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does-it-really-matter · 3 years

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Demonising Femininity

🤍 Disclaimer- In this article, we are mostly talking about femininity in the aspect of make-up, fashion, etc. Stereotypically feminine and masculine things are a social construct, and it is okay for anyone of any gender to engage in their preferred form of expression.

“You run like a girl.”

“Man up.”

These two sentences both talk about behaving like a certain gender, yet one is uplifting, while the other is an insult. It’s not hard to guess which is which.

We know that misogyny exists, and being a woman in itself comes with a lot of challenges. But it’s even worse when one is traditionally feminine.

So, what is femininity?

The concept of femininity varies across cultures, but it is generally the various characteristics and traits that are attributed to women. However, as these are personality traits, they can be exhibited by anybody regardless of gender. According to popular belief, it includes sensitivity, tenderness, kindness, passiveness, etc. In the modern world, it is also equated with the combination of wearing make-up, being concerned about their physical appearance, and ambition. But there isn’t a real definition of femininity as it is pretty much a spectrum encompassing certain traits. These certain personality traits and characteristics got gendered because society had a specific role for each gender, and they evolved these traits to better adapt to those particular roles. While both masculine and feminine traits can be found in everyone in various combinations, society expects men to show more masculinity, and women to show more femininity.

When and how did it get demonised?

Misogyny can be traced all the way back to ancient Greece, with the myth of Pandora’s box, where Pandora opened the box and unleashed misery upon mankind. Therefore the blame for all of man’s problems was placed upon the shoulders of a woman, and it all went downhill from there. As the original colonizers, the Greek spread this tale into the places they conquered, and misogyny took root in all the cultures around. This idea of women being inferior was also propagated by the tale of Adam and Eve in the Old Testament, where Eve made Adam eat the forbidden apple, which led to the downfall of man.

In the 1950s in the USA, women who had taken up civilian jobs during world war 2, were now expected to go back to being housewives, or taking up more ‘feminine’ jobs which would ultimately pay less. Due to this, in the second wave of feminism that started in the early 1960s, women rioted and started dressing and acting more ‘masculine’ in the hopes of being taken seriously by their male counterparts, and getting the jobs they needed. This meant that they denounced make-up and high heels and other such ‘feminine’ things.

So presenting as more masculine in that era was unfortunately required for women to empower themselves. But why do we still look down on those who present themselves in a feminine fashion today? We see it everyday; women who wear more make-up are considered shallow, women who like to dress in pink and have blonde hair are considered to be stupid and childish, and those who conform to this kind of femininity and are ambitious are chalked up to be mean and selfish, especially in the media.

In common teenage coming-of-age movies, and young adult fiction, the antagonist is generally a stereotypically feminine and preppy girl, while the protagonist is more of a tomboy and an outcast. The antagonist is made to be a villain with only their own motives in mind, with no other personality traits whatsoever. Though this does not embody what femininity means, it still depicts the appearance of hyper femininity as something that should be shunned. This is common even in movies targeted towards other audiences, such as Dreamworks' 'Shark Tale', where one female fish is strongly ambitious, while being concerned about her physical appearance. However, she is given the role of the villain, while the female love interest is, to be frank, bland and more passive, with her whole personality being just the love interest.

This kind of stereotyping women into two very strict boxes damages us more than we think. People knowingly or unknowingly absorb a lot of concepts from the media, and when we are presented with the idea that being ambitious and rocking a pink outfit = bad, while being passive and dressing down makes them more interesting, we apply this in our day to day life as well. But this narrative is absolutely wrong, because women cannot be pushed into such strong stereotypes. People are complex beings, and with each person's personality being so drastically different, it goes without saying that the same applies to women.

Studies have found that women who wear more make-up in their workplace are less likely to be given a promotion, solely because of their make-up. It is commonly viewed that women who wear heavy make-up are considered to be less competent than the other female workers. But this is a misconception, as the productivity of a person is in no way related to the amount of make-up they wear, or the way they choose to dress.

Another way this is expressed is that parents allow their daughters to play with ‘boy’s’ toys and games, but the same is not applicable the other way around. Sons are rarely given dolls and Barbies to play with, for the reason that it will somehow make them less masculine. What scares people so much about femininity?

Demonising femininity affects the mentality of almost everyone. It pits women against women, and pushes back the feminism movement as well. In the end, only the patriarchy benefits from this. Femininity being labelled as something that is evil has given rise to the ‘not like other girls’ and ‘pick-me girls’ trope.

The ‘not like other girls’ trope is basically when a girl, typically a pre-teen or teenager, believes that she is different from other girls because she is not into mainstream pop music, or doesn’t wear make-up and dresses.

Okay, she believes that she’s different. What’s wrong with that?

The problem is that when this phrase is used, it’s usually in the context that the girl being referred to is better than other girls just because she doesn’t wear make-up. The phrase puts down the entire gender, while trying to compliment one girl in a back-handed way. Dressing in a different way isn’t a reason to put a person on a pedestal, and it builds up a superiority complex for something that is pretty much inane. The phrase doesn’t even bring into consideration the personality of the girl in question as well as the personalities of the other girls.

This also results in internalised misogyny, since the girl believes she is better than other girls because she is being as masculine as possible, hence leading to the conclusion that being a girl in itself is bad. Internalised sexism, according to Wikipedia, is when an individual enacts sexist actions and attitudes towards themselves and people of their own sex. They further propagate the ideals and behaviour imposed upon them by their oppressors. This causes a bigger divide within women, as they subconsciously put down other women who do not conform to the patriarchy, and they tend to believe gender biases in favour of men.

This kind of mentality is hard to shake out, and it is damaging in both the short and the long run. Embracing your ‘feminine’ side is something that’s not only fun to do, but it also makes us human. Being feminine is not something to be ashamed of, or something to be demonized. The whole idea plays into the patriarchy. The ideology of ‘live and let live’ is very important in this aspect. We shouldn’t put down women just because of the way they dress. Many aspects of femininity help make us better people, and that is something we should celebrate.

We should no longer have to be apologetic or embarrassed for our femininity. We deserve to be respected for all our femaleness.

#we r back!!#blog #blogging #personal blog #bloggers #feminine #feminism #misogyny #women deserve to get good rep whilst being feminine #the media rep for women and poc and lgbtqia+ sucks man #feminist #the media needs to stop demonising femininity esp ultra femininity

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snapeaddict · 4 years

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YMMV but Lily was a stand in for Rowling. It's why the relationship with James is uncomfortable to read.

(I hope I guessed the meaning of stand in well because I am not totally sure)

In reference to this post about Gryffindor's (and JKR's) belief in their moral superiority.

Ah, yes op. I do think JKR wrote Lily as this, in her eyes, symbol of perfection for Harry, this symbol of goodness and kindness. I'm sure she saw her behaviour toward Severus as completely okay and positive, I'm sure she never questioned her writing of this apparently flawless character even during The Prince's Tale. But the fact she wrote Lily as flawless (more of a symbol than a character, honestly) doesn't mean she is actually flawless and we now know how problematic JKR's work can be.

I think, and this is a personal opinion, that JKR wrote Lily according to her standards of what a good person is like. Standards she also applies to herself, because she, as an author, and Lily, as her stand in character, have many similarities in the way they view the world and behave toward others. I am of course not comparing a real person and fictional character, but trying to show how one can influence the writing of a character - and what this person thinks of this character, which can be reflected through the narrative and main character's POV. Then, by extension, all of this strongly influences our own views on the character as readers, especially when reading the books for the first time. Some things that are disturbing to us and not understood by Rowling:

Strong belief in your own moral integrity: JKR seems to use her books as a weapon against those who point out her narrow-mindness, constantly reminding us she wrote them as a message of love and acceptance, "including" diversity in her world. She never questions her own behavior. She wrote Lily as morally flawless also because she is a Gryffindor and muggle-born: Lily, if you follow her narrative, is in her right to condemn and be critical of Severus' friends and choices, and to highlight her Gryffindor classmates moral superiority (ie they don't use dark magic) to justify the fact she grants herself the right to judge her friend and condemn his friends without addressing bullying. Because she knows better, and is moraly superior. Just as the narrative never really adressed the fact bullying by Gryffondors on a Slytherin isn't justified because they are "on the good side". JKR considers herself to be part of the Good People™, for many reasons, thus doesn't see any problem is writing blog posts explaining to some people why they are a threat to her own feminist fight or how they should behave. Of course I make NO comparison between her transphobia and a fictional character's behaviour; I'm just trying to show there is a similar pattern of behaviour which is, if I have to sum it up: I have moral integrity because [...] ➡️ So this moral superiority cannot be questioned ➡️ So this gives me the right to judge you/tell you how to behave without sweeping my own backyard.

Quick to condemn, unable to understand: This moral superiority (let's face it, Gryffindor are always portrayed as moraly superior in the books which nearly always justifies for discrimination against Slytherin) JKR thinks she has for reasons said above has for consequence the fact she gives herself the right to point out people's supposed flaws and "dangerous" behaviour without ever giving them time to explain, or listening to them. She sees what she wants to see, and so does Lily as she wrote her: the narrative makes of the fact she never gives Snape the opportunity to explain himself a normal thing, because we already know he is in the wrong; she already knows it and decided it, so why would she even ask?

Belief in your own right to judge and change people: for all the reasons I wrote above. You can question behaviours, you can point out flaws and issues: but you, as a person, cannot grand yourself the right to say "I know better than you do because this, this and this, so please change for me or I'll stop being kind to you." To JKR, this is perfectly acceptable behaviour (for example, "she knows and love trans people" but to the condition they remain silent and do not threaten her fragile views on feminism. If they do, she'll consider them a threat.) She writes Lily with a similar kind of behaviour regarding Slytherins: "without trying to understand who you are and why you are the person I see standing in front of me, without educating myself on your motives or asking for you pov, I ask you to change to match my own standards, no matter what it costs you."

Use of minorities, etc to serve personal aims and display your moral integrity: We have a whole history of JKR using sexual orientations or racial minorities to promote her work's open-mindness without ever giving them a voice or listening to them, trying to understand them. She writes Lily as a character who has such a good heart she is friends with Slytherin, dark arts affiliated Severus Snape and who knows it: "My friends (moraly superior Gryffindors) don't even know why I still hang out with you". ie "you should be grateful and their opinions have more values than yours to me." She points out her own benevolence at still accepting Severus as a friend, but never tries to understand Severus' own bravery and struggle at still being friend with her while having to survive in Slytherin house as a half blood (which was obviously more difficult). While reading this particular extract from the text, I cannot unsee the fact she (or JK) seems to think she does Severus a favor for being his friend (in context it's perhaps understandable), but it's very telling JKR would write this - we get the message as readers. The conclusion being, Lily had to be this moraly perfect girl as she had a Slytherin friend. I cannot say it's not implied by the narrative or it's not what JKR thought (she has lesbian and trans friends, so what she says cannot be discriminating/are justified by her supposed openness). Another disturbing and wrong way of thinking.

