Please feel free to use this as an open thread, posting whatever you like, for as long as you like, with whomever you like. ((I’m gonna keep using this line until someone tells me they recognize the reference.)) Self-linking is not mandatory, but it’s certainly encouraged.
Here are my current open Firefox tabs:
- Orson Scott Card has a new homophobic essay out, explaining why marraige laws that discriminate against same-sex couples are good for homosexuals. Yonmei at Feminist SF has written an excellent, substantive and detailed response to Card.
- Obama adviser is, in effect, attacked by the right-wing for being part of the Muslim community. Obama, typically, didn’t lift a finger to defend the adviser or speak out against the bigotry.
- That’s part of the reason I’m planning to vote for McKinney and Clemente, the only all-woman-of-color ticket in the race. Of course, I live in a “safe state.” ((Actually, right now it’s not looking so safe, but I suspect that as we get close to November it’ll firm up.))
- The McCain and Obama health care plans are given a detailed, side-by-side comparison.
- Why political comics have historically been a nerdy guy thing and how we can change that. (By Jen Sorenson, who does the wonderful strip Slowpoke).
- Sam at Feministe has some thoughts on homosexuality and Judaism. I disagree with Sam, by the way; Tster’s comment is closer to my view. I’d also recommend this page for some alternative rabbinical interpretations. Or, for a less deep and Christian-biased but easier read, this page on religioustolorance.org.
- This is what anti-semitism looks like, from The Girl Detective. Again, I don’t completely agree with the post, but it’s interesting, and so is the discussion.
- The Girl Detective recommends The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, a long essay on anti-Semitism and the left. I second her recommendation; I read this several months ago and was quite impressed.
- That reminds me, I also highly recommend Girl Detective’s blog Modern Mitzvot.
- Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are using physical violence to enforce a “women sit at the back of the bus” rule — even on buses that have no such rule. People who act like that are genuinely disgusting people who should be thrown in prison. Curtsy: Sam at Feministe, who entitled her post “I can’t believe it’s not the Taliban.“
- Someday I will do a “Hereville” storyline about an eruv. If you’re not sure what an Eruv is, Wikipedia explains at length. This is a feminist issue, because in practice it’s more of a hardship for those tasked with infant care to not be able to carry objects on Shabbos.
- Eating disorders plague the Orthodox world, on Jewcy and in The Forward. Because there is so little contact between prospective brides and grooms in Orthodox culture, the pressure on Orthodox girls to in effect cultivate anorexia can be enormous. This also effects some mothers: “Wanting to predict what a young woman’s figure will be when she turns 40 or 50, some men go as far as asking what the size of the potential bride’s mother is. This obsession with physical appearance has led to an increase in eating disorders among middle-aged women.”
- The Should I Write An Angry Response To Being Called A Racist flowchart! The end of the flowchart refers to an old post of mine, which I of course find enormously gratifying.
- Posts on the mikvah (Jewish ritual bath): 1, 2, 3.
- What happened to Mary Berg? “A young girl’s account of the Warsaw Ghetto was a big success. Then the diary—and its author—disappeared.”
- Tirtzah: A Community of Frum Queer Women
- The Racial Slur Database. 2649 slurs and counting.
- Completely awesome fountain, which uses falling water to create words and images, in a Japanese mall.
- Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules.
(Thanks to Bean for the final three links.)
Angelina Jolie and The Perfect family deals with the erasure of her children of color from her recent People Magazine thread..think motherhood and whiteness.
Blame it On the Dirty Prostitutes: One neighborhoods attempt to slut shame the prostitutes away while blaming them for everything.
Anti- Rape Condom: A device that makes anti rape womens responsibility.
Can’t wait for the “over 10% links by OLD PEOPLE” edition!
Ain’t even asking for 50%! Ha, are you kidding?
Glad you liked my first flowchart! I shall attempt not to make anyone ashamed of me with thoughtful sequels. Please do tell me if I’m doing wrong by your books. It would be good to have the feedback.
