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

Tag: Feminism

Quick Cut

This just sort of became a post, and I want to transport it over here just so it doesn’t take over that thread. (Still, some more, again, anyway.) So Amp linked to Chris’s post about why he does not identify as feminist. The thread contains a lot of good comments on when someone may identify as what, including some comments about other terms of affinity.

A commenter called spit wrote as follows:

This became a huge dilemma at dykemarch a while ago when a lot of FTM trannies — who had been members of the lesbian community for years, and who had fought alongside women as women for years, started pushing for inclusion in dykemarch even though they may identify as men. What do you do in those circumstances? If you exclude them, you’re once again basing feminism and womanhood on either “physical sex” or on some “one or the other” oppositional concept of gender, both things that feminism has spent a long time trying to counter.

And I responded:

Spit, while I would err on the side of openness for anyone whose gender identity is complex, I think that people who receive male privilege have a responsibility to opt out of safe space for women. If they intrude upon it, they insult its reason for existing: to provide a haven for people who are _not_ privileged. Ftms are welcome at a great many events focused on queer women, and are welcome to attend all the parties after the march. The dyke march is women-only, not as a nod to essentialism, but as a recognition of the damage essentialism has caused.

And we got into a whole long discussion about ftms and feminist demarcations of women’s spaces and of “woman.”

Basically–and I hope spit comes here to complain if I’m getting this wrong–spit’s position is that these boundaries tend to negate complexity in precisely the way that feminism wants to stop. They divide everyone into “male” and “female,” whether or not that’s an accurate description of their identities or their lives. Concepts like “women-only space” invariably turn on a definition of “woman” that ignores a whole lot of people:

To the extent that not all but many trannies bring the whole categorization scheme into question, feminism and the quest for all “women’s rights” that come out of it is going to have to work to figure out what, exactly, is meant by “woman” — because there will always be some trannies or genderqueers who still identify to some extent with women, even after they’ve transitioned. Any category that tries to have clear lines around it is going to run into problems here — and my inclusion or exclusion from that category, while I agree that it cannot necessarily only depend on how I feel inside, is fundamentally also flawed if it only considers more or less how I pass socially, largely because that will simply wind up reinforcing the social and gender-essentialist norm. And my relationship with the social as a tranny is also often going to be more complicated than a straightforward system will allow for — to the extent, say, that I am out and open about being trans, among other things.

I agree with this–we weren’t really arguing–but worry about a few things. It’s as counterproductive to ignore the dichotomy as it is to uncritically accept it. Spit and I are sort of speaking from different sides of the same idea: a binary that negates people who don’t live within it.

I see a lot of transguys who either do or will live as male and who therefore do or will receive male privilege, but who are incapable of acknowledging their current or future status. They need to believe that they are still vulnerable to misogyny and ill-treatment on a level equal to that of women. This is sometimes because of internalized transphobia; frequently, it’s because of a version of feminist affinity that ends up supporting trans invisibility.

Self-Appointed

In comments on Chris Clarke’s post about why he does not refer to himself as feminist, Dr. Virago said this:

I guess all I’m trying to say is that if you conclude that only some people (i.e., women) have the right to claim themselves “feminist” then you make feminism itself much less politically viable. You also reify the very gender categories that feminism seeks to undo.

On the contrary, I think you emphasize the experiential knowledge that feminism seeks to communicate. Women have the most direct contact with misogyny, and the greatest personal stake in ending misogyny. I get kinda suspicious if people-otherwise-known-as-straight call themselves queer activists; there’s a disturbing subsequent tendency on their part to arrogate the right to speak to my problems and my needs.

What About Actual Feminists?

A poster at Ilyka’s Blog Against Strawfeminism Week asks:

The one thing I’ve noticed missing from this entire series of (interesting and thoughtful) posts is… a definition of what feminism is. Pointing out straw feminists (and straw definitions of feminism) is good and proper, but I’m left wondering exactly what we (you) mean when you speak of feminism that is not straw-feminism…

Since, as you’ve noted, feminism is the subject of so many varying and contradictory usages, maybe the best thing we could to to prevent straw-feminism is to define what the heck feminism Really Is?

I know a bazillion of us feminists have already blogged about what feminism is to each of us. Pop on over and lend a link.

Good From the Rabble

We’re now 175 comments into a rather heated thread on the topic of feminism, blogs, and respect. Toes are crushed, feelings are hurt, and the synapses are sufficiently tinkered with.

The good news: That thread will now be used in a seminar on Internet Research and Theory with this post relating to net communities and gender. We — yes, us, with our still-occurring fight — are a live counterexample to the usual we hear on women’s reluctance to deal with confrontation and lack of turn-taking.

