Further Thoughts On the Sisterhood

As we gear up for the 2020 election, I was re-reading some of the stuff I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, particularly my Election 2016 Fallout series.

Here's me, on white women's complicity, two years ago:

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This loss is largely on white people, who disproportionately supported Trump while minority groups rejected him. We also saw white women voting against their own interests for a racist misogynist candidate.

Despite that, I also refuse to demonize white women more than white men.

I mean, really, the pieces that instantly came out about white women "selling out the sisterhood"? Yeah, they did. And people are surprised by this why, again? Oh, right, because nobody fucking listens to feminists, that's why. EVEN THOUGH it's the sad lesson from The Handmaid's Tale (1985): The very worst, most patriarchal, racist dystopia would not exist without the complicity of privileged classes of women.

Men alone cannot make racism and sexism "work." It is always a tangled knot. Forgive the circularity here, but many women hate women because women are hated. White women have a long history of benefiting via their kinship and marriages to racist, misogynist white men. It pays to be a cool non-feminist girl, for a time anyway. ("Trump can grab my pussy," boasted one Trump supporter, who both completely misunderstands the consent element of things and perhaps thinks her offering will insulate her from even worse misogyny than what she sees around her, inflicted on "other" women).

And this sweet, fresh hell in The Nation? In it, the author argues that white working class women in particular rejected Clinton because Clinton spent too much time cozying up to Lena Dunham and Big Feminism, whatever the fuck that is, when she should have been promoting:

"...[A] robust economic agenda focused on women’s needs: a $15 minimum wage, universal child care and pre-K, paid family leave, free college, and tough laws that crack down on wage theft and guarantee fair scheduling and equal pay for women."

You know, the very policies Clinton supported, to varying degrees, had anyone in the media stopped talking about her emails for 10,000 straight days and actually fucking covered them.

Sure, everyone has their theories about whose fault this is.

What seems clear is that white men are almost completely being given up on as people who can contribute to the electorate as anything other than angry beings who must be coddled and centered lest they elect nightmare authoritarians to make life hell for everyone else.

Example: An actual think piece in The New York Times, which I won't link to but is titled "The End of Identity Liberalism," sneers at the "failure" of liberalism's "narcissistic" "identity politics." Here's my summary of this piece and the dozens like them I've seen: As Trump fills his cabinet with KKK-supported white guys, white guys everywhere think liberalism has failed them because liberals talk too much about race and gender.

And so, the twin narratives about white people are that we ought to empathize with white male feelings of aggrievement while being disgusted at white female complicity. That, my friends, is just another fucked-up misogynistic fallout from this shit-show of an election that I refuse to indulge.

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My addition to this piece, now two years later is about The Women's March, which I was initially very excited about as a movement to channel women's anger and feminist resurgence.

Many of the women who marched, in my experience, were angry and somewhat-traumatized by the election of Trump and the misogyny we watched Hillary Clinton endure during the race. Relatedly, Trump's election is a symbol of white male supremacy, and very specifically female subordination, in the United States.

I had long known that prominent national leaders of The Women's March had supported Bernie Sanders and seemed to, I'll just say, not be fans of Hillary Clinton. They excluded specific reference to Hillary Clinton's historic run in communications about the March, which always seemed like a major disconnect from the rage and pain many women were feeling very specifically about how the mainstream media and Hillary's competitors treated her.

I have always wondered why seemingly anti-Hillary folks were chosen as leaders of a movement that was largely catalyzed by Hillary Clinton, and had been uneasy about it, but staying united against the Trump regime has always struck me as more important than letting that bother me too much 

A little over a year ago, I wrote of some of the intra-feminist conflicts within The Women's March, and specifically the decision some on the national team then made to invite Bernie Sanders to speak at the Women's Convention in Detroit in 2017, with some of their initial communications suggesting a sort of center-stage role for Bernie at this women's event. To me, it seemed like a decision that simply didn't think very highly of a not insignificant number of Women's March supporters - and the resulting criticism bore that out. For the leaders to virtually ignore, and thereby diminish, the historic nature of Clinton's run while continually lauding one of her white male opponents was bound to alienate many women.

Now, I think the best I can say is that I'm not even sure how relevant the national leaders are to the numerous local Women's March groups or the many women doing progressive, feminist work across the country, in their communities, and on social media.

From reports I've been reading, I think some factions of the left at best have very strange, gaslighting definitions of intersectionality that posit that only certain forms of identity-based oppression are valid for progressives to focus on at the moment and that if a person isn't that identity then they are a political neophyte, and an all-around shit person, who has nothing to contribute to the movement.

Somewhere around half of the white women who voted in 2016 voted for Trump and the left has been in a moral panic about it ever since. That statistic is also now used to treat white women as a monolithically-privileged class of conservative monsters, regardless of whether we're progressive and/or also poor, queer, trans, old, fat, disabled, or non-Christian. White privilege is real, even for women. And, many people have simply given up on trying to adeptly talk about people who have white privilege while also being oppressed along other axes of identity.

White Feminist used to mean a non-intersectional feminist, but it has quickly come to mean "any women who is white and has an opinion about something," such that now progressive white women are in the same category of "feminist" as Ann Coulter, which you'd think would render the whole fucking concept null and void among any person with a rational thought in their brain but here we are. And, even many progressive feminists have internalized this thinking.

It must be an MRA's dream come true.

In many ways, I have felt very disconnected from politics on the left, right, and center for the past couple of years, with a few exceptions. All of this is part of the backlash. Women have so many pressures to "forever cancel" other, flawed women, when men rarely do the same to each other.

Every generation of women will have to endure this, I believe, as the reasons women are given to hate themselves and each other, including and especially the "progressive social justice" reasons, continue to adapt to every gain feminists make.

The Iowa Polls: "I guess he'll do" 2020

It's 2019.  Grab your barf bags because we're off to the 2020 races and three white men are leading in the polls of likely Democratic voters.

Here's from a recent CNN poll of likely Democratic caucusgoers in Iowa (cite: PDF):

That's right, Joe Biden (32%), Bernie Sanders (19%), and Beto O'Rourke (11%). These are three men who have each lost the biggest political races in which they've competed. I'll just say for that reason alone, although there are many others, I am very concerned about 2020 and our chances of defeating Trump and the Republicans.

