Naomi Wolf: America's Reactionary Feminists. In which she argues that feminism "is philosophically as much in harmony with conservative, and especially libertarian, values—and in some ways even more so."
Sure.
For your full debunking, go see Jos, who makes all the salient points about individual privileged feminism vs. collective intersectional feminism.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
On Harassment and the Marking of Visible Womanhood
[Trigger warning for misogyny, rape culture.]
So, yesterday we had this great thread about how telling people to "smile" is not merely impolite, but a gross disrespect of agency. As frequently happens in such threads, there was also discussion of other types of street harassment and getting hit on.
Often, we contributors/mods have our own private conversations about topics being discussed on the blog, especially when we want to chat about something tangential that would be a derail to the main point. Yesterday, in tandem with the aforementioned thread, we were talking about the truly fucked-up scenario in which women who deviate from traditional definitions of womanhood, or whose appearance is nonconforming to beauty standards, are excluded from such discussions by virtue of having rarely or never harassed in that way.
It's an important conversation, and it deserves its own thread.
It is a conversation I've had before with trans women, with fat cis women, women with noticeable physical disabilities, and with a women who has severe craniofacial deformities—the "I don't want to be treated like a piece of meat or an object or a possession, but because Visible Women are treated like pieces of meat and objects and possessions, the fact that I'm not makes me feel like I'm not even a woman" conversation.
The conversation about feeling excluded from the sisterhood, because you haven't been harassed in the way most women talk about being harassed.
None of the women with whom I've ever had this conversation want to be harassed, nor do they want other women to be harassed, either—and yet there is something akin to envy they feel, sheerly by virtue of being on the outside looking in.
Simultaneously, they feel guilty for feeling that way, because, to a harassed woman, there is nothing enviable about being harassed.
Except, of course, for how there is—because being harassed is a routine part of the Visible Woman's experience. And as long as women's value is determined by objectification, to not be objectified is to feel unvalued, even if to not be objectified is what you want.
This, of course, is not a commentary on women—objectified or not, feminist or not. This is a commentary on the Patriarchy, and how unfathomably fucked-up it is that a failure to be treated poorly—not in exchange for being treated well, but as an alternative to not being acknowledged at all—has the capacity to make women feel worthless.
What a choice: Acknowledged but harassed, or ignored and denied recognition of one's womanhood.
It's a terrible predicament, this place of horrible and shameful "envy," that most women (especially feminist women) probably experience at one time or another during their lives. An older woman finally free of being hit on and cat-called and told to smile may suddenly "miss" the harassment the despised, because its void is not born of a long-sought respect, but of a silent commentary on her diminished worth as a sex object per the Patriarchy's horseshit standards. Two female friends of different races might alternately "envy" each other for the unique forms of objectification by which they're respectively targeted: She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks like the Girl Next Door. She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks Exotic. Etc.
Knowing how fucked-up it is doesn't change that visceral feeling of alienation: We are all too keenly aware of the narratives used to marginalize us.
And this "envy" is not just about being recognized as a woman; it's also about getting access to the tables at which women sit.
I have had friends who have never been raped confess to me with wracking guilt that they "envy" my history, because to have survived rape is to have earned admission into what can be a very tight-knit group of survivors, not unlike a group of veterans who emerged from the trauma of war as "brothers," having experienced something outsiders cannot understand and sharing a bond outsiders cannot penetrate.
They needn't feel guilty: I understand what they are saying. They don't want me to have been raped. They are not minimizing it. They don't want to be raped themselves. They are simply acknowledging a feeling born of the reality that so many women are victimized by sexual violence that it can feel, to women who have not been, that a key part of what defines womanhood is missing from their histories.
We all view, if not consciously, sexual violence and harassment as a sort of rite of passage, a fire through which we must pass on our way to womanhood. To be denied that trial, even though we don't want it, is to be denied as Woman.
I can think of few things that more poignantly underline how truly and comprehensively woman-hating the Patriarchy is than its creation of an "envy" to be hurt, just to feel like a complete woman.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please note that if your immediate response to this is to assert that you've never experienced this "envy," that may well be a function of privilege. Visible Womanhood is an indicator of privilege—cis women tend to be more visible than trans women, straight women more visible than lesbians, white women more than women of color, able-bodied women more than women with disabilities, etc. I strongly encourage you, rather than reflexively challenging the concept, to listen to the experiences of less privileged women which will certainly be shared here.]
So, yesterday we had this great thread about how telling people to "smile" is not merely impolite, but a gross disrespect of agency. As frequently happens in such threads, there was also discussion of other types of street harassment and getting hit on.
Often, we contributors/mods have our own private conversations about topics being discussed on the blog, especially when we want to chat about something tangential that would be a derail to the main point. Yesterday, in tandem with the aforementioned thread, we were talking about the truly fucked-up scenario in which women who deviate from traditional definitions of womanhood, or whose appearance is nonconforming to beauty standards, are excluded from such discussions by virtue of having rarely or never harassed in that way.
It's an important conversation, and it deserves its own thread.
It is a conversation I've had before with trans women, with fat cis women, women with noticeable physical disabilities, and with a women who has severe craniofacial deformities—the "I don't want to be treated like a piece of meat or an object or a possession, but because Visible Women are treated like pieces of meat and objects and possessions, the fact that I'm not makes me feel like I'm not even a woman" conversation.
The conversation about feeling excluded from the sisterhood, because you haven't been harassed in the way most women talk about being harassed.
None of the women with whom I've ever had this conversation want to be harassed, nor do they want other women to be harassed, either—and yet there is something akin to envy they feel, sheerly by virtue of being on the outside looking in.
Simultaneously, they feel guilty for feeling that way, because, to a harassed woman, there is nothing enviable about being harassed.
