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amazon_syren Aug. 15th, 2009 08:28 pm)
amazon_syren Aug. 15th, 2009 08:28 pm)H'okay.
So, we continue.
Just prior to the intermissions (just after the open mic, I think?) there was a discussion about women's space.
Except that it very, VERY rapidly went from "Women's Space and Oppressive Men" to "Uh... Intersectionality? What?" -- which, itself, is not a bad thing -- to (all together now) "What about the menz".
There is this extremely enraging thing where "we want equality" somehow got twisted around to mean "Well, feminist women, you're not *really* looking for *equality* unless you're devoting at least 50% of feminist time, energy and resources to looking at how patriarchy fucks over the guys".
Someone (a gal a few rows back) asked "Where are the men's feminist resources? Why aren't there any events like this [Radical Vulvas] for men?"
And the short version of my thought on this is:
"Where is their agency? Why aren't they making their own events and organizations?"
(To-which the response, from one of the guys, was: "Well, it's really hard to get funding. I mean, if you want to start a men's engineering association, people are just going to say "Yeah... Good luck with that").
I did not snap and yell: "Funding??? You think you need funding???" although it's emphatically what I was thinking.
With that in mind, I bring you this rant:
See, there's this derailing technique that crops up a lot in online arguments/mob-scenes wherein the privileged person who's been spouting ignorant assholery (or one of said person's defenders) essentially hollers "Well, what are YOU doing to educate me? Huh? Huh? It's not my fault I'm a clueless asshole because YOU - who have so many more important and personally relevant things to do - haven't take the time to address and remedy MY ignorance!" thus making the conversation All About Them and managing (or at least trying) to take the focus of the actual issue being discussed.
However, a similar thing happens (often enough for it to be a pattern) when men come into women-focused space[1] in good faith, firmly believing the following:
(1) Patriarchy blows chunks. It sucks for us, too. Let's get rid of it!
(2) Yay feminism! We want to help!
(3) Let's work together for equality of the sexes!
But not realizing that, when they say things like "But what about the men? Where are *our* feminist resources? Why isn't there space for *us* in this women-centered space?" they also, on perhaps a less conscious level, believe:
(4) Despite saying that we're all for equality of the sexes, we are still expecting women to look after our needs and/or desires
(5) Said expectation being based on the unconscious assumption that women are *supposed* to look after us, by default
Which basically gives the very strong impression that their commitment to gender equality is nothing more than lip-service.
Which, presumeably, is not how they feel - or at least not how they consciously feel - because, otherwise, they wouldn't be coming to the all-comers women-centered space in the first place, right?
However, that's how it comes across. And it doesn't take that much thought to recognize this.
Granted, perhaps I shouldn't have sat on my Feminist Rage (TM) last night and just told the assembled multitude this little factoid.
I didn't. When I'm pissed off, I'd much rather offend people's delicate sensibilities from a distance than up close and personal where they can get counter-hostile in ways I don't know how to rebutt[2].
See... The idea that resources for men-(or-women)-dismantaling-the-patriarchy need to be institutionalized and funded... sucks ass.
I mean, yes, funding is HELPFUL. It means you can publish a magazine like Shameless or $pread, it means you can open a women's shelter like Cornerstone or a recovery center like Amethyst or a resource center like the one opperated by POWER and the AIDS Committee of Ottawa.
But it's not a requirement.
It never has been.
There are whole books written about how to do anarchist-collective non-hierarchical organizing and how the revolution will not be funded.
So saying there's no money, or that there's no pre-set-up infrastructure... Yeah, it sucks to have to do it all yourself. I know. Believe me. But that doesn't mean it *can't* be done if you actually want to do it.
Also: A long but not entirely tangential rant on "equalism":
Equalism: Golf clap for you.
See, I have a problem with the term "equalist". Because, while it's well meaning, it does tend to show up in heavy conjunction with the phrase "I'm not a feminist, but".
Likewise, there's this idea that, to REALLY be an equalist you have to devote the same ammount of time, resources and attention to men's issues as you do women's issues[3].
And this is NOT the case.
