Comment of the day
Reminds me of the pornographic joke that my brother-in-law once told. It was a Michelle Malkin joke that evoked “Girl’s Gone Wild” imagery, frat boys and subsequent gang-banging. Now, my brother-in-law majored in American studies at a very liberal college and is all over anything racist, homophobic, etc. He once was visibly shaking when my husband used the 7th grade insult “that’s so gay!” (which with brother-in-law’s influence husband stopped using.)
Well, my brother-in-law could not figure out for the life of him why this Michelle Malkin joke was sexist. When I told him that I was offended he responded with a smile “oh, come on. You’ve seen her, right?” I said, yes, I have seen her and she’s very beautiful and her politics are despicable. So what? It’s sexist, not to mention a racial stereotype of Asian women – there to sexually serve white men. And then his eyes lit up. Racist! Oh, no! He did not mean that!
So we live in a day and age when racism is a well-known offense and we’ve all learned the “script” to stand against it when we see it. But we do not have this script for sexism, and neither does my very liberal, well-educated, American studies major, brother-in-law.
I wonder if I should start a Major Award (or just a tasteful commendation — perhaps a certificate embedded in lucite?) for those readers who manage to express The Theme Of The Blog in far fewer words than I ever do.
Irrelevant but hilarious animal picture of the day.
56 Responses to “Comment of the day”
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Lisa says:
Saying sexism just doesn’t hold any weight anymore. I have been trying to think of a new way to shame sexist behaviour so that it sounds as bad as “racist”. Can’t think of a thing. We need a phrase to use that makes people feel like a monster- makes them avoid being called this thing at all costs. “Sexism” just makes guys roll their eyes at you or outright laugh.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:16 pm EST -
Alikatze says:
Wow; this post captures something I’ve been feeling all day: that I live in the wrong era. Some of my men friends went running out to see the James Bond opening this past weekend; one of them was dumbfounded that I despise James Bond for the series’ image of women as mere commodities comparable to cars, guns and bling. I wondered how it would be taken if African Americans were treated that way in a major Hollywood blockbuster — since we don’t see that at all, I tend to believe that there’s a sensitivity to race now that there most definitely is not for gender/sex. I’m amazed that our society has advanced so in one area but “doesn’t get it” in another, equally important area. Why the hell is that????
My simple answer: not enough fight.
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grasshopper says:
The answer that keeps popping into my mind is “sleeping with the enemy”. We’re part of every man’s life – wife, mother, sister, daughter – such that they almost literally can’t see us. We’re like the wallpaper, completely taken for granted and invisible.
As long as so many of us continue to willingly share close personal relationships with them in *spite* of their behavior, there’s no chance they’ll see the error of their ways.
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Lisa says:
Speaking of James Bond, one of the most outrageous moments in a Bond film to me has always been at the start of Goldfinger when he slaps the girl on the butt and says “off you go” or some other dismissive line.
And now I can’t think of that moment in Goldfinger without also thinking of the “fistbump” moment when Obama was given the nomination. After Michelle had the “nerve” to treat him as an equal partner right there on stage in front of the entire country- he slapped her on the a** as she walked away. Just sickening. If I were her I would have turned around and punched him in the stomach.
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bluelyon says:
Holy crap. Lisa, I didn’t watch, therefore didn’t see that, but if my husband did that to me in public, he’d have had his head chewed off on the spot.
On the other hand, and speaking of Major Awards, Violet, you are the recipient of an award. You can pick it up at my place.
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Tabby Lavalamp says:
Lisa, I’ve been using “bigotry” as much as I can. They may be able to laugh at “sexist”, they may be able to shrug off “misogynist”, but “bigot”? That has sting.
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Anna Belle says:
I read that comment earlier and thought it was fantastic in its explication of the subject. Great job Ali.
I LOVE the photo Violet! Puuuurfect.
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Anna Belle says:
My simple answer: not enough fight.
