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On Friday (going back a bit), I ran into Idioglossia on the bus. Random, but awesome. We went and had a cup of tea (and she bought me cake! CAKE!) and we yacked about feminism and The E-Ville Patriarchy and all the rest of it, and also went wandering through MAC and Sephora playing with girly makeup and hunting up perfume. Whee! :-)
Something she talked about, regarding feminism and The E-Ville Patriarchy, is that individuals make their own choices. So a guy who goes out and kills his ex because she doesn't want to date him anymore is CHOOSING to go and do that thing.
And I have been thinking about this, and my thoughts go something like this:
Okay, yes. I can agree that every individual makes their own choices. Even when we aren't necessarily conscious of the fact that we're making a choice (I could choose to eat my cerial with a fork, but instead I choose to use a spoon - to take a totally innocuous example).
However. I think that suggesting that all of This Stuff (of the build-up of terrible, horrible, woman-hating, white-power, transphobic, CRAP that is clogging This Society like a backed-up septic tank from hell) is purely the result of individual choices is, um, foolish.
Sorry.
I think this because it suggests that those choices are being made in a vacuum.
And they're not.
Individuals do make our own choices, yes.
But the fact that, say, the percentage of men who kill the women (or men or children) in their lives is so much higher than the percentage of women who kill the men (or women, or children, or possibly all of the above, combined) in their lives suggests that there is something more than Individual Choice going on.
I know that testosterone makes you agressive. I know that it makes you horny. I know it makes you somewhat more biologically capable of packing on the muscle-mass.
But I also know that it *doesn't* make you a rapist, murderer, etc. by any kind of default[1].
So clearly there's something else going on here.
So, yes, individuals *choose* to pick up that gun/knife/two-by-four/frying-pan/can-of-lighterfluid/cross-bow/etc and go after the gals they've professed to love and care about.
But I think the fact that it happens so often, and so often in that specific gender-configuartion, is indicative of a larger, underlying pattern.
Before one makes the choice to commit that action, that action has to (on some level) look like a viable option.
Also, when someone chooses a given option, they're choosing it because it's the best option avaible (from, I recognize, their personal perspective which, in most situations, is going to be skewed in some way or other).
Amber Hollibaugh, in her essay "The Gap She Fostered", talks about being working class and loving reading and knowing, growning up, that being a well-read working-class woman meant (almost undoubtedly) that she would not grow up to be a professor or a novelist or a journalist, but that she would grow up to be the most well-read waitress, teen mother, biker-chick, and/or wife in town (Hollibaugh, "The Gap She Fostered", in Brazen Femme, P. 59). The circumstances of her life put limits on what options she was *likey* to have[2].
A situation where a guy chooses to stalk his ex-girlfriend, must *first* be a situation where "stalking[3] your ex-girlfriend" is a option seen, by the would-be stalker, as one which is open to him.
A culture which consistently (over periods of centuries or a single individual's life-time, and regardless of subculture or social group) presents images of women as existing to serve/titilate/bolster/comfort/please/generally-take-care-of men[4] and which has only very recently (as in, the 1970s) stopped thinking of wives and children as the "property" of the husband/father and, as such, still has those assumptions rooted in our not-too-distant past (as such, the ripples are still there), which presents Real Masculinity as agressive or linked, in some way, to violent action (whether that's a knight in shining armour slaying a dragon, a cop beating up a pimp/pusher/maffioso/etc, or the WWF wherein the heroes, themselves, are bullies and humiliation is seen as the appropriate action of a strong man towards anyone weaker than he, gender-irregardless), and which still presents a certain level of possessive jealousy as normal and healthy (and a sign that s/he loves you!!!) in a romantic relationship...
Such a culture provides an environment - a social discourse, a world-view, whatever - wherein the choice of "stalk/intimidate/endanger/murder your ex-girlfriend" is, in fact, tacitly, unofficially, supported on a *low*, but still *constant*, level. Which makes it that much easier to decide that "stalk/etc. your ex-girlfriend" is the most appropriate and the most personally advantageous choice to make.
[1] I realize this admission may surprise some of you. This is *me* we're talking about, after all...