'Cause, see...
In our culture (and bucket-loads of other cultures, too), boys and girls grow into men and women being taught the following:
Men's needs and wants are meant to be met and taken care-of by women.
Which means that guys grow up *expecting* to have their needs and wants put at the center of any co-ed situation[4]. And gals grow up *expecting* to always put their needs second to *everyone*, but particularly every *guy*.
Which basically means that in a co-ed group? Women are always - at some level - on call. (Unless we consciously work against it).
Hell, we even get taught to focus on guys when we're hanging out with each other (see: Cosmo and anything else that tells women how to look hot, drive him wild, and snag the guy of your dreams, in ten easy steps).
So women-centered spaces are rare and precious things indeed.
They're our fucking day off.
Seriously. And that "day off", that women-centered space and time, has been scraped out despite children who need to be fed and housework that needs to be done and jobs that need to be attended (and performed twice-as-well in) and husbands who look at taking care of their own kids as "babysitting", despite night-sticks, jail sentences and force-feeding, despite violence and misrepresentation and a perpetual fucking smear campaign that brands us all as man-hating and/or ugly and/or selfish and/or devil-spawn.
Wanting a few fucking hours a month -- hell, even a week -- where it actually *is* All About Us? That isn't selfish, and it isn't sexist. It's survival.
And asking/expecting that we take half that time and devote it to the same group that we're "supposed" to spend every other damn waking minute catering to?
That isn't equalism. That is maintaining the status quo, and doing so in spaces that were carved out in the name of changing it.
So, please. If you're a guy and you're attending women-centered events? Understand that, just as you attend them in good faith so, too, do we allow you in the door in good faith.
Because the vast majority of us (and, surprise, surprise, I am, in fact, including myself in this category) would really, really like it if we didn't have to do this as "two solitudes", so to speak.
It would be totally awesome if the guys and the gals could get together and dismantle the social hierarchy that fucks us all over.
But that can't happen if some of us are still expecting certain so-convenient-to-them-they-don't-see-it elements of the satus quo to be maintained and the rest of us are either seathing with resentment, or quietly pulling our hair out in frustration/despair, because of it.
So until that point, I say: Do it yourself.
If you are invited into women-centered space, maintain that focus. Listen to what we have to say. If you contribute, think really damn hard about what it is you're going to say because spouting ignorant-privileged garbage isn't going to make this kind of a partnership any easier.
And, in the mean time, do it yourself.
Get together with a bunch of like-minded guys and start dismantling the patriarchy as it exists and informs your own lives.
Do it yourself.
We are not here to be Mommy or Sweetheart to you (even those of use who *are* the mothers and Significant Others of some of you).
You are all grown up now.
Do it yourself.
Right.
With that in mind, and in the spirit of the above-mentioned good faith, I present a brief and hopefully not-too-snarky DIY guide to the unfunded masculine dismantling of the patriarchy (or at least some places to start):
Thing one: Get people together.
This is not 1846. I mean, hell, it's not 1991. We have facebook and twitter and the entire blogosphere available for social organizing. For FREE. We have libraries that will lend us those books on organizing and doing things on a shoe-string and deconstructing gender norms and feminist community history (hint: CR Groups are your friend[5]) and everything else. For FREE. And they will give us The Internet. For FREE.
If you've got a library card, you can get free internet for two hours a day in Ottawa just by showing up at the right building before it closes.
You can start a free blog (wordpress, blogger, blogspot, livejournal, dreamwidth, etc) about men dismantling the patriarchy with posts about recognizing and owning up to your own privilege and trying not to make assumptions (or actions) based there-upon. You can make it open-to-all so that anybody can read it and comment. You can start a dialogue.
You can post links to resources like the Men and Boys Project at Education for Choice, or the entire site of XY Online or the White Ribbon Campaign. You can post suggested reading lists and book reviews of works like The Masculinity Studies Reader or The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriachal Legacy[6], if you're the kind of guy who's into books and talking about them (as are so many of the fellows reading this, I know).
You can link to your Men Dismantling The Patriarchy facebook group.
