Advice From Two Grizzled Old Feminists

32 thoughts on Advice From Two Grizzled Old Feminists

1. Hmmm. I agree that it’s fairly easy to get men to recognize that things are fucked up for themselves in trying to meet the patriarchical standards. But almost every guy I’ve known, even more reasonably liberal ones, has inevitably expressed skepticism over rapes, arguing for example that it’s impossible that one in four women have been sexually assaulted, etc. They can often recognize their own oppression if you frame it that way, but then deny the existence of violence that women receive. I haven’t found a good way to encourage this type of recognition. I think it’s in part because if the numbers are really like that, then they have to recognize there’s a *lot* of men doing this stuff and they don’t seem to want to face that.

   Thoughts?

2. peanutbutter–

   Well, it depends on how much time you have with a guy. If it’s a one-hour presentation, I don’t waste my time with the guy who’s arguing that sexual assault doesn’t happen. He’s not going to be the ally anytime soon. I dismiss a guy like that by saying something about how numerous studies have shown this to be the case, and I can give him information after the event if he is interested. But if this is someone you actually have a chance to talk to more than once, you can find links to many, many studies that have shown how common sexual violence is, without too much research. There is the Koss study, the Fisher study, and lots of others. These results have also been replicated in many small-scale studies. Your local sociology or women’s studies professor may even have done a survey that looks at prevalence in your town or the local college.

   A couple of helpful links:

   A discussion of this very topic by a bunch of anti-rape advocates is here.

   A list of a few prevalence studies is here.

   I have also found it effective to point out that even if it is one in a hundred women, that’s clearly way too common.

   Oh, and even though a lot of women are being assaulted, it’s important to note that most men are not sexually violent. Most offenders are repeat offenders, and do a lot of damage. But we, as a society, enable them and make them feel justified in their behavior. I’ve found that if you approach a guy as a potential ally in addressing that enabling behavior rather than a potential perpetrator, he tends to respond better.

3. “It is a very rare individual who simply wants to give up their power because it’s “fair.””

   Exactly! That is the very reason I haven’t talked to my boyfriend about how important feminism is to me because I think he will get defensive and tell me something along the lines of “life’s not fair get over it.” But introducing feminism as a prescription for solving the unfair and harmful effects patriarchy has on HIM is great advice. I think it will be a great way to get the conversation rolling. Thank you!

4. I think that a great thing way to go about step one is to show that men are routinely punished for not being manly enough by making them like women. For example, what is a man called when he shows emotion, talks about how he is feeling, or asks for help? A pussy, bitch, maybe gay.

   Asking questions like that allow him to not only identify the immediate problem (“I’m a man who isn’t allowed to express the full range an variety of his emotions”), but to connect them to feminism, patriarchy, and how that harms women (being a woman, having a vagina, talking about concerns, loving men are all terrible things).

5. Actually, this method is exactly the same thing the religious right employs to combat any encroachment on traditional family values, specifically against homosexuality. Blaming and shaming people for their own pain is never a good tactic, nor is it very wise to attempt to deceive people whose trust one wishes to gain. Given the baggage feminism carries with men, particularly the misandry and androphobia that is commonly part of feminism, the best means of discussing the issues men face would be to actually address the issues from men’s perspectives. In this way one is more likely going to find common ground, and that common ground is more likely going to make those men open to listening to one’s positions.

   However, if the ultimate goal is to get men to focus solely on women’s issues by pretending to care about issues that affect to them, it will backfire incredibly fast and incredibly badly because few people are capable of sustaining such a deception sufficiently enough for their ultimate goal not to seep through their rhetoric. To this point, if one were speaking of the issues men face and then suddenly jumped to men raping women, the average man would catch one’s intention and likely stop listening. The reason is because he is not a woman, so talking about female rape does not affect him unless one contends that all men are rapists. It would be more prudent to discuss male rape, particularly considering that 1 in 6 males will be victims of sexual abuse by 16 (40% of which is committed by women, which often has a far worse effect). In this way one could make a comparison for those experiences and make a broader point about society’s treatment of sexual violence. It would be wise, however, to avoid placing blame solely on men by resorting to untested, unproven and unquestioned feminist theories such as “patriarchy.”

