Okay, I really didn’t envision myself starting the new year off so negatively, but the last few weeks in the feminist blogosphere have been rather arduous.
Jessica Valenti, co-contributor to Feministing and author of Full Frontal Feminism (2007), and Jaclyn Friedman, feminist poet, fat-acceptance activist, and performer, put out a call for submissions to an upcoming collection called Yes Means Yes!
Co-editors Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti are seeking submissions for their anthology on rape culture, Yes Means Yes!, to be published by Seal Press in Fall 2008.
Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren’t shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.
Welcome to the world of Yes Means Yes.
Yes Means Yes! will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture.
Potential essay subjects could include[:]
- Revamping how public sex education is taught, and to whom.
- The new backlash against rape survivors (i.e., media obsession with drinking, Girls Gone Wild culture being to blame for assault)
- Bringing men back into the conversation, making men leaders in the movement to end rape culture
- Thoughts on “enthusiastic consent”
- Taking Back the Porn: How changing the pornography industry can stop rape
- The power of language (naming rape for what it is, or the new myth of “gray rape”)
- A primer for men on sexual assault
- How good sex (where women’s pleasure is central) can mean an end to rape culture, and how a society that values genuine female sexual pleasure will make it easier to identify and prosecute rapists.
- Rethinking sexual interaction as a private joint performance, as opposed to as an exchange of a commodity or service
- An analysis of the economics of female sexual alienation/oppression, and an economic model for resistance
- Holding the MSM accountable for torture porn, kidnapping crusades and faux feminism.
- Desegmenting the Market: overcoming commercially enforced sexual stereotypes to organize across race, class, gender, and difference
- On pulling out the invisible lynchpin of rape culture: homophobia
- Creating accurate media representations of rape
Women and men, published and unpublished authors, are all encouraged to submit essays. Be creative, be forward-thinking, be funny! Perhaps most importantly, we are seeking essays with a pro-active bent that offer new and insightful thoughts and actions on how to dismantle rape culture. No more “No Means No,” let’s think “Yes Means Yes!”
When I first read the CFS, I was interested and also a little suspicious. All right, a lot suspicious. Feministing is, well, quite mainstream. Very mainstream. Posts at the site are days, sometimes weeks, behind the release date of the issues — they were many days behind mainstream media on posting about the Jena Six case in Louisiana, and many weeks behind posts about Jena Six on blogs written by people of color. I realize the Feministing contributors all have lives and don’t get paid for their work on Feministing, but really, it’s not too much to expect that a popular feminist blog that has often come under fire for its lack of attention to issues of race as they intersect with feminism to attempt to be up to date on such important issues. I credit the Feministing blog with introducing me to contemporary feminism and current women’s issues, but now that I’ve read I Blame the Patriarchy and other radical feminist blogs, Feministing just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. I still read, but I rarely comment except to call someone out on their victim-blaming or privilege-flashing. Most recently, the post that has made it clear to me how indifferently and potentially harmfully unradical Feministing is was this post, “Not Oprah’s Book Club: Getting Off.”
I haven’t read the book, but it’s very interesting to me because the author, Robert Jensen, analyzes the porn industry and its effect on masculinity. In the words of Courtney from Feministing, “he takes this analysis and then projects it the contemporary landscape of sex, violence, and power more generally, rape culture, and continued repression of both men and women’s authentic selves (sexually and otherwise). Eventually he goes so far as to attest that ‘we live in a world that hates women.’” Courtney then goes on to say,
This is where I keep getting snagged in Jensen’s analysis. He is utterly convinced that we live in a culture that — by and large — wants to see women humiliated, submissive, and in pain. He argues for totally eradicating, not reforming, masculinity: “I cannot escape a simple conclusion: If men are going to be full human beings, we first have to stop being men.” His prose reeks of self-hate and desperation.
But this doesn’t ring true with my experience of the world today. Yes, there is still massive repression in various places and contexts. Yes, rape is still horrifyingly common and America, in particular, is totally screwed up about sex. But there have also been big changes in the way that women and men interact over the last few decades. There are some truly liberating porn films and erotica outlets (see Rachel Kramer Bussel’s work) putting women in charge of their own sexuality and giving them a setting within which to explore what feels good.
I realize that Feministing and many mainstream feminists are sex-positive and therefore relatively porn-positive. But I didn’t realize, until I read this particular post (which, I know and would like to reiterate, is just one post among hundreds of posts on the blog and probably hundreds by Courtney), that radical feminism and mainstream feminism were so deeply different. Radical feminism is interested in dismantling all gender roles, including masculinity, not in making it easier or nicer or better to be masculine as the patriarchy defines it. If I take this post as a symbol of how mainstream feminism works with issues of gender roles and masculinity, then I find that mainstream feminism is not very interested in deconstructing patriarchal society but rather in making everyone happy. Courtney’s dig at Jensen’s probably very personal journey into the devastating effects the porn culture has had on him and men like him — he reeks of “self-hate and desperation” — evidences a lack of compassion and a lack of radical, stringent analysis of patriarchal oppressions. Just one among many complaints I have about mainstream feminism as represented on Feministing.