What could it possibly mean that Democrats and major media voices are not widely shouting at these men to retire into the woods and knit for the rest of their days?

Here are some theories, any combination of which might be playing out.

(1) It's Iowa, which is about 91% white.

Yet, in national polls, Biden has tended to lead, with Bernie Sanders coming in second, and someone else coming in third - often Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.

(2) Biden, Bernie, and Beto all have a lot of name recognition right now. Biden, who lost his previous bid badly, can ride on President Obama's coattails. Bernie has essentially never stopped running for president, even when he lost badly to Hillary Clinton. And, Beto just lost a high-profile race with the extremely unlikeable Ted Cruz.

(3) Hillary Clinton's electoral college loss to Donald Trump was deeply humiliating for American women and many women have lose their appetite to endure both the misogyny she (and her supporters) faced and another loss.

(4) The center to left has been in a moral panic about "white women" since approximately 47% of the white women who voted voted for Donald Trump.  It's as if some people have discovered, and just started thinking about, for the first time the very existence of conservative white women. Yet, rather than this 47% statistic being an indictment of conservatism, Christianity, misogyny, racism, or bigotry, in the framework of Clinton's loss, the 47% statistic is widely perceived as an indictment of "white feminism," a category that no longer means "non-intersectional feminism" but has come to mean, on the Internet, "words said by any feminist who is white."

I'm still teasing out the 2020 implications of this, but I've seen many men take advantage of this collapsing of many progressive feminists into the category of "irredeemably bad feminist who needs to shut up forever" in ways that are profoundly misogynistic. I see a lot of cynical mocking of the hashtag resistance because it's perceived as being comprised of dorky, white suburban moms who wear pussy hats. I see a lot of progressive white women internalizing this misogyny. Ironically, I see a lot of progressives who have just given up on intersectionality beyond the prism of one or maybe two intersections of identity, when there are so many more.

I think all of this contributes to the perception that it will take a white man to beat Trump.

(5) Relatedly, some people might want to vote for someone who isn't a white man, but they don't think enough other people will, so they perceive it as safer to support a white man.

(6) Many people are more tolerant of flawed white men, where women/people of color have their flaws amplified and used as dealbreakers. Every woman who runs will have her own version of "the emailz" to contend with, while her male competitors could be literal traitors to the nation and receive no comparable coverage.

(7) The beltway media portrays, and many people perceive, politics as akin to a boxing match, rather than a popularity contest that is largely framed by the media. And in a boxing match, people think it takes a man to beat a man. Hence the various male politicians and their fans with their "Bernie wouldas" and "Biden wouldas" after the 2016 election.

(8)  Decades of rightwing anti-Clinton propaganda and attacks amplified Hillary Clinton's flaws and contributed to many people on the center-left thinking she was a uniquely bad candidate, thus masking the misogyny that lingers among the voting population, even among Democrats and Independents. See, for instance, how Elizabeth Warren is already being treated, now that it's almost certain she's running.

(9) The mainstream media is still dominated by misogynistic, white supremacist people, especially white men.

(10) Our society still widely hates ambitious women.

(11) Trump is so bad that many people have completely romanticized the Obama years. They want the perceived safety of Joe Biden, the daddy/husband figure, even though Russia interfered with the 2016 election on the watch of Obama/Biden.

(12) It's very early. Other candidates may rise in the polls over time, with more exposure.

Note, none of these reasons are grounded in any of the leading men being uniquely good politicians.

They're not.

Yet, the thing about many white male candidates is that they rarely acknowledge the invisible assists they get from white male privilege, instead taking it for granted that their polling numbers and/or popularity are an authentic reflection of their qualifications for the job. 

What else?

The Bigot-Coddling Populism of Bernie

I would love to never write about Bernie Sanders again, but Bernie Sanders appears to be gearing up for a 2020 run or doing whatever it is he's doing at the rallies he continues to hold.

To me, one of his biggest flaws is that he doesn't appear to listen.

To me, it appears as though he has, for at least the past two years, been traveling the country speaking at people, over and over again, about what he thinks ails the nation.

It is now December 2017, and Bernie Sanders, the most progressive of progressives to ever progress, is still repeating the falsehood that "the vast majority of Trump supporters" are motivated more by economic anxiety than by bigotry, with an added dose of: "Trump said things that made sense."

.@BernieSanders: "I think that the vast majority of Trump supporters are people who are in pain, who are struggling economically… and they turned to Trump because Trump said things that made sense.” https://t.co/eoevCTIuf6

— VICE (@VICE) December 6, 2017

To me, Bernie Sanders is engaging in some craven, pandering bullshit.

To me, living in 2017 has meant being in an important cultural moment in which those who previously have not been listened to are now being heard. I'm referring to, of course, those who speak out against rape culture and, more broadly, the abuse of power.

Bernie Sanders is a populist who is hoping to leverage the power of the people for his movement.

And yet, while I think he thinks he's speaking for the downtrodden, forgotten man who is oppressed by The Establishment, Bernie Sanders demonstrates to me primarily that populism in a nation that has been rigged for racists and misogynists from the get-go means that the coddling of racists and misogynists is usually required in order for a populist politician to be popular.

Bernie Sanders' populism is not premised upon listening to the diverse, lived experiences of the the many people of this nation. It is premised upon talking to the aggrieved white people who get upset when people point out their various bigotries. If Bernie's populism were more than a crusty socialist version of Trump's, he would heed the call of his critics to do a better job balancing the perspectives of those who enabled the rise of Trump with those who are now disproportionately harmed by the Trump regime. He would also stop gaslighting the people of this nation about the prevalence of bigotry in our nation.

Bernie Sanders wants to lead the revolution. But what, exactly, is he tapping into, here?

Per Bernie, in the Vice profile on him:

"[Trump] said he was going to take on the establishment, and he was going to provide healthcare to everybody. You know what, it's pretty much what I said."

There's your 2020 slogan.

I guess I'll leave it at that.


