Animal people looking for good organizations to give your money to, I beseech of you, please ignore PETA, who seems to spend most of their budget getting young women to get naked in public as publicity stunts. If you love both animals and people, look instead to less sexy but much more humane organizations like the Humane Society, who actually have done a bang-up job of using their issue of animal welfare to highlight the problem of domestic violence. From Salon, I see that the effort from organizations like the Humane Society, PAWS, the ASPCA, and the Humane Association (and no doubt many other animal organizations that don’t see the need to parade naked women around to make a point) to improve the public’s understanding of the link between animal abuse and domestic abuse have led to an article in O about the link.
For people who understand how domestic violence really works, this link is not surprising. Abusers use any leverage they can to terrorize their victims and break their will, and will happily resort to abusing and killing pets for that end. There’s also the added incentive of using the pet as leverage to keep your victim from escaping, because she knows that fleeing without or even with the pet might result in the abuser retaliating by killing her pet. In order to make pet safety less of a barrier to women fleeing abusive homes, the Humane Society has put together a list of 170 safe haven programs, where both the victim and her pets are cared for by the shelters, using various methods.
From Roy, I found this great study that shows that the sexual assault rate at the University of New Hampshire saw a decline from 1988 until 2000, and then it held steady after that. The reason for the decline appears to be more education and better services.
Overall, UNH has found that the number of unwanted sexual experiences on campus declined significantly from 1988 to 2000, during which time the university established a crisis center and put a number of prevention programs in place. However, there has been little change since 2000 — prompting a need for more creative, broad-based responses, said Victoria Banyard, an associate professor of psychology and a co-author.
I find this interesting, because the reduction in the rape rate that’s been national and somewhat continuous ever since feminists made rape a big issue shows that the primary criticism feminists have—that ours is a “rape culture”, i.e. that rape is a product of a culture that is tolerant or even approving of it—was right, and when you change the culture, you change the rate of rape.
I was gaping in awe at the elephant in the room during this interview with Paul H-O, an artist and art journalist who has made a documentary about his 5-year relationship with Cindy Sherman, in which he garners the world’s pity by dwelling on how hard it is to be overshadowed by the Great Artist. Finally, finally, the damn interviewer asked H-O the question that really should have been up towards the front, especially considering how Sherman’s art examines gender and therefore there’s no way you can’t just ignore the issue.
For centuries women have gotten used to being the second fiddle.
I know. I know what it’s like to be second fiddle, and I acknowledge my inferiority to the greater body. But then, I got tired of it. I’m sick of fabulous people. It’s just a bunch of gas being blown up everyone’s skirt. If Sean Penn doesn’t know who you are, he’s not going to blow smoke in your face, but I don’t have anything to say to him, either.
Then that’s it. They don’t discuss what struck me as the major issue—the very premise of H-O’s movie would be laughable if the genders were reversed. Not that women don’t get to biography relationships they’ve had with Great Artists, but in order to make it interesting, and especially to get people feeling sorry for you, you got to come up with more than, “Well, people tripped over me at cocktail parties to talk to the Great Artist,” or “His Rolodex was like ten times fatter than mine,” both of which are examples of what made H-O so fed up with the relationship he had to get out. Female partners of male Great Artists tend to get the public’s attention and sympathy if their partners are drunks, abusers, try to shoot them, steal their work and pass it off on their own, seduced them when there was a huge age difference, or were otherwise weird men that are hard to tolerate. If a woman dared tried to scratch out the tiniest complaint about being overshadowed, she’d probably be called a whiner, and probably rightfully so to a degree. (I mean, you know what you’re getting into with your Great Artist lover.) The proper role of women who are coupled with Great Artists is to be quietly supportive, to the degree that women who merely buck expectations by having careers of their own that shine in their own right—even if they are less talented or famous than their husbands—open themselves up as targets for misogynist scapegoating by the public. Think: Courtney Love or Yoko Ono.
Not that I’m trying to bash this guy. He’s not doing anything outrageously sexist or cruel. He doesn’t demonize Sherman, though that’s something that does well at the box office. But it’s the whole situation where he’s getting sympathy and attention because he’s a man that had a role—second banana—that’s reserved for women. I don’t think he’d be getting attention otherwise.
So I just listened to a recent edition of Radio Lab about bioengineering and chimeras and the possibilities of blending genes, and in the show was this really amazingly cool story. Basically, this woman they interview needed a kidney transplant. (That’s not the cool part.) They go to family members first, of course, and they tested their DNA for a match. And they found that her sons…..were not her sons. They were her husband’s sons, but they weren’t a genetic match to her. So they retested her, same result. So they desperately tested a lot of different tissues around her body, after she demonstrated that she did in fact give birth to these boys, and they found out that the reason for all this was some of her body had one set of DNA and another had another. Her blood had one, but her reproductive system had another.