Basically, my take on the situation is that patriarchy, by definition, hates women (and anyone who is not a [n upper-class, educated, white, heterosexual] man). Patriarchy shows its hatred of women by oppressing them, and oppression appears in many forms — some of which often include humiliating and hurting women. We live in a patriarchy. Porn is the visual manifestation of patriarchal sexual desire, and because it’s patriarchal, because it eroticizes dominance and submission, it necessarily demands that women be harmed — submissive, in pain, humiliated, etc., et al. Again, I haven’t read Jensen’s text, but if he is arguing that masculinity be eradicated because masculinity as we know it, as a gender role, is harmful to everyone, men and women alike, then he sounds like quite the radical feminist and I agree with him. No wonder Courtney didn’t like that point — she’s not radical. Which is okay. I just totally disagree with her there.
(As an aside, I’d like to say that I’m not looking to be divisive in this critique of Feministing. I respect the writers there and value what they do; again, without them, I would not be the feminist I am today. I just think they could do a little better — and should, honestly, do a little better because they have such an enormous audience base. Additionally, looking back on Courtney’s post is an interesting and telling comparison with the CFS for YMY! I probably should have seen it coming.)
Besides the blog’s issues, there was a significant amount of criticism of Valenti’s first book, Full Frontal Feminism (FFF), in the feminist blogosphere. There was some critique of the language, but the most discussion centered on Valenti’s choice to use a picture of a white, skinny woman’s stomach as the image for the cover (discussed in part here and here; book critique here). If one of the goals of feminism is to end the sexual objectification of women, one would think that objectifying a woman’s body for the purpose of promotion (specifically, representing “woman” minus a head) would be just a tad antithetical to the purpose of the book. Additionally, if Feministing — and Valenti by proxy — is often the subject of criticisms regarding race, specifically criticisms that charge that Feministing and Valenti are only promoting a feminism by and for white, upper-/middle-class women, one would think that perhaps showcasing a white woman’s body in a book for “everyone” would be the best way to go. Valenti dealt with the criticism decently well and I understand that it can be difficult to change decisions in the publishing world, despite loud, valid, and convincing criticisms. It still bugs me that it was published this way, but so it goes, as Vonnegut would say. And so on.
Valenti is also working on a book of her own called He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Needs to Know, which should be out later this year. Valenti’s a widely published writer, beyond Feministing, and with her visit to The Colbert Report, she’s on the fast-track to becoming one of the most easily recognized feminist faces of my generation. She should be proud of herself and feel lucky that everything has worked out so well for her. So now we come to this collaboration between her and Friedman, Yes Means Yes! The CFS prompted a number of criticisms, which are catalogued at Fly By Night. I read a number of blog posts and forum posts responding to the call: imfallingup’s “Stopping race by saying yes instead of no?“; Roy’s response to imfallingup on No Cookies for Me; tekanji’s “Can we stop misrepresenting our own movement?“; and plenty of conversations on a radfem forum about the call. After the forums, I read The New Page of Consent at IBTP and Theriomorph’s “My Yes is Not More Important Than Her Often-Impossible No.”
After all this reading, I still felt (and feel) out of the loop on the subject of YMY!. After reading the call, I wanted to write something — the lullabye of possible “fame” and the real chance to write something relevant about feminism were very attractive to me. But the criticisms I read on the radfem forums made me rethink that first desire. The call for submissions — at least as it was first released — set up a very clear divide between mainstream feminists and radical and/or non-mainstream feminists. Let’s do a quick overview of the many criticisms of the call’s language and intent:
Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren’t shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.
Welcome to the world of Yes Means Yes.
Yeah, cool, okay, a world without slut-shaming and with joint sex rather than supply-demand-themed sex. No more rape? Sweet. On we go . . .
Yes Means Yes! will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture. [bolding mine]
Yeah! Wait. What?
Much of the criticism noted in radfem blogs, such as Theriomorph’s, centers on this passage. For one thing, the first bolded phrase sets up a dichotomy between “contemporary” (read: mainstream) feminists and “conventional” (read: radical, second-wave) feminists where “contemporary” feminists are looking to ignore “conventional” feminist theories that rape and sex are separate things. Rape =/= sex in second-wave feminist thought — and this is the foundation of “contemporary” feminist thought. This distinction between rape and sex has led to the acknowledgment of marital rape, acquaintance rape, and statutory rape as violent crimes and not as sex. The concept of rape vs. sex relies heavily on the notion of consent, and the current trend in some mainstream feminism is looking at enthusiastic consent as a way of dismantling one aspect of rape culture, specifically date/acquaintance rape and possibly marital rape.