Belief that your belonging to one oppressed minority prevents you from oppressing others: JKR uses her identity as a woman in a patriarcal society, her statues as a woman who suffered from this patriarchy, to justify her transphobia and point out the fact she, as part of a group which is oppressed, do not oppress others (her blog post on "Why I'm not transphobic" is very telling). My feelings when I read Lily's character (but this may be interpretations from my part) is that her statues as muggle-born also automatically grants her moral integrity or at least a moral compass (narrative-wise) to be judgemental over Severus' relations and to decide whether or not the Marauder's actions toward him were serious: there is a kind of disturbing hierarchy that is created with Slytherin using dark arts and having prejudices against muggle borns (according to her) vs the Marauders and their pranks (not serious at all especially in comparison for her, and anyways they are Gryffindors). As if the fact she is the victim of oppressors means she doesn't have responsibilities or all she does is somehow justified or cannot mean ill (for example, turning her back on Severus while he is being sexually assaulted after he insulted her. She had a duty to perform as a prefect, which she wasn't even doing well before he said anything). The problem isn't her, she has reasons to act the way she does and flaws like all human beings. The problem is that the narrative (thus JKR) sides with her and never have us readers question her behaviour as well. It matches her inner belief that some people's moral integrity cannot be questioned for certain reasons. We are never offered another pov, we are never shown another perspective (of course Lily as a character isn't the one supposed to be this meta): for example, we could have been shown how easy it is to fall into radicalisation especially when you're an abused and neglected child from a poor social background and a minority. (Again I'm not saying it was up to Lily as a character to understand this. She had no obligation toward Severus and isn't all mighty and a Saint. The "problem" is that the narrative is trying to portray her as such because the author truly believes this is how a good person behaves and should be looked at.)

All of this of course being unconsciously accepted, but never put in question. Lily's behavior being of course viewed more positively because no matter how flawed it was, it served honorable aims: fighting against the disgusting blood purity ideology. Her values are honorable. So to me, of course JKR was convinced of Lily's human perfection and inherent goodness because I think she wrote her according to her own views and beliefs on the matter. Which is why, if we grant importance to the narrative, her marrying someone as crual as James Potter is disturbing according of what is said of her:

"Not only was she a singularly gifted witch, she was also an uncommonly kind woman. She had a way of seeing the beauty in others even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn't see it in themselves."

But, when you take a step back, you realise that her marriage with James is a consequence of JKR's internalised sexism, as she heavenly implied macho and possessive behaviour such as displayed by James were attractive to girls in the end, and, if you take another step back, you realize JK never understood the seriousness of the bullying she wrote so it didn't look so appealing to her that Lily would date James as it is to us.

Then, if we really think of the characters themselves and not JKR's intentions, I think James and Lily were a good match for various reasons, not all negative.

I'm afraid this is a little clumsy and I just really want to say, I'm not blaming Lily for her behavior even if we must acknowledge the fact she wasn't a very good friend and was very far from being perfect; I'm not making a comparison between real life issues and fictional ones, or between author and fictional character: I'm trying to show why Lily appeared as such a model of goodness into JKR's eyes, which shines through the way she tells the story, because she was written according to the writer's standards - some standards and positions we cry about every day when we open twitter. It's not really about her transphobia or use of minorities, but the reasons why she thinks she has a right to give judgemental opinions and ask people to change, her own system of thinking. Her - phobia are a consequence of this but I have to talk about them to show how it seems to me JKR thinks of herself and of others.

This is not anti Lily Potter, she still was a good person and lived in a particular context which also explains certain aspects of her behavior; this has nothing to do with making Snape look better or finding him excuses.

It has everything to do with the way the author viewed her characters and certainly failed to understand the seriousness and complexity of all subjects she chose to address. With the way she sees things and how her characters behave sometimes accordingly.

(Like, for example, not making any comparison, I'm sure she really thought it was positive when she created the house elves, slaves that are happy to be slaves and making fun of those who are disturbed by their conditions and having the only free elf die; I'm sure she thought the message was good when it clearly reeks of colonialist fantasy, thus her own opinions and views as a white British in the 90s [not generalising this to anyone else!], certainly internalised.)

PLEASE MAKE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "SHE WRITES LILY THIS WAY" AND JUST "LILY".

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thefeministphysicist19 · 4 years

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Native Tongue and the Power of Language

I recently read the book Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin and found that its themes strongly resonate with what is currently going on in gender debates. Most notably, the book deals with the power of language to shape our perceptions and reality. The past few years have seen a push towards more gender-neutral language, to the point of completely changing or stripping some words of all meaning. These issues can be examined in light of Elgin’s message on the power of language, which serves as both a warning and a beacon of hope.

Native Tongue, published in 1984, is set in a highly patriarchal society 200 years from now. All progress made by women in the twentieth century has been lost, and men hold absolute power. The Earth’s economy in the twenty-second century relies on trade with various interstellar nations, and linguists are needed to learn alien languages in order to conduct trade negotiations. The novel principally focuses on Nazareth Chornyak Adiness, a linguist born to one of the 13 Linguist Lines. In the Lines, women are bred until they become barren, at which point they are sent to the Barren House for the rest of their lives. This is where the women are secretly developing their own language, Láadan, to express their own reality and regain their autonomy.

Elgin, having received a PhD in linguistics, subscribed to the controversial linguistic theory known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In its “weak” form (which is more accepted than the “strong” form), it says that our language constrains and structures our perception of reality. In other words, people who speak different languages see the world in different ways. Moreover, the way we perceive the world depends on the word choice as well as the metaphors encoded in the language. These ideas have also been brought up by feminist thinkers outside of linguistics, such as Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, who examined how language reinforces gender relations and stereotypes. In The Laugh of the Medusa, Cixous writes: “It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence” (881). Thus, Elgin’s position that changing language can change society complements feminist writings of the time.

The book’s fictional woman’s language, Láadan, is the result of the belief that language can change reality. The creation of Láadan is primarily based on Encodings, which are “the making of a name for a chunk of the world that so far as we know has never been chosen for naming before in any human language, and that has not just suddenly been made or found or dumped upon your culture. We mean naming a chunk that has been around a long time but has never before impressed anyone as sufficiently important to deserve its own name” (Elgin 22). The appendix of the book gives some examples of words in Láadan. One of these is “doóledosh”, which means “pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming” (332). In this way, Láadan can express the true perception of women by redefining what is significant or not.

There is a shift in perception happening today, as gender activists push for more gender neutral and inclusive language. However, this comes at the cost of denying biological reality and erasing women as a class. The most glaring example is probably the trend of replacing “woman” with “uterus-bearer”, “ovary-haver”, “menstruator”, etc. This reduces women to their body parts and is quite telling of the misogynist viewpoint these terms stem from. Indeed, since language acts as a lens through which we see the world, this change reflects the view that women are only good as child-bearers and sex partners. Moreover, the spread of this kind of language also perpetuates this ideology under the guise of “inclusive language”. As Láadan was created to show, the lack of female-centered language helps support the patriarchy.

However, Native Tongue also provides hope for the efficacy of woman-centered language. Elgin believed language could shape reality and showed it in her book. After the women of the Barren House decide to start using Láadan and teaching it to the girls, the men note: “Women, they tell me, do not nag anymore. Do not whine. Do not complain. Do not demand things. Do not make idiot objections to everything a man proposes. Do not argue. Do not get sick […] No more headaches, no more monthlies, no more hysterics… or if there are still such things, at least they are never mentioned” (303). The Linguist men, unsettled by this new dynamic, decide to make all of their women live in a separate residence, thereby inadvertently giving the women something they want. This shows how the new language altered relations between Linguist men and women and as a result brought a change to their lives. The change need not be so drastic, however, as simply using a language that expresses their views and values makes the women more cheerful and cooperative when dealing with the men. They finally have the freedom that only a language of their own can provide.

Elgin’s book is more relevant than ever at a time where feminists are fighting against the erasure of female-specific terms. The power of language is that it can oppress, like reinforcing gender stereotypes, but also liberate, as Láadan does for the Linguist women. The latter provides hope in the current battle against female erasure. We need language and writing by women, for women. As language is turned against us, so can we use it to fight back and create our own, more just, reality.

Notes:

· This essay is partly inspired by the afterword to the 2019 edition (Encoding a Woman’s Language by Susan M. Squier and Julie Vedder).

· The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been largely abandoned in favor of biolinguistics, the linguistic school that holds that the principles underpinning the structure of language are biologically preset in the human mind and hence genetically inherited, pioneered by Noam Chomsky. Since Elgin wrote Native Tongue in light of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, this essay does not question the validity of the theory.

· For more about Láadan: https://laadanlanguage.wordpress.com/

· Native Tongue has many more themes to explore, such as the balance of power between the sexes, which I chose not to go into. I highly recommend this book, and I will definitely be reading the other two books in the trilogy.

References:

Cixous, Hélène, et al. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs, vol. 1, no. 4, 1976, pp. 875–893. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3173239. Accessed 6 July 2020.

Elgin, S. H., Zumas, L., Squier, S. M., & Vedder, J. (2019). Native tongue. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York.

#feminism #radical feminism #radfem #linguistics #native tongue #suzette haden elgin #helene cixous #laadan

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werevulvi · 5 years

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I recently made a post saying I'm radfem now. So I thought perhaps I should adress that in a bit more detail. I'll try to not make this post several years long, but it's unavoidably gonna be a big post. This is to give a rough overview of my opinions, for anyone interested in knowing that.

The points I bring up, in the following order: - Patriarchy/oppression of women and girls - Gender/sex - Transgender - Femininity - Sexuality - Female only spaces - Porn industry - Prostitution - BDSM - Reproductive rights and women's rights in general - End notes/wrap up

Patriarchy/oppression of women and girls So I used to be an anti-feminist MRA and thus I didn't believe patriarchy was a thing. It took me a long while and lots of research and observing to see the fault in my ways. Admittedly, I was wrong, and now I know better. Also worth mentioning is the reason I found my way into radfem was because with my detransition I became increasingly gender critical, so if I focus extra on gender/sex opinions that's why.

Gender/sex Women and girls are oppressed in the world because of their sex, and it has nothing to do with "gender identity" and you can't opt out of oppression by transitioning or calling yourself another gender. Gender is a social construct and is just masculinity and femininity, including personality traits that can be called such. Anyone can be masculine or feminine and it doesn't make them the opposite sex or "not real" men/women. Male/female brains is not a thing. You are the sex you were born as. Woman just means adult human female and man just means adult human male.

Transgender Having dysphoria often tells people who have it that them wanting for their bodies to be of the opposite sex is what makes them, on some psychological level, of that sex. Conforming to the gender roles of the opposite sex often alleviates dysphoria cause it helps with passing, but few trans people think that the gender roles is what makes them men/women. It's just a tool to deal with dysphoria. Trans people should absolutely get the medical treatments available for their dysphoria for those who want that. Out of politeness and caring about their dysphoria, I usually refer to trans men as men and use he/him pronouns, etc, and vice versa for trans women. And on occasion I use the word "cis" to refer to people who are not trans but I don't agree with the term. I only ever use it for simplicity and in its simple meaning "not transgender" but I try to avoid it.