I felt bad for the lady. Obviously, this whole situation unnerved her and rattled her to the bone, and it’s too bad. I can’t help but think that if I found out that I’ve got the genetic material to make two people, I’d be stoked.* What great cocktail party banter! You could probably convince people you had superpowers and shit. I don’t truck with the more superstitious need to have individuality strongly defined in religious or biological terms—a person is a social construct that I think is best defined around the concept of the lived experience of having your consciousness and your body and your memories. But most people probably don’t think very much about the constructed nature of identity, and thus a revelation like this was pretty rattling. Most people think what you are is what you are, that your race and ethnicity and gender are set in stone and that your unique personhood is something special. But really, it’s not. Human beings are what we socially define them to be, and the boundaries can be blurred as the social understandings of these things are blurred.
I really, really like the design of this T-shirt, I have to say before I say anything else. It’s brilliant. Really captures the sense of shame that rape victims have, a sense of shame that, in a just world, would be the property of rapists, who are all too often belligerently unashamed of what they did.
In a fair world, saying you were raped should cause you no more shame than saying, “I was mugged,” or “I was carjacked.” In our world, however, it’s a crushing thing to talk about. I feel guilty bringing it up on this blog that it’s happened to me, though I know intellectually that it’s very important for those of us who can talk about to talk about it, to get the message to other victims: You aren’t alone. Which of course is the main attraction of this T-shirt designed by Jennifer Baumgardner as something of a sequel to her controversial “I had an abortion” T-shirt. (Hat tip.)
I appreciate the idea that visibility is critical to getting people to understand that women who get abortions or rape victims—two groups dehumanized and demonized in an effort to strip them of their rights—are human beings. I was in full support of the “I had an abortion” T-shirt, because to me, it’s not complicated. The anti-choice movement tries like hell to erase women’s existence, or at least our individuality, and the T-shirt undermines that. It also clarifies that abortion is nothing to be ashamed of. For me, “I had an abortion” should be as morally loaded as “I had a Pap smear”. The underpinnings of the moral angst about abortion—the idea that a woman has no right to pry loose a flag a man has planted in her (even if he agrees with her decision, as most men in this case do), or that she should be punished for having sex—offend me to the core, and that many women go through anguish over getting abortions depresses me. They shouldn’t feel bad for having sex or having autonomy. In fact, they should be proud of themselves for taking care of themselves despite all the misogynist messages out there that women don’t have a right to take care of ourselves. People balked at the idea that the “I had an abortion” T-shirts smacked of that mortal female sin of pride, but I applaud it. Women should be proud of doing right by themselves in a world where that’s socially disavowed.
I’ve seen this commercial at a couple of blogs, and in both cases, the blogger defended it, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone think that it’s anything but delightful. I’m sure the word “beaver” was not originally meant to be a nice word, but obviously, this commercial is reclaiming it in an effective way. But perhaps it was ready to be reclaimed? I mean, I’ve always wondered why “beaver” is supposed to be an insulting word. Who doesn’t like beavers? They are cute, they work hard, and sure, they could bite you (which vaginas can’t, though no one tell Chris Matthews), but on the whole, beavers have a positive role in our society. “Pussy” or any other cat pun seems meaner, because while cats are actually awesome, they have an unfortunate reputation with fierce authoritarians who dislike how a cat can reduce your pretensions with a haughty stare. But I can’t for the life of me imagine someone having a low opinion of beavers, so I never got why this word falls into the pantheon of ugly words for cunt.
I mean, it would be better if it was “otter”, I suppose. Really captures the playful angle, and would make for an even better visual pun in commercials. But “beaver” is not so bad.
Fitted just for you, Michelle.
The standard argument issued by professional anti-feminists is, “There’s no such thing as sexism anymore. Not really. A couple of slurs here and there, but what really matters is that women don’t have any pressures or obstacles on them anymore.” The irony in this is that their very existence proves otherwise. Conservative women who seek roles as leaders or pundits are largely stuck in the anti-feminist ghetto. Even though female columnists at Townhall are allowed to write about other things besides the evils of feminism, it seems they’ve got a 33% minimum requirement of feminist-bashing in order to talk about other things. I often think Phyllis Schlafly would have been happier peddling her strange brand of economic theory, but telling other women to step off and get into the kitchen was her meal ticket to even being allowed to have columns, radio shows, and organizational leadership.