Except, of course, for how there is—because being harassed is a routine part of the Visible Woman's experience. And as long as women's value is determined by objectification, to not be objectified is to feel unvalued, even if to not be objectified is what you want.
This, of course, is not a commentary on women—objectified or not, feminist or not. This is a commentary on the Patriarchy, and how unfathomably fucked-up it is that a failure to be treated poorly—not in exchange for being treated well, but as an alternative to not being acknowledged at all—has the capacity to make women feel worthless.
What a choice: Acknowledged but harassed, or ignored and denied recognition of one's womanhood.
It's a terrible predicament, this place of horrible and shameful "envy," that most women (especially feminist women) probably experience at one time or another during their lives. An older woman finally free of being hit on and cat-called and told to smile may suddenly "miss" the harassment the despised, because its void is not born of a long-sought respect, but of a silent commentary on her diminished worth as a sex object per the Patriarchy's horseshit standards. Two female friends of different races might alternately "envy" each other for the unique forms of objectification by which they're respectively targeted: She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks like the Girl Next Door. She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks Exotic. Etc.
Knowing how fucked-up it is doesn't change that visceral feeling of alienation: We are all too keenly aware of the narratives used to marginalize us.
And this "envy" is not just about being recognized as a woman; it's also about getting access to the tables at which women sit.
I have had friends who have never been raped confess to me with wracking guilt that they "envy" my history, because to have survived rape is to have earned admission into what can be a very tight-knit group of survivors, not unlike a group of veterans who emerged from the trauma of war as "brothers," having experienced something outsiders cannot understand and sharing a bond outsiders cannot penetrate.
They needn't feel guilty: I understand what they are saying. They don't want me to have been raped. They are not minimizing it. They don't want to be raped themselves. They are simply acknowledging a feeling born of the reality that so many women are victimized by sexual violence that it can feel, to women who have not been, that a key part of what defines womanhood is missing from their histories.
We all view, if not consciously, sexual violence and harassment as a sort of rite of passage, a fire through which we must pass on our way to womanhood. To be denied that trial, even though we don't want it, is to be denied as Woman.
I can think of few things that more poignantly underline how truly and comprehensively woman-hating the Patriarchy is than its creation of an "envy" to be hurt, just to feel like a complete woman.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please note that if your immediate response to this is to assert that you've never experienced this "envy," that may well be a function of privilege. Visible Womanhood is an indicator of privilege—cis women tend to be more visible than trans women, straight women more visible than lesbians, white women more than women of color, able-bodied women more than women with disabilities, etc. I strongly encourage you, rather than reflexively challenging the concept, to listen to the experiences of less privileged women which will certainly be shared here.]
If We Really Lived in a Post-Feminist World...
...banning advertisements that are explicitly designed to fool, manipulate, and body-shame women into buying expensive products that cannot possibly deliver what is promised via the sneakery of Photoshop would be the rule, rather than the exception.
Well done, MP Jo Swinson.
Well done, MP Jo Swinson.
In Which I Utterly Refuse to Credit as Ignorance What Is Manifest Dishonesty
[This started out as a comment in response to Shaker schumannhertz, and it got really long, so.]
In the comments thread of my earlier "Be Nice" piece, Shaker schumannhertz noted that zie knows" a lot of guys who [THINK they] understand the difference between the nice guy and the not-so-nice guy. The problem is: They think they're in the former category when they're in the latter." And that's a really common assertion (so I'm certainly not intending to negatively single out Shaker schumannhertz here, who just happened to be the person who left the comment this time); it's absolutely something I would have said myself once upon a time—but I wouldn't say that anymore.
In fact, I think that dismantling the idea that men can't intuit internalized prejudice against women is an important part of feminist thought.
(And I happen to know quite a few men who agree with me—men who find the notion that men lack this particular self-awareness incredibly demeaning.)
I genuinely don't believe that men don't understand the difference between "the nice guy and the not-so-nice guy." After nearly seven years of doing this, and dealing with dudes ranging from totes clueless to totally enlightened, and genuinely naive to genuinely nasty with a serious agenda, I think a man who doesn't, on some level, intuitively understand the difference between treating a woman as less than and treating her as a person, his equal, is a virtual unicorn.
It's not that I assume bad faith: It's just that my every experience, with myself and with other people, prescribes an expectation of awareness.
And then there's this: If 99% of the man who professed cluelessness in defense of their misogyny were actually just clueless, 99% of the "garsh, misogyny?!" conversations would dénouement with a grateful thank you for feminist enlightenment, instead of snarling flounces punctuated with accusations of man-hating and grievances about unwelcoming tones.
One of the rare points on which anti-feminists and I agree is that I'm not fucking special. There is nothing about me that makes me uniquely capable of intuiting the difference between my own humanizing and dehumanizing behavior toward other people. I may have the language to put that feeling into words, but I didn't need to have the language to have the feeling, to have the unarticulated knowledge of prejudice within myself.
One doesn't need to be actively trying to examine privilege to be aware of internalized bias.
I mean, hell, we've all got memories of learning about racial prejudice; we can all share stories of hearing a relative or friend or schoolmate introduce us to some piece of racial prejudice against another race (or our own).
Most of us, when we think about it, have memories of learning about sex prejudice, too. It's just that those sorts of discussions are rarer, especially in terms of men discussing the memorable events of their patriarchal indoctrination, because we take as read that men are from Mars and women are from Venus or whatever.
We use the "conventional wisdom" of intrinsic difference and unnavigable separateness to create a space in which men can tell the lie that they are unaware of their bias toward women.
And it absolutely infuriates me, because it is SUCH BULLSHIT.
When a man comes in here giving me this blinking, wide-eyed, oh-em-gee I just can't figure out how to treat women so as not to be creepy, because it's soooooo confusing, I just want to barf nine thousand times.