This quibble over articles leads us to the second major criticism of the above passage: the call sets up YMY! as “the key to dismantling rape culture”. This one book? Will solve all the world’s rape problems? Uh, no. Not so much with the globalized perspective there.
Finally, the use of the phrase “rape culture” effectively ignores the other aspects of rape culture that this book, judging by its essay topic suggestions, will not address, such as rape as a weapon of war, institutionalized rape, marital rape, and, of course, stranger rape. Basically, the claims the editors made in the first call are too broad to be anything other than privileged.
Other assorted criticisms of the essay topics as listed (in italics following each bullet):
- Revamping how public sex education is taught, and to whom. (I agree that this is an important subject, and I can see how educating people about enthusiastic consent would be useful, but, again, sex ed will not prevent all rape, only some types of rape.)
- The new backlash against rape survivors (i.e., media obsession with drinking, Girls Gone Wild culture being to blame for assault) (Ironic.)
- Bringing men back into the conversation, making men leaders in the movement to end rape culture (As imfallingup said, back into the conversation? Haven’t men always been part of the rape discussion?)
- Taking Back the Porn: How changing the pornography industry can stop rape (This one is my biggest problem, both with this call for submissions and with mainstream feminism as a movement. Changing porn will not make it better and it will not end rape. Eradicating porn is more likely to have that effect. But while we live under a patriarchy, porn will always and forever be oppressive and harmful to women, no matter what form it takes.)
- How good sex (where women’s pleasure is central) can mean an end to rape culture, and how a society that values genuine female sexual pleasure will make it easier to identify and prosecute rapists. (Again with the blanket “rape culture” language. Yes, enthusiastically consent all you want to the sex you want to have with the person/s you want to have it with, but when you’ve been raped while screaming “NO”, or after a dose of GHB, or during a war where rape is an order, a focus on genuine female sexual pleasure is rather irrelevant.)
- Rethinking sexual interaction as a private joint performance, as opposed to as an exchange of a commodity or service (see above)
- On pulling out the invisible lynchpin of rape culture: homophobia (huh?)
There are a lot of problems in this call for submissions. It took me quite a bit of time to go through the blog posts, so I’m relatively behind on this issue, but what I learned about feminism, specifically about feminist allies/male feminists/pro-feminist men, has been very valuable.
The cross-blog conversation I spent the most time reading was the one between Theriomorph and Hugo Schwyzer (which soon branched into Sweating Through Fog’s and Ilyka Damen’s blogs, which I’ll get to). Hugo Schwyzer wrote a post about YMY!, saying, basically, that he supported the project while recognizing the problems inherent to the language of the call for submissions. Later, Theriomorph delivers a cutting, elegant, totally necessary critique of the call and of the intent of YMY! Hugo Schwyzer responds and links to Theriomorph’s post and comments with his objective take on the whole ordeal, claiming that YMY! has divided feminists into two groups, the “purists” (not kidding) and the “popularizers.” Then, to illustrate, he compares this division to the division between Evangelical Christians (popularizers) and, uh, non-Evangelical Christians (purists). (Sorry, I’m agnostic and I haven’t been to any church in about 10 years — all the self-identified Christians I’ve ever known have been condescending, proselytizing jerks.) The purists (or radical feminists) want the feminist message to reach people as close to whole as possible, while the popularizers, with whom Hugo clearly sides, are comfortable with curtailing the message for the sake of, well, popularity. Jessica Valenti, apparently, is a popularizer, while everyone who criticizes YMY! is a purist. He throws some good ol’ “you’re just jealous of her success!” and some misuse of “the master’s tools” in the response for good measure. According to Hugo, it all comes down to who’s willing to market the ideas, because the market is what will determine the success of the movement.
If it’s not clear by now, I disagree with Hugo. Even his semi-apologetic, attention-seeking response to the criticism, “A rambling post about blogging, hubris, narcissism, and the puerile longing to be liked,” continues to espouse his unacknowledged sense of privilege and illustrate his ability to subversively, quietly, and verbosely earn a bingo on the Anti-Feminist Bingo Card.
Hugo’s not the first obnoxious male pro-/feminist/ally I’ve come across recently, and the YMY! discussion seems to be bringing Teh Menz and their Apolojeez out of the woodwork. Roy began the YMY!-apologia from the male-laden mainstream “side” of the discussion, and while he apologized for ignoring WOC feminist bloggers’ previously-had conversations about the issue, the issue of his white male privilege with regard to feminism remains. Hugo continued the apologia, and his privilege is even more blatantly obvious now than before the “narcissism” post. It gets better, though.
On Hugo’s “narcissism” post, a dude I dislike, Sweating Through Fog, commented to Hugo thusly:
I’m indifferent on the issues of this controversy, but I found it interesting enough to write about it in my blog. You’re evidently very torn up inside about it, and I’m sorry. You deserve better, fairer treatment than you’ve received on this.
