equality; it’s because Marx->gulags, and the cost of gulags is greater than the cost of kicking your ass.
(All ass-kicking references intended as rhetorical and not as genuine threats to your well-being.)
What if the medical efforts to attain immortality involve mining radioactives from virgin ecosystems, killing thousands of innocent people yearly in the attempt?
We kill or maim thousands of innocent people to get chocolate or components for gizmos. You don’t think we’d draw the line at immortality, do you?
But you’re changing the subject. We weren’t talking about reacting harshly to idealists who believe any means justify their Utopia; we were talking about the bizarre argument that antifeminism is about nothing more than criticizing a certain subset of feminists.
Yeah, I’m not really disputing the point, Mythago. Just saying that some things which are perceived as criticism of a certain subset of [any]ists, are actually disagreements about the structural possibility of what’s being attempted.
I agree that feminism is not monolithic; what seems to be getting skipped over is that anti-feminism isn’t, either.
It’s true that many feminists embrace and work toward equality; so do many anti-feminists, and so do many people who choose not to identify as either. But there are also self-described feminists (under the vast and diverse umbrella labeled “feminism”) who do not acknowledge male problems and male issues, and consider them irrelevant. Thus, the Good Men Project for discussing them.
Copyleft, “antifeminist” is not the same thing as masculist or MRA, or even “critical of certain feminists”. Antifeminist means against feminism, kind of by definition, no? Whereas a masculist or MRA focuses on men’s issues; that may lead to ignoring or disagreeing with feminism in some respects, but doesn’t require it, any more than being feminist requires one to be opposed to masculism.