The normalcy of misogyny
No big post here, just an observation. I was looking at Google News (hate the new design, by the way) and noticed an article in Time magazine about Mars Hill Church: Is Hell Dead? One of the batshit pastors at Mars Hill has written a batshit book, and Time is covering it.
Mars Hill is a male supremacist church. Most conservative Christian churches are, but Mars Hill is supposed to be young and hip and all that crap. Nevertheless, it is a profoundly misogynist church. Women, according to Mars Hill, are unfit for leadership and must obey their husbands, because they are fundamentally inferior beings who are incapable of reasoning clearly and with discernment. Men are supposed to be nice to their wives, of course, but men are also supposed to be nice to their pets and children.
Nowhere in Time’s article is there any reference whatsoever to this aspect of Mars Hill. If it were a white supremacist church, do you think that would be mentioned? I do. I think it would be a highly salient point, and one no reporter would ignore. But a doctrine of male supremacy? Just normal.
***UPDATE: A reader alerts me that there are two Mars Hill churches, and the one referenced in the Time article is not the same as the one I was thinking of. I had no idea there were two different Mars Hill churches; it’s an unusual name (at least to me) and I’d only heard of the one. So…actually I don’t know anything about this church that Time reported on.
62 Responses to “The normalcy of misogyny”
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K.A. says:
But all Christianity is male supremacist, which is why it doesn’t strike anyone as abnormal. A white supremacist church would be a stand-alone anomaly. I certainly don’t think a white male reporter gives a shit about black oppression any more than female oppression — they’d merely be reacting to the white supremacist church being different. But I was totally with you ’til the last line; male supremacy should not be treated as totally normal, even if we’re used to seeing it from religious institutions. It’s the same phenomenon we see when people treat female oppression in non-Western cultures as a mere cultural imperative rather than a human rights violation. It’s because female subordination is true everywhere, ergo, it’s always treated as an understandable cultural difference.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:25 pm EST -
K.A. says:
I mean, I know the normalcy of misogyny is your entire point, and that we’re not actually disagreeing. It’s just that so many times black women have taken offense to me using the comparison of black oppression to female oppression the way you have, as though I begrudge black people of some sort of imaginary relative privilege. I thought at the time it was the most effective way to make my point about how ingrained misogyny is, but I see what their problem is now.
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Violet Socks says:
That’s not an argument I’m going to buy into. The idea that nothing can be compared to black oppression in any way whatsoever is absurd. The specific argument that the sexist oppression black women experience shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as racist oppression is fundamentally and profoundly anti-feminist, and was originally used to shame black feminists in the late 60s and 70s. I don’t care what clueless young woman parrots it now; it’s anti-feminist and I will have nothing to do with it.
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Kali says:
It is like doing a review of “The birth of a nation” without mentioning race or white supremacy.
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Heather says:
Are you sure you’re thinking of the right church? The article is about the Mars Hill Church in Michigan, led by Rob Bell. The really crazy Mars Hill Church that’s all about women as inferior is the one led by Mark Driscoll, in Seattle. That’s a Reformed Christian group.
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Adrienne in CA says:
Violet says:
The idea that nothing can be compared to black oppression in any way whatsoever is absurd.
It’s the ideal anti-feminist strategy, since no more perfect metaphor exists, especially in this country, to communicate the utter indefensibiity of female oppression, and what it would take to curb it.
*****A
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Violet Socks says:
Are you sure you’re thinking of the right church? The article is about the Mars Hill Church in Michigan, led by Rob Bell. The really crazy Mars Hill Church that’s all about women as inferior is the one led by Mark Driscoll, in Seattle.
Good lord! There are two Mars Hill churches? Yes, I was thinking of the one with the batshit crazy Driscoll guy. I thought that was the only Mars Hill.
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K.A. says:
My point, Adrienne and Violet, is that it seems like an ideal metaphor, but the reason black people take issue when white people do this (as they have done with me) is because white people don’t really give a shit even when they say they do, so it’s insulting. I didn’t really buy into it either since I expect to be taken as a good-faith anti-racist, but it finally clicked when (for the umpteenth time) liberal white dudes who identify as feminist/pro-choice democrats (some lipservice, but aren’t terribly involved in feminist issues in practice) used women’s rights (abortion, rape) as a half-assed example to compare to whatever indignation they are upset about, even when they have a right to be indignant about said injustice. I find it insulting when men do that, because it never fails to show how little they actually care about the comparison group even if the example does hinge on one’s purported concern for their oppression as a class. I know where you’re coming from, I’m just bringing it up because I wouldn’t want black women to be alienated from your blog, which I do love (I’m guessing you’re doubting this at this point!).
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Violet Socks says:
I find it insulting when men do that, because it never fails to show how little they actually care about the comparison group even if the example does hinge on one’s purported concern for their oppression as a class.
I think it’s a mistake to extrapolate from that to the conclusion that all analogies are therefore suspect. If someone compares a genocide elsewhere in the world with the Holocaust, does that automatically show that the person doesn’t actually give a crap about Jews or anti-semitism?
The fact is, I’m quite familiar with the argument you present. I also know the history behind it, and I’m never ever going to play along with it. Because it’s anti-feminist bullshit. It was used to shame and ostracize black feminists.
You do know, right, that the black men who led the civil rights movement were, almost to a man, extremely sexist? And that Rosa Parks’s own boss said women belonged in the kitchen, right? And that women like Dorothy Height and Shirley Chisholm co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus (with Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, etc.) because they were fed up with sexism and wanted to fight that too, right?
Everyone with half a brain understands that sexism functions very differently from racism as an oppression. The comparison being made is that both forms of oppression—all forms of oppression, in fact—should be equally repugnant. Racism used to be compared to anti-semitism, by the way, to make exactly the same point.
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quixote says:
K.A., I have to say, I don’t even understand the points you’re making.
Sure, stupid, false equivalences are offensive. (E.g. “Man, I got raped by the taxes this year.”)
How could real equivalences, used to make somebody’s deficient thinking clear to them, be construed as the same thing? (E.g. church that treats blacks as subhuman: moral outrage. church that treats women as subhuman … {{ crickets }})
Anybody who takes offense at the second one is just trying to defend prejudice.