So Wal-Mart is warning their store managers about the evils that the Dems will do if they win the election.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121755649066303381.html
Because I had nothing else to do, I drew a cartoon about it.
http://bakertoons.blogspot.com/2008/08/welcome-to-wal-mart-praise-allah.html
11 years old romanian girl, raped by her uncle, had to go to Britain to have an abortion
“Wanting to predict what a young woman’s figure will be when she turns 40 or 50, some men go as far as asking what the size of the potential bride’s mother is. This obsession with physical appearance has led to an increase in eating disorders among middle-aged women.”
The only difference here between Orthodox Jews and anyone else is that the Orthordox Jews have to ask. It’s long been a maxim passed along among men that “If you want to know what your girlfriend will look like in 30 years, take a good look at her mother.”
Charles, I once was working for a major medical device manufacturer and was put into a management training course. One thing we were told was that we were to report to our supervisors any use of the word “union”.
Checked out the flowchart. Pretty funny! Although I have asked a few times on this blog and in other locations “What defines someone as a PoC?” and I have yet to get any definitive response.
@RonF,
Re: POCs,
I think you have to be or at the very least know a POC well to know with reasonable accuracy where the boundaries are between being and not being a POC, and they’re dynamic, social and subjective. I know that as a half-Chinese guy, I can sometimes be perceived as and treated as a POC, and sometimes not be. It really depends on the situation, the social context and other folks’ perceptions of me. As you can imagine, some of that is stuff I can influence, and some of it isn’t, and the whole equation depends on those other folks’ backgrounds, how they view the world, etc.
I would be surprised if anyone reasonably thoroughly self-educated (especially about racism) would try to give you a precise or definitive response.
I would also be surprised if you yourself didn’t know how you personally define the boundaries of who is/is not white and conversely who is/is not a POC, honestly.
We are raised with and grow up with this awareness, especially if you happen to be from the United States of America. Even if not, each society on earth has pretty clear guidelines about how classes of minority and majority are defined.
Us vs. Them is an important part, it seems, of everyone’s identity on this fine earth.
Oh, please. We do not live in a society where a mikve is a woman’s only access to clean water. I have a damn shower in my apartment. It’s not like I go around spouting menstrual blood on everyone around me just because I don’t go to the mikve.
Amp, I can’t find it right now, but there was a piece of news in Haaretz about six months ago about mikve women refusing to strike, even though they hadn’t received their pay, because that would prevent men from accessing sex. So yes, here in Israel it’s also a women’s labor issue.
That mall in Japan is in Fukuoka’s Canal City. I used to live there. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. :)
I think you have to be or at the very least know a POC well to know with reasonable accuracy where the boundaries are between being and not being a POC, and they’re dynamic, social and subjective.
I would also be surprised if you yourself didn’t know how you personally define the boundaries of who is/is not white and conversely who is/is not a POC, honestly.
It seems as though this makes the definition of a POC so subjective and changable as to make the term itself useless.
On a different thread, Daran wrote:
I do admire the catch-22 you’ve set up here, Daran.
Step one: Post something completely off-topic about how you’re always criticized by the “Alas” mods for derailing.
Step two: When a moderator points out that “how Daran is mistreated by the unfair feminists” is off topic this thread, you get to say “see? Just like I predicted!”
Very neat.
* * *
If I actually prevented any criticism of feminism from going through, I would have moderated or deleted your first comment on the “white people numbers” thread. But I didn’t — just like I haven’t moderated or deleted hundreds of similar comments from you and your ideological brethren.
It’s true that I and other moderators restrain you and other feminist-haters in many ways here; my experience is that anti-feminists have zero consideration for feminists, and if we didn’t moderate them “Alas” would soon turn into nothing but feminist-bashing all the time. But it’s simply not true that we don’t allow criticism of feminists or feminism here.
* * *
Your first comment was tangential to the thrust of the original post, but it was responsive enough not to be a derail. Diatryma, in turn, responded on subject to the slight tangent you introduced. As far as I’m concerned, neither your first comment nor her response was a derail, although if the tangent had continued for a bunch more posts it might have become one.
In any case, since you dislike the moderation here so much, I have a solution for you: Stop posting on Alas.
If you choose to continue posting on Alas, however, please cut down on talking about how much this blog sucks; after a few years it’s become tiresome. And don’t play moderation-lawyer about other people’s comments. If you feel a comment needs to be reported to the moderators, use the link at the bottom of the comment.
Harvey.
