Sunday, May 31, 2009

On Being "Too Feminine": One Gay Man's Perspective

[above is a photograph of Nigel Lythgoe, one of the main judges on the TV show, "So You Think You Can Dance"]

It is clear that the judges over at So You Think You Can Dance aren't going to relent in their quest to make sure male dancers--and only male dancers--keep their level of "femininity" in check. Time and again, from city to city, across the U.S. the judges who determine who is and is not moving on in the show as contestants and competitors remind male dancers just how feminine or masculine they are, as if dance (or is it pronounced donce), couldn't possibly exist beautifully, brilliantly, or brazenly without mandated gender markers and codes of conduct.

I was called sissy and other misogynist/homophobic names when I was a wee one because I was not seen as "masculine enough" by my male peers in school. I learned quickly what was expected of me, and almost as quickly rejected my male peers' standards for what it meant to be a male child. (A note to any child: what with boys having cooties and all, it is wise to think at least twice before taking their advice about anything.)

It was beyond clear that the boys who teased and harassed me were terribly insecure about their own masculinity, whatever the fuck THAT is. I was part of enough different cultures to know that what that word, and the other word, femininity, meant had everything to do with the time and place and circumstances in which one lived, and that there was no precise agreement about what those terms meant; the definitions were paradoxically both overtly arbitrary while simultaneously accepted as defining normality. In places I grew up, on one hand being masculine meant being "smart". On the other it meant being "athletic". My only brother was both those things. Yet he too was made fun of occasionally, called things like "sissy" because he was skinny. (The irony of the song title "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" did not escape me.) In the world of some of my male cousins, being masculine meant being not being too book-smart, and also showing a fetish-like interest in cars. Going to University as a theatre major was, therefore, both a masculinising and feminising activity, depending on which males you consulted.

For children, intersex, female, and male, "weakness" or "vulnerability" or "sensitivity" were seen as detrimental to your social standing and well-being. If a male child, especially, acted or appeared in ways that showed he was not interested in pillaging or maiming others immediately or in the very near future with or without buddies, he was setting himself up, as it were, to be identified and stigmatised as one of the most dreaded things of all: being feminine.

Being feminine meant, variously, being sweet, easily brought to tears, stupid, submissive, appearing to not have self-worth, appearing to care more about what others thought of you and your appearance than you thought of others and their appearance. It meant being in a position, socially and politically, to be judged, assessed, ostracised, humiliated, and/or tormented. It also meant being "the gender most likely to be raped", whether as a child or an adult. It meant being vulnerable, but not in a good way. It meant being (that is, existing) "for" boys in ways no one should exist for anyone, in my opinion. It meant one's heart and mind should be occupied with pleasing males of many ages, not with pleasing oneself and damn what males think.

In a well-organised patriarchal society, such mandates and codes of conduct are so thoroughly soaked into the culture that most children, by the time they are ten years old, know exactly what will and will not get them identified as "being like a girl". Girls who had social ambition and a desire not to be ridiculed and stigmatised as weak often sought to be "like boys" in some regards. I sought to be like girls in what seemed to me were important ways; in girls I saw the possibility of being humane, of being myself, of not being straight-jacketed, of having feelings (and thoughts) and also expressing them. I saw that many girls, relative to well-socialised boys, could and did do this along with also being smart, athletic, and prideful.

There were two options for children when I was young, and, from what I can see, things haven't changed all that much and in some ways have possibly gotten worse for kids. The two options were being girlish or boyish. Boyish girls were called, among other things, tomboys and dykes. Girlish boys were called many things, none of them implying "being a girl" was in the least bit status-worthy.

Low social status, being "too feminine", and being uncool went hand in hand... um, in hand. Being a girl, whether a boyish one, a girlish one, both, or neither, meant being a target for boys' wrath and ridicule. Being a boy who was seen as acting too much like a girl (and here we have to assume they didn't mean a young Venus Williams), meant taking on the stigma and inferior status of all girls. One couldn't be a girl and have the full status and privileges of boys. One could be a boy and achieve that status. Some girls tried, if they weren't already doomed with markers of "femininity" like having noticeable breasts and being termed "pretty", occasionally strove to gain that status reserved for boyish boys. In a white male supremacist society, being "pretty" if female, is like being dark-skinned if Black. It confirms your status as "other" and becomes a strike against you, in some regards. Being pale and being male is where it's at.