All that said, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that the Mormons explicitly put blacks in a lesser category, and yet the media get all “respectful” of beliefs in that case, too, and seem to try to gloss over it.
There’s definitely a huge amount more silence when women are the target, but I’m not sure it isn’t a difference of degree rather than kind.
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K.A. says:
It doesn’t really matter if comparisons were made in the past or not — that has no bearing on whether it should be examined for criticism. If you grant that it is alienating for some black people, what would it matter if it had happened in another instance before?
The genocide example doesn’t hold. That would only work if we were women living in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, were complacent Aryan citizens who may not have been actively pro-genocide but were pretty shiftless anyway (and some of whom were even wives of SS officers), and then compared domestic violence/femicide to genocide, and male supremacy to Aryan supremacy, all while the Holocaust was going on.
THAT is the point that black women have communicated to me. It’s not that there isn’t any parallel, it’s the context of who is pointing them out.
I was not understanding of it either — it seems like such a perfect analogy to get across to people who have no background feminist/social justice issues! Just so they can make the leap at least.
If you have dealt with this before on this blog, as it sounds like you may have already done, I apologize for what may seem to be a deliberate derail attempt. It just seemed like an issue worthy of discussion.
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Violet Socks says:
THAT is the point that black women have communicated to me. It’s not that there isn’t any parallel, it’s the context of who is pointing them out.
Because all feminists are white, and all white women are racists? Hello, Eldridge Cleaver. What next, penis pants?
I’m sorry if you don’t know the history. I’m sorry that there are so many women today of all races who do not know feminist history and only know the anti-feminist propaganda of men. Yes, yes, the feminist movement was really just a bunch of privileged white women daring to compare their broken fingernails to the horrors that The Black Man had endured and blah blah fucking blah. If you really can’t think through how that was used to belittle the feminist movement and silence all women of all colors about all kinds of sexist oppression, then I can’t help you.
And I’m sorry if I sound combative, but this anti-feminist propaganda shit brings up all kinds of bad memories for me. It’s like the anti-porn thing; I’m not going to sit around and have an intellectual inquiry into “well, just how anti-sex were those feminazis, and how much money did they take from the Moral Majority?” It’s fucking propaganda that has destroyed lives, and I will not play into it.
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K.A. says:
Hmm, looks like my reply got sucked into moderation. I am honestly not trying to derail or anything, or silence women, or any of that, it’s just that it’s come to my attention many times that black women tend to feel very uncomfortable in predominantly white feminist spaces, and I thought in the future I’d make a real attempt to not perpetuate that personally (and in a way that didn’t require Shakesville-level moderation hammers!). So this is a good-faith attempt at exploring that, although it’s hard to come across as anything but accusatory online. I was the queen of making this comparison, by the way, so it really is an attempt to bring up the point but in a non-accusatory way. I would be genuinely interested in hearing more about the history of this issue that you mention — not even to continue arguing about it from my end, but to read about your take on it being used as a silencing tactic. I’m just curious.
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K.A. says:
If it was used that way, I see why you would think I’m trying to wield it at you from that standpoint. But in the genocide example I countered with, the femicide would absolutely be on par with genocide — not a broken nail being on par with black men being lynched — it’s just the social position of the particular people making the comparison that a non-Aryan victim would not appreciate. I didn’t say feminists were only white (?). The point is that you are white, obviously. I’m talking about white women who make this comparison.
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Violet Socks says:
I’m not talking about myself. The women who have been most damaged by that accusation are black women. It has been used to sully the very concept of feminism in the black community, and to paint black feminists as race traitors and man-haters who were in cahoots with the white establishment. It is toxic, horrible shit.
Whenever I see some young black woman spouting that stuff, I feel the same way I do when I see some young white woman “explaining” that the anti-pornography feminists made a mistake when they “got in bed with the right wing.” It’s tragic and frustrating and just sad. A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.
Feminism is not white women. Feminism is women. And the feminist movement was an awakening to the realization that women in all patriarchal societies are, in various ways, discriminated against because of their femaleness. It’s not that all sexism is the same and all women are situated the same; they’re not. But there is nevertheless a core thing — sexism — that can be identified and called out and fought.
The Second Wave was actually the point when feminism became a global movement, and when an amazing cross-current of communication started happening between women in different communities. I remember a set of essays from around 1970 in which women in the Chicana, black, native, and white communities each wrote about how sexism manifested in their particular communities. Being able to learn from each other was enormously helpful and eye-opening for everyone. To take only one example: black men at that time were insisting that feminism was a joke at best and race betrayal at worst, that white women were happy and privileged, that racism was the only problem, and that black women would be perfectly fine if they could just lead lives like white women. A black feminist wrote a brilliant essay about how the existence of the white women’s feminist movement helped expose that lie. White women unquestionably had it better off, she said (correctly), but they were still in a patriarchal cage.
The Second Wave was about 1) recognizing sexist oppression as a global (albeit highly varied) phenomenon, and about 2) demanding that it be taken as seriously as the other forms of oppression the world was beginning to reject.
Now, think about whose hypocrisy might have been exposed and threatened by that. And think about why they might have done everything in their power to paint feminism as a silly whine-fest of privileged white women who were really just racists.
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Adrienne in CA says:
K.A., my understanding is that Violet is not white, though I am, so feel free to ignore anything I say.
Cracks me up to think this got started because there’s more than one Mars Hill Church.
Hey, now let’s talk about Ashley Judd. That’ll be fun!
*****A
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propertius says:
Violet,
“Mars Hill” is a fairly common place name, particularly for churches. It refers to the Areopagus in Athens, where Ares was tried for killing Poseidon’s son, Orestes was tried for killing Clytemnestra, and Paul got his philosophical butt kicked by the Stoics. ;-) Why Christians would want to commemorate that is beyond me…
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K.A. says:
Thank you Violet for telling me more about the topic. It is a a great issue worthy of discussion, given all this history I never hear about. Sorry it brought up bad stuff for you.
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Adrienne in CA says:
Violet says:
Everyone with half a brain understands that sexism functions very differently from racism as an oppression.
Oh, oh, now I’m confused (may be the < half brain at work). To the extent that "othering" someone makes it easier to oppress them, I see a lot of similarity between sexism and racism. Isn't seeing the subject as not-me, not-us the justification for both white privilege and male privilege?
