You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much over the past couple days! I would claim that this is because I was out getting drunk and partying, but this is me we’re talking about, so the actual answer is that I’ve just been incredibly lazy. However, I do not leave you without content! Just, you know, other people’s content.
Skepchick says smart things about femmephobia. (And links to NSWATM. People should link to NSWATM more. Fact.)
Ami Angelwings has been taking a bit of a break from blogging here for various personal reasons. However, she’s still saying some awesome shit over at her own blog. For instance, she talks about intent, why it is not fucking magic, and the effects of intent when you yourself fuck up. And she (TW for rape) calls out a victim-blaming asshole who blamed a rape survivor for not reporting his own rape.
Womanist Musings continues to discuss the racism and misandry within the prison-industrial complex.
s e smith worries that a (TW for rape) new mental health program in the military may present ordinary reactions to trauma (the example ou uses in the article is rape) as signs of weakness. I’m particularly concerned about this, from a masculist perspective, because mental health bootstrapping interacts badly with a male gender role that already discourages seeking help as a sign of weakness.
(TW for abuse) Dear Abby helps raise awareness of the abuse of men.
An interesting obituary of Van Lewis, a major anti-circumcision advocate (in Florida! My home state!).
Charlie Glickman talks about being a Sensitive New Age Guy. Some thoughts, for those of us who are still not sick of the Nice Guy(tm) thing.
NSWATM congratulates NWOSlave for winning (TW for rape and general stupidity) Manboobz Troll of the Year. Despite being banned, he occasionally comments on NSWATM opining that we all want to put men in a genderless box or something. This post includes a collection of his greatest hits maintained by Shaenon Garrity, and is fun for everyone, except for those who like having faith in humanity.
And, finally, Neil Gaiman leaves us with a New Year’s wish.
WRT the Skepchick article you linked in the original post: sadly, author Natalie Reed, who had been writing very consistently awesome posts on transgender and intersectionality issues, and had helped launch Skepchick’s sister site Queereka, has had to resign from Skepchick – and judging by some Twitter activity is likely to be blogging again over at FreethoughtBlogs.com with other awesome feminist writers like Greta Christina, Jen McCreight, Ophelia Benson, and PZ Myers. Just thought you’d like to know! B-)
Generally this gets back to Hegel, and Hegel’s influence on Simone de Beauviour, via the “Hegelian master-slave dialectic”, a name given to a narrative the Hegel wrote about how power and self-awareness are related such that the slave can achieve self-awareness while the master can’t.
Dr. Anonymous:
I have always wondered how it is that feminist women are able to both highlight the male privilege that is hidden from men, and declare that women don’t have privileges.
I’ve been asking that one around at Good Men Project a bit lately but no seems to have an answer.
For real if you find the answer to that one let me know.
Bah. HTML fail. =/
“Clearly while phobia does denote an irrational fear of something, it also is an anxiety disorder stemming from mental issues within, where the phenomenon at hand is closer to an externally imposed social policing of gender performance.”
This bit is a quote.
Clearly while phobia does denote an irrational fear of something, it also is an anxiety disorder stemming from mental issues within, where the phenomenon at hand is closer to an externally imposed social policing of gender performance. This may come off as a nitpick, but there is an extremely important distinction to made on phobias. Phobias are avoidance behaviors which escalate to some life-altering state. The avoidance behavior is what defines a phobia; the hatred and fear of the source of a phobia is a side effect or cause (note the “or” here; also, sometimes both) that is also treated… Read more »
@Lamech
The same could be said of problems women face.
Sexual harassment? Nope, haven’t had any. Groped on public transport? Nope. Verbally insulted? Nope. Raped? Nope.
In 6 years, none of that.
Pre-transition, I’ve been physically harassed, beatened, threatened with death and generally treated like shit with no recourse, because hierarchy is hierarchy, and a snitch is bad.
@Schala: To be fair a lot of the problems men face are things that are not generally encountered. If she didn’t need to deal with say… reporting a girlfriend abusing/assaulting/raping her (while appearing to the police as a guy) to the police she might be completely blind to that. Ditto if she never had to put up with the differing requirements to get her children citizenship*, or if she never had to deal with the increased rates of being charged for crimes males face in the United States. *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States_of_America actually go down to “children born out of wedlock overseas” then… Read more »
@Schala You noticed that too. Someone pointed it out in the comments, Skepchick’s reply was… confusing. I quote the relevant part of Skepchick’s follow up comment. “He didn’t make a statement about some broad “female privilege”, he only made statements of particular circumstances and situations that seem to privilege women. I don’t see that as being nearly as problematic or unsubstantiated as the claims of “female privilege” in a broad sense.” What does that actually mean? My best guess is something like “while there are privilege like circumstances in favour of females, you can’t call them female privilege because men… Read more »
Skepchick comments about how female privilege is only anecdotal, that male privilege is more important and that women are second-class citizens in a way men are not.
This, coming from a trans woman, is disheartening.
Especially since she called the call for female privilege to be MRA what-about-the-menz bullshit.
monkey
Let’s not forget that Hugo himself is a rather affluent white heterosexual, cisgendered, ablebodied white male, but somehow this doesn’t seem to even enter his mind. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.