To be fair, there’s not a whole lot of reasons outside of professional pride to get out of the ghetto. Anti-feminism often makes feminist writers grind our teeth in jealousy as we sit around in our used clothes and cheap shoes. You don’t have to be a clever writer, or smart, or anything really. If you have a pussy and are willing to argue that misogyny is the hip new thing girls are doing these days, then prepare to start writing yourself some checks. At this point, I’m required by law to quote this screamingly funny post by Dahlia Lithwick, who is almost enough reason for me to start reading The XX Factor:
You may have already seen this appalling disaster of a post by Kim “I Don’t Even Pretend That I Don’t Hate Women” du Toit, where he takes it upon himself to explain men’s (and by men, he means himself) views of marriage so that we too can obtain and hang onto marriage with an appallingly misogynist (which he wrongly assumes is all men). Why would women want this? I suppose du Toit thinks we’re another species, or perhaps robots programmed to get a man, any man. We’re all familiar with the argument, “Give up your rights/self-esteem or assholes won’t want to be married to you,” but du Toit really puts his own, insane spin on it.
After quoting some Dr. Helen doing her schtick about how it’s okay to hate women, because she does, too (not a direct quote, but sort of the meta-theme of her writing), he dives right into how marriage is basically for men like a car purchase.
I think that men keep a running ledger going in their subconscious—all the good/great things about their relationship on the one side, and all the bad/terrible things on the other. At some point or another, if the perceived negatives outweigh the positives, the man will quit the relationship—I mean, just bail out of the whole thing—and usually with a swiftness and finality which confounds women.
He forgot the part where men check Consumer Reports to see if they can get fair trade for a non-cooking bitch in order to get the down payment on one who knows her way around a kitchen better. If they don’t have that section, they totally should, of course. Dr. Helen says it would be okay.
Sadly, I’m not exaggerating.
Dontcha wish your girlfriend would settle like me?
Thanks to reader Michelle for sending me this beautiful horror show of an article about the importance of settling (for women, of course). It reads exactly like one of those women who got an abortion and regrets it and wants to deny you that choice. That level of delusion about how sure you are that the path not taken was the superior one.
To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist — vehemently, even — that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know — no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure — feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.
Oh, I know — I’m guessing there are single 30-year-old women reading this right now who will be writing letters to say that the women I know aren’t widely representative, that I’ve been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and basically, that I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Thanks for doing my work for me! In exchange, I’ll be generous enough to point out that my lack of desperation to get married and have kids has a lot to do with a general unwillingness to get married and have kids. Some people are allergic to cat hair. I’m allergic to strollers. Tragic, I know.
Congrats to Jessica for the big time coverage in the NY Times. Anything that gets the word out about the feminist blogosphere is a net good for us.
That said: Aye, I hate the catfight narrative the mainstream media puts on any situation where two women disagree. This article contrasts Marcia A. Pappas, who wrote an overheated press release on behalf of NY NOW accusing Senator Kennedy of betraying women because he endorsed Obama, with Jessica Valenti, who owns the website that denounced Pappas for claiming to speak for all women on this. (Feministing could have gone further and pointed out that the hyper-focus on the achievements of a wealthy white woman running for President over and beyond all other issues of more immediate importance to workaday Americans, half of whom are female, only reinforces criticisms that feminism is a movement more worried about a fraction of all women, even to the detriment of others. I disagree that this is true, and when someone lives up to that stereotype like Pappas did, I get pretty angry. I think having a female President is a very important goal. But I don’t think it outstrips all other concerns.) The article could have focused on the substantive differences between the two women, but instead they chose to do a fucked-up hatchet job on both that implies that Jessica is a lightweight (untrue) and Pappas is an ax-wielding man-hater (I don’t know her, but I bet that’s not true).
Before the article gets around to even mentioning the actual views of the women involved, clothes must be discussed.
No FRT today, because I have to fly out this afternoon, and I want to get my post up about Nancy Keenan’s speech at UT last night to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade early for Feminism Friday. Don’t worry; I still intend to Blog For Choice Tuesday—I have a post in my head touching on groups that inadvertently claim that black women are committing genocide against themselves and on Feminists For Life writing Amnesty International to protest women who somehow appear to be raping themselves for that—but I want to talk about Keenan’s speech while it’s still fresh in my head. I was even more firmly decided last night that the soundbite culture has to go (and blogs, with our abilities to speak in entire paragraphs, can help fight it). I had always heard soundbites that Keenan was walking around talking about the “moral complexity” of abortion, and it got my back up against the wall, because I heard that to mean “the people who think abortion is killing have a point”, and I don’t actually think this is an issue that’s painted in shade of gray. “Shades of gray” only comes into the equation for me when actual, feeling beings are killed or forced to suffer for reasons that are understandable,* but as fetuses are unfeeling balls of flesh that have brain activity far below the sort of animals we thoughtlessly kill in animal shelters and farms every day, I find there to be no complexity. In a battle between what is still technically a feeling-free parasite on a woman’s body and a living, breathing, feeling woman, the latter wins hands down, and there’s no complexity or shades of gray there.**
But when I listened to Keenan elaborate on “moral complexity”, I realized she wasn’t conceding that anti-choicers had a point. She was saying more that the people in the mushy middle feel like they’re in a moral quandary about abortion, because it’s all mixed up with various other issues about sex, commitment, self-image, family, ickiness, and other touchy subjects and thus most people refuse to really think the issue through and come to the correct conclusion: Anything so complex and personal should be a matter of personal conscience. The term “moral complexity” is a way of saying to those people, “Yes, we’re aware that all these buttons are pushed for you, but you should really talk and think this through anyway, and ask, should the government really be making the decision to force you to have a child?” In fact, she went on to talk about faith and god, which is again something that often makes me get my back up in soundbite terms, but in a full-length speech it was clear she was arguing that abortion is best framed as a 1st amendment issue in the face of Bible-thumpers who want to put their god on your body.