While I understand the inclination to think this way, I beg you to reconsider. What do we know about power structures? They will do anything to maintain power first and foremost, right? I believe the answer lies in this simple fact and Occam’s Razor:
Appeasing a 13% constituency is far less expensive in terms of power and money than appeasing a 52% constituency.
Feminism’s so-called failure can be boiled down to a profit margin. I promise you this.
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Iridescence says:
If someone seems to “get” why racism is bad and unacceptable but not sexism/misogyny, comparing the sexist behavior to some equivalent racist behavior may be a good way to clue them in.
Violet did this very effectively in a couple of her posts about the primary.
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cellocat says:
If women were capable and willing, in general as a class, of physically kicking men’s butts, then it would matter more to them when we said we were offended.
I remember the first time I ever felt completely safe in a bar; it was in college when I was on a date with a guy I trusted, and whom I knew no one in his right mind would mess with. It was a really mind-bending experience for me, a self-identified feminist. I thought how amazing it would be to walk down the street wearing the body of a really big scary-looking guy and know that most people wouldn’t touch me.
Women need to somehow become collectively, (and I don’t know how) the 500 pound gorilla in the room. Then offending individual women might start to mean more to those who now don’t worry about it.
And of course, there are plenty of days I wish I were Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Xena the Warrior Princess, or Sekhmet the Egyptian goddess (who gets fed up with humanity and creates rivers of their blood unless she’s propitiated with beer).
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Grace says:
It’s interesting that in American society there is sexism among all races: black, white, hispanic, and asian men discriminate against “their” women. It’s a universal and generalized phenomenon, it happens also w/people of opposite ideologies (democrats as well as repub, socialists, fascists of course). In this election, the only three men whom I heard speaking up against sexism were Ralph Nader, his running mate Matt Gonzalez, and guess who, the now famous Bill Ayers. He said that his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, was the leader of the Weather Underground in the 70′s, not him, and that she is an “extremely talented, brilliant woman who he deeply admires.” What do you know?
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Foxx says:
It is very tempting, if someone doesn’t get why something is sexist and offensive, to translate into race terms. What if someone called Obama a nigger, etc.
However, this is self defeating. The problem is that people don’t “get” sexisn, they don’t think it’s wrong. Switching to a racist example just reinforces this. Sexism (getting it) has to stand on its own two feet. People have to understand that abusing women is wrong because WOMEN MATTER. We have to get there by being in their faces insisting that WE matter.
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pacific-cali says:
We need to start at square one and educate people. What about a basic education campaign: “This is Sexism”(or Misogyny or Bigotry) and show examples/clips of ugly sexist behavior.
Someone in another thread talked about those “The More You Know” public service spots – what a brilliant idea. That’s the kind of basic education “we” could use. Square one. -
Alikatze says:
@ Anna Belle: I really refuse to believe that the only reason sexism is still around is because women don’t spend enough money watching Hollywood trash.
If women fought for their rights in the same loud, noisy, boisterous, ready-to-fight manner that African-Americans have, we might actually be seeing a woman president today who has won the adoration of hundreds of thousands. The “Obamamania” and swooning in the streets that took place after his election, are, IMHO, largely due to the lengthy, bitter fight that AAs fought as a whole against whites.
I stick by my answer earlier about women’s rights: not enough fight. When women are ready to stand up as a whole (undivided by fear of stereotypes and labels), and be willing to scream and raise holy hell for 40 or more years, then we’ll get where we want to be.
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votermom says:
In my home country, we don’t have a word for sexism. We simply call behavior disrespectful — and often goes into the — what if someone treated your mother/sister/daughter that way. It is also the same when someone is ageist.
I know that’s old-fashioned, and probably plays into the patriarchal set-up — but my home country has managed to elect TWO women presidents and is in the top ten of the Gender Gap Index. So maybe it works.
So my thought is not that we need a new word that applies to the oppression of women, but just identify oppression of women with a deeply ingrained cultural taboo. I know respect is given short-thrift in the USA — how about fairness or justness?