Related: 
Throwback Thursday To When We Were Gaslit About Bigotry

The Nationalist's Delusion - by Adam Serwer

Quote of the Day: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in "Donald Trump is the First White President," is worth reading in full, but here's a snippet. After noting that Donald Trump won every class-based group of whites, he writes:

"The focus on one subsector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which Trump’s presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony—even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president—is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country’s political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of."

Of course, the focus on the white working class - particularly men - is not puzzling at all.

White men dominate the media narratives across the political spectrum. The white male media elite were largely enamored, entertained, and/or fascinated by the rise of the two angry white male populists who ran in the 2016 election. Many of these men, in the wake of their complicity, now demand that we ditch identity politics, stop listening to Hillary Clinton, and/or stop saying accurate things about Bernie Sanders because Trump is the "true" enemy.

We were close, in 2016.

We know how scared so many men were because of how they are acting now, desperate to stay at the center of all things.

Let's Not Downplay "Identity Politics"

As white supremacists continue to unabashedly rally in Trump's America, I remember the spate of liberal/left-authored articles scolding those of us with identities to ditch "identity politics."

Seven months into this current Republican administration, Democrat leadership under Chuck Schumer has been strategizing to downplay identity politics. 

Oddly (or not), the Politico article I link to says that "identity politics" are being downplayed to appeal to more center-right Democrats, yet in my experience, many so-called Bernie Democrats simultaneously see themselves as the far left and also want to downplay identity politics in favor of "universal' economic messaging. If the far left, the center, and the right want us to ditch "identity politics," I guess that leaves those of us with identities outside of the political spectrum altogether.

The current absurdity of today's political labels aside, I'd like to link to a previous piece I wrote about this demand to downplay identity politics, back in December 2016.  It's still relevant, and I still believe that it's a mistake to ditch identity politics, particularly when neo-nazis are emboldened enough to rally on our public streets, without hoods, because they know they have the support of the Republican Administration behind them.

Thus, my plea to our white male allies:

"....[P]lease do not ask marginalized people to endure the hostility of the Trump regime on your terms or on anyone's terms but their/our own. The white walkers are here and we are doing our best to hold the door. My question to you is, which side of it are you on?"

Quote of the Day

The Feminist Wire's Statement on the Election is worth reading in its entirety. A snippet:

"The 2016 presidential election has deepened and revealed immense fissures in our social fabric along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship status, and ability. Though the people voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton by a wide margin, the slave-state holdover Electoral College is poised to elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Trump is an avowed and unapologetic racist, xenophobe, misogynist, and sexual predator whose campaign drew heavily upon vocal support from white nationalists while the Republican Party stood idly by. Indeed, their actions of recent years paved the way for a Trump presidency.

We recognize that our democracy has long been compromised by capitalism, neoliberalism, militarization, and special interests, and has been, since the founding of our nation, interwoven with white supremacy and imperialism. The U.S. is a nation of brutal-made-to-be-normalized violence. On this front, Trump’s election is nothing new. Nor are the fissures revealed by the election. What is new is Trump’s blatant disregard for democratic process, his unabashed white supremacy, his vocal misogyny, and his contempt for any semblance of human rights and social justice. He thus provides unrestrained authority and resources to violence of white supremacy and genocide."

This point is so important, I think: the election has deepened and revealed fissures in our social fabric (on the left and the right). It has not created them.

Election 2016 Fallout Parts 5 and 6: On Misogny and White Women

(5) On misogyny.

It is true that more people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump, which gives me hope. But hoo-boy the poetic (in)justice of the system not protecting us from a predatory man governing us without the consent of the governed.

The misogyny of Trump and many of his supporters could fill volumes. I will grieve for what Hillary Clinton (and we, vicariously) had to endure, probably for the rest of my life.  And to lose, in the electoral college anyway, to this man?

Donald Trump is a privileged, predatory, incompetent man who fell up. His vastly-more-qualified female opponent was pushed down while doing everything in high heels, backwards, and over towers of double-standards.

When you see enlightened dudebros in your lives doing their hot takes about how Clinton was the wrong choice because she was "the establishment candidate" you can tell them that when Rape Culture and Patriarchy are two of this county's most enduring establishments, electing Hillary Clinton was never "the status quo" option.

(6) On white women.

Jeeeeesus, the intersections on this one.

This loss is largely on white people, who disproportionately supported Trump while minority groups rejected him. We also saw white women voting against their own interests for a racist misogynist candidate.

Despite that, I also refuse to demonize white women more than white men.

I mean, really, the pieces that instantly came out about white women "selling out the sisterhood"? Yeah, they did. And people are surprised by this why, again? Oh, right, because nobody fucking listens to feminists, that's why. EVEN THOUGH it's the sad lesson from The Handmaid's Tale (1985): The very worst, most patriarchal, racist dystopia would not exist without the complicity of privileged classes of women.

Men alone cannot make racism and sexism "work." It is always a tangled knot. Forgive the circularity here, but many women hate women because women are hated. White women have a long history of benefiting via their kinship and marriages to racist, misogynist white men. It pays to be a cool non-feminist girl, for a time anyway. ("Trump can grab my pussy," boasted one Trump supporter, who both completely misunderstands the consent element of things and perhaps thinks her offering will insulate her from even worse misogyny than what she sees around her, inflicted on "other" women).

And this sweet, fresh hell in The Nation? In it, the author argues that white working class women in particular rejected Clinton because Clinton spent too much time cozying up to Lena Dunham and Big Feminism, whatever the fuck that is, when she should have been promoting:

"...[A] robust economic agenda focused on women’s needs: a $15 minimum wage, universal child care and pre-K, paid family leave, free college, and tough laws that crack down on wage theft and guarantee fair scheduling and equal pay for women."

You know, the very policies Clinton supported, to varying degrees, had anyone in the media stopped talking about her emails for 10,000 straight days and actually fucking covered them.

Sure, everyone has their theories about whose fault this is.

What seems clear is that white men are almost completely being given up on as people who can contribute to the electorate as anything other than angry beings who must be coddled and centered lest they elect nightmare authoritarians to make life hell for everyone else.

