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

Month: September 2010

Objectivity and Neutrality

RMJ (also known as Rachel McCarthy James) is a twentysomething who grew up in Kansas and currently lives in Virginia. She blogs about feminism and stuff at Deeply Problematic, where this was originally posted.

Objectivity is a keystone of journalism that extends to institutions like Wikipedia; the idea that we can somehow remove our selves from the things we think about and the contexts we exist is a bizarre USian fantasy akin to the classist racist American dream. It has its unpragmatic value: it hopes that just the facts will be enough, and that those recording those facts will report them without considering themselves, focusing on only the subject at hand.

But for my writing, commenting, and reporting? Objectivity and neutrality are not constructive mantras. I am a feminist writer, and I am not here to give my readers the party line: I am not here to give them the objective and irredeemably kyriarchal point of view. Instead, I focus on giving people basic facts and then making it clear what I think about it. I try to make my perspective, my biases, my point of view crystal clear – not obscured.

Objectivity is functionally a way to reflect and uphold and insist upon what is normal and okay and what is excluded: what is not normal and not okay. There are too many facts about any given situation to be able to divine a clear and central set of descriptions and explanations in any depth. And even then, seemingly small things like pronouns can betray a supposedly objective point of view.

Worship of objectivity shores up our idealization of what is normal, for normalcy often represents antifeminist points of view. When navigating the combustible waters of social justice, normal is a term tainted beyond any utility. In a world where some bodies are less and other bodies more, where bodies can be wrong and right, normal implies an objective standard that all other bodies must live up to.

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Fears

Wile E. Coyote holding a "HELP" sign

Like many of the folks over at NY Mag (and, I suspect, most New York City residents), I also wildly fear being pushed onto the subway tracks, being murdered in the back of a cab, being doored by a parked car, and finding rats in my cupboards. It has also crossed my mind that I may be smooshed by a falling air conditioner unit, because no one installs those things properly. And, what do you know, that happened:

There were no brackets on the unit that plummeted from the sixth floor of 65 Second Avenue yesterday. It fell from the window of Bruce Fuller’s apartment and, after smashing through the awning of WineBar, landed on the head of 67-year-old Vietnam vet Anthony Franzese. But there is a silver lining to this tale: Franzese did not die, and in fact, was found only to have minor injuries after being taken to Bellevue Hospital. And since he and Fuller, the AC unit’s owner, are friends, Fuller is taking care of Franzese’s Shih Tzu while he is incapacitated.

CHRIST.

I was particularly afraid of the AC-on-the-head thing when I lived in the East Village — my apartment was across the street from Wine Bar, actually — and I knew that half the neighborhood was young kids like me who were generally inept at anything involving tools or physical labor, and lived in tenement buildings owned by absentee landlorders and maintained by generally stoned or otherwise not-the-sharpest supers. My own super (who was both regularly stoned and not the sharpest) installed our showerhead upside down and could not for the life of him figure out a Plan B when I pointed out this mishap (I ended up duct taping a hand-held shower head to the upside-down holder, and showered like that for a year before finally just buying and installing a new fixture myself). Anyway, point being, I suspect that most AC units in those old East Village buildings are installed by total yahoos who stick them in the window and hope that they stay put. I know mine sure was. So I always avoided walking too close to the walls of those buildings in the summer time (also because AC units are drippy, and I’m kind of convinced that the drips are pure freon and are going to burn my skin off or at least give me cancer).

It’s pretty terrifying to realize that my fear of getting Wile E. Coyote’ed by an air conditioner came true for someone. And at a bar that I once went to, even though it’s a terrible bar with terrible over-priced wine and douchey clientele (I was being passive-aggressive towards a then-boyfriend who I knew would hate it. I probably deserved to get smashed by a falling AC unit for that!). And yes, I am aware that I am doing the thing where something bad happens somewhere and some annoying person goes, “Oh my God, I was there once!” as if that puts them in Very Close Proximity To Tragedy — see, e.g., “I once went to the World Trade Center!”

Regardless, I will never walk or sit under an air conditioner again.

