Odds 'N Ends

1. Writing in The New York Times, Nicole Hardy recounts her travails as an "independent woman" within Mormonism.

Namely, the combination of her desire to not have children, to have a professional life, and to remain chaste until marriage in accordance with Mormon doctrine left her "trapped in an adolescence." While non-Mormon men weren't interested in "being thrust back into the eighth grade" into a sexless relationship, Mormon men resented her ability to take care of herself, their church teaching them that it is a man's job to be "the provider."

She ends up rejecting Mormon doctrine and finds solace in the unlikeliest (for her) places.


2. Over at Isis' place, she writes of an email she received about a student at UC Davis who learned of an interesting grading technique a professor in the Veterinary School was contemplating using on a student who had just given birth and was set to be out of class for a period of time.

Long story short: The professor in question seemed to think it was acceptable to put the student's grade up for a class vote. Then, hyper-defensive students in the class began commenting at Isis' blog to vetsplain that it wasn't sexism or anything and that it's WRONG of Isis to "gossip" about their school.

Other folks noted that the school has an attendance policy, and so giving a woman who has just given birth anything other than a 0 in the class would be giving her a special right.

And so we meet again, Equality Feminism.

If men don't need something (or don't think they need something), nobody gets it.


3. Last week, the US Supreme Court refused to hear Roy Den Hollander's attempted continuation of his lawsuit arguing that "ladies' nights" at bars and clubs are a violation of men's constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

Justice Scalia was probably very pleased with this refusal, since it's so obvious that the 14th Amendment doesn't even prohibit sex discrimination and all.

But seriously, long story short: Yes, ladies nights are discriminatory against men, even if their purpose is to attract women for the benefit of heterosexual male patrons. However, the 14th Amendment applies to state entities, which a bar is not. Thus, ladies' nights are not unconstitutional discrimination.

Hollander is just a man with an admitted vendetta against feminism who nonetheless seems to think he is Very Hot Stuff, using women in their capacity as sex objects to affirm his manhood and prowess. He boasts:

'“When I go to a club and I’m looking at some young babe, I do not have malice in my heart,' he said. 'When some great looking 20-year-old babe is walking down the street, it is not malice in my heart that I’m feeling.'

Mr. Den Hollander refused to reveal his age because it might hurt his chances picking up younger women at bars. He said he looks younger than his true age and that 'I want to continue to exploit the infinite capacity of females to delude themselves.'”

I think he thinks he is a reaction to feminism. In reality, feminism is a reaction to men like him.

Gold Rings and Hand Grenades

[TW: Violence]


Now, this article, entitled "'Feminism' in Gaza: Women Train as Suicide Bombers," is bizarre. It begins:

"'Terrorist feminists' in Hamas-controlled Gaza are training to be suicide bombers and to shoot machine guns to kill Israelis."

While also disturbing, I say this article is bizarre because the article uses quotations to call these women "terrorist feminists," but nowhere does the journalist indicate who is calling them that or why their actions are particularly "feminist." The article continues, offering only this sort-of explanation as to how the women are "feminists":

"The women said they see nothing unusual in fighting alongside men because women also serve in the 'Zionist' army. One woman wore gold rings on one hand while holding a hand grenade in the other."

Based only on what's presented in the article, I gather that the journalist is calling these women "terrorist feminists" solely because they are women doing something, in this case terrorism, that is stereotypically masculine. Yet, if female terrorists are feminists, what are male terrorists?

Within the answer to this question lies the biggest pitfall of so-called equality feminism.

When a society that constantly denigrates femininity defines feminism as "equality between men and women," stereotypically feminine traits, like caring and nonviolence, are rejected as inferior while stereotypically masculine traits, such as domination and violence, are upheld and viewed as the default and universally human. So, rather than dismantling violent patriarchal values, some see it as a feminist success story for women to do anything a man can do, even if it is suicide bombing.

When this happens, anti-feminists, such as the author of this particular cited piece, note with glee what "feminism" has wrought for women, the implication being that we need to get our asses back into the kitchen and STFU because obviously this shows us ladies that we didn't realize how good we had it there.

