Sep 01 2014

Stop Being Complicit in your own Subordination

Although our cautionary ‘Don’t blame the victim’ is very important in the context of assault, I think we have overgeneralized.

And although I would certainly put more blame on men than on women for our sexist society, because it is men who are in a position of dominance, I do think women are often to blame. 

We have agency. 

We are not idiots.

And often we are not coerced.

And yet often we are complicit in our own subordination.

We speak in a higher register than is actually necessary and thus come across as child-like.

We smile more often than we need to and thus cancel the importance of our words.

We endorse the importance of our appearance by wearing make-up to cover blemishes and wrinkles and by constantly dieting.

Worse, we emphasize the sexuality of our appearance—by reddening our lips, emphasizing our breasts, exposing our legs—as a matter of daily routine.

No one coerces us to do any of that.  Coercion is implicated when you allow yourself to be assaulted by your live-in partner because that’s the only way to feed your kids, when you do not refuse because someone has drugged your drink, and when you shut the fuck up because otherwise he’ll kill you.  Coercion is not implicated when you wear high heels and a dress.

Cultural conditioning, social expectation, peer pressure—my god, you can’t resist that?  Grow a spine!

I’m suspect of claims that one would be fired if one stopped performing femininity.  (Try doing so in small increments.)  (Try suing.)

I imagine that yes, one might not get hired for some jobs if one doesn’t perform femininity, but hey—apply for a job somewhere else. 

But yes, since Hooters pays more than Walmart, I may be asking you to make a sacrifice—for the greater good.

Because only when men don’t see us as hooters will the female sales associate at Walmart be considered for a managerial position.  It seems to be all or nothing.  If men see us as sexual, they see us as only sexual.  If we have sexual power, we won’t have any other kind of power—political, economic, social.

So please, don’t use your sexuality to get what you want.*  It just makes it harder for the rest of us to be considered persons, with interests and abilities other than having sex and having kids.

Yes, I know you can use your sexuality to get what you want.  Men are idiot children when it comes to breasts, buttocks, and legs. 

But make no mistake.  They are in power.  Over us.  They own most of the property, they hold most of the managerial positions, they hold most of the political positions, they make more money than we do…  And they typically don’t concern themselves with ethics (speaking up about doing the right thing gets them accused of being a boyscout, of going soft….), and that adds to their power: they will not hesitate to hurt us.  Just take a look at contemporary porn, which is thanks to the internet viewed by most men, often starting younger than you might think.  (You are, you become, what you expose yourself to.)

So please, just don’t do it.

Don’t wear make-up and heels.   Don’t even expose your legs.  Unless you’re sure you’re not being sexual about it (don’t shave).  Present yourself as a person, not specifically a female person.

And don’t expect a man to pay your way for anything.  Only invalids and children need to have someone else pay their way.

Don’t even accept it because you think he’s just being nice.  He’s not paying your way to be nice.  He’s paying your way to express his superiority (just watch how angry he gets when you insist on paying his way) and to underscore your need for him, your dependence on him.

And unless you really like kids (did you want to become a nursery school teacher?), don’t have them.  In our society, there is no stronger, no more complete, trap into subordination.  Because then you will need him.  Then you will become dependent on him.  Which will triple his power over you.  (Because look, you can’t take your infant to work with you, so you will need someone to look after it while you’re out earning rent, and that will cost, probably as much, or almost as much, as you make, so you still won’t have rent…)  (Better to form an alliance with another mother; you can work eight hours at your job while she looks after yours and hers, then she can work eight hours at her job while you look after hers and yours.)

 

 

*I’ll respond in advance to all the sex-pozzie accusations that I’m a prude, that I’m anti-sex, that I don’t like sex.  You know what?  You’re right.  I  am anti-sex.  I don’t like sex.  Not as it typically occurs today.  Which is primarily for men’s pleasure, often via women’s pain (physical and psychological– anal penetration, vaginal penetration without sufficient lubrication, often accompanied by humiliation, degradation, insult…).  Sex for women’s pleasure wouldn’t even involve the penis!  The clitoris (which is not in the vagina or the rectum) best responds to tongues and fingers.

