Election Fallout Part 3: On the White Working Class

3) On the white working class.

I recognize two related truths: (A) Money is power, and (B) Improvement of economic conditions, by itself, does not make bigoted people stop being bigots.

Example: one of the most wealthy people I know, someone with a literal vault of gold bars, is still sending chain emails about Obama being a secret Muslim terrorist who isn't even a US citizen.  Why? Because she's been surrounded by white Republicans for decades who don't want to hurt her feelings by calling her or her views racist. We, probably all of us to varying degrees, value relationships with people more than the risk of alienating them, offending them, pissing them off, or "causing a scene," by calling them on their shit. (See also, The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck)

Disclaimer, because I think it's important: I like much of what Bernie Sanders stands for. Economic inequality is one of the great injustices of our day.

One, of the.

That said, let's take Bernie Sanders' recent New York Times op-ed. As if written fresh off the Democratic Primary campaign trail, he offered us essentially the same oft-repeated, re-purposed stump speech he gave at rally after rally:

"I am saddened, but not surprised, by the outcome. It is no shock to me that millions of people who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they are sick and tired of the economic, political and media status quo."

Okay, but guess what, Bernie? I'm sick of the status quo too, but I didn't vote for a nightmare candidate. So why do I feel like you don't have empathy for me or the millions of other people who rejected your message?  Why did many black voters, who consistently backed Clinton over you, reject your message?

Speaking for myself, I didn't see myself reflected in his message. I never know quite what he means by working people, regular people, or ordinary Americans, but I always come away thinking he's talking about white blue collar workers, probably male.

Take a recent Tweet:

I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 14, 2016

I come from the white working class too and (a) Hillary Clinton spoke to me just fine, and (b) it would at this juncture be helpful for Bernie to consider that many of us fled the white working class because of abuse inflicted upon us for, in some way, being different.

It is a tricky, nuanced take. Of course not all white working class people are bigots, but it is irresponsible for a popular politician to try to capture the argument on Twitter. It came off to me as, intentional or not, stoking the embers of white populist rage.

The Democratic Establishment is to blame for all your problems, white people, but Bernie alone understands and can fix it!  Which, sounds familiar doesn't it?

His goal seems to be to reach out to people who didn't vote, who voted for a 3rd party, or voted for Trump. Or, to people who are politically apathetic. Or, to people who rejected or feel alienated by "elite" Democrats. Or, to people who, if they are politically engaged, are pissed off for vague reasons they don't, can't, or won't fully articulate.

Consider Bernie's anti-Democratic Party message in light of recent advice on the best ways we, the populace, can reach out to our Congresspeople. We must be respectful, professional, brief, and prepared. We should email or call under some very specific guidelines. The bottom line: we as citizens must make our voices heard by reaching out to the people who ostensibly serve us.

Nowhere in this guide do I see the advice: "Elect an authoritarian nightmare who will wreak destruction upon women, immigrants, and people of color." But goddamn what a white thing to do and what a goddamn white rage-privilege thing to excuse it.

And so, I offer two final propositions:

A) Many people view the Democratic Party, especially now, as a firewall between ourselves and horrific misogynistic, white nationalist nightmare politicians.

B) That firewall should therefore not now be destroyed for the sake of making the Democratic Party more compelling to white people.

People are hurting across the nation. This hurt includes, but is not limited to, working class white people. But, because white nationalism is one of the most enduring US Establishments, Bernie Sanders seems to want to tear down the Democratic Party and build it up as a white-working-class-centric institution and if that's not his aim he has a lot of work to do to make that more explicit.

The subtext to all of the white working class fetishism, and not just limited to Sanders, is that we should put implicit good faith trust in white working class people that they are not bigots or that, if they are, better jobs will make them not be.

But, and here's what I think scares people like me: You know what's more dangerous than a poor bigot, probably? A bigot with more money and a better job.

Yes, let's lift all boats economically. But, I reject the notion that we should put kid gloves on and coddle the white working class because it hurts their feelings when they're called bigots. It is not "elite" to call out bigotry. It's self-defense. White working class Trump supporters alone did not put Trump in the White House, but many of them specifically voted for a man who boasted about getting rid of "political correctness," a man who said telling the truth was more important than people's feelings, as he enabled neo-nazis throughout the country.

If white liberals and progressives want to abandon marginalized people and our complicated "identity politics" in favor of walking on eggshells around the delicate sensibilities of fragile-yet-abusive white people, we will most certainly lose in 2020, as well, because you can deal me (and likely millions of others) out.

On the Fundamental Issue

So, you want to better understand the context in which, for instance, some feminists might react badly to "progressive" arguments (to the tune of The Bernie Sanders Movement*) that the real issue people should be worrying about is class/workplace issues/wealth inequality and not gender, sex, race, sexual orientation, or other identity politic issues?

Well, take a gander at anti-feminist Cathy Young's recent clickbait defense of men from mean mean feminism, for which she was likely paid by The Washington Post (how nice for her!). Now...there's .... a lot going on there, so pardon me for only having time to address one tiny snippet:

This gender antagonism [of women calling men out for sexism] does nothing to advance the unfinished business of equality. If anything, the fixation on men behaving badly is a distraction from more fundamental issues, such as changes in the workplace to promote work-life balance. What’s more, male-bashing not only sours many men — and quite a few women — on feminism. It often drives them into Internet subcultures where critiques of feminism mix with hostility toward women. [emphasis mine]

When both purported progressives and so-called feminist allies join anti-feminists in telling feminists to take our eyes off of gender equality because There Are More Important Issues To Worry About, we see another instance of when progressive intent can have rightwing consequences.

