Yes, I'm doing this when I should be doing something else...

[textualdeviance]

But I'm riffing off of something kyooverse said on the Post From Hell...

I consider myself a traditional feminist in many ways-- primarily in that I believe traditional gender roles are harmful to women (and to men, too.)

But one of the things traditional feminism missed is the notion that women are not All Good.

Absolutely women, as a sex, are still second class citizens in most of the world's cultures. Some worse than others, and some subcultures worse than others, too.

But where traditional feminism went wrong is in assuming that men are the ones solely responsible for this, and that men are therefore The Enemy, and the ones to be blamed, to be feared, to be held accountable. In training women to be aware of male power and to find ways to avoid being harmed by it, women were led into this false sense of safety and security with each other.



Case in point, the oft-discussed Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (and other women-only spaces like that.) The women there believe that they will be safe so long as an adult penis does not cross the boundaries of that space. And yet that's definitely not the case. While they may be safe from being raped by a man, or otherwise subject to male-specific violent or oppressive acts, they are still not safe. Women are not inherently non-violent. They are generally not as physically violent as men, but to assume that women are all nurturing, totally loving creatures who would never harm each other is a dangerous myth.

Who is it that enforces the practice of FGM? Women. Who is it that pressures girls into eating disorders? Women. Who is it that tells women they may as well not exist if they don't have male approval? Women. Who is it that ostracizes girls who are not gender-compliant? Women.

It may be true that the reason women do this is because of the outside pressure from the larger, male-dominant culture (particularly consumer culture) but that doesn't absolve women as a whole from culpability for the role they play in continuing the cycle, and it certainly doesn't absolve individual women from responsibility to not engage in activity which is damaging to other women, assuming they're in a safe enough position to do so. If you don't have a gun to your head, and won't lose your job or your house if you cease oppressing other women, you have no excuse. The women who do FGM have an excuse for what they do. Some arrogant teenage fuckwit nagging the school fat girl does not. Some mother clucking about how her daughter should really grow her hair out and wear something prettier does not. Women who merrily feed the corporate beauty and fashion machine, regardless of the deaths those industries are responsible for do not.

Women constitute a majority of the US population. Women now hold a great deal of power positions in business, politics, science and the arts. If women were indeed only pawns of the patriarchy who know not what they do, then feminism should have cured that, and we would all be free now. The strength in numbers and actual power we carry now, while still not ideal, is enough to set us free if women were in fact fighting for our rights as a group.

But obviously, that's not happening. Certainly, some women are too afraid of the consequences of bucking the system to suddenly stop feeding the sexism machine. But others know better, and are either too lazy, or have a twisted idea that they're benefitting from the subjugation of women as a group to bother. The fact that so many women with power insist on using that power to continue the abuse of other women is appalling. And those women absolutely should be held responsible for what they do.

One of the reasons Blank's original post pissed me off is the notion that femme space is somehow some special, magical place where one is fully loved and accepted and intimate with everyone there, because you're all mututally bonding over shoes. That's a pretty myth, but it's just that. The message of femme space is not "all are welcome here" but "you're welcome here if you are Femme or if you are Butch and support Femme." Sisterhood is not open to all with a cunt. It is open only to those women (and men) who will play along and do their part to reinforce harmful gender stratification.

No, we women are not safe with each other. Women-only spaces are not magical, mystical safe houses where no one will ever be harmed. Women in power has not ended sexism, and in fact in some ways is reinforcing it, because the only women who have thusfar been allowed to come to power are the ones who play the game. The concept that one will recieve unconditional love, safety and support merely by associating solely with someone whose genitals or gender identity you share is simply not actual fact.

Women can be just as nasty as men, and in some ways nastier because they're more subtle about the damage they do. And I'm supposed to just grin and say how great it is to be a chick, and how great other chicks are?

Hardly. No one is my "sister" just because she and I both have cunts.

Comments

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

But where traditional feminism went wrong is in assuming that men are the ones solely responsible for this, and that men are therefore The Enemy, and the ones to be blamed, to be feared, to be held accountable. In training women to be aware of male power and to find ways to avoid being harmed by it, women were led into this false sense of safety and security with each other.

