In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: December 2009

Time To Fire Ross Douthat, round 4095

Shorter Ross Douthat: Europe wasn’t racist enough, and so now they should be worried about the brown hordes. After arguing that European nations should have done more to restrict Muslim immigration, he concludes that while the end of the West is not near, there is still much to be fearful of:

This is cold comfort, though, if you have to live under the shadow of violence. Just ask the Swiss, who spent last week worrying about the possibility that the minaret vote might make them a target for Islamist terrorism.

They’re right to worry. And all of Europe has to worry as well, thanks to the folly of its leaders — now, and for many years to come.

The Swiss outlaw the building of new minarets — for no reason other than that they want to be hostile towards Muslims — and then they’re right to worry about Swiss Muslims’ hostility?

In which the feminist science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction fans have our fun

By way of following up on the Left-Handed Commencement Address thread.

I note that I am far from being the only person here who is both a feminist and a fan of science fiction! Because I love sharing the femSF love, let’s put together a list of our favourite novels, stories and writers. Don’t forget to say why you recommend them. Feminist works of fantasy and speculative fiction are more than welcome.

I’ll limit myself to three people in starting us off:

Octavia E. Butler: There are so many reasons to love Ms Butler. I can only read a bit of her writing at a time because she is just so good, so sharp, I have to stop constantly as I am just that overwhelmed. As such, I haven’t read any of her longer works, but I’m told that Kindred and Parable of the Sower will blow your mind. “Bloodchild” will make you rethink something you think you know about violence or reproductive justice or relating, so that’s my recommendation. I really don’t want to tell you the premise, because if you are reading it, you should head right into it. That said, it’s potentially triggering, so be warned.

James Tiptree, Jr.: Alice B. Sheldon wrote as Tiptree for a decade before she was unmasked. Not only did she challenge the SF establishment’s ideas about what women can write, she was huge in the American SF scene in the 70s and 80s. My rec is “The Women Men Don’t See” (here’s my review) because of not only the feminist content but the beautiful manipulation of the building blocks of story to feminist ends (particularly the confusion between narrator and protagonist). It’s a fabulous story about women who don’t want to be saved from the aliens, and a man who just doesn’t understand why they’re not fitting the narrative.

Ursula K. Le Guin: She has been one of the most popular SF/fantasy writers for decades. And, as Tlönista noted in the previous thread, it’s so, so good to have in the world a white writer who writes non-white characters properly, and not only that, but centres them in her universes. My favourite short story of hers is probably “Another Story” from the A Fishman of the Inland Sea collection, which is on time and culture and life and love. I am also very fond of Four Ways to Forgiveness, which is a suite of interconnected stories concerned with slavery and freedom. She’s really quite brilliant.

So what have you got for us?

Rape: The Method. by Josh Brorby

UPDATE: Brorby apologized in the comments to the piece. His apology is as follows:

First things first: apologies are needed for this article on behalf of me, the columnist. I’ll attempt to explain myself, but I accept that this is failed satire, and that’s that.

This began as an attempt to satirize the men whose main goal in college life is to “score,” to go out and – as I’ve heard men say before – “slay” women at the bars or at the clubs. […] I’m no Swift, but I attempted to use date-rape as the extreme example of men who go too far. I did not, though, consider the fact that I – as a male – have privileges that women living in our patriarchal society do not. I did not consider that women who have been raped might read this. That was a gross oversight, and to be honest I’m feeling pretty terrible about the whole situation. I apologize. I cannot stress enough that my aim was off – way off – and that the tone used in this article is much too light.

It is certainly appreciated, though it doesn’t undo the damage his article caused. I’ll leave the rest of the post up along with the link, and folks can make their own decision.
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Josh Brorby is a student at the University of North Dakota. He recently wrote an op/ed for the student newspaper which is essentially a sexual assault how-to manual. Trigger warning for that link and for what follows. Josh Brorby begins:

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Dr. Carhart targeted by anti-choice activists

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The same anti-choicers who long targeted Dr. Tiller found a new victim after Tiller’s murder: Dr. LeRoy Carhart in Nebraska.

Opponents of abortion, who had devoted decades to trying to stop Dr. Tiller’s business with protests and calls for investigations, are now turning their efforts to stopping Dr. Carhart. Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group, said he had traveled from the group’s headquarters in Wichita, Kan., to Nebraska six times in recent months, portraying this suburb of fewer than 50,000 as a new battlefield in the abortion fight.