Femininity My stance on this might differ from other radfems but what I do definitely agree on here is that it should NOT be forced upon women/girls in society like it clearly is. I appall that and it should not happen. I also see there are lots of harmful stuff about modern femininity that also should be scrutinised. However, I think that femininity at its core can be good if you just know what you're doing, and I think especially femme lesbians seem to have a pretty good grip on that, not just myself. I think very critically about it and do encourage others to do too. I want to eradicate the forcing of femininity and its harmful aspects - but not the femininity itself. And that's actually NOT because I love being femme: it's because I was coerced to be masculine as a child, and that not only harmed me, but also made me realise and understand that femininity is a genuine and essential form of expression for my artistic mind. So, I think I do have pretty good reasons for having the views that I have on that point.

Sexuality Sexual attraction/orientation is sex-based not gender-based. Lesbians are not attracted to males/penis and gay men are not attracted to females/vagina. It's important that definition does not get changed by the trans movement and anyone thinking it's "no big deal" or think that it should be changed is a homophobe. Any male trying to force dick upon lesbians is a horribly gross lesbophobe and no it doesn't make it any better if it's a trans woman. It's very much like just another form of conversion therapy and should not be tolerated. I'm a lesbian, so it matters to me a lot. And on that point I also stand in solidarity with gay men who get to face the same crap from females/trans men. However, I'm half-okay with trans women just calling themselves lesbians as long as they can behave themselves and know they're not actual homosexual females, and vice versa for male-attracted trans men calling themselves gay. Again only because of their dysphoria, and only if they're not acting like homophobes. I'm however NOT okay with trans women invading lesbian spaces, but I'll get back to that point in a bit.

Also I'm really strongly against trans people not disclosing being trans to sex partners. Doesn't matter if they're pre- or post-op or how well they're passing. Trans feeling DON'T get to override "cis" feelings. That might not be a super specific radfem point but I notice transmeds vehemently disagree with me on that point, and it just comes across as very entitled, so yeah.

Female only spaces Are and should be for biological females only. Although I'm slightly lenient on trans women using women's bathrooms because in my own country it doesn't seem to be an issue of men abusing that loophole, but I'm NOT fine with any males using women's locker rooms, abuse victims' support groups, abuse shelters, lesbian spaces, etc. Women need our own spaces away from the male oppressors. And as a survivor or sexual assault and rape who's kinda scared of men, I do very much understand that need. Even though I look too ambiguous due to my ftm transition to get any sort of access to women only spaces, aside from bathrooms, apparently. That's my own fault though, isn't it?

Porn industry Absolutely disgusting, what the hell is going on there?! Kind of. Women and girls are being badly hurt there and it needs to stop. I don't care if that means no one ever gets to ever have porn to watch, people's safety is more important than other people just wanting something sexy to watch. Men's violence on women (in general) is being perpetuated by porn teaching them that women are objects and only there for men's sexual pleasure. And I'm pretty sure it even exacerbated my own internalised misogyny in the past when I was watching a lot of porn and searched for the worst of it. I no longer want to support the porn industry in any way. I made the decision, few weeks ago, to stop watching porn completely and so far so good, although I was close to giving into it a few days ago but didn't. I've got this.

Prostitution I used to want to become a prostitute, actually. Before I came to my senses on that point and realised it was just my traumas speaking for me again. I no longer want that at all, and it makes me feel sick to just think of it. But I read up on it a lot back then. I understand that the entire "sex industry" is directly harmful to the women in it and indirectly harmful to women not in it. I'm all for doing whatever we can to stop it. However, since I read up on it in the past, I'm kinda skeptical that the Nordic Model would be a good solution. It has a lot of issues. As I'm living in a country that has that model implemented (Sweden) and I know that there is a lot of hidden trafficking going on here that cannot be spotted or caught due to the faults of the Nordic Model. According to my own (possibly flawed) research the Australian Model seems to be better at both catching trafficking and making prostitution in general less dangerous for those involved, but by no means is that a perfect model either. I need to learn more about this perhaps, but at the end of the day I'm 100% against any form of prostitution existing.

BDSM I used to be into bdsm and didn't want to see that it's harmful, and basically just a "socially accepted" form of abuse. I used to be into "rapeplay" and a lot of humiliating kinks as the submissive because it let me "repeat" my past traumas. Along with my realisation that I'm a lesbian, I also finally understood the true depth of my traumas and no longer want to engage in anything bdsm or kinks. That has no place in my life anymore. It just kept damaging me more when I needed to heal. That made me understand that there's still abuse involved in bdsm even though it's "consensual" cause how can you make an informed consent to something you don't understand is gonna harm you?

Reproductive rights and women's rights in general I guess this covers the whole "bodily autonomy" thing and I include anything from being able to get birth control and abortions to stopping fgm and child marriages, and much more, in this category. I dunno really what to say here other than of course women and young girls being treated as cattle, abused, mutilated, raped, forced to give birth, forced to marry, etc are very important issues that need to be fixed and that asap. I'd even say such things matter the most to me when it comes to women's rights: having the right to one's own body from the moment that any female human is born. But also, reading up on those really heavy topics gets to me so bad I can't manage it. I get really bad panic attacks and just start sobbing uncontrollably. So for the sake of my own mental health, that's why I don't reblog much of that. But please believe me that is still very important stuff to highlight, talk about and get to the bottom of.

End notes/wrap up All of this and more really stems from the systematic oppression that women are constantly kept under, and I see that "red thread" connecting all these issues to that root. We need to get to the core of those problems (and many more that I didn't bring up here) which is men in general oppressing women in general. So that got me back to where I started, patriarchy. That's a nice wrap up, I think. I tried hard to not make this into a gigantic post, so that's why I left out a lot of details, explanations, my own personal experiences that led me to my opinions, etc. And yes, it's absolutely fine to ask me about my opinions on any of these things, and call me out (preferably with an explanation) if you think it's horse shit and I'll look into it.

#personal #my radfem views #i know its not super comprehensive but i aint got all night #still new to this #and still learning #im a get shit for my views on trans i think but im too fucked up to care anymore

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cubistexpresstrain · 2 years

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Radfems/Gender Criticals!

I used to strongly dislike you all. That doesn't mean I ever sent death threats or insulting DMs, this is my first time talking about this on social media. I deeply judge everyone on any side who thinks violence is the answer or acceptable simply because you do not agree with someone.

I only watched content parodising you and saw your hateful side. However, I took my time to actually read your points and concerns. I am a trans man, I have been out for 4 years. I will not insult any of you in this writing or say vile things, I ask you to do the same if you decide to interact with me. I will not say TERF, as I am aware you don't like being referred to that way, but I ask you to not call me a TIF in return in the possible comments. I will not answer. Respect should go both ways.

I will first tell you what I see now that I completely missed before, then what I think you are all missing. Not because I think you aren't educated enough, but I think some of you might have made the same mistake as I did: refuse to be open-minded and only cared about clear hate speech. I also wanna be clear that I in no way agree with you on everything, and the language some of you are using is unacceptable (same on the trans side, obviously).

I refused to think of myself as someone who used to be a woman, and didn't associate myself with womanhood at all. I still believe I was born a boy, but I cannot erase the past, I was raised a girl and experienced the world as such. And it was traumatic. I don't like to think about it. I am sure I don't have to elaborate more. I understand your hurt and suspicion of men- both trans man and people who used to live as men but now are women. I often feel guilty nowadays for not being a feminist enough when I lived as a girl. I try my best now. I know most of you think of course, not all men, but enough men, and you don't wanna risk it. I understand and feel your pain. I am still uncomfortable around a cis man I don't know in the room alone, even though I have been passing for years now.

But I feel like you are mistaking the enemy. It's rapist men, the patriarchy, sexism, etc. Any intelligent trans person would be on your side, if some of you wouldn't misgender us on purpose or paint us as traitors (trans men) and people who wanna violate you (trans women). The same men who wanna hurt you wanna hurt us just as much. A man who would hurt you would hurt a trans man, and would hate crime a trans woman. In their eyes femininity is a weakness- and since trans women are feminine, trans men used to be feminine, they hate us all and put us in the same category. We wanna fight for feminism, we have every reason to.

You cannot base your opinion on a couple shitty trans people, just like I don't base my opinion on a couple shitty radfems. I know some of you are highly intelligent, well-read people. And we do not agree on everything, there is no "Trans viewpoint" we share.

Do you think trans people wanna erase the definition of women? We sure as Hell don't. Or at least I don't. But is it really menstrusting that makes you one? I don't think so. And I think you do not all think that either. A lot of women don't menstruate (even cis women), I know more than one who don't because of medical reasons. Being a woman means you are constantly fighting against a system that oppresses you and that you feel a sisterhood with those people, you feel that strong sense of womanhood you all talk about.

Do you think all trans men like the word "mensturator" and "vagina-haver"? I don't. I never met a trans boy who does. Maybe some do, I'm not saying that. But yes, reducing women to menstruators is dehumanising. It's a weird term. It triggers my dysophoria, if I see a post about women's health, I understand it's about me without specifying it's not only women.

(Some of) you think trans men do not wanna be women because of internalised misogny. I would get a lot of hate for this from a trans platform, but I admit, a few AFAB trans people probably suffer from this. But not all. I believe almost all AFAB people have internalised misogny. It's impossible not to. I did have a lot more than I do now, and I am working on it at that very moment too. I considered that I might be a girl who was taught being masculine is only for boys- but that just isn't the case. As I grew older and became more feminist, I now see women in a completely new light. I think being a woman is a beatiful, painful, admirable yet hard life. It just isn't for me. I cherish women, the reason I hate being called one isn't because I look them down because that's how I was conditioned. It's just not who I am. Trust me, I wish I could be one. Not because it's easier to be a woman than a man, but because being a trans man is way more struggle than living like a cis girl. I experience both transphobia and sexism. I am aware I could be a masculine presenting, non-gender conforming woman. Most trans men know that. We aren't trans to escape sexism, I surely am not. I didn't stop fighting against sexism when I started transitioning, I am with you in this still everyday. I call out sexists every chance I can. It's my duty to do so. But to say all trans men just hate womanhood is simply a lie. I don't. I love you all. I think you are all brave as fuck.

We aren't the same. Do not generalise.

And now, onto trans women. I admit there are some terrible ones- but there are some terrible cis women, trans men, cis men. No statistics show that trans women are more violent. Do you think a man would undergo surgeries, hormone treatment, a lot of transphobia and a constant battle just to harass you? If a man wants to rape someone in the bathroom, he will. He won't go through years of hormone therapy to do so. It's irrealistic. Transition is not as easy as you think. Trans women wanna be your allies, just because some shitheads posted they wanna rape women, it's not a representitive.

