Chris at Creek Running North has written a post entitled “why I am not a feminist.” Chris (who is male) begins by expressing irritation with a statement Hugo made in comments on Feministe (I think), during a recent discussion of privilege in the blogoverse:
One of the bloggers at the center of the storm opined that perhaps the reason he and one other male writer were taking such heat … some of which I delivered … was that there are so few male feminist bloggers, and thus he and the other were the subjects of rather high expectations.
This irritated me for a couple of reasons, one of which I spoke up about in response to his statement. That was this: there are quite a few male bloggers who write thoughtful stuff about feminist issues, on non-single-issue blogs.
I remember wincing when I read Hugo’s statement, for exactly that reason. (Although under the circumstances I’d definitely cut Hugo some slack; no one is at their best when they’re at “the center of the storm,” and I’ve read enough of Hugo’s work to feel sure he wouldn’t intentionally exclude anyone.) (Full disclosure: In case anyone is unaware, the other person at the center of that particular blogstorm was me).
Chris goes on to write (and this is just a bit from a longer argument, so you should go read the whole thing):
I read Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua’s This Bridge Called My Back the year it was published, and found it invaluable in understanding a part of American culture I had until then missed. Were I to call myself a Chicana as a result of my poltical support, I would be laughed out of the planning meeting. I have been marching in Pride Parades for a quarter century, and had mainly gay friends in college for a decade before that. Even with broadening definition of the term, calling myself a “Queer activist” would almost certainly raise eyebrows. I cut my political eyeteeth working on the defense of the Attica prison riot defendants. That does not make me a Black Power activist.
My goal is to be the best ally to feminists I can be, in the political realm and in the much more difficult personal realm.
But I cannot call myself a feminist: the label is not mine to claim.
The discussion in Chris’ comments – and also on Feministe and Reclusive Leftist – is fascinating (although the comments at Feministe are unfortunately ruined by an anti-feminist who won’t shut up). Interestingly, most of the folks agreeing with Chris are men (including Hugo), while most who disagree are women. For example, Dr. Virago eloquently responded to Chris’ argument:
Leaving aside the whole “gender and sex are culturally contructed” argument, and assuming that there are definable identities such as “man” and “woman,” and accepting your claim that you are indeed a “man,” I still think you’re a feminist. There were white people who were abolitionists and civil rights activist, despite being neither slaves nor black; there are white collar labor activists (and indeed, lawyers especially are pretty necessary to the modern labor movement); there are straight people working tirelessly for gay rights; and so on. These political activities don’t make these activists black, working class, or gay, but they’re still activists.
Feminism is a political position that can be held by anyone. “Woman” is (perhaps) an identity that only some can claim. You are not a woman, but you are a feminist, given your political claims above.
And from Jill, in the comments at Feministe:
Personally, the idea of a feminist man makes sense to me, since I see feminism as working against a system that hurts everyone (it hurts women substantially more, of course). The person I dated all through college never shied away from calling himself a feminist, but also recognized that there were some things that he just didn’t understand. I identify as an ally to the queer community and an anti-racist, but I also recognize that there are a lot of things that, being white and heterosexual, I just don’t get. I find greater solidarity in men feeling like they have a place in the feminist movement … in being committed activists in the feminist movement … than I do in men saying, “I support feminism, but I’m not a feminist.” I suppose this comes from so often hearing the word “feminist” used as if it’s dirty, with people asserting feminist positions and then following with, “…but I’m not a feminist.” I think we need as many feminists associating themselves with feminism as possible, and not being afraid to define themselves as active members of the community, not tacit supporters.
I agree with Dr. Virago and Jill. But it’s not a debate I’m usually inclined to get into myself, and I respect the view that it’s better for men to be called “pro-feminist.”
Years ago, I used to get into arguments about the “feminist” versus “pro-feminist” question, but then I began to wonder: Why am I spending time arguing with feminists? Is it my job as an ally to care about what these people I want to support choose to call me? If I get into long debates about what I should be called – or if I’m a feminist at all – aren’t I both wasting the time of feminists who might have better things to do, and making myself the center of feminist debate? (For that reason, I’ve more-or-less stopped going to female feminists’ spaces to argue about feminism – if I have to argue with someone, it’s better that it be an anti-feminist, or at least that the argument take place on my own space rather than appropriating someone else’s.)
I still call myself a feminist – frankly, I think more men should be calling themselves feminists, especially in public. But at the same time, I call myself pro-feminist if I sense that’s what most feminists in a room would prefer. It’s not helpful to feminism if I get into women’s faces and make demands about what I’d like to be called. In the end, I think the content matters more than the label. (Of course, there are feminists who argue that my content sucks, too).
Hissy Cat made what I think was a similar point in Chris’ comments:
Having thought about this a bit more, I think part of being a feminist, for a man, includes knowing when to shut up– or at least take a passive role. I think that, as a a reflective thought activity, there is value in a man thinking of himself as a feminist– in consciously looking at the world through a feminist lens– that there is not in just being some guy who is pro-feminism. This is not unreconciliable with Chris’s experience of refraining from self-identifying as a feminist in radical feminist spaces where, for any reason, that stance would taken as unwelcome or possibly as threatening: in that situation, to defer to the judgements of radical women feminists on whether or not Chris should call himself a feminist is the feminist decision: for a man to be a feminist in an ethical (as opposed to political) sense, if it means anything, means respecting women when they tell him to stop, to leave them alone, to back off, to go away. Period. There are most definately times when it is inappropriate for the most committed man (or woman, really; so much of this, when it plays out in the world, comes down to ugly shows of ego) to make claims about his feminism (for starters, “I’m a feminist” constitutes neither an argument nor a legitimate defense of one). But there are also many, many situations I can think of where the (ethical) feminist thing to do is (if it is asked, if it comes up, if it is appropriate) to say “I am a feminist.”
Exactly.
* * *
Finally, since this is my own blog, a point about why I’m a feminist. Partly it’s because I want gender justice. But partly it’s because I don’t think men and boys can ever be free until women and girls are. (This next bit, atypically for me, gets a little personal, so if you don’t want to read that shit this is your exit).
When I was a kid, I could not – really, really could not – “do” masculinity. And because of this, my peers (aided by too many adults who should have known better) taught me to hate myself. It took years, but I was an eager student, and I learned. I used to stand in front of mirrors interrogating my reflection, asking why I couldn’t just be “normal,” beating myself as hard as I could with my tiny balled fists (in retrospect, thank goodness I was a weakling!).
Can you punch yourself, as hard as you’re physically able to do, on your face? I can’t now – I reflexively stop myself. But I did it back then, many times. That’s how well I was taught to hate myself.
I wonder if it’s ridiculous, in my thirties, that I’m still stuck on stuff that happened to me over a quarter-century ago. It often seems ridiculous, to me. But I am stuck there. I’ve often said that I have no memories of my childhood, and to a great extent that’s true. But the truth is, I do remember – vividly, with immediacy, far more clearly than I can remember conversations I had just yesterday – isolated moments of shocking humiliation and self-hatred. Those moments are my primary childhood memories.
I’ve recovered, to a great degree. I’ve come to realize – largely thanks to feminism – that the self-hatred I was taught back then is sexist bullshit. But at another level, I’m not free of it. The self-hatred is still with me, lurking below the surface, at times astounding me with its immensity and urgency. I really don’t know if I’ll ever be free of it.
I’m not saying this to throw a pity-party for myself. Nor am I saying that my experience is worse than what happens to many women in a male-centric society – on the contrary, I realize that my experience of being bullied is negligible compared to the far more extreme abuses so many girls and women survive.
I am just trying to explain that, for me, feminism is not only the movement to liberate women. Feminism for me is not charity work, and is only partly ally work. Feminism is also, selfishly, the movement to liberate myself, the boy that I was, and boys like me who are going through similar experiences all over the world.
I am not a feminist because I was bullied. I am a feminist because I’ve spent years thinking about the issues and examining the evidence, and I’ve become convinced that being a feminist is the only position that makes any damn sense. Feminism is the only movement in the world that has anything at all sensible to say about how gender roles are used as a whip to keep people in their place. But I do think my childhood is one reason that I was drawn to examining these issues in the first place, and one reason I was open to feminism.
There’s an expression so well-worn it’s in danger of becoming a cliche: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then let’s work together.” Cliche or not, that quote encompasses a lot of why I’m a feminist.
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Hey, thanks for the link, Amp.
I have to say the discussion … if you will pardon the expression … engendered by that post has been some of the more insteresting I’ve seen in some time. A minimum of rancor, and yet a whole lot of divergent ideas in conflict with one another. It’s been a treat.
Awesome post.
I always think with social justice — gender justice, racial & ethnic justice, so forth — that the reality of the ways that these things are constructed and reinforce themselves through us all means that we all share in the personal cost to allowing them to remain unsubverted. Your points about masculinity, and about your social freedom as a man hinging on the social freedom of women, is a very, very important point, and you’ve expressed it very well here.
It’s the thing with structural oppression — it doesn’t just fuck with its obvious “target”. It gets everybody, and limits everybody.
Specifically on the men-who-are-feminists thing:
I have mixed feelings on this one, to be honest. One of the greater conflicts in feminism, and it’s very much still alive, is its often-reliance on there being a stable category of “woman” for much of a philosophical backbone. This is less true in younger feminists than in the general population, but as a trans-ish feminist, believe me when I say that it’s still at the core of many feminists’ ideas. Now, I still happily call myself a feminist because I have been one as a woman long enough to know that no two feminists think alike on this stuff, and that feminism is right now in a state of transition itself regarding its understanding of gender flexibility. But if I were coming at that never having interacted with feminism as a (clear) woman, I might have more reservations about bringing myself and my social meaning into that fray.
That might seem a little peripheral, but it’s really not.
I also know so many young people fighting for gender justice who absolutely shun the term “feminist” — sometimes for stupid reasons, sometimes for well-thought-out ones — that I’m honestly not sure I care what people call themselves.
On a personal note, I don’t think it’s ridiculous in the least to be stuck on stuff that happened 25 years ago. I know because I am also stuck on stuff that happened 25 years ago.
I’m not saying this to throw a pity-party for myself. Nor am I saying that my experience is worse than what happens to many women in a male-centric society – on the contrary, I realize that my experience of being bullied is negligible compared to the far more extreme abuses so many girls and women survive.
No need for the disclaimer. Injustice is injustice is injustice. Suffering is suffering. Patriarchal mores really do hurt boys and men.
Bravo.
I’d never heard that particular quote, so it isn’t at all cliched to me.