You can send out invites from said facebook group for all-comers marches, letter-writing campaigns, rallies, and meet-ups.
You can use twitter to let people know about those same events, live-blog about what's going on at marches or rallies, and post random thoughts on the subject of being a guy-with-guy-privilege and how you reconcile wanting to hang onto that privilege[7] with working towards the dismantling of the patriarchy.
You hang out with your buddies and you talk about this stuff. Openly or on the sly. [EDIT: See Iclysdale's entry on the subject. /EDIT]
You think about how you, personally[8], can and do kick patriarchal assumptions and behaviours out of your own life and your own brain.
And then you act on it.
You call your buddies on it when they make rape jokes or rude-assed remarks about how "someone needs to get a sandwich (or lay off the cheese-burgers)".
You ask "Yeah, Why is that?" when someone says that they just Don't Get Women or something, thus (in theory -- this may take some digging) opening up an intense and thought-provoking chat about Othering and why it sucks.
You teach yourself not to expect your wife to make dinner when she gets home from work.
You start watching your own thought-patterns and paying attention so that you catch yourself when you're Othering someone, and then you ask yourself where the hell that came from and try to re-route your train of thought.
It isn't easy.
It's never easy[9].
But you can do it.
And you and your men's groups and me and my women's groups will each do our own thing.
And we can stand shoulder to shoulder at vigils and march side by side in protests.
And we can get together for chips and salsa, or art-show planning, or games of Ultimate Frisby.
Because hanging out with people of like-mind in everyone-focused, non-sexist space is awesome for all involved.
But, gents, don't ask me to make my women-centered time all about you.
And, ladies, don't ask me to make my women-centered time all about them.
Right.
So, with all that in mind, I'll say Vive La Revolution! and leave you with this final, only tangentially related, link:
On Silence and Silencing, Rape, and the Space to Tell Our Stories.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] Or privileged!people come into opressed!people-focused space in general. Fill in the blanks.
[2] Now you know why I post so much. ;-)
[3] Witness: Last night, one very awesome, very smart, young MA student (who's a friend of Sara's as it turns out) reluctantly offering up fucking Men's Rights Activists[a] as an example of a men's movement for equality. Oh, honey, no. You're fantastic and amazing and brilliant, but no, you don't have to do that.
[a] Who, going by their blogs - particularly the one Idioglossia linked me to a while back - are actually all about wondering why women aren't barefoot, in the kitchen, on birth-control (unless *they* want to be daddies) and twenty years younger than them, and blaming Feminism for their inability to get laid[b].
[b] That last bit, at least, is true. If it weren't for feminists, we'd all be stuck without the legal right to vote or own property (would, in fact, still *be* property) and the asshat misogyny of these fuckers would actually constitute The Norm. So, yes, strictly speaking, it *is* feminism's fault that women have waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more options for survival than just shacking up with an asshole like one of them. Boo hoo. No dates for them. :-P
[4] Notwithstanding the earlier discussion of intersectionality.
[5] Though they may not feel like it at first. In women's groups, you get a lot of passive agression[a] and triangulation. In men's groups, 'cause you all are socialized to interact with each other differently than women are socialized to interact with other women, you're going to have a different set of Culturally Indoctrinated Bad Habits to recognize, break down, and eventually break. This takes time, practice, commitment, patience, and a willingness to forgive yourselves and each other and to keep on trying. You can do it. But it won't necessarily be easy. Just FYI.
[a] HA! Witness me posting this instead of just saying it out loud. ;-)
[6] I think this one might be going on my wish-list, actually. :-)
[7] Everyone wants to hang onto their privilege. The trick is getting Everyone to realize that this isn't a zero-sum game and extending those privileges to everyone else doesn't mean losing them yourself. You won't get treated like crap just because you stop treating other people like crap. At least that's the short version. The long version takes a lot more work.
[8] Yes, I actually do mean you, specifically. I know who reads this thing. ;-)
[9] Trust me. I have hella trouble with the catching my own Stupid part, AND the calling my friends on theirs part. It's hard. It's scary to risk alienating someone you like over something you believe in. Pick your battles. But do *pick* them.