I'm not interested in tidy, simplistic arguments claiming that by addressing one issue we can fix all issues. Our world is complex. We need leaders who understand that. And while I know progressives are very into recycling (as we all should be!) I'm not actually interested in progressive friends who recycle talking points we've been hearing our whole lives from rightwing foes which dismiss the very real harm we experience based on our identities.

For many people, identity issues ARE fundamental economic issues.  How nice for some people that that might not be the case for them.


*In the past several weeks, I've seen articles calling the "Not Me, Us" movement this. So [insert perplexed look here].  At what point does a failed presidential bid become a cult of personality?

Dreher Rages In Support of Gender Police

[Content note: anti-trans bigotry, gender policing]

Welp, Rod Dreher is at it again with the anti-trans crusade at his blog.

First things first, he begins with the preening male conservative equivalent of a trigger warning/content note (caps and bolds in original):

"Below, a video that went up on Facebook on April 19. DO NOT WATCH THIS AT WORK. The language directed at the police is foul and abusive. But if you can handle cursing, you need to watch it. I’ll describe it below."

I use content notes, so I'm not knocking the practice. Rather, my point is that his own content note shows that for all their railing against "PC culture run amok" social conservatives have their own versions of political correctness. And, I've interacted with such people long enough to know that their moral outrage about swearing, especially if engaged in by "females," usually far exceeds their moral outrage at certain (what they deem) societal undesirables being treated indecently.  Saying fuck, shit, or (lord help me) pussy while female is akin to inflicting upon society a human rights violation of the first order. But verbally bash gay or trans people? Shrug.

He continues:

"In the video, a very masculine-presenting teenager is asked by police to leave the women’s restroom. The person, who has a deep voice, says she’s a woman, and not going anywhere. She gets very aggressive: 'I’m a f–king female. Do I have to tell you again?'"

The police ask the teen for her ID and, when she says she doesn't have it, the police remove her from the restroom. Dreher links to the video, and adds his own commentary:

"I saw the video on this FB page. Read the comments for an example of the unshirted rage of these people."

"These people." Hmmm.  I guess it's something that he at least calls them people. Credit where it's due. Dreher goes on to justify the decision to remove the, what he calls "alleged lesbian," from the restroom:

"[If you don't remove her] you might have let a man stay in the women’s bathroom — a public toilet — making women who didn’t know this person was a lesbian very uncomfortable, and even make them feel unsafe.

.....This country is crazy. It is instructive to read that Facebook page, and to see how berserk so many of those on the cultural left are — as if the cops had behaved like stormtroopers instead of like reasonable people trying to protect the public safety."

The reasoning, such as it is, behind Dreher's argument is twofold (a) trans women are actually men and (b) men in women's restrooms pose an inherent threat to women.  Funny how this particular example works out though, isn't it?

In this case, he finds it justifiable for the police to have removed a cisgender woman from the ladies because some other women might have merely felt unsafe by what they might have thought was a man but really wasn't. The risk, by his own logic, was not there because neither a man nor a trans woman was present.  Thus, in practice, we see that the policy does not address actual safety of women, but perceived safety and even that's questionable. For, it is Dreher who editorializes, inserts himself, and simply imagines, on women's behalf, that women might be scared.

At his blog, Dreher speaks often of a so-called Law of Merited Impossibility, alluding to his belief that Christians like himself are at imminent risk of widespread, brutal persecution. Under this "law," he claims that liberals don't believe such persecution of Christians will ever happen, but if it does, we liberal types will think that those bigoted Christians will deserve it.

This "law" looks like 100% projection.

What was at first a policy of keeping trans people out of gender-appropriate restrooms becomes acceptable to more broadly apply, so that anyone who doesn't properly perform gender becomes suspect.  And, well, I guess those people deserve the policing and abuse, what with being so unhinged and angry.  I mean, did you hear they even swear sometimes? (Caution!)

Dreher's illogic becomes even more apparent when watching the video. In it, you see that the woman is in a line of many people in what appears to be a very crowded restroom of people coming and going.  Indeed, other people in the bathroom were telling the police, "That's a girl! That's a girl!" suggesting they were hardly threatened. It is difficult to imagine at what point this "potential man"/"alleged lesbian" would get away with raping a woman in the bathroom. What I'm saying here is that I'd do more listening to actual sexual assault experts on this matter, many of which condemn anti-trans "bathroom bills" for putting trans people at risk for violence and not actually protecting cisgender women.

Indeed, we scratch these policies even just a little bit and we mostly get the putrid smell of incoherent gender policing, coupled with threatened, fragile masculinity. The disgust at the "mouthy""masculine" "lesbian" and her cohorts is practically dripping from Dreher's mocking temper-tantrum.

Yet, rather than recognizing the flawed logic, rather than seriously engaging counter-arguments to his point of view, he acts as though the other side ("the cultural left") has no legitimate argument for all this bathroom business. As though trans people don't actually have to ever piss or shit when they're out and about. And if they do, well, too bad. It's their fault for being trans, and the rest of the world shouldn't have to accommodate that - they deserve no bathrooms! (And hey, did this lesbian ever get to pee, by the way? I hope so).

