While I really disagree that it’s “overbroad”, the issue with hostile-environment harassment is that there is no bright line. There can’t be.

1) Women hating men – obviously, my argument is very unpopular here, considering that this blog seems to be a bastion of a “hardline” approach identity politics. So be it. But its terribly clear to me – however much women hating on men may be valid as therapy (and one can certainly make a good case for this), it makes for piss-poor politics. It is simply not valid to concoct rules and proscriptions other people have to live by based on your hatred of them. (Hell, its pretty questionable to do that for somebody’s supposed benefit – doing it out of hatred is just that much worse.)

“Men have privilege over women” is a true statement (in a gross generalization kind of way). “Therefore, women should be able to do anything they like to men” or “therefore, the human rights and civil liberties of men is a non-issue” does not automatically flow from that true statement.

I’ll also point out once again that radical feminist who are the most “man-hating” are also the ones that are most hateful toward trannies and kinky people. I don’t think hatred can be kept in a tidy little box, where one can neatly separate out hatred of socially privileged groups (like men) from relatively marginalized groups (like transsexuals and other sexual minorities). If anything, hatred of the privileged simply manifests as a “kick the dog” syndrome where aggression and hostility is vented out on nearer and more vulnerable targets.

2) Catherine MacKinnon – I recognize her contribution to sexual harrassment law, and I’m not against sexual harrassment law per se. I am definitely against the highly problematic overly-broad application, especially in the area of “hostile environment” law. (For a very good discussion of why “hostile environment” law is corrosive toward civil liberties, I refer you to Eugene Volokh’s writing on the topic – shorter version here, longer version here.) I think this over-breadth comes straight from the fact that MacKinnon played such an important role in pioneering this area of law. And I think the over-breadth is intentional and that, if anything, MacKinnon’s intent is to make this branch of law far more far-reaching. I refer you to this podcast interview with MacKinnon where she makes some statements about how far-reaching these kinds of laws should be.

3) It was not actually my intention to make this discussion all about man-hating or sexual harrassment law or MacKinnon. My point is that similarities between the religious right and radical feminist lines on transsexuality simply cannot be viewed in isolation. There are multiple points of convergence on issues as diverse as transexualism, sadomasochism, pornography, monogamy and sexual “promiscuity”, and even, back in the day, on the Satanic ritual abuse panic. One would have to simply be blind not to see that all of this convergence adds up to a pattern.

“Men oppress women,”

while you can argue it’s an oversimplication and so on and so forth, I still find it less problematic than, as some of these people are also saying,

“Transpeople oppress women.”

What Holly said, although I think it’s not that clear and bright a line between “anger” and “hatred.” maybe that’s not really the point, though. I mean: you feel the way you feel, right; and in some ways, even shit I’d describe as outright bigotry, I think there’s an argument to be made that I’d rather just deal with it right up front than have to work through a bunch of pseudo-polite veiling only to find that under all the code it amounted to the same damn thing all along, weeks or months or years later.

Maybe this: the confusion between what’s hateful and hurtful, and what is or isn’t an accurate description of systemic injustice.

So, I mean: I don’t actually think the “Nigel Jr.” crap is any less hateful than the transphobic crap, especially when you consider that the speaker was addressing a mother and at the same time telling her to not take it personally; and yeah, that shit matters all by itself, it’s corrosive and horrible, and sometimes, you bet, “it’s the thought that counts.”

On the other hand, if someone were to point at that and say, well that clinches it, men are being discriminated against, feminists are telling women to leave their boy babies out on a hill to die and lo! it is so! this is an imminent societal danger! well…not so much. Does that mean it could -never- happen in any possible world, or that the speaker is any less loathsome than someone talking that way about some other population? No. But it does mean that people who grab onto that sort of shit as some sort of justification for how men ARE the Most Oppressed Of All really need to put down the crack pipe. Too.

This, honestly, is where I am too. As disgusted as I am with the bigotry, there’s a part of me that’s going “something really bad must have happened to this person to make them feel that way”, and I just can’t ignore that. It’s how I feel about Dworkin, actually - I disagree with her on almost everything BUT looking at her life experience, I can understand why she came to the conclusions she did. At one point I genuinely hated her, then I read about her life story and ended up wanting to give her a cuddle.