   In short, if one lost the attempted indoctrination, one might be able to have the conversation with men one wishes. If one does not, the effect will be the equivalent of the religious right trying to convince gay people adopt their faith. Neither side will listen to each other, the latter because of the rhetoric and the former because of a false believe that their positions are inherently correct and infallible.

6. As someone who feels an internal eye roll on the part of her boyfriend every time I mention some aspect of feminism, I found this really interesting reading. I’ll be checking out the links.

7. 1) I agree that power is the thing, and pretty much the only thing that matter is what people do when they have the whip hand.

   2) I think the advice is useful, but this sort of thing gets a backlash from certain feminists who think the relevant ideology must be centered around the woman. I’m thinking of Suzie‘s response to intersectionality on Echidne’s blog. They will agree some “outreach” can’t hurt, but there will be fights over devoting real resources to that effort or even recognizing women who don’t fit their definition of “woman”. Moving this kind of conversational strategy beyond each feminist by themselves will be difficult.

   3) One of the real problems with this strategy on a mass scale in my mind is that we’re talking about Patriarchy in a more abstract conceptual universe than merely about oppressing women. Most people are going to be simplifying something like that, round off the sharp edges of incomprehension. Trying to relate this to men’s personal struggles with the Patriarchy is going to run smack dab into their narcissism and what will stick will be whatever that resolves the insecurities orbiting the event horizon. I think estimating and evaluating the angles of approach for these conversation will be almost as important. One would have to make it hard for the discussion to revolve around heirachy. That takes out emulation of a person or process, which makes teaching quite hard.

   4) Many of the Patriarchy’s social mechanism are not just a product of dialectical relationship, but are actively courted as a means of social control by elites. Any movement that pushes back is going to be dealing with both conscious and unconscious responses that may result in a confused mess that leaves one beyond ideological comfort. It’s a matter of keeping pushing and mind that one doesn’t get neurotic after you’ve engaged the enemy, so to speak.

8. Thank you for this. It’s really interesting, but just kind of makes me feel sad about the fact that I can’t see what I can do to change anything, let alone convince anyone around me to do.

   I am feminist. Anyone who knows me knows the kind of person I am, whether or not they apply that label. My partner is feminist, though he rejects the word and makes fun of “teh patriachy” to rile me up.

   He calls guys out on being dickwads and when he said to a bunch of guys he was hunting with who were complaining about women being incomprehensible that if he’s feeling confused about his partner’s feelings she’s probably feeling the same and he should ask her. He got asked if he was gay, and just laughed at them.

   I guess we influence the people around us minutely, and that’s cool, but in the name of mental health I seek out like-minded people and I just cannot imagine any inroads in the stubborness of most humans.

9. I’m with Dana. I haven’t had any luck peddling feminism to men. With boyfriends I have worked out uneasy truces. I think they think they are giving up a lot.

   Do people think there’s an analogy to anti-racism as white people experience it? I’m comfortable copping to white privilege all the time, in a way that the men I know don’t cop to male privilege–but maybe that’s just because it’s relatively cheap and easy for me to admit I get goodies that nobody is seriously threatening to remove. Whereas I am dead serious about removing male privilege, and I work at destroying it pretty much every day.

10. I’ll remember this one next time i end up in a political discussion with my unaware classmates (most are ok but some are awful).
    I would like to say I don’t think that being academically inclined necessarily means you’re more likely to accept/endorse the ‘it’s biologically determined’ explanation. A bit of scientific literacy can help to make you question studies mentioned in media. Understand what words they use etc (e.g. ‘objective standards of beauty’ wtf). It just needs to be examined with a critical eye.