Example: An actual think piece in The New York Times, which I won't link to but is titled "The End of Identity Liberalism," sneers at the "failure" of liberalism's "narcissistic" "identity politics." Here's my summary of this piece and the dozens like them I've seen: As Trump fills his cabinet with KKK-supported white guys, white guys everywhere think liberalism has failed them because liberals talk too much about race and gender.

And so, the twin narratives about white people are that we ought to empathize with white male feelings of aggrievement while being disgusted at white female complicity. That, my friends, is just another fucked-up misogynistic fallout from this shit-show of an election that I refuse to indulge.

Election 2016 Fallout Part 1: On Bullying

Part 1 in a series of 9.

(1) On bullying.

I've seen a lot of white Trump voters on social media who are shocked, angered, and saddened that "intolerant liberals" are "bullying" them by calling them, or suggesting they are, bigots.

But, it's not limited to the right. Over the course of the election season, we saw various levels of even liberal hand-wringing about how Clinton supporters need to have more "empathy" for Trump supporters, largely coded as the (white, male, aggrieved) working class. The white working class, we are told, has "economic anxiety" and we mustn't judge them with our "elite liberal" sensibilities by calling them bigots.

Well, I'll talk more about that economic anxiety claim later this week. But, on the empathy/bullying front, I still contend, as I've contended for years, that the empathy must work both ways. For, we also have to remember that Trump is a bully-in-chief who ran a campaign premised upon name-calling, taunting, and aggression, which he has neither atoned nor apologized for. Indeed, he's already back on Twitter sounding off his grievances about the anti-Trump protests and media. People are so mean to him. So unfair.

So, while it is nice, I guess, that Trump supporters are taking a stand against bullying now that they feel they are being bullied, where were they for the past 18 months when their top guy was impulsively pecking out insults on his Twitter? Oh, right. They were celebrating his "tell it like it is" persona because they purportedly believe telling the "truth" is more important than coddling people's feelings.

Truth.

What a concept. Imagine if more people understood that a critical distinction exists between saying what one thinks the truth is versus what the truth actually is. Trump, for instance, might be "honest" in the sense that he says whatever is on his mind at the moment; but what's on his mind is not necessarily truth in any objective sense of the word.

Which leads to the hypocrisy of it all, via garbage fire Joe Walsh:

The "joke" within the first post is that liberals have overly-delicate feelings and can't handle the truth.

The argument within the second post is the threat: you damn well better not call us names, or we'll never vote for you again! That this also might be construed as a request to coddle the delicate feelings of bigots, who literally argue for safe spaces within the public discourse, does not seem to cross the bigot mind.

All of this is to say I'm suspicious of any demands to re-center the feelings of white people who have unexamined, defensive bigotry, whether these demands come from the left, right, center, media, or purportedly neutral parties. The Tolerance Trap of "you must tolerate my intolerance of you" is a real, fucked-up thing.  But, listen, we actually don't have to be tolerant of all things all the time, particularly of opinions and people that degrade our dignity, just because people call us "intolerant" or mock our safe spaces or think we're mean when we express fear, hurt, or anger at injustice against us.

Drawing boundaries is, actually, a key point to being a feminist progressive.

I humbly offer this post as a resource, particularly for those who navigate conversations in which people request that you not call out bigotry when you see it.  You might have noticed the Gaslight Extravaganza that's going on everywhere lately.

Name what is happening, if only to yourself, and know when you need to walk away for your own well-being. Note the hypocrisy. Note the double-standard. If Trump supporters and their liberal enablers are imploring to you that bigotry wasn't a factor in Trump's election, know that this claim can only be made with a straight face in communities with toxic, fucked-up power dynamics.

Transparent - Beyond the Supreme Court Test Plaintiffs

Are people watching Transparent?

I largely enjoyed Season 2, in particular.  I am also aware of, and sympathetic to, critiques within the trans community regarding the casting of cis male actor Jeffrey Tambor as Maura, a trans woman - and of trans stories in general not being told by trans people.

Perhaps to her credit, creator Jill Soloway has publicly discussed her hiring of trans actors, consultants, and at least one trans writer to help with the production of the show. Is that enough? I'd say that's not my call, as a cis person.

Today I want to highlight the less-frequently discussed character, Tammy (Melora Hardin).

BAM!

Tammy is, to me, hot.  Like, HAF*.

*(I recently learned that's what the kids are saying for "hot as fuck." I also say fuck on this blog now on the regular, apparently.)

Lesbian and bisexual women's portrayal in TV and film is increasing, but butch women, butch queer women, being portrayed is still incredibly rare. It's as though queer women can be depicted, but they can't actually look like how many queer women actually look in real life.

Which, I guess is sort of an ongoing general rule for women in TV/film in general, yeah?

Men, I would argue moreso than women, can be fat, ugly, bald, frumpy, and old and still get acting roles - as they should! Women, however, have to constantly worry about their, in Amy Schumer's words, Last Fuckable Day - the day when the media decides that an actress is no longer believably "fuckable." So, like a woman reaches the age of 40 and from then on she's only fit for roles where she's, say, Tom Hanks' mom.

I would extend that further and note that even for women portraying queer characters, these characters often have to meet the standards of what's commonly thought of as the Hetero Male Gaze. Even The L Word, which was entirely about lesbian and bisexual women, showed approximately 3 butch women ever over the course of 5 seasons. (That might be an exaggeration. Was Shane butch? Debatable).

And, as a lesbian myself, I find many women appealing who do fall into those conventional beauty standards - but, my standards are also much broader.  I like women, like Tammy, who swagger.  I like women who give no fucks about whether men think they're nice, cool, or hot. I like women who are over 40 and are still portrayed as sexual beings. I find many women attractive who are, by media standards, fat (or who call themselves fat).

I like women are stereotypically feminine, androgynous, and yes, I like women who are butch.

So, back to Tammy. She is, in many ways, a mess. She's at times an asshole and, in Season 2, has a cringe-worthy public meltdown. (there, there, Tammy, there, there......sigh.....I'm sorry, what were we talking about?)

Oh yeah, but at the same time, isn't basically every character on Transparent a mess in their own unique way?

