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

Month: November 2011

A message to Yashar Ali from a woman: I’d already figured that out, actually, but the affirmation is appreciated

Ladies, for all those times you’ve sat through an argument thinking, “Wow, there’s something wrong with me” instead of, “Wow, what an asshole,” you have official confirmation: Those accusations that you’re just overreacting aren’t real. There’s even a term for it that you’ve never heard before!

You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!

Sound familiar?

…

When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling — that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation, pure and simple.

…

I want to introduce a helpful term to identify these reactions: gaslighting.

Gaslighting is a term often used by mental health professionals (I am not one) to describe manipulative behavior used to confused people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.

Okay, I actually feel kind of bad for reacting to Yashar Ali this way, because he is, by his own admission, fairly new to this form of participation in this form of feminism. I certainly don’t want to imply that he can’t be a feminist, that men shouldn’t try to speak about feminism, or even that men shouldn’t be allowed prominent voices in feminist discussions–I don’t want to discourage any man from getting involved, particularly someone as serious and sincere as Ali appears to be. And judging from some of the comments on his piece at HuffPo and at Ali’s own site, there are women who weren’t familiar with that kind of manipulation or were just grateful to hear it acknowledged, not to mention men who not only didn’t get it but flat refused to get it. The piece is obviously not without merit.

It’s just kind of frustrating to see issues that women have been struggling with and fighting against–and trying to draw attention to–since time immemorial presented as novel, revolutionary discoveries by the newest members of the club.

It’s hard to pin down precisely what it is about the article that bothers me. Maybe it’s the tone (tone!) of voice–Don’t worry, ladies. You’re not crazy; you’re just being manipulated. No, no need to thank me–I’m glad to help. Maybe it’s the helpful introduction to new vocabulary. Maybe I’d be more comfortable about it if it were a message to women from another woman, from someone who’d been on the receiving end of such manipulation. Maybe it’s that that message is one that women have been pouring their blood into–yes, accusations of hysteria, histrionics, and oversensitivity are a frequent and much-beloved weapon against women–and yet again, it takes a man’s voice to draw attention to it. Maybe I’m just jealous.

Maybe it would have been better as a message to men from a man. Please don’t tell me about my sanity (which is its own story), tell me I’m being manipulated (trust me, I know), teach me new words (I knew it already), or let me know that in many areas, women are dismissed and disregarded as a matter of course (it’s actually come up once or twice). Since you have both a voice and an audience, use it to tell men that they do that, if they aren’t already aware. Help them understand the implications. You really do have insight there; share it with men who don’t. As an ally, recruit other allies.

Seriously, you have good things to say, and you have access to a valuable platform to say them from. Just make sure you’re saying them to the people who most need to hear them.

Personhood Amendments and the Pro-Life Long Game

I’m writing in the Guardian today about the real purpose of personhood amendments. A taste:

Pro-lifers don’t actually believe that a fertilised egg is the moral equivalent of a newborn baby – if they did, there would certainly be major pushes for research on why more than half of all these cellular human beings are flushed out of the body and die. (Imagine if more than half of all three-year-olds suddenly dropped dead – we wouldn’t just shrug our shoulders and say, “Well that’s nature!”) What they do believe is that birth control has given women too much freedom. And they realise that if they can change the terms of the debate – just as they did when they rebranded an embryo as a baby – they might make some headway in the long run.

Enter personhood amendments. It’s a great strategy: you say that birth control kills fertilised eggs, then you try to pass a law that would make killing fertilised eggs murder, and then your opponents (logically) respond by pointing out that the proposed law is purposed to outlaw many forms of birth control. Voilà, you’ve just made the fantasy that birth control kills fertilised eggs a political truth. The Mississippi personhood amendment might have lost, but the anti-choice pseudo-science machine had a big win.

Read it all over there.

Stopping Police and DAs from Using Condoms to Convict Sex Workers

By Crystal DeBoise, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine

Last winter, “Sheila,” a sex worker in her early 20s, had just finished her counseling session with me at the Sex Workers Project, and was heading out the door. Sheila was seeking counseling from the Sex Workers Project to help her make a career change, but had no financial support and was still working in the sex industry. I gestured towards our colorful shoebox of condoms, lube and pamphlets about safe sex and reminded her to take whatever she needed. She looked at me as if I were suggesting she walk into the January snow barefoot and said, “Are you crazy? I’m not carrying those things around! You want me to get arrested or something?”

Sheila was referring to a situation in New York that permits the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution, resulting in their collection and confiscation from women who are detained by the police. This practice is an outright slap in the face to the decades of hard work that public health advocates have undertaken to increase safe sex, decrease HIV and create a positive shift in the cultural acceptance of condom use. This policy discourages a stigmatized and marginalized group of sexually active people from carrying the tools they need to be healthy and safe. And this occurs despite the fact that the New York City itself runs a free condom distribution program because “Using a condom every time you have anal, oral or vaginal sex protects you and your partners from getting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases … and prevents unplanned pregnancies.”