I mentioned Venus Williams not only because I appreciate her athleticism and tenacity on a tennis court, as well as her humor and general ways of being, but also because her very existence demonstrates how stupid the whole racist/misogynist/heterosexist system of "gender policing" is. If the Williams sisters' father had liked "his" girls to be dainty and coy, rather than determined and confident, what would have become of Venus and Serena? (And, for that matter, their less famous sisters?) We can thank their parents for allowing Venus and Serena to be the great athletes they are. They were lucky.

In most circumstances, the importance of being masculine if a boy, or feminine if a girl, cannot be understated in its significance to social standing. Body- and esteem-crushing abuse came down especially hard on those who did not behave as dominant society mandated. As has been noted here elsewhere on this blog, being gendered is not so much a willful performance as it is a survival or supremacy strategy in a racist, misogynist, heterosexist society. A society that is deeply ableist, classist, and ageist as well.

I'm currently watching the "cooler" show about dance, the one not called "Dancing With The Stars". For a variety of reasons, that show will never be cool. "So You Think You Can Dance" has an opportunity to be cool because it includes dance styles developed on the streets of urban neighborhoods. Poorer urban youth of color, and adults, have always had a great deal to bring to a society that scorns them, with little means of getting it out unless "discovered" by someone tied to white male systems of power. The same holds true for the cultural contributions of the rural poor, of whatever ethnicity. Once a statused white man says "Wow" then it becomes "cool" in dominant society. This key fact is left out of most accounts of why it is that aspects of African American male cultures become both popular and cool among white boys. It's the appropriation and exploitation of those cultural contributions by the racially privileged and empowered class that makes things cool, without white adoring eyes, African American cultural contributions may well have status among Black people, but so too do the contributions of whites, such as they are. (As has been discussed in many places, "white culture" is a bit of any oxymoron; whiteness takes meaning only when positioned over and against people of color; it takes status only when it controls and co-opts the cultures of the people whites oppress and destroy.)

Non-disabled middle class kids are one "standard" for what it means to be a child. So is lightness and whiteness. So is manliness. And each of these are not at all biological phenomenon, as that is popularly understood. Genes don't create societies in which boys with limp wrists are punched and killed by boys who make sure their arms have firm fists at the end of them.

On SYTYCD, there is a bit of a problem. "Dance" itself is seen as "feminine". "Femininity" isn't cool, apparently. How then do producers create a show to be cool that has primarily to do with being able to dance well ("well" being determined mostly by studio-trained dancers, most of them white). Stigma and status surround every performance on the show. Whether trying out to be one of the finalists, or competing in the last weeks before the season's finale, males and females have to demonstrate particular qualities that are not only steeped in discrimination and oppression, but in the dehumanisation of children across class, race, ability, sexuality, and gender.

This past week, once again, the viewing audience was reminded that males have to be masculine, and ought not be "too feminine". They were told this mostly by one white man, Nigel Lyhtgoe, but also by a white woman, Mary Murphy. Mentioning that Nigel is, in many ways, more feminine than Mary is akin to pointing out naked emperors aren't wearing clothes. And me saying that is not, and I do mean NOT, an insult to either of them. It is an observation made which may partly explain why they have to work so hard to be sure the male dancers on their program don't come across as (pardon the language) faggy and the women as dykey.

That, and the fact that their corporate sponsors are selling the world products designed to enforce the oppressive and dehumanising gender binary.
END OF POST.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part nine

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Correspondence from Aussieguy:

I agree with your approach as you describe it in challenging your friend over his treatment of his wife. I can feel that my desire to objectify women is part of a selfish mood I am in. At the same time, I have an urge for instant gratification of all my other desires as well. I also agree that in choosing to indulge my desire to voyeur and objectify women, I am violating real people, potentially harming them and in any case taking something I have no right to take. I really benefit (and more so, the women I otherwise harm may benefit) from your unflinching and clear statements about what is going on here.