Women’s reluctance to deal with confrontation. Irony prevails — and I love blogs.

Lowering the Discourse

Ann Bartow finds my feminism lacking.

Sorry, Jill and piny. I’m not feminist enough for this blog. I’ll have to pack up and go. Ann said so, and she’s the arbiter of All Things Feminist, don’tchaknow.

The Vagina Warriors Are Gonna Getcha

I just don’t understand the right-wing obsession with The Vagina Monologues. So they talk about vaginas. They raise money to combat violence against women and girls. They don’t say, “The best way to live is to wait until your married, then close your eyes and think of England.” Conservatives would be better off attacking Avenue Q.

And yet they just can’t stop. Karin Agness, president of the Network of Enlightened Women at UVA (who I suspect is pissed off because her vagina never taught her how to write effectively) is example A:

While most people were celebrating or searching for love on Valentine’s Day, groups of women throughout the country decided to forego this lovely holiday to talk about their vaginas.

Because you either get vaginas or love, not both. And they never, ever have anything to do with eachother.

Women have the choice to do this. I am thankful for that choice. But this choice to participate in The Vagina Monologues is the latest manifestation of feminism gone wrong in America.

Read More…Read More…

Goodbye to Betty Friedan

I think perhaps Rox says it best.

Like most notable feminists, Friedan’s passing will undoubtedly be met with criticisms from all sides of the aisle. But we cannot ignore the simple fact that Friedan ignited a revolution, and it was one that was good for all of us. Some conservatives have complained that she was scornful of housewives; other critics have pointed out that her version of feminism was remarkably middle-class and white. While those are certainly fair statements, Friedan leaves us with a legacy that confers more value onto women — all women — than would have existed should she have never had her “ah ha!” moment and written The Feminine Mystique.

Because the focus of her most famous work was the role of the housewife, I think it’s worth addressing what Friedan left us with in that area. She was certainly critical of the view that housework was a woman’s life calling, and that women were somehow flawed if they didn’t enjoy their domestic role. In her criticisms, she is often perceived to have attacked the housewife herself — anti-feminists will toss out Friedan quotes about housework being suited for the simple-minded and boring as “proof” that Friedan believes stay-at-home moms to be stupid. But I’m not sure that was her point. Housework is boring and repetitive. It isn’t stimulating. Most people do not enjoy it. But it still has to get done. Recognizing that it sucks, and that it’s pretty unfair to hold up members of a particular gender as failures if they don’t enjoy it, isn’t the same thing as disparaging the people who, out of necessity, do it. Criticizing the system is not the same as criticizing the individuals who do their best to operate within that system.

I also don’t buy the idea that Friedan’s work and the feminist movement were bad for stay-at-home women, or that they constructed the stay-at-home woman as a negative thing. If anything, the fact that staying at home is now much more a choice than it was 50 years ago confers a good deal of value onto it — women who are staying home are doing it because they want to, not because they’re mandated to do so. They see it as a viable lifestyle choice, and one that they want for themselves. That breeds an understanding of staying home as one in a series of valid life choices, as opposed to something that, by virtue of having a vagina, some second-class citizens are simply expected to do. Of course, how much of this “choice” is actually made freely is debatable, but it’s certainly much more of a choice, for many more women, than it was before. And our construction of staying home as a valid choice remains fraught with problems. Women who don’t stay home with their young children continue to be branded as selfish, because self-sacrifice continues to be one of the defining characteristics of womanhood. And while women who do stay home with their kids are largely lauded in principle, their day-to-day work is ignored and undervalued; to compound that, they’re often assumed to be submissive, uneducated or simply not that smart, politically conservative, and/or dull. Men who are stay-at-home dads are applauded for their sacrifice, and fawned over for being so family-oriented. Women who stay home get little of this, since they’re simply fulfilling a role that’s still sort of expected. So the situation is by no means perfect. But it’s a heck of a lot better.

Friedan also drew attention to the fact that home-based work, though it may be repetitive and fruitless, is exhausting, taxing and stressful — that women at home are workers who don’t get pay or recognition. And it’s important to recognize the legions of women who never had such a choice to begin with: the low-income women who, even in Friedan’s time, didn’t have the option of staying home with their kids or focusing their efforts on mop-n-glow. These are the women who were invisible in Friedan’s book.

But in the aggregate, I think most people would agree that Friedan’s work was good. It was better than good — it was transformative. Feminism may have quickly surpassed Friedan’s politics, and many of us may be ideologically very far from where Friedan was, but her contribution to the movement and to the lives of women everywhere cannot be emphasized enough. She is, and will remain, high on the list of women who helped to instigate major social shifts. We can all be grateful for what she left us.