So, we continue.
Just prior to the intermissions (just after the open mic, I think?) there was a discussion about women's space.
Except that it very, VERY rapidly went from "Women's Space and Oppressive Men" to "Uh... Intersectionality? What?" -- which, itself, is not a bad thing -- to (all together now) "What about the menz".
There is this extremely enraging thing where "we want equality" somehow got twisted around to mean "Well, feminist women, you're not *really* looking for *equality* unless you're devoting at least 50% of feminist time, energy and resources to looking at how patriarchy fucks over the guys".
Someone (a gal a few rows back) asked "Where are the men's feminist resources? Why aren't there any events like this [Radical Vulvas] for men?"
And the short version of my thought on this is:
"Where is their agency? Why aren't they making their own events and organizations?"
(To-which the response, from one of the guys, was: "Well, it's really hard to get funding. I mean, if you want to start a men's engineering association, people are just going to say "Yeah... Good luck with that").
I did not snap and yell: "Funding??? You think you need funding???" although it's emphatically what I was thinking.
With that in mind, I bring you this rant:
See, there's this derailing technique that crops up a lot in online arguments/mob-scenes wherein the privileged person who's been spouting ignorant assholery (or one of said person's defenders) essentially hollers "Well, what are YOU doing to educate me? Huh? Huh? It's not my fault I'm a clueless asshole because YOU - who have so many more important and personally relevant things to do - haven't take the time to address and remedy MY ignorance!" thus making the conversation All About Them and managing (or at least trying) to take the focus of the actual issue being discussed.
However, a similar thing happens (often enough for it to be a pattern) when men come into women-focused space[1] in good faith, firmly believing the following:
(1) Patriarchy blows chunks. It sucks for us, too. Let's get rid of it!
(2) Yay feminism! We want to help!
(3) Let's work together for equality of the sexes!
But not realizing that, when they say things like "But what about the men? Where are *our* feminist resources? Why isn't there space for *us* in this women-centered space?" they also, on perhaps a less conscious level, believe:
(4) Despite saying that we're all for equality of the sexes, we are still expecting women to look after our needs and/or desires
(5) Said expectation being based on the unconscious assumption that women are *supposed* to look after us, by default
Which basically gives the very strong impression that their commitment to gender equality is nothing more than lip-service.
Which, presumeably, is not how they feel - or at least not how they consciously feel - because, otherwise, they wouldn't be coming to the all-comers women-centered space in the first place, right?
However, that's how it comes across. And it doesn't take that much thought to recognize this.
Granted, perhaps I shouldn't have sat on my Feminist Rage (TM) last night and just told the assembled multitude this little factoid.
I didn't. When I'm pissed off, I'd much rather offend people's delicate sensibilities from a distance than up close and personal where they can get counter-hostile in ways I don't know how to rebutt[2].
See... The idea that resources for men-(or-women)-dismantaling-the-patriarchy need to be institutionalized and funded... sucks ass.
I mean, yes, funding is HELPFUL. It means you can publish a magazine like Shameless or $pread, it means you can open a women's shelter like Cornerstone or a recovery center like Amethyst or a resource center like the one opperated by POWER and the AIDS Committee of Ottawa.
But it's not a requirement.
It never has been.
There are whole books written about how to do anarchist-collective non-hierarchical organizing and how the revolution will not be funded.
So saying there's no money, or that there's no pre-set-up infrastructure... Yeah, it sucks to have to do it all yourself. I know. Believe me. But that doesn't mean it *can't* be done if you actually want to do it.
Also: A long but not entirely tangential rant on "equalism":
Equalism: Golf clap for you.
See, I have a problem with the term "equalist". Because, while it's well meaning, it does tend to show up in heavy conjunction with the phrase "I'm not a feminist, but".
Likewise, there's this idea that, to REALLY be an equalist you have to devote the same ammount of time, resources and attention to men's issues as you do women's issues[3].
And this is NOT the case.
'Cause, see...