In one sense, these female terrorists are breaking down the gender binary by demonstrating that, despite their pretty shiny lady rings, they are capable of the stereotypically-masculine endeavor of inflicting great violence upon others. Those who insist that certain traits are inherently male or inherently female, essentialist thinking that is seen among some feminists and anti-feminists alike, would do well to remember these women.

Indeed, Riane Eisner has aptly noted that the dominator gender stereotypes, these violent values that women are expected to assimilate themselves into in a so-called post-feminist world, are learned.

Yet, it is sometimes overlooked that just as women are imprisoned within the gender binary and are not allowed to be fully-human, neither are men. Within the alleged universality of manhood, it is therefore forgotten that being a man is a particular, rather than a general, experience. The unstated assumption is that how men learn to be is how people just inherently are.

If, unlike men, female terrorists are by definition feminists and their gender is notable when referring to them, it is implied that men who kill are only fulfilling their natural god-given role as members of the murderer class. It means that men who kill cannot be expected to do better because violence is a fundamental part of what men are, an unflattering and frightening definition of manhood that too many nonetheless embrace.

Equality means that, if killers are what men are, killers are what women must become because what men are is what "people" are.

Is that really our feminist struggle?

A Different Kind of Crime

[TW: Sexual assault, harassment]

Feminist Naomi Wolf is advocating an end to anonymous rape accusations, arguing that such accusations are unethical and ultimately damaging to women.

There is much to unpack in her piece, but we can examine the key flaw by examining this paragraph:

"Feminists have long argued that rape must be treated like any other crime. But in no other crime are accusers' identities hidden. Treating rape differently serves only to maintain its mischaracterisation as a 'different' kind of crime, loaded with cultural baggage."

It's one of the oldest "gotchas" in the anti-feminist playbook to use the concept of "equal treatment" against women. One of the bases of our legal system rests in treating likes alike and unalikes unalike. Thus, Wolf asserts that a crime is a crime is a crime; they are all alike and isn't that what the feminists wanted all along, to be treated just like men?

Well, ok. But the thing is, rape is a different kind of crime. To categorize it as a crime just like any other elides these distinctions which justify different treatment. What Wolf minimizes as "cultural baggage" is that:

Unlike burglarly or murder or carjacking, women are 5 times as likely as men to be raped (PDF) and it is almost always men who are the rapist (PDF).

Unlike burglarly or murder or carjacking, the majority of rapes (60%) are never reported to the police.

Unlike burglarly or murder or carjacking, rape culture narratives tell us that the survivors of rape asked for it, are lying about it, agreed to it, deserved it, and/or liked it. These narratives are both widely believed and help explain the preceding statistic regarding the non-reportage of rapes.

Rape is different because rape culture narratives tell us that the mass rape of women as a weapon of war is a "women's rights" issue, rather than a human rights one, because unlike more readily-recognizable (that is, masculinized) human rights violations like water-boarding, rape happens mostly to women.

Rape is different because rape culture narratives put the onus for rape prevention on women while also telling women that such empowerment is dangerous because men might be harmed by our newfound skills.

Rape is different because rape culture narratives tell us that men are entitled to sexual access to women and it is a violation of men's rights to put limits upon that access. Indeed, hell can unleash no fury like that which is unleashed upon women, feminists, and feminist bloggers who question that access. And so, Melissa at Shakesville writes:

"I'll simply note that [Wolf's] premise is intrinsically flawed as it's based on the erroneous assumption that we shield accusers because of some antiquated notion that rape is shameful. We do not. We shield accusers because survivors are routinely revictimized by rape apologists."

Item: When Keith Olbermann shared the link to the name of one of Julian Assange's accusers with his 166,533 Twitter followers, he not only contributed to the receipt of death threats by Assange's accusers, but to the receipt of death and rape threats of the STFU-because-women's-"pussies"-belong-to-men type targeting feminist bloggers who criticized Olbermann's actions.

Until all of the above circumstances change, it would be unwarranted, unwise, and unsafe to follow Wolf's brand of rape-is-just-like-any-other crime equality feminism which mandates that if men don't need something like anonymity in rape accusations (or don't imagine they will ever need it), then nobody gets it.*


*Tip o' the beret to Catharine MacKinnon.

