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

Ask Me Anything, And I Will Answer, part 2

Jill

Continuing from Part 1, I’m answering your questions about feminism. And again, feel free to critique my answers, ask follow-up questions, or add your own answers in the comments.

1. From Tuomas, “How do you define a feminist? Is anyone who calls herself/himself a feminist, if not what sentiments is one required to share in order to be called a feminist?

How does feminism measure its success, which statistical measurement devices would you consider important? What about failures (can it fail)?”

Very loosely, I define a feminist as someone who believes in universal human rights, and that rights shouldn’t be contingent on your sex organs. A feminist no doubt recognizes biological differences, but further recognizes that men and women are vastly more the same than they are different, and that biological differences don’t justify differences in social, economic, or political treatment. One could not, then, call oneself a feminist and promote policies or belief systems which position women as subordinate to men. Don’t believe that women should be paid on par with men? Don’t believe that women deserve the right to vote? Don’t believe that women deserve full economic, social, and physical self-determination? Then you aren’t a feminist, in my eyes. But again, that’s broad, and there are many different types of feminsim which are at odds with mine, but which I can still recognize as feminist belief systems.

I’m not sure how feminism measures its success. The most obvious way, of course, is looking for parity in law, which is fairly easy to gauge. What isn’t so easy to gauge is social parity, and fairness in the way that those laws are applied. We can also gauge things like poverty levels, access to healthcare, hours worked in and outside of the home, and general economic well-being. Those are important measures, but they obviously aren’t exhaustive.

As for failues, I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking — how we measure failues? That, I’m not sure about, aside from looking at the above-listed measures and recording the areas in which we go backwards. If you’re asking what feminism’s failures have been, well, I’m not sure that “failure” is the best word, since it seems a little strong. But feminism (or, to be more clear, feminists) have certainly dropped the ball on a few issues. When it comes to international women’s rights, I think that Western feminists have been a little to quick to impose our cultural framework on others, without allowing non-Western feminists a place to speak and be heard and divise their own solutions. I think that feminism could certainly use a PR make-over, but I don’t blame feminists for that, I blame conservatism and backlash culture.

2. From Unsure, “consentual BDSM. Be it the male or the female who holds the ‘power’ in a scene (in porn, in 24/7 relationships, or just in people’s fantasies and experiments), I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the relationship between current patriarchal culture and S&M. Also, when done with love/care/affection, can such a sexual practice coexist with feminism as you understand it?”

Ah this is a tough topic for me. My short answer: Yes, BDSM can certainly coexist with feminism as I understand it.

My long answer: BDSM, like all other sexual practices, fetishes, fantasies and areas of enjoyment, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It wasn’t conceived of in a vacuum. I’m not sure that anyone can engage in overtly power-based sexual acts and argue that getting off on that exchange of power has absolutely nothing to do with patriarchal society. That’s part of the fetishization of power: Getting off on either acting out that traditional power to the extreme, or flipping that traditional power on its head. Would BDSM still exist in an entirely gender-neutral society? Maybe, because people get off on power. But, like porn, I think it would look really different.

Fetishization of power isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Where I get frustrated is with the perspective of, “I like it, so it’s ok.” We saw that a lot in the Great Blowjob Wars of 2006, and I suspect we’d see if again if BDSM was discussed in-depth on a lot of feminist blogs. Sexually, we like what we like. Some of us like blowjobs. Some of us like BDSM. Some of us have rape fantasies. Some of us like missionary and nothing more. Some of us are abstinent by choice. Some of us like to watch or even create porn. Some of us are sex workers. All these choices and areas of sexual enjoyment are completely valid, but they aren’t above feminist discourse. And all of them are influenced by patriarchal culture, norms and values.

BDSM, in my opinion, can be, like blowjobs, “patriarchy-approved.” I will admit that images of women tied up or appearing to be injured or tortured really, deeply bother me. Hearing that many women have rape fantasties really, deeply bothers me. And getting to the root of these things is important, and it inevitably involves examining gender issues.