As soon as trans women start passing, they will get the same harassment as you do. And even higher amount of violence. They will get catcalled just like you, talked down to, belittled, etc. Since they identify with womanhood, they will also internalise the messages society sends about women.

Are you annoyed they think makeup is what womanhood is about? I don't think they do, but even if you do, have kind discourse with them. Tell them how to be a good feminist, I'm sure a good portion will listen. They want equal treatment like you. I know you think they will never be fully women, but they will experience the same opression you fight against. Have them fight with you. Isn't that the goal? Why not have more supporters?

People will answer hate with hate. If you do not give us respect, they won't give you any either. Is that wrong? Of course it is. Both parties should be mindful.

But my point is; we want the same thing. We have the same enemy. Let's fight together, not against each other.

#radfem #radical feminist #gender critial #radfems do touch #radfems do interact #gender criticism

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richietoziersgazebos · 7 years

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Ok I don't think 'all men are trash' but this usually comes from people who have been abused by men. Of course not all men are trash, everyone knows that! Not all men abuse but most women have been abused or had an uncomfortable moment with a man. That person talking about 'new fake feminism' and 'victimization of women' knows nothing about feminism!, Also, you can't be sexist toward men cause of historical context patriarchy etc Discrimination and sexism are very different things. This site->

Is hell!! Most ppl don't know what they are talking about here. So if you want to learn about feminism there are some amazing theorists/intersectional feminists out there, don't play attention to people on Tumblr. Feminism (even the 'modern' one) is not about hating men, is about dismantling patriarchy. Sorry i'm writing this to you but there were many wrong things about that post that can confuse people about feminism and sexism and I really like you-

I could write a lot but i dont want to annoy you and my english sucks!

Hello anon, first of all, as long as your messages are this well put and interesting you don’t have to worry about annoying me, secondly I’m not a native speaker myself so don’t worry about your english skills either (which seem very good to me, btw)let me tell you that I understand where you come from and I even agree, at least on some points, but I also feel the need to respond to a few points:

“This usually comes from people who have been abused by men [...] most women have been abused or had an uncomfortable moment with a man” okay but there’s a huge difference between feeling skittish/uncomfortable around men and or being able to trust them and saying and believing that any cis man is scum and deserves to be killed. because this was the point of the post, it was aimed to those people (and there’s a lot of those on this site) that believe this is feminism. it’s not. I’ve been a victim myself, for years, and I still have my share of issues with men, this doesn’t give me the right to be a shitty, hateful person.

“That person talking about 'new fake feminism' and 'victimization of women' knows nothing about feminism!“ I’m pretty sure she was referring to the same people I talked about ^

“you can't be sexist toward men“ I strongly disagree; if you discriminate someone purely because of their gender you’re being sexist. it works both ways, that’s what’s great about equality.

believe me when I say that I know that true feminism is not what you experience on this site, but that’s exactly why that post is so important! because it’s on tumblr! it was not aimed towards feminism but people being mean just because this world sucks and since being a woman is hard this gives them the right to do so. I’m sorry but I won’t stand for this.

tl;dr: people can be mean regardless their gender and people can be trustworthy regardless of their gender, don’t let people on tumblr tell you that it’s right to hate on an entire category of people just because it’s widely accepted here.

#anon #ask #I'm glad I got the chance to give my opinion about this #nice anon #Anonymous

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spatialanomalousmatter · 5 years

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TJ Demos – Against the Anthropocene. The Many Names of Resistance

vimeo

T.J. Demos | Against the Anthropocene from Kaaitheater on Vimeo.

How do we critically reflect on climate change through the arts? TJ Demos’ previous books include “Decolonising Nature” and his latest book “Against the Anthropocene”. His latest book has a more activist stance. The term Anthropocene coined in the early 2000s. The term supported a strongly technical and scientific sense, with not much in the way of political discussions. This proved problematic for TJ Demos, hence his polemical work “Against the Anthropocene”.

There is no such thing as discrete human subjectivities, we are connected to nature and enmeshed with it. Anna Sing’s book “Multispecies Salon” argues this. The term Anthropocene looks more at humans only, and in general as being responsible for climate change. However it is not all humans, but particular ones that are responsible for climate change. Some have been more adversely affected depending on wealth, poverty, class, gender, race etc. There is a disproportionate impact of climate change depending on who and where you are.

“Climate change represents the burning of Africa.” - TJ Demos

Political conference delegates agree on 1.5 degrees celcius warming, but this would be catastrophic for people in coastal regions in Bangladesh for example. There is a suggestion that geoengineering may be a necessary response to climate change. Technofixes for climate change deals with the symptoms but not the causes. Economic growth is seen to be compatible with climate solutions, but is this belief true? The Capitalocene these argues that climate change has been going on for 500 years, but if we are to address it properly we need to address this capitalist history.

The dates of the Anthropocene are proposed to have begun in the 1950s by geologists. This is when nuclear power was globalised. The book “Anthropocene or Capitalocene” edited by Jason W. Moore, rejects technoscientific empiricism in favour of looking at the cause from a political, colonial perspective. Capitalocene emphasises environmental violence and injustice against oppressed people and nature. Intersectionalist discussions look at the racial and colonial injustice that has accompanied the environmental transformation.

Forensic Architechture has also looked at the Capitalocene. Eyal Wiseman suggests that environmental transformation or climate change is not an unintended accident, but rather an intended aim of colonialism from the start. TJ Demos helped set up the Centre for Creative Ecologies to encourage this research and discourse. There is a risk of environmentalism becoming a privileged domain. In his view it needs to be linked to social justice domains. Environmentalism must not become a white domain, it needs to be intersectionalist and support social justice.

The Cthulucene: a term coined by Donna Haraway, from her book “Staying with the Trouble”. Linked to HP Lovecraft’s Cthulu, without the sexist undertones. Diverse mythological constructions such as naga, pachamama, or mother earth. Cthulucene is the era of multiscpecies being. Visualisations of the Cthulucene have been created by artists such as the Crochet Coral Reef. They sometimes show them as bleached to emphasise their destruction. Also shown are Navajo weaving and Pigeon Ring.

We need many names. A “Manifesto for the Gynecene” was an idea by artists Alexandra Pirici and Raluca Voinea in 2015. They proposed that patriarchy should be excluded in all its violent expressions such as colonialism, profit etc. Practices such as pachamana and rights of mother earth come out of indigenous traditions which are an example of the Gynacene. Defend Our Mother was an example of a poster by Fabiana Rodriguez, Gynacene aesthetics. Standing Rock against Dakota Access pipeline: “Water is life” proposing a different ontology based within a non-capitalist, non-commoditised understanding of environmental issues. Geontology is seeing the conditions of being as rift zones where different world views come into a clashing relationship.

Mountain top removal mining is when companies blow up mountain tops to get at coal underneath. Plantationocene is where agriculture has been turned into a science of colonialism. Anna Sing shows how divisions between genders and races are regimented into Capitalist labour systems, within a monocrop area. Plasticene is about the spread of plastics and micropolymers throughout the world. This is only going to grow in the future. We are plasticising the planet. Plastic as a material of Capitalism. The Pyrocene relates to the spread of wildfires such as in California.

"A World at War" is an article in New Republic. Our only hope is to mobilise like we did in world war 2. They want to decrease the CO2 in the air to under 300 parts per million. But they are looking at it from only a technoscientific viewpoint, and not looking at the 500 year history of Capitalism and its effects on climate change. Communities of colour are more endangered by incinerators than others, their lives are seen as less important somehow. We must decolonise environmentalism. Avoid the ecologies of affluence of white environmentalism. Ecological struggles are really the struggle for universal emancipation.

Artistic project “Forest Law”, 2014, investigates decades of oil exploitation in the Equadorian Amazon by oil companies, drilling for oil and leaving oil by-products on the floor. Artists building solidarities and connections with social movements is crucial. “The Party of Others”, a political party that is non-anthropocentric and includes animals and others so they can have a political voice. Rosa Braidotti calls it developing a zoe-centred (animal or non-human) egalitarianism. “The Climate Games” included Inflatables to activate participants, creating space between activists and police. There is a history of the use of cobblestones in revolutions in France. Non-violent civil shutting down of coal mines, “we are nature defending itself”, avoiding the anthropocentrism of the nature/culture binarism. In New York “not an alternative” wrote a letter to museums to detach from fossil fuel funding. David Koch, a fossil fuel corporate figure, got kicked off the board of the American Natural History Museum. Liberate Tate have been doing performance interventions showing the cost of petrocapitalism, and got Tate to stop its association with BP: institutional liberation. Non-reformist reform, welcomes small steps but also recognises it is inadequate.

Discussion after the talk:

Sustainability as an empty signifier. It supports not ecological sustainability but economical sustainability. Post-representational system in which language is dead. Evidence doesn’t necessarily change minds, people become sensitive and embedded in their positions. Create art based within the affect of social justice. What is Art in the post-representational present?

Billionaires buying escape silos in case of catastrophic futures. Others cannot do this. “Breakthrough Institute” (setup by people such as Bill Gates and other corporate leaders) don’t talk about racism or economic inequality, they talk about saving humanity and humanism through geoengineering and saving humanity with all its inequalities intact.

Reference:

Demos, T.J.; "Against the Anthropocene"; Sternberg Press, 2017.

#compartscriticalstudies

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enchantedzuyorker · 4 years

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Setting Fire to Social Justice

Call-out culture refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others. People can be called out for statements and actions that are sexist, racist, ableist, and the list goes on. Because call-outs tend to be public, they can enable a particularly armchair and academic brand of activism: one in which the act of calling out is seen as an end in itself.

What makes call-out culture so toxic is not necessarily its frequency so much as the nature and performance of the call-out itself. Especially in online venues like Twitter and Facebook, calling someone out isn’t just a private interaction between two individuals: it’s a public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are. Indeed, sometimes it can feel like the performance itself is more significant than the content of the call- out. This is why “calling in” has been proposed as an alternative to calling out: calling in means speaking privately with an individual who has done some wrong, in order to address the behaviour without making a spectacle of the address itself.

In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing. For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass judgment on someone’s entire being, as if there is no difference between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking down the street (who is of course also someone’s friend). Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories.

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that there is a mild totalitarian undercurrent not just in call-out culture but also in how progressive communities police and define the bounds of who’s in and who’s out. More often than not, this boundary is constructed through the use of appropriate language and terminology – a language and terminology that are forever shifting and almost impossible to keep up with. In such a context, it is impossible not to fail at least some of the time. And what happens when someone has mastered proficiency in languages of accountability and then learned to justify all of their actions by falling back on that language? How do we hold people to account who are experts at using anti-oppressive language to justify oppressive behaviour? We don’t have a word to describe this kind of perverse exercise of power, despite the fact that it occurs on an almost daily basis in progressive circles. Perhaps we could call it Anti-Oppressiveness.