But don’t stop on my account.
Harvey? I don’t get it.
@RonF:
It seems as though this makes the definition of a POC so subjective and changable as to make the term itself useless.
Unfortunately I can’t (and I doubt anyone can) give you an ironclad definition of who a POC is. I find it helpful when I deal with being a POC and deal with other POCs to, if possible, if it’s respectful, be as openly accepting to that identity as possible, because telling someone how to identify is more problematic, in my mind/experience, than it is to deal with the occasional outlier who claims a POC identity when it is perhaps not warranted.
I think it is more respectful to let folks self-identify (and to me this holds not only in racial discussions but also in other identities, like sex, gender, sexuality, religion, culture, etc.), and, to a great extent, more helpful, in general, to be as open to criticism as possible, and deal with the unwarranted types of criticism (perhaps from someone you don’t agree has a claim to being a POC) as one-offs.
To be discouraged by there being no hard and fast definitions is totally understandable, but I don’t think it absolves you (abstract, collective) of responsibility to participate responsibly and respectfully in social life and deal responsibly and respectfully with each individual who comes your way.
Harvey? I don’t get it.
“Harvey says that he can look at your clock and stop it and you can go away as long as you like with whomever you like and go as far as you like. And when you come back not one minute will have ticked by…. Einstein has overcome time and space. Harvey has overcome not only time and space – but any objections…. [B]ut so far I’ve never been able to think of any place I’d rather be. I always have a wonderful time just where I am, whomever I’m with. I’m having a find time right now with you, Doctor. (Holds up cigar.)”
Elwood, from Mary Chase’s Havey (1971)
Apparently you had a different reference in mind.
Yes, I do. But the mix-up has entertained me quite a lot, so thanks. :-)
It’s quite possible that the other reference I had in mind, was itself referring to Harvey.
The McCain and Obama health care plans are given a detailed, side-by-side comparison.
Hm. Actually, the link does not do this.
The actual details of the health plans are not compared in detail on a side-by-side comparison. Some components of the health plans are mentioned, but we have no idea if all of them are, and what is presented is done in more of a narrative fashion than a side-by-side fashion. What IS presented is an analysis of what the authors presume will be the outcome of implementing those health plans, without any particular details on the assumptions that the analyses are based on. And given the recent experience in implementing the Massachusetts health care plan and the much higher than predicted costs in doing so, I don’t place much stock in the analysis presented in this article without a lot more background on how it was done and what the underlying assumptions and the plan details are.
Step one: A feminst makes a statement, which may or may not be connected to the matter at hand, which accords with feminist doctrine, but which is, in fact contentious.
The dissenter then has the following choices: He or she can
a) Not react, in which case the feminist wins the point by default.
b) Take it back to their own relatively unread blog, which leave the point unrebutted in the places where it was made.
c) Rebut here, in which case the scenario plays out as described in this comment.
Feminists repeat this time and time again thereby establishing their points through mere repetition without ever winning the arguments on their merits. There is, however, a forth option, which is what I did (and do):
d) Call out the dynamic.
You then accuse me of derailing by doing so, and of putting you in a catch-22 situation, which completes the catch-22 situation for me, because when I object you get to say “see? Just like I predicted!”.
Very neat.
You’re also in a catch-22 situation, but it’s feminists who put you there, not me. This is because you have additional options you haven’t explored:
i. You could attempt to show that the dynamic I describe above doesn’t really happen, or that it doesn’t unfairly slope the discoursive playing field in feminists’ favour. But that won’t work, because it quite clearly does happen and it does unfairly slope the discoursive playing field.
ii. You could alter your moderation policy/practices to correct that dynamic, which would be the obvious and fair solution to the problem, except that you would then lose the support of most feminists. There’s your catch-22.
(reordering your remarks for the purpose of replying to them)
I never claimed that you don’t let critical comments through. I said that feminists are protected from criticism by the system which privileges statements of feminist orthodoxy over statements of dissent, the latter being treated as derailments while the former, no matter how irrelevant to matters at hand, never are. I appreciate it that you didn’t rule my first comment out of order, but this illustrates the point very well. Feminists would never be faulted from rebutting me. As you have admitted, I would be faulted if rebutting feminists takes the thread off at a tangent.