I'm a bit apprehensive jumping into this (having read most, but not quite all, of the Post From Hell), but I want to make an historical point, from the perspective of a 46-year-old woman, who was not quite old enough for the Second Wave that began in the 1960s after the introduction of The Pill, but who is old enough to remember, as a teenager and young adult, the climate of the culture supposedly post-freedom for women. I admit, to start, that my experience is from the Bay Area in the early 1970s, probably as much the hotbed of feminism as any place in the world at that time.

And from that perspective, I will tell you true, that neither me nor my peers nor most of my elder sisters believed that "men are the only ones solely responsible for this." We knew, very clearly, that there were women who chose to keep their lives tranquil, or to further their ambitions, by being relatively "compliant." We knew that there were men who saw how women as a whole were treated, and rebelled against enforcing the stereotype that their male leaders told them was "normal." And we knew how individual we were; again, granted that we're talking Berkeley High School (the only public high school in Berkeley) in the early to mid 1970s; perhaps that was abnormal in the rest of the country, but you wouldn't know that for that time and I never met anyone in my peer group from other parts of the States who weren't aware of this reality then.

One thing I want very much to say is that my "enlightenment," in those times in that place, came from a man. A musical mentor, really, a jazz musician/steel drum artist, Andy Narell. Who was an early "male feminist" in about 1973 or so; he strove to explain feminism to the then-14-year-old me, by trying to rile me up about being denied stuff because I was a girl. He tried several tactics - university places, jobs - until he hit on, "suppose you were told you couldn't play your music, because you're a girl?" And I replied, "then I'd walk away from whoever told me that, fuck you!" And he said, "yes, but today you are being told that"; and as of that day, I was a feminist.

So you can't tell me that men are enemies, or that women in the Second Wave in the 1970s believed that. My example is by no means the exception; modern feminism has never declared Men Bad Women Good. It is simply not true, and to start your thesis by saying there was a "mistake" made in "traditional feminism" 30+ years ago is to simply mis-represent the facts. Yes, I will agree that women's rights have progressed far too slowly since the Second Wave began (women still make, what, 74 Cents per men's dollar in the same job?); but I think more men have started to think that's unfair, and have started to consider equality between the sexes as a right, not an aberration as I can attest it was only 30 years ago.

None of this addresses the various sub-cultures of which you're engaged at the moment, I know; but I felt it important to set the record straight, feminist movement wise, from someone who lived it first hand.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

So you can't tell me that men are enemies, or that women in the Second Wave in the 1970s believed that. My example is by no means the exception; modern feminism has never declared Men Bad Women Good. It is simply not true, and to start your thesis by saying there was a "mistake" made in "traditional feminism" 30+ years ago is to simply mis-represent the facts.

If that is indeed not the case, how is it that that's the image traditional feminism has gotten? Should we solely blame Dworkin and MacKinnon? And perhaps Rich?

Obviously, not all second wave feminists agreed (at the time or now) with those woman-idealizing philosophies, but they were (and are) certainly salient enough that the other things that wave was (and is) working on, in terms of freeing women from the prison of mandatory heterosexuality and domesticity has gotten hopelessly confounded with them.

The idea that the Girl Power crowd has that questioning extremes of femininity = being anti-sex, anti-male had to come from somewhere. It's not correct, of course, but somehow that's the popular notion that's come about. The pop culture image that comes to mind with the very word feminism is someone who looks and acts like Dworkin. Apparently there are only two forms of feminism: honoring stereotypical femininity or hating men. Obviously there's more than that, but that's what many young people have come to believe. When they hear a statement as strong as the assertion that heterosexual sex = rape, that's all they come away with, and everything else remotely associated with that idea is melted into it.

The ironic part is that both philosophies are essentialist. One simply believes woman = goddess, the other believes woman = sex kitten. I wish we could toss both of them, because I'm tired of being told by both groups that men are some sort of separate species, either to be feared and avoided or to be coralled with the power of one's tits.

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that a lot of the negative image that traditional feminism has today is due to how media presented feminism on the news and in other venues at the time - it was more "newsworthy" to describe Dworkin's rants, somehow, than it was to report on women's collectives organizing to force companies to provide child care for their employees. Obviously the latter is far more important than the former, but the former had a titillation factor that news media seem to feel they need in order to sell more papers or advertising spots, etc.