*****A
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gxm17 says:
@ K.A.
“Liberal white dudes” are privileged. They are not oppressed (except in imaginary MRA land). They have no business comparing inconveniences they may experience with the experiences of oppressed classes. Of course we are referring to “groups” and not “individuals” which is the confusion “liberal white dudes” often make, being the default human and all.
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Violet Socks says:
Adrienne: Of course there are similarities; all oppressions based on “othering” are similar in that way, as you point out. But the huge functional difference between racism and sexism is that, as I’ve written ad nauseum, women don’t form natural groups. By which I mean self-sustaining ethnic human communities.
There is, for example, such a thing as the black community in America. There was such a thing as the Jewish community in Poland. There is no such thing as the women’s community, because women don’t (or didn’t) marry each other and have kids and have a shared culture and family and language and all that stuff that defines a human community.
Women are, instead, one-half of every community. And sexism exists within the community itself (as well as outside it).
This makes sexism much more deeply entrenched and much, much harder to uproot. Think about how the black community resisted racism in this country, or how the Jewish community held together in the face of anti-semitism. What do women do? We’re not a community. We’re the Jews and the Poles, the blacks and the whites, the cowboys and the Indians, the rich and the poor, the everything. How do we band together? No such thing. Humans don’t work like that.
This is why the feminist movement will never, ever function as the sort of community-driven liberation movement that characterized Civil Rights. Instead, feminists are more like a guild of allies, a sodality.
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Violet Socks says:
Adrienne, I am white. My family is multi-racial and multi-cultural, which is maybe where you got the idea, but I personally am white.
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Adrienne in CA says:
I think it was when you mentioned sending in a DNA sample to find out your ancestry. Sounded exotic to me.
*****A
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Adrienne in CA says:
I’m referring, of course, to this sense of the word “exotic” :
3: strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual
*****A
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Violet Socks says:
Reading back over this thread, I realize that it suffers from the fact that K.A. and I have vastly different backgrounds. Where she is repeating in good faith something she’s been told and believes is a good thing, I hear a dog whistle which I know all too well is anti-feminist. I know where it comes from, I know what it was used for, I know what it’s still used for, and I know how it has been transmuted over time.
I will try to explain.
Let me recast the assertion implied in the last paragraph of my original post as a statement:
“Resolved, that male supremacism should be considered just as unacceptable as white supremacism.”
The only logical objection anyone could make to this statement is if they don’t agree with it. No other objection makes sense. Things like, “oh, it’s offensive because a white person is saying it,” don’t stand up to scrutiny. A white person mustn’t reject white supremacism? What? Does this also mean that straight people mustn’t reject homophobia? Are we making any sense here?
Things like, “oh, but it’s offensive to say sexism is the same as or worse than racism” also don’t stand up to scrutiny because, dig it, I didn’t say that. Never have.
No. The real objection lurking there, the thing underneath, is exactly what you think it is. It is a defense of male supremacism. It is a refusal to allow sexism to be seen as a “real” oppression. And it was dreamed up by sexist men.
In the late 1960s, women of all races began talking feminism. Black women became active in fighting the sexism within the civil rights movement, sometimes joining forces with their white feminist allies in the anti-war movement. Men of all races responded the same: no fucking way. Racism is serious, they said. The war is serious. Sexism isn’t even a thing; it doesn’t exist. You’re inferior and you belong on your back and shut the fuck up. Now get me some coffee, bitch.
Black men in the civil rights movement, in particular, were extremely hostile to black feminism, which they regarded as an intolerable assault on their masculinity and on the cohesiveness of the civil rights movement. Many black civil rights men waged a kind of psychological war against black feminists. They ridiculed black feminists’ complaints of sexism. They attacked black feminists as race traitors and backstabbers. They accused black feminists of genocide for demanding birth control and abortion rights. They claimed that white feminists were racists who were trying to destroy the civil rights movement by recruiting black women into feminism. Not all black men in the movement, of course, but many. It was ugly. It has left scars to this day.
If you are a white person, odds are you have never read or heard about any of this. And if you’re a black person, odds are you haven’t either. Because the winners write the history books, and black men won that war. They dominated (still dominate) the civil rights narrative. Hell, they’re all saints now in the textbooks. And that whole sorry chapter has largely been suppressed.
The history has even been rewritten, to recast white feminists as the villains and black men as the patient heroes. I once heard a young black woman say that it was white feminists in the 70s who attacked black women and demanded they choose between being black and being feminists. Unfuckingbelievable. Of course, the behavior she was describing was actually what black men had done. But now it’s been reassigned to the evil white feminists.
At any rate, to make a long story short: when I hear the “oh no, you mustn’t mention racism and sexism in the same breath!” I know what it means. The speaker undoubtedly thinks it’s something about white people and “appropriation,” but that’s just the pretext that’s gotten attached to it over the years. What it’s really about is shutting down feminism, period. It’s short for that whole “sexism is not a real oppression/how dare you even mention it in the same breath” clusterfuck. And—here’s the kicker—it is ultimately aimed at black women.
That’s the irony. The fact that many young black women today don’t realize it doesn’t change the facts. They themselves are the ultimate targets. It is their feminism that is being shut down, vilified, ridiculed, made untouchable.
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Alison says:
“The history has even been rewritten, to recast white feminists as the villains and black men as the patient heroes. I once heard a young black woman say that it was white feminists in the 70s who attacked black women and demanded they choose between being black and being feminists. Unfuckingbelievable. Of course, the behavior she was describing was actually what black men had done. But now it’s been reassigned to the evil white feminists.”
This is fascinating Violet. I see this a lot and it saddens me.
This whole thread is fascinating, actually. In regard to the community issue that you brought up, in terms of women not being natural allies, etc. I’ve come to the conclusion that only a small percentage of women will ever get involved in women’s issues, even within each community. I think our strength will be bridging communities so that the small percentages of women within each community can gather as a whole. I see this on a world level. I would like to defend women in Saudi Arabia, and I would like to see them defend my daughters against the pornified culture that they are subject to in the states. So this issue with white women feminists being seen as the oppressors of women of color seems to be a constant perception that is very disabling.