I still see some value in posting here. Presumably you also see some value in allowing me to do so, since you haven’t banned me.
I’m not complaining about individual statements by feminists, but about the invisible systems which operate here to privilege them. This makes the above doubly ironic: Firstly, because you of all people ought to be able to understand the concept of invisible systems of privilege, and secondly because your proposed solution would be to render my objections invisible.
Daran, I’m going to decline to debate you about moderation issues. After hundreds of times of being accused of being an unfair moderator by both feminists and anti-feminists, I’m completely burned out on the topic, and may be for years to come.
Why I allow you to post here:
1) Because you put in some effort at obeying the moderation policy, and I appreciate that.
2) Because years ago, you posted comments that I found substantive and interesting, because they were about real topics (not just vauge accusations that feminists are evil, or rules-lawyering).
3) Because so many people who have treated me like shit have demanded that I ban you. I’m stubborn that way.
But do I find sniping at feminists, usually lacking any data, supporting quotes or links, or any real substance other than “feminists suck!” — rather like your posts on the white numbers thread — to have value? No, I don’t.
Do I find endless rules-lawyering and whinging about moderation issues, of value? Not even slightly. Frankly, these sort of meta-blogging discussions — which apparently obsess you — are the opposite of value. They’re a drain on my time and mental energy, and they make “Alas” less worth spending time on for me.
@Daran,
I am a man with feminist background (mother: feminist, college: b.s. in chemistry/minor in women’s studies) who thinks that your protests are grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding of the system of privilege and its cousin, entitlement.
You are using the right vocabulary for the wrong reasons. Yes, if you squint at feminist spaces and turn your head sideways, you can see privilege (in fact, a lot of your arguments have been made about the bigger feminist isolationist gatherings in the past, I think to great detriment of the feminist community at large). But in general, what you are railing against is something that hardly ever happens and only rarely puts actual minorities at risk of not being able to express themselves.
You are fooling yourself if you think women start at a level playing field, and you are seriously delusional, I think, for using the term “privilege” to talk about feminist orthodoxy. There may be relative privilege in a feminist space that favors the feminist speaker, but it does not survive in the greater, outside world. These kinds of spaces evolve for folks to formulate an approach that works in the greater, sexist world. That you, an apparent non-feminist, feel that it’s okay to use the same vocabulary to talk about entirely different things to me just proves your feeling of entitlement.
A non-feminist going to a feminist space to talk about privilege of communication is very unethical, very unhelpful, very, I think, unwise, because it conveys to the average reader that you don’t know what you’re talking about and you don’t know what you’re saying. The problem with acting like an ass when you feel that you are not is that eventually folks will just take you at face value as an ass and lose touch with what you feel are your deeper qualities. Believe me, I know from personal experience. That was a very hard learned lesson for me.
Finally, the arguments you use are BORING. They are specious, boring and unfair. I personally do not enjoy reading them. You are not contributing to the positive value of this blog. Please, for the love of G-d, GET OVER THIS, and start making interesting comments Ampersand says you are capable of.
….Gentleman Adventurer!!
heh. Sorry, you DID say it was an open thread.
You have a police sergeant who apparently has a habit of getting drunk and brandishing his firearm (which is a crime in some circumstances), where do you assign him next?
a: personnel and training
b: the SWAT team
c: investigations
d: Internal Affairs
Yes, they put him there. Some day I’ll blog about it.
Hello Malcolm
I think you are wrong. I’ve been looking for a long time at how privilege and entitlement operate in the world, and I understand how feminists conceptualise it.
You are mistaken in my intent in using the word “privilege”. In my comment #20 above. I used the word three times. The first two as a verb in the sense of “to grant something a special status”. Only the third time did I use it in the feminist/antiracist sense “invisible society-wide systems with certain (disputed) properties”. The only thing I said about the latter was that Ampersand ought to be familiar with the concept. Of course I was analogising. The analogous elements I wanted to draw out was that the problem with the blog dynamic was systematic and invisible. This was in response to his obtuse response that I could complain about individual comments in a way which could only be seen by the moderators. Clearly that suggestion is inadequate to deal with a problem that the moderators have shown no sign of willingness to remedy or even recognition that it exists.