The treatment that Palin received was unfair.
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Lisa says:
votermom, what is your home country? You must have been here in the states a long time- you seem to have a deep understanding of this country.
I am afraid that women saying things are unfair will just make men smirk and call us big whiners. I don’t think men care about “fairness”, well actually I don’t think younger women do either. Young so called feminists often claim it as “unfair” to vote for women based on sex, or to use sex as any kind of justification for affirmative action.
Respect goes a long way in my family, and saying to my son he is being disrespectful can reduce him to tears (he is 9), but I don’t think it would have any effect on his friends that he brings home, or their dads for that matter.
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yttik says:
Women must build unity with each other, gender loyalty. Black people have figured this out.They have loyalty and unity with each other. Some people voted for Obama just because he was black but if you vote for a female just because they’re female, you’re called a vaginal voter.There’s something wrong with you, you’re irrational, etc.
I heard many women during this election apologize and defend themselves.”I’m not voting for her just because she’s a female.” Always the explanation attached, heaven forbid anyone think I’m chosing gender or something.
But these same women were so understanding if some black folks just wanted to vote for Obama because he was black. Well of course they do, he represents so many things to them, it’s their right, etc.
You can support somebody because they have big ears and Opie had big ears so big ears means the candidate is honest. You publically express that opinion and you will get some support for your “theory”. Try saying you’re supporting someone because they’re female and you will immediately be accused of being irrational, incompetent, etc. It’s viewed as stupid to support somebody because they’re female.
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samanthasmom says:
If we look to the black civil rights movement, however, we can get a blueprint for how a successful movement is accomplished. Legal “teeth” (Brown vs. the Board of Education for example), boycotts (Montgomery buses), peaceful protests (lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom riders) and a willingness to become violent if necessary. Women have much larger numbers and could accomplish all of these things. The problem is that most women seem to be OK with the status quo. Our first job is to convince women that they are oppressed, which was a place that the blacks did not have to visit. We can boycott sexist news casts, TV shows, and movies, but if it’s only five of us, no one is going to notice.
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Alwaysthinking says:
I do agree that lack of respect for one another is a huge part of the problem we see in society today. I often wish we would return to such behavior in an innate sort of way. Patronizing of women did exist, though, during even our more civilized eras. My father was a good example. Always a gentleman. He always treated the girls in my family equally with the boys when it came to education. Still, he was always protective of the girls and of our mother and quite restrictive in the kinds of professions he thought we should undertake. So, in reality, what we call sexism today was in existence then even under the umbrella of respect (and I think it was real respect).
Once, after I was a professional, I spoke up to an older physician about calling me and one of my co-workers “honey.” He actually responded, “Oh, honey, you know I don’t really think anything about that. No more than when I call my N___ hired man “son.” In other words, he saw nothing wrong with either term. Black men have come a long way since then and I eventually did see fewer professional women called “honey” on the job, but now we have outright verbal abuse of women in public.
I do know, as has been pointed out here and elsewhere, that more than a few men I know “don’t get it” when they hear or see examples of “sexism,” but they are definitely attuned to racism.
I wish I knew what the solutions were. I only know we have to do something to change things for the better.
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votermom says:
AT, I miss respect too but I wasn’t calling for respect, actually — I was pointing out that it works in my culture for women to frame feminism as basic respect because respect is already a strong value in the culture.
My suggestion is that since in the USA, it seems like fairness is a strong value, it would work for us to frame feminism as simple fairness.
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Sis says:
Unfair would be what you call it when it’s your wife or daughter; but sexist is the (lost the word). Ism.
alwaysthinking — everything you’ve said. I recently had an e-mail exchange with a physician with whom I work. He was voting Obama, and didn’t see any sexism toward Palin. I patiently pointed it out, over several e-mails. At one point he opined maybe I was not feeling well? I ignored it and kept at the task, using all the analogies. The final e-mail on the topic, him to me…”Why so bitchy”.