"Human" and "Female" as Mutually Exclusive Categories

[TW: Rape, Torture]

"When a woman is tortured in an Argentine prison cell, even as it is forgotten that she is a woman, it is seen that her human rights are violated because what is done to her is also done to men. Her suffering has the dignity, and her death the honor, and her legal status the recognition of a crime against humanity. But when a woman is tortured by her husband in her home, humanity is not seen to be violated. Here she is a woman- only a woman. Internationally, her violation outrages the conscience of few beyond her friends.

Put more schematically, in the perspective of human rights, what is done to women is either too specific to women to be seen as human or too generic to human beings to be seen as about women. Atrocities committed against women are either too female to fit the concept of human or too human to fit the idea of female. "Human" and "female" are mutually exclusive by definition; one cannot be a woman and a human being at the same time. Women's rights are, in other words, not yet human rights, nor are human rights yet women's rights."

-Catherine MacKinnon in "Rape, Genocide, and Women's Human Rights," Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues

Increasingly, LGBT rights are framed as human rights. As they should be. And yet, I wonder, often, how much this narrative has to do with the fact that men are included in the group "LGBT." How different, say, would the "LGBT" rights movement be if it consisted solely of lesbians, bisexual women, and transgender folks? How much less seriously would the movement as a whole be taken? Would hate crimes against LBT women (and transgender men) be too "female" to be recognized as the atrocities that they are?

That hate crimes against women as women occur every day in this nation, pervasively, and commonly and yet are often, rather than being seen as the human rights violations they are, minimized as "domestic disputes" I believe, answers these questions for us.

So, Did We Win?

[TW: Sexual assault, gender-based violence, murder, war]

In Iraq, I mean.

Now that President Obama has declared an end to combat operations, and given that the 7+ year war in Iraq was predicated on an "intelligence failure" that former President Bush has said was his "biggest regret," what would a victory look like?

President Obama has said that "the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country," but I am left wondering: Which Iraqi people?

In war, victory and defeat have not always meant the same for women as they have for men.

We need only look at our own Revolutionary War for an instance of gender-discrepant war outcomes. While some men predicated a war on the self-evident truth that "all men" were created equal and, therefore, imbued with certain rights, looking back we see that these men were at once too literal regarding the word "men" and too figurative with respect to the word "all." On September 4, 1783, the day after the war formally ended, many black women and men were still enslaved and most other women were still some form of male property. Native American women and men, meanwhile, continued to have a decidedly less equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness than did whites.

Western feminists are sometimes criticized for critiquing patriarchy, sexism, and rape culture in Western society instead of engaging in the More Important Task of single-handedly solving the plight of Middle Eastern women.

Yet, in the dominant discourse surrounding the Iraq War, advancing the status of women was not consistently or loudly offered as a rationalte for invasion, nor was our military's failure to advance the status of women consistently or loudly rendered as a criticism of the war in non-feminist narratives. Clearly, solving the plight of the Middle Eastern woman is a task of the utmost importance only for feminists and not for the general population or the mainstream media, which naturally has More Important Things To Do than talk about or solve the plight of the Middle Eastern woman.

(And, of course, can't you already hear the criticism: Well, Western feminists aren't making us care enough about Middle Eastern women! Because people need that extra special prompting to consider half of a region's population.)

Thus, it was with interest that I came across this article in ColorLines about how the war has not exactly been a victory for Iraqi women. Beginning in 2003, as this article explains, hundreds of thousands of young men were killed in violence or fled the country, leaving women without marriage partners. In a conservative nation where marriage remains an important life marker for women and life as a single woman is restricted, lack of marriage partners is a big deal:

"Women who cross the 30-year threshold and are single face powerful social stigmas and live under heavy limitations. Generally, they must continue living with their parents or other family. If they are not wealthy, educated or employed, they are often reduced by relatives to servitude — cleaning, washing, cooking and watching over small children.

Work opportunities are limited. At jobs or in public, unmarried women are sometimes seen as vulnerable, without the protection of a husband. Some almost never leave their houses."

Men's rights activists like to cite statistics noting that most of the people who fight and die in wars are men. But what they tribalistically overlook are the things that men do, to "other men's" women, in wars. Not only is the male rape of women (and female soldiers) a weapon (sometimes in the form of friendly fire) of war, but the majority of those displaced by war, especially in Iraq, are women and children. After US invasion of Iraq (PDF):

"[M]ost women in Iraq now only go outside with a male escort and rape is commonly committed by all armed groups; they also report that the killing of women is increasing. 'Honor killings,' or the murder of a woman or girl usually by a male relative to restore 'family honor,' have increased dramatically....Approximately 50,000 Iraqi women and girls in Syria have been forced into prostitution."