Sorry, what? Hugo is now being cast as a victim? Because he wrote some fucking privileged, underthought, overextended tripe and got called out on it? Wrong. Sweating Through Fog apparently felt compelled to write this post, “A Flameout Attempt to Triangulate Between Feminists.” Some gems:
I don’t really care about feminism, and I could care less what Jessica Valenti or the various WOC bloggers that are involved in this controversy think. What interests me is Hugo’s attempt to add his voice to the mix, by trying to convince both sides that there is room for both in his big-tent view of feminism. And I care very much what Hugo thinks, because he is clearly a decent man, and a deep thinker. . . .
Like all of these discussions, it always – always! – boils down to a matter of privilege. Privilege is the leftist counterpart to the Christian doctrine of original sin, absent its universality. . . .
Here is what is happening. In the view of ideological leftists, the sin of privilege – particularly that of a white, heterosexual American male – can never be washed away. It is a permanent defect of your soul. It means – to ideologues – that you have no moral worth. Despite what they say, no amount of “unpacking”, no amount of insight, no amount of loyal “ally work” can regain your humanity.
Boy golly, do I ever love being called an ideologue just because I understand something and stick with it and have heard almost all the arguments against it and have deemed them stupid and irrelevant. Anyway.
Hugo responded to this post of STF’s with, “You know, STF, I really really needed to read this. Thank you.”
*boggles*
No, what you needed to do was stop talking. You needed to apologize for your stupid shit, shut up, and listen. If you claim to be an ally, then be a fucking ally. Take some tips from Tia at Unfogged. Practice silence. I am just appalled at the behavior of the men in my blogroll and on my radfem-friends’ blogrolls and comment threads who claim to be allies or pro-feminists or male feminists or whatever they call themselves. Appalled and astounded. Seriously, all of you need to take a step away from your computers, breathe, listen, listen some more, and shut the holy hell up already. (And if you find yourself reading this and fighting the urge to say, “Not me! Not me!” just keep on fighting that urge and don’t say it. You know who you are and you know who I’m talking to/about. No cookies granted here.)
Thankfully for my sanity, Ilyka Damen, Chris from Creek Running North, and Sylvia have responded to both Hugo and STF with characteristic wit, charm, and righteousness.
I guess part of what I’m thinking with the YMY! controversy, reading male feminists’ responses to it, reading Feministing, and reading the blogs of some male feminists is that mainstream feminism is probably harmful to men who are interested in feminist/gender studies. I may be basing that judgment too narrowly on what I’ve read in Pro-Feminist Male’s blog lately (specifically this), but I can’t shake the sense that mainstream feminism coddles men and too easily allows them to maintain their privilege while supplying them with the tools to defend themselves against checks on their privilege. Of course, this isn’t true for all men, regardless of whether they identify as feminists/allies or not. Many men, such as my Nigel and Chris from CRN and Richie from Crimitism, seem to be pretty darned good at shutting the fuck up about things they don’t understand and listening instead of spouting off and then not apologizing. This is unrealistic and biased, but I think that if men are going to go after gender studies, they should go for radical feminism and work with us to eradicate gender roles instead of working to maintain the status quo only with more acceptable language and labels. It just frightens me that so many of these men (specifically Hugo, as well as many others) are linked on Feministing and are thus held up as beacons of feminist-ally-dom when they’re actually committing the same anti-feminist sins as their supposedly less feminist-educated brothers, just with a different audience and a larger vocabulary.
And perhaps many men are doing this already — they’re shutting up about things they don’t understand and shouldn’t be commenting on. Maybe that’s why there are so few prominent, relevant, non-asshat male feminist bloggers on the ‘nets (at least as far as I could find). I doubt it, but maybe.
All of this controversy and blog in-fighting has, ultimately, led to a revised call for submissions for the Yes Means Yes! essay collection at Feministing. The blatant “No more ‘No means no,’ let’s think ‘Yes means yes!’” dig at “conventional” feminism has been replaced with “Yes Means Yes! will make the world safer for women to say yes and no to sex as we please.” It’s still privileged and narrow, but at least it’s no longer “The Key” to the end of rape culture. Also, happily, Friedman and Valenti have added a few new suggested topics for essays, including “Beyond consent: state-sanctioned and institutional rape that even the healthiest sexual culture won’t stop.” I am very happy to see that they have taken so many vital critiques of the project’s intents and turned some of them into productive changes for the collection.
Even before this revised call for submissions, I had said that I wanted to collaborate with some other radfems in creating an essay to submit to the project. I’m still tossing around ideas in my head, but the revised CFS has helped me get past the problems into more productive mindspace. I may do some brainstorming for the collaboration in the near future, possibly even tomorrow. Maybe one of my brainstorms will centralize on the apparent divide between “mainstream” and “radical” feminists when it comes to the issues of rape, sex and consent, and how all feminists can/should work to bridge that rhetorical gap. We shall see.