11. Good post. I think it’s important to make it clear that highlighting patriarchy is not anti-male, rather anti-patriarchy. If I can quickly plug my new book, “Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy”, the final paragraph reads:

    “I have argued for the rejection of masculine spirituality due to its patriarchal nature and restrictive treatment of gender. But this does not close down in any way men discussing religion and spirituality in terms which resonate with being a man. It opens up a conversation which resonates with any number of ways of being a man (or masculine) that rejects patriarchy. It is a pro-man conversation because it is pro-person, which by necessity must involve the liberation of all people. Feminist and queer theories and theologies have done most of the work in making way for such a conversation. What is needed now is for predominantly straight men to step up and play their part in a process which will benefit the vast majority of people. This is hardly a new or radical suggestion, but its realization remains elusive. Such is the insidious nature of patriarchy. But as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

12. I think this is a good way to start to open the eyes of some men. Its hard to see from the beginning, but EVERYONE loses with the patriarchy (some just don’t quite realize it – maybe they would if they understood the hurt they cause others with their actions).

    It is what opened my eyes. I will freely admit that it was only a matter of months ago that I still treated the concept of ‘feminism’ with ease. All the women in my family, especially my sister, had spoken of feminists as if they were a menace to society. Learning about gender identity, gender roles and specifically the evolution of the concept of masculinity really made me realize that the very idea of what it is to be a ‘man’ was based on completely manufactured and impossible ideals.

    That of course makes you question more, and here I am reading what would shock my dear old mother, heh heh. Play to the male ego and you might get some quite pleasant results.

13. Pingback: “Advice” From Two Grizzled Old Feminists « Toy Soldiers

14. I wanted to direct people to this online resource on men, masculinities and gender issues. http://www.xyonline.net/index.shtml

    There are all sorts of theoretical and practical resources there about how to involve men in forging gender equity/equality. The Men’s Bibliography section is a really impressive resource

    peace

15. Unree

    As someone who’s both white and male, I don’t think parallelising the two is very viable, because they’re not experienced nearly so similarly. It’s pretty easy to admit that being white is all sunshine and cupcakes, because being white is almost never negative. It’s all positive or neutral. (This isn’t strictly true, like say, it is for being cisgendered. I have … once, that I know of … been at a disadvantage because I’m white, but I digress.) It’s different being male, because that gets held against me every day. It also gets used in my favour every day, but it doesn’t have a clear overwhelmingly good association the way whiteness does.

    As a white man (who, hell, is probably generally perceived as the oppressor in every way except that I’m too poor to pay income tax), I think there’s a lot of problem in framing messages to me as “fair treatment” or “equal treatment”, because it invites comparison to their own experiences and expectations, which can really ruin the rapport. If you complain, say, that women who report being raped aren’t taken seriously enough by police, a “fairness” or “equalness” test of the argument’s validity invites me to compare to how I’d expect to be treated if I, as a man, reported being raped to the police, and that involves a lot of pointing and laughing, maybe wedgies. So I’m not a very receptive audience. Better, I think, is to frame it as “just” or “unjust” treatment, and not as a comparison. It’s easy enough to see that not being taken seriously when reporting a rape is unjust, even if it’s hard to see how it’s unfair. (Because we’re comparing to two different standards) Similarly above, there’s talk about the violence that women experience. But when men experience more violence than women, “fairness” or “equality” aren’t what you’re after, but “just” or “moral” or “ethical” treatment.

    The downside is, I guess, that you need to take a line about what it’s like to be a man that’s fairly different from a “typical” feminist narrative. I don’t think there’s any need at all to tell a differnet narrative about what it’s like to be a woman, or compromise at all on how you think women ought to be treated. Just that neither of these depend on what it’s like to be a man, or how men ought to be treated. Don’t deny men’s experiences if you want them to listen. This has some separation of “men in general” from “you, there” that’s usually poorly done. More of us have been raped (3%-10%, depending on who you ask), than have raped somebody (1%-3%, depending on who you ask). The former are probably a lot more sympathetic to feminist causes (given that their gender role gives them no real way to heal beyond walking it off), but are probably going to be turned off when they’re told they’re responsible for rape. I dunno, this last bit is kinda jumbled. But the “Women want just treatment” being a much better focus than “Women want fair treatment” because it’s a comparison to a different benchmark point is, I think, valid.