That said, by the later 1970s, the "traditional feminist movement" was under fire from within, because many women saw it as an elitist movement, catering to white, middle class, educated women and ignoring the different needs of the poor and non-white and uneducated women. I think that as an organized social force, feminism began falling apart around that time, because of that (quite true) criticism as much as it fell apart because of external pressures.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure the media coverage definitely had a lot to do with it. But I do find it interesting that Rich and Dworkin, especially, form a lot of the core material in many women studies classes even now. At least they did when I was taking them. I remember one of my term papers was on how the conventional wisdom that porn is necessarily bad was wrong. (I pointed out that mainstream, non-porn sexualization of women has done far more to turn women into sex objects than stuff like, say, amateur hardcore with couples filming themselves in their basements.)

I suppose "traditional feminism" is probably a misnomer anyway, though. I don't think it can be said that there's ever really been a unified feminist voice, in any of the waves. Even the suffragists disagreed on philosophy. (Which reminds me: Iron Jawed Angels is a great movie.)

I guess my version of traditional... wrong word, but... is probably the stuff that sparked me when I was a kid. I don't recall specific voices at the time, I just remember hearing a lot about the ERA, and a lot of rot from Phyllis Schlafly about how we were going to get stuck with unisex restrooms and other silly stuff. My dad was the primary filter for me at the time, and the big message I got was that girls could do anything boys could do and men were pigs. Thanks, Dad. :) (Seriously. There are things my dad taught me that I disagree with now, but I really love him for encouraging me to be strong, even as my mom was trying to get me to wear dresses and be rather less vulgar.)

I didn't start hearing specifics in terms of theory and perspective until I realized I was queer about 12, and started in on gender-related writings from that angle. Amusingly, one of my first books in that direction was Our Bodies, Ourselves, the 1973 edition (still sitting on my shelf, actually.) My mother had gotten it from a co-worker who recommended it as a good book for sex education. I don't think my mom knew what was actually in it, though, especially considering the other book she presented me with at the time (donated from an entirely different co-worker) was a 1965 edition of the workbook from the "Sears School for Young Charmers." Add in all the teen rags and the issues of Cosmo I started buying around that time, and I'm sure you can imagine how confused I was. ;)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the generation just behind me came away with such a warped view of things. I was growing up right in the thick of the movement, but by the time all those Reagan-era babies started being born, the ERA had been defeated, the socialist angles of feminism were being derided as un-American, and female power became embodied by becoming part of the captialist machine, or emulating the women on Dynasty. The more grassroots stuff was just considered hopelessly out of fashion as soon as denim gave way to polyester. I feel lucky that I was steeped in as much of it as I was, considering how anachronistic it was characterized as later. I also feel lucky that the third wave, and the older women who energized it, started up right around the time I was starting college. I remember reading Backlash and The Beauty Myth and getting really excited. But then the Backlash backlash started, and the third wave splintered, and Katie Roiphe started whining, and it was kinda all downhill from there.

I'd like to think that maybe the Clinton-era kids will become something of a 4th wave (they do seem pretty smart) but I'm afraid we're going to have a lot of infighting that's going to limit what the movement as a whole can do for the forseeable future. Maybe there will be another seminal work that sparks some unity, but for now, it does seem like there's no getting past the girl power crowd, and merely calling oneself a feminist, traditional or no, isn't quite enough to explain what it is one really stands for.

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

I made up my degree in university, and one requirement for doing so was that I had to have core classes in at least three departments and two schools; one of the departments I chose was Women's Studies, then (1980-1983) a new program. Dworkin and others were writing at about the same time, but I don't remember them being discussed in any super-serious way; then again, I took mostly classes within the department that dealt with liberal arts, not feminist theory per se. I recall a strong sense of commonality and community in the classes, though, during that period. There was also one incident where the whole class had a raging debate for several weeks because a man wanted to take the course, and nobody was sure that he should be "allowed" to do so; some women felt the class was their only woman-only zone and felt uncomfortable about having any men around, others felt that the one man in the class, simply by virtue of being male, would somehow "take over" all class discussion and thereby ruin the discourse. As I recall, he was eventually asked to leave....and I'm not sure how that furthered the cause in any way.