Though I don’t feel I particularly suffered because of my gender, I suffered because I didn’t fit the mold, and that bothered people so much. Now I am another person somewhat stuck on bullying and mistreatment from the past, hoping I can do what I can to prevent others from being made to hate themselves because they don’t fit.
Unfortunately the first man I ever met who called himself a feminist turned out to be an emotionally abusive asshole. I’m glad to have seen many real feminist and pro-feminist men on this site to redress the balance of his poor example.
one more thing (sorry, I’m always so bloody rambly!)
…”on the contrary, I realize that my experience of being bullied is negligible compared to the far more extreme abuses so many girls and women survive.”
The thing is, these things are so intricately connected that there’s really no such thing as more/less abusive. YOU turned out great, apparently. But many men who deal with this bullying (and all the other aspects of rigid masculinity) wind up internalizing so much of the gender shit that they become a huge part of the very problem we face as women. I’m not in any way excusing them, just in case anyone was wondering… just saying that the system that’s in place hurts everybody, and often in ways that become expressed outwardly in a way that continues the cycle. You can’t really seperate what is the abusive situation for men from what is the abusive situation for women — because they’re different sides of the same shit cycle.
Even leaving aside the problems I have with it philosophically, I wish beyond wishing that the “men’s movement” had formed in a way that it worked to subvert masculinity and really question the roles that men are forced into, instead of the reality of what it became. Because it left feminism still holding up the whole gender justice weight, which is simply not what feminism was originally designed to do, IMO. And it leaves us feminists — those of us who want men and women and everybody else to be able to operate without being sucked right back in to fucking over themselves and/or each other all the damned time — trying to redesign a feminist thought-base to have broader meaning while simultaneously trying to keep that “broader meaning” from becoming dominated, again, by men’s needs.
Sorry, been drinking cheap-ass beer. It makes me even more incomprehensible than usual.
And BTW, I think we’re all stuck on stuff that happened 25 years ago (or however long ago is a long time for us).
Rosemary said:
“Unfortunately the first man I ever met who called himself a feminist turned out to be an emotionally abusive asshole.”
This, for me, brings up the real reason why I would hesitate to call myself a feminist: that actions speak louder than words. Any yahoo can call himself or herself a feminist. I would not hesitate to refer to myself as a feminist among people I know, trust, love. But among those who do not know me, I feel it can look like a boast, and then I’m carrying a coin easily demeaned even by the lightest of crayons.
Amp, I’m curious, has it been your experience, with regard to those male feminists you know one way or the other, that their feminism is rooted in similar childhood experiences? I mean some level of sexual self-dislike (not to say hate)? Because I felt similarly about myself as a boy, though I didn’t have it nearly as bad as you.
I don’t even get this argument. Feminism is a position, not a sex. Phyllis Schlafley is a woman, but she’s not a feminist. When I say, “I’m a civil rights activist,” I’m not saying, “I’m a black activist.” Ditto “gay rights activist” versus “gay”.
If you were claiming to be a woman just because you support feminism, I’d be pretty pissed off, but “feminist” is not synonymous with “female”, so what is this about, really?
I’m not in any way excusing them, just in case anyone was wondering… just saying that the system that’s in place hurts everybody, and often in ways that become expressed outwardly in a way that continues the cycle.
Another way of viewing it is that the system that is in place imposes costs, which are paid by everyone (although some people pay a lot more than others). All systems have costs; all systems deliver benefits. Viewing things as “the system that hurts everyone” implicitly assumes that there’s some magical system out there that costs nothing but still delivers the benefits. There’s no reason to believe that is true.
To the extent that alternative systems are feasible (which seems intellectually plausible), then they must be measured under the same rubric; who benefits, what are the costs, how does it balance out, how stable and self-perpetuating is it, etc.
That’s the non-partisan, true-no-matter-what-you-believe part of the analysis. You don’t have to believe it, but to the degree that anything describing human beings can be, it’s factual, and if you want to argue it, argue it with someone else; I don’t have time.
The partisan and interestingly-arguable part comes here: it’s my observation that people who believe in overthrowing gender roles (hi Barry!) are people for whom articulation and conscious calculation of values are low-cost goods. IE, Barry is very easily able to articulate his thinking on a host of complex social questions. Any system of gender roles – which forestall the need to think things through, allowing us instead to step to the conclusion – bring Barry &c. very little benefit, while imposing very high costs, as the heart-tearing story of Barry’s self-loathing as a boy makes clear. I teared up when I read that; my oldest son used to hit himself for conceptually similar, though not identical, reasons.
But that personal truth about the costs and benefits of roles only applies to a segment of the population. For many people – I would wager a substantial majority – the capacity and the inclination to reason through 40,000 years of human social and cultural evolution and come to a rationality-based conclusion is simply lacking. Yet the project to eliminate gender roles and replace them with individual reason is predicated on the ability and willingness of the populace to spend enormous quantities of emotional and mental time on processing and discussing and feeling. (Look at the quantities of energy expended in recent threads about racial and trans and feminist-friendly people and whether they are “allies” or “friends” and how they should interact.) For 99% of us, that’s inside baseball to a level that is simply never going to be replicated.
So we wind up with an empirical proposition, not to eliminate gender roles altogether – because we haven’t got the power, cap’n – but instead to just start accepting the articulated wisdom and vision of a small elite, ruling on the appropriateness or unacceptability of various elements of those roles, rather than the unarticulated wisdom and vision of all that cultural evolution. Both approaches have merits, and both approaches have problems, but both of them are ill served by descriptors which think of them as “hurting everyone”.
Patriarchy “hurts everyone”; so would any other system of distributing power. I submit that patching patriarchy and spreading cultural values that undermine its destructive elements and buttress its positive ones, would have a lower total cost and produce better social outcomes than any alternative I have see proposed.
Of course, that is simply the opinion of one man. YMMV, and doubtless will.
I want to second spit’s comments, both of them. I know many feminists with differing opinions. It’s not a one-size-fits-all label. It’s a principle that focuses on women irrespective of the principle holder’s genitalia.
Also on “being bullied is negligible…” Pain is pain and can’t be compared or judged. Nobody can ever know the effects of any type of abuse. One person might experience life-long effects and flash-backs from being bullied, while another person who was beat up might recover in a few weeks and hardly think of it again.
I also experienced bullying, but instead of coming away with self-loathing, I came away with a new sense of freedom from the constraints of mainstream ideology. I’m not sure why I didn’t internalize any of the taunts I heard, but I’m glad it all processed that way for me (read more here).
I’m sorry for what you went through. Nobody should have to suffer through that kind of crap.
My husband calls himself a feminist because he “believes in what he understands the basic principles of feminism to be.” When I asked him to articulate those principles he answered, “darn it, I knew you were going to make me articulate on my answer. and “Something about women not being doormats or prostitutes.” (He’s quoting Deborah West, 1913, here.)
Robert,
I think specificity would clarify what you mean when you want to perpetuate “patriarchy.”
In terms of patriarchy – Historians tend to define patriarchy as a system of land distribution that is inherited by the eldest male son.
I understand on this list why “patriarchy” is often used in a very general term to mean unequal social, political and civil rights based on gender difference.
However, that in itself is a very general definition. I bet Robert doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t be able to inherit land or vote. But I really don’t know what he does mean.
I have a pretty mellow definition of patriarchy, geoduck2. (BTW, I studied at Evergreen State College myself. Well, I attended. Well, I was signed up for classes. Some semesters, anyway. Shut up. Omnia Extare!)
Patriarchy is a set of social systems that believes in, and probably fosters, meaningful differences in the collective capabilities of women and men, and assigns values to those capabilities which tend to lead towards outcomes of male leadership and female support. (I think the differences would exist independently of the social pressure; the social pressure cements an existing, smaller, tendency.) Patriarchy assigns men more power, more responsibility, and more privilege in the sexual, familial and career arenas. It is my belief that a great deal of this differential lies in a passive acceptance of accumulated individual outcomes; patriarchy doesn’t make women stay out of the boardroom, it just doesn’t object when men win the competition in greater numbers.
My patriarchy is pretty soft. I don’t generally believe in restricting people from following their hearts or their dreams; I just don’t see a problem with large differentials outcomes on those dreams. To put it another way, I’m encouraging all of my children to foster their talents in the directions where they have native ability; in my oldest two, this means I’m encouraging my son to develop his physical skills and I’m encouraging my daughter to develop her mathematical talent, because that is where their abilities seem to lie. But it wouldn’t disturb me in the slightest if he was a math geek and she had her heart set on babies and man-catching, either.
I do think it’s wrong, absent some compelling social crisis, to stifle a person’s inclinations and talents in the interest of maintaining arbitrary categorizations. I also think it’s wrong that people who aren’t comfortable fitting into gender roles are severely punished for their nonconformity; we ought to be a lot more tolerant of ambiguity and accept “well, Joe is just Joe and that’s that.”
I think that 90% of the social ills that are assigned to patriarchy are actually endemic to our troubled species; patriarchy is merely the lens through which the tainted light passes. But the other 10% do exist and are problematic and are the legitimate ground for reform, in my view. Excessively privileged male children who think that other people are their rightful property are a damn big chunk of that ten percent.
“none of us are free if one of us is chained, none of us are free.” (Solomon Burke, with the Blind Boy’s of Alabama.)
I am with the if it offends one to call a man a feminist than don’t; but frankly, who cares? That kind of debate while kind of interesting if carried very far does nothing to advance the cause of Feminism. Keep the main thing, the main thing. The enemy is real, and ought naught to be us.
I do not see that you are vying for pity, sharing our testimonies should be healing for the one sharing as well as those limping down the road with you. (The first step in Recovery starts with “We,” we are not alone, nor are we supposed to be.) It is staggering how many of us are hurting from others attempts at forcing us to conform to an ideal that doesn’t exist. Tragically those that are leading the charge have frequently been hurt and are fearful that someone might know their pain. They are afraid to see it themselves, so compensate by causing that very pain in others. I feel sorry for them the most. This is why we must continue the fight for folks on all fronts to have the rights to work it out (this life) without being coerced.
Thank you for adding your story to the rest of ours; we have that much more in common, and are the better for it. Blessings.
Jill: I identify as an ally to the queer community and an anti-racist, but I also recognize that there are a lot of things that, being white and heterosexual, I just don’t get.