But I don’t think that one’s sexual practices negate one’s feminism (with a few exceptions, the most obvious of which is rape — it’s pretty hard to be a rapist and a true feminist). I do, however, think that one’s feminism requires one to take a good hard look at their own sexual practices. Those practices don’t necessarily have to change just because they’re patriarchy-approved in some way or another (not to say that all BDSM activity is patriarchy-approved; I don’t think it is). But awareness is important. And in my experience, knowing exactly what you’re buying into (or fucking with) while you’re doing it can make sex all the hotter.

There is, of course, a line, and that line is crossed when actual harm (physical, mental or emotional) is being done to your partner. But from my understanding of the BDSM community, this is rarely the case.

3. From Werty, “can feminism ever be a conservative ideology?”

Well, that would depend on how you define “conservative” (and how you definie “feminist”). Can it be socially conservative, according to the current incarnation of what social conservatism means? I don’t think so. But I’ve encountered some conservative feminists in my day who are pretty damn incredible, so I’m not going to write off conservative or libertarian-identified women from this movement. There are also lots of feminist women in more conservative societies working within those frameworks to bring women’s rights to their countries. They may be religious, and fairly conservative from my vantage point, but in their own culture context they’re incredibly progressive and doing great work.

It is difficult, though, to reconcile feminism with conservatism. However, it’s much easier to reconcile feminsim with fiscal conservatism or small-government conservatism. I do think it’s possible to subscribe to the theory that our government should generally stay out of our lives and still be a feminist. It gets tricky when dealing with institutional discrimination and strategizing solutions — small-government feminists probably aren’t going to be the biggest fans of using government-sponsored social programs to combat discrimination and alleviate suffering — but certainly not impossible.

Further, I’ve met many women who are personally conservative, but who don’t believe that their social or religious views should translate into policy that affects all women. Conservative women of that stripe can certainly be feminists. And if conservatives can be feminists, then I suppose feminism can be part of a conservative ideology.

4. From hedonistic, “I need help answering the question I receive FREQUENTLY at my site (got one this morning!) as to why feminists can’t solve all the problems stemming from oppression in OTHER countries before presuming to “whine” about oppression at home.”

Ha. We get this a lot, too, and my answer is generally that we need to clean our own house before we go around trying to fix up everyone else’s. I would also say that it’s inherently misogynistic and bigoted to assume that there aren’t already women in these other countries fighting for their rights. I would hope that women around the world are open to community-building and helping each other, but no one wants a group of people who are unfamiliar with their situation coming in and telling them exactly how they should run things in their movement.

Feminists are also able to multi-task. As bloggers, we can write about more than one thing in the course of a day. Just because we cover a local issue doesn’t mean that we can’t also cover international issues in the same day, or the same week, or the same month. And the fact is that proximity matters. We’re better equipped to combat discrimination and sexism at home than we are in, say, Yemen. And we recognize that while we are happy to be of help to other women wherever we’re needed, there already are fantastic, motivated women in all countries around the world doing good feminist work. We trust them to do what they’re doing, and don’t feel the need to step on their toes or second-guess them, when we know very little about where they’re coming from. They’re also likely to be far more effective in their own countries than we, as strangers, could ever be.

5. Exangelena asks, “What do sex-positive feminists believe? (and, what I’d really like to know, what do sex-negative feminists or sex-negative people believe?)”

Sex-positive feminism, as I understand it, stemmed largely out of the “sex wars” of the 1980s between anti-pornography feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon and other feminists who opposed efforts to censor pornography. It basically argued that pornography, sex work, etc isn’t inherently demeaning towards women, and that sexual freedom is a key component to the feminist movement.

As for “sex-negative” feminists, well, I’m not sure that they exist in any organized way. Part of the problem with a term like “sex-positive” is that it implies that anyone who doesn’t adhere to the sex-positive viewpoint is, in fact, sex-negative. That obviously isn’t the case, and is one reason why I take issue with the term “sex-positive”; a lot of feminists who don’t fall into the sex-positive category simply take issue with pornography, or sex work, or objectification of women sold as “empowerment.” Sex-positive feminists will often argue that pornography isn’t inherently bad (something I would actually agree with), but in my experience, get a little defensive whenever something sex-related is critiqued, be it porn or prostitution or blowjobs.