Humour often plays a role in call-out culture and by drawing attention to this I am not saying that wit has no place in undermining oppression; humour can be one of the most useful tools available to oppressed people. But when people are reduced to their identities of privilege (as white, cisgender, male, etc.) and mocked as such, it means we’re treating each other as if our individual social locations stand in for the total systems those parts of our identities represent. Individuals become synonymous with systems of oppression, and this can turn systemic analysis into moral judgment. Too often, when it comes to being called out, narrow definitions of a person’s identity count for everything.

No matter the wrong we are naming, there are ways to call people out that do not reduce individuals to agents of social advantage. There are ways of calling people out that are compassionate and creative, and that recognize the whole individual instead of viewing them simply as representations of the systems from which they benefit. Paying attention to these other contexts will mean refusing to unleash all of our very real trauma onto the psyches of those we imagine to only represent the systems that oppress us. Given the nature of online social networks, call-outs are not going away any time soon. But reminding ourselves of what a call-out is meant to accomplish will go a long way toward creating the kinds of substantial, material changes in people’s behaviour – and in community dynamics – that we envision and need.

How do you begin to say, “I think we’ve been going about this all wrong?” Howdo you get out of a dead-end without going in reverse? It seems like in the last fifteen years, rape has gone from being an issue that was only talked about by feminists and downplayed in other radical communities, to one of the most commonly addressed forms of oppression. Part of this change might be owed to the hard work of feminist and queer activists, another part to the spread of anarchism, with its heavy emphasis on both class and gender politics, and another part to the antiglobalization movement, which brought together many previously separated single issues.

Despite all the changes in fifteen years, its just as common to hear the sentiment that rape is still tacitly permitted in radical communities or that the issues of gender and patriarchy are minimized, even though in most activist or anarchist conferences and distros I know about, rape culture and patriarchy have been among the most talked about topics, and it wasn’t just talk. In the communities I have been a part of there have been cases of accused rapists or abusers being kicked out and survivors being supported, along with plenty of feminist activities, events, and actions.

All the same, every year I meet more people who have stories of communities torn apart by accusations of rape or abuse, both by the shock and trauma of the original harm, and then by the way people have responded and positioned themselves. One option is to blame a passive majority that toe the line, giving lip service to the new politically correct doctrine, without living up to their ideals. In some cases I think that is exactly what happened. But even when there is full community support, it still often goes wrong.

After years of thinking about this problem, learning about other people’s experiences, and witnessing accountability processes from the margins and from the center, I strongly believe that the model we have for understanding and responding to rape is deeply flawed. For a long time I have heard criticisms of this model, but on the one hand I never found a detailed explanation of these criticisms and on the other I was trained to assume that anyone criticizing the model was an apologist for rape, going on the defensive because their own patriarchal attitudes were being called out. After personally meeting a number of critical people who were themselves longtime feminists and survivors, I started to seriously question my assumptions.

Since then, I have come to the conclusion that the way we understand and deal with rape is all wrong and it often causes more harm than good. But many of the features of the current model were sensible responses to the Left that didn’t give a damn about rape and patriarchy. Maybe the biggest fault of the model, and the activists who developed it, is that even though they rejected the more obvious patriarchal attitudes of the traditional Left, they unconsciously included a mentality of puritanism and law and order that patriarchal society trains us in. I don’t want to go back to a complicit silence on these issues. For that reason, I want to balance every criticism I make of the current model with suggestion for a better way to understand and deal with rape.

When I was in a mutually abusive relationship, one in which both of us were doing things we should not have done, without being directly aware of it, that resulted in causing serious psychological harm to the other person, I learned some interesting things about the label of “survivor.” It represents a power that is at odds with the process of healing. If I was called out for abuse, I became a morally contemptible person. But if I were also a survivor, I suddenly deserved sympathy and support. None of this depended on the facts of the situation, on how we actually hurt each other. In fact, no one else knew of the details, and even the two of us could not agree on them. The only thing that mattered was to make an accusation. And as the activist model quickly taught us, it was not enough to say, “You hurt me.” We had to name a specific crime. “Abuse.” “Assault.” “Rape.” A name from a very specific list of names that enjoy a special power. Not unlike a criminal code.

I did not want to create an excuse for how I hurt someone I loved. I wanted to understand how I was able to hurt that person without being aware of it at the time. But I had to turn my pain and anger with the other person into accusations according to a specific language, or I would become a pariah and undergo a much greater harm than the self-destruction of this one relationship. The fact that I come from an abusive family could also win me additional points. Everyone, even those who do not admit it, know that within this system having suffered abuse in your past grants you a sort of legitimacy, even an excuse for harming someone else. But I don’t want an excuse. I want to get better, and I want to live without perpetuating patriarchy. I sure as hell don’t want to talk about painful stories from my past with people who are not unconditionally sympathetic towards me, as the only way to win their sympathy and become a human in their eyes.

As for the other person, I don’t know what was going on in their head, but I do know that they were able to deny ever harming me, violating my consent, violating my autonomy, and lying to me, by making the accusation of abuse. The label of “survivor” protected them from accountability. It also enabled them to make demands of me, all of which I met, even though some of those demands were harmful to me and other people. Because I had not chosen to make my accusation publicly, I had much less power to protect myself in this situation.

And as for the so-called community, those who were good friends supported me. Some of them questioned me and made sure I was going through a process of self-criticism. Those who were not friends or who held grudges against me tried to exclude me, including one person who had previously been called out for abuse. In other words, the accusation of abuse was used as an opportunity for power plays within our so-called community.

For all its claims about giving importance to feelings, the activist model is coded with total apathy. The only way to get the ball of community accountability rolling is to accuse someone of committing a specific crime. The role of our most trusted friends in questioning our responses, our impulses, and even our own experiences is invaluable. This form of questioning is in fact one of the most precious things that friendship offers. No one is infallible and we can only learn and grow by being questioned. A good friend is one who can question your behavior in a difficult time without ever withdrawing their support for you. The idea that “the survivor is always right” creates individualistic expectations for the healing process. A survivor as much as a perpetrator needs to be in charge of their own healing process, but those who support them cannot be muted and expected to help them fulfill their every wish. This is a obvious in the case of someone who has harmed someone else it should also be clear in the case of someone who has been harmed. We need each other to heal. But the others in a healing process cannot be muted bodies. They must be communicative and critical bodies.

The term “perpetrator” should set off alarm bells right away. The current model uses not only the vocabulary but also the grammar of the criminal justice system, which is a patriarchal institution through and through. This makes perfect sense: law and order is one of the most deeply rooted elements of the American psyche, and more immediately, many feminist activists have one foot in radical communities and another foot in NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations). The lack of a critique of these NGOs only makes it more certain that they will train us in institutional modes of thinking.

The current method is not only repulsive for its puritanism and its similarity to the Christian notions of the elect and the damned; it is also a contradiction of queer, feminist, and anarchist understandings of patriarchy. If everyone or most people are capable of causing harm, being abusive, or even of raping someone (according to the activist definition which can include not recognizing lack of consent, unlike the traditional definition which focuses on violent rape), then it makes no sense to morally stigmatize those people as though they were especially bad or dangerous. The point we are trying to make is not that the relatively few people who are called out for abuse or even for rape are especially evil, but that the entire culture supports such power dynamics, to the extent that these forms of harm are common. By taking a self-righteous, “tough on crime” stance, everyone else can make themselves seem like the good guys. But there can’t be good guys without bad guys. This is the same patriarchal narrative of villain, victim, and savior, though in the latter role, instead of the boyfriend or police officer, we now have the community. The term “survivor,” on the other hand, continues to recreate the victimization of the standard term, “victim,” that it was designed to replace.

One reason for calling someone a “survivor” is to focus on their process of overcoming the rape, even though it defines them perpetually in relation to it. The other reason is to spread awareness of how many thousands of people, predominately women, queer, and trans people, are injured or killed every year by patriarchal violence. This is an important point to make. However, given the way that rape has been redefined in activist circles, and the extension of the term “survivor” to people who suffer any form of abuse, the vast majority of things that constitute rape or abuse do not have the slightest possibility of ending someone’s life. This term blurs very different forms of violence.

Hopefully, the reader is thinking that an action does not need to be potentially lethal to constitute a very real form of harm. I absolutely agree. But if that’s the case, why do we need to make it sound like it does in order to take it seriously? Why connect all forms of harm to life-threatening harm instead of communicating that all forms of harm are serious?

As for these crimes, their definitions have changed considerably, but they still remain categories of criminality that must meet the requirements of a certain definition to justify a certain punishment. The activist model has been most radical by removing the figure of the judge and allowing the person harmed to judge for themselves. However, the judge role has not been abolished, simply transferred to the survivor, and secondarily to the people who manage the accountability process. The act of judging still takes place, because we are still dealing with punishment for a crime, even if it is never called that.

The patriarchal definition of rape has been abandoned in favor of a new understanding that defines rape as sex without consent, with whole workshops and pamphlets dedicated to the question of consent. Consent must be affirmative rather than the absence of a negative, it is cancelled by intoxication, intimidation, or persistence, it should be verbal and explicit between people who don’t know each other as well, and it can be withdrawn at any time. The experience of a survivor can never be questioned, or to put it another way an accusation of rape is always true. A similar formulation that sums up this definition is, “assault is when I feel assaulted.”

I don’t want to distinguish rape from other forms of harm without talking about how to address all instances of harm appropriately. One solution that does not require us to judge which form of harm is more important, but also does not pretend they are all the same, would have two parts. The first part is to finally acknowledge the importance of feelings, by taking action when someone says “I have been hurt,” and not waiting until someone makes an accusation of a specific crime, such as abuse or rape. Because we are responding to the fact of harm and not the violation of an unwritten law, we do not need to look for someone to blame. The important thing is that someone is hurting, and they need support. Only if they discover that they cannot get better unless they go through some form of mediation with the other person or unless they gain space and distance from them, does that other person need to be brought into it. The other person does not need to be stigmatized, and the power plays involved in the labels of perpetrator and survivor are avoided.

The second part changes the emphasis from defining violations of consent to focusing on how to prevent them from happening again. Every act of harm can be looked at with the following question in mind: “What would have been necessary to prevent this from happening.” This question needs to be asked by the person who was harmed, by their social circle, and if possible by the person who caused the harm.

The social circle is most likely to be able to answer this question when the harm relates to long-term relationships or shared social spaces. They might realize that if they had been more attentive or better prepared they would have seen the signs of an abusive relationship, expressed their concern, and offered help. Or they might realize that, in a concert hall they commonly use, there are a number of things they can all do to make it clear that groping and harassing is not acceptable. But in some situations they can only offer help after the fact. They cannot be in every bedroom or on every dark street to prevent forms of gender violence or intimate violence that happen there.

In the case of the person who caused the harm, the biggest factor is whether they are emotionally present to ask themselves this question. If they can ask, “what could I have done to not have hurt this person,” they have taken the most important step to identifying their own patriarchal conditioning, and to healing from unresolved past trauma if that’s an issue. If they are emotionally present to the harm they have caused, they deserve support. Those closest to the person they hurt may rightfully be angry and not want anything to do with them, but there should be other people wiling to play this role. The person they have hurt deserves distance, if they want it, but except in extreme cases it does no good to stigmatize or expel them in a permanent way.