Law professor Catherine Mackinnon has described war as a particularly ejaculatory method of conflict resolution. When it is (mostly) men doing things to (mostly) other men, a war is seen as occurring- a metaphorical pissing contest. When it is (mostly) men doing things to women, or doing things that affect women, what is happening to women is seen as an ancillary by-product of war, rather than part of the actual war itself or as a war against, say, women. It is woman's natural role in life to be on the receiving end of the things that men feel compelled to do.

In this way, even if "we" win, women don't.

Even if "they" win, women don't.

MacKinnon: On Man as Default

I was first introduced to the ideas of legal scholar and feminist Catherine MacKinnon almost a decade ago during a Feminist Jurisprudence course in law school.

Sadly, I don't think I appreciated either MacKinnon or that class as much as I could have back then. Law school has a way of sometimes sapping the curiosity right out of someone. I would love to audit that class now, with a bit more real world experience and feminist consciousness under my belt. Until then, I have settled for reacquainting myself with feminist legal theories and exploring them further on my own.

MacKinnon is a dominance feminist who, among other things, argues that legal strategies to make women equal to men are unsatisfactory because they continue to center men as the norm. In a recent interview, she expands on this idea:

"'De Beauvoir showed the problem: that the woman is the `other,' and the man is the standard. I am showing something else: that the things that have been depicted as a solution to the problem - that is, the feminist struggle for equality, for the equalization of the rights of women to the rights of men - are in fact part of the problem.'

MacKinnon makes it clear that the very fact of wanting to be equal to men perpetuates the assumption that men and masculinity are the model that determines what is worthy and what is desirable. 'If we want to achieve equality in such conditions of inequality, our way will become endless,' she comments."

We see this centering of the male experience in the way that women are encouraged to be and think like men in order to have successful careers, which only reinforces male dominance. For sci-fi geeks out there, think of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, where femininity has been devalued and erased as women have been assimilated into the maculine-human norm. Even though women have achieved formal equality, men remain the default human being.

Her argument is interesting because, on the surface, it borders precariously close to different theorists, and many anti-feminists, who say that men and women are inherently different. While MacKinnon would likely agree that some biological sex differences exist between men and women, she would argue that more important questions are (a) how and whether the law is used to create and reinforce sex/gender hierarchy and (b) how the legal system and male dominance have exaggerated sex differences, making many of these differences appear to be "natural" when they are not.

And, of course, MacKinnon has a lot to say about rape and pornography. Watch how she deals with one mansplainer:

"MR. WATTENBERG: ...Rape -- you know,we keep coming back to this. Rape is against the law. Rape is a vulgar, terrible, murderous crime. I mean, who says that anybody --

MS. MacKINNON: And women -- and what women know about it --

MR. WATTENBERG: Who says that anybody is saying rape is okay?

MS. MacKINNON: It is not taken seriously in this society.

MR. WATTENBERG: Oh, that's just not true. I mean --

MS. MacKINNON: I mean, I'm glad that you take it so seriously, but I think it would behoove you to realize --

MR. WATTENBERG: I mean, do you think that people --

MS. MacKINNON: -- that the society you live in does not.

MR. WATTENBERG: -- that people who are husbands and fathers and brothers don't take rape seriously?

MS. MacKINNON: Well, not only don't they, but the incest figures suggest that they participate in it to a considerable degree.

I definitely need to re-introduce the word "behoove" into my vocabulary.

Book Review: Right-Wing Women, Part I

"From father's house to husband's house to a grave that still might not be her own, a woman acquiesces to male authority in order to gain some protection from male violence. She conforms, in order to be as safe as she can be."

The above quote is a good starting point for Andrea Dworkin's book Right-Wing Women, which is her attempt to explain women's complicity and collaboration in their own oppression in a male-dominated society.

I have long been interested in the phenomenon of ladies against women and feminism. Those Phyllis Schlaflys and their modern-day counterparts, the Ann Coulters and Laura Ingrahams. Women who, from the perspective of many of us on the more progressive side of things, appear to sell out as women in exchange for those oh-so-valuable patriarchal pats on the head.