And if men want to get pissed at someone for my exasperation with this rubbish, then they can direct their ire at the men for whom the honesty about knowing is more important than the fraudulence of not knowing in defense of continued misogyny.
I'm just done with playing that game. I just don't have the patience for it, anymore. I refuse to indulge it, because it's horseshit. I am a human being, and I am a privileged human being, and I know how to recognize the presence of bias within myself, and so does That Guy.
All I got anymore for That Guy is this: Don't tell me you don't fucking know. Don't try to claim, with a straight fucking face, that you don't know the difference between treating a woman as an individual person and treating her as part of some ladyperson monolith whose contours are drawn in demeaning narratives by seething oppressors. Don't even feign that infuriating haplessness in which you profess to be unacquainted with the cavernous divide between treating women as your equal and treating them like garbage.
You want me to trust you're an intelligent and decent guy who believes me to be his equal for whom he has some modicum of respect? Then you can start by jettisoning the aw-shucks routine and give me the respect of truth. Tell me you do indeed know that you view women differently, treat women differently, hold women to different standards than you do men.
Then we can have an honest goddamn conversation about how to fix that.
But I'm not having one more dishonest conversation about your supposed cluelessness. Not anymore. Because we both know it's just the sad-ass anthem of the Dude Who Doesn't Want to Fix It.
To the dudes who do, I give you the gift of expecting more, which, although it may not feel that way, is an act of generosity and good faith. I am a better person than I once was because people gave me the gift of expecting more of me, of setting a higher standard and encouraging me to reach for it, of challenging me not to settle into the well-tread grooves of my socialization, of admonishing me to reject the vast and varied prejudices and myths with which I'd been indoctrinated, of urging me expect more of myself and persuading me to believe I could be the change I want to see.
Not perfection. Just more.
Perfection is an unattainable goal and an unreasonable expectation. More, on the other hand, is eminently reasonable.
And it is a kindness, extended by someone who wants to be your equal.
In the comments thread of my earlier "Be Nice" piece, Shaker schumannhertz noted that zie knows" a lot of guys who [THINK they] understand the difference between the nice guy and the not-so-nice guy. The problem is: They think they're in the former category when they're in the latter." And that's a really common assertion (so I'm certainly not intending to negatively single out Shaker schumannhertz here, who just happened to be the person who left the comment this time); it's absolutely something I would have said myself once upon a time—but I wouldn't say that anymore.
In fact, I think that dismantling the idea that men can't intuit internalized prejudice against women is an important part of feminist thought.
(And I happen to know quite a few men who agree with me—men who find the notion that men lack this particular self-awareness incredibly demeaning.)
I genuinely don't believe that men don't understand the difference between "the nice guy and the not-so-nice guy." After nearly seven years of doing this, and dealing with dudes ranging from totes clueless to totally enlightened, and genuinely naive to genuinely nasty with a serious agenda, I think a man who doesn't, on some level, intuitively understand the difference between treating a woman as less than and treating her as a person, his equal, is a virtual unicorn.
It's not that I assume bad faith: It's just that my every experience, with myself and with other people, prescribes an expectation of awareness.
And then there's this: If 99% of the man who professed cluelessness in defense of their misogyny were actually just clueless, 99% of the "garsh, misogyny?!" conversations would dénouement with a grateful thank you for feminist enlightenment, instead of snarling flounces punctuated with accusations of man-hating and grievances about unwelcoming tones.
One of the rare points on which anti-feminists and I agree is that I'm not fucking special. There is nothing about me that makes me uniquely capable of intuiting the difference between my own humanizing and dehumanizing behavior toward other people. I may have the language to put that feeling into words, but I didn't need to have the language to have the feeling, to have the unarticulated knowledge of prejudice within myself.
One doesn't need to be actively trying to examine privilege to be aware of internalized bias.
I mean, hell, we've all got memories of learning about racial prejudice; we can all share stories of hearing a relative or friend or schoolmate introduce us to some piece of racial prejudice against another race (or our own).
Most of us, when we think about it, have memories of learning about sex prejudice, too. It's just that those sorts of discussions are rarer, especially in terms of men discussing the memorable events of their patriarchal indoctrination, because we take as read that men are from Mars and women are from Venus or whatever.
We use the "conventional wisdom" of intrinsic difference and unnavigable separateness to create a space in which men can tell the lie that they are unaware of their bias toward women.
And it absolutely infuriates me, because it is SUCH BULLSHIT.
When a man comes in here giving me this blinking, wide-eyed, oh-em-gee I just can't figure out how to treat women so as not to be creepy, because it's soooooo confusing, I just want to barf nine thousand times.
And if men want to get pissed at someone for my exasperation with this rubbish, then they can direct their ire at the men for whom the honesty about knowing is more important than the fraudulence of not knowing in defense of continued misogyny.
I'm just done with playing that game. I just don't have the patience for it, anymore. I refuse to indulge it, because it's horseshit. I am a human being, and I am a privileged human being, and I know how to recognize the presence of bias within myself, and so does That Guy.
All I got anymore for That Guy is this: Don't tell me you don't fucking know. Don't try to claim, with a straight fucking face, that you don't know the difference between treating a woman as an individual person and treating her as part of some ladyperson monolith whose contours are drawn in demeaning narratives by seething oppressors. Don't even feign that infuriating haplessness in which you profess to be unacquainted with the cavernous divide between treating women as your equal and treating them like garbage.
You want me to trust you're an intelligent and decent guy who believes me to be his equal for whom he has some modicum of respect? Then you can start by jettisoning the aw-shucks routine and give me the respect of truth. Tell me you do indeed know that you view women differently, treat women differently, hold women to different standards than you do men.
Then we can have an honest goddamn conversation about how to fix that.
But I'm not having one more dishonest conversation about your supposed cluelessness. Not anymore. Because we both know it's just the sad-ass anthem of the Dude Who Doesn't Want to Fix It.