And I’m sure if this had been going on in person I’d have been prescribed something.
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Sis says:
Bill Ayers was using his wife. He’d checked the weather report.
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InsightAnalytical-GRL says:
A couple of pictures that contrast the message sent out to candidates…plus more
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Sis says:
Agreeing the opening quoted comment is a nail it post, I would still have to say to this:
“I wonder if I should start a Major Award (or…)”
No. It moves the discourse from an exchange among collaborating equals, to a contest.
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no pasaran says:
Calling out offenders using the words sexism and/or misogyny, as mentioned above, doesn’t work and often brings on laughter and ridicule. For me what works is a more basic: “How come you enjoy beating up on women?” It seems to silence them for at least a moment, perhaps it is the dread of being perceived as cowards.
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Lisa says:
no pasaran, that’s pretty good. I will have to try that one.
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no pasaran says:
Votermon said at 9:16 “So my thought is not that we need a new word that applies to the oppression of women, but just identify oppression of women with a deeply ingrained cultural taboo. I know respect is given short-thrift in the USA — how about fairness or justness?”
I agree with you that we need to tie sexist behavior to a cultural taboo. And, I think, men fear being perceived as cowards. We should try to link sexist behavior to cowardice.
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wbever says:
We have to remember that women, too, can be sexist. I compare it to the situation of blacks in racist America: some incorporated even unconsciously white America’s low estimation of them; others did not and expressed their refusal in various ways (anger, violence, political action, etc.)
My 81 year old neighbor identifies herself as a feminist and at the same time criticized HRC for not deferring to Obama, for not stepping aside and let him run unimpeded. Women can be sexist, too.
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votermom says:
Cowardice is a good one! Brilliant!
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Anna Belle says:
@ Anna Belle: I really refuse to believe that the only reason sexism is still around is because women don’t spend enough money watching Hollywood trash.
That’s not anything like I said, ftr. I never inferred that women needed to spend more money to be free, and I have no idea where you twisted that from.
What I mean is that women had barriers put into place by the patriarchy to deliberately prevent them from achieving what blacks have achieved. At the same time, that same patriarchy offered a helping hand up to blacks. It was the patriarchy, after all, that passed the MLK holiday law and opened up the national curriculum to black narratives. When you talk like this, you discount the millions of women that were fighting just as hard, and just as loudly, all throughout the late sixties and seventies, and beyond.
Another thing you fail to consider in your simple analysis is the fact that women have consequences for speaking up that males do not have to deal with. Women are deliberately silenced by the patriarchy by the very institutions that should allow them a voice. Men can, and often do, say anything they want with no challenge at all to their authority. Women pay the social price for voicing their opinions just about every time they do so. People challenge women all the time when they would never do that to a man voicing the same or even opposite opinion. That is the way it is, and women are not to blame for that. And blaming them like you do will only serve to silence them further.
That said, I understand your frustration, and on the surface, your analysis seems to work, but that’s because it is all breadth and no depth. Understanding the so-called failures of feminism requires a deeper search into the nature of patriarchy, and the events of history.
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Anna Belle says:
Follow up comment, because I failed to finish reading your comment, Ali.
We do share the same goal: getting women to break out of the chains of their socialization. I don’t think telling them they aren’t fighting hard enough is the answer. We need to get them to understand their own plight, so they will be invested enough to fight. That’s also what blacks did. They didn’t start by going about criticizing each other.
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Anna Belle says:
Crap, I was using a shortened version of Alikatze, so my comments are responses to that poster, not the Ali in the post. Sorry. Just wanted to be clear.
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MG says:
Alikatze says: “My simple answer: not enough fight.”
Simple, and wrong. Understandably tempting to blame women for men’s continued oppression of them, but still wrong.
The reason white men ‘get’ racism is simple: it affects men. Sexism doesn’t. Sexism is something familiar, enjoyable, something they can bond with other men over, including black men. And they can feel good about that, good about how liberal they’re being; they’re not losing anything. (You’ll notice those men who feel they have something to lose will still indulge in racism, just not so openly.)