Jill, I’m betting that although you are an ally, or work very hard to be, you do not identify as “queer” or as a queer activist or any variation thereof, because you are het. It sounds to me as though you identify as a het woman who really cares about lesbian women, bisexual women, and gay men, a woman who will defer to their opinions as to political issues. I’m also betting that you don’t use any of the names people of color who are political activists use for themselves . You identify as an anti-racist white woman, and I think that’s just right.
My view is, men should not identify as feminists– ever. They should let that be up to feminist women to decide. I think if even a few feminist women believe men should not identify as feminists, men who really do care about the people of women will defer to those few feminist women’s judgment, and will continue to work on behalf of the interests of the people of women regardless. I think the use of, or advocacy for, pornography — any kind — disqualifies a man from calling himself a feminist. I think taking sides with some feminist women as against other feminist women disqualifies a man as a feminist. I think being dismissive of feminist concerns about male feminists disqualifies a man as a feminist. I think men who really do care about the people of women will keep on working on our behalf, despite how pissed off they might be about what I have just written.
I think that if a man is truly an ally to feminists, he will understand precisely why many feminists will never agree that he is. He’ll continue to give himself to issues which matter to the people of women, no matter what, even if feminist women themselves reject him and give him all sorts of grief. Why? Because the liberation of the people of women is right, and just, full stop.
It may be true that there are few male feminist bloggers. It is also true that male feminist bloggers get ALL the media attention and particularly if they are white and het. Try being a radical feminist, a lesbian separatist, and just see what happens to you then. You might be writing the best goddamn brilliant woman-centered feminist posts EVER, and the whole world will shun and marginalize you. You will find yourself on no blogrolls. No one will be quoting you or linking to you or seeking you out. And why? Because your very existence really is a threat to male supremacy. This is something men who believe themselves to be feminists ought to think really deeply about. I am asking you to think deeply about this. If you really do care about my people, the people of women, I think you ought to care about the most marginalized, the most radical of women, and when you differ with them — with us –I think you ought to step severely aside, reject the male privilege you have, and make room for their voices to be heard.
I really don’t understand why a man wouldn’t want to call himself a feminist if he believes in feminism. My father labeled himself a feminist (and acted as such). As a girl, this was a powerful experience and caused me to never settle for less in my future life choices. Don’t get me wrong, my father didn’t make a “big deal” out of it – it is just a label.
But he read books titled things like “How to Raise Independent and Professionally Sucessful Daughters.” I found that book in my parents book shelf, and it cracked me up.
Robert,
It’s great to hear from a fellow Greener. My husband is also an alumni.
So, I guess I’m a little confused, but maybe I misunderstood your post. This sounds like feminism to me:
I do think it’s wrong, absent some compelling social crisis, to stifle a person’s inclinations and talents in the interest of maintaining arbitrary categorizations. I also think it’s wrong that people who aren’t comfortable fitting into gender roles are severely punished for their nonconformity; we ought to be a lot more tolerant of ambiguity and accept “well, Joe is just Joe and that’s that.”
And you are encouraging both your children to develop their interests and talents. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck …?
Excessively privileged male children who think that other people are their rightful property are a damn big chunk of that ten percent.
This made me think of a certain sports team at Duke.
Heart, that was an interesting post but I have to ask you to clarify this statement. What exactly do you mean by “media attention”? Further down in the post you write about being on blogrolls, getting quoted and getting visitors to your site. Is that what you mean? Because if you do, I don’t see how you can make the claim that the male feminists get ALL the attention.(or even one tenth of the attention) I know of three male feminist blogs – alas, hugo and now this chris person. But I read many more female feminist blogs – feministe, echidne, twisty, amanda, flea, frog etc etc. On those blogs as well as right here on alas hundreds of female run blogs get linked to, quoted and put on the blogroll. How many female and how many male run feminist blogs does alas link to? How many female and how many male run feminist blogs does [insert random feminist blog here] link to? Do you have any stats of how many unique visitors different feminist blogs have or some other data to support your claim? Considering the enormous popularity of feministe, pandagon, one good thing etc I think your statement is wrong.
Heart
Slightly off topic.
Here in Sweden queer is a term that indicates that you don’t believe in heteronormativity and that you have a personal commitment not to adhere to these fixed definitions when it comes to issues of sex and gender.
I know several heterosexuals who define themselves as queer and, since all those people actually adhere to that in their personal lives, I don’t think that is misleading at all.
When it comes all of these terms I don’t see why it is any different from how some people call themselves socialists, christian or whatever and then not live that way. There are women as well as men who calls themselves feminists and then acts so as to work against feminism. I don’t see how this should be an argument for excluding some people from calling themselves feminists only based on their gender.
Jill, I’m betting that although you are an ally, or work very hard to be, you do not identify as “queer” or as a queer activist or any variation thereof, because you are het.
But being “queer” or a “queer activist” isn’t the same thing as being a “queer rights activist.” Jill wouldn’t call herself “queer” because she’s not queer, or a “queer activist” because she’s not an activist who is queer, but if she works on behalf of queer people then she is a queer rights activist. Just as a white person who works on behalf of civil rights is a civil rights activist, though not “black” or a “black activist” or “Hispanic” or whatever.
I see “feminist” as a description of someone who believes in and works for a cause, a description of an ideology and of actions, rather than of essence. So “feminist” is analogous to “civil rights activist” whereas “queer” or “Chicana” is analogous to “woman.”
Which is pretty much what Avedon said.
That was a marvelous post Amp. Feminists up, Dorks down! :)
For me, it’s easy. Feminism is an ‘ism’. Amp addressed it in offering up that feminism addresses all people hurt within a system that is unequitable. It’s important to me that the ‘ism’ which to me implies active thought and deed is endowed upon people who meet the criteria. Vagina optional. It’s important to me that my daughters grow up with the majority of men in their lives identifying as feminists if possible, and if not that, at least as feminist allies.
Well hopefully being surrounded by people who love and appreciate you very much now works as a good counter-weight to this.
Right. If poor people can be capitalists and privileged people be socialists then surely men can be feminists.
B, there are also people in the United States who identify as “queer” even though they are, for all intents and purposes, heterosexual. I don’t agree with that, either, because the inference is that queer is something that goes on in someone’s head, or is something which can be put on and taken off like a bathrobe, as opposed to queer being a fact about a person’s life and choices which has resulted in his or her being marginalized, suffering various kinds of discrimination in the world, specific hardships imposed on those who violate patriarchal norms or standards. (For what it’s worth, I don’t like the label “queer” either, for the same reasons I don’t like it when men identify as feminists. When people with comparative societal power and privilege elect to “identify” as members of political movements intended to liberate those with much less power and privilege, the latter group inevitably ends up invisible-to-erased in their own movement. )
St. Ulfsten, I’m not talking about blogrolls, etc., I’m talking about media attention. The first feminist blogger to get invited to speak on, hmm, Air America(?), for example, was Amp, even though at the time there were lots of feminist women blogging. While you’re right, it’s an exaggeration to say that male feminists get *all* the attention, they are the ones who *do* end up in the spotlight most of the time, and I think that’s because under male supremacy, male voices are privileged over women’s voices, even in our own movement. (Just as het voices, especially het male voices, are going to be privileged over others in the queer movement.)
Another example: over on my boards someone recently posted an article from other boards somewhere, not sure where, there was no link, in which the (woman) author was going on about the failure of feminist women to write about race, and in the course of that, she held up four heterosexual white men as examples of people who were doing what feminist women are supposed to be doing around the issues of erasing whiteness/ending race privilege. In fact, feminist women have always written about erasing whiteness/ending white privilege, from the beginning of the Second Wave. Peggy MacIntosh is the person who came up with the white privilege checklist. Marilyn Frye was speaking and writing about about erasing whiteness back in 1981 as were others. A widely used college textbook on critical race theory, in its introduction, states that critical race theory is built on the insights of two preceding movements: radical feminism and critical legal theory. So how is it that we have a young feminist women popping up to say, “Gee, how come it’s only white men who are writing about erasing whiteness/ending white privilege and not women?” Well, it’s because it’s white men who got published, white men who ended up in the spotlight, with women’s voices erased, often because at the time they were writing and speaking, they were considered too radical.
Another example which is fresh in my mind is from an e-mail I got from a feminist professor friend who is on a NARAL listserv in her state. The woman who runs the listserv sends pro-choice stuff around all the time and recently sent a glowing endorsement of a piece which, as it turned out, was written by Amp, in which Amp concluded that anti-choice people are motivated by a desire to punish women for having sex. While I’m glad about Amp’s conclusion, I think this is something feminist women concluded 40 years ago and have been continually asserting and concluding ever since. I think the NARAL woman and circulating and exuberating over Amp’s piece has to do, again, with the way what is written by men is privileged over what is written by women. And I think the more marginalized the woman, the less likely it is that her voice will be heard. Another example of this phenomenon is the way increasingly in the colleges, women’s studies have become “gender studies” with less and less attention devoted to women’s issues, fewer women professors, fewer feminist-authored textbooks, more and more attention devoted to issues around “gender” which pertain to men and not women.
It’s true that identifying as a feminist is not the same as identifying as queer or as a person of color, as you’ve said, Kim and Lanoire and I think someone else, too. The problem is that feminism exists to eliminate the power disparities between women and men, and specifically, to end the subordination of women to men. I think when we see men speaking on behalf of feminists, men being the ones in the spotlight, we are seeing ourselves, as women, being subordinated to men in the very movement which intends to bring that power imbalance to an end, particularly when what those men might be saying *as* feminists does not enjoy the support *of* many feminist women. And I think this process begins when men identify as “feminists”, which is why I don’t think they should. That’s the way movements end up co-opted.
Hey Heart. it’s been about a year since I f*cked or been f*cked by a man, and in the intereim, I’ve f*cked or been f*cked by 3 women.
Do I still count as queer?
“The woman who runs the listserv sends pro-choice stuff around all the time and recently sent a glowing endorsement of a piece which, as it turned out, was written by Amp, in which Amp concluded that anti-choice people are motivated by a desire to punish women for having sex. While I’m glad about Amp’s conclusion, I think this is something feminist women concluded 40 years ago and have been continually asserting and concluding ever since.”
Particularly, at least Amanda Marcotte (and probably many other feminist bloggers that I don’t read) had been saying this long before Amp’s post. But they never listed the specific ways that it happened. Maybe in a single post they would talk about one or two, and over time cover them all. But Amp’s post was a summary, and a damn good summary, and very compelling and useful. If you can point out where a female blogger did something similar and was ignored, your comparison might be valid.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your wider point though. But I’m not really convinced.