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Melinda says:
I’m fully behind everything Violet just said. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it said better. But I just wanted to contribute one thing that’s also been erased from the “official” history. Many of the same tactics being used to disenfranchise and disempower African-Americans were also used against women.
For instance, poll taxes prevented women from voting. Despite gaining the right to vote in 1920, women’s ability to cast a ballot remained suppressed for decades because poll taxes could be used to prevent women from voting. In poor and working class families, they couldn’t afford to pay poll taxes for two (if they could pay it at all), so the man voted and the woman didn’t. In many middle and upper class families, the man controlled the purse strings and could thus prevent his wife from voting by denying her money to pay the tax. The same is true of literacy tests, since women were frequently denied the ability to get any education at all and had significantly higher illiteracy rates than men.
Because of the effect of these restrictions on women, the National Organization for Women became one of the primary lobbying groups fighting to get Congress to eliminate barriers to voting.
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Melinda says:
Edit that: I think I may have the organization wrong. It may have been one of the precursors to NOW that did much of the lobbying.
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m Andrea says:
Thank you very, very much Violet. So worth bookmarking this thread to read your words again. Extremely sorry this subject is distressing but anything else you’d like to add would be greatly appreciated. It drives me crazy also when people try to use the argument that comparing one horrific oppression to another equally horrific oppression is somehow offensive.
Maybe five years ago many WOC blogs were on a kick about how the comparision of sexism to racism was MINIMIZING racism. And it is exactly as Violet said: it is logically impossible for anyone to make that argument unless the speaker has already minimized the extent of the harm caused by SEXISM in their own mind.
Are they equal oppressions given the harm they cause, or not?
Apparently we are all supposed to believe that women of color hardly ever experience sexism. Apparently sexism is only something that upper-class educated white women experience — and if that is truly the case then sexism probably doesn’t really exist as an actual oppression. It becomes a privilege instead, a positive goal for every economically and educationaly disadvantaged woman of color to strive for. The best circumstance a woman of color should ever hope to experience is the privilege of groveling under the boot of the default human.
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Swannie says:
I remember , will never forget .. .. it was the old gilded cage argument.. , white women could should be happier because THEIR CAGE was gilded , and their wings clipped with golden scissors. And racism was MORE IMPORTANT !!
This is one of the reasons black women to this day avoid the F word and anything even associate with feminism . The most recent reason I have heard was there were not many black women in the Feminist camp , so they are under-represented and unwelcome , and again of course this is because of white women . -
Nell says:
The myth that the feminist movement was comprised of only upper class white women, who had the means and the time to dabble in the cause as a result of the labor of WOC who cleaned their houses, cooked their meals, and raised their children, further served to divide women who should have been natural allies (if not natural tribeswomen).
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Violet Socks says:
Are they equal oppressions given the harm they cause, or not?
That is not the right question. It’s like saying, “are homophobia and anti-semitism equal oppressions?” How do you compare such things? The point is, they’re all wrong.
Coretta Scott King said, “I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.”
It’s not about counting up bodies or trying to come up with some calculus to measure the amount of suffering. It’s just about saying that all forms of discrimination are wrong.
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Swannie says:
All forms of discrimination are wrong and cause suffering. Women , however are at least 50% of the entire world population; that is 50% of every population ; not one segment , racial, religious, ethnic group, cultural group, or tribe. The entire world. Also 100% of the worlds children , are born by women .
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Violet Socks says:
So this issue with white women feminists being seen as the oppressors of women of color seems to be a constant perception that is very disabling.
Okay, I’m going to use this as a jumping off point to talk about the significance of the fact that women really are part of different communities (see my comment #21), often communities that are in opposition. ‘Cause it’s important.
It is absolutely true that white feminists of the Second Wave were far less racist and far more conscious of all forms of oppression than white people as a whole. Feminists of all races, in fact, were the most evolved people in the country then, since they alone were the ones recognizing all forms of oppression.
However: this cannot be said of white women as a whole. White women, like white men, have on the whole been the oppressors of black people in this country. And so here we get to the nub: that feminism means liberating all women from sexism, including those who might be your antagonists in other ways.
This is crucial to understand. To understand, and to accept.
—If you’re a black woman, ending sexism means liberating white women too.
—If you’re a Latina woman, ending sexism means liberating Anglo women too.
—If you’re a Jewish woman, ending sexism means liberating Christian and Muslim women too.
—If you’re a Muslim woman, ending sexism means liberating western/Christian/Jewish women too.
—If you’re a poor woman, ending sexism means liberating rich women too.
—If you’re a Democratic woman, ending sexism means liberating Republican women too.In short, ending sexism means liberating a whole bunch of other women whom you probably don’t like and who have even been your community’s enemies and tormenters.
Because women are half the human race.
This has been a stumbling block for women all over the world, and it is a weakness that men have never failed to exploit in trying to quash feminism. They’re doing it right now, in fact. Somewhere in the world, a man is saying, “Feminism? You mean those white/Anglo/western/Jewish/rich bitches who have given our community nothing but trouble? You would ally yourself with them? You backstabber! You traitor!”
And women themselves, of course, can have a hard time when feminism is presented as a sisterhood club. “I’m going to ally with the women whose men are currently bombing my village? I’m going to sympathize with the women whose ancestors used to own mine, and who just last year were refusing to let me drink at their water fountain?”
This is one reason I consistently and continuously stress that feminism is not a club. It’s not even a sisterhood. It’s simply the political conviction that sexist discrimination is wrong. Always wrong. It always needs to stop.
Doesn’t matter whether the woman next to you has suffered as much as you have, or whether her group has been privileged over your group. It doesn’t matter whether she “deserves” liberation as much as you do.
All that matters is that sexism is wrong. It’s always wrong. It has to end. Wherever it exists, in whatever form it takes, it needs to be rejected as a “real” oppression that is every bit as unacceptable as any other.