If they can ask themselves this question honestly, and especially if their peers can question them in this process, they may discover that they have done nothing wrong, or that they could not have known their actions would have been harmful. Sometimes, relationships simply hurt, and it is not necessary to find someone to blame, though this is often the tendency, justified or not. The fact that some relationships are extremely hurtful but also totally innocent is another reason why it is dangerous to lump all forms of harm together, presupposing them all to be the result of an act of abuse for which someone is responsible.

If their friends are both critical and sympathetic, they are most likely to be able to recognize when they did something wrong, and together with their friends, they are the ones in the best position to know how to change their behavior so they don’t cause similar harm in the future. If their friends have good contact with the person who was hurt (or that person’s friends), they are more likely to take the situation seriously and not let the person who caused the harm off the hook with a band-aid solution. This new definition is a response to the patriarchal definition, which excuses the most common forms of rape (rape by acquaintances, rape of someone unable to give consent, rape in which someone does not clearly say “no”). It is a response to a patriarchal culture that was always making excuses for rape or blaming the victim.

The old definition and the old culture are abhorrent. But the new definition and the practice around it do not work. We need to change these without going back to the patriarchal norm. In fact, we haven’t fully left the patriarchal norm behind us. Saying “assault is when I feel assaulted” is only a new way to determine when the crime of assault has been committed, keeping the focus on the transgression of the assaulter, then we still have the mentality of the criminal justice system, but without the concept of justice or balance. At the other extreme, there are people who act inexcusably and are totally unable to admit it. Simply put, if someone hurts another person and they are not emotionally present in the aftermath, simply put, it is impossible to take their feelings into consideration. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want help. In such a case, the person hurt and their social circle need to do what is best for themselves, both to heal and to protect themselves from a person they have no guarantee will treat them well in the future. Maybe they will decide to shame that person, frighten them, beat them up, or kick them out of town. Although kicking them out of town brings the greatest peace of mind, it should be thought of as a last resort, because it passes off the problem on the next community where the expelled person goes. Because it is a relatively easy measure it is also easy to use disproportionately. Rather than finding a solution that avoids future conflict, it is better to seek a conflictive solution. This also forces people to face the consequences of their own righteous anger which can be a learning process.

Finally, the most important question comes from the person who was hurt. The victimistic mentality of our culture, along with the expectation that everyone is out to blame the victim, make it politically incorrect to insist the person who has been hurt ask themselves, “what would have made it possible to avoid this?” but such an attitude is necessary to overcoming the victim mentality and feeling empowered again. It is helpful for everyone who lives in a patriarchal world where we will probably encounter more people who try to harm us. Its not about blaming ourselves for what happened, but about getting stronger and more able to defend ourselves in the future.

I know that some zealous defenders of the present model will make the accusation that I am blaming the victim, so I want to say this again: it’s about preventing future rapes and abuse, not blaming ourselves if we have been raped or abused. The current model basically suggests that people play the role of victims and wait for society or the community to save them. Many of us think this is bullshit. Talking with friends of mine who have been raped and looking back at my own history of being abused, I know that we grew stronger in certain ways, and this is because we took responsibility for our own health and safety.

In some cases, the person who was hurt will find that if they had recognized certain patterns of dependence or jealousy, if they had had more self-esteem, or they had asserted themselves, they could have avoided being harmed. Unless they insist on retaining a puritan morality this is not to say that it was their fault. It is a simple recognizing of how they need to grow in order to be safer and stronger in a dangerous world. This method focuses not on blame, but on making things better.

Sometimes, however, the person will come to the honest conclusion, “there was nothing I could have done (except staying home / having a gun / having a bodyguard).” This answer marks the most extreme form of harm. Someone has suffered a form of violence that they could not have avoided because of the lengths the aggressor went to in order to override their will. Even shouting “No!” would not have been enough. It is a form of harm that cannot be prevented at an individual level and therefore it will continue to be reproduced until there is a profound social revolution, if that ever happens.

If we have to define rape, it seems more consistent with a radical analysis of patriarchy to define rape as sex against someone’s will. Because will is what we want taken into the realm of action, this idea of rape does not make the potential victim dependent on the good behavior of the potential rapist. It is our own responsibility to depress our will. Focusing on expressing and enacting our will directly strengthens ourselves as individuals and our struggles against rape and all other forms of domination.

If rape is all sex without affirmative consent, then it is the potential rapist, and not the potential victim, who retains the power over the sexual encounter. They have the responsibility to make sure the other person gives consent. If it is the sole responsibility of one person to receive consent from another person, then we are saying that person is more powerful then the other, without proposing how to change those power dynamics.

Additionally, if a rape can happen accidentally, simply because this responsible person, the one expected to play the part of the perfect gentleman, is inattentive or insensitive, or drunk, or oblivious to things like body language that can negate verbal consent, or from another culture with a different body language, then we’re not necessarily dealing with a generalized relationship of social power, because not everyone who rapes under this definition believes they have a right to the other person’s body.

Rape needs to be understood as a very specific form of harm. We can’t encourage the naive ideal of a harm-free world. People will always hurt each other, and it is impossible to learn how not to hurt others without also making mistakes. As far as harm goes, we need to be more understanding than judgmental. But we can and must encourage the ideal of a world without rape, because rape is the result of a patriarchal society teaching its members that men and other more powerful people have a right to the bodies of women and other less powerful people. Without this social idea, there is no rape. What’s more, rape culture, understood in this way, lies at least partially at the heart of slavery, property, and work, at the roots of the State, capitalism, and authority.

This is a dividing line between one kind of violence and all the other forms of abuse. It’s not to say that the other forms of harm are less serious or less important. It is a recognition that the other forms of harm can be dealt with using less extreme measures. A person or group of people who would leave someone no escape can only be dealt with through exclusion and violence. Then it becomes a matter of pure self-defense. In all the other cases, there is a possibility for mutual growth and healing. Sympathetic or supportive questioning can play a key role in responses to abuse. If we accept rape as a more extreme form of violence that the person could not have reasonably avoided, they need the unquestioning support and love of their friends.

We need to educate ourselves how systematically patriarchy has silenced those who talk about being raped through suspicion, disbelief, or counter accusations. But we also need to be aware that there have been a small number of cases in which accusations of rape have not been true. No liberating practice should ever require us to surrender our own critical judgement and demand that we follow a course of action we are not allowed to question. Being falsely accused of rape or being accused in a non-transparent way is a heavily traumatizing experience. It is a far less common occurrence than valid accusations of rape that the accused person denies, but we should never have to opt for one kind of harm in order to avoid another.

If it is true that rapists exist in our circles, it is also true that pathological liars exist in our circles. There has been at least one city where such a person made a rape accusation to discredit another activist. People who care about fighting patriarchy will not suspect someone of being a pathological liar every time they are unsure about a rape accusation. If you are close to someone for long enough, you will inevitably find out if they are a fundamentally dishonest person (or if they are like the rest of us, sometimes truthful, sometimes less so).

Therefore, someone’s close acquaintances, if they care about the struggle against rape culture, will never accuse them of lying if they say they’ve been raped. But often accusations spread by rumors and reach people who do not personally know the accuser and the accused. The culture of anonymous communication through rumors and the internet often create a harmful situation in which it is impossible to talk about accountability or about the truth of what happened in a distant situation.

Anarchists and other activists also have many enemies who have proven themselves capable of atrocities in the course of repression. A fake rape accusation is nothing to them. A police infiltrator in Canada used the story of being a survivor of an abusive relationship to avoid questions about her past and win the trust of anarchists she would later set up for prison sentences. Elsewhere, a member of an authoritarian socialist group made an accusation against several rival anarchists, one of whom, it turned out, was not even in town on the night in question. Some false accusations of rape are totally innocent. Sometimes a person begins to relive a previous traumatic experience while in a physically intimate space with another person, and it is not always easy or possible to distinguish between the one experience and the other. A person can begin to relive a rape while they are having consensual sex. It is definitely not the one person’s fault for having a normal reaction to trauma, but it is also not necessarily the other person’s fault that the trauma was triggered.

A mutual and dynamic definition of consent as active communication instead of passive negation would help reduce triggers being mislabeled as rape. If potential triggers are discussed before the sexual exchange and the responsibility for communicating needs and desires around disassociation is in the hands of the person who disassociated then consent is part of an active sexual practice instead of just being an imperfect safety net. If someone checks out during sex, and they know they check out during sex, it is their responsibility to explain what that looks like and what they would like the other person to do when it happens. We live in a society where many people are assaulted, raped or have traumatic experiences at some point in their lives. Triggers are different for everyone. The expectation that ones partner should always be attuned enough to know when one is disassociating, within a societal context that does not teach us about the effects of rape, much less their intimate emotive and psychological consequences — is unrealistic.

Consent is empowering as an active tool, it should not be approached as a static obligation. Still, the fact remains that not all rape accusation can be categorized as miscommunication, some are in fact malicious.

There is a difficult contradiction between the fact that patriarchy covers up rape, and the fact that there will be some false, unjustified, or even malicious rape accusations in activist communities. The best option is not to go with statistical probability and treat every accusation as valid, because a false accusation can tear apart an entire community make people apathetic or skeptical towards future accountability processes. It is far better to educate ourselves, to be aware of the prevalence of rape, to recognize common patterns of abusive behavior, to learn how to respond in a sensitive and supportive way, and also to recognize that there are some exceptions to the rules, and many more situations that are complex and defy definition.

The typical proposal for responding to rape, the community accountability process, is based on a transparent lie. There are no activist communities, only the desire for communities, or the convenient fiction of communities. A community is a material web that binds people together, for better and for worse, in interdependence. If its members move away every couple years because the next pace seems cooler, it is not a community. If it is easier to kick someone out than to go through a difficult series of conversations with them, it is not a community. Among the societies that had real communities, exile was the most extreme sanction possible, tantamount to killing them. On many levels, losing the community and all the relationships it involved was the same as dying. Let’s not kid ourselves: we don’t have communities. In many accountability processes, the so-called community has done as much harm, or acted as selfishly, as the perpetrator. Giving such a fictitious, self-interested group the power and authority of judge, jury, and executioner is a recipe for disaster.

What we have are groups of friends and circles of acquaintances. We should not expect to be able to deal with rape or abuse in a way that does not generate conflict between or among these different groups and circles. There will probably be no consensus, but we should not think of conflict as a bad thing. Every rape is different, every person is different, and every situation will require a different solution. By trying to come up with a constant mechanism for dealing with rape, we are thinking like the criminal justice system. It is better to admit that we have no catch-all answer to such a difficult problem. We only have our own desire to make things better, aided by the knowledge we share. The point is not to build up a structure that becomes perfect and unquestionable, but to build up experience that allows us to remain flexible but effective.