It is also an important point you make about remembering who has the power. I reread my description of what has been going on and I definitely wrote it from the position that these things were 'happening to me', rather than that I was behaving in these ways. I picked up that language from reading about, and supporting my partner in, depression. In that case, it is important to remember that depression happens to people and is not something they are doing themselves. Our case is different and you are right to remind me to always acknowledge that I am behaving in this way and I am making an empowered decision to do so. (Empowered by the very system I profess to be fighting against but that makes no difference.) The emotional issues underlying it are another matter and I would feel justified in using that type of language if I had been talking about an emotion I was experiencing.

I had a very telling insight into my fantasies and what turns me on. I found that in all my voyeuring fantasies, an essential ingredient is that the woman doesn't want to be seen naked and either doesn't know I can see her or is embarrassed when she does know. It horrifies me that I carry that desire around but my behaviour has been an equally horrible indication of what's going on inside me anyway. The fantasies I have about actual sex are entirely consensual but there is still the problem that a woman's sexuality exists for my pleasure.

I don't know what to do about that desire. Did you find a way to address it? I have an idea that it is so much a learned fantasy that if I manage not to indulge it and reinforce it, it will fade away on its own. (I don't expect that to be a quick result.) Do you have any experience with this one?

On power again, it occurred to me that sometimes the important issue isn't that men are empowered by pornorgaphy or objectification of women, it is that we are empowered by the unwritten rules of society to make and view pornography and to join in the objectification of women.

(This is a slightly random collection of paragraphs but there are a few different things I wanted to chuck in here.)

I had a sudden insight a year or two ago about 'the gaze'. I remember when I was smaller, when I walked past some older kids and they just sat and looked at me without acknowledging me in any way, it was very threatening. Still now, I feel threatened if I'm in that situation with someone that I think is capable of doing me serious harm. I don't necessarily think they're going to attack me but I'm on the defensive in case. I think it's an instinctive thing. When you're in a space with someone else, if you're not being friendly and sharing the space, then it's presumed that you're in competition in some way and not to be trusted.

When I perve at women, I don't acknowledge them at all or engage in communication with them as people and I realised that I am doing exactly the same to them. It's a rare, self-assured woman who feels secure against attack from a full-grown man and I was forced to realise that just the act of voyeuring a woman is threatening her. In addition to the political implications of men's access to women's bodies - which is the context in which it takes place and provides the fuel for women's nervousness - the act itself is an aggressive one in a really basic, physiological way.

That goes unnoticed a lot of the time because we spend so much time sharing space with strangers and not communicating with them so we're in that threatened, competitive mindset already. It would be good for society if we were to act to berak down that separation in general. But I think actively watching someone takes it a step further. Of course, I can imagine women not wanting to be talked to by every man they meet and 'unwanted attention' is rightly part of the definition of sexual harassment. I don't mean we should engage women in conversation while we stare at them. I have started a habit with all people of meeting their eyes, giving some minimal kind of smile, nod or other acknowledgement and looking away. I do that with people I walk past in the street, people on the bus etc. To be genuinely respectful, it needs to be accompanied by minding my own business after that and not ogling women, otherwise it's pretty fake.

I didn't quite get the part where you said:
But at some point the fact of paying for access to dehumanising images of people, or of images of dehumanised people--whichever most applied, was a main reason for not seeking out Internet pornography, or any other pornography. I considered that a more humane reason, one in greater consistency with more of my professed and deeply held values, than "just" not looking at it because I didn't want to pay for it.

I think I probably know what you mean but maybe you could say it again. For me, not paying for porn has also never been a matter of boycotting the industry. I have paid for magazines and once I even subscribed to a website so I could look at the hardcore stuff and archives they had. Giving my own money to those companies felt pretty nasty but my political brain tells me that I'm giving just as much support by looking at the free stuff because it's all funded by ads and sponsors who pay when I look at it or follow their links. Try as I might, I can't imagine that I'm not supporting the industry (financially, as well as philosophically) by looking at free porn sites.

Sometimes I think the problems all stem from the fact that boys don't play with dolls. That's a bit glib but it comes from this train of thoughts:
- Men's sexual abuse of women is selfish. All levels of abuse and violation have a common thread of men satisfying a desire regardless of whether the woman we use wants to take part or not.
- Environmental destruction also takes place for selfish reasons.
- Selfishness is about seeing oneself as the only real being and everyone else as objects in one's world.
- Playing role plays with dolls is training in imagining someone else's perspective the world and understanding what they would do in their position
- GI Joe doesn't really cut it

I am not in denial in a general sense about the fact that
"When you or I choose or have chosen to objectify someone, we are being oppressive jerks. We may feel "weak" but we are behaving in ways that strengthen male supremacy."