To the dudes who do, I give you the gift of expecting more, which, although it may not feel that way, is an act of generosity and good faith. I am a better person than I once was because people gave me the gift of expecting more of me, of setting a higher standard and encouraging me to reach for it, of challenging me not to settle into the well-tread grooves of my socialization, of admonishing me to reject the vast and varied prejudices and myths with which I'd been indoctrinated, of urging me expect more of myself and persuading me to believe I could be the change I want to see.
Not perfection. Just more.
Perfection is an unattainable goal and an unreasonable expectation. More, on the other hand, is eminently reasonable.
And it is a kindness, extended by someone who wants to be your equal.
Feminism 101: Helpful Hints for Dudes, Part 6
Following is a primer for men who are genuinely interested in learning about how to be a more feminist-friendly dude. Most of the information in this piece is, as always, generally applicable in terms of being decent to the people around you, but this has been written to be most accessible for men in keeping with the objective of the series, which is responding to commonly emailed questions from privileged men (here, generally meaning straight cis men) seeking advice on how to interact with the women in their lives.
In the wake of the Elevator Incident, and throughout all the ensuing discussion, and in many of the emails I received in response to my post, there ran a thread of desperate concern, tinged with the usual belligerent exasperation, about how (straight) men are ever supposed to figure out how to interact with women in a way that won't be regarded as rude, sexist, and/or creepy.
Many people who have weighed in at various feminist, atheist, skeptic, and/or scientific blogs have taken up the challenge of addressing those concerns, with recommendations on how to approach women, guidelines for conferences, and prescriptions for social or institutional change. I'm not inclined to replicate those efforts.
I will, however, take a moment to answer a question that I feel was being asked implicitly in many of these discussions, and was asked explicitly of me by a male emailer, writing to me to express his frustrations on this subject: "What is it exactly that you want men to do?"
I want men to be nice to women.
Here, I will not insert any caveats about how what I really want is for all people to be nice to each other, or that I acknowledge that there are men who are nice to women, or women who are not nice to men, or whatever acquiescence would allegedly inoculate me against the accusation that I am a shrill, horrible cunt. The demands of chronic obfuscators have nothing to do with the question that was asked of me, which I intend to answer without indulging tangents and distractions.
The question that was asked of me is this: What is it exactly that you want men to do?
More precisely, I was asked what it is that I want (straight) men to do, so that they might avoid being charged with rudeness, misogyny, or creepiness. Implicit in the question is the charge that there is no answer, the assertion that there is no way that (straight) men can publicly interact with women in a way that will not be negatively construed.
Especially by women who are hysterical. Women who are psychos. Women who are over-reactionary. Women who are man-haters. Women who think all men are perverts. Women who are looking for things to get mad about. Feminists.
But, of course, there is an answer. Men can be nice to women.
There are, surely, people who will read that and snort derisively and feel compelled to make arguments about how "nice" is a relative term and is thus meaningless, in terms of trying to help a man know how to interact with a woman.
And, just as surely, people like myself, who are not invested in the idea that (straight) men can't possibly know how to interact with women without a high risk of offending them, will call bullshit in retort.
You see, one thing I have observed over and over (and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and over some more) during my thirty-seven years on this rock, is that there are men who treat women like people, and men who treat women like not-men.
Men who treat women like people—that is to say, in the same way they treat other men—generally tend to have no problem being nice to women. They are pleasant in their interactions with women; they are respectful during their interactions with women; they hold friendly and engaging and fun and challenging and sometimes contentious conversations with women; if they are straight men, they acknowledge appropriate boundaries in terms of romantic behavior (i.e. they don't treat a work environment like it's a singles bar just because a female person is in it); they don't ogle or grope women; they regard women as their equals, and are capable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species.
Men who treat women like people treat them as individual people, who are deserving of their decency unless and until an individual woman gives them a reason to be guarded, or avoidant, or angry, or whatever—in which case, those feelings are directed at the individual woman who piqued their ire, not at "women."
They are, in short, nice.
On the other hand, there are men who treat women like not-men. Women are regarded as a separate class of human altogether (or, in some cases, non-human), a monolithic variation which exists not in complement to men, but in service to them. Men who treat women like not-men, if they are straight, view women as the sex class, and ergo do not draw any delineation between spheres of work and play, but view a woman in a professional space as an interloper, whose purpose as a sexual object and potential sex partner supersedes her role as a working person in her chosen vocation.
Men who treat women like not-men have problems viewing women just as co-workers, as bosses, as friends, as teachers, as equals, because they see them as humans with a (sex/reproductive) service role, which is not how they see other men.
And because they see women as fundamentally different from men, they imagine that there must be a whole set of unique rules to interacting with women. They cannot conceive that there is, simply, a set of rules to engage all other humans politely and respectfully and productively—and that the boundary between "man" and "woman" is not nearly as important as the boundary between, say, "work" and "speed-dating event."
(Which is not to say it's inherently awful or wrong to meet someone at work. There is a difference—and a not remotely difficult to discern difference, at that—between happening to meet someone at work in whom you become romantically interested, and treating the women who share your place of employment as a captive audience for your random sexual overtures.)
Men who treat women like not-men are incapable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species. They use any woman's failure to please as a strike against the entirety of womankind, and they annihilate the individuality of a woman beneath the crushing weight of their own biases about women, and then accuse women of being all the same.
They treat a woman's personhood and her womanhood as mutually exclusive constructs, while treating manhood and personhood as synonymous, and then they wonder how it is that women can complain of different treatment, of lesser treatment.
They are, in short, not nice.
There's nothing decent or kind about treating women as though they are alien beings whose primary use is in service to your needs. Unless, of course, a woman is not attractive to you, in which case she has no use at all.