But all men have something to lose from seeing women as equals; they lose the ‘power over’, which means the loss of the control of women’s production, reproduction, and all the shit work and emotionally supportive work women do for them. That means they’ll fight a lot harder to keep women down.
There’s also the issue of the locus of sexism being within the family; a daughter in a patriarchal family is in the same position as a black child adopted into a racist white family. A black child in a black family can be raised to see their oppression as oppression and fight against it from day one; that’s a luxury that women don’t have, and the effect of that shouldn’t be underestimated.
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madamab says:
I really like the idea of saying, “Why do you like beating up on women?” I think it’s brilliant, because it’s still culturally taboo to hurt women physically…although it may not be too much longer if we let this situation continue…
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cellocat says:
There’s also the fact that most people find it easier to be in a heirarchy than a democracy. It takes work to make things function in a situation of equal partners hashing stuff out. It’s easier for many to just establish a power structure so that one person can “make it happen” quickly and without more than a certain amount of disagreement. Patriarchy, is, obviously, not about a collaboration of equals.
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DancingOpossum says:
Congrats on a VERY well deserved award!!
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Violet says:
Bluelyon, thank you for the Major Award! I appreciate that. When does the lamp arrive?
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octogalore says:
I think there’s something to both Alikatze’s and Anna Belle’s theories, but I’m not completely sold on either.
On the “not enough fight” thing, what I think is true there is not that individual women and groups of women haven’t fought hard, but that women as a group aren’t as united in objective as other groups. Some women do benefit (or, more accurately, believe they benefit) from the status quo. One example is economic. Many women do not want to have equal responsibility for “providing” and other things that would come with true equality. For people of color, I believe all feel united in believing the objectives of the anti-racist movement are their objectives. Some differ on the “how to,” eg on issues like affirmative action there are prominent POC leaders both pro and anti. But none believe anti-racists are not on the right course, I don’t think. On the other hand, there are women who believe feminists (and womanists and others who believe in women’s rights but use different labels) are NOT on the right track.
So for this reason, while I think the profit margin is a pretty good way to analyse everything, it gets more complicated here. The fact that not all women are united means that “sexist” loses the stigma that “racist” has. In fact, if anyone watched Boston Legal yesterday, you’ll see it ends with protagonist Allan wondering charmingly (or, that was the goal) “Am I a sexist?” The show is from a male liberal perspective, in which objectifying women is OK (Allan also speculates about a 3-way involving him, Candice Bergen and Sarah Palin) whereas pretty much every other liberal cause is sacrosanct. I’d wager that most people don’t find the show offensive. If it involved racial humor in the same way it involved sexist humor, you can bet they would.
So IMO it’s not the size of the constituency, but the lack of any defined female constituency. You have a 13% constituency with a viable concern and smart, mobilized speakers behind whom a supermajority of the 13% is aligned. Then you have a 52% group with some scattered smart speakers, but not much alignment.
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ElleR says:
This topic just gets more and more interesting — and painful. I read the first comments this morning before I left my house and have spent the day thinking about why misogyny is invisible. As a result of this discussion, I have decided to take a poll of my women friends, who greet my diatribes on misogyny with silence and a change of subject, on why they believe that misogyny does not exist or, if it exists, why it is not a problem. They are liberal and strongly opposed to racism. I’ll let you know what I find out.
Anyway, because misogyny is not confined to men, but is culture wide, I decided to analyze three women in my family and their attitudes toward being women — and other women. And the effect they had on me. (I am in my 60′s, so all this happened long ago, but I think it is still relevant.)
My grandmother and my aunt on my father’s side had contempt for women because they saw them as silly and superficial. They were both male identified and worked with men and admired male qualities (my aunt went to law school– which was highly unusual for women of that era). Neither one was especially domestic, in spite of the fact that my grandmother had four children. So, from these two women, I learned to have contempt for “feminine” women; I learned that the only way to have value in our society was to emulate men. I never heard either of these women praise mothers or motherhood.