I don't always have it in mind as I walk around and look at women in the world though. It is a real training to go through and keeping on bringing myself back to these facts seems like the way to do it.

It's not only training in the empathy that I failed to learn as a kid, but also unlearning lots of bullshit I was taught - and finding ways to deal with the fact that most men still hold onto the bullshit.

Thanks again for all your correspondence

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part eight

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Correspondence from USguy:

Thanks for that honest update.

The level of struggle you describe, or, rather, the particular "draws" are ones I have had to deal with over the years, both before and after giving up the practice of violating already violated, or at the very least self-objectified, human beings by looking at "home-made" pornography.

This raises a few matters for me. At least one is somewhat tangential, while others are more directly responsive to the emotional-political conflict you're currently facing.

One tangent: Part of my own process for not using pornography was to understand how and to what degree misogyny + racism/white supremacy + capitalism + Western cultural imperialism/genocide = the possibility of, the practice of, and the mass access to pornography as an industry of human destruction. So, for example, decades ago I subscribed to Playgirl magazine. Once my access to pornography was primarily or only online, I never went to sites that required me to pay money. This wasn't done initially as a "grand gesture" at repudiating the financial support of racist, sexism capitalism, but, rather, was more due to the fact that I tend not to pay for things I can rather easily get (legally) for free. In that sense, my motivation was much more in keeping with my "recycle, resuse" and "anti-consumerist" values. (Why purchase cardboard boxes, for example, when book stores and hospitals throw out great boxes every day?)

But at some point the fact of paying for access to dehumanising images of people, or of images of dehumanised people--whichever most applied, was a main reason for not seeking out Internet pornography, or any other pornography. I considered that a more humane reason, one in greater consistency with more of my professed and deeply held values, than "just" not looking at it because I didn't want to pay for it.

The leads to a longer conversation we can have some time, if you wish, about why and how it is that "mass destructive consumption, capitalism, exploitation, greed, and objectification of human beings (turning people into things, or pornographised "genres" of human beings) become valued and necessary in contemporary Western post-industrialised societies, to the demise of humans, non-human beings, and the Earth. (How destruction is seen as "a right worth defending" for example. How "selling sex[ism]" or manufacturing and distributing racist sexxx is turned into a "social good" rather than being seen and felt, en masse, as a social harm. (Note: NOT a social/spiritual SIN; not the way the white Right holds looking at pornography or renting human beings for sex. Harm, as in political, emotional, psychic, economic, environmental harm. Human rights violation-type harm, not a "you're going to hell if you keep doing that" kind of harm.) Enough on that tangent for now.

Back to what you are struggling with. I think, once again, how we frame up and understand our challenges has a lot to do with how effectively we can approach and deal with them. So, note in your language who or what has the power. Often, in white male supremacist societies, the opppressed, in various and absurd ways, are imbued, by oppressors, as "possessing the power" to control the people who are socially-politically-economically dominant, when, in fact, the opposite is the case.

Pornographers and pimps have a kind of power that is real, to harm people in many ways. Procurers of women and others for sex or sexxx also have power to coerce and manipulate, as well as to exploit, abuse, and kill other human beings, usually with impunity, if not also fanclubs.

And you and I have real power, status, privilege, entitlements, and access to harm others at will, including by voyeuring them, by making them objects of our violative attention, by seeking to possess something of them, like a snapshot of a woman in a certain shirt or skirt, for us to "hold" in our minds for our own emotional and/or sexual and/or political gratification.

Psychotherapy, on the whole, and society, on the whole, if not Right-wing, tends to view voyeuristic activity as natural and normal if done by heterosexual males to adult females. It is not generally understood as "political opportunism" or "violative use of power" by those of us who have in the past or still do voyeur others.

A significant part of my shift in stopping voyeurism, including when walking down a street at night and noticing lights on in someone's home, and including when seeing a "cute man" walking or standing somewhere, came about when I would maintain a "he is like me" or "he is not different than me" or, better yet, "I cannot know his history of being violated" consciousness that I didn't chose to pack up when I wanted a quick fix by visually violating others.