The many failings in the current model have burned out one generation after another in just a few short years, setting the stage for the next generation of zealous activists to take their ideals to the extreme, denouncing anyone who questions them as apologists, and unaware how many times this same dynamic has played out before because the very model functions to expel the unorthodox, making it impossible to learn from mistakes. One such mistake has been the reproduction of a concept similar to the penal sentence of the criminal justice system. If the people in charge of the accountability process decide that someone must be expelled, or forced to go to counseling, or whatever else, everyone in the so-called community is forced to recognize that decision. Those who are not are accused of supporting rape culture. A judge has a police force to back up his decision. The accountability process has to use accusations and emotional blackmail.

But the entire premise that everyone has to agree on the resolution is flawed. The two or more people directly involved in the problem may likely have different needs, even if they are both sincerely focused on their own healing. The friends of the person who has been hurt might be disgusted, and they might decide to beat the other person up. Other people in the broader social circle might feel a critical sympathy with the person who hurt someone else, and decide to support them. Both of these impulses are correct. Getting beaten up as a result of your actions, and receiving support, simply demonstrate the complex reactions we generate. This is the real world, and facing its complexity can help us heal.

The impulse of the activist model is to expel the perpetrator, or to force them to go through a specific process. Either of these paths rest on the assumption that the community mechanism holds absolute right, and they both require that everyone complies with the decision and recognize its legitimacy. This is authoritarianism. This is the criminal justice system, recreated. This is patriarchy, still alive in our hearts.

What we need is a new set of compass points, and no new models. We need to identify and overcome the mentalities of puritanism and law and order. We need to recognize the complexity of individuals and of interpersonal relationships. To avoid a formulaic morality, we need to avoid the formula of labels and mass categories. Rather than speaking of rapists, perpetrators, and survivors, we need to talk abut specific acts and specific limitations, recognizing that everyone changes, and that most people are capable of hurting and being hurt, and also of growing, healing, and learning how to not hurt people, or not be victimized, in the future. We also need to make the critical distinction between the forms of harm that can be avoided as we get smarter and stronger, and the kinds that require a collective self-defense.

The suggestions I have made offer no easy answers, and no perfect categories. They demand flexibility, compassion, intelligence, bravery, and patience. How could we expect to confront patriarchy with anything less?

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hattieargyle · 5 years

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Controversial Feminist Opinion

Men aren’t the fucking enemy. The patriarchy and pure ignorance is the enemy and men who are ‘anti-feminist’ are simply uneducated but they aren’t the fucking ENEMY. My male friends, my dad, my brother etc are not people I would ever refer to as an enemy just in the name of the feminist movement that I support so strongly especially as they are all massive feminists themselves. Don’t try and gain equality by turning one gender against another for the love of god just don’t.

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engl2030021 · 5 years

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Selected Readings on Toxic Masculinity, Gender, and Social Media

Ging, Debbie. “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere.” Men and Masculinities, (May 2017). DOI:10.1177/1097184X17706401.

Debbie Ging is a senior lecturer in media studies at Dublin City University in Ireland, researching gender portrayal in social media. Her article “Alphas, Betas, and Incels” is an exploration into the recent evolution of anti-feminist men's rights collectives converging on the internet, known as the “Manosphere.” Ging suggests that despite the continuation of a historical theme of hegemonic masculinity, the “beta male” and “incel” (involuntary celibacy) ideas at their core plan on what she calls “tropes of victimhood,” and are in fact a new, subtle perturbation in a critical understanding of patriarchy as a whole. By analyzing the Manosphere in its proper context, Ging's claim is that a stronger understanding of toxic masculinity, its place in the tech era, and its growth patterns can be obtained. The article is supported strongly by numerous quotes and references, both in text and bibliography. While her language is a bit dense and technical, Ging's analysis is thorough, and her generous use of relevant sources lends credence to her arguments.

Grossman, Sara. “Masculinity, Anxiety, and Fear of the Other in the Age of Trump.” Haas Institute, (Nov. 6, 2016). Link: https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/masculinity-anxiety-and-fear-other-age-trump

Published the day before the 2016 US presidential election, Grossman offers an essay discussing the rhetoric on which the Trump Campaign focused, suggesting it is another iteration of the same rhetoric behind McCarthy's “witch-hunt” during the 1950s. Specifically, Grossman hones in on the theme of “otherness” in connection with masculinity and American patriotism through the 2010s. Grossman's essay presents a succinct introductory description of toxic masculinity, placing it in the context of the Trump-McCarthy comparison. Despite the significance of her claims and included quotes, Grossman's essay lacks in-text citations, making it difficult to trace the source of quotes and statistics. This is occasionally offset by the use of hyperlinks mid-sentence, linking to external sources for further reading.

Hamblin, James. “Trump Is a Climax of America's Masculinity Problem.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, August 8, 2016. Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/trump-masculinity-problem/494582/

This health piece from The Atlantic is less of a health article, and more of an opinion editorial. Hamblin, in so few words, makes the claim that Donald Trump's persona and rhetoric are a culmination of a uniquely American brand of masculinity, and that this is in fact a dominant contributing factor to his success. Despite its informal tone and structure, Hamblin provides a perspective that is useful in understanding, on a basic level, the tools and social context that result in Trump's success and presidential election.

Johnson, Paul Elliott. “The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery.” Women's Studies in Communication, 40:3, 229-250, Aug. 2017. DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2017.1346533

An article analyzing Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign in connection with pathetic appeals to toxic masculinity and white victimhood. Through the manufacture of artificial precarity and uncertainty, Johnson argues that Trump has been able to utilize growing social insecurities in a gendered and racial regime of American national identity as a means of securing perceived authority. Johnson, a post-doctorate researcher at University of Pittsburgh's Communication Department, provides an extensive and thorough examination of Trump's rhetoric and its social and political effects. Aside from the generous usage of decorative vocabulary, Johnson's flow is well structured, and his arguments are clear and well supported. In order to improve clarity, he uses section headers, and starts paragraphs with statements that give a clear expectation of the local content, and a reminder on its place in the context of the article.

Li, Karen. "If Men Are so Strong, Then Why Is Masculinity so Fragile?" Medium.com. March 07, 2017. Link: https://medium.com/applied-intersectionality/if-men-are-so-strong-then-why-is-masculinity-so-fragile-331d0b7c5fa6.

A blog post for a course on applied intersectionality, Karen Li provides a critical analysis of masculine fragility in modern America. In this piece, Li explores the ways in which masculinity is paradoxically harmful to men, and concurrently stokes and caters to their insecurities. This particular brand of masculinity, Li suggests, is subversive to men by glamorizing rape culture, American nationalism, and even gendered product advertisement. This post is useful in describing examples of characteristics of masculinity's place in a gendered, patriarchal society that are fundamental in building a working definition of toxic masculinity. In particular, viewing the post on the Medium web page allows users to view comments and responses to this post, all of which are harshly critical, essentially mocking Li for being a woman writing about masculinity. These comments, in fact, ironically underscore her central thesis, and provide an external component useful for analysis.

Massanari, Adrienne. “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures.” New Media & Society 19, no. 3 (March 2017): 329–46. DOI:10.1177/1461444815608807.

An investigation of two particular events in recent internet history: #Gamergate and The Fappening. The article first explores Reddit in general as a social platform for ideological proliferation, and draws a direct connection between masculinity and “geek and nerd culture,” explaining that a discussion of online gaming culture is necessarily a discussion of masculinity and anti-feminist sentiments. Massanari's core focus in this article is the way in which Reddit implicitly supports the progression of what the article refers to as “toxic technocultures.” The arguments and definitions crucial to Massanari's claims are clear, and well supported by a number of sources. She is an associate professor of Communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Messerschmidt, James W. “Engendering Gendered Knowledge: Assessing the Academic Appropriation of Hegemonic Masculinity.” Men and Masculinities 15, no. 1 (April 2012): 56–76. DOI:10.1177/1097184X11428384.

“Engendering Gendered Knowledge” is an analytical assessment of hegemonic masculinity and the recent reformulation of an academic understanding of hegemonic masculinity. In this piece, Messerschmidt explores a number of primary research and critical sources of social expressions masculinity in recent years, and considers the results in the broader scheme of studying gender and masculinity. The focal thesis is that a complete and accurate approach to understanding hegemonic masculinity must consider women as well as men, along with “peripheral” social components such as class and race, and masculinity at the local, regional, and global levels. Much of the paper is centered around describing the context and nature of research conducted, and connecting the results to the thesis. Messerschmidt, a professor and chair of the Criminology Department at the University of Southern Maine, earned his Ph.D. from the Criminology Institute in the Department of Sociology at the University of Stockholm, Sweden in 1979. He has been studying gender, crime, and hegemonic masculinity since the early 1990s and has released several articles and books on the subject. As such, this piece may be considered less expositional, and more so a checkpoint to ensure that Messerschmidt, himself, and other researchers have a clear and functional understanding of hegemonic masculinity by which future research can be conducted.

Mudde, Cas. "Why Is the Far Right Dominated by Men? | Cas Mudde." The Guardian. August 17, 2018. Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/17/why-is-the-far-right-dominated-by-men.

This online op-ed piece for The Guardian dissects the political right and far-right/extremist groups, positing that male identity and “victimized” masculinity, rather than racial motivators, are at the core of men's rights and white supremacy movements in America. Mudde then extends this assessment to the recent elections, in that Donald Trump's success is founded in his misogyny and stoking of an imagined emasculation of America. While this is an editorial of opinion, Cas Mudde affords an analytical insight that motivates a shift in social and academic discourse on masculinity in the context of the American political climate.

Parent, M. C., Gobble, T. D., & Rochlen, A. (2018). “Social media behavior, toxic masculinity, and depression”. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, DOI:http://dx.doi.org.aurarialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/men0000156

An original study into social media/social networks (abbreviated SM/SN within the study) and their associations with toxic masculinity, depression, and positive/negative SM/SN interactions. Among other findings, Parent et al. Report a significant relation between toxic masculinity and affect-biased attention (attention/perception biases to a particular class of stimuli based in its subjective salience, or significance), as well as a multivariate link to increased symptoms of depression. The study is recent, but draws on findings from previous relevant research dating as far back as the early 1980s, building their methods and analysis on theories supported by years of academic research. A thorough description of the research subjects, data collection, and discussion of the findings from the data are provided in a format that is unobtrusive and easy to navigate. Data and analysis is provided in its entirety, including calculation types and relevant constants of uncertainty, error etc. Considering the range and type of variables included in the study, the procedure as well as findings are of potential use to future psychological and sociological studies into toxic masculinity and social media/networking as the tech era advances.

Veissière, Samuel, Ph.D. "The Real Problem With “Toxic Masculinity”: Why Our Culture Needs Strong and Nuanced Gender Archetypes." Psychology Today, February 16, 2018. Link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/201802/the-real-problem-toxic-masculinity?page=1.