My mother was one of the very “feminine” women which my aunt and grandmother despised. Being feminine to my mother meant being infantilized, being the eternal “girl.” She was all about clothes and hair and jewelry. She was very uncomfortable with being a woman in terms of woman’s reproductive role — which meant that I almost was not born (I was an only child born very late in my parents’ marriage). It was too low, too animal.
The goals of my aunt and grandmother and my mother, although they were very different kinds of women, were the same. In two very different ways they sought to distance themselves from their biological womanliness — from icky femaleness. My mother distanced herself by focusing on externals and making herself as artificial as possible; my grandmother and aunt distanced themselves by identifying with “human/male” mind and not “female” body. None of these women would have been in sympathy with feminism; they believed in patriarchy and patriarchal values, although they didn’t know what patriarchy was. They believed that women in general were inferior, but each, in her own way, thought of herself as an exception.
Unconsciously influenced by these three powerful women in my life, I decided to pursue a course which included both of these strategies — to be as “artificially feminine” and as “masculinely smart” as possible, while avoiding marriage and children (and womanhood) as long as possible.
My female relatives and I were in deep denial of how our culture viewed women, which put us all in deep conflict with ourselves, which resulted in depression and anxiety disorders — and an incredible amount of psychological pretzel making. It took me years to finally admit what my real status was in my own culture as a result of being born female. And I really couldn’t admit it to myself until I no longer believed in my culture or its values.
So the fact that my culture didn’t value me didn’t bother me that much as I didn’t value my culture. I no longer felt that there was something wrong with me; I was just sorry that my culture was so screwed up.
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Alikatze says:
@ Anna Belle: I stick by what I have written here. It’s too bad (for all women) that you felt it necessary to resort to a sneering invalidation of my point in order to make yours.
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Ali says:
Thank you, Violet. Perhaps we can at least shame our family members from making sexist remarks by posting them on the internet? Can’t wait to tell brother-in-law…
From another thread someone posted an article about the amazing Pink Vigilantes, a group of East Indian women who practice martial arts to protect themselves and other women against abuse. I love this quote:
Aarti Devi, 25, says: “On my own I have no rights but together, as the Gulabi Gang, we have power.”
Yes, the power of women together is important. So what if my brother-in-law is sexist or the Apostate thinks more of herself for hating Republicans than for standing up against misogyny? Not everyone is going to see what we KNOW – at this stage, at least. But together – just us – the ones who do see what is going on, we do have power and we can get things done.
Thank you, Violet and the New Agenda for bringing us together. I am so excited.
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Violet says:
Alikatze and Annabelle: your disagreement isn’t personal, so don’t interpret it that way. There is a difference between intellectual debate and personal attack, and when I read your comments I see debate, not attack. You’re both making interesting arguments.
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Lisa says:
So Many interesting comments to ponder today! I love it here, I always imagine we are all sitting around in someone’s living room over coffee having a discussion.
ElleR you write such great posts…. actually everybody does. I have learned so much here.
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Ali says:
Samantha’s Mom #18
I love what you wrote – I think it’s importance to reference the civil right’s movements and all the strategies they used successfully. I think if we use these strategies we can change women as well as men.
I love how effective a boycott can be. I would love to start hurting some pocketbooks. What if we collectively called for a cable boycott – until there was more representation on cable news channels: female pundits, anchors, news castors, the whole deal. Ahem, these people need to pay big time.
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ElleR says:
Thanks, Lisa. I’m really enjoying the discussion. I love it here, too.
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Alwaysthinking says:
votermom — I think in this country we see pockets of true respect in the culture — maybe something inherent in the original culture of certain immigrant families? However, we also are seeing utter disrespect and subjugation among people of other cultures now entering the country. (of course, most of us are immigrants, though not all recent arrivals).