[2] Yes, I know. You can work your ass off and get a schollarship, you can find a bursary, take on a student loan, work three different jobs and do school part-time so that you don't *have* to take on the student-loan. Yes. There are options. But if you have been told, all your life, in subtle and unsubtle ways, that Working Class People just aren't cut out for thinking, that they're ignorant by nature and don't deserve respect, that they deserve their poverty, that they are, in fact, *always* poor, you may not be able to *see* that those options are available to you.
And, yeah, those messages are out there, and they *are* prevalent. The existence of the term "white trash", the fact that Algonquin College is working like hell to get young people interested in the trades -- which, if trades-work was seen as the work of intelligent, deserving, worth-while people, probably wouldn't be necessary. Take a look at prime-time tv and see how working-class people are portrayed, if they're portrayed at all.
[3] Read: "Intimidating and Endangering".
[4] Movie scripts wherein female characters get little to no character-development (or character motivation) written into the script and whose actions therein directly serve largely/only to convince the audience that the male lead is what we're really supposed to be paying attention to. "She shouldn't have got into the car". That socially under/un -valued support/nurturing jobs tend to go to women and/or be seen as "women's work" or "soft issues" or what-have-you. The income difference between traditional "pink-collar" vs traditional "blue-collar" work. The Second Shift. The fact that women's unpaid labour is systematically ignored by those who calculate the GNP even though that unpaid labour significantly reduces the gross national expenditure on things like, for example, elder- and child- care (Not theory, research. see What Men Value, What Women are Worth and Making Women Pay). "Dressing like that? Come on, she was *asking* for it". The fact that the majority of The Poor are women and their kids, that they system allegedly designed to help The Poor make ends meet and get back on their feet actually does the opposite, and that no real effort is made by the state to *actually* help The Poor (rather than keep them dependant, hundry and in despaire) unless large numbers of formerly-middle-class white men suddenly find themselves in financial trouble all at once (see No Way to Live, available in the Carleton U library - it's not theory, it's actual impoverished women talking about their lives). The fact that random, female strangers have never intruded upon my thoughts to tell me, personally, to "Smiiiiiiiiile (you look so much prettier when you smile)", but random male strangers have on numerous occasions, and I know that I'm not alone in this. Pop music videos. That - according to one study (see Ursula LeGuin's The Wave in the Mind for reference) - men felt that if women in a co-ed conversation spoke more than 30% of the time, they were (good gravy) "dominating" the conversation. [...]
Something she talked about, regarding feminism and The E-Ville Patriarchy, is that individuals make their own choices. So a guy who goes out and kills his ex because she doesn't want to date him anymore is CHOOSING to go and do that thing.
And I have been thinking about this, and my thoughts go something like this:
Okay, yes. I can agree that every individual makes their own choices. Even when we aren't necessarily conscious of the fact that we're making a choice (I could choose to eat my cerial with a fork, but instead I choose to use a spoon - to take a totally innocuous example).
However. I think that suggesting that all of This Stuff (of the build-up of terrible, horrible, woman-hating, white-power, transphobic, CRAP that is clogging This Society like a backed-up septic tank from hell) is purely the result of individual choices is, um, foolish.
Sorry.
I think this because it suggests that those choices are being made in a vacuum.
And they're not.
Individuals do make our own choices, yes.
But the fact that, say, the percentage of men who kill the women (or men or children) in their lives is so much higher than the percentage of women who kill the men (or women, or children, or possibly all of the above, combined) in their lives suggests that there is something more than Individual Choice going on.
I know that testosterone makes you agressive. I know that it makes you horny. I know it makes you somewhat more biologically capable of packing on the muscle-mass.
But I also know that it *doesn't* make you a rapist, murderer, etc. by any kind of default[1].
So clearly there's something else going on here.
So, yes, individuals *choose* to pick up that gun/knife/two-by-four/frying-pan/can-of-lighterfluid/cross-bow/etc and go after the gals they've professed to love and care about.
But I think the fact that it happens so often, and so often in that specific gender-configuartion, is indicative of a larger, underlying pattern.
Before one makes the choice to commit that action, that action has to (on some level) look like a viable option.
Also, when someone chooses a given option, they're choosing it because it's the best option avaible (from, I recognize, their personal perspective which, in most situations, is going to be skewed in some way or other).