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anna says:
“The myth that the feminist movement was comprised of only upper class white women, who had the means and the time to dabble in the cause as a result of the labor of WOC who cleaned their houses, cooked their meals, and raised their children”
I hate that myth. Truth is, plenty of poor women were and are feminists. And plenty of rich PEOPLE, not just women, exploit the poor in lots of different ways, not just by hiring them as housekeepers. Saying that it’s perfectly fine for a man to have a career and leave all/the majority of housework and childcare to his wife to do for no pay or recognition, but it’s horrible oppression if his wife dares to hire a housekeeper so she can have a career, no matter how well she pays and treats the housekeeper, is sexist bullshit. (And you’ll notice the people who wring their hands over this, like Caitlin Flanagan, never want to work for husbands being expected to do their fair share, and laws requiring decent pay and benefits for housekeepers. Their solution is, wifey gives up her dreams and does all the shitwork for free.)
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Branjor says:
Women may not form completely all-female communities naturally, but woman centered societies do form communities very different from patriarchal societies. For instant, the Mosuo in China have what they call “walking marriage.” Women are in charge of this society. The woman stays in her own female centered family of origin and leaves her bedroom door open at night if she likes a man. He then comes, they have sex and he leaves in the morning. Not even the straight women want to get married and live with the guy. The woman’s children also remain in her house and the mother’s brother takes care of them. It seems only patriarchal societies demand that a woman leave her mother and “cleave” to her husband (then to be available for 24/7 sex and housekeeping services for him). The men like the Mosuo arrangement too because they can “play around” and aren’t tied down to a wife.
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Unree says:
Agreed 100% Violet, but a movement needs something concrete to rise up against, and that’s where racial divisions arise.
Let’s imagine a multiethnic and multiracial group of women connecting on sexism and misogyny: the good old Second Wave click. “Your d00d does that too? Huh. I thought I was the only one.” And then comes something extrinsic for white participants and central for participants of color.
Say for instance a principal and school board install armed security guards in an ethnically diverse junior high school. African-American mothers are worried and angry because they know their 13-year-old sons are literally in the guards’ line of fire. They propose that the group unite in opposition to these firearms.
The non-mothers and the white women sympathize–or think they do–but they also believe the mothers of color are derailing. “That’s not feminism,” they say, or think. “Armed guards aren’t a feminist issue. Unless the guards are being sexist and endangering girls.”
When you’re a mother of color, you might think you were wasting your time hanging with this group. When you’re a non-mother or a white woman, you might think the membership has lost its feminist compass. It’s hard to find common ground.
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djmm says:
Wonderful post and comments, Violet! Thanks for the reprise. I remember it all too well, but you have said it better than I could have.
djmm
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Alison says:
Violet, would love to see some of the stuff that you have written here as a post! This is fascinating stuff and I would love to have a good link to send to friends, family and those I converse with in the blogosphere.
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quixote says:
Another recent example of the “You traitor” syndrome was among Iraqis at the beginning of Shrub’s War. The godbags were resurging, shoving women back into veils, etc., etc. Women began making noise that their rights should be strengthened, not weakened, in the brave new post-Saddam democratic world.
They got shut up instantly by being told that Iraqis had to stick together. No disunity! (Which for some odd reason never meant unity around the rights of women.)
It’s scary how effective that shit always seems to be.
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julia says:
“Women do not have a community, we are, instead, half of every community”. What a brilliant line.
There are many ways that all kinds of opression intersect. My being a woman and understanding sexism in my skin makes makes me a little more open to understanding racism. If I were a white, hetero, middle class man I might be able to grasp it mentally but not viscerally.
No wonder women are still invisible – because we don’t have our own community. Whatever the critique of the Second Wave,movment, it gave us rape crisis centers, the criminalization of rape, planned parenthood, legalized abortion, Title 9, etc etc.
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Violet Socks says:
Agreed 100% Violet, but a movement needs something concrete to rise up against, and that’s where racial divisions arise.
But Unree, there is something concrete to rise up against: sexism. Women across different communities don’t have to unite to “find” this cause. It already exists right there in their own communities.
And feminism—this is important—does not consist of women across different communities uniting. Feminism consists of every woman who is fighting sexism in her own community.
If every white woman on the planet vaporized tomorrow, black women would still need feminism. Because black men are sexist. Black feminism is always going to be rooted in that community, in the particular needs and experiences of that community.
This is true of all communities and feminists, not just black and white.
I honestly think that the way a lot of Third Wavers (at least on the blogs) go about it now is totally misguided. They seem to think that “feminism” means all women of all communities get together and all work together on the problems confronting all communities. And if it doesn’t work, then “feminism” is a farce.
Well, Second Wavers figured out a long time ago that it in real life, it doesn’t work that way. We can and should try very hard to be each other’s allies, but the real work of feminism is going to happen inside the community. And sometimes, the best thing we can do is stay out of each other’s way.
And if you think that last sentence is harsh, it’s not. For example, there are many prominent feminists of all races who have maintained close friendships since the Second Wave. But you don’t hear about that too much or even see them together in public. You know why? Because they realized about 35 years ago that it wasn’t always helping. Sometimes the presence of out-group women just made it even harder for in-group women to persuade their men to pay attention. Sometimes the presence of out-group women just inflamed all that bullshit about “traitors” and “backstabbers.”
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Ciardha says:
Yeah, Yoko Ono is friends with Gloria Steinem, Kate Millet, etc… but they don’t involve themselves with Yoko’s continuing efforts to work for a strong feminist movement in Japan. Yoko speaks on Japanese TV in Japanese and has written songs in Japanese promoting feminist thought (An effort that has had marked success- especially amongst women now in their thirties and forties. Yoko and Takako Doi were very powerful figures to that generation of Japanese women back in their teens and twenties.
Doi has kind of retired from the scene the past few years, but Yoko still regularly visits Japan and makes a point of talking about feminist issues in her interviews there- and she’s treated with respect for doing so too.) Yoko is careful not to talk much about sexism in other Asian countries- China, Korea, etc… because it would have a negative effect due to the history of Japan in the region. When she visited Guangzhou (better known as Shanghai in the west)China to do an art show there last year (first time she ever visited China) she talked a bit in an interview done on a Chinese talk show (yes, they do have those kind of shows in Communist China too- the guy that interviewed her kind of vaguely reminded me of Mike Douglas…) about the sexism she had personally faced growing up in Japan and the racism and sexism she faced as an adult in the West but carefully framed it to avoid backlash from any side. (which is very difficult to do!)
Yoko can and does talk in the US and Japan about the evil nexus of racism and sexism she has encountered in the west, and the sexism she encountered growing up in Japan.