 

 

[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]

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Aug 18 2014

Transgendered Courage

Transgendered people are often seen as courageous; they have the guts to take radical steps to become the people they really are. But I don’t see them as any different from people, mostly women, who get nip-and-tuck surgeries, botox, and breast enlargements. After all, they too take radical steps to become the people they feel they really are – youthful and sexually attractive.

I understand the mismatch between what’s inside and what’s outside. Really I do. I look like a middle-aged woman. But I don’t feel like a middle-aged woman. At all. I feel like a young gun, still burning at both ends. Mixed metaphor and all.

Transgendered people aren’t snubbing sex stereotypes; they’re reinforcing them. You’re in a woman’s body but you don’t feel like a woman? You don’t want to wear make-up, high heels, and a dress? You’re not into gossip and giggles? So don’t do any of that shit.  You’d rather play football and fix the car?  So do that shit instead.  You don’t need to get a male body.

You’re in a male body but you’d really like to wear lavender chiffon and spend the day baking cupcakes and arranging flowers? So do it.

If we had more people with the courage to just do what they wanted to do, regardless of what others think they should do based on their indefensible notion of a sexual dichotomy based, in turn, on physical appearance, if we had more people who were willing to stand up to the consequent taunts and ostracization, maybe eventually the taunts and ostracization would disappear.

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Aug 17 2014

Reporting What Women Do

What if for just one year, the media reported 90% of the time what women were doing instead of, as is now the case, what men are doing?

Not because what women do is better, or more newsworthy, but just to see how it would change our outlook, our world view. 

The news might be more boring.  But then, hey, what does that say? 

It would likely involve a lot less death and destruction.  Ditto. 

It probably would have less to do with money.  Again…

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Aug 07 2014

Our Androcentric Culture, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

So I’m reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Our Androcentric Culture…(yeah, same Gilman who wrote The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland…both highly recommended) – a few bits below…

“Advocates of football, for instance, proudly claim that it fits a man for life.  Life–from the wholly male point of view–is a battle, with a prize.  …This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not so dangerous in its effects.  … The valuable processes today are those of invention, discovery, all grades of industry, and, most especially needed, the capacity for honest service and administration of our immense advantages.  These are not learned on the football field. … ”  (p39-40)

“An unforgettable instance of this lies int he attitude of the medical colleges toward women students.  The men, strong enough, one would think, in numbers, in knowledge, in established precedent, to be generous, opposed the newcomers first with absolute refusal; then, when the patient, persistent applicants did get inside, both students and teachers met them not only with unkindness and unfairness, but with a weapon ingeniously well chosen, and most discreditable–namely, obscenity.  Grave professors, in lecture and clinic, as well as grinning students, used offensive language, and played offensive tricks, to drive the women out …” (p50).

And today? Have things changed?  You bet.  Now they’re chanting “‘No’ means ‘Yes’; ‘Yes’ means ‘Anal’!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jul 29 2014

We Won!

“We won!” a neighbor crows to me. Apparently she’d watched a game of some kind on television the night before.

“What ‘we’?” I snort. Okay, scoff. “You had nothing to do with it.” She probably spent the whole game, and much of her life, eating potato chips and drinking beer.

The conversation ends. She can’t think about it.

She can’t see that her enthusiasm is manufactured. That her ‘support’ for her team isn’t support at all. That ‘her’ team isn’t her team at all. She can’t see that she’s been deluded into thinking that she’s somehow part of it, that she somehow has a stake in it.

Another neighbor, who’d been watching the Olympics, says the same thing. “We won!”

I point out to her as well that she had nothing to do with it.

“Well,” she makes a lame attempt to justify her feelings, “we’re Canadian.”

“I’m Canadian. But when I get a book published, you don’t cheer ‘We got published!'”

And if you did, I’d smack you upside the head.

How can she feel even a little bit of pride and achievement? She did nothing! Not one push-up, not one lap around the track.

“Well,” she tries again, “I support the team with my taxes.”

“And you support my writing with your taxes as well. Whenever I get a grant from the Arts Council,” I explain.

She still doesn’t see it. She doesn’t see that her emotions are being manipulated by the sports corporations, who want to deliver as many potential customers as possible to the companies who buy the advertisements that pay their salaries, because the more viewers, the more they can charge for those advertisements.