Some (ahem, Rod Dreher) who maybe have never seen the show, perhaps fantasize that Transparent is a propagandistic promotion of gender and sexual nonconformity that presents deviance as both desirable and superior than conventionality.

(which it is, obvs)

BUT, the power of Transparent, to me, is not that it depicts fantastical versions of people outside the norm. For one, it doesn't.  On the contrary, I feel drawn to the characters because they are imperfect, because they make bad decisions, and because they act jerky sometimes.  And, they're allowed to, even though they're queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming (and even if they have weird hairstyles - Season 2 Ali, what is going on?).

The show takes us beyond the point where queer characters must be pretty, gender conforming, and acceptably "safe" for a conservative, heterosexual audience (looking at you, Jenny's Wedding). We are invited to care about these characters despite their flaws. They are not the Supreme Court ideal handpicked, sainted, and prepped "test" plaintiffs for LGBT rights.

The show argues, instead, these people - we-  matter and are deserving of dignity, even if not immediately appealing to the mainstream. And that, I think, is progress.

Rome Hosts Conference on Complementarity

Last week, several offices of the Roman Catholic church held an event in Rome called The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium.

Many American opponents of marriage equality were thrilled by this conference and some, such as Rick Warren, were even speakers.

I guess, if you're looking to better understand what is meant by "gender complementarity" that is at the root of many people's opposition to marriage equality and, oftentimes, anti/non-feminism, the conference site would be good to check out.

What I'm so often struck by is the almost childish, emotional, romanticized way that complementarists talk about "man and woman." And yes, they often use the singular versions of these terms - which speaks to the belief that little variation exists within each gender category.

Anyway, from the conference's Affirmation about marriage and gender:

"See man and woman together. They are not just two people. He is for her, and she for him; it is inscribed in their bodies. Their union will bring life that binds and mingles families, encourages faith to flourish, and brings humankind and the world’s diverse cultures to flower again."

So, it's fine to be emotional about this stuff - but this Disney version of reality shouldn't be the determining basis for whether same-sex families deserve equality rights, protections, and dignity.  And, people are right to call out this thinking as irrational, unfair, and yes bigoted when it's consistently put forth to erase and marginalize non-heterosexual, non-cisgender, and gender non-conforming individuals.

A final note is that complementarists often talk about how "man and woman" are "different but equal."

7 out 32 speakers at this conference were women. Unlike their male counterparts, it is impossible for any of these women to be at the top of the hierarchy within the Roman Catholic church.

Just like within the US anti-equality movement, which is grounded in complementary thinking (at best), male voices, perspectives, and opinions are amplified and prioritized, even as they simultaneously tell us how important both "man and woman" are to life and marriage.

That is what gender complementarist "equality" looks like.

Cross-Gender Convos About Feminist Interactions

Over at Shakesville, Liss has written some helpful tips for how men can communicate more effectively in good faith conversations with women about feminist issues.

I thought I'd share both because it may be helpful to some male readers who may be seeking such advice, and because I think it can also be helpful for many women to see these suggestions articulated.  I know that when I have engaged with men on feminist issues, even if all parties are engaging in good faith and with good intentions, the interactions have still felt hostile.

Yet, like men, many women have internalized the stereotype that men are more objective and rational than women and so sometimes when men are engaging in sexist behavior it can be hard to immediately recognize and name what's going on.

I agree with all of the suggestions Liss makes, and in the comments I added one of my own:

When discussing feminist issues, "joking" about how scared you are "as a man" to be in the conversation is not helpful (eg, "I'm just going to say this and *duck* outta the way!"). These kinds of statements usually precede statements that are hostile to women while simultaneously putting the onus on women to center the man's feelings and ensure that he feels safe and not-too-challenged at all times in the conversation.

Even guys who are generally open to feminist arguments will trot this jokey-joke out. I've gotten, for instance, "Don't kill me for saying this, but Title IX should have never happened." The "joke" has always felt so unfair to me, and it wasn't until relatively recently that I really began to consider and articulate why.  Through the "joke," the man gives himself permission to say something offensive while pre-emptively framing any response that's not 100% appeasing as unduly hostile.

Now, when I see men make this "joke," I recognize them as men who are not adult enough to stand by their positions.  It's the equivalent of if feminists preceded gender conversations with men with, "Don't get pissed about this, but all men should be kicked in the nuts twice a week. Whoa, whoa down boy! You mad?"


Related: 
On Humor and Civility

When Some Men Say Sexist Things

It can be oddly validating.

Via Bloomberg Businessweek:

"At a Sydney technology startup conference, Evan Thornley, an Australian multimillionaire and co-founder of online advertising company LookSmart(LOOK), gave a talk about why he likes to hire women. 'The Australian labor market and world labor market just consistently and amazingly undervalues women in so many roles, particularly in our industry,' he said. When LookSmartwent public on Nasdaq in 1999, he said, it was one of the few tech companies that had more women than men on its senior management team. 'Call me opportunistic; I thought I could get better people with less competition because we were willing to understand the skills and capabilities that many of these woman had,' Thornley said…. 

Thornley went on to say that by hiring women, he got better-qualified employees to whom he was able to give more responsibility. 'And [they were] still often relatively cheap compared to what we would’ve had to pay someone less good of a different gender,' he concluded. To illustrate his point he showed a slide that said: 'Women: Like Men, Only Cheaper.'”

Yes.  Women being paid less than less-competent, less-qualified men.  Hmmm, kind of like what feminists have been saying since forever.  

"Well, he's young"

This "explanation" is sometimes offered to me as a reasonable justification for why some young men are oblivious to their privilege, are acting aggressively, and/or are being rude to women.

Once, when I was guest blogging at a conservative site, I gently took issue with one "fresh from undergrad" young man's, ahem, problematic behavior, and an older man associated with the site privately emailed me to request that I give the young guy a break because he's just a young guy, visibly upset by the encounter, and so forth.  (Men acting problematically often have very delicate feelings, you see, even as they mock feminists for being over-sensitive. Hence, the dance we often have to play with the word "problematic.")

Another time, I was on a project with a young guy, new to working, who was hyper-defensive about even the minutest of critiques and suggestions to his work. He strutted into the workplace both assuming he had lots to teach everyone else, especially the women, and believed that much of the work in his job description was "beneath" him. He was the Big Picture Guy, or so he thought.