It isn't just terrible men who treat women this way. It's lots and lots and lots of men, who consider themselves to be decent and kind, and who are hardly considered monsters by the women who know them. I'm sure the man who asked me what it is, exactly, I'd like men to do is not an awful fellow. He's probably just a guy who's been told his whole life that it's okay to treat women differently and never questioned if maybe that wasn't actually the best thing to do, if you really do fancy yourself an egalitarian sort of bloke.
And thus is my advice to him, and to all the men who are wondering what it is they're supposed to do to make us bitches happy: Be nice.
If you really think about it, and if you're really honest with yourself, you know what that means.
In the wake of the Elevator Incident, and throughout all the ensuing discussion, and in many of the emails I received in response to my post, there ran a thread of desperate concern, tinged with the usual belligerent exasperation, about how (straight) men are ever supposed to figure out how to interact with women in a way that won't be regarded as rude, sexist, and/or creepy.
Many people who have weighed in at various feminist, atheist, skeptic, and/or scientific blogs have taken up the challenge of addressing those concerns, with recommendations on how to approach women, guidelines for conferences, and prescriptions for social or institutional change. I'm not inclined to replicate those efforts.
I will, however, take a moment to answer a question that I feel was being asked implicitly in many of these discussions, and was asked explicitly of me by a male emailer, writing to me to express his frustrations on this subject: "What is it exactly that you want men to do?"
I want men to be nice to women.
Here, I will not insert any caveats about how what I really want is for all people to be nice to each other, or that I acknowledge that there are men who are nice to women, or women who are not nice to men, or whatever acquiescence would allegedly inoculate me against the accusation that I am a shrill, horrible cunt. The demands of chronic obfuscators have nothing to do with the question that was asked of me, which I intend to answer without indulging tangents and distractions.
The question that was asked of me is this: What is it exactly that you want men to do?
More precisely, I was asked what it is that I want (straight) men to do, so that they might avoid being charged with rudeness, misogyny, or creepiness. Implicit in the question is the charge that there is no answer, the assertion that there is no way that (straight) men can publicly interact with women in a way that will not be negatively construed.
Especially by women who are hysterical. Women who are psychos. Women who are over-reactionary. Women who are man-haters. Women who think all men are perverts. Women who are looking for things to get mad about. Feminists.
But, of course, there is an answer. Men can be nice to women.
There are, surely, people who will read that and snort derisively and feel compelled to make arguments about how "nice" is a relative term and is thus meaningless, in terms of trying to help a man know how to interact with a woman.
And, just as surely, people like myself, who are not invested in the idea that (straight) men can't possibly know how to interact with women without a high risk of offending them, will call bullshit in retort.
You see, one thing I have observed over and over (and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and over some more) during my thirty-seven years on this rock, is that there are men who treat women like people, and men who treat women like not-men.
Men who treat women like people—that is to say, in the same way they treat other men—generally tend to have no problem being nice to women. They are pleasant in their interactions with women; they are respectful during their interactions with women; they hold friendly and engaging and fun and challenging and sometimes contentious conversations with women; if they are straight men, they acknowledge appropriate boundaries in terms of romantic behavior (i.e. they don't treat a work environment like it's a singles bar just because a female person is in it); they don't ogle or grope women; they regard women as their equals, and are capable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species.
Men who treat women like people treat them as individual people, who are deserving of their decency unless and until an individual woman gives them a reason to be guarded, or avoidant, or angry, or whatever—in which case, those feelings are directed at the individual woman who piqued their ire, not at "women."
They are, in short, nice.
On the other hand, there are men who treat women like not-men. Women are regarded as a separate class of human altogether (or, in some cases, non-human), a monolithic variation which exists not in complement to men, but in service to them. Men who treat women like not-men, if they are straight, view women as the sex class, and ergo do not draw any delineation between spheres of work and play, but view a woman in a professional space as an interloper, whose purpose as a sexual object and potential sex partner supersedes her role as a working person in her chosen vocation.
Men who treat women like not-men have problems viewing women just as co-workers, as bosses, as friends, as teachers, as equals, because they see them as humans with a (sex/reproductive) service role, which is not how they see other men.
And because they see women as fundamentally different from men, they imagine that there must be a whole set of unique rules to interacting with women. They cannot conceive that there is, simply, a set of rules to engage all other humans politely and respectfully and productively—and that the boundary between "man" and "woman" is not nearly as important as the boundary between, say, "work" and "speed-dating event."
(Which is not to say it's inherently awful or wrong to meet someone at work. There is a difference—and a not remotely difficult to discern difference, at that—between happening to meet someone at work in whom you become romantically interested, and treating the women who share your place of employment as a captive audience for your random sexual overtures.)
Men who treat women like not-men are incapable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species. They use any woman's failure to please as a strike against the entirety of womankind, and they annihilate the individuality of a woman beneath the crushing weight of their own biases about women, and then accuse women of being all the same.
They treat a woman's personhood and her womanhood as mutually exclusive constructs, while treating manhood and personhood as synonymous, and then they wonder how it is that women can complain of different treatment, of lesser treatment.
They are, in short, not nice.
There's nothing decent or kind about treating women as though they are alien beings whose primary use is in service to your needs. Unless, of course, a woman is not attractive to you, in which case she has no use at all.
It isn't just terrible men who treat women this way. It's lots and lots and lots of men, who consider themselves to be decent and kind, and who are hardly considered monsters by the women who know them. I'm sure the man who asked me what it is, exactly, I'd like men to do is not an awful fellow. He's probably just a guy who's been told his whole life that it's okay to treat women differently and never questioned if maybe that wasn't actually the best thing to do, if you really do fancy yourself an egalitarian sort of bloke.
And thus is my advice to him, and to all the men who are wondering what it is they're supposed to do to make us bitches happy: Be nice.