Well. Many people in his comment section rightly took Dreher to task, although he mostly responded with the typical whining that people didn't READ what he ACTUALLY WROTE so WAH! So, he posted an "update" to his piece, erm, clarifying:

"Maybe living with that degree of social anxiety [of people being able to use "whichever gendered bathroom they want"] is worth it to you so transgenders, genderfluids, genderqueers and all the rest can pee wherever they like, whenever they like. But it’s a big damn ask for women."

Okay player.

First they come for the "transgenders," and then see how the list of who it's justifiable to exclude from public restroom access expands. (Hey, by the way, did you all hear that The Handmaid's Tale is coming to Hulu?!)

Now, here I have to ask, why the potty obsession, which seems so fashionable in conservative circles at this particular moment in time, with an election looming?  With so many defenders of traditional morality being exposed as sexual hypocrites or predators themselves, are we looking for a new social wedge issue or does the topic serve the purpose of being p0rn for prudes? By "monitoring" "deviant" gender and sexual behavior, some conservatives can consume that behavior while also signaling their own virtue by publicly rejecting it.

Here: I do not reject any of this.

On a final note, if we assume the very best intentions on his part, well, as a woman, I don't want or need Rod Dreher, or any other concerned-ass citizen, to exclude trans people from women's restrooms on my behalf, for my defense. Mostly, because I live in the real world where trans people don't actually pose a threat to me in the potty.

The fact is, I have shared restrooms with trans people (when I've even known they were trans) and I have literally never felt unsafe. But, for me, trans people aren't an abstraction. They're not a symbolic evil or sign of societal decay and decadence. They're not "men trying to be women" or "women trying to be men" or predators hell-bent on attacking women in restrooms.

They're human beings.  And, I'm of the opinion that when one understands that simple concept, one also understands that therefore trans people's concerns and perspectives are worth contemplating beyond a knee-jerk reactionary level that dismisses the whole debate itself as evidence of how "crazy" modern society is about gender.

But, you know, I'm a swearing lesbian who likes a prison show featuring trans, lesbian, bisexual, and otherwise gender-non-conforming women too, so I'm sure that discredits my entire argument in the view of some. Scribble that on your goddamn content note.

Yes or No

Fannie's Room should implement comment moderation in the voice of Blaine the Mono from Stephen's King's Dark Tower series?

Okay, I kid, it's just that I'm about a quarter of the way through Wizard and Glass.  And, as I was reading it, I was thinking that it could be entertaining to deal with trolls and abusive commenters with comments like, "YOU ARE BEING VERY IRRITATING AND RUDE." Or, when banning people, to say, "SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR AFTER WHILE CROCODILE DON'T FORGET TO WRITE."

And, of course, the primo retort for when people inevitably come back sock-puppeting or directly emailing me: "TOUGHT TITTY SAID THE KITTY."

Every now and then, Little Blaine would chime in with a, "Ohh, you better watch out, you're making her mad."

Ahhh, fun times.

A Most Civil Response

An update to yesterday's post: The anti-gay Christian writer has responded to Ellen's clip in an "open letter." It's an extremely odd mix of complimentary and incredibly condescending, demeaning commentary.

In it, he acknowledges that Ellen is indeed a funny gal, and pleads, "hasn't the time arrived for everyone involved in this dialogue on gay-related issues to lower our voices and approach one another with respect and civility though we have our differences?" He then continues:

"Being 56 years old, childless and with your third 'partner,' you may not understand the awesome responsibility it is to shape impressionable and vulnerable children. I've done it with children and grandchildren plus helped parents for over 42 years with this most challenging task. 

....Ellen, a nation rises or falls on marriage. If we dismantle this pillar of society, as it has existed for over 5000 years of Western civilization and redefine it to accommodate other arrangements such as yours (or those advocating for polyamorous, polygamous or other configurations) what will be the consequences for this sacred institution and the future of our nation?"

Previous articles of his include, "Are You Aware of the Avalanche of Gay Programming Assaulting Your Home?" and "Archie Comics Now Includes Homosexuality, Witchcraft, Demons and Occult."

These anti-gay (and Christian supremacist) viewpoints are nothing new, of course, but it's worth pointing out the profound disconnect.  Many LGBT people view people like this guy as obvious raging bigots who lack all awareness of the harm their words cause. To many ant-LGBT Christians, though, accusations of bigotry feel incredibly unfair, and as though the label is used to intentionally "shut down conversation." As though, by virtue of these beliefs being religious, the beliefs cannot by definition be problematic, uncivil, or immoral.

I encountered this attitude a lot when I was a guest blogger at Family Scholars Blog when we discussed civility. To me, and many LGBT people, statements like this guy's about same-sex marriage and homosexuality having the power to destroy civilization are demeaning to our human dignity. In this case, to make it super personal, referencing Ellen's past relationships and using scare quotes in reference to her legal wife, which suggests that Portia is not actually her wife, in order to make a point suggesting that she can't possibly therefore understand the implications of same-sex marriage is, simply put, an asshole move.

Over the years, it has been a learning experience to me that these kinds of statements can be so obviously demeaning to me, while many anti-LGBT Christians think they are being perfectly civil and respectful. Many anti-LGBT Christians and LGBT people/allies are operating from different definitions of civility. Working from the simplistic notion, for instance, that both swearing and slurs are "uncivil" and that basically everything else is fair game, many Christians believe that if they state their anti-LGBT opinions politely enough, without saying "fuck" or "fag," then they can cause no harm and as though there's nothing offensive or wrong about what they say.  They think there's a stark difference between the message, "all fags are going to hell" and "you're going to hell because of your homosexuality." (Erm, to me, there's not a meaningful difference between the two).