In our culture (and bucket-loads of other cultures, too), boys and girls grow into men and women being taught the following:
Men's needs and wants are meant to be met and taken care-of by women.
Which means that guys grow up *expecting* to have their needs and wants put at the center of any co-ed situation[4]. And gals grow up *expecting* to always put their needs second to *everyone*, but particularly every *guy*.
Which basically means that in a co-ed group? Women are always - at some level - on call. (Unless we consciously work against it).
Hell, we even get taught to focus on guys when we're hanging out with each other (see: Cosmo and anything else that tells women how to look hot, drive him wild, and snag the guy of your dreams, in ten easy steps).
So women-centered spaces are rare and precious things indeed.
They're our fucking day off.
Seriously. And that "day off", that women-centered space and time, has been scraped out despite children who need to be fed and housework that needs to be done and jobs that need to be attended (and performed twice-as-well in) and husbands who look at taking care of their own kids as "babysitting", despite night-sticks, jail sentences and force-feeding, despite violence and misrepresentation and a perpetual fucking smear campaign that brands us all as man-hating and/or ugly and/or selfish and/or devil-spawn.
Wanting a few fucking hours a month -- hell, even a week -- where it actually *is* All About Us? That isn't selfish, and it isn't sexist. It's survival.
And asking/expecting that we take half that time and devote it to the same group that we're "supposed" to spend every other damn waking minute catering to?
That isn't equalism. That is maintaining the status quo, and doing so in spaces that were carved out in the name of changing it.
So, please. If you're a guy and you're attending women-centered events? Understand that, just as you attend them in good faith so, too, do we allow you in the door in good faith.
Because the vast majority of us (and, surprise, surprise, I am, in fact, including myself in this category) would really, really like it if we didn't have to do this as "two solitudes", so to speak.
It would be totally awesome if the guys and the gals could get together and dismantle the social hierarchy that fucks us all over.
But that can't happen if some of us are still expecting certain so-convenient-to-them-they-don't-see-it elements of the satus quo to be maintained and the rest of us are either seathing with resentment, or quietly pulling our hair out in frustration/despair, because of it.
So until that point, I say: Do it yourself.
If you are invited into women-centered space, maintain that focus. Listen to what we have to say. If you contribute, think really damn hard about what it is you're going to say because spouting ignorant-privileged garbage isn't going to make this kind of a partnership any easier.
And, in the mean time, do it yourself.
Get together with a bunch of like-minded guys and start dismantling the patriarchy as it exists and informs your own lives.
Do it yourself.
We are not here to be Mommy or Sweetheart to you (even those of use who *are* the mothers and Significant Others of some of you).
You are all grown up now.
Do it yourself.
Right.
With that in mind, and in the spirit of the above-mentioned good faith, I present a brief and hopefully not-too-snarky DIY guide to the unfunded masculine dismantling of the patriarchy (or at least some places to start):
Thing one: Get people together.
This is not 1846. I mean, hell, it's not 1991. We have facebook and twitter and the entire blogosphere available for social organizing. For FREE. We have libraries that will lend us those books on organizing and doing things on a shoe-string and deconstructing gender norms and feminist community history (hint: CR Groups are your friend[5]) and everything else. For FREE. And they will give us The Internet. For FREE.
If you've got a library card, you can get free internet for two hours a day in Ottawa just by showing up at the right building before it closes.
You can start a free blog (wordpress, blogger, blogspot, livejournal, dreamwidth, etc) about men dismantling the patriarchy with posts about recognizing and owning up to your own privilege and trying not to make assumptions (or actions) based there-upon. You can make it open-to-all so that anybody can read it and comment. You can start a dialogue.
You can post links to resources like the Men and Boys Project at Education for Choice, or the entire site of XY Online or the White Ribbon Campaign. You can post suggested reading lists and book reviews of works like The Masculinity Studies Reader or The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriachal Legacy[6], if you're the kind of guy who's into books and talking about them (as are so many of the fellows reading this, I know).
You can link to your Men Dismantling The Patriarchy facebook group.
You can send out invites from said facebook group for all-comers marches, letter-writing campaigns, rallies, and meet-ups.