If you really think about it, and if you're really honest with yourself, you know what that means.
An Observation
It occurs to me that there would be far fewer obnoxious thread derails on feminist blogs (and this concept applies to all social justice spheres and intersectionalities, with the appropriate adjustments in language) If there weren't so many people who misconstrue:
"If you don't [like/respect/admire/spend time with/consider your equal/appreciate/enjoy talking to/otherwise positively engage with] any women, then you've got a misogyny problem."
to mean:
"If you don't [like/respect/admire/spend time with/consider your equal/appreciate/enjoy talking to/otherwise positively engage with] every woman, then you've got a misogyny problem."
Sometimes, that is a mistake made out of defensiveness by people steeped in unexamined privilege, the sort of reactionary deflection that's the hallmark of careless listening caused by existential panic.
But sometimes—more times, I think—it's a deliberate misconstrual used by fauxgressives who always have an exceptional hatred to offer, in order that they may be assured it's still okay to hate that lady.
All of which is a long way of saying, I estimate we're going to be playing the "Just because I hate Sarah Palin/Michele Bachmann, doesn't mean I hate ALL WOMEN" Mad-Lib around here a lot in the coming months, with people whose engagement of anti-feminist narratives to demean "individual women" suggests otherwise.
"If you don't [like/respect/admire/spend time with/consider your equal/appreciate/enjoy talking to/otherwise positively engage with] any women, then you've got a misogyny problem."
to mean:
"If you don't [like/respect/admire/spend time with/consider your equal/appreciate/enjoy talking to/otherwise positively engage with] every woman, then you've got a misogyny problem."
Sometimes, that is a mistake made out of defensiveness by people steeped in unexamined privilege, the sort of reactionary deflection that's the hallmark of careless listening caused by existential panic.
But sometimes—more times, I think—it's a deliberate misconstrual used by fauxgressives who always have an exceptional hatred to offer, in order that they may be assured it's still okay to hate that lady.
All of which is a long way of saying, I estimate we're going to be playing the "Just because I hate Sarah Palin/Michele Bachmann, doesn't mean I hate ALL WOMEN" Mad-Lib around here a lot in the coming months, with people whose engagement of anti-feminist narratives to demean "individual women" suggests otherwise.
Assvertising
Repeat offender in this series, Klondike, which is owned by Unilever, whose brands (which include Axe and Dove, among others) constitute probably something like a third of the entries in this series, is running an awesome new campaign called "5 Seconds to Glory," in which someone has to put up with some HORRIBLE SHIT for five seconds to get a Klondike bar, like listen to his wife:
A white dude in his 30s sits on his couch watching TV. "New Klondike Mint Chocolate Chip bars present 5 Seconds to Glory!" exclaims a male voiceover, as the dude's white wife comes in and sits next to him on the couch. "Mark verses Actually Listening to His Wife!" says the voiceover, as she begins to talk to Mark about painting their foyer yellow. He turns toward her and makes a face of stern concentration, as a countdown clock ticks down from 5. After 5 seconds, a bell dings and he jumps up and cheers. Confetti and balloons fall and two blond women in short skirts and go-go boots run out and hand him a Klondike bar, while his wife looks on, confused. Cue the "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" jingle.
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
For what is probably the nine dozenth time in seven years, I will point out that this advert, in relying on the Patriarchal (and heterocentrist) narratives about women being boring and talkative and men being inattentive and poor listeners, insults not merely women, but men, too. The ad team who designed it was comprised almost exclusively of men (the team included one woman).
It is feminists, of course, who have the terrible reputation as man-haters, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and potential rapists. The holders of those views are the women and men who embrace, perpetuate, and trade on the narratives of the Patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.
[H/T to Deeky.]
A white dude in his 30s sits on his couch watching TV. "New Klondike Mint Chocolate Chip bars present 5 Seconds to Glory!" exclaims a male voiceover, as the dude's white wife comes in and sits next to him on the couch. "Mark verses Actually Listening to His Wife!" says the voiceover, as she begins to talk to Mark about painting their foyer yellow. He turns toward her and makes a face of stern concentration, as a countdown clock ticks down from 5. After 5 seconds, a bell dings and he jumps up and cheers. Confetti and balloons fall and two blond women in short skirts and go-go boots run out and hand him a Klondike bar, while his wife looks on, confused. Cue the "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" jingle.
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
For what is probably the nine dozenth time in seven years, I will point out that this advert, in relying on the Patriarchal (and heterocentrist) narratives about women being boring and talkative and men being inattentive and poor listeners, insults not merely women, but men, too. The ad team who designed it was comprised almost exclusively of men (the team included one woman).
It is feminists, of course, who have the terrible reputation as man-haters, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and potential rapists. The holders of those views are the women and men who embrace, perpetuate, and trade on the narratives of the Patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.
[H/T to Deeky.]
Quote of the Day
"I am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one."—Rebecca Watson, continuing this discussion at her place. Please note that the post contains discussion of various aspects of the rape culture, as well as violent imagery, which may be triggering.
On Policing Femininity, and the Right to Be Wrong
This started out as a comment on Kate's post, but it got really long, so…
One of the real problems with feminist policing of expressions of traditional femininity (among many problems, which also include looking suspiciously like a thingy that polices from the other direction), is that it effectively ignores the reality that many feminist women (almost like real humans! wheeeeee!) tend to go through stages where they have different personal relationships with the accouterments of traditional femininity as they move through life accumulating experience and knowledge, and their feminist philosophy changes, deepens, broadens.
Many years ago, I rejected certain expressions of traditional femininity because I was a misogynist, raised in a misogynist culture to hate women (including myself). I was socialized to have axiomatic contempt for the feminine and all its associations with weakness and frivolity and being less than.