16. Very good post!

    As for the fairness thing (Man: “Why should I care that women have it worse than men?”), there is an easy comeback:

    Me: “You do realize the logical implications of what you’re saying? If you defend unfairness, you have no defense for yourself. You are basically saying that if someone beat you up or hindered your work – or, say, castrated you – you would just have to live with that.

    You know, it works both ways.”

17. Good post. I think it’s important to make it clear that highlighting patriarchy is not anti-male, rather anti-patriarchy.
    Yes.

    Just like with anyone who is a victim of something one of the main things to reassure them of is its not their fault. I’ve been slowly and surely rethinking my own masculinity and realizing it doesn’t line up with the old male gender role and one of the biggest things I had to learn was that I didn’t create the system as it is today and even if I do benefit from its still not my fault.

18. Do people think there’s an analogy to anti-racism as white people experience it? I’m comfortable copping to white privilege all the time, in a way that the men I know don’t cop to male privilege–but maybe that’s just because it’s relatively cheap and easy for me to admit I get goodies that nobody is seriously threatening to remove.

    Yes. I think you’ve just explained precisely why there are so many white dude “progressives” and even “radicals” who are able to connect with issues of class privilege much more than race privilege, and race privilege much more than gender privilege. It’s always easier to recognize privilege there’s no hope of giving up in your day to day life! Class privilege is easiest because it is the most structural of oppressions, and economic classes are essentially completely segregated. The more someone in a privileged class interacts with members of the oppressed class(es), the more they could actually give up right this moment, if they wanted to.

    I really think the key is getting privileged people to see where they’re getting screwed by their privilege. They always are, in a million ways. It’s just a matter of questioning the basic premise that there are only two possibilities for interaction with others: domination or subjugation.

    I would like to say I don’t think that being academically inclined necessarily means you’re more likely to accept/endorse the ‘it’s biologically determined’ explanation.

    Oh, to clarify, I didn’t mean that at all! I just meant that academically oriented sexists would have a more articulated version of evo psych garbage, not that understanding science would make people believe in biological determinism. In my experience, it’s just the opposite. The biologists I know see that stuff as totally simplistic and unscientific crap.

    @5– Thanks, and glad it was useful. If you’re looking for resources, I didn’t mention it in the post, but bell hooks’ book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love has been well received by every guy I’ve given it to, even one dude who was such a mess of sexist ideas I honestly had no hope for him.

19. Thank you for writing out this list, these seem like really useful and accessible points. Hurrah for sharing activist advice.

    In regards to your comment about most people having some fuzzy view of biological determinism in their head, I’ve found that a good method to make them question that model is to point out that regional accents function a lot like cultural gender roles. Accents are set early on, vary widely based on location, and are often unnoticeable to people who use them because every one else has the same one. Yet, no one thinks that accents are an in-born characteristic, they’re something you learn based on mimicking the people around you. Of course, it’s hardly a perfect analogy, but I’ve found it can be a good way to get people to stop and think instead of reverting to old, cliched “but my little girls naturally like pink! and dolls!” responses.

20. It’s pretty easy to admit that being white is all sunshine and cupcakes, because being white is almost never negative. It’s all positive or neutral.

    I agree that whiteness is less ambiguously pleasant than maleness (I often think that my life is actually much better than some dude trying trying trying to live up to the macho ideal), but I disagree that racism means all positive effects for white people. For example, white people often lack a sense of identity because whiteness has been normalized and made invisible as an identity. Racism means that many people of color who could be incredible friends, lovers, etc. will never trust you completely. Or maybe you’ll never meet them because the society is so segregated. On a broader level, right now health care reform may be permanently stopped because of racism. There are many social programs that would make everyone’s life better that have been stopped with the invocation of racist stereotypes–the boogeyman of people of color using social services and taking advantage of “us.”

    Don’t deny men’s experiences if you want them to listen.

    I think this is key. I’ve not met anyone who feels like their life has been easy or free of suffering. If you try to get a privileged person to buy that they are privileged with this argument, which simply does not describe reality for them, you won’t have much luck.