When such Christians state their anti-LGBT views while simultaneously believing they're replicating the "word of god," well, there's really no telling them that they're actually being quite awful.

I suspect that's what's going on here, as well.  Mr Christian Guy suggested that he and Ellen get coffee and talk about things in a civil manner, and he deigns to elevate the discourse to a higher, nicer level. What offers like that tangibly mean for LGBT people, however, is subjecting ourselves to verbal assaults from people who inflict them with the approval of their own consciences.

Sommers Critiques Critics of Video Game Misogyny

I think probably the best things about professional anti-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers' recent video mocking the hoards of "hipsters with degrees in cultural studies" who take issue with misogyny in video game culture are (a) the part at the beginning where she says the last time she played a video game was in the 1980s, when she played Pac-Man in a bar, and (b) the part at the end where she just knows critics of misogyny are making a big deal out of nothing because she herself spent several weeks looking at this issue.

Both of which obviously render her qualified to discuss current video game culture because reasons.

Frustratingly, Sommers throws around a lot of [citation needed] claims, which is pretty easy for one to do when one's arguments are already playing into what's thought of as common sense truths about differences between "males" and "females."  These sorts of ignorant reactionary pieces take hours for thoughtful people to transcribe and then to rebut each and every claim she asserts.

And the worst of it is that, in many ways, it's as though she isn't even speaking to prominent critics of video game culture, let alone about them in ways that accurately represent them or their arguments. That's evident from the way she ridicule and caricatures her "hipster" ideological opponents to the way she deigns, fucking deigns, to speak authoritatively about video game culture from her measly several weeks experience thinking about it.

Basically, the entire video is just one more bit of evidence misogynistic dudebro gamers need to hear to further justify their entitlement to have all things within video game culture centered around their needs, desires, attractions, biases, and prejudices.

Alrighty Then

In a video that's been making the rounds throughout the LGBT blogosphere, one mansplaining Christian "preacher" has posted a video on his website calling for a constitutional amendment that would make homosexuality a crime and subject prisoners to 10 years of hard labor.

Pathetic and hostile, yes.

I guess I'm just so getting inured to this shit that I approach it with dark humor, but I find it somewhat entertaining that, as is the case with so many bigots, this guy seems completely and unjustly enamored with his own "brilliance" as he lectures viewers on not only the evils of homosexuality, but about how "homosexuals" have turned things into a "zero... sum.... game," which he then proceeds to define for all of us dum dums.

I actually went to the preacher's website to gauge the legitimacy of it because, I mean, who really knows on Internet, right?  It's everything you might expect it to be from a Christian conservative bigot or one invented on Internet as a caricature.

He or "he" has posted several installments of his ramblings on a variety of hot topics that he says he's turning into a book. He opines on, for instance, the "orgies" of purported rioting and looting happening in Ferguson nowadays and, in a separate article, on the sinfulness of abortion which, in a blast from the past, references Baby Jessica.

In other news, I keep coming back to the notion of being imprisoned for being a lesbian and what "hard labor" with all of my gal pals might look like and, well, I should just stop here.





Related:
Atlantic Writer: Women's Prison Show Should Be More About Men

Deep Thought of the Day

One thing bigots and other anti-LGBT folks need to learn is that their views are crap even if they can find LGBT people and self-described progressives and liberals who agree with them about some stuff.

At the awful National Organization for [Heteroseual] Marriage blog, the "NOM Staff" author approvingly quotes a purportedly progressive person who wrote an article claiming that religious people's objections to marriage equality "aren't trivial."

Seriously, bigots love this shit, the same way misogynists love "women against feminism."  The "ex-gay," the gay man opposed to same-sex marriage, the celibate lesbian who refuses to live in sin.  It's not exactly a startling revelation that anti-LGBT groups love using these people's words and stories to the extent they echo anti-LGBT talking points.

It's just a reminder that the same talking points we've heard and rebutted over and over and over again for years don't suddenly gain respectability and credence just because it's not the same old bigots saying them.

"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.

Civility, Safety, and Harassment Links

Here's some stuff I've been reading lately pertaining to one of my fave topics of Internet harassment, civility, and threats:

1) Geek Feminism has a Code of Conduct.  I think it's a good idea for, especially, larger group blogs and sites to have explicit codes like this, although content may vary.  As I've written before, I've been a guest blogger in environments without explicit guidelines on comment moderation, conduct, and harassment, and my volunteer writing in those spaces is an experience I would not want to repeat.

2) Here's an interesting article about the strategies some feminist bloggers have used to resist trolls and harassers on Internet.  Particularly, I appreciated the framing of such strategies as "collective labor" to be apt, as yes, it takes actual work to make a site safe.  It doesn't just happen.

3) Over at Cyborgology, robinjames writes about being perceived online as male, due to her name, and how that might result in her receiving less harassment online than women with more "feminine"-(my scare quotes)-seeming names.

4) The other day, National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM) posted a braggy video on its blog purportedly showing how kind, loving, and civil opponents of marriage equality were while attending NOM's recent march in DC.  These interviews of march attendees show, according to NOM, how the Liberal Homosexualist Media unfairly portrays equality opponents as So Mean, when look right here at how nice these people are being at their "historic" (my scare quotes) march against equality:

Here's the first person interviewed, speaking in response to a "reporter's" question on why she attended the March: "I feel like it's my duty to do it. I don't want my children to ask 'Why did you not fight for me, Mom?'"