Sex-positive feminists have also been key in breaking down barriers for LGBT people in the feminist movement, and for that I’ll give them a lot of credit (many traditional feminists have been great on this issue as well, so I don’t want to downplay their work — but sex-positive feminists really made it a cornerstone of their movement). Sexuality and sexual orientation have historically been tricky issues for feminists. We’ve seen lesbian separatist movements, hetero feminists who fear being associated with a “lavendar menace,” discrimination against trans women, etc. And the sex-positive feminists have addressed these issues head-on.

“Sex-negative” feminists, in my opinion, aren’t actually sex negative at all. I used to identify as a sex-positive feminist because, as a general rule, I don’t think that pornography should be censored; I think sex work should be decriminalized; and I believe that women can genuinely enjoy pornography and erotica. But I think that there are serious problems with pornography, sex work and sex in general as they’re currently constructed, and I think that those problems need to be addressed. I think we need to discuss them, and to recognize that our desires and our sexual practices are shaped by a patriarchal society, and just because you enjoy something sexually or get off on a particular sexual practice doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s empowering, or even ok from a feminist perspective. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to criticize these practices, as long as we aren’t attacking the women themselves who engage in them. From the perspective of some sex-positive feminists, this makes me “sex-negative.” I think it just makes me a liberal feminist.

So there are some issues with the terminology, which underscore the ideological divides.

6. From exangelena, “What is your take on the relationship between beauty or beauty culture and feminism?”

First, I think there’s a huge difference between beauty and beauty culture. My personal view is that beauty is a wonderful thing. Aesthetics are important. What I have a problem with is the over-emphasis on a culturally-constructed standard of physical beauty, and a gendered requirement as to who has to focus their efforts on achieving that beauty. As it stands, women are the beauty class — beauty is supposed to confer greater benefit on us than just about any other attribute, and as a group we put far more time, money and effort into achieving beauty than men do. Socially, women are required to fit a particular physical standard that men just aren’t. In many industries, expensive and sometimes painful clothing and beauty items are required — high heels, make-up, “professional” hair-dos (i.e., no natural hair for African-American women), maintaing a certain weight, etc. That’s a problem. So my feminism takes issue with a beauty culture that puts the burden on women to be beautiful, over-emphasizes the importance of physical beauty, and pretends that there is a narrow definition of “beautiful” that women must strive for. It doesn’t take issue with beauty itself.

More soon.

15 thoughts on Ask Me Anything, And I Will Answer, part 2

  1. I speak only for myself here, but it’s not often that I see someone who does not do or have any particular affinity for BDSM write five paragraphs in a row about BDSM that I agree with. Well done.

  2. There is, of course, a line, and that line is crossed when actual harm (physical, mental or emotional) is being done to your partner. But from my understanding of the BDSM community, this is rarely the case.

    What Thomas said, except for this. I don’t think that it’s more common than in non-BDSM relationships, and I think that a lot of players have some very good systems in place to protect people from it. However, “rarely the case” sounds like wishful thinking to me, and I think that self-congratulation is the worst possible way to keep it from becoming more widespread.

  3. You’re right. I phrased that really poorly. I was trying to counter assumptions around BDSM that it’s inherently physically and psychologically harmful. I didn’t mean to imply that physical/mental/emotional harm is any less common in the BDSM community than in the general population. I just meant that it’s not a requisite part of practicing BDSM.

  5. Piny, I do think that being self-congratulatory decreases the actual protection of community norms, which work by increased watchfulness. However:

    (1) I think what Jill said is more true to the extent one talks about the narrow, self-defined and often political “community,” and less true as BDSM becomes more accepted among folks who have no real connection to a “community” except as consumers of cultural trends. As one “community leader” told me once, before the mid-90s, BDSM was passed down hand-to-hand. The established folks at parties and clubs would take newbies under their wing and teach things like skills, and, more importantly, norms. Now, I think that folks are putting ads up as doms and subs on the web, having never seen anyone else swing a flogger and having talked to nobody about how to negotiate limits and triggers and the contours of a scene. (That’s not to say that folks in the big orgs are perfect; as a friend said to me once, “those people have been rejected for leadership positions in everything else, including bowling leagues.)