You can use twitter to let people know about those same events, live-blog about what's going on at marches or rallies, and post random thoughts on the subject of being a guy-with-guy-privilege and how you reconcile wanting to hang onto that privilege[7] with working towards the dismantling of the patriarchy.
You hang out with your buddies and you talk about this stuff. Openly or on the sly. [EDIT: See Iclysdale's entry on the subject. /EDIT]
You think about how you, personally[8], can and do kick patriarchal assumptions and behaviours out of your own life and your own brain.
And then you act on it.
You call your buddies on it when they make rape jokes or rude-assed remarks about how "someone needs to get a sandwich (or lay off the cheese-burgers)".
You ask "Yeah, Why is that?" when someone says that they just Don't Get Women or something, thus (in theory -- this may take some digging) opening up an intense and thought-provoking chat about Othering and why it sucks.
You teach yourself not to expect your wife to make dinner when she gets home from work.
You start watching your own thought-patterns and paying attention so that you catch yourself when you're Othering someone, and then you ask yourself where the hell that came from and try to re-route your train of thought.
It isn't easy.
It's never easy[9].
But you can do it.
And you and your men's groups and me and my women's groups will each do our own thing.
And we can stand shoulder to shoulder at vigils and march side by side in protests.
And we can get together for chips and salsa, or art-show planning, or games of Ultimate Frisby.
Because hanging out with people of like-mind in everyone-focused, non-sexist space is awesome for all involved.
But, gents, don't ask me to make my women-centered time all about you.
And, ladies, don't ask me to make my women-centered time all about them.
Right.
So, with all that in mind, I'll say Vive La Revolution! and leave you with this final, only tangentially related, link:
On Silence and Silencing, Rape, and the Space to Tell Our Stories.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] Or privileged!people come into opressed!people-focused space in general. Fill in the blanks.
[2] Now you know why I post so much. ;-)
[3] Witness: Last night, one very awesome, very smart, young MA student (who's a friend of Sara's as it turns out) reluctantly offering up fucking Men's Rights Activists[a] as an example of a men's movement for equality. Oh, honey, no. You're fantastic and amazing and brilliant, but no, you don't have to do that.
[a] Who, going by their blogs - particularly the one Idioglossia linked me to a while back - are actually all about wondering why women aren't barefoot, in the kitchen, on birth-control (unless *they* want to be daddies) and twenty years younger than them, and blaming Feminism for their inability to get laid[b].
[b] That last bit, at least, is true. If it weren't for feminists, we'd all be stuck without the legal right to vote or own property (would, in fact, still *be* property) and the asshat misogyny of these fuckers would actually constitute The Norm. So, yes, strictly speaking, it *is* feminism's fault that women have waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more options for survival than just shacking up with an asshole like one of them. Boo hoo. No dates for them. :-P
[4] Notwithstanding the earlier discussion of intersectionality.
[5] Though they may not feel like it at first. In women's groups, you get a lot of passive agression[a] and triangulation. In men's groups, 'cause you all are socialized to interact with each other differently than women are socialized to interact with other women, you're going to have a different set of Culturally Indoctrinated Bad Habits to recognize, break down, and eventually break. This takes time, practice, commitment, patience, and a willingness to forgive yourselves and each other and to keep on trying. You can do it. But it won't necessarily be easy. Just FYI.
[a] HA! Witness me posting this instead of just saying it out loud. ;-)
[6] I think this one might be going on my wish-list, actually. :-)
[7] Everyone wants to hang onto their privilege. The trick is getting Everyone to realize that this isn't a zero-sum game and extending those privileges to everyone else doesn't mean losing them yourself. You won't get treated like crap just because you stop treating other people like crap. At least that's the short version. The long version takes a lot more work.
[8] Yes, I actually do mean you, specifically. I know who reads this thing. ;-)
[9] Trust me. I have hella trouble with the catching my own Stupid part, AND the calling my friends on theirs part. It's hard. It's scary to risk alienating someone you like over something you believe in. Pick your battles. But do *pick* them.
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