Every few months or so, there’s an uproar over a woman who dares to breastfeed her child in public. In the latest incident to catch the eye of the denizens over at WingNutDaily, a lawsuit was slapped on a Ruby Tuesday restaurant in St. Lucie, Florida for ordering a woman to stop feeding her child at the booth she was seated in.
Dee Dee Olsen claims a manager at the eatery instructed her to nurse her infant daughter inside the ladies’ room, or else leave the premises.Now I don’t know about the claims of emotional distress or “continued mental and physical anxiety” cited in the claim by Olsen, but that Ruby Tuesday franchise is legally in the wrong.Olsen opted to pay her bill and leave the restaurant, but claims the incident caused her severe emotional distress.
According to Florida law, mothers are permitted unconditionally to breastfeed anywhere, public or private, covered or uncovered.
The relevant statute says, “The breastfeeding of a baby is an important and basic act of nurture which must be encouraged in the interests of maternal and child health and family values. A mother may breastfeed her baby in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be, irrespective of whether or not the nipple of the mother’s breast is covered during or incidental to the breastfeeding.”
The Port St. Lucie News reports Olsen’s lawsuit claims the restaurant violated that rule and illegally discriminates against mothers and infants by forcing them to feed in a restroom or outside of the restaurant.
What I don’t understand is the logic of so many people up in arms over the boobie that they’d prefer to subject a woman and baby to the filthy environs of a restroom rather than simply averting their eyes if the sight of nursing gives them the vapors (see the poll). We’re not talking changing diapers on the restaurant table, for god’s sake. What is wrong with these people? Oh we know what’s wrong. Check out this Freeper thread about a case in Kentucky, where a similar incident occurred at an Applebee’s. There was one voice of sanity in the swamps…
A woman breast feeds a baby in public, what’s the big deal? The hypocrites in this country are beyond belief as if the sight of a piece of the woman’s breast area the size of an “M&M peanut candy” when exposed is going to destory our morality in America is ridiculous. I remember ten years ago our hypocrites in the media would show Black women’s nipples in African documentaries. Today those offending “nipples” are digitally edited out. I have more of a problem with having to observe men wearing shaggy pants with their butts hanging out or other members of society who reside in large cities scratching their crotch in public.Imagine what President Pastor Huckabee thinks about the boobie.
I’m sorry, but Matt is not only wrong, he is small and unimaginative in his thinking. All the other sports have half-naked women prancing around for crap pay to reassure anxious men that they haven’t gone homo in the past 5 minutes. If hockey wants to stand out, it needs to be different.
I suggest instead that hockey games have a squadron of well-muscled but slender men wearing fur-lined hot pants, ice skates and nothing else to skate around doing risque cheers about hefty sticks and landing one in the net. At half-time,* they could skate out and do routines that involve a lot of bending over and shaking their fur-clad tushes at the crowd. For the pleasure of comporting themselves with such dignity, they can be paid a whopping $25 a game. And anyone who raises nary a peep about it will immediately be accused of being humorless, anti-sex, just jealous, and fun-killing.
*Or whatever. What I know about hockey could fit into a thimble. I assumed it was basketball on skates.
UNICEF’s photo of the year:
No, not a father and daughter as you would assume. This picture, taken in Afghanistan, is of a couple on their wedding day. The child bride is 11.
Upon discovering that Jamie Lynn “How’d that happen?” Spears has been dating her boyfriend that got her pregnant since she was 13 and he was 16, Mommagrrl asked:
So, they started dating when she was 13? I wasn’t allowed out with a boy when I was 13. Am I naive? Isn’t 13 really young for dating?
I wouldn’t say that it is absolutely, but it’s certainly too young to be dating outside of your immediate age group.