The second person interviewed explained, "God made us that way. He made a male and a female to come together as one."

That's about as a far as I got because, yeah no.  Not only are those "reasons" for opposing marriage equality nonsensical and irrational, they are also not civil.  Same-sex marriage will not hurt your bigoted non-existent future kid, lady. And, a person's neat-o religious beliefs about "males" and "females" should have no bearing on my equal rights.

But.... nice try.

This Little Blog

At my blog, I occasionally get the drive-by anti-feminist commenter who's read like 1 post of mine ever and thinks he's suddenly a Fannie's Room expert.

A common theme among these commenters is their assumption about their place in the world relative to mine.  Namely, that they're speaking from a place of objective authority over what I write about and that they, being men, have the power to take me down a notch.

Two days ago, Guesticon stopped by to opine, out of nowhere:

"lol well done for proving exactly why we need MRA's because of sad little twisting sexisit attitudes like yours, that want females to be in a position of dominace over men, because somehow in your twisted immature mindset, us men being your property will make us equals."(emphasis added)

In this case, Guesticon not only distorts my writing, but tries to trivialize it.

Even as they appear to do no blogging of their own, anti-feminist men sometimes show up here to do this.  They cannot stand that women are allowed to blog.  They loathe that we, while being women, say things about gender that they disagree with.  Too lazy and entitled to do true, helpful advocacy work for men, they certainly don't want women to do such work or writing for women.

Ban me from you little blog, they say. Hold your little opinions, they bark. Talk to your little friends here, they mock.

Thus, even as Guesticon fantasizes about my fictitious fantasies about feeeeeeeeemales dominating men, he himself, and men like him, attempt to assert dominance over me, this blog, and my writing.

And yes, my blog is relatively little in the grand scheme of things.  It's a 1-woman endeavor that I do in my free time and continue to do so because I get enough feedback from people that say that enjoy it and find it helpful. Becoming the next Huffington Post has never been my ultimate goal.  Impressing anti-feminists is not my endgame.

I think most people who read this blog regularly already know that.

It's still good to call out the behavior of Guesticon for what it is, just because it's a theme that pops up here sometimes.

Threats, trivaliaizing our work, showing up to distort our writing: all in the anti-feminist toolbox of ways they try to get women on Internet to shut up.


ps - I'm a lesbian. Having men as my "property" is also not high on my list of life goals.

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.

Fun with the Homo Hivemind!

I can't stand rhetorical sloppiness like this. Straight from the nation's most prominent national group opposing same-sex marriage:

"Many in the gay marriage movement claim that they have no desire to force their lifestyle on anyone else, they only want the freedom to love and marry whomever they wish. But sometimes this carefully-crafted claim is undermined by the real-world actions of the homosexual community itself."

Emphasis added, because, likewise, if some gay people say they hate ice cream, but then some other gay people go and actually have an ice cream social, it means that the gay people who claimed they hated ice cream were obviously lying and in on the ice cream extravaganza the whole time!  

So, basically, that's the level of rational thought coming from the National Organization for Marriage.

It's kind of a good starting point for thinking about the other shit they do.

My Family's Good, Thanks

Welp, I got a big kick out of this post, where a Catholic man who runs an outfit called Fix the Family opines that people should not send their daughter to college.

I first found out about the article via Shakesville, where Liss accurately billed it as the "worst thing you're going to read today." And, it was. It really really was, for me! Like, so much so that one wonders if feminists are being punked. Because, wow, the two dudes who started this organization are not into feminism! I mean, they're into feminism in the sense that, wow, it looks like a fave topic for them to talk about! But, like not in a good way.

The content itself is really just a bunch of blah blah blah concern trolling about how college turns "girls" into sluts and makes them forego their "god-given" most important roles in life as being sperm receptacles for their husbands and, relatedly, fetal vessels for the Catholic Church.

Sample text:

"We believe in women making wise prudent choices for themselves. The indoctrination of the feminist culture and the practicing of a sexually promiscuous lifestyle severely cloud, practically blind that good judgment. Getting a college degree often makes a young lady feel an 'obligation' to use it, to make money. Often her husband doesn’t want to see it go to 'waste,' So the degree is what actually traps her. Not having a degree frees her to enter into a marriage with proper roles in which her husband will provide for her and their children. Christian marriage by definition does place her in a submissive role to her husband, but no one forces anyone to marry anyone."

So, we see. College degrees trap women in the.... job market? Which, if true, would be... a.... bad? thing... for women... to be employed. Because all women everywhere.... should actually be... trapped in marriages in which they are economically dependent upon their .... husbands. I mean, what could go wrong, really?

These fellows do a lot of blustering about how practically everyone who's commented on their site are calling their opinions "chauvinstic" for, like no reason at all. And really, what can one do except find that a big hoot!? Internet never agrees on anything!  Internet Commenters are the absolute worst (present company excluded). But, like, these guys are so far off that even Internet is backing away slowly like, "Ummm, dudes we want nothing to do with you."

Of particular note, this "Fix the Family" website also has a video series where one of the founders has made 10 whole entire videos in a series called "Feminist Lies." That's fun to contrast with the site's "Man Room," which sits there like a little turd floating in the kiddie pool, neglected, devoid of content, with only a promise: "Coming Soon!" 

Of course.

How very anti-feminist of them. Nothing to offer men except misogyny.

Well, that and cheap promises of a heavenly, magical, oxymoronic, paradoxical, equal hierarchical marital relationship in which women-chattel are simultaneously placed on a condescending pedestal while also being expected to be entirely dependent upon their husband-masters for their survival in the world.