We further see locales in this country where women routinely attain high positions in local and state politics with no apparent disrespect, yet Clinton and Palin were treated abominably, with the well of historical insults against women brought out to slander them. You are right, though, that we have to find the best way of framing and teaching respect, although that may involve different approaches to reach our multicultural society. (Whipping and beating wives once was common in many cultures and we still see elements of it today. Calling men cowards used to work, but will it today?)
I also knew not to bring up the issue of fairness in my workplace, because it would have brought scoffs, including taunts such as “The world is not a fair place,” and “You’re working in a man’s world now.” I did find other ways, nevertheless, to overcome certain inequalities but I knew not to use the gender or fairness words. However, I did point out, among other things, that my then salary was based upon a very low starting salary. I think my big bosses saw through my argument, but it came at the height of the women’s movement (clout?) and I don’t think they wanted to see any public “ruffling of feathers.” Yes, at times they did use that term, though I never heard it directly.) Regardless, they brought my salary to an equivalent level of the men doing my same work (and who often had less responsibility). In general, I think men in today’s world would see the cry for fairness as one of whining or of playing the victim role. (Those charges seemed to be a routine tool used in this year’s campaign, too.)
Sis – Yes, I’m afraid we still see some of the patronizing in medicine (and law and clergy) and a few other fields, even though many more women have entered them. I have seen less of it, but in the past year I ran into some of it in my work. (I have done a great deal of historical research and writing involving the medical profession and have worked professionally with physicians most of my adult life, yet when I work with a new doctor, I almost always have to start at ground zero to assure them that I know what I’m talking about.) Historically, however, women’s complaints have been dismissed as unimportant or something just “in their mind.” Luckily, there are some in medicine who long ago saw through these facades. I knew one old codger (he was a lovable one and he called things like they were) who told me that women were critical to making an organization civil. (I won’t say what he said about men in workplaces without that civilizing factor.)
I still don’t know the answers to resolving all this. Persistence, demands? I don’t know.
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Anna Belle says:
That’s what I thought I was trying to do, V, and assumed Alikatze was trying to do as well. I was surprised by A’s last comment, quite frankly, not that it would ever stop me from posting my opinion.
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Anna Belle says:
I agree with others, the dialogue here is fantastic. So many smart posters here, the vast majority women.
I was happy to see you mention the Gulabi Gang Ali. I am very interested in their story, and in watching their development. I fear they will be violently attacked by an organized force. I was just telling my husband earlier today that I would join any gang of women that created itself like that in America. I am absolutely angry and frustrated enough to do things like drag guys like the one that beat Lynnette Long’s friend into the street and beat the crap out of him so he could have first hand experience in his own bad behavior. My frustration is such that I would participate in that assault, but only as long as I didn’t have to stand alone.
I also dream of trying to start a modern day Silent Sentinel movement, committing myself to standing in front of the White House every day until things changed. But again, it’s something I’m willing to do alone. It’s not something I can even afford to do right now, actually, so that’s the major constraint.
A couple of elements that are always present in every wave are stagecraft mixed with activism. That seems to be missing today. What I’d like to discuss is how we can organize for that. How can we organize for getting our comfortable butts off of couches and out of desk chairs, away from TVs and computers, and into the public eye?
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Anna Belle says:
NOT something I’m willing to do alone…preview is my friend, preview is my friend, preview is my friend. Heh.
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Sis says:
What award Vi? What did you win; is it edible?
Amazing posts. Feminism is *not* trashed. You’re wonderful. We’re all brilliant.
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the15th says:
“comparing the sexist behavior to some equivalent racist behavior may be a good way to clue them in.”
It’s a very good way to clue them in. That’s why women who do this have been silenced and shut down by a lot of liberal dudes and third-wavers accusing them of engaging in “oppression Olympics.”
“In two very different ways they sought to distance themselves from their biological womanliness — from icky femaleness. My mother distanced herself by focusing on externals and making herself as artificial as possible; my grandmother and aunt distanced themselves by identifying with ‘human/male’ mind and not ‘female’ body.”