This Psychology Today article is a reflective piece about healthy and toxic gender archetypes. Veissière's gender archetype categorization includes the masculine and feminine, and the healthy and toxic variants of each. In this regime, he suggests that focusing on toxic masculinity is counterproductive, and that true social and academic progress can only be borne of considering a complete system, and that strong gender archetypes are paramount to raising boys and girls under “good” masculinity/femininity. Veissière's central argument may, as he admits, be “hard to swallow,” but it is useful (if only as a thought experiment) to approach gender, parenting, and social regimes from multiple perspectives to better gain a full picture.

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johnclapperne · 6 years

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{#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism?

A man recently found out that I, the completely normal-looking and friendly young woman he had been chatting with, was a feminist.

This must have really shaken him up (I assume he’d never met one of us IRL before), because his next question was:

So you think women should be superior to men?

Naturally my first response was to assume he was kidding and laugh. Because… wut?

But no. This man was deadass serious. I have no idea what kind of people he had been exposed to, but he was completely under the impression that, since gender inequality no longer exists, feminists are trying to oppress men so that we can run the world.

The interesting thing was that this man really believes that since women are paid the same as men (false lol) and we can vote and own land now, so basically… any woman who feels oppressed at this point is just playing the victim card and want everything to be handed to them.

He also seemed to feel very strongly that identifying our movement according to gender is just “divisive” and that we should be focusing on “walking together” rather than “pitting ourselves against the good men trying to help us.”

Sigh.

Anyway, after this conversation turned sour, I got to thinking. Not about him, because he had nothing to offer but privileged nonsense, but about some of the beliefs we was spouting. I hear echoes of his views all the time, from good people who are genuinely struggling to understand why is feminism still a thing again…?

It’s very easy for people (aka people who aren’t actually reading feminist texts or following feminist leaders) to completely misunderstand the goal of feminism. They hear bits and pieces from snarky and inaccurate third-party sources like FOX news or whatever, and come away with the belief that feminism seems stupid, dangerous, or unnecessary.

If you frame it like “women whining about injustice instead of doing something about it” or “women wanting to oppress men,” then yeah, the whole thing is pretty unlikeable. Duh– that’s why so many anti-progressive (right-wing) sources spin it that way!

But those views are based on nothing more than malevolent gossip; a smear campaign designed to invalidate a movement that causes trouble for people who want to maintain the status quo.

That’s why I decided to set a few facts straight, and tackle some basic shit about what I’m fighting for when I say I’m a feminist. Obviously this is a much bigger topic than one essay’s worth, but I’ll do my best.

Q: Why do we still need feminism?

A: Because there is still gender inequality. There is still sexism, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, and gender presentation. There is still exploitation and oppression based on gender.

Q: What is the goal of feminism?

A: There are many serious legislative and structural issues at the core of the feminist movement, like fighting for access to full reproductive health care and rights, access to affordable and high quality child-care options and paid family leave, an end to sexual exploitation and human trafficking, and fighting for better representation in media/entertainment as well as a more equal percentage of women in elected office, CEO positions, leadership positions.

Not to mention of course the right to not be sexually harassed/assaulted/raped, the right to not experience domestic violence, and equal pay for equal work. Oh, and the right to be LGBTQ or transgender without the barrage of violent and marginalizing fuckery that currently comes with that.

Note: It’s also important to acknowledge the intersections of oppression that cross categories such as race, ability, class, age, weight, etc. Intersectional feminism is about recognizing and fighting the various intersecting systems of power that marginalize and oppress people, because a black woman’s experience is completely different than a white woman’s experience, and a fat woman’s experience is completely different than a thin woman’s experience.

I wish I had more time to tackle the complicated intersectional landscape, but for the purpose of this essay, feminism’s goal is simply to end sexism, gender inequality, and gender bias.

Q: Who is the enemy of feminism?

A: Spoiler alert: it’s not men! Feminism is not anti man. Again, we’re just anti-sexism, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression, and anti-exploitation. The “enemy” is sexism, discrimination based on gender and sexuality, and gender inequality.

Q: What do you mean by sexism and gender inequality?

A: If you’ve never personally experienced gender or sexism inequality, they can be completely invisible.

Wikipedia says:

“Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals wholly or partly due to their gender. It arises from differences in gender roles.”

So here’s the deal: Our culture is obsessed with gender differentiation. Before a baby is even born, we are consumed by the desire to categorize them based on their genitals (which is super creepy if you think about it), and we wrongly identify both sex and gender on a binary. You get to be just one of the two options, and anyone who doesn’t fit into one of those has to just pick whichever is “closest.”

Interestingly, intersex people are born all the time with a variety of unique reproductive organs and genitals that make it hard for them to check the box of either “boy” or “girl.” These people are often surgically altered at birth to make them fit whichever box is most convenient.

Isn’t that pretty fucked up? Like… we have a binary system and these babies don’t fit in with it, so we cut their bodies until they do. Oh, and in case you think this is a super rare occurrence, it’s not: intesex people are born at about the same rate as redheads.

Ok, so I take issue with the way our culture fetishes sex and gender right out the gate, and forces everyone to choose a binary option, but from there it only gets worse! Due to our obsession with gender, we shove gendered clothing, toys, and treatment on our children.

Our implicit gender biases (aka: biases that are below the level of consciousness) get passed on when we praise little girls for being cute, nice, pretty, and well-behaved, and we praise little boys for being smart, strong, fast, and clever. They get passed on when we buy our girls dolls and our boys trucks. They get passed on when we permit our boys to be aggressive and wild, but shame our girls for the same. They get passed on when we permit our girls to be sensitive and emotional, but shame our boys for the same. They get passed on when we put our little girls in dresses that limit movement and have no pockets, teaching her that her body is for looking at, not for doing stuff.

In short, we socialize our children to see their gender as the most fundamental part of their identity, and we teach them how to appropriately perform their gender so that they fit in with our sexist ideas of what gender should be.

It doesn’t get better from there though.

The perceptions we hold of each gender get stronger throughout a person’s life, and we chalk it all up to biology rather than the way we socialize children since before they’re born.

We perceive men as better at math and driving. We perceive women as better at nurturing and childcare. We see men as smart, and women as social. We assume men are better leaders, and women are better at domestic skills. We take for granted that men love sports and women, while women love shopping and makeup. We unconsciously believe men need to feel like useful providers, while women need to feel beautiful and desirable.

In short, most of us internalize the performance of gender that we got stuck with based on our genitals at birth, and apply it both to ourselves and to everyone else. We know that people who break the rules are severely punished and marginalized. Think: a feminine gay man who spends his entire life being shamed for not being “manly” enough, or the way a woman is slut-shamed and victim-blamed if she tempted a helpless man into assaulting her.

We all have implicit gender biases, and women and non-conforming gender individuals get the short end of the stick. Both men and women view men (especially tall, white, conventionally masculine men) as more trustworthy and competent, for example, so it starts to feel completely natural that they hold more positions of leadership, and make more money, and otherwise rule the world.

When we talk about living in a patriarchy, it simply means that this culture was historically built by men, for men, and most of us still view this as the natural order of things due to implicit gender biases that we keep passing on to our children. The patriarchy determines who is suitable for which job positions, who is believable in a trial, who gets access to bodily autonomy, and whose problems matter most.

Q: But… what about biology?

A: Many people really, really want to believe that men and women are each naturally drawn to all the gender roles and gender performance we shove on them, and they use “biology!” to defend their gender-obsessed actions.

First of all, I certainly recognize that there are some inherent differences between men and women beyond genitals, but it’s very difficult to tell the difference between which is nature and which is nurture when it comes to gender. Socialization is powerful shit, and we don’t have a gender-blind control group to see what would happen. (Trust me, I dream of this world often.)

That said, I feel like… if it’s really biology, then nobody should have a problem with us fighting the gender-based socialization. Because that would mean that even without teaching girls to be sexual objects and people-pleasers, they would become that way anyway! And even without teaching boys to feel entitled to women’s attention and bodies, or to repress all of their feelings except anger, that they would become violent, stoic, and emotionally stunted anyway!

I mean really, if biology is so strong, nothing would change if we stopped shoving gender performances down everyone’s throat. So maybe just let us try?

Most importantly though, using the “biology!” response is very rude, because if biology explained all of our gender biases and performances, then we wouldn’t have a feminism movement because nobody would be bothered by anything. But people are, well… bothered.

It’s kinda like how we used to think women weren’t capable of voting, owning land, having jobs, running a mile, being fulfilled without children, or anything else. They used to cry “biology!” to that shit too, and we’ve slowly proved it allllll wrong. When I hear the biology argument, what I hear is that you simply don’t want things to change because the status quo is working for you.

Q: Why do we need to talk so divisively about gender, why can’t we just focus on coming together as humans?

A: It has to be about gender because it’s already about gender. This question, though usually well-intentioned, would be like asking your doctor: why does my treatment have to be all about cancer? Well… because you have cancer, my friend. It would be silly to treat you as if you didn’t have cancer, just because cancer makes you uncomfortable, right? Yeah. That.

When gender is no longer a divisive issue, we’ll stop treating it like one.

But gender determines how people are treated and perceived, what life chances and opportunities they’ll get, what standards they’ll be held to, and how they’ll be encouraged to view their role and identity.

This isn’t healthy for anyone of any gender, but women and non-gender-conforming individuals are disproportionately negatively impacted by both implicit and explicit biases, discrimination, exploitation, and marginalization.

This is why we fight, my friends.

Whew.

Happy Tuesday.

<3 Jessi

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ruthellisneda · 6 years

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{#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism?

A man recently found out that I, the completely normal-looking and friendly young woman he had been chatting with, was a feminist.

This must have really shaken him up (I assume he’d never met one of us IRL before), because his next question was:

So you think women should be superior to men?

Naturally my first response was to assume he was kidding and laugh. Because… wut?

Sigh.

But those views are based on nothing more than malevolent gossip; a smear campaign designed to invalidate a movement that causes trouble for people who want to maintain the status quo.

Q: Why do we still need feminism?

A: Because there is still gender inequality. There is still sexism, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, and gender presentation. There is still exploitation and oppression based on gender.

Q: What is the goal of feminism?

I wish I had more time to tackle the complicated intersectional landscape, but for the purpose of this essay, feminism’s goal is simply to end sexism, gender inequality, and gender bias.

Q: Who is the enemy of feminism?

Q: What do you mean by sexism and gender inequality?

A: If you’ve never personally experienced gender or sexism inequality, they can be completely invisible.

Wikipedia says:

“Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals wholly or partly due to their gender. It arises from differences in gender roles.”

It doesn’t get better from there though.

The perceptions we hold of each gender get stronger throughout a person’s life, and we chalk it all up to biology rather than the way we socialize children since before they’re born.

Q: But… what about biology?

I mean really, if biology is so strong, nothing would change if we stopped shoving gender performances down everyone’s throat. So maybe just let us try?

Q: Why do we need to talk so divisively about gender, why can’t we just focus on coming together as humans?

When gender is no longer a divisive issue, we’ll stop treating it like one.

This is why we fight, my friends.

Whew.

Happy Tuesday.

<3 Jessi

The post {#TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism? appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2zMzN36

#{TransparentTuesday} Why Do We Still Need Feminism?

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