Wow, sign me right up, mister!

Yes, Please Submit This Anti-Gay Marriage Brief!

Welp, this was an... interesting article on same-sex marriage, penned by a David Usher who apparently is President of an outfit called the Center for Marriage Policy.

In it, Usher, whose bio does not say he's a licensed attorney, has sputtered some bizarre, word salad-ish "legal" arguments against same-sex marriage. Stay with me here, though, because that part of his article is actually pretty boring. His arguments are not clear or well articulated, and they do not, in my opinion, coherently reference relevant legal principles despite his assertion that his organization is working on a neat legal brief with a "ranking constitutional scholar" to challenge same-sex marriage.

The basic argument, and here's where shit gets funny, is that the US Supreme Court's recent DOMA ruling has created "three classes" of marriage, a structure that places "mother-mother marriage" at the top, "heterosexual marriages" in the middle, and "male-male marriages" at the bottom. No word on where non-mother lady/lady marriages fit into this schema, they seem not to exist.

You really kind of have to read a few paragraphs to get the full effect of the article.

It's a peculiar twining of MRA ideology with gender traditionalist homobigotry that, frankly, I haven't seen a lot of.  Add in the implicit argument that sexual orientation isn't an actual trait, with consequent notion that gay people therefore don't actually exist or aren't relevant to the issue of "gay marriage" and, well we get arguments that aren't anywhere near rationally related to reality, let alone rationally related to legit government purposes.

Furthermore, I expect many opponents of same-sex marriage to have some level of hatred/disgust toward lesbians and bisexual women, but many of them also have a somewhat traditionalist, simultaneously condescending and idealized view of heterosexual women, especially those who are mothers.

Usher, though, kind of lays it all out by insinuating that all women are basically greedy sperm-burglars who opt to marry other women, not because they're gay, but because women basically want the extra help around the house, in addition to wanting boyfriends on the side who will pay them child support and give them a little pickle tickle on the side I guess.

For real. His own words:

"When two women marry, it is a three-way contract among two women and the government. Most women will bear children by men outside the marriage – often by pretending they are using birth control when they are not. Entrapped men become economically-conscripted third parties to these marriages, but get nothing in return.

This is a significant advantage compelling women who would otherwise become (or are) single mothers to choose to marry a woman instead of a man. They can combine incomes, double-up on tax-free child support and welfare benefits, decrease costs, and double the human resources available to raise children and run their household. They are sexually liberated with boyfriends often cohabiting with them to provide additional undeclared income and human resources without worrying about what happens when they break up with their boyfriends." 

I emphasized a sentence in there that really highlights the traditionalist view of gender. Note the stark admission: In male-female households, Usher takes for granted that only one parent, the mother, is available to raise children and run the household, even though, presumably, two adults exist in that household.  In female-female households, he asserts that the human resources available to raise children and run the household are magically "doubled."

I'll say it again that gender traditionalists are often their own worst PR campaign for "traditional marriage."

Usher goes on to whinge that it's so unfair that heterosexual marriages, what he calls "class 2" marriages, have to "subsidize" the other two classes of marriage. Mumblemumblesomethingjust'cuz.

Things get fun again when he starts talking about "class 3" marriages, that is, male-male marriages. He opines:

"Marriages between two men are destined to be the marital underclass. In most cases, these men will become un-consenting 'fathers' by reproductive entrapment. Men in male-male marriages who become fathers by deceptive means will be forced to pay child support to women in bi-maternal marriages, and become economically enslaved to Class-1 marriages."

Again, this is what happens when people deny that sexual orientation is relevant to the larger marriage conversation. It's as though heterosexual men who are duped by female sperm burglars will throw their hands in the air and resign themselves to marrying other men, where they will live lives of financial servitude to the Matriarchalist Overlords.

I mean, the whole article is like watching a conservative "think tank" guy mistake his own crappy MRA speculative fiction fantasy story for a legal argument.

So, I just want to reiterate.

According to this Usher dude, "The Center for Marriage Policy is currently drafting a preliminary brief [asserting these theories] with the assistance of a ranking constitutional scholar."

Good luck with that.

The War on Pop-Tart Guns

Oh gag me with a spoon.

Feminist critic Christina Hoff Sommers has done what she does best, badly, this time writing in Time about her fave topic, the so-called War On Boys in schools.

"As school begins in the coming weeks, parents of boys should ask themselves a question: Is my son really welcome? A flurry of incidents last spring suggests that the answer is no. In May, Christopher Marshall, age 7, was suspended from his Virginia school for picking up a pencil and using it to “shoot” a “bad guy” — his friend, who was also suspended. A few months earlier, Josh Welch, also 7, was sent home from his Maryland school for nibbling off the corners of a strawberry Pop-Tart to shape it into a gun. At about the same time, Colorado’s Alex Evans, age 7, was suspended for throwing an imaginary hand grenade at “bad guys” in order to “save the world.”

In all these cases, school officials found the children to be in violation of the school’s zero-tolerance policies for firearms, which is clearly a ludicrous application of the rule. But common sense isn’t the only thing at stake here. In the name of zero tolerance, our schools are becoming hostile environments for young boys."

Is it ironic that this so-called war on boys prevents boys from playing war in schools? Who knows!  Who cares! Those male persecution complexes aren't going to feed into themselves!