21. I’ve not met anyone who feels like their life has been easy or free of suffering. If you try to get a privileged person to buy that they are privileged with this argument, which simply does not describe reality for them, you won’t have much luck.
    Exactly. You can hardly expect to bring someone over to your cause if you open up with trying to tell them what their reality is instead of trying to find out what their reality is. You can’t force a round block into a square opening and then wonder why the round block won’t cooperate.

22. Ashley

    Being white has way, way less negatives than being a man. Both personally (anecdotally, I know), and statistically, you can find a lot of drawbacks to maleness, and few (if any!) to whiteness (okay, I know of once in my life when being white was a substantial problem. But I could probably blather on for hours about times when being a man has been a substantial problem.) And yet you feel the need to step in and say “Whiteness isn’t all kittens and rainbows”. This impulse is going to be a lot stronger in men when talking about how great men have it and how shitty women have it, which is a huge part of feminism’s outreach problem. Men are aware of how maleness holds us back all the time (and much less of when femaleness holds women back, and when maleness propels us forwards), so they get unco-operative at a lot of feminist ideas that compare men and women in ways that are completely unrealistic about the difficulties associated with being a man. (Which are often internalised too, but I’m pretty sure if I was a woman, I’d have never thought “I realise I’m bleeding into my brain, but I’m not sure I need to go to a hospital.”)

23. Brian,

    My point was more that racial oppression is problematic for everyone and should be considered something white people have a stake in ending than it was that white people have such a rough time, the poor dears. The oppression olympics for privileged classes strikes me as a pretty silly exercise to take on here at Feministe. If you measure it in terms of how happy people feel, I think life is hard for everyone.

    For some white men, racism has literally meant death because the union got busted with racism, and then they were left without a job, or health care when they needed it, while being male didn’t really matter so much. The intersections of oppressions means that each individual will have different interactions with oppression. What hurts us the most depends on our individual trajectory and relationship to those oppressions.

24. For example, white people often lack a sense of identity because whiteness has been normalized and made invisible as an identity.

    This is something I’ve noticed rather a lot with white Americans in particular – I get the impression white Europeans tend to have more of a concept of their heritage as an ethnic and cultural identity, probably because we’re more exposed to other cultures in a relatively un-Othered context (whether that’s American via movies and the like or other European ones via travelling). Or maybe it’s just me, as several years spent living in the US as a child have given me a very strong sense of my identity that way. At any rate, it’s something I’ve often puzzled over – that many Americans I’ve spoken to seem unable to realise that that in itself is an identity with distinct culture(s) attached to it, when that fact seems very apparent from the outside.

    I’d never properly connected it to racism, but now that you mention it that makes a lot of sense and I’m going to have to mull this over further. And shut up before I derail and/or really overstep my bounds as a not-really-American. 🙂

    I don’t have much to add to the main topic at hand, except that I’ve found pointing out how so many of the things men are supposed to avoid being like are because those things are *associated with women*, and being like a woman is a terrible thing, quite helpful when it comes to trying to explain feminism to people who believe sexism is a thing of the past or are using “but the menz have problems too!” type arguments. People, not just men, as I think this is the one argument that had a real effect when I argued about this with my mother. It tends to be forgotten that the class of people who don’t see the need for feminism and think all that sexist bullshit is in the past doesn’t just include men (I remember the discussion I had about the gender imbalance in mathematics with the female postdoc who didn’t see why a lack of female lecturers or other role models might discourage women with… interest).