Which is why this whole thing is so damn confusing. I can understand WHY some radfems hate men, I just can’t agree with them, and it always seems to end up with a situation where you’re talking past each other

[Paranoid rantings, completely devoid of any actual evidence to support Christian’s deluded accusations, disemvoweled by Amp. Christian, you are now banned from “Alas”; please don’t attempt to post comments here anymore. –Amp]

Out of curiosity, did you sometimes take out the y?

To be more detailed there, Mackinnon helped pioneer the idea of the “hostile workplace”. Up until then, sexual harassment was only considered harassment if it was quid pro quo–”sleep with me and I’ll promote you,” that kind of thing. But it didn’t address sexual harassment where there were no explicit conditions other than having to tolerate the harassment. For example, a lone woman at a workplace whose male co-workers constantly hit on her, left pornographic photos with her photo pasted over the model’s face taped to her desk, discussed their sex lives in graphic, loud detail every time she walked by, etc. - would not, traditionally, have been “harassed” because nobody threatened to fire her or made promotion contingent on sleeping with her boss.

Mackinnon helped legal theory change to understand that this kind of work environment, like quid pro quo harassment, is sex discrimination.

spps hv n chc bt t nswr y, mp. ntl rd yr ltmtm ws gng t drp t. thght thr ws lss dsgrmnt tht rdcl fmnsm hd sm sss wth mn. Y cld mk rsnbl rgmnt, thnk, tht [...] th d shw tht grt dl f msndr s tlrtd nd vn wlcmd n Hrts blg [...] Bt vn s, th chrr-pckd cmmnts fll fr, fr shrt f th ccstns Chrstn lvld bt fld t spprt wth n fcts. Y dmt msndr s tlrtd wthn rdcl fmnsm. Y dmt trnsphb s tlrtd wthn rdcl fmnsm. wld xpct th frqnc f n t crrlt strngl wth th frqnc f th thr. Tht s th ssntl pnt wshd t mk. Th thr nswrs n ths thrd fr th qstn ‘Wh d th tlrt trnsphb?’ hv bn ‘Bcs th’r mr gndr ssntlst… fr n xplnbl rsn’ nd ‘Wht trnsphb?’. f h dsnt ctll nswr Mycs qstn, b prvdng xmpls f sm srt f rptbl (r vn rll xtrm) rdfm rgnztn srsl dvncng ths ds nd n, Vlr Slns dsnt cnt! thn thnk h shld b bnnd frm ls. cpl f thrs wr qckr n th drw t nwrng Myc wth xmpls f th wrtngs. Myc rd thm nd th md th pnt s ddn’t bthr rptng thm. dn’t knw f n rptbl rgnztns tht r prsntl tryng t psh nt-ht sx lws thrgh th crt systm, bt th wld hv t b nsn t tr wtht vr lrg pltcl spprt bs. Crt lng bfr th hrs. n bsns f pltcl rtrdtn ds nt mn th r bv rprch, nd t dsn’t mn th r glt f crs, bt smn s sprdng sch ds t grss rts lvl. Sm f thm r cknwldgd b sm f th ls lt t b rdcl fmnsts. Nw, th Fmnst nttv prt f Swdn ws rptbl nd frst ttmpts t nt-ml lws hd bn lnkd wth thm. Th prt hd bn dvncng pltcll b lmtng tslf t strtg f prmtng pltfrm f scl gltrnsm fr ll nn-htrnrmtv flk, pplr mvmnt n Swdn. Thr chncs f frmng prt wthn th gvrnmnt dspprd whn thr ntrnl nt-ml, nt-htr nd nt-trns bgtr nd bllyng ws xpsd. S t sms rdcl fmnsm s s cpbl f prjdc s n thr grp, nd s s cpbl f dnyng t s n thr grp. ctll, m gng t bn Chrstn rgrdlss, nlss h plgzs prfsl fr th thrd rch cmmntT nyn wh fls hv ffndd thm b lnkng ht prpgnd wth th Thrd Rch, plgz. ws nswrng qstn: hw dd th spkrs f th d cnv thm? Srsl? Srcstcll? Drml? sd th Thrd Rch s shrthnd t s ‘th cnvyd th wrst knd f flth wth th vgr f tr blvr.’ Gd lck thn, whtvr y dcd mp.

Thanks, since I also consider Christian a troll.

pornographers, pimps, and the BDSM scene

Just another reminder. Whichever side wins, my spouse and I are in trouble. Gee, reminds me why I stick up for transfolk.