She’s a bit more reticent about that when she does interviews in the UK (still very few journalists in the UK have profeminist attitudes, less than in the US frankly, which is no bastion of feminist thought amongst even those that claim to be progressive as we know too well.) In the UK Yoko tends to let the feminism in her music and art speak for her.
She’s had a bit more luck with communicating that message in France (being a fluent speaker of French probably gives her some positive points there) but still keeps it more subtle than in the US or Japan.
The Japanese media didn’t like that back in the 1970′s and made some negative commentary- about how her drug use and marriage to a white man and pop musician had made her become unfeminine, but the second wave of Japanese feminists adored her, and asked her to write a feminist song for the Japanese feminist movement- which she did: “Josei Joi Banzai”- which did become something of feminist anthem for the second wave of Japanese feminism- and she sang it live at every concert she performed at her 1974 concert tour of Japan, plus as the headliner at the Woodstock-like “One Step Festival” in Japan. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jys-YoVsufE Released as a single in Japan only in early 1974- the song was so long that it’s divided into two parts the 3 minute main song, and the second part a 5 minute jam- like session where she cuts loose with her trademark voice experimentation- left out of all later remixes of the song- probably due to all the negative comments in the west (not in Japan) about those stylistics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....&NR=1
Yoko’s younger sister Setsuko Ono (who worked for the World Bank for 27 years- then quit in disgust during the Bush administration and became a professional artist and ardent socialist feminist) has friendships with other socialist feminists around the world but focuses her socialist feminist speaking and writing in Japan, and uses her art (large scale figure and nature images in metal) to subtly promote a pacifist, ecofeminist message in the US.
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m Andrea says:
Once again, thank you Violet! I knew that bit you quoted was slip-sliding into oppression olympics territory but didn’t know how to rescue it.
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Sameol says:
That’s not feminism,” they say, or think. “Armed guards aren’t a feminist issue. Unless the guards are being sexist and endangering girls.”
But it’s not that we don’t care unless it affects women. It’s that virtually every situation and issue does affect women, just in ways that aren’t noticed or cared about. Armed guards in school would endanger young women of color. Virtually everyone understands automatically how young MOC would be affected, but the dangers to girls are not so obvious to most people. Just to start, the number of girls raped by faculty and staff even without the introduction of firearms. And that’s not the only way girls would be endangered. It’s not that we can’t all join together to fight against armed guards in schools if it would help to do so. It’s more about not framing everything as if girls don’t matter.
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anna says:
So what if armed guards aren’t a feminist issue? Black women can still fight the issue with other groups (gun control groups, anti racism groups.) Feminism is not going to fight for every cause that is important to every woman or group of women. Feminism fights sexism. All women need to fight sexism, because it affects all women. That doesn’t mean they can’t also separately fight armed guards in the schools.
For example, there are gay people in the NAACP, and nobody expects the NAACP to work for gay rights. That’s a separate issue. But somehow feminism isn’t fair and doesn’t count unless it tackles all the problems of every woman, not just sexism?
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Unree says:
Thanks, respondents–I don’t think I put my point too articulately. What I meant to say was that “sexism” is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to something like “With our time and energy scarce, should we, who came together as a group of feminists, make a priority of uniting and speaking against armed guards in Junior High 101?” Women of all demographics can agree (at some level) about sexism but are likely to reach divided answers to the second question.
One solution is for white women and non-mothers to say, “Rather than focus on what is and isn’t a feminist issue, we’ll join the protest work in the name of unity, provided that we also spend time on issues that affect women and girls more directly.” I think Linda Hirshman (who spent time in Chicago horsetrading circles) has argued for that approach. It might work but it also underscores differences among women.
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quixote says:
“sexism” is relatively abstract and theoretical
o_O
Are you human?
We swim in that stuff. That’s like a fish saying water isn’t very real.
If that’s indeed the attitude out there, it’s time to call Houston and tell them we have a problem.
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Violet Socks says:
I think that is the attitude out there. Around the time I stopped reading Feministe, a commenter there asked what, aside from abortion rights, feminism was needed for. This was I think in the era of “Sean Bell is a feminist issue.” The commenter expressed genuine bafflement as to why feminism shouldn’t be about race issues, since there really wasn’t anything else for feminists to concentrate on. Yeah, abortion rights, but what else?
The person was sincere. It was mind-blowing.
So yes, I think that is the attitude. Girls and women are being raped and murdered, women in some places can’t go outside the house without a bag over their heads, women even in the countries with the best record on women’s rights still don’t earn enough as men and get regularly beaten to shit by their domestic partners, and women politicians are jokes. But all this is just wallpaper, apparently. Nothing to see. Hey, let’s focus on something important, like the problems black men face!
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Violet Socks says:
It might work but it also underscores differences among women.
Unree, there are differences between women. As I said upthread, I think the attempt by some Third Wave blogs to pretend otherwise is thoroughly misguided.
“With our time and energy scarce, should we, who came together as a group of feminists, make a priority of uniting and speaking against armed guards in Junior High 101?”
Is that really the problematic situation? I don’t think so. It is normal for people to enlist their allies in various fights, which is why you’ll see everybody from the NAACP to NOW to the ADL on the scene of some travesty. All to the good.
The real problem is when Third Wave feminists try to redefine feminism itself. It’s not “should feminists care about racism?” Of course they should; all right-thinking people should. It’s not even, “will you join with us in speaking out against racism?” because, again, that is usually not a stumbling block. It’s, “feminism itself must be redefined.”
Why? Feminism is about ending sexism. It can be combined with anything else, but there’s no reason to redefine the core philosophy. Gay people should also be against racism—and since there are a whole lot of gay people of color, there are a whole lot of people who are personally coping with both issues—but that doesn’t mean that the core concept of gay rights needs to be redefined to be about racism. Why should it be?
As for what African-American feminists choose to focus on: look, feminists in any given community are going to focus on issues of importance to that community, including issues that don’t strictly concern women. The core concept of feminism is about sexism, but local varieties of feminism are always going to be augmented and flavored with whatever else is an issue for that community. This is totally natural and appropriate. It’s another reason to stop trying to paper over the differences between women, to drop this counterproductive fantasy of a sisterhood club where all women all over the world share the same issues.