25. Hello, I wanted to ask for some help/advice. I’m in uni studying for a Bachelor of Social Work, and I”m mainly interested in Sociology and Human Rights. My university (much to my dismay) does not offer any subjects in women’s studies and my professors, although generally left-leaning and anti-establishment, tend to gloss over feminism, and even paint radical feminism in a bad light. My anthropology professor, whom I had a good relationship with and assumed to be on-board with feminism, mentioned at our first class that he used to run a strip-club. As hard as it was for me I decided to send him an email and call him on it. Here’s the correspondence:
    Me to him: Today, in class, when we were all introducing ourselves with a “interesting fact”, you chose to tell us that you used to run a strip club. I have to say, just hearing that was enough to turn the safe and supportive environment of the classroom into something a little more hostile for me. It wasn’t just the fact that you used to run a strip club; if I had found this out another way I wouldn’t have had an issue with it. It was your choice to tell the class; the smiles amongst the men in the back row. Why did you tell us? So the other men would think you were cool? When one of them shouted the question, “Why did you leave?”, I thought, okay, now (…) is going to make it better. He’s going to tell us that he chose not to be a part of the exploitation he saw and how it inspired him to be part of the solution, which is why he chose to study sociology. But no. Your answer was, “It was owned by the mafia and I had to get out of there cause things were turning bad for me.” I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.

    Before you begin to tell me not to judge things I know nothing about, let me tell you what I know. When I was 22, I worked in The Court Wine Bar in Perth. This was an exclusive wine cellar restaurant where the power elite of Perth spent their days. Their corporate lunches would last from 10 or 11 until 5 or 6, Monday to Friday. It was the old white boys club, not a single woman ever came there. Their talk was all business deals. Top government officials and big business owners made nice. And got drunk. I suffered constant verbal sexual harrassment and sometimes the odd grope. I was offered money for sex many times. These were the people leading our society, feeling so free to behave this way to me, in spite of, or perhaps due to, the very obvious power imbalance between us. I think this is where my feminist sentiments rose to my consciousness, and I first had a great desire to change things.

    The spectre of ending up stripping was always there. One of my girlfriends became a skimpy waitress, and it was very hard to get her out of the industry. The owners of the business had no regard for her safety whatsoever. She was constantly pressured to go further than she wanted to, she was sent to skimpy waitress in small towns, and they would send her in the passengers seat with various truck drivers. She ended up being drugged and raped in one of those towns, and it was so far away there was no way I could get to her. The business would not let her quit her job, so I went in there and told them that she was my sister and she’d left the state and I was there to collect her pay. Walking in there was so disgusting, the attitudes toward me were so obviously disdainful yet lustful at the same time. I felt suffocated from it after just five minutes, and realised just what my friend had been through.
    Another girlfriend did become a stripper in a strip club. That soon turned to prostitution, as is the nature of the business. Another girlfriend got a job hosing jizz off the walls of a peep show room. The pressure on her to become “the act” was huge.

    I’m upset now because I’m in university to try to stop these things. I know you’ve studied and taught Marxism and feminism. You are in a position of authority and power. You are shaping people’s ideas and opinions, not just with the course curriculum but also with your own behaviour. There are a lot of school leavers in that room, boys and girls, whose ideas about our society are still being formed. For everyone in the room to have smiles and laughs on their faces while we discuss the most sexist, exploitative industry in our society sends the wrong message. If you had just been a bouncer, then it wouldn’t be as bad. But to run the club. You must have seen the exploitation. You must have participated. I’m not okay with your decision to disclose this, and especially with the fact that you didn’t follow up with some kind of criticism of the industry. If a professor who’s doing a PHD in sociology can be cavalier about an industry which is so inherently exploitative, that just makes me despair a little. I realise the battle is big, but there are some people who I take for granted to be on my side. You were one of them.
    Him to me:
    Sorry if I have offended you and most especially sorry that my flippant reference to my Club X days left you feeling ‘kicked in the stomach’. That is the last thing I’d want to do. I do tend to be quite open with information both about how the uni works, about myself etc. but in hindsight the reference was indeed cavalier – and would have been much better contextualized.

    I would certainly agree with you that the industry is based in exploitation. Working in Hindley Street in Adelaide you’d have to be blind not to see that. As for participating in the exploitation – mmm, that’s a very good question. At a personal level I have always been the person I am now – I have always cared about people and treating them with respect. In fact I think the measure of person is how they treat people they could get away with treating badly. The hardest thing I found about being in the industry was watching people you care about sink. I would, however, agree that the industry has an inherently exploitative aspect to it – so to that extent, yes, I did participate. Ironically part of my leaving was that the ‘new guys’ were introducing peep shows – something that I had refused install.