    I’m especially bothered that there appears to be a whole universe of porn that tries to ride the greater acceptance of BDSM, but that incorporates nonconsent into the narrative (and especially into the advertising). Fortunately, there is a trend the other way, where some porn aimed at the BDSM community is explicit about the consensual frame of the scene, sometimes using before- and after-scene interviews to make it clear that the in-scene power imbalance is limited to the scene itself and that the participants are having fun.

    (2) self-congratulation is probably somewhat unavoidable for a community that has to get the message out that what it does is not abuse. We have to continually make clear to the opponents and naysayers that we have limits and safewords and value meaningful consent, etc. In doing that, the tendency may be to convince ourselves that we never fuck up — and saying what you said is probably the only thing we can do to keep ourselves on our toes.

    Ultimately, all I claim for BDSM as a broad community on issues on meaningful consent and the absence of abuse is that I think we are better than the general population. I know some folks are working on empirical research (I’ve been a subject), and I hope the data confirms my impressions.

  6. I used to be very defensive in conversations about pornography, but I’ve come around recently. It has nothing to do with content, however, and everything to do with the industry. I have no problem with any image being expressed, as such – particularly relevant to drawn erotica or written works. It’s just that the production of same is highly unlikely to come about in any palatable way. The government spends all of its time cracking down on kiddie porn – isn’t there a solution that instead tries to crack down on the coercion? Requiring all participants to be free of illegal drugs, for example, would likely be unenforceable, but still take out a nasty path.

  7. However, it’s much easier to reconcile feminsim with fiscal conservatism or small-government conservatism. I do think it’s possible to subscribe to the theory that our government should generally stay out of our lives and still be a feminist. It gets tricky when dealing with institutional discrimination and strategizing solutions — small-government feminists probably aren’t going to be the biggest fans of using government-sponsored social programs to combat discrimination and alleviate suffering — but certainly not impossible.

    This, I think, is very true. I’m not necessarily a fiscal conservative, but I have a lot of respect for this line of thinking. I think it has absolutely been very valuable for me to use what I’d call the “libertarian impulse” to force myself to look skeptically at political power and political players in trying to think of solutions to sexism. I think there’s a danger in writing that off entirely, because oftentimes feminists have this very, very idealized view of government and what we can accomplish with it. (Which is ironic, because we are usually very good at looking at other institutions and critiquing how they become self-perpetuating in upholding the existing power structure.)

    On balance, I’m definitely not pro-small-government. But I think there’s no contradiction between being one and being a feminist; it only requires that you believe that institutions will always serve those currently in power and thus the only real social change will come from the grassroots and changing attitudes, not changing laws.

  8. Jill – thanks so much for the thoughtful responses; I know that when I see some crazy article in the New York Times or Salon, that I can check here for some cool-headed commentary 😉

  9. (1) I think what Jill said is more true to the extent one talks about the narrow, self-defined and often political “community,” and less true as BDSM becomes more accepted among folks who have no real connection to a “community” except as consumers of cultural trends. As one “community leader” told me once, before the mid-90s, BDSM was passed down hand-to-hand. The established folks at parties and clubs would take newbies under their wing and teach things like skills, and, more importantly, norms. Now, I think that folks are putting ads up as doms and subs on the web, having never seen anyone else swing a flogger and having talked to nobody about how to negotiate limits and triggers and the contours of a scene. (That’s not to say that folks in the big orgs are perfect; as a friend said to me once, “those people have been rejected for leadership positions in everything else, including bowling leagues.)

    I think that there are two different avenues to abusive situations, and that it’s important to distinguish between them lest you fall into the “no true sadist” fallacy.

    The first one is the one you’re describing here: ignorance perpetuated by disregard. These people do exist, but it’s true that they aren’t so much a part of the scene proper simply because the scene proper (at least, mine) is so much focused on training people out of ignorance. However, mainstreaming of BDSM is not merely creating a bunch of fakers; it’s also making it more difficult for the community to stick to the close-knit paradigm that makes it easier to disseminate ssc discussion.