Understanding what we're doing is not "a point of weakness" or "a period of slipping" but is more accurately "a willful act backed by powerful entitlements and privileges" shifts, for me, how I understand what I've done in the past, and do very infrequently, if at all, now. Keeping "the other" person real, in other words, not necessarily known, but not projected onto, not turned into my fantasy object, is critical to my profeminist political practice, which is to say, my practice of being a humane human being.

Anyone I choose to gaze at has a personal life and history, with feelings that are not accessible to me and a past that may or may not include experiences of terrifying violation or gross objectification. That not only means that they may be vulnerable and sensitive to being visually violated, but also that they are not "mine" to look at. It means other people don't exist "for me".

For whites and men, especially, and for Westerners generally, we are raised to believe everyone and everything is "for us". The Earth, animals, the air, and oppressed people, allegedly exist for us, for me. I am the center, a "white whole" of consumption, greed, exploitation, and abuse, whereby my actions of harm and destruction, due to my status and entitlements, are seen as ethically ok or good or appropriate. Sometimes our (white men's) actions are actually mandated, enforced, policed, and encoded, meaning that if we don't do them we are ostracised by our social-political peer group.

That we can surround ourselves with people, including white men, who do not approve or condone and celebrate white male supremacist use and abuse only means we have chosen to take in another perspective, one rooted, hopefully, in the experiences of the oppressed, not the "generosity of character" of the oppressor. (As long as we, white men, are oppressors, individual acts of kindness and small group decisions to not do as much harm are relatively ineffectual, except in our own personal lives and the lives of those around us.) You and I are agreeing to correspond, and you or I could opt out with little to no consequence, right? And if this conversation stays between us, who benefits, concretely?

I can surround myself with radical feminist and womanist friends, but can also do whatever the fuck I want when they are not around, right? Unless part of my connection to them involves me not hiding practices I know they would rightfully, appropriately challenge and critique.

So the process, for me, involves developing an ethical, political, spiritual center that doesn't place "me" at the center, but, instead, places the pain and degradation of those I am entitled to harm at the center of my emotional/sensible/intellectual world. At the same time it means creating and supporting systems of accountability that mean that my private acts of harming others cannot be privatised.

I do get it that someone, an oppressor, can act in ways that harm others while not feeling particularly empowered, and while not intending to do any oppressive harm. But choosing to look at a woman (or a man) in an objectifying way is a political act, and never is not. It might also reflect or be tangled up with other struggles in one's life.

A few months ago a heterosexual husband told me that he thought the reason he'd been more condescending to his female spouse was that he was "depressed lately". I don't remember all of how I responded to him, but I didn't accept "depression" as a legitimate reason for oppressing his wife. First, he oppresses her when he isn't depressed too. Second, even if being depressed renders him a more obnoxious and oppressive mate, unless he's taking action to alleviate that depression, and to find other ways to manifest it, he's choosing, whether he owns it or not, to be an oppressive jerk.

When you or I choose or have chosen to objectify someone, we are being oppressive jerks. We may feel "weak" but we are behaving in ways that strengthen male supremacy. We cannot or ought not be in denial about that. (Not that you are, necessarily.)

I challenge you to own your entitlements and power when you choose to behave exploitively and violatively around one or more women. To name your behavior as violating, as harmful to her, as misogynistic, and as in service to male supremacist mandates. In some sense we may be behaving cowardly when we turn away from profeminist values and behave patriarchally. But in the actual social world, cowardice kills, or, in this case, violates. You and I and every man have to decide, moment to moment, who we are going to be in a world that supports us having virtually constant visual and other contact with women. We have to estimate to cost to women's humanity of us having that access and entitlement. We have to decide who we are going to be and become. And we have to, in my view, priortise women's safety and freedom above our own fleeting wishes to feel something akin to pleasure by degrading and unethically intruding upon other human beings. Why we feel pleasure when we are violating others is a question worth asking, but not if it means continuing the behavior in search of the answer.

I'll wait to hear back from you about what you do and don't agree with above, before blathering on further.