    Im not sure that I would agree with you on it being the most exploitative industry in our society (id agree on the sexist bit though). One of the reasons people get trapped in the industry, I think, is that it is often a well payed exploitation that makes the low payed exploitation of so many other jobs untenable. I would have felt worse running a cleaning company hiring migrant women at low wages to clean toilets. It’s a weak defence though.

    Banning strip clubs, peep shows and the like might be a worthy cause. I’d certainly be open to your arguments for it. I don’t think they serve much positive value so it’s hard to come up with much of an argument for them. Yet I’m reasonably sure that banning the sex industry (especially prostitution) would lead to worse exploitation of those who are the most vulnerable. Lastly, and I think it is the most complex question regarding exploitation and banning, is the role of women’s choice to be in the industry. In my experience women are in the industry for a myriad of reasons, for some it was the fastest way out of exploitative personal relationships, to give their kids a better life than the pension, the legally safest way to maintain their drug habit etc. Its sad that there are not better opportunities – less potentially damaging and exploitative ones – but shutting down the industry might just close down women’s options (problematic options though they may be).

    In summary I guess I’m more on your side than you might think, but less than you might have expected.
    Me to him:Thanks for your response.
    To be honest, it wasn’t easy at all to write you with my feelings about it, I’ve never been good at confrontations. But I think it’s important that I find my voice, and being able to do that, although difficult, is a big and important step for me. I feel women are trained to be “nice” and blame themselves, and we need to learn that our opinions are valid and should be voiced.

    First I want to say that I do believe that in all your life capacities you were caring and respectful to the people around you. I’ve seen consistently in you your care and respect for all your students, and your patience and desire to see even the slowest ones or the most trying of us achieve our full potential. I’m sorry I expressed myself in what came across as a personal attack. It was more rage against the entire patriarchy in my email, rather than against you as an individual.

    Second I do want to argue with a couple of your points:

    The fact that you question why women choose to remain in the sex industry highlights to me the very different world experience of women and men. From earliest childhood, girls are indoctrinated with the idea that to be a girl is to be pretty/sexy. That our entire worth as a person is directly correlated to our beauty and sexual desirability. It’s both explicit and implicit, from our parents, friends, and entire society. But it’s not just about beauty and sexuality for its own sake. We soon begin to understand that it’s about the pleasure we provide to men. Women do almost everything in their lives with the aim of being desirable or pleasing to men. If you are not, then you are a failure, a misfit.
    Right alongside that is the contradictory judgement of women who are TOO sexy, enjoy it a little too obviously, take control of their own sexuality or use it for their own purposes (as all men do) as being sluts or whores.

    When you grow up with all these messages, you learn that there is power in your sexuality which is normally used against you, but there is the idea there that you could actually use it to empower yourself the way men do. Yet when you attempt to address the inequality in this way, you are instantly throwing away your value in the eyes of society. The messages that you are now worthless, a slut, an object to be used, are so strong that you begin to believe it. The loss of dignity, pride, identity and your own sexuality that follows is devastating to your personality and you may never recover.

    To say that someone who makes clothes in a factory for next-to-no wage is more exploited than a sex worker reduces the exploitation of the sex worker to one dimension. It is now simply the standard worker exploitation that Marx wrote about. But the levels of exploitation involved in the sex industry are so much deeper and more complex. Girls are set up for this exploitation virtually from birth. This is the stealing of souls.

    I would never attempt to dismantle the legal sex industry! As you so correctly pointed out, this would severely worsen the problem. But if, during my lifetime, I am able to challenge or even shake the ideologies that trap women into this self-image, and allow men, leaders of our communities to complacently enjoy the services of such women, then I will be very proud of my life.