Robert, your “true no matter what you believe” assertion that all systems have costs seems to imply that the costs are roughly equivalent in their aggregate and differ in their distribution. If you’re making that assertion, it’s just plain wrong and at odds with the entire field of game theory. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Patriarchy is a “prisoner’s dilemma” scenario where mistrust and imperfect information create a situation of advantage-seeking that is inefficient in that it is sub-optimal even for the participant that it works out better for, and disastrous for the participant that gets the short end.
i’ll ditto josh’s comment. i was in a 15 yr relationship with a man and am currently in a 10 yr open relationship with a woman. in that time i’ve slept with a couple of guys too. can i have your permission to call myself queer please? or are you one of those people who think bisexuals don’t exist?
Heart, from what you’ve written it sounds as though you don’t think that James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman could properly be identified as civil rights activists, because they were white. Do you embrace that conclusion?
Heart — I think I understand where you’re coming from, and I think it’s a dilemma that’s at the core of just about any fight for equality by a marginalized group.
What tends to happen in any movement that is broad is that the groups of people with the most social power come to dominate the conversation. This is what, for example, happened with the SF gay pride parade for years — it became a parade by and about primarily white gay men, which is why lesbian feminists later started the dykemarch — which specifically excludes men so that there can be a space which specifically focuses on women, is by women, so forth. I fully support that, and I march in the dykemarch almost every year.
But the problem with it is that anytime you make a solid boundary around the community that you’re trying to represent, you start to tread dangerously close to the same exclusionary tactics that you’re trying to fight, first off, and you also tend to start to step into some level of essentialism as you try to narrow down who, exactly, does or does not fit in your space. This became a huge dilemma at dykemarch a while ago when a lot of FTM trannies — who had been members of the lesbian community for years, and who had fought alongside women as women for years, started pushing for inclusion in dykemarch even though they may identify as men. What do you do in those circumstances? If you exclude them, you’re once again basing feminism and womanhood on either “physical sex” or on some “one or the other” oppositional concept of gender, both things that feminism has spent a long time trying to counter.
On the term “queer” — queerness often implies a level of flexibility within “not straight” that none of the other terms do. Which is why you wind up with people who happily identify as queer but who maybe do not fit in the particular categories that we’ve socially constructed. Personally, I think that’s a step in the right direction. The problem you’re getting at, I think, in which people have or do not have privilege based on their current or most recent relationships, is a problem that comes from the wider culture, it’s binary concept of gay/straight, and its tendancy to assume these things are inflexible — that’s not the fault of people who are not easily put into “gay” or “straight”, it’s the fault of a conceptual system based on dualism. To say that queerness is dependant on how the outside world conceptualizes you is to allow that status quo to remain indefinitely, to never force people to question the ways they assign people to boxes.
One of my greater fears, to be honest, in ever really going forward with my transitioning is that I absolutely, 100% do not want the world to box me in as a “straight man”, with all the baggage that goes along with it. That’s going to be a massive problem for me. That doesn’t mean, though, that there’s something fundamentally wrong with my identity, it means we don’t have a categorization system that’s flexible enough to handle people like me — and the only way that’s going to change is if “people like me” push the envelope a little — it’s certainly not going to change by placing at fault the very people who don’t fit easily in the categories.
Copper coinage.
Amp, I think this is a very brave post, not just because it reveals personal details of your life–and therefore puts them out there for scrutiny–but because it explicitly connects those details to your politics in a way that foregrounds what is at stake for you and that presumes to claim that what is at stake for you is a version of what is at stake for all of us, and to do that is to take a risk that few men who claim to be or to support feminists often do. I have thought for a long time that more of us who came to feminism through early experiences of abuse or self-hatred or of watching our mothers or sisters or whomever be abused need to tell our stories in intimate personal detail, not as you put it, to throw a pity-party, but to demonstrate that feminism is not something we profess/do/choose-your-verb “for” women, but that it is for ourselves, because our freedom is intimately connected to women’s freedom.
Somewhere in an issue of the now-defunct literary journal called Central Park that focused on child sexual abuse–the book is
in storage so I cannot retrieve the quote–a woman cited the statistics at the time reflecting the percentage of men in the
US who had been sexually abused as boys; it was either 1-in-5 or 1-in-7. I know that such statistics are easily open to interpretation and manipulation, but even if the figure is 1-in-8 or 1-in-10, the point she made next still holds: Given that the overwhelming majority of members of Congress are male, she said, think about what would happen if all the men in Congress who had been sexually abused as boys not only told the truth about what had happened to them, but began to act politically in accordance with that truth. It would, she argued, alter irrevocably, and for the better, this country’s political priorities.
Whether or not this woman was right about male politicians and politics, her larger point is worth considering: most men for
whom patriarchal masculinity has not worked–either because they were not able to measure up or because they became an object of its violence and oppression–do not tell the truth of that experience or do not do so in a way that consciously connects
their telling to a personal and political commitment to change that system. (For anyone who’s interested, I have written a
very long essay called My Daughter’s Vagina and a companion piece called My Son’s Penis that tell my story. You can find
links to them and a little bit of background about them in the second half of this entry on my blog.)
Feminism first became important to me when I was 19 or 20 and was beginning to be aware of the fact that I had been sexually abused at two different times in my childhood, each time by a different man. This was at a time when people in the US were just beginning to acknowledge the sexual abuse of girls; almost no one was talking about the fact that it happened to boys as well. In fact, at a summer camp training session–I was 20, which means it was 1982–a male social worker who was there to help us learn, among other things, how to deal with campers who might choose to tell us they’d been sexually abused told he would use the pronoun “she” as the generic pronoun to refer to such campers because those children who were sexually abused were overwhelmingly female. (In fact, as far as I know, while child sexual abuse is more common among girls, I don’t think the statistics show and overwhelming disparity.)
I would not now argue with the man’s political motivations for his choice of pronouns–though I would question whether it was appropriate in a training session for camp counselors who would be dealing with both boy and girl campers–but the fact is that, on a personal level, what he said rendered me, my experience and my body invisible. Around this time, I also went to the library to find what I could to read about the sexual abuse of boys and all I could find was a study of people’s perceptions of boys who’d been sexually abused, and the one detail I remember now–probably because it was the one detail that really made an impression on me then–was that a majority of the people surveyed believed that boys who’d been sexually abused by men were more likely to grow to be homosexual. The only place I found a vocabulary that helped me to begin naming my experience of abuse, both the abuse itself and what the abuse did to me in the years following, was in feminism, specifically reading the essays in Adrienne Rich’s On Lies, Secrets and Silence.
Reading Rich was thrilling and frightening and frustrating all at the same time. On the one hand, I identified copmletely with what she had to say about how women’s bodies are sexually objectified and used by men; on the other hand, her words also identified me, as a man, as a member of the same class of people that included the men who had abused me. On the one hand, I recognized immediately the connection between pornography and the sexual objectification of women that led to rape and other forms of sexual assault; on the other hand, I was deeply interested in pornography. I would later find out that it is not uncommon for male survivors of child sexual abuse to become deeply invested in porn, to the point of obsession/addiction, but what I also hoped very consciously to find in porn at the time–more than naively I now understand–was information about ways of being sexual that were different from the abuse I had experienced. I came to understand the necessity of feminism, not just in my own life, but as a political and cultural movement through the process of trying to reconcile these oppositions.
There is, of course, a lot more to my story than this, but I have gone on long enough already and I want to get back to the question posed in Amp’s original post. I agree that, ultimately, it matters less what people call me or what I call myself and that that really matters is the work I do. Some of the comments in this thread, though, have made me think: If feminism means, simply, something analogous to, say, “the civil rights movement,” then it is true that men can be feminists in the same way the white people can be civil rights activists. If, on the other hand, feminism means a way of being in the world, of making meaning in a way that takes women’s perspective as the center, if, in other words, feminism is a philosophical and ontological and even epistemological stance from which a politics of women’s rights follows/emerges, then the question of whether men can be feminists is a good deal more complicated.
Ok, I have gone on long enough.
“if, in other words, feminism is a philosophical and ontological and even epistemological stance from which a politics of women’s rights follows/emerges, then the question of whether men can be feminists is a good deal more complicated.”
Exactly. I just wanted to repeat this because it gets right to the heart of this, IMO. Because how you view men’s roles in feminism does depend on how you view feminism itself, and I think that’s where this debate becomes frankly pretty unresolvable (though always fun to ramble about, IMO).
Personally, even with your latter definition, I think men can be feminists — but that being a feminist in that sense requires a whole different fundamental view of the world and cultural forces than the vast majority of men or women have.
Wow, Amp. Wow.
I doubt that anyone can sum up his life in nine paragraphs. But nine paragraphs can do a lot. Not to sum up perhaps, but to open up.
Three reflections:
1. I don’t know Amp. I don’t know anyone on this list. But I don’t know it.
Instead, I imagine I know you all. I imagine I know all about you: You’re me! Actually, you’re all a younger, somewhat idealized version of me. But you’re all white and male and heterosexual and able-bodied and middle-class and educated. You all went to my high school. You had my childhood. Except to the extent that you specify otherwise. But where you haven’t specified, I don’t realize that you haven’t. I’m happy to fill in the blanks with me, me, me!
You’re a reasonablely good-lookin’ bunch. And you’ll be surprised to learn, we have a lot in common.
Nine paragraphs help me realize a little something more about Amp. And a little something more about me. (See? It’s all about me!)
2. I don’t feel Amp’s burning passion. I don’t feel anybody’s burning passion. I can argue for my preferences, but many people – even people I agree with – express exasperation with my detachment. Maybe detachment is the consequence of growing up white and male and heterosexual and able-bodied and middle-class and educated and…. Or maybe not. Anyway, here I am.
I haven’t studied Buddhism or anything, but I have tended to regard detachment as a useful quality. I may not strike with the same energy as others, but I like to think my aim is better, and that I can take a blow without shattering.
Which brings us, at long last, to the use of the label Feminist. I sense many commentors feel a primary allegiance to the word Feminism and to fellow Feminists. Discussions about to what and with whom exactly they are allying themselves come second. I suspect the statement “I’m a feminist” provokes people to engage in the same kind of thinking that I do: projecting their own assumptions about feminism onto the speaker. Admittedly, the ambiguity of a label can be useful, especially in politics. But for purposes of understanding, I suspect the word obscures more than it clarifies.
I come to this blog to explore ideas, not for propaganda. I’m interested to hear arguments about whether pornography perpetuates oppressive gender roles. I’m less interested to hear that someone labels pornography “anti-feminist.”