Staff at the Sex Workers Project had been seeing police reports of arrested sex workers that listed the possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution for some time. Many of the arrests were not of even sex workers, but, rather, incidents of profiling transgender individuals as sex workers — their personal condoms were confiscated and used as “evidence” of prostitution.

Sentiments like the one Sheila shared have become more prevalent among sex workers, and for good reason. Prostitution convictions have an extremely negative impact on the lives of sex workers.

Arrests themselves are often abusive and traumatic, as well as costly. A criminal record is a major hurdle to joining the mainstream job force. Many jobs require disclosure of crimes or out-and-out disqualify people who have such records. When hired despite their records, those with prostitution-related crimes on their record often face discrimination on the job; others encounter sexual harassment when arrests for prostitution are disclosed. If carrying condoms increases the chance that a sex worker will have to experience these consequences, there’s a difficult decision to be made.

New York State Bill A1008/S323, cosponsored by more than a dozen state senators, would stop police and prosecutors from using possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution in specified criminal or civil proceedings. According to the summary of the bill, it “provides that possession of a condom may not be received in evidence in any trial, hearing or proceeding as evidence of prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, promoting prostitution, permitting prostitution, maintaining a premises for prostitution, lewdness or assignation, or maintaining a bawdy house.”

The explanation for the bill says, “It does not promote public health and welfare if the law discourages prostitutes from carrying condoms. If anything, their use by prostitutes should be encouraged by public policy ….” As of fall 2011, the bill was sitting in Judiciary Committee of the NY State Senate and the Codes Committee of the NY Assembly.

The Sex Workers Project is participating in an active campaign to support the passage of the bill this legislative session. Our online public service announcement explains its importance, and we have an ongoing petition with over 5,600 signatures at Change.org. Thirteen organizations have signed statements in support of the bill, and our staff holds legislative advocacy sessions for sex workers and allies where supporters can join our “pink postcard” campaign to send a message to state senators and assembly members.

Our activism is needed to make sure that this simple health and safety measure is put into place. If the bill passes, sex workers and the general public will be able to feel confident that the condoms they have in their pockets will not be used to assist law enforcement in accusing them of committing crimes.

Who had November 8, 2011, in the office pool?

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Michelle Duggar and her husband Jim Bob are expecting their 20th child, the couple revealed exclusively to TODAY.

“We are so excited,” Michelle Duggar told TODAY Moms before the broadcast. Now three and a half months pregnant, the mom of 19 says she was actually surprised to discover that she’s expecting again at 45. “I was not thinking that God would give us another one, and we are just so grateful.”

In all seriousness, though, the newest Duggar always prompts debates across the feminist blogosphere about the appropriateness of criticizing women who choose to have large families. And certainly it’s generally accepted that it’s antifeminist to tell a mother how (or in what volume) she should parent. And it’s certainly a woman’s choice to be (or not be) a stay-at-home mom, have babies, have tons of babies, and/or measure her proudest accomplishment on the success of her family. (No snark intended there–God knows the world would benefit from a well-rounded and educated next generation.)

But concentrating on that aspect of the large-family discussion misses one essential element of the Duggar superfamily debate: the patriarchal, fundamentalist Christian dogma that influences women like Michelle Duggar to carry 20 pregnancies, particularly in light of #19, which was traumatic (verging on fatal) for both mother and micro-preemie baby.

Read More…Read More…

Kids These Days.

Everyone should read this very excellent piece by Edith Zimmerman.

I guess this may all just be a roundabout way of saying, “I saw something that made me feel old, isn’t that crazy?” To which you say, “No,” and also maybe, “That song sounds terrible.”

Then again, the Internet is a new kind of barometer for keeping track of exactly how old you feel: how many things you don’t get, how many mini-Internet worlds you can’t find the door to; exactly how many crickets in the world you can no longer hear chirping. Unlike in generations past, when (I imagine) you just kept doing what you and your same-aged friends did, and aged into obscurity in comfort on a cloud of your own tastes and generational inclinations, until you died either thinking you all were still the coolest or not caring anymore about being cool, these days the Internet exists in part to introduce you to all these things you didn’t know about, but in part to remind you how much there is out there that you’ll never know about. The Internet is basically like being at a house party and trying to find the bathroom and opening up a door to a room where a bunch of kids are playing a game or doing a drug or having an orgy (metaphorically) or something and you get all flustered and say, “Oh, my God, I’m sorry!” and they all look at you like, “You pervert,” and you quickly slam the door shut. Everywhere you go on the Internet there are rooms you don’t understand, people playing games you don’t know the rules to, teenagers doing drugs you’ve never heard of and can’t even pronounce. And you just walk through the halls of this house party, aging in fast forward, until you open the one last door at the end of the hallway and it’s Death. Ha, ha.

Again, this may be just a truly long-winded way of saying I saw a video that made me feel old.

Don’t even get me started on this. WHY. (Although I do kind of covet her various motorcycle jackets and her bodysuits and her amazing high pony).

Justifications, translated.

“We got rowdy, and we got maced,” Jeff Heim, 19, said rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.” [Translation: You made me hit you by talking back; men who create things that other men like deserve a get-out-of-rape-free card. See also: Polanski defenders who really loved Chinatown].