But I bring these examples up to illustrate a simple point for Feminism Friday: In a patriarchy, women are basically treated like minors and thus the distinction between “adult” and “child” is not a matter of maturity, but of whether or not you’ve been moved from the ownership of your father to the ownership of your husband/lover. In both these examples, you have heavily patriarchal religions that make it easy to deny women the gradual maturity that men have. Either you’re a virgin child or a breeding adult, but the idea that maturity is a mental state is denied women. Because only our bodies count, not our minds.
Fun girls are not completely unknown in the world of comedy.
Meghan O’Rourke tackles the stereotype of women in comedies, especially romantic comedies, as joy killers, after Katherine Heigl got pissed on in the media for telling the truth about how Knocked Up fed off the standard trope of men as fun-loving (if irresponsible) and women as responsible but tedious and boring. It was hard not to be defensive of Knocked Up, and not just because it was so funny, but also because Apatow at least tried to show the parallels between men’s fears and women’s fears about adulthood. He grasped that women do have inner lives, but he just failed to write the female characters with the same understanding he brought to the male characters. He showed a glimmer of understanding that the endless rotation of work in a woman’s life is not necessarily something that women want but have embraced because they feel they don’t have a choice, whereas most movies and shows and commercials that position the men as boisterous children and women as disapproving authority figures seem to think that women are mysterious non-human creatures who get off on being fundamentally unlikeable.
It’s a real disappointment to see this standard sitcom trope continue on into the movies made by bona fide Gen Xers, because one would hope that those of us growing up after the feminist revolution would have a view of women that posits that they are people, with inner lives and hopes and dreams and a sense of humor, instead of functional and oddly demanding appliances. But it’s a zombie sexism we’re dealing with here, and not so easy to kill.
Feminism Friday post. It takes me awhile, but this post is more about the concept of masculinity than about porn, really.
Courtney Martin has an interesting review up of Robert Jensen’s new book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. I really like the review, and she captures a lot of the thoughts I had when I saw Jensen give a speech on pornography—basically a combination of knowing he’s right on one hand, but also feeling he overplays that hand. He’s absolutely right that there’s a huge market for misogynist porn that feeds both a serious anger a lot of men feel towards women in light of declining male power. Watching a lot of the kinds of porn he describes, you get the general idea that the theme is, “Well, you may have a right to compete with us in school and work, but in the end, you’re just a fucktoy.” He’s right that the porn he is describing is wildly racist and a lot of it isn’t even remotely erotic, unless you’re conditioned to find misogyny arousing.
He’s also right that guys who watch this stuff and downplay its impact need to own their shit, and realize that even if they don’t necessarily want to believe they are hating on women, they are in fact getting off on just that and until they get out of denial, things won’t get better for them. Martin assumes her shock at the stuff he describes stems from her lack of contact with pornography, but I’ve seen more than my share of the two-dicks-up-one-ass-spit-in-her-face-make-her-cry stuff and I still flinch to read stuff like this:
I won’t expose you to his analysis at length here, but suffice it to say that he reports such dialogue as this being heard: “Can these fuck toys be any dumber?”
When I say “fucktoy”, then, I’m not employing hyperbole, but a direct quote.
In my link to Jeff’s brilliant “Explainer” post, Raznor commented:
It’s good, but a bit harsh. Not saying that MRAs don’t deserve harshness, but I would have liked more about legitimate complaints (men being more likely to die on the job for instance) so that he could more effectively argue that feminism is the better means of repairing such complaints. That’s what I’m used to in reading about MRAs from you and from Barry Deutsch.
I thought that was a reasonable point, but that the issue of legit complaints from MRAs really requires a separate post. So, stealing Jeff’s “Explainer” idea, here’s that post.
Don’t MRAs have some good points, though?
Er, they say things that are factually accurate. But that’s a bit different than having a point. You can correctly observe that someone has a broken ankle while not having a point that the way to cure it is to do a rain dance.
Okay, okay, I get it. But the issue is that if they say things that seem true, that helps their recruiting efforts. Shouldn’t we deal honestly with the stuff they say that aren’t blatant lies and bullshit? Some of the stuff they say that shows that there’s unfairness to men does convince some that there’s no patriarchy.
Good point. Shoot.
What about the draft? Only men get drafted.
It’s indicative of the intellectual emptiness of MRA thought that in order to show discrimination against men, they have to reach for a practice that hasn’t been activated in the U.S. since women weren’t allowed into the Ivy Leagues or to sit on juries in Texas. A dearth of modern examples causes them to resort to such a silly tactic. But they like to bring up the draft, because they know that most feminists are squishy liberals and can be counted on to digress on why we think the draft itself is problematic, etc. while they run around doing the touchdown dance because we didn’t immediately say that women should be drafted.
Feminism Friday entry, to help build up the ongoing collected works series.