I take some interest in discussions about who gets to wear the label Feminist, but mostly as a study of group dynamics/politics and linguistics. The issue seems pretty far removed from whether pornography perpetuates oppressive gender roles, etc.
3. Amp, would you want to add those nine paragraphs to your website bio? I honestly don’t know whether displaying them there, out of the context of this discussion, would be appropriate or not.
There are also women who identify as lesbians even though they are not exclusively, primarily, or even remotely sexually attracted to women. If an arguably heterosexual woman can make an activist statement by identifying as a “political lesbian,” why can’t arguably heterosexual people make activist statements by becoming “political queers?” These people have chosen to ally themselves with an oppressed group, and to explicitly reject the up/down dichotomy between straight and [twisted]. I’m happy to have them around, and I’m happy to see a bunch of words entering the lexicon which don’t attempt to draw clear bright lines between “hetero,” “homo,” and “bi.” Makes it a hell of a lot easier to describe all the free spirits in my city.
Spit, while I would err on the side of openness for anyone whose gender identity is complex, I think that people who receive male privilege have a responsibility to opt out of safe space for women. If they intrude upon it, they insult its reason for existing: to provide a haven for people who are _not_ privileged. Ftms are welcome at a great many events focused on queer women, and are welcome to attend all the parties after the march. The dyke march is women-only, not as a nod to essentialism, but as a recognition of the damage essentialism has caused.
You know, I wasn’t making any point in my post about the way individuals identify. I tend to agree with you, spit, that in general, it’s a move in the right direction for people in het relationships to personally identify as queer if that’s what they are by the prevailing definition. I was talking about political movements, though, and particularly about whose voice gets heard and whose gets marginalized. I would not think it was a good idea for a white man married to a woman, for example, to be heading up the local (or national) GLBTQRSTUVWXYZ organization– even if he personally identified as queer for some reason. I think it’s great if he does identify as queer personally, but he’s just not going to be feeling things the way the majority of people in that particular movement are going to be feeling them and it seems to me that that ought to be obvious to him. He ought to step aside, give up as much of his privilege as he can, and use whatever influence he has to see to it that the voices of the most marginalized are heard instead of his same old same old married white guy voice. Same thing with feminism. Feminism is all about leveling the playing field gender-wise.
Spit: If you exclude them, you’re once again basing feminism and womanhood on either “physical sex” or on some “one or the other” oppositional concept of gender, both things that feminism has spent a long time trying to counter.
I don’t think the issue is physical sex or one or the other oppositional concepts of gender when it comes to feminism as a political movement. I think feminism in its purest form simply seeks to end women’s subordination to men. That being so, how does it make sense for men to be other than allies to feminist women? Feminism should be the one movement which women lead, for which women speak, and where men find ways to support women in doing that, along with finding ways to give up their own privilege.
The situation with FTMs is different, I think. A lot of women I respect disagree with me, but my thinking is, if a person was born a girl, grew up as a girl, has the experiences and lived reality of a girl, transitions, but wants to be in the dyke march or go to some other similar event, I’m okay with that. But that, again, has to do with lived realities, with the experience of being subordinated on the basis of having been born female. Even if a woman later transitions, I don’t think she ever forgets. On the other hand, if a woman *does* transition and goes on to identify as man, I don’t think she ought to be the one speaking for feminism, speaking for women, or identifying as a feminist. I think at that point she becomes an ally, a pro-feminist man. It really isn’t about biological essentialism or exclusion on the basis of biology; it’s about the way power has been apportioned to us under male supremacy, about who has had it, and who has been made to be subordinate to it. I think those who have been subordinated on the basis of their sex ought to be the spokespersons for feminism, not those who have participated, however unwillingly or unwittingly, in the subordinating.
Oh, one more thing. Thomas asked about white civil rights activists. I think that white people can be civil rights activists, just like men can be women’s rights activists. But I don’t think white people ought to be viewed as somehow having their finger on the pulse of the Civil Rights movement. They ought to be allies, in other words, just as men ought to be allies. The interesting thing is that white people, including white men, have not been looked to to be the spokespersons for the Civil Rights movement, and I think that’s because there are plenty, plenty of black men who have always led and continue to lead the movement. I think that white men haven’t tried to insert themselves because men respect men. And fear them. In a way that men do not respect and fear women– even allies a lot of the time.
One more p.s. I went back up and read my earlier post and I see that I didn’t make a good distinction between how a person identifies individually or personally and the way political movements work. My bad, and hopefully my latest post was more clear.
piny — this is one of those things where there are a lot of good arguments on all sides, IMO.
Anecdotally, I can say that trannies who tend toward more solid views of their own genders also have a tendancy not to march, or to march during the beginning of their transitioning, but come to the conclusion that women’s space is no longer theirs — not just out of respect for that women’s space, but also out of respect for their own sense of their gender.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people, as I know you’re aware, for whom this is a far more complex issue. And that’s where this stuff gets particularly messy — because nobody can fundamentally say what somebody else’s identity is or what social meaning it has. On the one hand, privilege is given to FTMs as a result of their appearance as men — that social meaning is handed to them whether they want it or not (again, a major personal issue for me). On the other hand, their social meaning is not necessarily limited to that, and that privilege is absolutely revoked the second they clarify — if they wish to clarify — that they are queer not only in terms of their sexuality, but also in terms of their gender.
I also just think you can’t — when you start getting into people who are all squishy with gender — say who does or doesn’t have the gender privilege. It becomes a really complicated discussion very quickly, rather than a simple “you’re a man so you have X privilege, you’re a woman so you don’t” thing when you get into this stuff — for reasons of past history, for reasons of current identification, so on.
The dyke march is women-only, not as a nod to essentialism, but as a recognition of the damage essentialism has caused.
I agree with you that this is a large part of the intent — but I also feel strongly that whether it is intended or no, even just the phrase “women-only” absolutely assumes the same inflexible definition of “woman” that it works to combat. Honestly, I think there’s not an easy answer here — the dilemma inherent in the argument is one that cuts right to the core of all the feminisms that have come before. Until recently, they never had to ask “what is a woman, anyway?” to this kind of level. It’s going to keep right on leading to these conflicts until a theoretical backbone is worked out that deals with the issue of gender flexibility.
Dykemarch, so far as I know (missed it last year), has gone with trans-inclusion at this point.
Heart wrote:
I haven’t yet read the entire thread, but I wanted to address this misconception, that I’m the most prominent feminist blogger. While that may have been true three years ago, when I was nearly the only blogger concentrating on feminist issues, nowadays such a statement ignores the accomplishments of blogs like Pandagon, Bitch PhD, and Feministing (among others).
It’s true I was on Air America, but there were female, feminist blogging guests on Air America both before and after my appearance. (I was the first feminist blogger on the “bloggers debate” segment on Janine Garofalo’s show, which may be what Heart is thinking of, but others had appeared in other contexts before that point).
As for mainstream media attention, a lexis-nexis search shows that “Pandagon” has been mentioned fourteen times in the last couple of years in major mainstream newspapers and magazines (most recent mention: today’s Guardian article about feminist blogging) ; in contrast, “Alas” has been mentioned once (in an article about blogs covering the Terri Schiavo controversy). Bitch PhD and Feministing have both been mentioned twice.
Heart- thanks for the clarification; I get what you’re saying better now, I think.
I think we agree more than we don’t, if you’re viewing feminism primarily through a political lens. I don’t agree on the language specifically — I think that viewed as a political movement, the word “feminist” should be applied to all those involved in its activism and in the formulation of its theoretical underpinnings; that, to me, simply has to be able to include men too. I do agree with you, though, that there is a danger in generally bringing men into that without working on the social dynamic that tends to place them higher on the soap-box, more or less. In this sense, I think that men can be feminists… it’s just that not many of them are, IMO, because it’s a lot harder to understand all the complexities to marginilization when you, yourself, are not being marginalized in the same way.
I personally question more what men’s role on that theory-dialogue level is or can be — for exactly that reason. I have known any number of very intelligent, very thoughtful men who just didn’t have a clue what I was talking about when I got into the social meanings of gender. Being able to not think on that level is largely a privilege of being either on the top of the ol’ totem pole or often fitting well into whichever gender box you’ve been placed within. But again, I think that while I can think of plenty of examples of men who could not understand feminism on that level, I’ve also known a few who could, and with whom I’ve had very interesting and useful discussions on this stuff.
So I guess the line for me isn’t about men and women, it’s about people willing/able to get to complexity vs. people who are not. All, IMO, have a place in political organizing, if they want it. The latter tend not to give a rat’s ass about the theory anyway.
Heart said:
“I think that white people can be civil rights activists, just like men can be women’s rights activists.”
Heart, I have tremendous sympathy for your arguments, particularly those in your second comment above. But this statement is where your position falls apart for me. If men can be “women’s rights activists”, what is the difference between a man calling himself that, and calling himself a “feminist”? Both are labels, one just has more words. Is it the fault of the application of the label that the media give more attention to male women’s rights activists than they do to women feminists? Do you think that, if all men immediately started following your advice, this instant, it would change this? The fault surely is not in how men or women label men and women, but in how the media are run, in the decisions of those in positions of authority in the media.
If Amp had never called himself a feminist, but done everything else in his life exactly the same, Air America would surely have called him up just the same. I think where your arguments lead is to the position that, if Amp considered himself a “women’s rights activist”, and not a “feminist”, then he would have declined Air America’s invitation and pointed them to a woman activist. But where does this stop? It sounds like potentially a slippery slope to where men always should decline any recognition for work done as feminists, women’s rights activists, or however else we want to name it.
I consider this viewpoint transphobic; it delegitimizes the current lived realities of transmen. Whether or not we were raised as women, we do not identify as women and do not move through the world as women. I have never seen any defense of this stance wrt transmale “inclusion” that did not end up denying that. Look at the use of “person” here, the unwillingness to use male pronouns, and the reference to a “woman” who transitions as “she.”
It is usually true that coming out is extremely dangerous for ftms. However, that is not always the case. It is also true that ftms receive privilege as masculine/male-presenting, rather than merely male-identified, people. This doesn’t always disappear when a transguy is openly trans, and is particularly difficult to slough off in queer women’s spaces. And the dangers ftms face cannot be lumped in with plain old misogyny. There’s a specific anti-trans motivation for the threat–from which, I should add, ftms are not always shielded in women’s spaces.
There’s also the issue of how women’s space defines an ftm for purposes of his inclusion in it. In society at large, it is usually impossible to be a transsexual and a guy at the same time. Women’s space inverts this paradigm so that it can take the other half: ftms have to be female-assigned transsexuals first, and men a distant second if at all. This is why “trannyboys” and “genderqueers” are more desirable than post-transition transguys. It’s not really honoring someone’s history or larger context, but discarding one part so as to privilege the other.