Arduous? Yes. I’m a bit of a n00b, but even I cringe at the thought of going through my feminist blogs lately. (After reading a couple posts re: Yes Means Yes! I’ve deleted Feministing all together; it almost felt like sacriledge.)
It just feels all Feminism Is Serious Business, but without any actual relevant topics. Sex education in this country sucks…ok, I’ve heard that already, got anything new to contribute?
In my exhausted skimming of the post in question (YMY submissions), I failed to put my finger on what was wrong with it. Duh! I watch SVU, I know this one — rape is not about sex. Rape is not because she was pretty and he felt a stirring in his pants over it. Rape is not because she said yes then changed her mind. Rape is about power, control, and violence — and I believe this is true even with date rape. I do not believe there is such thing as “accidental” rape, as in “I thought she wanted it but she changed her mind.” When a person rapes, he knows exactly what he is doing, and he knows it’s wrong, and he is getting a high off of it.
I am trying real hard to repress the fangirl impulse here, but–
OMG this post is so great! You hit something that’s been irritating me so much lately:
THANK YOU. (And thank you for reminding me of Tia’s post, which I think might be the only thing I’ve ever truly enjoyed reading at Unfogged!)
I want to shake some of them and say, “You can’t ride to the rescue of the damsel in distress without invoking all the antifeminist baggage of, check this, a dude out to rescue a damsel in distress.” They should know this. It’s fucking 101! And if they’d only stop doing it, then maybe women could, oh, I don’t know, talk TO EACH OTHER and regain more say in our own feminisms, without all the dudely interference.
Just brilliant. Thank you for writing this!
Agreed, zombie. And that’s why I think there’s such a huge group of people who are discussing the implications of this book with such passion — if we can get this message out to more people, maybe we can help reduce the effects of the rape culture in some aspects.
YES. That’s my biggest problem. It’s such a fucking waste of time to have to remind men that, hey, you’re privileged here and you need to be quiet so that we can have the conversations we need to have. Seriously, they’re acting like a bunch strawmen come to life. Thanks for reading, ilyka. :)
Great essay. You certainly investigated the issue and really got to the meat of it.
I think you’re right that Feministing and Valenti tend to be mainstream and aren’t seriously critical enough of themselves and reality to promote a world-changing feminism. Instead, they promote a marketable feminism, one that ignores intersections of race, class, species, age, ability and so forth.
You’re right that Valenti is on the fast track to being a major feminist figure in our generation. She already is.
I have issues with Feministing being run like a business. They poor-mouth asking for donations like a nonprofit, yet they don’t disclose financial data or lobby or do any sort of real activism, like a nonprofit would. Instead, the site is run like a business, where they shut out dissenting voices and sacrifice already othered voices and ideas to make themselves more marketable.
I was just told in comments at an anti-feminist blog that their only source for information on the feminist movement was NOW and Feministing.
I know I’m a bit stuck in the past where nothing that happens on the internet means anything to the real world, but..really?? A blog — perhaps a popular one, but still not any better than Wikipedia as far as sourcing, verifiability, etc, goes — is your primary source for information?
Anyway, if that’s not a good reason for Feministing to turn the critical eye on itself, at least a little bit, I don’t know what is.
I came to the shocking realization this morning that the self proclaimed leadership of the third wave of feminism still hasn’t figured out that MEN HATE YOU.
No wonder they think the radfems are shrill.
Aphra Bein knew it in the 1600’s.
Wollstonecraft knew it in the 1700’s.
Ida Wells knew it in the 1800’s.
The suffragettes demonstrated it in the 1900’s.
And that is just in the english speaking histories of women.
How is it possible that young women with access to the history of women on this planet have failed to grasp this simple obvious fact?
I find it hard to imagine how empowering women’s sexual pleasure will help stop rape. I think it’s a good idea, but you stop rape by changing the attitudes of men towards women, specifically dealing with our attitude that dominance is preferable to cooperation, and the all-or-nothing attitude that having power over others makes us “better” men.
great, great post
> If you claim to be an ally, then be a fucking ally.
well said! as is so much more, but wow, this totally cuts to the heart of it. people who see themselves as allies need to realize that just *wanting* to be allies and describing themselves that way isn’t enough.
jon
L – I appreciate this post, as it certainly highlights a lot of what I sense as a friction between radical feminism and mainstream, liberal feminism.
Let me ask: what do radical feminists truly want to be the end goal for feminism? I don’t mean that “to rid the world of patriarchy” isn’t a sufficient answer, I just need a clearer definition of it all.
As well, I would also like to know what it is you expect out of pro-feminist allies …what should our roles be?
The fact of the matter is that we’re not perfect. We’re trying our best based on our values and our convictions. Sometimes we’ll fall on our faces, and then we’ll get back up, dust ourselves off, and move on, bearing in mind that we won’t make the same mistake again.