I was born into a world in which, given my particular set of personal circumstances and privileges, I was told that I was equal to men from the day I was born—and it was a real shock to me to find out that not everyone agreed. In theory, I was equal. In practice, I was decidedly not.
And the way I first learned to navigate that ego-rattling disparity was to assert myself as an Exceptional Woman. Not like those other women. Certainly not like those radical feminists. I wasn't like them. I laughed at dirty jokes and didn't take three hours to get ready and liked baseball. I was practically one of the boys.
Ugh. Embarrassing stuff.
I thought I was a feminist, but I only understood feminism in the most cursory way.
Then I was exposed to proper feminist theory for the first time—and suddenly I started REALLY LIKING being a woman, and other women, and all things feminine, in a way I had never liked any of those things before. It made me voraciously desirous of feminine things, many of which I'd always liked, deep down, but had rejected, shoving my affections to dark vaults at the bottom of my psychological sea. There they could be forgotten, or at least denied.
But feminism gave me permission to love the feminine, which I'd never had before. And I wanted to wear pink—not ironically—and to be pretty.
I lived on—and my perspective on the world changed, and I changed, and my feminism changed. Some of the expressions of traditional femininity I had embraced started to seem problematic to me. I didn't exactly ricochet back in the other direction, but I certainly felt less disposed toward, less fond of, certain expressions of femininity. Some of them felt, when on my body, on my skin, in my mouth, in my thoughts, like an artifice behind which I was hiding.
I lived on. Change. Etc. My life is not static. My thinking is not static. I interact with new people who introduce me to new ideas all the time. I am influenced by the world around me, which itself changes in ways that affect my thinking. I am influenced by the parts of myself that continue to emerge, and sometimes surprise me.
There has not been any point at which my personal feminism is/was "right" with regard to my expressions and/or rejections of femininity, according to every other feminist on the planet. It is a moving target, even for me, finding some balance between my feminism and my femininity.
All I have learned is not to judge, not to audit—because I have no idea where any other feminist is on her journey. I don't even know where I am on my own.
I don't want to be the police, and I don't want to be policed. What I want is the presumption I'm fumblefucking my way through this thing in good faith, that I don't want to make life any harder for any other person during my time on this rock.
What I want is the freedom to fuck up, and the right to be wrong.
One of the real problems with feminist policing of expressions of traditional femininity (among many problems, which also include looking suspiciously like a thingy that polices from the other direction), is that it effectively ignores the reality that many feminist women (almost like real humans! wheeeeee!) tend to go through stages where they have different personal relationships with the accouterments of traditional femininity as they move through life accumulating experience and knowledge, and their feminist philosophy changes, deepens, broadens.
Many years ago, I rejected certain expressions of traditional femininity because I was a misogynist, raised in a misogynist culture to hate women (including myself). I was socialized to have axiomatic contempt for the feminine and all its associations with weakness and frivolity and being less than.
I was born into a world in which, given my particular set of personal circumstances and privileges, I was told that I was equal to men from the day I was born—and it was a real shock to me to find out that not everyone agreed. In theory, I was equal. In practice, I was decidedly not.
And the way I first learned to navigate that ego-rattling disparity was to assert myself as an Exceptional Woman. Not like those other women. Certainly not like those radical feminists. I wasn't like them. I laughed at dirty jokes and didn't take three hours to get ready and liked baseball. I was practically one of the boys.
Ugh. Embarrassing stuff.
I thought I was a feminist, but I only understood feminism in the most cursory way.
Then I was exposed to proper feminist theory for the first time—and suddenly I started REALLY LIKING being a woman, and other women, and all things feminine, in a way I had never liked any of those things before. It made me voraciously desirous of feminine things, many of which I'd always liked, deep down, but had rejected, shoving my affections to dark vaults at the bottom of my psychological sea. There they could be forgotten, or at least denied.
But feminism gave me permission to love the feminine, which I'd never had before. And I wanted to wear pink—not ironically—and to be pretty.
I lived on—and my perspective on the world changed, and I changed, and my feminism changed. Some of the expressions of traditional femininity I had embraced started to seem problematic to me. I didn't exactly ricochet back in the other direction, but I certainly felt less disposed toward, less fond of, certain expressions of femininity. Some of them felt, when on my body, on my skin, in my mouth, in my thoughts, like an artifice behind which I was hiding.
I lived on. Change. Etc. My life is not static. My thinking is not static. I interact with new people who introduce me to new ideas all the time. I am influenced by the world around me, which itself changes in ways that affect my thinking. I am influenced by the parts of myself that continue to emerge, and sometimes surprise me.
There has not been any point at which my personal feminism is/was "right" with regard to my expressions and/or rejections of femininity, according to every other feminist on the planet. It is a moving target, even for me, finding some balance between my feminism and my femininity.
All I have learned is not to judge, not to audit—because I have no idea where any other feminist is on her journey. I don't even know where I am on my own.
I don't want to be the police, and I don't want to be policed. What I want is the presumption I'm fumblefucking my way through this thing in good faith, that I don't want to make life any harder for any other person during my time on this rock.
What I want is the freedom to fuck up, and the right to be wrong.
ERA Reintroduced Today
Neat-o:
Sure would be cool to hear our allegedly feminist president give a speech about how important the passage of the ERA would be for USian women.
Not that coasting on Ledbetter isn't an awesome demonstration of feminist principles and all, but maybe it's time to kick it up a notch, ahem.
This afternoon Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) re-introduced the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA currently has 160 co-sponsors in the House, including Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-WI), Chair of the Congressional Women's Caucus.The ERA was first introduced in Congress in 1923. It's basically the Chicago Cubs of constitutional amendments.
Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal spoke at a press conference today announcing the bill's re-introduction, stating, "Women and men deserve and need full equal rights. Without constitutional equality, too many women, and thereby too many families, are cheated. Americans overwhelmingly support constitutional equality. It is time—in fact, it's long overdue—for us to move forward."