I’m sorry to look like a hit and run, I’m just starting to find my voice in the feminist blogosphere (e.g. I have a blank blog under the name of justmekaren “What was I thinking?”) so it may seem hit and run, but I don’t mean to be so.

This whole idea of hypersimplification really reflects on more than just a cartoon. If we look at ourselves, are some not hypersimplifying transpeople, and transwoman a la carte, in the blogs of others?

Won’t that beg a hypersimpliflied answer? Or even, only entertain one?

I’m saddened that more nuanced voices don’t get the attention that a few commentators get. People with nuanced voices help nuanced listeners, they are themselves nuanced people. They care. They break down walls.

I read the cartoon as asking “Maybe we should talk, and not just ascribe motives (walls)?” through a negative inference. The people being talked about aren’t there, though.

They are in the response section of this blog, however.

For what it’s worth, you’re dead wrong. I didn’t post the cartoon thinking “gosh, I’ll get a lot of praise for this one”

I’ve noticed that when amp posts a cartoon about ANYTHING he’s sure to be told that it’s wrong, incomplete or needs to be done better.

KH, #105 and #108, thank you for your eloquent defense of my cartoon. I mean, I need to thank a whole bunch of people for that :-D , but I think your comments in particular were well-reasoned and frankly did a better job than I have done putting into prose what I “intended” with the cartoon, and why most of the critics have entirely missed the point.

Crys T wrote:

Amp, I apologise if my comment appeared to be a personal attack on your character or motivations.

Crys, it was a negative characterization of my motivations. In your original context, there is no other reasonable reading of “Amp slammed radfems on this issue because radfems are currently a very easy target…. earn the cartoonist a lot of nice back-slapping” except that you were talking about my motivations.

There’s no “if” about it.

That said, apology accepted.

For what it’s worth, you’re dead wrong. I didn’t post the cartoon thinking “gosh, I’ll get a lot of praise for this one”; I posted it fully expecting to be torn apart, and to be attacked not just for the ideas expressed in the cartoon but for the “amptoons sell-out” (which is NOT a topic I’m eager to bring up again!) and for whatever other personal attacks people could make (which turned out to be attacks on me for being fat). Also, publishing the cartoon caused two real-life friends of mine to be significantly peeved with me, which is not an outcome that I want at all, but was an outcome I suspected would happen.

As for why I wrote the cartoon, it was because I was furious after reading a thread at Heart’s place. Not because I was seeking praise; not because I’m bitter over “Ampgate”; I was just pissed off. Just as I’ve been pissed off when I’ve written dozens or hundreds of previous cartoons about other subjects. Why is that so hard to believe?

This expression of anger might make for good therapy, but I really think it makes for lousy politics. On one hand, yeah, ideas like a hetero sex ban or a “man tax” aren’t ever going to amount to anything. (Though I do think radical feminists like MacKinnon have actually taken crappy ideas like this into actual legal theory and, more rarely, practice.)

Actually, I don’t think that’s true at all. MacKinnon’s biggest success at policy making is the laws against sexual harassment in the workplace; even if you disagree with sexual harassment laws, they simply cannot fairly be described as being “ideas like” a ban on heterosexual sex or a tax on being male.

MacKinnon most famous and reviled attempt at lawmaking is the MacKinnon/Dworkin anti-porn ordinance, which would have made it possible for people who believed that they were victimized by porn to bring civil suits against makers and distributors of porn. I think the law was a bad idea, both on its own merits and as a political strategy; but it’s still a thousand miles away from ideas like banning all heterosexual sex.

I think my claim — which is that radical feminists have too often been way to accepting of anti-trans bigotry in their midst — is quite supportable. But I don’t think all of the other claims made about radfems in this thread are equally supportable.

(Yes, I know I’m digressing my own thread. But heck, it’s past the 100th post, and to tell the truth I agree with Daisy: some of the comments on this thread, most especially Christian’s, are nothing but radfem-bashing.)

Christian wrote:

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but radical feminism has always seemed to be a home for those with particularly large axes to grind. It seems whenever I hear about a feminist organization or person advocating such policies as making het sex illegal, the removal of men from political office or forbidding the birth of male children they most often identify themselves as radical feminists.

Let’s not forget that not a single example of a feminist person or organization “advocating such policies as making het sex illegal, the removal of men from political office or forbidding the birth of male children” has been posted.