1) Fear

Dworkin begins by arguing that the Right makes several promises to women that the Left does not. By exploiting the fear that "male violence against women is unpredictable and uncontrollable," the Right "promises to put enforceable restraints on male aggression" (21). It does this, via religion and traditional marriage, by offering form in a world of chaos, a home and sure place in it, safety in obedience, rules for safety, and love in exchange for sexual subservience and childbearing (22).

In addition to the fear of male violence, the Right constructs the world outside of traditional marriage as an incredibly scary, unpredictable place. Fears of the Other are exploited, causing rightwing women to fear lesbians for threatening a known sexual order, to loathe abortion as the "callous murder of infants," and to share an anti-Semitism that is rooted in fundamentalist Christianity (33). Dworkin recounts when, as a reporter covering an Equal Rights Amendment convention, she talked with a man from Mississippi who claimed to be a member of the KKK. He said that he and other KKK members were sent there to "protect their womenfolk from the lesbians, who would assault them" (115). In this way, does patriarchy frame lesbians- the Other- as sexually dangerous, even though the reality is that male sexual violence perpetrated upon women, even married women, is exponentially more frequent.

Against all of these threats, female complicity offers women some degree of safety, or at least a safer alternative. Dworkin writes, "Every accommodation that women make to [male] domination, however apparently stupid, self-defeating, or dangerous, is rooted in the urgent need to survive somehow on male terms" (34). In line with this need to survive, they direct their anger and fear at Others, instead of at men. "Having good reason to hate, but not the courage to rebel, women require symbols of danger that justify their fear. The Right provides these symbols of danger by designating clearly defined groups of outsiders as sources of danger" (Ibid.). Queers, babykillers, and Jews.

Today's most prominent symbol of danger, I would add, is contained in the Right's recent Manhattan Declaration. In this haughty, self-aggrandizing tale, a delegate of powerful, Christian, (mostly) male signees has informed the world that abortion, science, and same-sex marriage will destroy civilization but that they, thankfully, will come to everyone's rescue as long as certain rules are followed. Namely, with their courageous leadership, restrictions on abortion and denial of same-sex marriage will be put into place.

2) The Denial of Intelligence

In perpetuating itself, patriarchy has historically denied women intelligence, which has led to women's dependency on men. For one, cross-culturally, most of the world's illiterate are women. Yet, literacy is how humans find meaning in, and define, experience. Two, the requirement that women be wives (so that they are not whores) and bear babies kills the sexual intelligence of women. "Men have constructed female sexuality" down to two rules: "be fucked, reproduce" (56). Real sex, for instance, is largely defined by what it is sexually pleasing to men- intercourse- which is not always or necessarily pleasing to women.

In short, women are constructed as sex. And when women as a class are sex, it is difficult for people- men and women alike- to view women as anything else. Further, it is difficult for women to survive on non-sexual terms.

Thus, prominent rightwing ladies against feminism, despite their educational degrees and experience, often remain relegated to the pink ghetto of "women's issues" (along with, I would add, rightwing people of color, who the Right uses as, for instance, Expert Black Man Against Barack Obama). While rightwing (and leftwing) male talking heads can be college dropouts and still be considered authoritative people Just Telling It Like It Is, possessing an advanced degree is an unspoken necessity for women to be given the same level of deference.

For instance, Dworkin uses the example of Phyllis Schlafly, who has a law degree, has given testimony on many subjects over the course of decades, was an important organizer of the Republican party, had published multiple books, and had stopped the Equal Rights Amendment dead in its tracks yet whom Reagan overlooked when he was making appointments to his Administration. A man with her credentials and experience would have been guaranteed a position and, indeed, Schlafly conceded that point to feminist attorney Catherine Mackinnon in a debate (30).

Because of this sexualization of women, Rightwing women find the world to be a dangerous place without the alliances of men and the resources they control. And thus, Dworkin writes, "They see that traditional marriage means selling [sex] to one man, not hundreds: the better deal... They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games: at home and at work too.... Right-wing women are not wrong" (68). Which brings us to the Left and it's woman problem, which will be continued in tomorrow's installment of this review.