...In response to the US Supreme Court's ruling in favor of Wal-Mart in the sex discrimination case, Representative Carolyn Maloney underscored the importance of passing the ERA: "The Wal-Mart case reviewed by the Supreme Court this week is a classic example of how far attitudes must still come. The facts of the case support the view that over a million women were systematically denied equal pay by the nation's largest employer."
The passage of the ERA is even more important today following Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's comment this year that the U.S. Constitution does not protect women from sex discrimination. In an interview with the California Lawyer, Scalia stated that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal justice under the law for all persons, does not prohibit sex discrimination under the laws of the United States or its states.
Sure would be cool to hear our allegedly feminist president give a speech about how important the passage of the ERA would be for USian women.
Not that coasting on Ledbetter isn't an awesome demonstration of feminist principles and all, but maybe it's time to kick it up a notch, ahem.
UC researchers find new anti-mosquito weapon
I found this inspirational list on MamaVision’s blog -Move forward eagerly, while embracing the now. -I am free to choose to live as I wish and to give priority to my desires. -Remember that your body only is not you. The sum of who you are is more important than your body. -I’ll definitely remember who Stephen Hawking is – but not who won Miss Universe’s last contest. -I am thankful for all the parts of my body that function correctly -I appreciate all the movements that my body let me perform -I am thankful for being able to touch, see, smell, hear and taste -“I don’t ask for more: the sky above me and the path under my feet.”Robert Louis Stevenson -Our physical body is a key part of our existence. -I listen to my intuition.
Found this list on Facebook written by Sarah and wanted to share. This just struck me as a really cool idea…add thoughts as they come about and read through them to reinforce positive reality. See list in process here
She’s a marathon runner (on and off mostly since she’s in school now) and usually runs San Diego’s Rock n Roll Marathon, but couldn’t this year due to school. And we were saying how we should get my dad to run it next year since he’s lost like 15 pounds now since he stopped drinking. Then I said I would run it, the half marathon at least. And at first I was just kinda joking around and saying it, but now I think I should really stick with this goal. I want to start training and maybe I could actually run/walk the half marathon next year. I’m gonna have to really train though because right now I can only run/walk like half a mile to a mile, and a half marathon is 13.1 miles. But I have until next summer. So I’m going to try my hardest to get there! If any of you are training for races or marathons, tips would be very much appreciated on how to get started training and where I should be running wise at certain points in the year I have to train.
Help?
Today was the first day of my new, and hopefully permanent, lifestyle change. Well, almost. I’ve already been working on eating healthier, but I haven’t been as committed to exercise. So today, I woke up at 7:30 and got my fitness on!
Goal: Healthy, Happy, Beautiful. I want to be in my best physical condition; I want to have a flat sexy tummy before Micah comes home in approx. 3 months.
HEALTH - Tabloid Sores (Nosaj Thing Rmx)
Being on a low-carb diet means that your protein sources have to be as low in carbs as anything else you eat. If you eat meat, for example, you can only eat it breaded and fried if the breading is low-carb. The same goes for meatloaf, which typically has many more carbs than you would suspect. Not all meat is carb-free by itself, either. Read on to learn how to choose the protein sources you need without the carbs you don’t.
-If you eat meat, most cuts of beef, pork, poultry and lamb have less than a carb per serving. How you cook or prepare them can change that, however. Avoid any kind of liver or any internal organs, like chicken giblets. With the exception of ricotta, cottage cheese and Gjetost (or Brunost, as this brown Norwegian cheese is also called), cheese is also a good low-carb source of protein.
-If you eat fish and seafood, fish has no carbs. Seafood can, however. Oysters, mussles, clams and abalone can have the most. Still, the carb content for a modest serving is low. For example, 3 oz. of cooked Pacific oysters has 8.4 carbs.
-If you do not eat meat, fish, or seafood, try seitan. It has the highest amount of protein of the vegetarian meat substitutes. Plus, it is a good source of iron and has little fat and no cholesterol. You can make seitan at home; but you can also buy it at a natural foods store. Use it as you would beef. You can buy a chicken-flavored seitan, as well. Another good source of protein is tofu.
-Drink soy milk for extra protein. Choose one without sweetening so that you can have the benefits of soy protein without unnecessary carbs.
-Don’t forget to eat your vegetables. They have protein, too. Beans and peas have as much protein as the same amount of tofu. Broccoli and asparagus have half as much protein as the same amount of tofu.
While the Congressional Budget Office has said that only 7 percent of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) will have to switch to subsidized-exchange policies in 2014, a McKinsey survey which included more than 1,300 employers found that about 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI after 2014, when Affordable Care Act will come into effect. The survey also found that at least 30 percent of employers would gain financially if they did not offer ESI benefits, and more than 85 percent of employees would remain at their jobs even if their employer stopped offering ESI, although about 60 percent would expect increased compensation.
Read More from McKinsey Here.
While the Congressional Budget Office has said that only 7 percent of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) will have to switch to subsidized-exchange policies in 2014, a McKinsey survey which included more than 1,300 employers found that about 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI after 2014, when Affordable Care Act will come into effect. The survey also found that at least 30 percent of employers would gain financially if they did not offer ESI benefits, and more than 85 percent of employees would remain at their jobs even if their employer stopped offering ESI, although about 60 percent would expect increased compensation. Read More from McKinsey Here.
Medic Mobile Announces The First Mobile SIM App For Healthcare
SIM apps can operate on 80% of the world’s phones from $15 handsets to Android smartphones – and Medic’s new implementation of this technology brings data collection to a new level of accessibility and affordability.
But researchers at UC Riverside and the National Institutes of Health have identified an odor that can confuse mosquitoes and camouflage their prey. Find out more.