Clearly, my calling in feminism is different than yours. I am focused on lesgislations, the law and politics. We all have different things to bring to the table, and perhaps that’s how the feminist movement works best, but sometimes I seems as though radical feminism does not want that. Rather, it wants to discredit all the hard work third-wave, liberal feminists have done, and I can’t help but think that it’s somehow dividing the movement.
Furthermore – on being an ally and shutting the hell up …perhaps radical feminists use a different set of language. What the hell is an ally if not one to share ideas and visions with? I suppose my other beef with radical feminism is that the majority of its members claim to have the enlightened knowlege about feminism while its allies are still “learning,” yet at the same time, it’s also stoic and apolitical …sitting there and deconstructing and talking about theories is nice, but when it comes down to it, we have to go out there and get our hands dirty.
Third-wave feminists everywhere are going out there and getting their hands dirty. What are the radical feminists doing? This is not meant to be a critique, but rather, a question.
The bewilderness, please tell me, and I am actually truly curious to find out, how do all men hate all women? It seems comments like these are the reason people are turned off to feminism and the fight for equality.
Marc, please be aware that I am only letting your comments be published because you are serving as a wonderful illustration of what I talked about in this post. Everyone else, please do not feed the troll. Marc, reread this post and all of the links included and see if you can answer your own questions instead of “requesting” (i.e., demanding) that we/I educate you.
ETA: For a start on what radical feminists do (beyond educating ignorant, over-privileged asshats like you), check out this post at Women’s Space/The Margins.
ETA2: Actually, I’m going to make it even easier for you so that you have absolutely no excuse not to read about what radfems do. Go here instead.
[...] and well worth a read, as, in my experience has been anything by this author, and can be found here. The catalyst for this post though, was my response to a specific comment which said that women [...]
I’ve published this reply as a post on my blog, trying first to explain why I respect the conclusions drawn in the comment I’m responding to, and requesting that people comment to me if they have a problem, not to the commenter I’m responding to, as I would hate to draw any disrespect towards this commenter for a pretty legitimate view.
I also linked to your post as I think it is interesting, well written and thought provoking. I hope this is ok.
To The Bewilderness
I am not trying to disrespect your belief that men hate women. I just wonder whether that belief gives us any way “out”. Masculinity is constructed in opposition to the construction of femininity, bred to fear and loathe it. However saying all men *anything* is of concern for me, if for no other reason than if we can posit that “all menx”, then equally it can be posited that “all women y, and all gays z and all “blacks” a, and all “whites” c”.
Whenever we generalise and categorise and attribute certain characteristics to a “class” of people, violence seems certain to follow. Indeed I think there can be violence in the very act of categorising and defining.
There are times, when I look at the statistics of violence, abuse and disrespect directed at women by men that I feel like this is *true*, like MEN HATE WOMEN. And yet…I am raising a boy child. I am sleeping with, laughing with, loving a man – not a saviour, not a saint, just a human being…and the *fact* that this man listens to, learns from and loves me (and here I mean love in the very best sense, love as a verb, as a gifting, showing his love in many ways with many acts and many words and with kindness and laughter) doesn’t *disprove* the fact that masculinity is violent and oppressive, that masculinity has produced a culture where rape is used to silence, to belittle, to humiliate…that it has produced individuals and societies which disrespect women…I just wonder…if we believe that men *hate* women, because they are men, and because we are women…are we not throwing our hands in the air and saying nothing can be done? Where are our options, our ways out?
If on the other hand, gender constructions damage all of us (and yes, definately to greater degrees and vastly different ways) and language and discourse, and *masculinity* and *femininity* are problems that produce violence and individuals and structures who disregard the autonomy, rights and needs of other humans, this at least gives us the room to work on challenging and deconstructing gender, gives us some hope for making changes. I dunno. Maybe I sound like a naive, ignorant git. But…as an atheist this is the faith I have to have, my choice to embrace “messianism without a messiah”- that there are changes that can be made, that it is discourse, culture, religion and science that fuck us up, that being born with a penis doesn’t mean that you are biologically destined to hate everyone with a vagina, or everyone you deem “unworthy” to *have* a penis, or homosexual men, or anyone who transgresses the boundaries of gender.
I struggle with this, as I often panic over the *fact* that since a penis can (and so often is) used as a weapon, that every where I look there are human beings equipped with a weapon that they could, if they so chose, use against others to harm, to humiliate, to degrade, to assert power. I feel desperate over the state of the world knowing this. It makes me ill that there are many areas of the world in which this *weapon* is deployed coldly, callously, en masse, as a tool of war, and in every part of the world, that there are family homes in which it is wielded in secret, relationships where it goes from being a part of a body which gives and recieves pleasure, to a tool of pain, times where it is used against strangers not as a command in war, but for “fun”, for punishment, for violence for the sake of violence… I despair over this, and I fear for us all, myself, my friends, the women I don’t know, women trapped in civil wars, and boys growing into men that could be corrupted to a point of such revolting callousness and disrespect – and I don’t understand it. But I can’t bring myself to say that ownership of the penis=biologically inescapable hatred for women.