Of course African-American feminists are going to focus on racism as well. Also: Native American feminists are going to focus on sovereignty, and maybe, depending on where they live, on fishing rights or nuclear waste. Many Latina feminists in this country are going to focus on immigration. Latina feminists elsewhere might focus on a variety of things—rural poverty, political freedom. Jewish feminists might focus very intently on the fate of Israel. Feminists in India might focus on pesticides as a burning issue for their communities.
Which is all great! The core philosophy of feminism is about sexism, but that core philosophy can then be plugged into and combined with whatever else needs to be addressed in that community. That is how intersectional feminism works.
The hapless Third Wavers, on the other hand, seem to get it backwards. Their idea of “intersectionality” is to redefine feminism to mean everything. To hell with the core concept! We’ll make feminism be about sexism + racism + immigration + sovereignty + fishing rights + nuclear waste + Israel + poverty + political freedom + pesticides….
It’s totally unworkable. It’s counterproductive. Especially since, in the real world, the stuff like sovereignty and fishing rights and Israel never makes it into the official new All-Encompassing Feminism. The All-Encompassing Feminism tends, instead, to reflect the concerns of liberal white and black Americans, and nobody else. To feminists in other communities, it just looks like the same old cultural imperialism, but now with a biracial cast. (Again, that may sound harsh, but I cannot overstate how repellent that kind of thing is to many feminists in the Latina, native, Asian, and Muslim communities.)
The deeper issue, of course, is why this impulse exists at all to redefine feminism as Everything. Nobody seems to be trying to redefine racial equality or gay rights that way.
But we know the answer, don’t we? It all goes back to the same old clusterfuck: sexism isn’t a “real” oppression. It doesn’t deserve to have a movement on its own. It has to be combined with something important in order to justify its existence.
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Unree says:
@48, I never said sexism wasn’t real. That’s a bizarre interpretation of what I wrote. What I really said: Sexism is RELATIVELY abstract and theoretical compared to a development that calls for–or maybe doesn’t call for, depending on your point of view–an immediate and tangible response. For a group of feminist activists, sexism becomes meaningful when you add particulars.
Violet, I am not channeling my inner Third Wave twit. Instead I’m asking, what would you do inside a mixed-ethnicity feminist group where most of the women of color want to focus on something different from what most of the white women want to focus on–where the women of color argue that the issue they raise is an emergency, a matter of life and death–and the white women believe that this other issue isn’t feminist because it isn’t about sexism, and so the group shouldn’t engage with it?
I’ve been inside this situation. It’s not theoretical for me. If you think ‘the white side’ of this dispute is correct, fine, but you can’t be surprised when women of color leave the group.
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Violet Socks says:
Unree, two things.
First, in answer to your specific question, what I would do would depend on the particulars. I would probably be inclined to go along, but it would depend on the group, its size and history, the issue the African-American women are raising, what the group is being asked to do (immediate support or a long-term switch of focus?) and so on. I personally think alliances are very helpful. I’ve been involved in cases where every single social justice group in town, including the Korean-Americans, got involved to support an African-American issue. Solidarity is good.
I would probably not be in favor of a long-term refocusing of the group’s mission, but since we’re talking hypotheticals here, this is all bullshit anyway.
The second thing I want to point out is that this is not an issue restricted to white women and feminism. For example: a gay rights group I know of near Atlanta had some inner turmoil when the African-American members of the group (and there weren’t many) lobbied for the group to take on anti-black racism. They expressly said that they were uncomfortable just arguing for gay rights, and wanted the group to focus on racism too. Which is understandable for them, but the rest of the group was baffled. It was a multicultural group, and included Asian-Americans, Latinos, etc. These other members felt strongly that the group needed to focus on its original mission and reason for being: combating the homophobia they all experienced. They were sympathetic to the African-American issue, but that’s not what the group was supposed to be about. End of story: the African-Americans left the group.
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Carmonn says:
“Rather than focus on what is and isn’t a feminist issue, we’ll join the protest work in the name of unity, provided that we also spend time on issues that affect women and girls more directly.”
I don’t feel like feminists are obsessed with marking the boundaries of what is and is not a feminist issue. It’s more of a reactive thing. Why is it so absolutely essential that that Sean Bell be defined as a feminist issue? Not as an incredibly important issue, not an issue that all people should care about, which no one would ever have a problem with, but explicitly as a feminist issue? Because it’s a guilt-tripping and silencing technique, to force us to admit that feminist concerns are marginal and we need to stop being so selfish and return to being the ladies’ auxiliary for universal causes.
That’s the problem. If you could find even a handful of feminist groups that would balk at investing all kinds of resources into fighting against armed guards in schools, I’d be very surprised. And nobody believes that feminists, or even feminist organizations, must concern themselves only with feminist issues 100% of the time. But it doesn’t help anyone to define feminism out of existance.
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Carmonn says:
Err, sorry, I didn’t refresh the page, of course Dr. Socks made the point I was fumbling with millions of times better than I ever could.
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Alison says:
Violet,
Again, fascinating conversation here. This is very enlightening, thank you and it has me thinking about many things. I’m confused with what you are saying now in terms of what you have written in the past about Big Tent Feminism. Should Feminists of different backgrounds, political identities, races, religions, economic class, age, etc. come together to focus on women’s issues or do you think it’s too problematic and destined to fail? With what you have written about Big Tent it would seem this is the way to go but now it seems that infighting is inevitable.
What you wrote about the infighting in the gay community was interesting. I had always thought that gay rights activist in America were very focused and were not “gulity” of infighting to the extend that feminists in America are.
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gxm17 says:
Excellent commentary, all!
Violet Socks @ 34: In short, ending sexism means liberating a whole bunch of other women whom you probably don’t like and who have even been your community’s enemies and tormenters.
This is a very important point. It drives a lot of the hatred we see directed at women politicians. It’s particularly frustrating when self-described liberal feminists attack Sarah Palin in a sexist or misogynistic manner, because, frankly, they should know better.
Violet Socks @ 50 The hapless Third Wavers, on the other hand, seem to get it backwards. Their idea of “intersectionality” is to redefine feminism to mean everything. To hell with the core concept! We’ll make feminism be about sexism + racism + immigration + sovereignty + fishing rights + nuclear waste + Israel + poverty + political freedom + pesticides….