Also, privilege is the presence of choice. Women who live as women can’t opt out of that condition, and that is why they need access to spaces where their basic safety isn’t compromised by their gender. Plus, most post-transition ftms don’t walk around announcing their assigned gender to everyone they meet; that would make transitioning kinda pointless for most of us. Most of us are able to live without letting people know about our trans status, and most of us choose to do so.
I also don’t know that the nonconsensual nature of male privilege, or its attendant terrors, should be a factor for transmen any more than it is for cisgendered men. Amp didn’t choose to be a guy, either, but he is. Exclusion from women-only space isn’t meant as punishment; it’s just an acknowledgement of a transguy’s present position in a misogynist system.
Crap! Amp, your blockquote function has intruded upon my reply-only space. Can you eject it, please?
[Fixed! –Amp]
A magnificent post, Amp. Thanks for your candor and your willingness to explore the nuances of the topic. I choose the label pro-feminist largely because it’s what I was “raised to do” — and what the organizations I worked with (NOMAS, Men can Stop Rape) tended to use informally.
Read in conjunction with Chris’s post, it’s clear that men with a commitment to feminism can disagree as to what to call themselves without turning nomenclature into a vital issue. Bravo.
Heh. You’re gettin’ all blockquoty in your blockquotes. But then, I never use blockquotes because I’m constantly fucking shit like that up.
“Exclusion from women-only space isn’t meant as punishment; it’s just an acknowledgement of a transguy’s present position in a misogynist system.”
I think this is the core of where we disagree — not about the “punishment” thing, because we’re on the same page there, but about whether it’s a universally valid acknowledgement of a transguy’s position. What is a transguy’s position in that social system, exactly? It depends, centrally, on the transguy himself, on his view of his own gender and its relationship to his personal history in terms of gender, depends on his expression of gender, depends on a million other things. There’s no one answer to that, though certainly I can see the argument that given that he now has a certain level of male-privilege (though I don’t think that’s always true, and I don’t think that’s always a choice people have).
But the way that fundamentally works for him, or through him, or counter to him depends on the structure of his own identity.
For some transmen, they are men. End of story. For others, and not just those who identify as “trannyboys” or as genderqueer, it’s a whole lot more complicated than that. All of those positions are valid, and it’s the job of feminism to work out what it thinks about them, how to deal with the fundamental questions that arise.
On a semi-personal note, there is simply no way, the way my brain works, that I could not think about how much I will be bothered by the “straight man” categorization if and when I transition. I’m one of those terribly, terribly squishy people.
PS
the fact that I think feminism needs to work out some shit on this topic is also why I think it’s so important that tranny feminists get involved and be unafraid to call themselves feminists. It adds a whole ‘nuther dimension to the “can men be feminists” thing, which I guess is how my brain got here from there.
And I think tranny feminists are just going to have to fundamentally disagree on some of these things as much as all other feminists do, BTW.
…Yes, but feminism hasn’t done such a good job, either when it errs on the side of inclusion or on the side of exclusion. Like I said, there’s that issue, too: feminist theorists can be as essentialist, selective, and self-serving as the straight world, only in a different direction.
And I don’t know if identity can be the defining factor in determining who has the right to safe space. I identify as a man just like Amp does; that doesn’t mean that he and I should be treated the same way for the purposes of creating trans-only safe space. A lot of the answers to these questions are complicated because there’s a striking but not overwhelming correlation between how you identify and how you’re read; it gets yet more complicated when you recognize that transsexual experience is characterized by an evolving position wrt gender dichotomies.
I am not saying that ftms should be generally perceived as “men, end of story,” or that ftms generally feel that way, or that ftms should be pressured into feeling that way. I am saying that transition usually brings male privilege with it, and that it’s important to acknowledge that privilege when it exists. Although that system does drag razor-wire over transsexual lives, those borders separate a lot of us from quotidian vulnerability.
Of course. It was a hugely uncomfortable possibility for me, too. I identify as queer-oriented, and I identify with genderqueers if not as genderqueer. I just need to keep in mind that the rest of the world sees me as a nice young man and favors me accordingly, no matter how I might feel about their standards.
Agreed.
As in this milieu, so with many others: there arises a “You must choose!” that negates the single experience that unifies the transsexual community. I think that we can use our experience to speak from experience; I think that to the extent we are protected, we need to be honest about that. I also think that we have an obligation as activists to make sure that we don’t use whatever male privilege attaches to us to silence women. I’ve known a bunch of feminist/pro-feminist/feminist-ally transguys who’ve used life on both sides to create some fascinating critiques–I hope to be one of them.
My view, consise form: in 2006 I think that men can be feminist activits, however I do not think they are capable of being feminist theorists (the social disconnect they would have to make vis-a-vis their *relative* privilege is too great at this time).
…Okay, so I’ve been reading over my comments here, and it occurs to me that my language is a little narrow. If I sound like I’m arguing with the premise that all ft?/transmasculine/genderqueer people identify as male, pass as male, and live as male, I don’t mean to. I’m mostly talking about transition if and when it occurs, and thinking mostly about people who can’t acknowledge the male privilege they currently have. I understand that there are people–including some male-identified people–who do not pass or desire to pass, and who are not read as male or masculine.
In what ways could they (we) responsibly make their experience a part of their activism?
Certainly many brands of feminism are not very friendly to trannies. Some brands of trans-thought are not very friendly to feminism, either… trannies, too, “can be as essentialist, selective, and self-serving as the straight world, only in a different direction”. But backed off a little from that, the issues overlap to such a great extent that there’s simply no way to disarm the argument until a loose consensus emerges on the relationship of feminism to a flexible concept not just of gender roles, but of gender itself.
To the extent that not all but many trannies bring the whole categorization scheme into question, feminism and the quest for all “women’s rights” that come out of it is going to have to work to figure out what, exactly, is meant by “woman” — because there will always be some trannies or genderqueers who still identify to some extent with women, even after they’ve transitioned. Any category that tries to have clear lines around it is going to run into problems here — and my inclusion or exclusion from that category, while I agree that it cannot necessarily only depend on how I feel inside, is fundamentally also flawed if it only considers more or less how I pass socially, largely because that will simply wind up reinforcing the social and gender-essentialist norm. And my relationship with the social as a tranny is also often going to be more complicated than a straightforward system will allow for — to the extent, say, that I am out and open about being trans, among other things.
We agree more than we don’t, I think. This is all terribly complicated stuff.
The world currently views you as a nice young man, and the world currently views me as a boyish young woman. That it would seem that neither of these categories really gets either of us means, frankly, that I have no more fundamental “right” to be included with women than you do — and feminism, IMO, needs to be fully capable of understanding that regardless of the mainstream social context. Feminism is, after all, largely about changing that mainstream understanding of gender.
And the language is always a barrier in this stuff, at least in my experience. It’s really hard to say exactly what you mean when everything is so damned loaded.
Q Grrl —
I’m honestly not sure whether I agree or don’t. I think that to a large degree, there are aspects of women’s social position and women’s experiences that men are simply not going to get — because part of the whole deal with men being the sort of cultural “default” is that they are not forced to understand the effects that society has on them. And understanding feminist theory gets impossible, IMO, unless you can think on that level of social meaning rather than just personal meaning.
But some men can and do get there at least to a level that brings a lot to the conversation, and plenty of women don’t take it and run with it. So I’m just not sure the distinction there is only about gender.
Of course; I was referring specifically to discussions about trans-inclusion among feminists who are mostly not trans. The same thing happens to discussions about anti-sexism among transguys who mostly don’t identify with women. Pretty much what you said: the two groups have a mutual problem, but don’t necessarily share all its aspects.
That’s true. Women-only space also has multiple purposes depending on the aspect of assigned womanhood; safe space vs. feminist space vs. women-focused space vs. dyke meet-n-greet space, for example. The dyke march, AFAIK, is deeply tied to the idea of safe space for queer women, which makes the presence of men people problematic. And when I think about “women-only space,” I don’t think of it as a space which necessarily attempts to define women so much as a space that attempts to mitigate one aspect of life as a woman in a misogynistic system.
I also should mention that I see feminism colonizing transphobic violence in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable–both because it’s self-serving and because it implies that transpeople will be safe in any space that protects women.
Agreed. And I think that feminist frameworks are the best ways to analyze all these disconnects when having detailed discussions about privilege, vulnerability, and unexamined assumptions.
Um, we’ve kind of derailed the thread. I’m gonna post about this over on my blog. Would you be interested in continuing the discussion there?
“I also should mention that I see feminism colonizing transphobic violence in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable”“both because it’s self-serving and because it implies that transpeople will be safe in any space that protects women.”
This is a great point, and one I’m going to have to think about for a while. Because I think you’re absolutely right, while I also think that feminism can and should have a lot to say in that discussion.
We have kind of derailed things. Sometimes I’m really bad about that.
Apologies for that, everybody.
Unfortunately, my sitting-at-the-computer time needs to be done for now; I’ve already gotten sucked into this to the exclusion of all the other random shit I need to do today.
But thanks for the good discussion, and I’m sure we’ll wind up having more of it some other time.
Piny, I’m feeling dense right now. :)
I’m not sure I understand what you are asking me.
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Wow. I had no idea how interesting this thread would be.
I don’t have much to add, at this point – I feel that everyone’s said it what I would say, but better – but I want to thank people for posting here. In particular, I want to thank Spit, Richard, and Piny, who have really made awesome contributions, and clearly put a lot of time/thought into this thread. And thanks to everyone else who posted, as well.
I want to particularly thank Heart. It takes courage to post where you know people will disagree with you. I just noticed that The Margins (a space administered by Heart) has started a blog – I’ll definitely blogroll it.
I hung it up on my blog anyway (feministe.us/blog), if you have further thoughts later. It was a great conversation, and thanks; I don’t tend to spend much time discussing these boundaries across ft? designations rather than within mine.
Well, how can men share those disconnected experiences within a feminist framework? But it seems like Amp has provided one example.
sparkane, I think there’s a difference between the terms “women’s rights activist” and “feminist.” The first term connotes action, work, service, the kind of thing allies do. The second term is an identification. I don’t hear women calling themselves “women’s rights activists,” I hear them calling themselves feminists, even though they engage in women’s rights activism.