I don’t know…maybe this does make me a fool. And perhaps it is true that all *deconstructing gender* won’t make a licking difference to the use of rape as a tool of war. However, I can’t see how (and I am willing to listen to an explanation of how it might) taking the view that men hate women will make a difference here either. Sadly I am only a hairs breadth from agreeing with you when I ponder what the hell *will* make a difference to the many and varied ways in which rape is utilised to punish, to keep scared, to violate, to overpower, to hurt, to humiliate…
I just know that I am uncomfortable with the ramifications of enforcing categories of people, and effacing the differences between people in that category, then ascribing certain attributes to “all” of the people *within* that group. This, it would appear, is the way that so much of the violence of modernity has worked.
So perhaps we need to acknowledge the specificities of rape(s). That rape as a tool of war, as a *command* which must be obeyed, is linked to, but differs from rape in other scenarios, in that it requires its specificity to be acknowledged if we are to even begin thinking through how we might possibly protect people from it. We will need to acknowledge issues of race in rape, for example the perception in Australia, that men from certain cultures are more ready to rape *our girls*, which cause hostility to certain members of our society, ignores the many gang rapes committed by *anglo aussies*, and does little if nothing to actually keep women safe, prevent rapes or intervene in the violence inherent in the ways we *do* masculinity. Also, what of other issues of race involved in rape? Where white men raped Aboriginal women? Where women are being trafficked illegally to Sydney?
In mentioning some of the complexities inherent in any discussion of rape and how to begin even thinking through *undoing* “rape culture”, I am not for a second holding myself up as someone having the answers. I don’t even know all the complexities, being that the privileges of my life have sheltered me from having to know some of them. It’s just immensely complex and I don’t want to reduce the problems of rape to only those I know about/understand, or position myself as some “expert”, some neutral, objective “authority” who gets to make bold blanket statements because I see the danger inherent in that…
I just don’t see how the conclusion that men hate women will help us to resolve these issues. Even when I am at my most down, most vulnerable to this belief – I can’t believe it. I choose not to believe it. If I believe it, then I see no way forward. If I believe it, then I can see no good in men. If I believe it, then given the power men have in society, we’re all doomed. If I believe it I think I really will go crazy. If I believe it, then stretching on forever, all I can see is hate, punishment, violence, retribution, no escape, no options, no possibilities. I look at my son, I look at my lover, I look at my male friends, and I see that while masculinity has a powerful hold over men, while masculinity pressures men to devalue and disrespect women, that men make choices, that men are human beings, capable of civil and respectful behaviour, capable of loving, capable of kindness, capable of good no less than women. Sure, many men continue to choose hate. But to categorise them as *all the same* and to attribute a hatred of women to them all is bleak…and not only is it bleak, but the act of categorising and attributing is defeatest, disrespectful, devoid of hope and buys into the very violence masculinity operates by, thus disabling us from deconstructing and debunking this violence.
Sorry, actually, to soften that last part…it seems *to me* that it is a bleak view to take, and *I* worry that it is violent. I don’t want to sound like I *know* this…this is what I thought when deciding for myself.
I meant it when I said i didn’t wanna disrespect your view. Cos fuck, it really really seems like it is true when you look at the state of the world (You sure I can’t *feed the troll, as in telling him off?)
And I don’t wanna presume to know how you intended that remark – whether it’s your *world view* or you made it as a half smart-arse remark, or something in between. It doesn’t discomfort me…it’s just in trying to figure it out for myself, the reasons above were why I couldn’t use it as my mantra in life without wanting to top myself out of desperation.
So I hope that clears it up some. Don’t wanna come off all hostile…
You sure I can’t *feed the troll, as in telling him off?
Nah, not this time around. Trust me: it’ll be a waste of bandwidth, time, energy, and typing. I answered all his questions in this post — he just can’t be bothered to read, comprehend, and apply, it seems.
I’m still getting through the rest of your comments, FP — thanks for such a thoughtful, thorough response.
FP — I’ve finished reading your comment, and I have a few things to respond with.
thebewilderness’s statement that “men hate you” is one that is thoroughly discussed and debated at IBTP here. The basic premises are these (by Twisty):
There’s a difference between making an essential/biological argument (men hate women because they’re genetically programmed to hate women) and making a claim that is supported by facts/stats and that can be explained with a socialization bent (men hate women because patriarchal constructs condition men to hate women [or anything not-man] from before they’re born).