What has been posted is a couple of hateful comments that stopped well short of any of the extremist proposals Christian described. I followed the first link, to Pony’s “all men are rapists” comment, and saw that later in the thread there were comments like this (from Heart):

I like what I think Aletha said– I think all men do have the capacity to rape given certain situations, conditions, but many never would or will. What is significant is, the same can’t be said about women, I don’t believe. I don’t think that’s about differences between men and women. I don’t think men are “naturally” more violent or are born with a rape mentality. I think, as I’ve said before, that men have been corrupted by power in a way that women have not been so far.

And this comment, by Gaia’s muse:

No, all men are not rapists. But all men are raised in a culture like this, that condones, minimizes, allows for and excuses rape.

So what it seems to me we’re dong here is cherry-picking the most extreme comments from Heart’s threads, not talking about the representative views there.

You could make a reasonable argument, I think, that the cherry-picked comments might not represent the norm, but they do show that a great deal of misandry is tolerated and even welcomed on Heart’s blog. (It’s not like Pony is an unwelcome member of the community there). But even so, the cherry-picked comments fall far, far short of the accusations Christian leveled but failed to support with any facts.

I think Mandolin’s early response to Christian was on the mark:

I’m suspicious of the ways in which radfeminist arguments are characterized as man-hating, and particularly of the ways in which you summarized certain radfeminist arguments which I imagine you’ve heard. Are people really arguing for making het sex illegal? If one examines the context of that, does the argument become more complicated, or possibly sarcastic, or even just kind of grumpily dreamy in a way that doesn’t reflect what the arguer would actually want to do in a real world situation? [...] So, in sum, the way you phrased the particular examples of supposed radfem ideology seem to me to be problematic and unlikely.

And also Myca’s initial comment:

I ask because they sound an awful lot more like typical anti-feminist ‘urban legends’ than they do like any position any feminist has ever seriously advanced.

IF there are examples of some sort of reputable (or even really extreme) radfem organization seriously advancing these ideas, then yeah, they should probably be opposed, but I just don’t think it’s a problem somehow.

I disagree with radical feminism on a lot of grounds, but I’m pretty sure they’re not trying to force the abortion of male children or make hetero sex illegal. I mean, Jesus, man.

Again, right on the mark, and I’m frankly bewildered that you apologized for this statement, Myca. Your first instinct was right.

As far as I can tell, Christian is a nasty anti-feminist troll and a liar. If he doesn’t actually answer Myca’s question, by providing “examples of some sort of reputable (or even really extreme) radfem organization seriously advancing these ideas” — and no, Valerie Solonas doesn’t count! — then I think he should be banned from “Alas.”

Edited to add: Actually, I’m going to ban Christian regardless, unless he apologizes profusely for the third reich comment (and maybe even then). But before banning him, I want to see if he can actually come up with any evidence to substantiate his fantastic accusations. My bet is he can’t.

Much of what I’ve seen and read lately has me kind of very worried when it comes to what’s considered publicly acceptable in radfem circles, and if what I’m seeing is cherry-picked or extremely rare or generally confronted and shouted down by other radfems, I’d like to know it. It’s entirely possible that I have the wrong impression.

On the other hand, if the stuff I’m seeing generally isn’t uncommon or isn’t confronted by other radfems, then discussing that seems fair.

Also, back in post 45/46, Amp kind of tried to engage with you directly, and give you an opportunity to explain some of what was bothering you about the cartoon. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you wanted to respond to his post now.

—Myca

I think the reasoning goes something like, “maleness is so incredibly threatening and hurtful to women through its mere existence, whether it’s biological maleness or male privilege we’re discussing, that we must treat anything even close to or related to maleness as if it were the same thing.”

Thus people who used to be male, people who are becoming male, and people who are male (but infants) are all equally a threat. Because that’s how bad it is.

I don’t have any sympathy for the bigotry, of course, but I guess I find the whole thing just sad in a way. How awfully wounded are these people to get to that point? What kind of awful shit has the patriarchy done to them? I mean, it really reaffirms my commitment to be as careful as I can be with the world around me.

—Myca

The question of whether or not radfeminists as a group condone anti-male bigotry also seems like a sideline — except when it’s being used within the specific context of its relationship to transphobia.

i’d argue that anytime radfems as a group condone transphobia, it’s because they also condone anti-male bigotry, because those that condone those sorts of things, see trans women as males. or at the very least, “male born”, which is a round-about way of saying that trans women *are* male. from my experience, those rad fems who are anti-male are also anti-trans. they go hand in hand. i’ve never encountered a rad fem who was one without the other.