ElleR, I don’t know your mother or grandmother, but I’m not sure how it’s infantilizing or exceptionalizing for a woman to be ambivalent about childbirth and domestic roles, whether she prefers to focus on a legal profession or on pretty jewelry. The abstract male thinker/earthy female nurturer dichotomy is just one more thing that stops us from being seen as individuals.
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Sandra S. says:
Word, the15th. I mean, I can’t criticise ElleR’s take on her family- she obviously understands that situation better than me. But I’m a long way from an essentialist. Dichotomizing and talking about what is essentially feminine versus masculine just seems counter productive to me. Because I personally am highly logical, because I value facts over feelings, am I less female? I know that these are traits that our society values, and also traits that are coded as male. I just happen to think they’re valuable traits regardless of their (arbitrary) gender assignment. You know?
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ElleR says:
Sandra S and Word — My point was that my female relatives (and I) had internalized the patriarchy’s fear and loathing of women to the extent that they, too, hated women — especially woman in her reproductive role.
I don’t think they were unique in their hatred of women. I think that many feminists hate women, as was exemplified by the Palin/Clinton pile-on. I thought much of the contempt for Palin had a lot to do with her reproductive choices. Her “icky femaleness” was much talked about. Remember the low point of discussions of her water breaking? Unbelievable.
As to the “charge” of being an essentialist, I plead guilty if by essentialism you mean that I think that the human species, like all other mammals, is sexually dimorphic, with the two sexes having very different reproductive organs and roles. I do not think that culture constructs penises or vaginas or testes or ovaries or the fact that the reproductive role for the male can be measured in minutes (seconds?), while the reproductive role for the female is measured in years.
However, I am no essentialist when it comes to characteristics conventionally associated with either sex or the value assigned to these characteristics. On the contrary, I think culture constructs the characteristics which we associate with the sexes. For example, although I certainly do not believe that logic is a tertiary sex characteristic, I recognize that I live in a culture that believes that — and assigns logic to males. Which means that logic is overvalued — as are all qualities associated by our culture with males, while, conversely, all qualities associated by our culture with females are undervalued.
To my mind, logic and reason are vastly overrated, and I say that as someone who is logical to the extreme. Human beings are driven by emotions (which get a really bad rap); logic and reason enable us to reach the goals our emotions are driving us toward. For example, the hurt and anger we are experiencing as a result of the recent outpouring of misogyny are true and useful emotions which are motivating these discussions and will galvanize us to use our logic and reason to figure out how to combat it.
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Sandra S. says:
ElleR,
I’m sorry if I implied anything you disagree with. I disagree that logic is overvalued, but that’s a personal value that I came to after many years of consideration, and I don’t claim to know better than anyone else. Certainly I agree that humans are sexually dimorphic and that further differences are largely attributed to culture. Perhaps what bothers me so much is that I find so much of myself in your aunt and grandmother as you’ve described them, so to have them also described as anti-feminist and trying to get away from their icky-woman-ness is something I have an emotional response to. But that has little to do with you and everything to do with me, probably.
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Suzie says:
I’m sure some of you understand that, in the third wave, it is considered verboten to compare/contrast the women’s movement and sexism to the civil-rights movement and racism. Similarly, people are not supposed to compare gay rights with black civil rights. I’ve been violating this rule right and left lately because I think the comparisons are interesting. As a white woman, I don’t do it to irritate black people or dismiss the discrimination they’ve suffered. But surely there must be room for thoughtful analysis.
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Violet says:
I’m sure some of you understand that, in the third wave, it is considered verboten to compare/contrast the women’s movement and sexism to the civil-rights movement and racism.
That’s because the Third Wave is feminism-as-designed-by-patriarchy. Vis-a-vis the civil rights movement and racism, the Third Wave is simply parroting the anti-feminism of the black male patriarchs who ran the civil rights movement and who were (and still are) bitterly opposed to feminism.