Every conversation with him was a battle in which his sole objective was to "win" everyone over to his viewpoint.  He had no capacity to understand that maybe, just maybe, he didn't automatically warrant an immediate CEO position. He didn't get why people didn't just do what he said, just because it was him saying the things.

"Well, he's young," some people would say.

But, the thing is, I know many young people, men and women alike, and not all of them are assholes.  Many of them are kind, aware, and humble. Many of them believe they have things to learn from other people - about work, about privilege, about other people's life experiences.

I do not deem "Well, he's young" to be a sufficient reason to explain away a young guy's assholery. When I hear it, I hear a phrase that enables young men to their entitlement to be fonts of unexamined privilege and illusory superiority.

#NotAllMen: Conservative Academic Edition

Brad Wilcox and Robin Frewell Wilson have a gross, notorious piece in the Washington Post about violence and marriage.

For some brief background on Wilcox, Sarah Posner has a round-up of some choice quotes of his promotion of traditional gender roles in marriage. And, I've previously noted his ethically-questionable involvement in the tainted Regnerus study conservative use to denigrate same-sex marriage and parenting. Meanwhile, Wilson is a conservative law professor, not a sociologist, who has also published hand-wringing pieces about "religious liberties" in the wake of same-sex marriage.

In this latest piece, Wilcox and Wison riff off the #YesAllWomen hashtag many women used in response to the UCSB shooting to communicate their experiences living in a world in which men commit the vast majority of violent crimes, threats, and acts.

Giving feeeeeeeeemales some pro Safety Tips, Wilcox and Wilson opine:

"Marriage is no panacea when it comes to male violence. But married fathers are much less likely to resort to violence than men who are not tied by marriage or biology to a female*. And, most fundamentally, for the girls and women in their lives, married fathers provide direct protection by watching out for the physical welfare of their wives and daughters, and indirect protection by increasing the odds they live in safe homes and are not exposed to men likely to pose a threat. 

So, women: if you’re the product of a good marriage, and feel safer as a consequence, lift a glass to dear old dad this Sunday."

As Echidne notes, the authors fail to acknowledge, let alone address, causality and its direction: "Which comes first, domestic violence or the dissolution of marriage (or the decision not to marry someone who is violent in the first place)?" Or, other causes: maybe violent men are less likely to marry. Maybe women who are married are less likely to report their spouse for violence than are unmarried women. Maybe the criminal justice system is more lenient on married men than unmarried men.

My point here is that we see once again how gender traditionalists like neat, easy-peasy solutions for real-world problems, starting with the original URL of this article, which barked at women to get married if they don't want to get themselves attacked. It's a worldview that accepts "females" as the victim class and "males" as the murderer-rapist-abuser class, and commands women to work within that framework to marry men, tame the "beasts," and limit our behavior and movement in the world because Men Cannot Be Trusted and, meanwhile, the low bar of human decency for men is set at "don't rape, attack, or kill someone unless you have a good enough reason" (and man oh man authority has thought of lots of ways to give men what it deems good, justifiable reason for these things, yeah?)

Meanwhile, real-worl reality has a lot going on in it that the gender traditionalist narrative doesn't account for. To them,  and we largely see this perspective in the article above, the world is divided into two classes of men: Good Protector Men and Evil Violent Men. It's a narrative that fails to recognize that some men can be protective of "their" women while violent toward others.  It fails to acknowledge that people are not binary either 100% Good or 100% Evil.

So-called "Men's Rights Activists," of course, rarely if ever take issue with this gender traditionalist worldview of men, which of course underscores that movement's true motivation: putting uppity women back in their/our place. So, on that note, I've answered my own question on my why MRAs rarely critique gender traditionalists. They're mostly on the same wavelength.

(*Note too, of course, the authors' use of "females" as a noun as though it's the proper analog to the term "men.")

This Is What Dehumanization Looks Like

I saw a popular anti-LGBT writer approvingly promote this silly, self-important, fear-mongering piece by Michael Hanby.

The TL;DR version of this post is that, like many anti-equality pieces, this one's an academic version of National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage's (NOM) ridiculous "A Gathering Storm" ad about the grave harms we are to experience as a society that accepts same-sex marriage.

You can tell right off because Hanby, or his editor, calls his piece "The Brave New World of Same-Sex Marriage."

Which, first off, as an avid sci-fi fan, I find that many conservatives love using Huxley's work as their handy, super profound dystopian reference, no matter how tiny a connection exists between that and whatever it is they happen to be writing about.  It's as though some people are like, "Stuff I think is scary is happening now, and scary future stuff happened in Brave New World too, therefore it's exactly the same."

Hanby starts with some... fun premises:

"Just as feminism has as its practical outworking, if not its theoretical core, the technological conquest of the female body—'biology is not destiny,' so the saying goes—so too same-sex marriage has as its condition of possibility the technological mastery of procreation, without which it would have remained permanently unimaginable."

Hanby's reference to feminism here may seem irrelevant but, for many, being anti-feminist and being anti-LGBT go hand in hand.  Poke a homobigot even a little bit, get them into a conversation about gender, and yep, as NOM claims:

"Men and women make unique, irreplaceable, contributions to parenting. Both genders are needed for human flourishing."

Both progressive feminism and pro-LGBT advocacy threaten this allegedly "natural" world in which all of humanity can be simply and easily reduced to two,and only two, gender complementarist and essential roles (with men on top, of course).  Gay people, trans people, "masculine" women, "feminine" men, intersex individuals, bisexuals - we're all aberrations that, to those invested in "natural law," don't even cause a blip on the radar of what it means to be a true, authentic human being.  Our experiences that deviate from the "nuclear family norm" are, to them, artificial social constructs.

In addition to Hanby's bizarre (macho?) framing of feminism as "the technological conquest of the female body," he makes quite the claim in concluding, without argument, that same-sex marriage would have been unimagineable without the existence of alternative reproductive technologies. That claim, to me, belies an ignorance of the most prominent reasons put forth for same-sex marriage as well as the reasons for its increasing acceptance - none of which are dependent upon the argument, "Well, same-sex couples can use egg/sperm donors, therefore, they too can get married."