@Dr. Anonymous:
I was also scratching my head at the “affluent white dude” part, which ignores the frequent criticisms that black feminists have towards affluence white feminists…
monkey
I have always wondered how it is that feminist women are able to both highlight the male privilege that is hidden from men, and declare that women don’t have privileges.
@Thomas: Actually, it looks like it’s a combination of both. His article incorporated some stuff about the gaslighting article. But, wow, what a disingenuous twit Schwyzer is! He describes an example of a guy in one of his classes thusly “Most of the guys had been quiet all semester long. But one (there is often such a one) was a talker.” Sound an awful lot like “he didn’t know his place.” As well, he’s a freaking hypocrite when he basically derides men’s fear of words, when that was the whole point of the arguments about gaslighting, belittling and verbal abuse.… Read more »
@Tamen I almost laughed out loud when a feminist comenter (Iforget where, but I remember who) who said thatt Schwyzer canoodled with MRAs. Me too. In my perception most of the criticism (in the widest sense of the word from hate-mails to rebuttals) before that blowup came from MRAs or egalitarians. I’m really surprised by the harsh reactions to his person and work now. I always assumed he’s well respected among mainstream feminists. But apparently his “colorful past” (awful euphemism but he uses it in his own writing) was less well known than I thought. @Monkey As for the thing… Read more »
I’d actually like to rename “femmephobia” to something like “femmestigma”. Clearly while phobia does denote an irrational fear of something, it also is an anxiety disorder stemming from mental issues within, where the phenomenon at hand is closer to an externally imposed social policing of gender performance. (I also would like to think if a dudebro had to hold the most feminine purse in the world because there was a bomb in it and he would save the childrenz, he’d hold it without any sort of anxiety buildup compared with a person with a true phobia having holding up a… Read more »
Tamen: Schwyzer definitely fits the mold of Sensitive New Age Guy, at least as I remember them from college: a romantically successful guy who “rejects” the patriarchy that has nothing but benefitted him, and who looks down on other men (and occasionally women) for being less feminist than he. Bizarrely, he has lately commented that in his opinion younger men are more enlightened than their Gen X elders (other than himself, I guess). He wrote with a presumably straight face that part of this (at least when it comes to being open to sex toys) came from their watching Sex… Read more »
Super agreement with Flyingkal and tovyasagain…. @Ozy: Someone is Wrong is really good if the conditions are right. But they are rarely right – see the brewing shitfight over in the Nice Guy Part Four thread…. Here’s a super-condensed summary of my philosophy of arguing: 1) Someone is Wrong needs to be one-on-one. More than two individual human beings doing it = Inevitable Flamewar. This is why most of politics etc in the world are just Giant Flamewars. 2) The parties need to be approximately equal in whatever qualities are relevant to the argument (which is the generalised version of… Read more »
Schwyzer has been taking a lot of heat from several feminists sites lately. I almost laughed out loud when a feminist comenter (Iforget where, but I remember who) who said thatt Schwyzer canoodled with MRAs. If he at any point tried to canoodle any MRAs he failed miserably. All the citicism of Hugo (and also of Clarisse Thorn who posted an interview with Hugo on Feministe which started that particular pushback) seem to either focus on his past misbehaviour (which included an attempted murder/suicide) or on him centering himself in the feminist movement (being a professor in gender studies, acting… Read more »
It’s Hugo Schwyzer, not Hugh.
I don’t even want that level of association with him, call me petty if you want…
Just chiming in to agree with tovyasagain here.
Last I heard of Schwyzer was Feministing praising him for abandoning the “Good men project”-ship.
YmcY: I prefer Someone Is Wrong, because it really helps one crystallize one’s arguments, find proof for one’s statements, etc., to have to defend them against someone else. Preferably, someone intelligent.
tovyas: Have you seen the backlash against Hugo Schwyzer on Feministe and such lately? I’ve been mulling over a post on it.
“I.E. “Attractive male feminist who takes a lot of humanities classes at uni (or similar)” privilege?” Well, I was hesitant to go towards the “Hugh Schwyzer privilege” direction of conversation, but yeah, that’s what I was indirectly expressing. It’s depressingly common to see the “Naturally attractive male ‘feminist'” comment on gender equality while ignoring their position on the “attractive” axis of privilege. Even on NSWATM, you see men comment while implicitly accepting the “Well, of course women are attracted to me” fact…. when in actuality, sometimes women are attracted to men for reasons entirely distinct from personality. People in generally… Read more »
but really, that’s only something that happens if you’re attractive *and* happen to engage in a lot of social interaction in an environment full of women. I.E. “Attractive male feminist who takes a lot of humanities classes at uni (or similar)” privilege? Can I construct feminism as an axis of privilege around these parts? I know its not the same as race or sex where you Can’t Choose At All. But because of path dependency, what’s Chosen and what’s Destiny is kind of on a continuum. And I know you have to be in a very specific niche for feminism… Read more »
Charlie Glickman’s post dances uncomfortably close to “If you’re a good guy, you’ll get laid” territory. It’s pretty full of a “If you’re supportive of gender rights, don’t abuse the fact that that will potentially get you lots of sex”… but really, that’s only something that happens if you’re attractive *and* happen to engage in a lot of social interaction in an environment full of women. If they went to an engineering school that was 80% guys, I doubt it would have occurred to them to comment on not abusing the privilege that being egalitarian gets you. Perhaps it isn’t… Read more »
Yeah, see, only one of those is Actually Bad.