As to an FTM wanting to participate in a dyke march, I would not personally object to that as I already said. (But I would also defer to dykes who did object to it and would not argue about it at all; it isn’t any hill I’d be willing to die on, to tremendously understate.) I was responding specifically to spit’s post about that particular issue. I don’t think FTMs can have it both ways: identifying as a man, full stop, while invoking their history as women when they want to be part of a woman-only events, then attending the women-only events expecting women attending to use male pronouns wrt them. Because that’s a violation of boundaries women have established for their own events. I think identifying as a man, attending a woman only event, and demanding that the women at that event use male pronouns is anti-woman, is pure political power-tripping, is an attempt on the part of a man to subordinate women. And no, I have no respect for that kind of politics or behavior and won’t dignify it by participating in it.
Heart
I think that this viewpoint contradicts the idea that an ftm who has transitioned–an ftm who lives as a man, passes as a man, is addressed as a man, is treated as a man, and is not treated as a woman–should be allowed to enter women-only space. That is a “full-stop” condition which applies to the whole rest of that ftm’s life and to their presence in women-only space. Anyone who refuses any acknowledgement of ftm reality to enforce their fake discrete boundary can’t complain when ftms want to carry in those markers with which they are comfortable. If they are welcome, they should be welcome, not whittled down to a convenient size.
As to an FTM wanting to participate in a dyke march, I would not personally object to that as I already said. (But I would also defer to dykes who did object to it and would not argue about it at all; it isn’t any hill I’d be willing to die on, to tremendously understate.)
Wouldn’t the proper thing to do be to defer to the decisions of the aforementioned dykes, not because you have no strong feelings about it but because you are not a dyke yourself? Is this analagous to what men’s input should be into feminism/feminist organisations? Or do I misunderstand your logic when it comes to men & feminism?
Ack! I swore I was just gonna look, not get sucked back in.
Heart —
on a practical level, the reality is that there is really no reason for an FTM who fully and unambiguously identifies in all ways as a man to want to enter a specific women’s space — in fact, most of that group spends a whole lot of effort on trying to distance themselves from their previous possible associations with things specifically for women as they come into an understanding of themselves as social men — even as very feminist or pro-feminist men.
What we’re really talking about here are people who have much harder to define senses of their own genders. While they may identify as men, some people don’t, for example, view that as excluding their history as women. There are a lot of totally contradictory views involved here; some FTMs view themselves as having always been men. Some view themselves as having become men. Some view themselves as man-identified people who will never, ever be exactly what society means by “men”. There are a million different permutations on all of these, along with other stuff, and that’s not even getting into people who are genderqueer or who consider themselves neither or both or somewhere not even on the socially-constructed gender scale.
And that’s generally where this stuff gets so complicated. Because if you assume that someone largely has the right to self-identify, then you can’t really say they’re right or wrong to identify on some level as women either historically or currently even if they’re simultaneously in their transitioning, say, or have a beard, or also think of themselves as men. If you assume they don’t have that right, then you run into vast other problems — that you are basically, then, defining “woman” in a way that relies on it’s being a fundamental, essential quality of a person regardless of their possible historical or current reasons for thinking otherwise, and regardless of any understanding of gender as a socially constructed phenomenon.
There’s certainly no easy answer here.
Piny, I’ve been reading your comments here at Alas for some time and am now enjoying your posts over at Feministe as well, and fwiw I think you are already what you aspire to be, however much it’s still a work-in-progress and whatever additional aspiration you have notwithstanding. I’ve loved this conversation between you and Spit, actually, since you are two of my favorite posters regarding the more deeply theoretical, structural, and complicated aspects of gender theory. (Spit already knows this, more or less.) Thank you for doing what you do. You’re very good at it.
Should also clarify, reading my last post, that I also agree with piny that you either have to be for trans-inclusion or not; the complexities involved mean that it’s nigh on impossible to tell, unless you know somebody very, very well, where they personally stand regarding their own gender identity etc.
But I wanted to point out that on a practical level, your scenario above (where somebody super firm in their identity as a man would use a women’s space for clearly sexist reasons, say) is very unlikely in the real world.
Also wanted to toss a happy nod to IndyLib… somehow I figured you’d not be too far from this conversation. Been missing you online lately, and I unfortunately really do have to be going. Sacramento just turned very thundery, and I don’t have a good surge protector. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me to get off my ass. ;)
…Everything Spit said. I can agree with the idea of safe space in response to an imposed dichotomy. However, pretending that these boundaries track reality won’t solve any problems on either side.
Absolutely true.
And thanks, Indylib. That’s a high compliment.
Sparkane:
Sparkane, I don’t actually think it was wrong for Amp to accept the invitation to appear on Air America. But supposing that some position did imply that men should decline all recognition for anti-sexist work, I don’t see why that would disqualify the position from rational consideration. Maybe men should decline any recognition for anti-sexist work. Why not? Maybe sometimes genuinely good deeds have to go unrecognized. Or maybe they shouldn’t. I don’t think that either position is especially obvious, or especially absurd.
Maybe sometimes genuinely good deeds have to go unrecognized.
On the gripping hand, I would not imagine that Ampersand is a feminist because he does “good deeds”. I imagine that he is a feminist because he believes that to be the morally correct choice of action.
Well, this does explain why you’re so keen on staying friends with anti-feminist men.
But if we disregard the whole issue of qeerness, isn’t it true that feminist men can bring a whole new perspective to feminist theory just because they are men and have to deal with their own privilege?
In a way I think that feminist women find it easier to ignore the ways that we too perpetuate the patriarchy. In my experience good male writers of feminist theory often deal with how and why men perpetuate the patriarchy – something that I believe is important to understand if we ever are to get rid of patriarchy.
I don’t understand why any man would object to being called a feminist if he believed in equality between the genders. Our ways of definining equality may differ, but equality is the core issue.
I also don’t understand why any woman who is a feminist would object to a man calling himself one. Is hypocracy rampant among feminist males? Certainly. We are products of the culture, and change is a long hard process. I constantly battle with ideas and attitudes instilled in me during my youth. It something we all deal with throughout our lives.
Amp, I’m REALLY REALLY sorry for the superlong post, please let me know if this is unacceptable and next time I’ll take it offline.
Hi RadGeek:
“Sparkane, I don’t actually think it was wrong for Amp to accept the invitation to appear on Air America. But supposing that some position did imply that men should decline all recognition for anti-sexist work, I don’t see why that would disqualify the position from rational consideration. Maybe men should decline any recognition for anti-sexist work. Why not? Maybe sometimes genuinely good deeds have to go unrecognized. Or maybe they shouldn’t. I don’t think that either position is especially obvious, or especially absurd.”
Yes, I agree with that. And yet I still stand by what I said before. I find that this happens when I receive a response to a comment, that I think I’ve been clear and then I guess I haven’t been, and when I try to figure out what I meant, it’s not even completely clear to myself. But I’ll try again.
I think my use of recognition may be something of a distraction. This makes it sound like I meant that men should receive some attention from the media, and as “feminists”. But I think what I was really getting at was more toward the practicality of the policy that no man should allow himself to speak for feminism – at all, as I understand Heart’s view.
Allow me to reiterate a bit. I apologize for the upcoming longwindedness, but I’m trying to be complete, in hopes I will be clearer.
I asked Heart what the difference was between feminist and women’s rights activist, because she said she denied men the former identity but allowed men the latter. This seems wrong to me, because both terms are nothing but words, and as has been noted many times wrt other issues, not just feminism, terms of identification get changed by others (in this case, those not directly associated with the feminist movement, not privy to the terms’ “real” meanings) – so you can’t rely on the meanings of those terms remaining the same, for all people. Sure the radical feminists would maintain the pure original meaning and use of the two terms, just like RMS maintains the pure original meaning of “free software”. But other people, even direct disciples of radical feminists, will get other ideas, and use the terms in different, unorthodox, even “wrong” (from the pure pov) ways; e.g., few outside of the free software movement give a damn that, strictly speaking, they are not running Linux on their machines, but GNU.
(I mention here that Heart’s response to my last comment, telling me what difference she sees between the two terms, hasn’t adequately addressed my question in my view, but it may be simply because I don’t understand what’s going on with all this “identity” stuff, which appears to be more a technical term for feminist theory. I wasn’t going to worry about it right away, but since I’m commenting again, I’m mentioning it.)
This fluidity of identification terminology being the way of things, to maintain that the media will give more recognition to women and not men in the feminist movement, if we call the women feminists and the men women’s rights activists, doesn’t fly with me. Far more likely is the media, given a patriarchal bias, will continue to invite those whom in Heart’s view can’t speak for the feminist movement; and perhaps the net result would be that “women’s rights activists” eclipses “feminism” as a term of frequent use for feminism outside the movement itself. Or there would at least be some pressure in that direction.
This is all to address what I originally thought were compelling arguments of Heart’s in her second comment in this thread, particularly this passage (last paragraph):
“I think when we see men speaking on behalf of feminists, men being the ones in the spotlight, we are seeing ourselves, as women, being subordinated to men in the very movement which intends to bring that power imbalance to an end, particularly when what those men might be saying *as* feminists does not enjoy the support *of* many feminist women. And I think this process begins when men identify as “feminists”, which is why I don’t think they should.”
The only way to effect Heart’s goal here, since it won’t have any effect on the outside world, is for male women’s rights activists to shut themselves up. If Air America calls you and says “Mr WRA, we’d like to talk about all the great work you’ve done for Feminism,” from my current understanding of Heart’s position (should I call it philosophy? outlook?), that man has to stay silent. That man has no voice when it comes to speaking for, or about, feminism. As you say, well, maybe that is the way it is. And I say, sure, on a theoretical level, maybe that’s what’s required.
But will it work?
Heart said, “My view is, men should not identify as feminists”“ ever.” But she says they can and should work for the cause of women. What is the difference between a feminist and a women’s rights activist? Well, one has a voice. The other does not. One is allowed to do all (or perhaps not all?) of the things the other would do for the same cause, but is not allowed to represent it in any way. That is the expectation of complete selflessness on the part of the male women’s rights activists. It can’t work. I don’t see how it could succeed. And not because men won’t do it. Hardly any of us, men or women, are ready for complete selflessness. Feminism, as with all movements, has its internecine struggles, its bruised and bitter egos. Ironically, an artificial enforcement of selflessness is, if I am not mistaken, something that feminism struggles to pull women out from under. Ironically, really to be completely selfless you already have to be spiritually enlightened, but to the degree that a male is enlightened enough to be selfless, he would certainly not be an oppressor, or someone who would try to co-opt the feminist movement for himself, and then it would seem there is no need for such a restriction of his voice – unless where Heart is coming from is that an enlightened male will always on his own part opt for voicelessness in the very movement, existence, and life which has given him meaning and significance; this, and I offer a sincere plead for pardon in saying this, sounds close to saying that a man is constitutionally unable ever to speak for feminism, because he is a man.