Hanby continues:

"To accept same-sex unions as ‘marriage’ is thus to commit officially to the proposition that there is no meaningful difference between a married man and woman conceiving a child naturally, two women conceiving a child with the aid of donor semen and IVF, or two men employing a surrogate to have a child together, though in the latter cases only one of the legally recognized parents can (presently) contribute to the child’s hereditary endowment and hope for a family resemblance."

Gee, something is missing from this picture. Notice how in all this talk of the brave new world of reproductive technologies, Hanby fails to mention that male-female couples also use these practices.  In his brave new world, and even his current world, it's as though all male-female couples conceive children "naturally" while only same-sex couples use alternative reproductive technologies to have children.  Adoption doesn't occur either, apparently.

These omissions, these double-standards in which a practice is highlighted and denigrated when same-sex couples do it and invisibilized when heterosexuals do it are, to me, always a sure sign of the dreaded b-word. And, indeed, he really gets worked up a bit later, culminating in his overall thesis:

"Underlying the technological conquest of human biology, whether in its gay or feminist form, is a dualism which bi-furcates the person into a meaningless mechanical body made of malleable ‘stuff’ and the affective or technological will that presides over it. 

The person as an integrated whole falls through the chasm. This is the foundation of the now orthodox distinction between ‘sex’ which is ‘merely biological’ and ‘gender’ which is socially constructed, as well as the increasingly pervasive (and relentlessly promoted) idea that freedom means our self-creation of both. Technological dominance over procreation imposes this bi-furcated anthropology upon parents and children alike, and codifying it implicitly makes this anthropology the law of the land. 

To declare same-sex unions marriage and their technological ‘reproduction’ normative is essentially to reconceive the child not as a person but as an artifact. It is to deny that he [sic] is his [sic] own being with inviolable dignity who cannot be manipulated or controlled; since it was a process of manipulation and control that brought him [sic] into being in the first place. 

To declare same-sex unions marriage and their technological ‘reproduction’ normative is essentially to reconceive the child not as a person but as an artifact. It is to deny that he [sic] is essentially the natural fruit of a love inscribed into his [sic] parents’ flesh; since love is now a mere emotion with no bearing on the meaning of the body, which has been relegated to the sub-personal realm of ‘mere biology.’" 

Lot going on there, right?

In a nutshell, his main argument is that same-sex marriage results in the normalization of alternative reproductive technology, which results in the dehumanization of all of us in society. It is the academic speak covering a simplistic argument that, to me, is most infuriating: The notion that it is uniquely same-sex marriage that is the harbinger of this brave new world of, quoting Hanby again, "embryo selection, cryopreservation, ‘baby farming,’ three-parent ‘composite’ babies, defective embryos and chimeras manufactured for research."

Now, as some of you might know, I used to guest write at the conservative-leaning Family Scholars Blog, where I was a progressive lesbian feminist blogger in the midst of those who held views much like Hanby's. I've said it there and I'll say it now, the ethics of ART ought to be explored, debated and discussed (and often are).

However, the biggest failing of many anti-ART voices who are also anti-LGBT is the coupling of their concerns about ART with the almost single-minded blame for all ills associated with it on same-sex couples, same-sex marriage, and (as in Hanby's case) feminism.  I once asked a prominent opponent of same-sex marriage and ART how many same-sex couples used ART compared to heterosexual couples and she honestly couldn't tell me. Yet, from her writing and advocacy, one would be led to assume that she had solid information that millions of same-sex couples, and same-sex couples only, were using these technologies.

To single out same-sex couples and same-sex marriage as harbingers of the dehumanization of human beings is, frankly, sickly, and absurdly, dehumanizing.  But, of course, dehumanization is a key feature of gender complementarist theories and practices that push people into simple "pink" and "blue" categories, that ignore and invisibilize actual human experience and difference while masquerading as absolute truth "natural law" about humanity.

Quote of the Day

I'm reading Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing.  Here she is, writing on white male fauxbjectivity (my term):

"...[M]en and women, whites and people of color do have very different experiences of life and one would expect such differences to be reflected in their art. I wish to emphasize here that I am not talking (vis a vis sex) about the relatively small area of biology - about this kind of difference in experience, men are often curious and genuinely interested - but about socially-enforced differences.  The trick in the double standard of content is to label one set of experiences as more valuable and important than the other. Thus [to the list of ways women's writing is denigrated] we have added.... She [wrote it], but look what she wrote about."

And so we have terms like "chick lit," "pink" science fiction, "mommy blogs" special segregated sections magazines that are for female interests while the entire rest of the "general" articles are for the regular humans, female characters who are purported "Mary Sues"and more - all standing in contrast to white-male-authored works and characters which are generally classified as more serious, non-gendered, color blind, profound, important, and universal to the human experience.

Misogyny and Nice Guys

Over at Cyborgology, Jenny Davis makes an important point about violent misogyny in the age of Internet:

"["Elliot Rodger's] parents saw the digitally mediated rants and contacted his therapist and a social worker, who contacted a mental health hotline. These were the proper steps. But those who interviewed Rodger found him to be a 'perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human.' They deemed his involuntary holding unnecessary and a search of his apartment unwarranted. That is, authorities defined Rodger and assessed his intentions based upon face-to-face interaction, privileging this interaction over and above a 'vast digital trail.' This is digital dualism taken to its worst imaginable conclusion."

Many feminists and the Southern Poverty Law Center rightly note that the-called "manosphere" is devoted almost entirely to woman- and feminist-hating.

From time to time, mainstream (often male) journalists "discover" the manosphere, imbue it with much more good faith than it is deserving of, often with a pretense that the men who comprise the manosphere are "just" loser extremists who aren't taken seriously by anyone and, say, who would also be readily identifiable as woman-haters "in the real world" by, I don't know, their steepled fingers, pointy eyebrows, and general aura of creepiness permeating from them.

One of the manosphere's most prominent voices, Paul Elam, has said that today's women are "shallow, self-serving wastes of human existence—parasites—semi-human black holes that suck resources and goodwill out of men and squander them on the mindless pursuit of vanity."  And, thousands of men agree with him.