“We’re trying to get criminal charges against him, to get his license revoked, and to get legislators there to look at the law,” Mr. Newman said of Dr. Carhart.

It seems like wherever Troy Newman and Operation Rescue go, violence, harassment, assault and murder follow. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Dr. Carhart, though, is taking precautions:

Still, in the months since the killing, Dr. Carhart has made changes at his clinic and to his lifestyle as he has openly moved to take up Dr. Tiller’s cause.

Visitors to the clinic here must pass through a metal detector, new security cameras scan outside the building and a security consultant is employed full time. Dr. Carhart says he goes out publicly only on short, unscheduled trips and rarely eats out (and when he does, he says he stays less than 30 minutes). Dr. Carhart, an Air Force veteran, said his daughter was wed this fall on a nearby military base, mainly for security and privacy.

“We do everything differently now,” he said.

Of course, these are people who aren’t below shooting you dead in church, so there’s only so much he can do. Needless to say, he is an exceedingly brave man.

Anti-choicers, naturally, claim to deplore violence, even while they make Carhart their next target. God-willing nothing will happen to him, but I can guarantee that if he is ever assaulted, or if his clinic is ever bombed, or if he or his employees are ever shot at, the anti-choicers who launched this campaign and intentionally made Carhart #1 on the Pro-Life Most Wanted List will profess their innocence.

Late-term abortion rights divide even pro-choice people, and there is too often a lack of nuance in discussing what Dr. Carhart actually does. These are not purely elective abortions. No one wakes up in the 23rd week of pregnancy and decides, “Hmmm, I think I don’t want a baby anymore.” Nebraska has very strict abortion laws; in order to terminate a pregnancy that late, you have to jump through a series of hoops and prove that there are serious complications or threats to your health. The first commenter on the Times story illustrates why this service is crucial to women in need:

What a brave and selfless man. Having once faced the horrifying possibility of a late-term abortion due to a grave prenatal diagnosis, I know too well what a valuable service Dr. Carhart is performing for women at a devastating juncture in their lives. He is risking his life and reputation to offer an option to parents faced with an unimaginable crisis. Any mom who has received a devastating prenatal diagnosis late in a much-wanted pregnancy knows the depths of darkness that Dr. Carhart is helping women navigate. He is to be commended for standing for a deeply unpopular position because he believes it is the right thing to do.

Lucky: Some Thoughts on Community-Building and Privilege

Hey, who wants to hear some totally non-news-related navel-gazing that later opens up into a discussion of feminist practice? Oh, you DO? Good!

So, as the year winds to a close, here is one thing I have had to face about how it has gone down: I’ve suddenly become a really, really lucky person. I mean, bad things have happened this year too! Because bad things happen to everybody! But also, I started a blog a while ago, and for some reason – some reason I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND, mind you – people have been really, unaccountably nice and supportive about it. And now, I am getting to do the thing I have been telling people I was going to do since I was seven years old, which is Be a Writer. A broke Writer, mind you! But, still! And I know nobody wants to hear me yammer on about that, because it is boring, but suffice it to say: I have wondered how to use this luck well. How to deserve it, basically. And I was on the train yesterday, reading Adrienne Rich, and I suddenly came across this passage (in her essay “When We Dead Awaken,” which you NEED TO READ if you have not already, and NEED TO RE-READ if you have) that was basically like Adrienne Rich suddenly fixed her steely gaze upon me and decided to speak to me about all my nonsense:

We seem to be special women here, we have liked to think of ourselves as special… An important insight of the radical women’s movement has been how divisive and ultimately destructive is this myth of the special woman, who is also the token woman. Every one of us here in this room has had great luck – we are teachers, writers, academicians; our own gifts could not have been enough, for we all know women whose gifts are buried or aborted. Our struggles can have meaning and our privileges – however precarious under patriarchy – can be justified only if they can help to change the lives of women whose gifts – and whose very being – continues to be thwarted and silenced.

Which: yes, Adrienne Rich. That is true. I agree with you on this topic, Adrienne Rich. Because, basically, I know that I would not be here if several men and women had not – BIZARRELY – found the time and energy to help me out in about a million ways. My question to you is: how do you justify that? How do you use what you’ve been given, and give it to other folk?