Quite apart from that, it’s no coincidence that sports are dominated by men. Or, rather, it’s no coincidence that it’s predominantly men’s sports that get television coverage. It’s just another way of making sure men are the center of the universe. My god, how many television stations are devoted to just sports? Why in god’s name does sport get a regular time slot in the daily news? As if men playing a game is as important as a war! And more important than the changing of our climate (which doesn’t get a regular time slot in the daily news)!

Which makes her ‘We won!’ just a little bit ironic.

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Jul 28 2014

On the Radfem Doctrine of Separatism

Here’s the thing.  Men are already separatists.  (So really we have no choice.)

Men already exclude women from anything, everything, important.  (Any inclusion is tokenism: a false symbol, a PR move.)

Men already refuse to get involved with ‘women’s issues’, whether personal or political.  That feminism itself is considered a special interest thing indicates that.  (It shouldn’t be.  And it wouldn’t be if ‘women’s issues’ were typically included in ‘issues’.  That we have to establish them as ‘add-ons’ proves that ‘issues’ are really ‘men’s issues’.  See?  Separatism.)

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Jul 09 2014

A must read –

Just finishing Esme Dodderidge’s The New Gulliver – a must read!!!  (a subtle but thorough reversal…)

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Jul 07 2014

Why aren’t there any great women Xs?

A new (for me) answer to the classic question, Why aren’t there any great women Xs, occurred to me when I saw a website for a small company of composers specializing in music for dance troupes (all four composers were male) shortly after a male friend of mine confessed that if he wasn’t getting paid to do it (write a book – he’s an academic with a university position), he probably wouldn’t, and another male friend confessed confusion at the idea of composing something just out of his soul (everything he’d written had been for pay – soundtracks for video games and what have you). Until then, the answer to that age-old question seemed to go to merit and/or opportunity.  Now I’m thinking it goes to money.

How many of those great-man achievements would have occurred if they had to have been done on their own time at home?  Discoveries, inventions – they’re done on company time at work.  When my friend works on his book, it’s just part of his job.  All those great men, who we know to be great because of the prizes they win, the fame they garner – they get those prizes and that fame for just doing their job.  And those prizes and that fame is in addition to the pay they’ve already received for whatever it is they’ve done.

In addition to the motivation factor (if they weren’t getting paid, they wouldn’t put in the time, the effort, that, occasionally has led to great things), there’s also the legimitizing factor: payment for your work is the stamp of quality – consider the dual meanings of ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’.  So even if you do make a great discovery or write a great book on your own time at home, no one will recognize it as such; getting paid for it is prerequisite for its identification as great.

And it doesn’t hurt that when you’re in a paid position, you have access to resources, such as a lab or a studio, that you probably otherwise don’t have.

And here’s the thing: men have, in far greater proportion than women, held paying jobs and received commissions; they’re the ones who have been getting paid for their time, their effort, their work.*  The work that sometimes leads to greatness.

*And why is that so?  One could say that women don’t get the jobs or the commissions because they’re not as good – it could come back to merit after all.  But we know that’s simply not true. 

It might come back to opportunity though: the people who get the jobs and the commissions are the ones in the boy’s club – being male (still) increases the opportunities to land the money, status, and resources of a job/commission (the people who are in a position to pay, the people with money, are men, not women, and men are more apt to hire other men than they are to hire women, unless they’re after some political correct currency).

But even the individual entrepreneurs, the guys who set up their own company to provide music for dance groups, for example — why is it that men, so much more often than women, have not just jobs, but careers?  Because that’s been their role.  They’re supposed to make a living.  Women are supposed to make a home. They’re supposed to support their family. Women are supposed to make that family.  Also, I think somehow men find out how to turn jobs into careers.  I don’t know how they do, but they do.  Perhaps it’s simply because their social network is more apt to include someone who has done just that, or perhaps it’s because they get informal mentoring more often than women.  But show me two composers, one a man and the other a woman, and I’ll bet it’s only the man who thinks to get some buddies and form a company.  (The woman is composing for free, giving her music away, to school groups or church groups or friends…)

[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]

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Jun 23 2014

Men who need Mom to clean up after them

I spend a lot of time walking on the dirt roads near by place, as well as on the old logging roads through the forest.  Twice a year, I take a large garbage bag with me to pick up the litter – mostly beer cans and fast food containers, but often whole plastic bags of garbage have been tossed in among the trees.  (Lately, I’ve had to take two large garbage bags.)