What I do know for sure is that first and foremost girls and women were formally and/or legally banned from many forms and levels of education for many years in US history.  And, feminists who reference that history and context today in terms of their lingering effects are largely thought of as thin-skinned dummies who get our panties in a bunch over nothing.

Might gender gaps in wages and certain fields maybe be explained by this history and the concomitant social conditioning around gender? Nah. We're instead to believe that sure all that stuff about women's oppression happened a long time ago, but then a buncha other stuff happened mumble mumble equal opportunity not equal outcomes everything's fair now except boys have it worse now that they're expected to compete against girls and women as equals! *insert big "Men are #1" foam finger and start waiving it around*

But my my my, just look at the outrage! the hyperbole! the exaggeration! in the rhetoric when the so-called feminized school system does even the tiniest little thing to take away a boy's god-given, rightful place in the world to shape his pop-tarts into guns during lunchtime at his school.

Suddenly, the whole entire educational system is rigged against him! Suddenly, getting in trouble over playing at violence explains EVERYTHING about EVERY gender gap in which women might be outperforming men.

Which brings me to point two. The whole "schools is rigged against boys because they can't pretend violence anymore" argument only works if one believes that violence is inherent to boys and therefore cannot and should not ever be tempered.

That is, it's just another fuckin' way to say that it's a boy's world and everyone else just lives in it, because boys are violent and rough 'n tumble and whuddaryagunna do, ladies? Tut tut, you better keep yourselves safe and not go and get yourselves shot or raped!

And even though society wrings its non-existent hands every time a boy commits another school shooting, if we dare suggest that little boys not minimize gun violence by treating it as a form of play, or maybe if we even want to explore why little Tommy feels so compelled to nibble his pop-tart into a gun in the first place, it's a war I tell ya, a war! A war not against violence, but against boys!

Ker-pow!

Seriously, anti-feminists. Calm the fuck down.

Public Discourse Promotes Anti-Equality "Primer"

Back in June, I took note of a creepy "primer" purporting to give marriage equality opponents tips on how to better frame the marriage debate.

As I noted back then, key takeaways from this propaganda manual, er, "primer" include "elevat[ing] as spokesmen" gay people who oppose same-sex marriage, "telling bigger stories" that reverse who the victims and victimizers are, and subverting the "marriage equality" meme with "stickier" anti-equality memes.

So, basically more of the same "winning" strategies the anti-gay movement has been using for years all jotted down in one handy-dandy document which I hope will be in the appendix of a future history book as actual proof of there being an actual anti-equality agenda.  Because really, I'm starting to wonder if many anti-equality folks are so insular and insulated from opposing views that they maybe don't get that it's the reliance on these very strategies, strategies that gaslight LGBT people's lived experiences and aim to divide and drive wedges between marginalized populations, that many people find hateful.

Brian Brown (who doesn't seem to be the same guy from the National Organization for Marriage), has written a piece at the Public Discourse, promoting this new "primer" and discussing its key concepts. Funnily enough, his article's title is a sarcastic admission of sorts, "Now That We're All Haters..."

The ellipses are in the original title, for dramatic effect I suppose?, but *spoiler alert* his punchline isn't a conciliatory and apologetic "Sorry for the harm we've caused gay people, let's see how can come to a better understanding and try to temper this culture war a little."

Nope.

Now that opponents of marriage equality think that everyone else thinks they're haters (but do we, really?)... the new goal seems to be to try to not look like haters whilst still opposing equality for same-sex couples while parroting superficial platitudes and sound-bites that don't embiggen the discourse.  

Because yes yes, we know. Whether or not people think marriage defenders are hateful bigots is the single most pressing concern in this entire culture war, a concern that must be centered in all conversations, especially mixed-company ones. Because god forbid we just not magically accept as benign the notion that "true marriage is more diverse" unlike "mono-gendered" marriage, and pretend that a catchphrase like that is not rooted in some serious sexist, supremacist, and shallow bullshit thinking about gender and sexuality.

Fun fact: The Public Discourse is hosted by The Witherspoon Institute, the "think tank" that recruited Mark Regnerus to run "his" widely-critiqued study on parenting that was timed to be available before the US Supreme Court issued its marriage equality opinions.

Schadenfreude Moment of the Week

As I've continued to mull over the recent gay-related Supreme Court victories regarding DOMA and (sorta) Prop 8, I've gotten a bit of satisfaction about how the Regnerus study did not successfully sway the Court's majority even though public records show that the study's release was timed to influence major Supreme Court decisions.

According to The American Independent, the conservative Witherspoon Institute paid about $700,000 for the study.

Gosh, that must be really sad for the study's biggest fans.


Related:
The Regnerus New Family Structure Study 
American College of Pediatricians Misuses Regnerus Study in Amicus Brief 
Journal Audit Finds Severe Flaws in Regnerus Study 
Regnerus Speaks at Ruth Institute Conference

Scholars Critique Regnerus Study
Regnerus: Same-Sex Marriage Will Change Heterosexual Marriage
Fischer: "Underground Railroad" Needed to Rescue Children in Gay Families

*Record Scratch*

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the federal benefits of marriage won't apply to same-sex couples who are in legal domestic partnerships or civil unions.

My partner and I, who are in a legal civil union with all of the state-level rights, benefits, and privileges of marriage, have been wondering what impact the DOMA decision would have on our lives. At this point, as far as I can tell, it's not even clear that we can receive the federal benefits of marriage even if we were to, say, obtain a marriage license in, say, Iowa, as we do not reside in Iowa.