Amber Hollibaugh, in her essay "The Gap She Fostered", talks about being working class and loving reading and knowing, growning up, that being a well-read working-class woman meant (almost undoubtedly) that she would not grow up to be a professor or a novelist or a journalist, but that she would grow up to be the most well-read waitress, teen mother, biker-chick, and/or wife in town (Hollibaugh, "The Gap She Fostered", in Brazen Femme, P. 59). The circumstances of her life put limits on what options she was *likey* to have[2].
A situation where a guy chooses to stalk his ex-girlfriend, must *first* be a situation where "stalking[3] your ex-girlfriend" is a option seen, by the would-be stalker, as one which is open to him.
A culture which consistently (over periods of centuries or a single individual's life-time, and regardless of subculture or social group) presents images of women as existing to serve/titilate/bolster/comfort/please/generally-take-care-of men[4] and which has only very recently (as in, the 1970s) stopped thinking of wives and children as the "property" of the husband/father and, as such, still has those assumptions rooted in our not-too-distant past (as such, the ripples are still there), which presents Real Masculinity as agressive or linked, in some way, to violent action (whether that's a knight in shining armour slaying a dragon, a cop beating up a pimp/pusher/maffioso/etc, or the WWF wherein the heroes, themselves, are bullies and humiliation is seen as the appropriate action of a strong man towards anyone weaker than he, gender-irregardless), and which still presents a certain level of possessive jealousy as normal and healthy (and a sign that s/he loves you!!!) in a romantic relationship...
Such a culture provides an environment - a social discourse, a world-view, whatever - wherein the choice of "stalk/intimidate/endanger/murder your ex-girlfriend" is, in fact, tacitly, unofficially, supported on a *low*, but still *constant*, level. Which makes it that much easier to decide that "stalk/etc. your ex-girlfriend" is the most appropriate and the most personally advantageous choice to make.
[1] I realize this admission may surprise some of you. This is *me* we're talking about, after all...
[2] Yes, I know. You can work your ass off and get a schollarship, you can find a bursary, take on a student loan, work three different jobs and do school part-time so that you don't *have* to take on the student-loan. Yes. There are options. But if you have been told, all your life, in subtle and unsubtle ways, that Working Class People just aren't cut out for thinking, that they're ignorant by nature and don't deserve respect, that they deserve their poverty, that they are, in fact, *always* poor, you may not be able to *see* that those options are available to you.
And, yeah, those messages are out there, and they *are* prevalent. The existence of the term "white trash", the fact that Algonquin College is working like hell to get young people interested in the trades -- which, if trades-work was seen as the work of intelligent, deserving, worth-while people, probably wouldn't be necessary. Take a look at prime-time tv and see how working-class people are portrayed, if they're portrayed at all.
[3] Read: "Intimidating and Endangering".
[4] Movie scripts wherein female characters get little to no character-development (or character motivation) written into the script and whose actions therein directly serve largely/only to convince the audience that the male lead is what we're really supposed to be paying attention to. "She shouldn't have got into the car". That socially under/un -valued support/nurturing jobs tend to go to women and/or be seen as "women's work" or "soft issues" or what-have-you. The income difference between traditional "pink-collar" vs traditional "blue-collar" work. The Second Shift. The fact that women's unpaid labour is systematically ignored by those who calculate the GNP even though that unpaid labour significantly reduces the gross national expenditure on things like, for example, elder- and child- care (Not theory, research. see What Men Value, What Women are Worth and Making Women Pay). "Dressing like that? Come on, she was *asking* for it". The fact that the majority of The Poor are women and their kids, that they system allegedly designed to help The Poor make ends meet and get back on their feet actually does the opposite, and that no real effort is made by the state to *actually* help The Poor (rather than keep them dependant, hundry and in despaire) unless large numbers of formerly-middle-class white men suddenly find themselves in financial trouble all at once (see No Way to Live, available in the Carleton U library - it's not theory, it's actual impoverished women talking about their lives). The fact that random, female strangers have never intruded upon my thoughts to tell me, personally, to "Smiiiiiiiiile (you look so much prettier when you smile)", but random male strangers have on numerous occasions, and I know that I'm not alone in this. Pop music videos. That - according to one study (see Ursula LeGuin's The Wave in the Mind for reference) - men felt that if women in a co-ed conversation spoke more than 30% of the time, they were (good gravy) "dominating" the conversation. [...]
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