Elam and his fans, like the gay-hating Phelps clan, are probably all nice people sometimes in some contexts.

They also live in a culture in which they teach and/or are taught - by the media, by culture, by the manosphere - that women aren't full human beings like how men are full human beings and that they're entitled to sex from these sub-human creatures known as women.

The biggest lies the mainstream tells us that there are good guys and there are bad guys, that most guys are good guys, and that therefore the good guys have no introspection to do in how they contribute to our woman-hating culture.

For men to point out how awful they think it is that yet another man went on a shooting spree is not all that helpful to the national discourse. Not killing people because you hate women is, like, the lowest fucking bar of civility ever.  And it seems such an obvious wrong that to point out how awful it is seems to beg the question of its wrongness at all.

What seems more helpful to society's overall misogyny problem is for men to do the things that are harder to do, things that would maybe cost the man something - some bro points, some cool points, some ego, some dent in the aura of assume intellectual superiority, whatever.

Things like: listening to women when we talk about our lived experiences in a misogynistic society; dropping the assumption that you have lots to teach women about gender, stuff, and life in general because you're the man in the conversation; recognizing that you probably don't notice men doing problematic things in the way that women often notice them because you haven't spent a lifetime being on the defensive about these things;
and calling other men out when they're awful and even when they're just engaging in the everyday microaggression-level bullshit.

Trans People Still Face Military Discrimination

Via the Washington Post:

"As [Landon Wilson] enlisted, he was urged to become a cryptologic technician. By Wilson’s estimate, the Navy spent at least a half-million dollars getting him the highest-level security clearance in government and training him for an intelligence job that involves intercepting and analyzing communications from foreign governments and extremists. 

He developed a reputation as a talented, meticulous, hard-working sailor, said Shayne Allen, a former colleague who was stationed with Wilson at the Navy Information Operations Command in Hawaii.

'Landon was someone who you don’t see a lot of in the military these days,' Allen said. 'He not only checked all the boxes, but went above and beyond.' 

During his time in Hawaii, Wilson earned several awards and accolades for his work. In a unit of roughly 10,000 sailors, he was recognized as the performer of the quarter in 2012 and the enlisted sailor of the quarter in 2013."

The Navy later determined that Wilson was a transgender man and sent him home from Afghanistan, where he was stationed, intercepting communications for Special Operations troops. He was then granted an honorable discharge.

This post is just a reminder that the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" did not address service by transgender people. Meanwhile, a non-partisan commission led by former US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, MD, has determined that "there is no compelling medical rationale for banning transgender military service, and that eliminating the ban would advance a number of military interests, including enabling commanders to better care for their service members" (See PDF for full report).

I have complicated, conflicting thoughts about the US military, but it seems like Wilson was thriving in it. The problem doesn't seem to be that Wilson is trans, but that the bureaucracy didn't know what to do with him for being trans.

I'm no more of a military expert than Elaine Donnelly, but it always seems facetious to me when opponents of trans, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people serving in the military suggest that it might be too complicated to figure out how to appropriately integrate these non-cis, non-hetero people into the military.

The US military practically invented Internet. I'm highly confident it can figure out how to let trans people continue serving. If its leadership really wanted to.

18 Ways Some Guy Has No Clue What It's Like to Live as a Woman

Via Shakesville, I learned that some guy has written a super, link-bait article entitled, "18 Things Females Seem Not To Understand (Because, Female Privilege)."

As regular readers of Fannie's Room can guess on the basis of the title alone, the whole list is quite the stellar compilation of the usual MRA "seeeee, men are the ones who are really oppressed by the feeeeee-males" talking points.

For instance, we have:

"Female privilege is being able to walk down the street at night without people crossing the street because they’re automatically afraid of you."

Welp, newsflash to MRAs: I will always, always, prioritize my physical safety over a male stranger's possible hurt feelings about how I might have, say, crossed the street to avoid an encounter on a sidewalk at night.  Yes, I consider that my actions might hurt his feelings for a few minutes, but in the grand scheme of my life, yep, I admit that I value my own life more than a man's feelings.

Of course, leave it to an MRA type to frame what is in reality a survival mechanism to the reality of disproportionate male violence as an example of "female privilege," with all of the associated implications that survival is a "privilege," and not something women are entitled to because of our humanity. Because, a man's feelings.

And really, that's a pretty good summary of much of the list.

How Convenient

Recent narratives purport that being good at school is now a girl thing, because schools these days are purportedly feminized, biased to reward girls, and hostile toward boys and "innate boy behavior."  So claims psychiatrist Ned Hallowell, quoted in a recent Boy Crisis article:

"God bless the women's movement—we needed it—but what's happened is, particularly in schools where most of the teachers are women, there's been a general girlification of elementary school, where any kind of disruptive behavior is sinful.... 

Most boys are naturally more restless than most girls, and I would say that's good. But schools want these little goody-goodies who sit still and do what they're told—these robots—and that's just not who boys are."

How lucky then, for boys and men, that New York Times columnist David Brooks is now telling the nation that boring goody-goody good-grade-getters ought not to be hired!  He purports (via Shakesville):

"'Bias hiring decisions against perfectionists. If you work in a white-collar sector that attracts highly educated job applicants, you've probably been flooded with résumés from people who are not so much human beings as perfect avatars of success. They got 3.8 grade-point averages in high school and college. They served in the cliché leadership positions on campus. They got all the perfect consultant/investment bank internships. During off-hours they distributed bed nets in Zambia and dug wells in Peru. 

When you read these résumés, you have two thoughts. First, this applicant is awesome. Second, there's something completely flavorless here. This person has followed the cookie-cutter formula for what it means to be successful and you actually have no clue what the person is really like except for a high talent for social conformity. Either they have no desire to chart out an original life course or lack the courage to do so. Shy away from such people.'"

Getting good grades, being well behaved, and taking on leadership and volunteer positions are, today, largely coded as girl/feminine things.  So of course it's no surprise that these traits are now being dismissed, denigrated, and devalued in one of the nation's most important newspapers.