“I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for JoePa going down,” said a freshman, Mike Clark, 18, adding that he believed that Mr. Paterno had met his legal and moral responsibilities by telling university authorities about an accusation that Mr. Sandusky assaulted a boy in a university shower in 2002. [Translation: It’s not the fault of the person who did the bad act. It’s the fault of anyone who points that out. See also: Calling someone a racist or sexist is worse than actually being racist or sexist].

Some blew vuvuzelas, others air horns. One young man sounded reveille on a trumpet. Four girls in heels danced on the roof of a parked sport utility vehicle and dented it when they fell after a group of men shook the vehicle. A few, like Justin Muir, 20, a junior studying hotel and restaurant management, threw rolls of toilet paper into the trees. “It’s not fair,” Mr. Muir said hurling a white ribbon. “The board is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population.” [Translation: Wahhh waaaaaaaaahh. Yes, it’s the board that is embarrassing your school, and not a 20-year-old man hurling toilet paper into trees while speaking to a New York Times reporter. Also: The “girls in high heels dancing on the roof of a car” line is about the only coverage that female students received in this article. All of the people actually interviewed were men. The girls, I guess, are pretty additions, with their high-heeled dancing to keep the riot sexy].

Paul Howard, 24, an aerospace engineering student, jeered the police. “Of course we’re going to riot,” he said. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?” [Translation: Of course you got hit. What do you expect when you don’t have my dinner on the table when I get home?]

Another student, Caitlin Miller, stood outside Paterno’s house for part of the evening with signs reading “We Are proud of you Joe” and “When Joe told Schultz, he told the police.” [Translation: LOL “facts”].

Scandal overshadows the big day, by Ryan Loy: It’s important to say that the boys identified as victims in the grand jury presentment are the ones who were truly hurt in all of this and can’t be compared to members of the 2011 team. But, the current football program, specifically those who take the field each Saturday, deserve the recognition and support that has been a trademark of Penn State for so long. [Translation: Sure, rape is bad, but let’s focus on what matters: FOOTBALL].

Get it together, guys.

Sure, children were raped, but…

Football!

Seriously, Penn State students who are rioting because the board of trustees fired a man who helped cover up serial child molestation? You all should be ashamed. And if the comments on your school’s facebook page are any indication of the level of intellectual discourse (and basic spelling and grammar skills) you’ve got going on over there, I would suggest you spend more time hitting the books and less time bleating about how Joe Paterno is a victim, too.

I know you all like football. I know a lot of people like football. I know it’s fun and culturally important and for some reason people identify incredibly strongly with Their Team, many to unhealthy levels. But it’s football. It is just football. Feeling personally devastated because someone you trusted made a really terrible decision is one thing; being personally devastated because your identity is so wrapped up in your team that the idea of any member of that team being punished for covering up child rape strikes you as fundamentally unfair is another thing. It is something that should make you seriously reconsider your identity and your values. Being really good at coaching football doesn’t absolve you from looking the other way when you hear about child rape; it doesn’t absolve you from encouraging others not to report child rape to the police.

And perhaps Penn State as an institution should consider why their football coach was the highest-paid employee at the entire university (and, I believe, in the entire state). Perhaps they should consider the kind of culture they foster when pride in their school is wrapped up in a sport which ultimately does very little for society as a whole, but which generates the university large amounts of money at the expense of student athletes who are unpaid and who play a sport that poses significant physical risks. It’s not just one guy raping little boys. It’s a culture that values a game over basic bodily integrity and physical health; it’s a culture that values that game over education, even at an institution of higher learning. Of course, in the context of that culture, a child rapist is going to get a pass if he’s integral to the game. Of course people are going to cover for him, or look the other way, or make small changes so that they can feel better but don’t actually go to law enforcement, which might threaten the game.

There have been a lot of comparisons to the Catholic church pedophilia scandal, and I think those are apt. We’re talking about individuals within relatively powerful institutions; we’re talking about individuals who were very valuable to those institutions, and were handed enormous amounts of power in a culture that revered them. And we’re talking about institutions that placed the end-game ahead of any individuals who made up their support base; we’re talking about institutions that have traditionally been ok with chewing up and spitting out followers and doing very real harm to the bodies of their followers, if that harm can be justified by the fact that it brings them money or power or both. Of course individuals who had virtually unlimited power and whose totally trusting following saw them as god-like abused that power; of course the institutions that put them in those positions of power decided to cover up the various abuses. Of course the victims of abuse weren’t the ones that mattered. Why would they?

The game is all that matters.

On wresting good from stupid: Herman Cain, sexual harassment and sexual assault

This is a guest post by Emily L. Hauser.
With the revelation of what is turning into quite a slew of accusations of sexual harassment and/or assault (“Hey, baby, you’re lookin’ gooood tonight!” [or some such] being the former; grabbing a woman’s inner thigh and pulling her head toward his crotch [the actual accusation that Sharon Bialek has leveled] being the latter) we have an opportunity to wrest some objective good out of this mountain of stupid.