    The second one is thornier, and it’s not the kind of thing that can be solved by holding up technical expertise as a community standard: an abusive personality who has latched onto BDSM for any number of reasons. These people can be brilliant tops, prominent scenesters, and can be perfectly well aware of community mores around coercion. That doesn’t make them any less likely to follow those rules. Their harm isn’t even necessarily characterized by physical damage or abuse; in fact, I would say that that situation is less likely because it is less ambiguous for the bottom. They depend on bottoms who might be unaware of some of the more insidious manifestations of abuse, and on the same protections that non-BDSM abusers have. They also benefit from ideas about consent and rights within relationships that saturate the larger culture.

  10. Um, Jill–I’m gonna get around to writing a post on this myself one of these days. If we’re derailing your thread, I’ll move my comments.

  11. But one more thing:

    In terms of links to misogynist relationship mores, I guess you could say that the former group is acting them out because they’re unregenerate sexists, whereas the latter is happy to exploit them even though they’re perfectly aware of paradigms that don’t excuse them.

  12. Ha, no worries piny. It’s an interesting conversation, and something I’ve been meaning to write about as well, but have felt too ignorant to delve into. It’s an interesting conversation, and certainly on topic, so feel free to keep at it until you put up your own post.

    (And since you’re a co-blogger, you’re allowed to derail any thread you want, for as long as you want. It’s one of the benefits 🙂 )

  13. However, it’s much easier to reconcile feminsim with fiscal conservatism or small-government conservatism. I do think it’s possible to subscribe to the theory that our government should generally stay out of our lives and still be a feminist. It gets tricky when dealing with institutional discrimination and strategizing solutions — small-government feminists probably aren’t going to be the biggest fans of using government-sponsored social programs to combat discrimination and alleviate suffering — but certainly not impossible.

    See, this is where I pretty much fall myself. When it comes to social issues, I am an absolute progressive. But when it comes to fiscal issues, I am not. So I don’t tend to label myself as a progressive, because I’m not really one as a rounded political person.

    When it comes to institutional discrimination, which I completely recognize exists, I struggle with solutions. Part of me thinks that we ought to form an investment institution that will invest only in companies that have socially progressive policies as well as good returns on investment. I think there ought to be more organized boycotts, although I recognize this has an impact on the workers that can’t be ignored (you could have a foundation that aids workers in those companies impacted by boycotts, if you could raise enough money). I think if there were enough organization and fundraising, you could start to impact the policies of corporations. So at least you could address that side of institutional discrimination. The kind that exists in public schools, I have no issue with government regulating. Government funds those schools, they damn well should be able to implement whatever policies would help ameliorate the problem. I know I’m missing out on other types of institutional discrimination, but I’m tired right now and can’t think of them all. FWIW, if the government is putting out a contract, it should absolutely be able to set whatever terms it wants for respondents, such as minority- and women-owned businesses, etc.

    However, I also recognize that more companies are asking in their RFPs how much business the respondent companies do with minority- and women-owned businesses, and I cannot attribute a large portion of that to anything other than affirmative action laws. So I can’t deny that government regulation can work in helping to address some of the problems caused by institutional discrimination. Therefore I’ve made a kind of peace with some forms of it.

    I managed that through viewing discrimination as a form of market failure. And one arena I definitely think government involvement is necessary is in addressing systemic market failures (I would define that as one that due to social or other barriers is unlikely to be addressed by the private sector left to its own devices). This is the reason I not only have no problem with but applaud insider trading regulations, for example.

    So that was fairly long and rambly. I hope it makes some kind of sense.

  14. Lots of interesting stuff here … I look forward to Piny’s followup post.

    On the libertarian/small-government conservative question, I’ve hyped this before but I’ll do it again: I found this essay on why libertarianism and feminism are compatible quite thought-provoking and interesting.

  15. Thanks. I’ve been wondering whether I could claim the title (apparently yes). As for failures of (organized) feminism, I’ll expand on that later, or just let you know on other threads.

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