I love the Guttmacher Institute, I really do. In the reproductive justice debates, they’re a peerless organization, adamantly pro-choice, but so thorough and unassailable in their research that even the SOBs on the anti-choice side, the people who peddle lies about abortion causing depression and breast cancer, have to give their respects to the Guttmacher Institute. One of the valuable things they do is provide the necessary research to back up commonsense assertions from reproductive rights advocates that anti-choicers assail, precisely because there’s not a lot of research to prove things that people basically already know to be true. For instance, it was the Guttmacher Institute that did the research showing that the vast majority of Americans—95%—have premarital sex and this has been the trend for decades. It’s one of those things that reality-based thinkers might wonder at, since it’s so obviously true that it almost seems pointless to research it. But “abstinence-only” education has been shoved down the throats of school districts nationwide on the theory that avoiding premarital sex is a common enough choice that we can build the curricula around it, and this research is priceless in making the ninnies who think that if you just don’t tell kids what condoms are, they’ll wait until their wedding night for sex look like the blathering idiots they are.
Anyhow, Guttmacher just released another “no duh” study that will nonetheless be critical in shutting down anti-choicers who make bad faith arguments about how they just looooooove babies, when it’s clear that it’s more about punishing women for having a sexuality. The research shows that worldwide, abortion bans don’t work at all in reducing the abortion rate, not one bit.
Jeff rules. Seriously, just read this post. A small, tempting sample so you click over and read it all:
Is that like the “National Association for the Advancement of White People” or the folks who think the Christian Right is oppressed?
Yes, the Men’s Rights Movement is the same kind of animal. All of these groups share a common worldview, that the traditionally oppressed groups, be they women, minorities, or non-Christians, have somehow seized control of the country and are systematically denying the straight, white, Christian men their rights.
That’s insane!
Well, yes, but don’t ignore the reason for the pushback: men’s traditional privileges really are under attack. It’s just that these rights, like the right to beat and rape your wife with impunity, are anathema to a truly free and equitable society.
So they agitate for the right to rape and assault?
Not in so many words. But the MRAs do certainly seem preoccupied by the loss of that privilege. Look at the Glenn Sacks/Helen Smith interview we talked about early this week. It was all about how the Violence Against Women Act is a debacle for men, because, they say, men get sent to jail unfairly in domestic disputes. VAWA is a traditional hobby-horse for the MRA set.
Can we relinquish the self-flagellation whip?
Carol Hanisch’s 2006 introduction to her famous 1969 essay titled “The Personal Is Political” is being passed around feminist blogging circles, and it’s always a good time to revisit this essay, which was the origin of the famous, and widely misinterpreted, phrase. The phrase is often used as a bludgeon to guilt-trip women about everything from dieting to getting married to staying at home with the children, but as Hanisch clarifies in her introduction, it’s about realizing the political origins of your personal struggles.
But [liberal male activists] belittled us no end for trying to bring our so-called “personal problems” into the public arena - especially “all those body issues” like sex, appearance, and abortion. Our demands that men share the housework and childcare were likewise deemed a personal problem between a woman and her individual man. The opposition claimed if women would just “stand up for themselves” and take more responsibility for their own lives, they wouldn’t need to have an independent movement for women’s liberation. What personal initiative wouldn’t solve, they said, “the revolution” would take care of if we would just shut up and do our part. Heaven forbid that we should point out that men benefit from oppressing women.
Unfortunately, since she coined the phrase, Hanisch has seen it used in what appears to be the exact opposite of how it was intended—by demanding that political change will only come if individual women take personal action and that the best way for feminists to get anything done is forever run around guilt-tripping each other about the compromises we make to get by in the patriarchy. Most flamewars that flare up in the feminist blogs come from someone basically trying to revoke someone else’s feminist card because she doesn’t individually resist male domination in the way the complainer feels she should.
I can honestly say items like this blow my mind. (Via.) Who buys something that broadcasts that you are such a sniveling baby that the very idea of a woman with power is enough to emasculate you? Maybe you are a man with such a tenuous grip on your own manhood and own self-identity that your balls shrivel into your body at the idea of a powerful woman, but wouldn’t the sane reaction to knowing this about yourself be deep shame and an attempt to hide your lack of self-worth? Who brags about being such a poor excuse for a man, much less a human being?
Jeff Fecke has a really good post up about the bewildering amount of man-hating required to uphold the justifications for the patriarchy. Specifically, he details out how a bunch of golf pants-wearing NRO weenies have spent the day telling themselves a tale about how men are barely restrained beasts who, without the power of pussy to tame them, would be running around raping and pillaging and killing small animals with their bare hands to drink their blood and eat their flesh raw. Thank god for women gently submitting to men, though, which is what civilizes them and turns them into golf pants-wearing weenies.