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part seven

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Correspondence from Aussieguy:

I'm having a bit of trouble lately, finding myself looking in lighted windows that I walk past or my eyes following women I see in revealing clothing of any kind. It doesn't even need to be clothing that will actually reveal her body, just something that makes me think it could or may or reminds me of something that would. I have weakened a couple of times just today, sneaking glimpses before looking back at my work.

Not looking at porn has continued to be obvious to me, though, and fairly easy. I have had a few occasions where I have been tempted towards finding a video with a sex scene in it to watch, but I haven't succumbed to it. I had a real clear vision of the seediness of porn the other morning. It was as I was waking up and it just flashed into my head, I don't know why, and then it was gone. Before that, I had only had a kind of political understanding of why it is wrong but I think I had a kind of moment of real empathy and understood properly what I hate about it for a second. Now I can't get that clarity back but it helps just having had that one moment.

I feel as though porn is really in the past for me. Even though I still get these impulses to look at it, I feel like my change of habit has been thorough enough to mean I will be able to resist them now. I can't say the same for objectifying women in general. I'm still struggling constantly with that and failing enough of the time for it to show in my behaviour sometimes. I think your advice about hearing the stories of women's experience of sexism is a good start and I've followed a few links from Julian's blog and read some stories there. I think I have a new round of work to do in eradicating this behaviour but I think maybe I need to keep reading and working on my empathy and understanding before it will be very effective in the long term. In the meantime, there is no harm in continuing to actively pull myself up when I catch myself at it.

That's enough for now
END OF POST.

Monday, May 25, 2009

So You Think You Can Dance and NOT be heterosexist? Not a chance.

[image is from www.fanpop.com]

I'm a gay man.

One of the things that most means in my life is not that "I have sex with men" (I don't; I don't have sex with anyone) but rather that I stand--with lesbians, Two Spirit people, SGL folks, transgendered and intersex individuals, and other gay men, primarily--in a political-social-cultural place that is steeped in heterosexist violence which is part and parcel of the society in which I live. I have no expectation that this embedded pillar of racist patriarchal culture will be collapsing any time soon. But I also won't turn that lack of expectation into any form of resignation or apathy when encountering overtly heterosexist values and behavior.

While watching the first episode of the new season of So You Think You Can Dance this past week, something occurred which I had been hoping would happen since I first learned about the program existing: a same-sex couple auditioned to win a spot (well, two spots) in the final selection of dancers who will comprise this season's contestants. SYTYCD is a profoundly heterosexist program, as are all programs on TV featuring stage-floor dancing competitions; in the news this week was a story about a junior high school that is using thoroughly heterosexist ballroom dancing to get students more engaged with school, both socially and academically. It appears to be working well for some students, and will likely do additional harm to those of us who are queer youth, who are forced to dance with members of "the opposite sex". Why girls can't dance with girls, and boys with boys, is a question that has no reasonable answer from the dominant society; there are only bigoted answers, and cowardly ones.

About twenty minutes before the first two-hour premiere show ended, two white men came out (no pun intended) to perform as no two men had yet performed before SYTYCD's panel of judges, a panel that would determine their fate in terms of their progress on to the next round. Fox--the network/conglomerate, not the animal--has power. Judges, whether behind a courtroom bench or seated in groups of three or four at a table on television, have power. The kind of power they have is to reinforce social codes and conditions which make liberation for some oppressed people more or less possible, more or less likely. They can, as a part of dominant media, break new ground or fill in any foundational cracks with new concrete making sure the cracks don't deepen.

Two white men, one gay, one not, came onto the stage and performed a well-rehearsed piece, which was presented to three judges in an effort to advance to the next round of preliminary judging. The comments they got back were so outrageously heterosexist, so completely anti-lesbian and anti-gay, so utterly misogynist and masculinist, that I was stunned and furious. I, the gay man who has no expectation that heterosexism will be significantly weakened as a political force, was stunned and furious. (I'm glad that was my response; it means I have still have a political pulse.)

In case you're among the people who don't watch network TV, SYTYCD is the cooler cousin of ABC's "Dancing With The Stars". Unlike DWTS, SYTYCD actually embraces amazing and beautiful forms of dance that come from the street, not just the styles taught and practiced for decades in Western civilisation's studios and dance halls. Current contemporary forms ignored or ridiculed by "[white heterosexist male supremacist] dance purists" are embraced much more on this newer, hipper program. This show's success, in fact, has forced DWTS to loosen up a bit and welcome a more varied palette of dance styles into its own program, but on ABC these forms only show up in special segments, not as part of the general, week-to-week competition.