This statement also threw me off the first times I read it, much like “men rape women.” The latter statement comes across as “all men rape all women,” but that’s not what it’s saying; instead, it’s saying that men are largely responsible for the rapes that women experience. Some men rape other men, some women rape men, and some women rape other women — these are realities, but they do not disprove “men rape women.” Because they do. We see that every day. Likewise, “men hate women” describes a pattern that plays out every single minute in every single country around the world. Certainly, there are exceptions to that pattern: many men do not hate women and do not treat women in hateful ways; some men just hate other men, or don’t; some women hate other women, or don’t. Regardless of the exceptions, the rule still stands: men hate women. If they didn’t largely hate women, they wouldn’t be largely responsible for the hate crimes that women experience.
That said, I don’t think that “men hate women” is necessarily a limiting statement. As it does not imply that every single man hates every single woman, it does not imply that there is nothing to be done about it, especially because it is not an essentialist argument about the nature of men. In fact, the anger it inspires (or should inspire) can be redirected rather productively to dismantle the culture that makes men hate women. (Enter radical feminism.)
I think this is where you start with radfem — once you understand that men hate women, that this is not to say that they are incapable of anything else (because they are, indeed, human and capable of change and compassion for the most part), and that their hatred takes many forms, both visible and invisible, you can begin to work toward eradicating the gender roles that condition men into hating women. Like GI Joe says, knowing is half the battle.
I’m having a difficult time following your take that violence stems from categorizing and classifying. I do see that as the case when the group doing the classifying is in a position of social power, but at the moment, I don’t believe that women classifying men as group that hates women will necessarily cause violence — at least not violence upon men. I could see the problem if this classification invited violence upon women, but really, men are already hurting women every half-second everywhere, so saying “men hate women” isn’t exactly adding to the harm. In any case, I’d, for one, appreciate some more clarification of that issue.
Thanks again, FP, for your in-depth response. thebewilderness, if I’m wrong in any of this, please correct me. And thanks to everyone thus far for your insightful comments! Keep ‘em comin’!
“I just don’t see how the conclusion that men hate women will help us to resolve these issues.”
Hello fuckpoliteness,
How do you begin to solve a problem if you haven’t identified it?
“Men hate you” is the name of the problem.
The evidence is overwhelming. It’s everwhere.
Every culture on the planet teaches that “men hate you”, and furthermore that it is just and right that they do so.
The only way that I can see to resolve the issues mentioned in the call for submission is to recognize that they are symptoms of a larger problem.
Men often say that they killed a woman because they loved her too much. I say they killed her because they hate her.
One of these statements is accepted as conventional wisdom. The other one is logical and reasonable.
I would like to strip away the myth, and apply the brutal truth to what we see around us every day.
I believe in nonviolent noncompliance.
Ok…thanks for the responses. I can only really say “granted” – I guess it’s a bit of potato/potato (come to think of it that’s an auditory analogy) situation, that perhaps the difference in our positions (as so far stated) is mostly semantics – While I’m resisting saying “Men hate women”, I certainly am under no disillusions about the extent of male violence against women (and each other and children), and I am certainly not short of anger over it.
Yes, I am familiar with “men rape women”, and no I don’t object to that, because I know it to be true. I understand this is also an inflammatory statement to make, but recognise it’s importance in that the ways in which rape is discussed make perpetrators out to be the exceptional *psychos* on the street, or a *drunken confused ‘lad’*, boys will be boys etc.
It’s gonna take me a while to process all of this, the responses and what I think of all this, because this is exactly what has been at the root of my depression and anxiety – trying to figure out if I believe that what it all comes down to is “men hate women” or not. I guess me not be comfortable with “men hate women, but being fine with masculinity produces subjects which are consistently aggressively disrespectful and sadistic towards women is me playing semantics and trying to dodge the *bullet*. I don’t know.
My response, as to the violence inherent in classifying and ascribing attributes to certain kinds of humans, is that that is the logic of modernity, the logic of binary oppositions, the logic of the types of psychology that have led to all kinds of violence. I don’t mean that saying it is physically violent towards men, I mean the logic itself has a history of violence and I’m not sure I want to take that up.
Having said this, I knew, when I wrote it, that it was me making that jump from “men hate women” to “all men hate women”. I wasn’t trying to be decietful, but trying to follow it through to it’s end point, and possibly trying to protect myself from the conclusion.
I’m still trying to process all of this, so I don’t want to be oppositional here…I do think though, there is something of value, for instance in looking at the way we *do* “Love”. I think the way we teach and talk about love contains its own violence, being about ownership and sameness and the effacing of difference. If we don’t engage in the discourse around love and say “Crimes of Passion” we may miss some ways of dismantling the problems in society…just throwing that idea out there, more as a question/discussion point than an argument.
Anyway – I really have to get back to work, it’s my first day back…I’d really like feedback, but, given that there are plenty of resources out there, feel free to tell me to shut up and go look up more radfem sites myself rather than do what the boys so often do and argue and ask that you spoon feed me.
The way I’ve come to use the truth ‘Men hate women’ is by recognising the verb in the statement.
Were it a biological imperative, the statement would read: Men must hate women.
Instead, however, we see that the action is the hating. And because hating is an action it can be stopped.
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