Jeff asks an important question about this theory of gender essentialism:
Melissa links to an article by Kimberley Strassel of the WSJ called “What Women Want”, advice for the GOP to woo female voters. It’s tough for me to be too hard on this article, because, partisan hack that I am routinely accused of being, I really hope that the Republicans follow her advice, which can be summed up as, “Keep doing what you’re doing”, i.e. courting the vote of women who’ve married affluent men. The only problem is that Strassel seems to think that “marrying affluent men” is a generational tic, and that my generation figured that one out and the two older ones than us didn’t.
The Democrats’ own views of what counts for “women’s issues” are stuck back in the disco days, about the time Ms. Clinton came of political age. Under the title “A Champion for Women,” the New York senator’s Web site promises the usual tired litany of “equal pay” and a “woman’s right to choose.” Mr. Richardson pitches a new government handout for women on “family leave” and waxes nostalgic for the Equal Rights Amendment. Give these Boomers some bell bottoms and “The Female Eunuch,” and they’d feel right at home. Polls show Ms. Clinton today gets her best female support from women her age and up.
The rest of the female population has migrated into 2007. Undoubtedly quite a few do care about abortion rights and the Violence Against Women Act. But for the 60% of women who today both scramble after a child and hold a job, these culture-war touchpoints aren’t their top voting priority. Their biggest concerns, not surprisingly, hew closely to those of their male counterparts: the war in Iraq, health care, the economy. But following close behind are issues that are more unique to working women and mothers. Therein rests the GOP opportunity.
I really like the idea that the only women who have a real care for or need for reproductive rights protection are post-menopausal. I don’t doubt that a lot of older women show huge amounts of support for reproductive rights, but at this point, it’s out of the goodness of their hearts and the memory of how liberating it was to have the symbolic victory for the idea that women own our own bodies that Roe was. Feminists will actually be the first to agree with Strassel that women who grew up post-Roe don’t rate reproductive rights as high as perhaps they should, for the same reason that voters rarely rate, “access to garbage pick-up and fire departments” as high on their issues list, though these are surely priorities for most voters. The reason is that we take these things for granted—the problem is that with reproductive rights, we shouldn’t, since the powerful conservative movement has chipped them away right under our noses.
Wow, there’s almost nothing I can add to what Violet said about this. The post is from a British police officer, who has published the supervisor notes after rapes have been reported to the police. Savvy readers (read: not MRAs) will notice a slight difference in how victims are treated according to gender.
1. Incident:
Caller reporting her 17-year-old daughter was raped last night by two named offenders after going out drinking at her local pub. Daughter is very distressed and sore.
Update from supervisor:
Officers to attend and establish the following:
1. Is the daughter making an allegation?
2. Names and descriptions of alleged offenders.
3. How much alcohol was consumed?
4. If allegation is being made, locate scene.
5. Will the victim attend court?
6. If allegation could be true, will she consent to a medical?2. Incident:
Caller reporting her 18-year-old son was raped last night by a male known to him, following a party at his house. Son is in pain and upset.
Update from supervisor:
Officers to attend and establish the following:
1. Locate the crime scene.
2. Arrange medical examination and take victim to rape suite.
3. Name/description of offender.
4. Preserve forensic evidence, seize clothing.
Jessica at Feministing is collecting examples of double standards for an upcoming book on the issue, and I think this is a big one—the double standard that says if a man is assaulted, he is a victim, but if a woman is assaulted, she must have done something to bring it on herself.
My heart goes out to both victims, of course. It’s a shame that only one looks like he’ll be seeing justice.
Plenty of feminist goodness at the 43rd carnival, by the way.
Feminism Friday entry.
Other feminist bloggers have written about this extremely silly article in the NY Times about a supposed trend of women eating red meat on dates to impress men. There’s no real way to measure these things, and since there’s nothing new about the various pressures that make even choosing dinner a gendered, sexualized act, I’m skeptical that there’s any such trend. But I do get why you’d want to write an article like this—first dates are situations where you’re trying to make pretty big judgments on people with very little information, so it’s not completely silly to suggest that people order dinner with an eye towards saying something about themselves to their date. (What my dinner choices always, always say: I am a vegetarian, a fact that gets over-analyzed to death.) That said, this article is a train wreck of stereotypes and plain weirdness, and it’s more evidence for the pile that Carol Adams wasn’t off-base to write about the sexual politics of meat.
Eating meat, particularly red meat, is gendered as masculine and being a vegetarian is gendered as feminine, I think it’s safe to say. With that in mind, this article reveals the sort of casual disdain for feminine things that puts women in such a bind, particularly when trying to fulfill our social role of being pleasing to men. You’re supposed to be feminine, of course, but you’re also supposed to embrace masculine things in a non-threatening way to be appealing. The movie There’s Something About Mary sent up these ridiculous expectations on women in an amusing way. Mary had the best of both worlds—rail-thin, beautiful, generous while also being big into sports and beer and man food.