I think much of this “intersectionality” thinking is an outgrowth of the patriarchal tenet of the default male. As I commented on TGW, boys raised in a patriarchy become psychologically detached from all that is the accursed feminine and lose the ability to empathize with women. This happens to varying degrees with girls too. Girls raised in patriarchal communities grow up with their identities forming, appendage-like, around the default male. Just how invasively the androcentrism takes root has everything to do with nature (innate personality) and nurture (home life, religion, etc.). This is why we see so few men in the feminist trenches and why we see far too many anti-feminist and conditionally feminist women creating opposition. In almost every community, men/sons have more value than women/daughters. Sadly, we see this played out again and again in progress/retrogress cycle that women’s equality seems locked in.
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Violet Socks says:
I’m confused with what you are saying now in terms of what you have written in the past about Big Tent Feminism. Should Feminists of different backgrounds, political identities, races, religions, economic class, age, etc. come together to focus on women’s issues or do you think it’s too problematic and destined to fail?
My conception of the Big Tent is that it’s the place where feminists of all stripes could cooperate on the issues they all share. If feminist communities are a bunch of circles (like in grade school math), the Big Tent is the place where all the circles overlap.
The purpose of the cooperation is to amp up our power, of course. So if all groups agree on an anti-rape measure, for example, then our combined support would help it succeed.
Actually, it wouldn’t have to be an issue everybody agrees on; the Big Tent would just be the metaphorical place where cross-community support happens.
I do think that it’s important not to mistake the means for the end. The Big Tent is a means; it’s not the goal of feminism. The goal of feminism is ending sexism.
An analogy in my mind is with environmentalism. Apart from the global warming thing, almost all environmentalism is local. Your goal as an environmentalist is to stop local pollution or clear-cutting or whatever, not to get all other environmentalists in the world to understand your issue. It doesn’t matter if they understand your issue or have even heard of it. If you’re working on stopping the paper company from damming up a stream, that’s your goal. Not sitting around fretting that people in Washington or Brussels aren’t working on that same issue with you. And you sure as hell don’t sit around waiting for Washington or Brussels to take the lead. “When is Brussels going to start talking about my fish stream?” Yeah, doesn’t work that way.
Too much contemporary feminism is like that. It’s as if feminists think they’re in a giant club with one agenda for everybody. And naturally they get pissed if the “leaders” (whoever they think that is) don’t make their issue part of the agenda.
I think the Big Tent should be like an environmentalist consortium, where we can share ideas, learn from each other, support each other when possible, and join forces on the big things that need lots of power. But not be dependent on each other, or mistake the consortium for the every-day community work of environmentalism.
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Violet Socks says:
I had always thought that gay rights activist in America were very focused and were not “gulity” of infighting to the extend that feminists in America are.
They’re not. Because, ahem, they’re men. Whatever other problems men face, lack of confidence in the importance of their issue is usually not one of them.
The infighting I’ve seen in the gay community never goes beyond the scenario I related. Black gay men say, “we think this group should focus on racism.” Other gay men say, “Nope. Sorry. We feel your pain, but our focus is gay rights.”
And that’s where it ends.
With women, of course—who have all been soaking in brainwash solution for decades that says feminism is frivolous and doesn’t deserve to exist—it becomes a major thing. And it goes further. Some feminists say, “we think feminism itself should be redefined to be about something more important, like racism.” And other feminists say, “My gosh, you’re right! How selfish of us not to see that before! We’re so ashamed!”
Doesn’t happen in the gay community. It’s hard to imagine a black man saying to a non-black gay man, “Your whole movement should be redefined to be about racism.” And the gay man saying, “Oh my god, you’re right!” Men don’t do that shit to each other.
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julia says:
Women are expected to do everyone else’s work. This ia a big reason the Second Wave of feminism began. Any woman who was a part of the anti-war movement in the 1960s will tell you how sexist it was. No one was standing up for women.
While racism, classism and other oppressions have to be a part of feminism – so that we are not divided from each other – this can not take our time and focus away from the Liberation of Women.
In the late 1980s, great numbers of lesbians were caring for gay men dying from AIDs. Sonia Johnson said they should stop. She said that gay men do not help lesbians dying from breast cancer, nor do they make the right to medical care for breast cancer a part of their movement.
Once again, women were putting their energy towards men, who don’t return the favor or even become political allies.Mary Daly wrote ‘Radical feminism is the Cause of causes’. If you look at feminism from the roots, it puts women, children and all living things at the center. It is not just about equal rights -it is a completely different paradigm. With life at the center instead of money or possesions or war, it makes you wonder why other groups are not fighting for radical feminism. It could bring about the kind of society that many of us long for.
Time is limited, and I’m getting older. My free time and my activism is for women. If I don’t organize for women, if I don’t help a homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk, there is a very real chance the no one else will.
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Alison says:
Violet,
I appreciate the environmental analogy. That makes sense to me. So I have long seen (I mean for the past two years) the Big Tent presence as very important but I never thought to think of Feminism on a more local level. I live in New Hampshire, for example, and there is a lot going on with women politically here and a lot of groups that support women. A lot of discussion with women as business leaders, etc. And yet I never thought to get involved on a local or more intimate level if that makes sense.
In terms of gays vs. women as activists you wrote:
“The infighting I’ve seen in the gay community never goes beyond the scenario I related. Black gay men say, “we think this group should focus on racism.” Other gay men say, “Nope. Sorry. We feel your pain, but our focus is gay rights.”
And that’s where it ends.”Again, until you wrote this I really only thought of Big Tent activism as part of solving this issue in terms of women’s rights. But I gather I can take this idea of refocussing feminism on women at the more local/ smaller group level too.
Time for me to grow my feminism beyond the internet, LOL.
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KendallJ says:
Wow! What a wonderful and honest conversation. Thank you so much violet. I’ve learned so much here today. Its as if I finally found the conversation that I have been waiting for for years.
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Branjor says:
Now I see what’s been bothering me about the “women don’t form natural communities” narrative. It’s the negative emphasis on what women (purportedly) “don’t” do. The way I see it is that men are a subset of the human species, but women *are* the species.
Women with children bonding with other women with children to share childcare and survival skills were the basis of the first human communities.