    Anyway, it was good for me to be able to air all this and to have the courage to think about why I was so offended. I guess the fact that I was shocked shows that I do have a high opinion of you. I’m still looking forward to next anthro class, I’ve been enjoying the lectures and I find you to be a wealth of knowledge.
    I didn’t recieve a response to this although I know he read it.
    I feel like I’m floundering here, unsure of myself. Any wisdom or advice or support would be gratefully received.

26. One groundswell thing to do is to make it “cool” to support women and getting male headlining music and comedy acts to play feminist events is a good way. Also, and I know how this causes people to flame out, never underestimate female pressure and standards. I’ll say specifically that men are confused by some women wanting to be “traditional” and stay at home moms and others who want to have, gee, a life with a career and more untraditional arrangements. Women can discuss this together and see the distinction but men don’t get it. They don’t see “choices” – they see “right” and “wrong.” They see any debate as a “woman” thing, while they will gladly get involved in “green” or “racial equality” issues. More men are probably cool with same sex marriage equality than looking at actual equality in the ways men and women work and live!

    Women often work so hard to be sure that there is no impact on a man in marriage, and a groundswell thing to do is to work with those we are closest to.

    We often think about feminists being supportive of other women’s choices, but women who stay at home should also be supportive and vocal to their husbands of more nontraditional choices they did not make and get them involved in feminist values.

27. As another suggestion, I’d love to see the power of so many mom-bloggers taken with collective feminist action at all the same time. Even this: a union of mom bloggers saying they will try this action within their marriage or do this bit of feminist activism to open up the thinking about women – all of them this week, then blog about it. Something along those lines. Maybe they could all take their husbands to a feminist event or act on some change in their relationship.

28. A missing part of the formula for getting guys involved in feminism is creating a tangible way for men to discuss and develop men’s ideas on feminism – a community.

    This is exactly why we started The Guy’s Guide to Feminism: as an open starting place for guys in particular to engage in feminism and speak out about new and emerging views on what it means to be a man in context of feminism.

    Feel free to join the discussion at guysguidetofeminism.blogspot.com.

29. I just wanted to make a point on the whole ‘biology or society’ debate. You can’t just throw the biological explanations out, because there is actually a lot of validity in them.

    The problem with the debate is that too many people see it as nature VS nurture, instead of trying to figure out how the two influence each other. I agree, you can’t just say that men are violent because they’re biologically agressive – that’s a big load of BS, as we all know.

    But we can say that in early human societies, stronger, more aggressive men tended to live longer, and provide better for the group. Because of this, the women may have created a societal preference for this type of man, meaning that the genetic traits for these ‘desirable’ qualities became more widespread.

    Such qualities are less prized in the modern world, as they are less useful, so are now less socially desireable, but we are still left with the biological legacy of previous societies.

    Remember, women created the men who created patriarchy! 😉

30. Kezmoo,

    Your assertions are not backed up by any research I know of my anthropologists or scientists studying primate behavior. Further, the article I cited in my post, which you obviously did not read, debunks the claim that more aggressive men have an evolutionary advantage.

31. Kezmoo,

    “Remember, women created the men who created patriarchy! ;)”

    So without knowing which of the myriad possible offensive meanings you particularly wanted that sentence to carry, I’m just going to go with the universal parts of it.

    “Remember,” – Can we please not be condescending?

    “Women created the men…” – Can we please not imply that patriarchy is ultimately the fault of women? Original sin imputations besides, it’s just a bit obnoxious.

    “;)” – Can we please not add the “I know what I’m saying is offensive, but lol, I’m winking at you, so suck it up you humourless feminist” smileys?

    And oh look, I’ve been sidetracked into an OT discussion. Again.

32. I thinkk it’s helpful to start with what people’s own experience, and oppression is almost always more visible than privilege.
    I think a lot could be gained by improving the dialogue about how men are oppressed, and what they have to gain from feminism, and listening to men’s side of things. It’s hard to be sympathetic to someone who you feel has no interest in your experience and well being.
    In my experience, especially with other men, gender based oppression and privilege is really not obvious at all to a lot of people. I think it would shed some light to help people think about their own experience through a gendered lens.

Comments are currently closed.