Our Bodies, Ourselves, the 1973 edition (still sitting on my shelf, actually.)

Me too :>) Can't remember if I bought it when it came out (or received it as a gift), or if I picked it up later on, though...

by the time all those Reagan-era babies started being born, the ERA had been defeated, the socialist angles of feminism were being derided as un-American, and female power became embodied by becoming part of the captialist machine, or emulating the women on Dynasty. The more grassroots stuff was just considered hopelessly out of fashion as soon as denim gave way to polyester.

Yes, I was in my 20s in the Reagan years, and I definitely remember how feminism became a dirty word during that time; certainly young girls growing up then would have easily been led by the media and society at large to believe that "equal rights" was not a goal worth pursuing. There was a lot of the "women are better than men, so why lower ourselves to be equal?" claptrap going on in the media, which young naive girls might easily grow up believing. The Clinton "generation," however, might be more politically aware, not least for seeing how Hillary was reviled in the right-wing media for simply being a strong woman with definite ideas about how to make the country a better place. I think we can place some hope in that generation, as it comes of age over the next 10 years or so....

OTOH, it seems to me that, along with multimedia/zillions of websites and telly stations, etc., political organizations are splintering into smaller and smaller parts these days - you may be a militant lesbian feminist and I might be an older straight feminist - in the old days, we would have found ourselves in the same political organizations, fighting for equal rights for all, but today you'd probably be in groups that wouldn't accept me, and vice versa. Which is a shame because, of course, such splintering weakens the cause as a whole. But I don't see that trend reversing itself any time soon (though possibly the growing anti-war movement, consisting of tons of groups that otherwise have nothing in common, is a sign of better things to come).

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

(though possibly the growing anti-war movement, consisting of tons of groups that otherwise have nothing in common, is a sign of better things to come)

I hope so. I also think, given the trajectory of the US economy, that economics and social class issues are going to jump to the forefront in the next few years. Supply-side economics is about to go boom, and I think a lot of current political dividing lines are going to go wonky because of it.

Thanks for the convo, btw. :)

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the convo, btw. :)

*waves* de nada

[nat-does-lj.livejournal.com]

"Women who merrily feed the corporate beauty and fashion machine, regardless of the deaths those industries are responsible for do not."

Make-up and fashion KILL?

Pray, do tell how.

As for sisterhood, it can be found quite easily, all one has to do is open their eyes and minds. No need to lock up the penis endowed.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Make-up and fashion KILL?

Pray, do tell how.

Eating disorders, cosmetic and other image-enhancement surgeries gone wrong, poisoning from supplements and drugs...

The corporate fashion and cosmetic industries are able to make billions by making women feel that they are inadequate without the use of those products. In marketing lingo, it's called "creating need." When women are convinced by constant bombardment by these messages that they are inferior the way they are, that message leads to more-dangerous behavior. Want to make sure you look good in that outfit advertised in Vogue? Well, clearly, you need to be just as underweight as that model. Here, have some anorexia with a side of crank. Want to make sure your skin is totally flawless? Go have a laser peel. Sorry if something goes wrong and you end up with third-degree burns on your face.

And what if none of that works anyway? What if you're never good enough because you're never going to look like an underweight, photoshopped 18 year old? Well, must be time to off yourself, because everyone else has bought those messages, too, and believes, as you do, that you have no value unless you're fashion-worthy.

I realize that according to some worldviews, this could never happen, because supposedly everyone is born automatically knowing that they need to ignore media messages about how inferior you are. But the fact remains that that advertising works. If it didn't, they wouldn't make fortunes from it. And there wouldn't be millions of teenage girls destroying their bodies trying to look like an unattainable ideal. Our cultures make us who we are. The fact that most women worry about what they look like on an almost-constant basis (especially when that isn't true in cultures where media images of women aren't looks-focused, or where there is little advertising saturation) isn't just a failure of those individual women, or some failing in women in general. It's a social disease, and it is rooted in greed. The only way to stop that is to stop feeding those industries, and stop giving in to the notion that what we look like has any bearing whatsoever on our value as individuals.

