Our brothers were bossy know-it-alls, and they did cruel things to us and to animals.
The boys in our class taunted us and always got into fights with each other. They were rude and forever demanding to be the center of attention.
In high school, they became socially awkward, struggled with the material, and became fascinated with sports.
In university, they used pick-up lines (i.e., lies) to impregnate us, seemingly unaware of the immensity of the consequence. In the lecture hall, they were always so full of self-importance, so full of themselves.
So how is it that they become our supervisors, our MPs, our CEOs? How is it they get to be in charge of things? How is it they come to have power?
Why do we think they magically become competent, mature, responsible— When they graduate? When they put on a suit?
Because apparently we do think that. I saw that magic with my own eyes happen with my brother. He graduated, put on a suit, bought an attaché case, and suddenly the world was his. His entitlement.
When did that metamorphosis happen? When did he become so qualified? So worthy?
We commonly joke that ‘B students’ become our bosses, because they’re the ones that go in to business, whereas the ‘A students’ go into the humanities and the sciences.
We’ve got it wrong. The ‘C students’ go into business. The ‘B students’ go into the humanities and the sciences. The ‘A students’ were girls. And they’re nowhere to be seen now.
[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]
Just so you’re ready for the next time some woman you know says they’re not a feminist or they don’t think feminism is important or what have you…memorize feimineach’s reply:
Really, feminism is a load of rubbish is it? How’s going to university working out for you? Looking forward to getting a job and earning a wage, are you? Appreciating your full access to birth control, I suppose? Ah, enjoyed the pub last night, I see. Voting about AV in May, are you? How do you think you got to enjoy all of the above?
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.Iam 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.]
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.
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’!”
“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.
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.)
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.]
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (full-length drama and short drama)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…