I'm not particularly looking for advice on what we should do, I'm just noting another absurdity of treating like couples in un-alike ways. Kind of like how civil unions are supposedly a just-fine substitute for marriage. For instance, even though married different-sex couples and some same-sex couples can now file all of their taxes jointly, my partner and I have to complete our taxes roughly 17 times each tax season since we have to file federally as "single" individuals, complete "as if married" federal returns in order to obtain numbers required to complete our state tax returns jointly, and then actually file our state returns jointly like how different-sex married couples file theirs at the state level.

These are nuances and complexities that I don't think many "marriage defenders" really consider when they oppose equality whislt parroting their vague, generalized soundbites and "every child needs a momma and a daddy" platitudes. Or, who knows, maybe these people get off on being able to make other people's lives more complicated and annoying. Kinda like there's some sort of power trip in knowing they can make other people's lives more difficult.

In other news, Ross Douthat recently raised the possibility of Andrew Sullivan being "the most influential writer of his generation."

I don't know how such a thing would even tangibly be measured or if that bold claim was said more for attention, but I'm especially fascinated when generally anti-gay folks try to write, or revise, histories of the importance of various figures in gay politics.  The whole convo seems to have a tone of men only considering other men to be their peers and true competition in life as Douthat goes on to only consider other men - Paul Wolfowitz, Christopher Hitchens, Kenneth Pollack, and Bill Keller, for instance.

So, that's always fun, especially when political conversations, a large one of which is about same-sex marriage, are also largely thought of as same-sex conversations among and by men.

People really love their Great Man narratives of history and politics, don't they?

Conversion Therapy Group Exodus International "Sorry"

Exodus International, "the oldest and largest Christian ministry dealing with faith and homosexuality, issued an apology to the gay community for years of undue suffering and judgment at the hands of the organization and the Church as a whole."

This news broke last week, but I wanted the apology to marinate a bit in my head before writing about it.  See, as I'm sure most of you know, not all apologies are created equal.

I'm a lesbian who, when I was first coming out many years ago, considered suicide, going so far as to contemplate actual ways I could have done it. When anti-gay folks have harassed me on the Internet, they have sometimes played on the notion that the world would be better of without gay people, by giving me explicit directions on how I could and should kill myself.

I had suicidal thoughts even though I was almost always okay with being gay and knew for much of my life that I was. It was greatly problematic to me that other people, pervasively powerful other people at that- like the most dominant religion in the US, who seemed to be not okay with me, or anyone else, being gay.

So, that's my filter, my personal background, when I read Alan Chambers', Exodus President, apology.  And, that's my filter, quite frankly, when I read any person's apology or purported change of heart for their prior anti-gay, anti-equality advocacy.

These apologies, retractions, and changes of opinion, I think, are going to perhaps become more frequent as Opposing Everything Gay becomes more of a political liability. The extent to which people own their harmful advocacy, even if they did not intend to harm people, is something that I, at least, will notice. The extent to which the apology looks like a sincere, thoughtful change of heart, as opposed to a politically calculated "harumph!" sort-of resignation to the reality that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are increasingly accepted in our society, is also something I notice. The extent to which formerly anti-gay folks go on to engage in dialogue and understanding with members of the communities they previously hurt, is also something I notice. And, the extent to which these publicized announcements, which are purportedly about apologizing to a harmed community, also serve as ways to self-promote New Projects and New Fundraising Appeals is also something I will note.

Accordingly, Chambers writes, in part:

"Never in a million years would I intentionally hurt another person. Yet, here I sit having hurt so many by failing to acknowledge the pain some affiliated with Exodus International caused, and by failing to share the whole truth about my own story. My good intentions matter very little and fail to diminish the pain and hurt others have experienced on my watch. The good that we have done at Exodus is overshadowed by all of this.....

....Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.....

 ....I cannot apologize for my deeply held biblical beliefs about the boundaries I see in scripture surrounding sex, but I will exercise my beliefs with great care and respect for those who do not share them.  I cannot apologize for my beliefs about marriage. But I do not have any desire to fight you on your beliefs or the rights that you seek. My beliefs about these things will never again interfere with God’s command to love my neighbor as I love myself."

Exodus International is closing down and is beginning a separate ministry with the purported goal to "reduce fear."

I can graciously accept the apology of Exodus. However, I do so with extreme caution, perhaps as a defense mechanism from years of this organization hurting people. For, the harm Exodus inflicted may have been unintentional, but Chambers does admit that harm was happening and that it was harm that Exodus was responsible for. What leadership and moral authority in this arena do these people think they still have? Maybe slow down before starting and publicizing another big project, yeah?

For, from my reading of Chambers' apology, I believe that Chambers and Exodus also still hold, and may still spread, problematic views that can still contribute to the marginalization of LGBT people and same-sex relationships.

I'm certainly not looking for a softer bigotry of "love the sinner, hate the sin." I don't see a great need in the world for a ministry that teaches people how to continue opposing homosexuality and same-sex marriage while also knowing the right words to parse so as to "not appear" bigoted or hateful.

I don't want gay people's forgiveness of Chambers and Exodus to embolden them to think of new ways to continue to, even if unintentionally, hurt us. Maybe we've heard enough of the Exodus folks for now, and it's time for them to really listen and understand better where they went wrong.

So, time will tell in what direction this new ministry goes.

Related:

Not a Christian, But
To Forgive Without Apology
What Would You Do If You Witnessed Bigotry?
SPLC Sues Conversion Therapy Provider
An Open Letter to Exodus International's Super-Remorseful Alan Chambers