There's a great paper here that goes into more of the history of how this happened.

As for sisterhood, the idea of it is that it is indeed limited to bio women, and it's somehow automatic. Neither of which are true. There's nothing automatic about trusting, honest friendship, regardless of the gender of the people involved. Those things are built from time and experience. It's like the assumption that family will always love you, which isn't true, either. Mere biological connectivity, whether chromosomal or through DNA doesn't guarantee getting along.

[nat-does-lj.livejournal.com]

Yay! You posted me and responded. DISCOURSE!! Thanks, it's been too long since I've had a decent debate/dialogue on such a subject.

Okay, read the link. Basically a regurg of Fem Mystique, Beauty Myth and every other 90s book on the topic, although kudos that a man bothers to write it. Rudimentary. Pleasant, but redundant don't you think? It's the basis of any freshman woman's course. As an undergrad, I was a soc major by default bc I leaned that way - 2 classes from a marketing major. You aren't telling me anything I don't know. I would like to think that such a paper doesn't state anything surprising to ANY woman. I could be wrong on that, but I don't even want to go there.

Hon, I am not arguing the fact that advertising in general is utter crap. Nor would I argue that such tactics certainly don't help redefine feminine stereotypes. Both are pretty well proven. What I take offense with is your dramatic stance that it "kills." That simply isn't true. We could argue botched laser facials until the end of time, the fact is that advertising is EQUALLY detrimental to BOTH sexes. Viagra anyone? Can't sleep, take a pill. Stuff your face with supersized fries, etc. etc. etc. Any push to sell a product that saturates mainstream press is inherently uncaring to ANYONE that it is aimed at. Period.

As for eating disorders, you are completely and totally off base with the assumption that clinical eating disorders have anything to do with the bony chick on the cover of Cosmo. They don't. Perpetuating that myth is harmful. Anorexia and Bulemia are disorders that form in those seeking CONTROL. They are highly correlated with family dysfunction and barely if ever tied in at all to actual "dieting." Overbearing, judgmental, unavailable and emotionally estranged parents raise daughters with eating disorders.

So what's left? Supplement poisoning? I'm not even going to go there, such a low incidence and wtf?? Try people of BOTH genders who end up addicted to Xanax bc they've been told they need it by their family doctors after seeing an ad.

It's interesting that so many of your arguments have historically been gauged around feminine form (i.e. make-up, fashion, body shape, hair or the lack of). It's so very superficial. It also has an edge of misogyny that I am hoping you don't intend it to. You speak of women as if they are nothing more than sheep formed of putty. No free will or choice. If a woman who is otherwise liberal chooses to shave her legs - maybe it's because she LIKES them to be smooth?? Some women have long dragon claw finger nails, personally I find them gross - but if sisters wish to have airbrushed palm trees on their fingers, I'll simply think that it is their CHOICE. Do these issues come up in third world tv deprived nations? Sure they do. It isn't just Western culture.

Are women influenced by those airbrushed pics? Sure. But you need to add perspective to it. Most of us can say "gee I wish I had that perfectly airbrushed ass" and move on. Most. Those who can't are going to stumble because of something else. Ego strength or lack of. That isn't societal, it's personal. Every teen wishes to be exactly like their friends. Most of us grow out of it. Again, most. Most women realize that they don't have to buy into all of that shit to "belong" as they have, by adulthood, gained the acceptance of those around them.

As for being judged by society's inherently faulty expectations? Sure, it happens. In both directions. Conventionally pretty women often get their foot in the door first, but have to try twice as hard to prove they aren't bimbos. Less conventionally attractive women have to battle that door open, but often find it easier once they get in. Stereotypes only work for strangers. Regardless of shape, colour, gender, once they get through the door, most people are judged on their own merits. To do otherwise is to dehumanize. Period.

Are women objectified? Sure. But if you walk away from your everpresent arguments, which are based on texts and articles that are almost 10 years old, you will find that there are so many more important concerns out there. Ones worth focusing on. Issues more important than whether middle and upper middle class women bother to laser peel or buy tits.