I never claimed that the blog-dynamics were society-wide privileges.
What I am complaining about happens every time someone dissents from a statement of feminist orthodoxy, which are side issues to the topic at hand. Indeed it defines what is orthodox. Furthermore, this has the effect of protecting the othodoxy of topic at hand from criticism as well, because the side issues are often brought in to provide support for main issues. Feminism is a Gordian Knot of circular arguments.
Feminist ought to be concerned about this. They ought to be concerned that if their ideas are protected from criticism they may not be able to stand up to criticism on their own merits.
I don’t not think this. I think that by any reasonable non-self-serving definition of privilege under which male privilege can be identified, so can female privilege. The playing field of gender privilege is not level, but different parts of it slope in different directions, contrary to feminist orthodoxy which is that it slopes one-way only. By contrast race privilege is a one-way phenomenon.
Interestingly Ampersand himself recognises this, sort of:
But rather than accept a conclusion that departs from feminist orthodoxy, Ampersand attributes it to his “flawed” definition: if he could just find some way of defining his way around those pesky contrafactuals. His latest working definition is an attempt to do just that.
But if his definition is flawed, why is he so certain that his conclusion is correct? Ampersand never explains.
Feminism is the societal hegemon in the field of gender analysis. The greater, outside world, doesn’t think that much at all, but uncritically accepts what is fed to it.
Here‘s a feminist using the word “privilege” as I did, as a verb meaning “to grant something a special status”:
This is also an example of female privilege according to the definition of “privilege” given in the male privilege checklist: It is systematic, it is invisible, and it confers dominance upon female victims over male when it comes to receiving services.
It is also an example of female privilege according to Ampersand’s new definition: 1. Women are systematically unfairly advantaged over men in the social context of services for survivors. 2. Women are the “default” victims of sexual abuse. Male are treated as “exceptions”, and 3. Women hold a near-monopoly on the high leadership positions of society’s controlling institutions in the field of services for survivors. (Ampersand dropped this last criterion, but it is notable that it nevertheless applies.)
I do know what I am talking about, and I do know what I am saying. “You’re acting like an ass” is the standard response of privileged, powerful people to those who speak truth to them.
Yes. Truth to power. Male victims of rape and domestic violence need recognition and services. That is the truth. Feminists, by defining these crimes as “violence against women” have ensured that male victims are invisible to and ignored by the medis and Government. That is power.
This also illustrates one reason why Ampersand was correct to drop the third criterion of his working definition. It doesn’t matter whether those in power have penises or vaginas, or whether they have black or white skin. What matters is whom their decisions benefit and whom they harm.
Listen to yourself! Do you know how privileged you sound? I don’t have the luxury of being able to summarily dismiss the views of critics, or set up gated discoursive communities where effective dissent is suppressed, because I don’t have the ear of Government and the Media, the way feminists do. I don’t have power to be heard.
Nor can I afford to get bored, because the privilege systems I’m combating, whose existence feminists deny, tend to have the effect of sending men to their graves.
If you think my arguments are specious or unfair, please state why, with specificity. But don’t assume that I don’t know what I’m talking about, or that I don’t understand feminist theory.
@Daran,
Apologies for misapprehending your background and context.
It seems from the limited exposure I have to you like every unequal transaction you are having is something you hit with the “privilege” argumentation hammer, and while I am certainly not innocent of such patterns myself, I think it might be useful for you to explore other methods of deconstructing your opponents’ argument.
Using your hammer, you seem to have the privilege of having the time, inclination, energy and resources to post truly humongous comments in response to criticism. Please keep in mind that not all of us have that amount of resources to post comments so comprehensive in overall scope.
Both in general I have a personal policy of not responding point by point if I can help it, and in this case, I simply cannot provide you enough time to respond point by point to your latest.
That said, I will cop to my own privileges, and you’re right, I was dismissive. Which is my standard response to folks I don’t think have done the homework. Like I said, I misapprehended you and your context.
While I do identify as feminist, I do not subscribe wholesale to all the standard feminist orthodoxy, so please don’t mistake me either. I do think that arguing against feminist orthodoxy based on these kinds of logic (arguments grounded in privilege, silencing and hypocrisy) is an approach that is very problematic (for reasons I’ve already spoken about in my comment that was more dismissive) and I personally would not argue that tack.