I apologize for the comparison, but this strikes me also like the recording industry applying DRM to all their CDs, which punishes their customers, and does nothing to stop the real intellectual property infringement by big-time thieves. Allowing no man to stand with women in equal solidarity seems to me to punish, unnecessarily, ones who should be praised, and does nothing to change the attitudes of the men who so need changing. In fact as a policy, it will certainly alienate many; many men, but also women, I think. And it will do nothing to change whether Air America makes patriarchal decisions about whom to interview from the women’s movement.
That’s just how I see it at the moment. I’m open to persuasion, as always.
I’m sorry that my brief carry-all has turned into this Samsonite mess. That’s what happens when I pack too quickly.
This is not to say that Heart is wrong to say the things she says, or hold the values she holds. If she doesn’t want to call me a feminist, or me to call myself a feminist, that’s no skin off my nose. I even feel less inclined to call myself a feminist because of what she says, regardless of my disagreement – because it’s polite and because I know I’m ignorant of – erm, well, something, if I knew what it was I probably wouldn’t be ignorant, now would I. I just don’t think that refusing ‘recognition’ of men in the feminist movement, that making them unequal – not unequal at all, not unequal in a true way, but artificially unequal – is going to work, or is right, or something.
This is not either to say that men should demand more recognition in feminism. It is about compassion and egos get in the way of compassion very easily. I am 100% with Hissy Cat. But it’s another thing to say that someone can’t have a voice in a movement, none at all. Sure, a man’s voice will not be as convincing, should have less authority. But that’s going to be the natural way of things. That’s not forced. That’s a natural lack of trust. If a man has something to say in feminism, and it’s wrong, people are going to tell him, and he will have less trust invested in him if he’s always wrong. But if he says things that are right, and trust is invested in him, what is wrong with that?
It sounds like more pool time and less babysitting for the women, to me.
I think when we see men speaking on behalf of feminists, men being the ones in the spotlight, we are seeing ourselves, as women, being subordinated to men in the very movement which intends to bring that power imbalance to an end, particularly when what those men might be saying *as* feminists does not enjoy the support *of* many feminist women. And I think this process begins when men identify as “feminists”, which is why I don’t think they should.
I agree that men in the spotlight, getting more airtime than female feminists, is a co-option of feminism.
I don’t agree that this process begins when men identifies as feminists, or that men identifying as feminists naturally leads to this. I believe that a big part of being a male feminist is working on knowing when to shut the fuck up and let women take the lead. This is a process that I think all male feminists can and should go through.
There are, however, aspects of feminism where men should take the lead. For instance, men should take the lead in talking to other men about rape and domestic violence.
I agree with Lanoire that where men need to take the lead is in calling men out on the way men abuse women. I really wish men who believe themselves to be allies to feminist women would get busy addressing all of the many ways men violate men.
As to sparkane’s post, I’ll repost something I posted today to my blog:
“”To keep a group subordinate, an elite must persuade it that it deserves subordination because of innate inferiorities. A person of an inferior group cannot be the author of her or his own life, but must center on the superior group. Thus women must be presented as mainly sexual, indeed heterosexual, beings who have no life apart from men. And it is essential that a subordinate group not perceive its dominators as oppressors. The primary taboo forbids portraying men-as-a-caste responsible for women’s problems. If one man appears as a woman’s oppressor, another must appear as her savior. When this taboo is broken, men protest.”
““Marilyn French, The War Against Women, Summit Books, 1992
I’m uninterested in men as saviors to feminist women. That is part and parcel of male dominance, male supremacy. Men can be our allies, but we ought to be the ones who recognize that that’s what they are. In the meantime, let men apply themselves whole heartedly to all of the ways that their brothers violate us, all the time.
Heart
Sorry, a typo. I meant to say:
I really wish men who believe themselves to be allies to feminist women would get busy addressing all of the many ways men violate women.
Heart
Hi
I haven’t read feminist writings but have always believed in fairness and good treatment in all relationships.
To me, a male feminist would be someone who truely shares the responsibility of unpaid labour. The 51 hours housework the average women with 1-2 children does per week and 24 hour care women are supposed to provide for children leaves them will little hope of equality because many men will not help truely equally and will not pay for this arduous work.
Even if your man does 10 hours of housework per week you will still be doing 41. Right wing governments would like to get rid of any payments to women who leave marriage therefore making them slaves, this is why women favour the left at least the left give them some credit and protection . To me the huge social welfare system women provide at low or no cost to men is what keeps women poor and therefore easy to mistreat. Women put up with a great deal from men in marriage because if they don’t they often face grinding poverty and work without break if they leave. Your husband cheats on you and if you leave him you will pay the bills for the next 20 years. So if your husband treats you bad you will either have to put up with it or be poor and overworked.
Motherhood needs to be paid. Not because women are greedy but because they are providing services to society that take all their time and money.
In the Animal kingdom females are not slaves to the males. They do usually provide sole care for offspring but are not required to provide 24 hour care ( it would be impossible for a cheater to hunt and not leave her cubs unattended) and are not required to do 51 hours of housework. Althought the 51 hours is not in law, if your children are living in squalor you will be convicted of neglect. 51 hours is what it takes to keep it together ( cooking, cleaning, shopping washing etc etc) and this is no guarentee of a tidy house.
Also in the animal kingdom most of the resources are allocated for motherhood. Men have taken the natural world of support away from women and not replaced it with any resources. The only way to get support for motherhood now is to marry and go along with a husband. They have pronounced marriage to be Holy as it keeps women under control and most of the worlds resources in male hands. So human mothers have very little choice but to be a slave to a man. Im not saying relationships can not be wonderful for some, but the framework for the support of motherhood in human society is very limited, especially when compared to the outlay of time, hard slog and resources.
Society has made Holy an increasing demand for cleanliness which women are expected to provide. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” and a good woman (Slave) will provide this luxurious cleaness at her expense. Women now do about 7 times the washing their grandmothers did and even though there are machines, there is still pegging, sorting, folding and ironing. Imagine that for 7 times the washing your granny did. There is still heaps of handwashing because people have many moore clothes and change them more often. Many clothes now days are not machine washable.
If a man supports sharing this equally and lives this then to me he is a feminist.
In other words if he gives his mate true equality by sharing the huge burden society has given his partner then he truely is her partner, not her slavekeeper. Then and only then he is not just a parasite who feeds his host just enough to keep her alive and of benefit to him.
Ive probably gone off topic but my personal brand of feminism supports women by sharing the resources of the world with mothers. This is how nature created it and intended it. In my vision women would be able to demand equal sharing of unpaid labour in households so that they could pursue a career with the same chances as their husbands or opt to be full time mums with pay, with or without a partner.
I guess we all have our ideas of what feminism is but curiously it starts with the letter F for fairness and also freedom.
I’m wondering if there isn’t a difference that is being elided in this disucssion between being a man who presumes to speak for feminism and being a man who speaks as a feminist (or feminist ally/profeminist–for the purpose of what I am saying here, I’m not so sure that the difference in label matters.) Heart seems to be arguing that men should not do the former, and should not allow ourselves to be put in positions where we are perceived as doing the former, while sparkane seems to be arguing that men need to be able to do the latter, for reasons that are both pragmatic and ideological/philosophical.
For me, the difference between speaking for and speaking as comes down to what Lanoire said about men needing to take the lead in speaking to men, holding men accountable for male privilege, etc.
There’s more to say about this distinction and its implications and consequences for men in feminism–which is the title, by the way, of a really interesting book in which the essays tackle precisely the topic we are talking about here–but I need to go. I will try to come back later to fill out the rest of what I am thinking.
Heart, in response to yours, let me say too that I am “uninterested” in men being women’s saviors. In fact uninterested may be too strong a word, because to me, the notion itself is silly; no one can save anyone else, in my view. Women are not responsible for men in that way, nor men women; but I guess I would also have to say, nor men men, nor women women.
I don’t know if that will seem to you like understanding or misunderstanding of what you said. Perhaps I do not understand what you really mean by “savior”. I suddenly suspect, not what I thought at first.
Richard said:
“I’m wondering if there isn’t a difference that is being elided in this disucssion between being a man who presumes to speak for feminism and being a man who speaks as a feminist [..]”
Absolutely spot-on IMV. Actually a recall a few murky thoughts rolling through my brain in just this direction when I was writing my long-ass-as-hell comment. My impression is that women themselves do not speak for feminism, but always as feminists. Perhaps that is not the case; but as there are honest disagreements between women in feminism, it seems to me this is really the proper approach for anyone. Forgive me anyone if this expression causes offense, but to me no one owns it, and everyone does; but the ownership naturally takes different forms for different people.
Erm, second thought Richard, if Heart believes no man should identify himself as a feminist, then surely she also means no man should speak as a feminist, even though she said “for feminism” in one comment. So in her case I guess she’s not eliding a distinction; rather that’s her gist. She would say, again my understanding, please correct if in error, that regardless of “for feminism” or “as feminists”, men should not speak so.
True, which is why I put the parenthetical comment with the other labels (pro-feminist, etc.) in that sentence. More later, I hope, if I have the eyes and energy after grading papers.
Emphasis mine. I could be quoting myself. I’m nearly 50 and I’m still dealing with the crap generated by the crap I dealt with in my thirties.
As I get older, I lose patience with those who would make such crap mandatory for everyone.
If I had a penny for every time I’ve had to dicksize some dumbass just so I could establish the right to have a polite conversation about an issue with a nuance or two, I would be a wealthy man.
About half of the techniques I’ve learned for dealing with the testosterone-challenged have been from women.
One part of life as a penis-bearer is the social pressure to wave the damn thing around – an exercise that I find unbearably silly. But I manage to keep a straight face and do it if there is no other way to establish my right to have an opinion. I sigh, reach into my virtual pants and haul out my Patriarch’s Staff and use it as a talking stick.
This leads me to snicker about an inherent advantage in this respect Goddess has granted lesbians. But soon, biotech may allow me to have mine glow in the dark as well.
I cannot always conceal my utter disdain for those who have nothing in thier social toolkit beyond verbal willy-wagging, and this has in some cases limited my opportunities for social intercourse.
But then, talking to freepers is a lot like a bad cornholing. Not only is it nonconsensual, it’s disappointing.
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