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U.S. Pastors Silent in the Face of Genocide in Uganda

Uganda is set to pass a bill that would recommend the death penalty for gay people who are “repeat” offenders — that is, gay people who have sex more than once (your punishment for one-time sex is life in prison, unless you’re HIV-positive, in which case you also get the death penalty). It also mandates prison terms for anyone who fails to report homosexual activity.

Brave members of the Ugandan Anglican church are speaking out, likening the bill to genocide against gay Ugandans. While Byamugisha took a big risk in countering the tides of hate in his country, American pastors who have long meddled in Ugandan politics and policy — and who face no similar risks in speaking out — are staying silent. American Evangelicals like Rick Warren have exported homophobia, and encouraged African pastors to marginalize gay people. Anti-gay organizations in Africa were well funded under the Bush administration, which threw money at religious groups as part of its HIV/AIDS strategy (the result? An uptick in HIV/AIDS in Uganda, a country where rates had previously steadily fallen).

American conservatives have convinced their African peers that collaborating with them somehow represents a kind of anti-colonial resistance. One is almost tempted to applaud the American right’s audacity. After all, it generally opposed Africa’s national liberation movements, and often smeared the progressive churches that supported them. Now, by presenting homosexuality as the corrupt imposition of a decadent, dying West, American Christian conservatives have positioned themselves as champions of the developing world’s cultural authenticity. Meanwhile, African leaders purport to fight Americanization by aligning with some of the most powerful and chauvinistic of American religious leaders, and even taking US government money.
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Like anti-Semitism, homophobia can’t necessarily be controlled by those who unleash it. Scott Lively, for example, might balk at instituting the death penalty for homosexuality, but Uganda is only taking his work to its logical conclusion. Lively, after all, has claimed, in his book The Poisoned Stream, that “a dark and powerful homosexual presence” can be traced through “the Spanish Inquisition, the French ‘Reign of Terror,’ the era of South African apartheid, and the two centuries of American slavery.” Surely, strong measures are necessary to combat something so sinister!

Rick Warren, who has close ties and heavy influence in Uganda, is passing the buck, claiming that just focuses on his relief work and doesn’t take sides in politics:

Our role, and the role of the PEACE Plan, whether in Uganda or any other country, is always pastoral and never political. We vigorously oppose anything that hinders the goals of the PEACE Plan: Promoting reconciliation, Equipping ethical leaders, Assisting the poor, Caring for the sick, and Educating the next generation.”

But Warren won’t go so far as to condemn the legislation itself. A request for a broader reaction to the proposed Ugandan antihomosexual laws generated this response: “The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.” On Meet the Press this morning, he reiterated this neutral stance in a different context: “As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides.”

So he vigorously opposes anything that hinders his PEACE plan… but executing gay people doesn’t qualify? And “I never take sides” my ass. Warren takes sides all the time. He runs around calling abortion a “genocide,” but he can’t bring himself to even condemn a law that forces people to rat out their gay neighbors and mandates the execution of gay people. He should at least be honest: This law is the logical outcome of the hate-filled rhetoric that he and his compatriots have spewed in Africa, so he is simply indifferent.

It’s shameful. And yes, it enables murder and genocide.

“We have nothing to fear from love and commitment”

via The Awl comes this video of New York State senator Diane Savino speaking about marriage equality yesterday. I also loved her speech:

And the speech that really made me lose it was Ruth Hassell-Thompson:

One thing I noticed while watching the senate debates was the diversity of the pro-marriage contingent, and how proponents of fairness and equality so often referenced their own history of discrimination and oppression. The biggest proponents of the marriage equality bill were senators of color, Jewish senators, and women. While Ruben Diaz was a vocal opponent, most of the senators who silently voted “no” are white men.

After Proposition 8 was passed in California, the “blame people of color” meme was loud and strong — even in the face of statistics that refused to bear out any truth to the claim that gay rights failed because of black and Latin@ voters. Now that gay marriage has been defeated in New York — thanks in large part to white senators — the media is silent on the issues of race and ethnicity. Funny how that works.

While the defeat of the marriage bill was painful, many of the floor speeches were beautiful to watch. Take, for example, Eric Adams:

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