I typically wait until the fall, because it seems the summer people litter more than those of us who live here, and I typically wait until after the spring hunt, because it seems the hunters leave quite a bit of trash.

I have always suspected that men litter more than women, and I’ve come across a statistic supporting my hunch: males do 72% of deliberate littering and are responsible for 96% of accidental littering (http://www.greenecoservices.com/myths-and-facts-litter/).

Why is this so?  I think it’s because ‘cleaning up after’ is seen as a woman’s task.  This thought occurred to me when one guy slowed down as he passed me in his truck, while I was on one of my litter pick-up walks, and called out, “Good girl! Good to see you’re good for something!”*  After all, wasn’t it Mom who cleaned up after them when they were kids?  (Mom did the cleaning; Dad did the fixing.)  Of course the generalization from Mom to all women is a mistake: “Mom cleaned up after me, Mom is a woman, so women should clean up after me” is the same as “Princess is a kitten, Princess is white, so white things are/should be kittens”.  But I doubt these morons can think in a — well, I doubt these morons can think.

Of course a mistake is made too in thinking that when you’re old enough to drink beer and buy your own fast food, you’re still a kid who needs Mom or a woman to clean up after you.  (No, wait, I’m making the mistake there – I’m confusing chronological age with developmental age.)

*Another man explained that no, that wasn’t it; the guy in the pick-up thought that since I was a lesbian (aren’t you?), I wasn’t fuckable.  That is, I was useless, good for nothin’.  That’s what his comment was all about.

[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]

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Jun 23 2014

No Advertising in Public Space

I once read a sci fi novel in which holographic ads suddenly appeared in front of you, ‘blocking’ your way, almost continuously, as you made your way down a city street. It made me imagine people paid by perfume companies wandering through the streets assailing me with sample sprays…

I am a strong advocate of prohibiting all advertising in public spaces. There is no justification for the desires of one person, let alone the desire of one person for money, to be imposed on everyone. Furthermore, there are enough alternative venues for advertising (radio, tv, newspapers, magazines, websites, malls), all of which, unlike, often, public space, can be used or not (especially as long as there are advertising-free radio, tv, magazine, and website options), making the use of public space is simply unnecessary.

We should be able to go about our lives without the constant assault on the senses, on the mind, that is advertising. Of course this is an argument made by someone who notices ads, who pays attention to her environment, who thinks about what she sees. For most people, ads are not such an assault, because they’re unconsciously perceived. But then they’re even more coercive, subliminally manipulative, and even more indefensible in public space.

Advertising is not only cognitively coercive, but physically dangerous when it appears on roadsides, especially in animated form, which shameless tries to take drivers’ attention off the road. Would we allow drivers to watch tv, similarly visual content with moving images, while they drive?

An additional argument applies to natural environment public space (forest, field, lake, ocean) which is, to my mind, beautiful (or at least more beautiful than city). In this case, there is the added transgression of the destruction of beauty. It was a sad, sad day when advertising was allowed along the perimeter of the rink and even on the ice during figure skating performances. Years to achieve the perfect lines, sullied by persisting, in-your-face, BUY-MY-SHIT signs we can’t help but see while we try to focus on the beauty. (And it’s not like the sign enhances the beauty. It’s not like the sign itself is remotely beautiful.)

Would those of us who can hear allow a deaf person to make a clamour with cymbals all day long? Then why do we allow aesthetically-challenged CEOs to do the same? Why do we allow our natural beauty to be degraded, destroyed, piece by piece, by those who are, obviously, blind to its beauty? Is it because we don’t recognize the beauty or because we don’t value it (or, at least, don’t value it over the individual pursuit of money). (Seriously? Do we really believe that an individual’s desire for money trumps so much?) (Well, no, the people with the power to make regulations believe that. And they are as aesthetically-challenged. And often CEOs.)

 

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