My other big-city fears: Falling through those metal doors on the street that lead to restaurant basements (which never seem to be securely closed); falling through the sidewalk grates; being killed by an exploding manhole; being killed by scaffolding; being killed by someone who is hiding out within an elaborate maze of scaffolding and blue-painted wood walls; being killed by a falling window-washer or a window-washer’s supplies; being killed by someone who breaks into my apartment; bedbugs; having a rat run over my feet while I’m waiting for the subway; contracting some sort of horrific disease from touching the subway poles; being attacked by pigeons; and contracting some sort of horrific disease from being attacked by pigeons.

I cannot be the only one. What do you irrationally fear about where you live?

Car Repair is Women’s Work

By Ann Farmer, republished with permission from On The Issues magazine.

Car mechanic and mother Audra Fordin dons her work gloves to do a grease job on an automobile in her shop in Queens, New York. She’s so comfortable under the hood that she’s embarked on a mission to teach other women the basics of auto repair in monthly classes called, “What Women Auto-Know,” donating proceeds to help fix the cars of women in need.

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On the Issues magazine is inviting others to send in short videos on the topic of nontraditional employment. Send inquiries to On the Issues and check out their video library on YouTube.

The Alt-Sex Anti-Abuse Dream Team

This is a post by pro-BDSM activist Clarisse Thorn, who blogs at Pro-Sex Outreach, Open-Minded Feminism.

BDSMers face a lot of stigma around our sexuality, and this can be a major problem when BDSMers are trying to deal with abusive situations. I’ve written before about generally negative conceptions of BDSM — they can briefly be summarized as:

* S&M is wicked,
* abnormal,
* a sign of mental or emotional instability,
* inherently abusive,
* or even antifeminist.

Given this climate, it’s not surprising that two things almost always happen when BDSM and abuse come up:

1) People of all genders who are abused are often unwilling to report. People of all genders who are abused within BDSM relationships tend to be particularly unwilling to report. Victim-blaming is already rampant in mainstream society — just imagine what happens to, for example, a woman who has admitted that she enjoys being consensually slapped across the face, if she attempts to report being raped. And that’s assuming the abuse survivor is willing to report in the first place; ze may prefer not to negotiate the minefield of anti-SM stereotypes ze will be up against, ze may be afraid of being outed, etc.

2) Members of the BDSM community sometimes push back against real or perceived anti-SM stigma by talking about how abuse is rare within the BDSM community. This BDSM blog post and comments claim that not only is abuse within the community rare, but abusive BDSM relationships seem more likely to happen outside the community. In fact, if you look then you can find posts from submissive women who found that getting into the BDSM community, being exposed to its ideals and concepts, helped them escape or understand their past abusive relationships.

I tend to think that #2 is a really good point — particularly the bit about how abusive BDSM relationships are more likely to happen outside the community, due in part to lack of resources and support for survivors. For this reason, I tend to stress the role of the community in positive BDSM experiences, and I encourage newcomers to seek out their local community. But lots of people don’t have access to a local community at all, especially if they’re not in a big city. Plus, lots of people have trouble enjoying their local community for whatever reason, perhaps because they have nothing in common with local S&Mers aside from sexuality, or because they don’t have time to integrate into a whole new subculture.

There’s also the unfortunate fact that point #2 sometimes reacts with point #1 in a toxic way — that is, it can ironically be harder for abuse survivors to talk about abuse within the BDSM community because the community is pushing back so hard against the stereotype of abusive BDSM. I’ve spoken to BDSMers who feel that the S&M community pushes back far too hard, and that survivors are being aggressively silenced simply because the rest of us are so invested in fighting mainstream stereotypes. I have never personally experienced this, but I would not be surprised if I did. And the fact is that I’m sure there are toxic dynamics in some BDSM communities — we aren’t a monolith, folks — and that even in 100% awesome communities, I’m sure there are at least a few abusive relationships. And even one abusive relationship in the community is obviously too many.

As Thomas MacAulay Millar wrote when the most recent abusive BDSM case hit the media, “Our declaration that the abusers are not us has to be substantive.” This is something we should be taking action on. But how?

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“Thanks for the tacos, now get out of our country”

From an article on the Brooklyn Tea Party:

Dr. John Press, president of the Brooklyn Tea Party, doesn’t believe in multiculturalism. Instead, he believes in “culturism.”

Press believes in America’s roots as a Judeo-Christian society, and as such, his group believes in an adherence to the values associated with Judeo-Christian cultures.