The overall feel of your arguments without the context from your comment 20 led me, I think pretty fairly, to believe that you were a clever anti-feminist or troller who had repurposed feminist idiom and orthodoxy to try to sabotage our dialog by making us feel guilty about our process. This happens so very often in anti-feminist writing that it’s hard to see any other motive for the act, thus my overreaction and misunderstanding.
Also, the hyperbole you use when talking about Feminism and self-contradiction is, to my mind, unseemly and further tends to sabotage your attempts at having your arguments be taken seriously. I’d avoid that too, in the future, assuming I were trying, directly, to get need for change communicated effectively and weren’t just trolling the shit out of the feminists for fun.
Finally, it sounds to me like you are not only an activist in sex/gender and sexuality spaces but also potentially in anti-racist spaces. My advice as someone in a similar situation: try to avoid conflating the different structures of privilege and power through analogy or other rhetorics. While I get your points because I am in a similar space, these kinds of comparisons are incredibly problematic for a number of different reasons and in my experience tend to alienate and be divisive rather than build coalition and understanding.
Re gender and race discrimination:
IMHO, the “oppression Olympics” (i.e. getting into a debate about whether white women or minority men have it worse) is a losing proposition on both sides. That being said, however, is there anything useful to be learned by comparing how the oppressions experienced by white women and minority men work? How are they similar? How are they different? Does examining the similarities and differences yield any information about how oppression in general works or does it just dissolve into randomness? Can the question even be examined without everyone getting so upset that nothing useful is learned?
You have a police sergeant who apparently has a habit of getting drunk and brandishing his firearm (which is a crime in some circumstances), where do you assign him next?
I might consider drug rehab (as a patient), but otherwise the obvious answer would be the unemployment office, wouldn’t it?
You’d think! But actually he’s in I.A. now possibly investigating other officers alleged to brandish guns.
I love the ACLU so much right now. They (and the attorney who appeared) are awesome!
Malcolm:
I do not work, a legacy of a childhood of gendered torture and the decade-and-a-half-or-so of adult insanity/internalised torture that was the result of it. Consequently I do have a lot of free time. Yes, I’m privileged to live in a country that has a welfare state which meets my physical needs, but I tend to get a bit testy, when anyone, male or female, who was not so destroyed (as evinced by their ability to pursue a career) tells me to check my (gender) privilege. They should check theirs.
That’s a good policy, and one which I have recently committed myself to. But old habits die hard.
I do not wish to argue against feminist orthodoxy based upon anything other than evidence and reason. But when one is systematically prevented from so doing by the dynamics of the forum, what is one supposed to do?
When did I talk about feminism and self-contradiction? (I dare say I did, but it’s not coming to me right now.)
I am certainly mindful of the need to present myself better to feminists. (skip down to the asterisked division in this post, for example.) But changing the message would be defeat the purpose. It’s the message that is important, not the presentation. The message may be wrong of course, in which case it should be changed, but that you will have to argue on its merits, with evidence and reason, rather than on presentational grounds.
Potentially yes, though I am less interested in race than gender. This is the reverse personal-is-the-political effect: I haven’t personally been hurt by race. (Yes, I acknowledge the privilege in that statement.) Nevertheless, a lot of my blogging examines the gender aspects of war in Africa and the Middle East where inter-state, rather than just inter-personal racism is a factor.
The irony of your comment is that my comment in the other thread which started this discussion was objecting to the conflation of the different structures of privilege through analogy. What happened there was that a women analogised her position to that of a black person.
Dianne, I have just replied on my blog to a question you asked more than a year ago.
The most recent update on a former police officer in my city who’s being tried on federal charges for killings of Iraqi detainees several years ago.
Former Marine to go on trial
I had the lovely experience of having a bottle thrown out of a car in front of me and then it exploded. Judging from what the family who lived in the house said when they came rushing out, it might be a jilted ex-boyfriend.
Ex-Marine faces manslaughter charges in federal court
I love the paragraph where he’s taped on the phone by the Navy talking to another sergeant who’s being court-martialed about beating up and framing people as a police officer in Riverside and then discussing the killings in Fallujah. Nelson knew the phone call was taped apparently.