Another example of the impossible expectations put on women to be “perfect”—the virgin/whore dichotomy. Or specifically the sense you get that you’re both supposed to be sexually modest and cautious (feminine) while still being able to be adventurous (masculine) to please your partner once you’re firmly placed in a committed relationship. This impossible dichotomy is on full display in the sexual “purity” movement—girls are told that they should not have sex and often not even kiss or hold hands until their wedding night, but the sex that happens within minutes/hours of having your first kiss ever is supposed to be amazing, because amateurs are just the absolute best at everything, apparently.
It’s Thursday night, but a good time to submit a post for Feminism Friday.
Update: August Pollak alerted me to an article in Campus Progress about the conference, an article that seems a bit more honest about the ugly sexism on display. Contrary to my theory that men act like dicks a lot of the time because they’re living under some pretty ugly pressures, the ladies at IWF seem to think that men were born dogs. But you know, having an empathetic attitude towards male feelings evidence that one is a man-hater. You only love men if you see them as no better than leg-humping dogs.
I can’t say why exactly Allison Kasic of the IWF fascinates me so much. I think it’s because she’s smart enough to have clued into the fact that there’s disillusioning and miserable about the attitudes of so many young men towards young women, but she comes to the exact wrong conclusion about how to handle the issue, arguing that instead of combating the misogyny that’s handed down to young men as a birthright, we reinforce the sexist notion that female sexuality is more of a commodity than a set of autonomous female desires. She’s got a write-up of IWF sex conference that the evil sleeper cell winger Dr. Drew spoke at, and it’s just a train wreck of false assumptions and pie-in-the-sky hopes about how to coerce a less contemptuous attitude towards women from the frateratti.
By the way, to calm the nerves that a paragraph like the before invariably ruffles, I’m not saying all college age men are pigs. But it’s been my experience that there’s a lot of pressure on men when they’re younger to demonstrate a certain level of contempt for young women in order to satisfy their male peers that they’re all man. As they get older, their priorities shift and some of the compulsive misogyny falls away for a lot of guys that were only into it half-heartedly. But when you’re actually in college, sometimes the amount of pressure on men to be disdainful towards women can be stifling. In fact, my heart goes out on a level to a lot of young men who find themselves in a situation where respect for women is simply incompatible with having camaraderie with men in college. It’s this tension that I think is driving a lot of the unhappiness with men coming from the college women at this conference that Kasic talks about.
Warning: Tomboyish joy is atypical.
Um, Feminism Friday post on Saturday. Enjoy!
So, Salon has this article up about a new wedding trend of “trashing the dress”, which is, like 95% of wedding traditions, mostly another photo opportunity.* Still, the writer Izzy Grinspan painted the new tradition as being a rebellion of sorts against the all-important wedding dress, which you’re not only supposed to spend a fortune on, but then you’re supposed to preserve in expensive storage for no discernible reason. It’s not like you’re going to wear it for your next wedding, right?
Well, I got all excited at the idea of new brides taking their dresses out and destroying them photogenically. I had mental images of women tossing fluffy white dresses on bonfires or spray-painting them. I hoped that at least one picture on this Trash The Dress website would show someone taking her dress out to the range and riddling it full of bullets. I set my hopes way, way too high. Mostly, “trashing the dress” is just another paean to femininity, and the pictures show the women in the dress, lolling around looking fuckable. The dress is trashed both by getting wet and having someone vamp in it, just screwing with the iconic virginity of the whole thing.
Consider this part of the Feminism Friday series.
I suppose disease-prevention does benefit men, but so does pregnancy-prevention. There’s a reason men are terrified of getting a woman pregnant. It isn’t like disease-prevention is a man-only concern or sexual fetish. The problem here may have something to do with gender, in fact it’d be easy to convince me it does, but the relationship Marcotte describes here doesn’t really make any sense. This seems like far more of an issue with everyone’s pleasure and choices than women’s in particular. Of course, that makes perfect sense: many of the religious don’t like recreational sex, and they’re angry when men and women alike have it.
I dare say that I never argued that men don’t see the benefit of preventing pregnancy; many do. But Mike’s main problem here is assuming that people’s behaviors and beliefs about sex stem from a rational perspective, which is statistically impossible. If people behaved rationally about sex, our unwanted pregnancy rate would be a fraction of what it is now. Even if you assume, as many sexists do, that only men can be counted on for rational decision-making, that shouldn’t matter, because no man anywhere who didn’t want a baby right now would have sex with a woman without either a condom or verifying to his satisfaction that she can’t get pregnant. Clearly, that’s not happening.