“When they say that all cultures are our friends, and anybody who supports having a border is racist, they undervalue us and do us a disservice, and quite frankly endanger the continuation of America,” Press said. “That’s why we’ve got to replace multiculturalism with culturism.”
…
The organization was the brainchild of Press and a few friends, who had seen the Staten Island Tea Party achieve success. What began as small meetings at a local pizza shop grew through word of mouth, paper flyers, and a Facebook page. Now the group meets every Sunday at Kosher Hut on King’s Highway.
…
Press says he is not a racist, but instead a “culturist.” He says that multiculturalism does not work, and that all countries have a core set of cultural aesthetics — like Judeo-Christian teachings in America, for example — they need to sustains themselves as nations.

“If this was racism, there would be no hope, because people are not going to change their skin color,” Press said. “But this is culturism. People can change their culture.”

People sure can change their culture and assimilate and leave their own practices and belief systems behind when they come to the United States. But historically, that’s not exactly how it’s worked.

You keep on enjoying the Kosher Hut in Brooklyn, Mr. Press.

Yes, I’m sure immigrants are crossing the desert by foot for the free water

I can’t believe that this is even a dispute, or that there are people who seriously think it should be illegal to leave jugs of water out for desperate immigrants walking across the Arizona desert.

Two years ago, Daniel J. Millis was ticketed for littering after he was caught by a federal Fish and Wildlife officer placing gallon jugs of water for passing immigrants in the brush of this 118,000-acre preserve.

“I do extreme sports, and I know I couldn’t walk as far as they do,” said Mr. Millis, driving through the refuge recently. “It’s no surprise people are dying.”

Mr. Millis, 31, was not the only one to get a ticket. Fourteen other volunteers for Tucson-based organizations that provide aid to immigrants crossing from Mexico to the United States were similarly cited. Most of the cases were later dropped, but Mr. Millis and another volunteer for a religious group called No More Deaths were convicted of defacing the refuge with their water jug drops.
…
But opponents say the water drops are encouraging immigrants to continue to come across the border illegally. The critics say there ought to be Border Patrol agents stationed near the water stations to arrest those who are crossing illegally as soon as they finish drinking. So furious are some at the practice of aiding immigrants that they have slashed open the water jugs, crushed them with their vehicles or simply poured the water into the desert.

Yes, I’m sure that undocumented people, crossing the Arizona desert, are really only doing it because they know there will be free water.

Mr. Millis, a former high school Spanish teacher who now works for the Sierra Club, disputes the notion that leaving out water jugs is luring more immigrants. He said it was border enforcement efforts that had pushed those seeking to cross into dangerous desert areas.

As for spoiling the environment, he said he collected as many jugs as he left behind. He also recounts how he found the dead body of a 14-year-old Salvadoran girl near the refuge days before he was ticketed.

Water jugs aren’t the problem.

Wrong bra gets lawyer barred from visiting her client

Also, no bra:

Attorney Brittney Horstman was not packing heat.

She was wearing an underwire bra.

And when the metal detector went off on a visit to the Miami Federal Detention Center, security guards wouldn’t let Horstman in to see her client.

The attorney reminded guards of a detention center “memo” allowing female attorneys wearing an underwire bra to enter. But the guards would not relent.

Horstman stepped into a bathroom and removed her bra. In blouse and jacket, she returned, and cleared the walk-through detector.

Again, guards refused to let her pass — now, because she was braless, which is against prison dress code guidelines.

Nice.

Thanks to Tom Foolery for the link.

Walk-Outs

The United States delegation to the United Nations, and at least 32 other delegations including the whole of the European Union, walked out on a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran after Ahmadinejad went on a 9/11 Truther rant. He claimed that the US government orchestrated the Sept. 11th attacks in order to rescue its economy, exert its influence in the Middle East and protect Israel (what?).

I’m personally of the mind that all world leaders, no matter how terrible, have a place at the UN. But when they go on bizarre anti-Semitic and conspiracy-laden rants? Yeah, walk out.

If only our elected officials would do the same to the Birthers and other bigoted conservative American conspiracy theorists.

Now seems like as good a time as ever for this:

[Video description: Andy Samberg and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine serenade Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Lyrics here]