[nat-does-lj.livejournal.com]

Women continue to make up the majority of this nation's homeless population. They continue to be raped, beaten and murdered at alarming rates. They do the same work as their male counterparts and get paid far less, and that disparity increases with educational and professional level. They are penalized professionally for having children. They are ostracized if they decide to stay at home with their kids, they are vilified if they return to work. They are more likely to not have adequate health insurance. The list is endless.

To me, those issues are far more important than the fact that a woman decides to shave her crotch.

I agree with your stance on friendship. I also think that women are capable of the deepest friendships in the Universe. I think that the "odds" are that your family will always (to some extent) love you. I think that the odds are that if you sequester a group of women away from the world for an hour, a day, a week, or a month, you will find that there is sisterhood inherent.

Does it always ring true? Of course not. If it did I would actually have some semblance of relationship with my father and his entire family. But I realize that generalizations cannot be made from the smallness of my own personal experience.

I wish you would someday do the same.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

A more-detailed response will be forthcoming when I have a chance, but for the immediate moment, I should point out that the main reason I talk mostly about the ill effects of gender stratification and the exploitation of consumer ignorance on women is because, having grown up female, that's what's most salient for me. Absolutely I'm aware of the ill effects on men, too, and that's part of what's at the root of this post. I'm quite tired of being told--by feminists both essentialist and constructionist-- that women are all-innocent in perpetuating sexism and that men are the ones to blame, and are not being harmed at all. While it's true that the economic and social systems in most cultures have (recently) historically favored men, it's definitely not only women that sexism hurts.

I really resent being told that I am misogynist because I refuse to honor those (constructed) cultural trappings of femininity which have historically been used to confine women to subservient roles. Am I also a misandrist because I equally hate the cultural trappings of masculinity which require men to be violent and aggressive?

And heavens to betsy-- I'm using 10 year old documents! I suppose we ought to throw out the Constitution, Aristotle and Skinner while we're at it, since nothing anyone said in the past could ever have relevance to modern life. ;)

As for choice, I'll just say that I'm not a Libertarian, I'm a Socialist. I believe that individual choice does not exist in a vacuum, and that we all have the responsibility to make choices which do not have negative impact for other people. It's obviously not easy to do that-- modern life is complex, and there's only so much one can do-- but if some women refusing to participate in image fascism helps others, then it's worth it. You choose your battles. This is the one I've chosen, and I don't think it's any less valid than any other.

Incidentally: if eating disorders are solely about control issues, why do they only exist in cultures where media images of underweight women are the norm? I assure you, when I was bulimic at 15, it had nothing to do with control, and everything to do with the fact that every message I got every day told me I wasn't even fit to live because I was 50 lbs overweight. If I were rebelling against my parents, surely I would've done something that my mother WASN'T encouraging, no?

But then, I suppose this perspective isn't something that someone who has spent her entire life being conventionally attractive in liberal urban areas would understand.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

But I realize that generalizations cannot be made from the smallness of my own personal experience.

I wish you would someday do the same.

Um. How is pointing out that an absolute statement is wrong because of an anecdotal exception an absolute statement itself?

Sisterhood is declared to be some sort of organic given. I and thousands of other women are living proof that it is not. It may be *generally* true that, due to social conditioning to be emotionally open and to bond with others (even at the expense of one's own needs) that women are more likely to develop friendships with each other, there is nothing which makes that organically mandated. Estrogen causes enough nesting behavior that it probably encourages some of that, but most women don't have levels of that high enough to declare that the biological smoking gun.

I know plenty of women who bond better with men than with other women. Are they simply not women because they don't have the sisterhood gene? Or are men who easily bond closely with other men actually women instead?

Honestly, I think it's probably healthier for both of us at this point to realize that we come from entirely different philosophical backgrounds as concerns human behavior. You're much more of an essentialist than I am, and much more focused on individual behavior and responsibility than group and larger cultural dynamics. There's no Great Answer Book to tell either of us that we're entirely wrong or entirely right, so I suspect we'll simply be debating into perpetuity about our respective points of view. And I'm not sure that that's productive, in this kind of a forum. Were we doing this in a more academic setting, it might be useful, but I don't think we're going to resolve the nature/nurture debate, nor the free will one on LiveJournal.