Same-sex dancing has occurred on SYTYCD in seasons past. But the way that the choreographers and judges portray "two women" dancing together, or "two men" dancing together, is always through a firmly set heterosexual lens. There's never "homosexual" eroticism or overt sexual attraction conveyed in the dances, unless you find two men "battling" sexy, which I do not. So when the show allows, just very occasionally, for two women or two men to pair up and perform, the assumption that they must be heterosexual is unambiguously established in the story of the dance created by the choreographers. What do two women have to express to one another in dance? Most likely a mother-daughter theme, or some sort of asexual sisterly affection. What are two men allowed to express? Feelings of competition and aggression. Girls can get along in dance numbers, and boys can fight. Those are the rules. When Fox appears to go way over the line, it might actually allow two women to show a bit of aggression, and men a bit of tenderness, but never to the point that we can think there might be "something sexual" going on between the two.

After the white male couple performed a competent if not spectacular routine, the judges displayed a level of befuddlement and confusion that seemed preposterously staged to me; they were, to put it bluntly, behaving incredibly stupidly. They had on their faces expression akin to those found on G.W. Bush and D. Cheney's face when they contemplate foreign policy that doesn't include bombing people of color. (Huh? You mean there IS foreign policy that isn't genocidal?!)

The judges, two white-appearing women and one distinctly white (and requisitely British) man, "didn't get it" or "couldn't follow it". What is it about two same-sex people dancing together that renders the judges emotionally illiterate? (The same question applies, of course, to the expectation placed on pairs with one woman and one man: why is their performance always presuming the impossibility of sexual interest existing between them?)

I went through a brief phase, when dancing at queer clubs, of refusing to dance with women, unless as part of a larger group. But in any pair situation, I would only dance with men. For most the heterosexist readers who come here, you probably know what I'm talking about: I was employing a similar standard that you do when you dance "only" with someone who is allegedly opposite to you sexually. Well, not the same standards exactly. Yours are socially supported and celebrated, if horrendously oppressive to women, while also compulsory and mandatory. Lesbian and gay standards, if not heterosexual that is, are not supported, and are the opposite of compulsory and mandatory. They are, in other words, forbidden or looked upon with disdain. Many queer-bashers often linger outside queer dance clubs and bars, only partly to get a kind of sex they consciously deny they want. Whether same-sex encounters happen or not, the gay- or lesbian-identified person--before, during, or after a sex act takes place--is too often beaten within an inch of their lives, as soon as the queer-basher remembers what their social function is: to police gender and instill terror in any queer person who doesn't wish to embrace heterosexuality as a normal or natural phenomenon. (And we thought all men just fall asleep after sexual encounters. If only.)

I won't take enough time here to consider the plight of the transgendered, intersex, and asexual dancers and choreographers, and members of the larger society. But suffice it to say there's no room at the Dance Hall Inn for any of "them".

I ended this phase because I realised it was silly: the way two men dance together is often grossly heterosexist (and masculinist) and can mimic, while not exactly replicating, the way many heterosexual men dance with a woman. (I must note that too often these men disregard women's rights of physical integrity by using such occasions to cop feels, overtly grope, and invasively press erections against bodies of uncomfortable females.) I'm not making this up: the women who come from the clubs tell me what they just endured, feeling they have no right to expect that they should actually be able to go out in a mixed gender club and have fun without being fondled and frisked by men who don't care about them as actual human beings.

But watching SYTYCD made me want to re-employ this policy, just as a form of cultural protest. I wanted to boycott watching the program, but know I won't. I really like the show, in many ways. But if the link above works, try and access the first program online, and jump to the last half hour of the two-hour show and watch how the judges mishandle an opportunity to help the viewing largely heterosexist audience understand that two men dancing together can be neither masculine nor feminine, don't have to be masculine or feminine, and write them an email reminding them that telling all male dances to be masculine, and all female dancers to be feminine--as they understand those terms--is profoundly and dangerously racist, misogynist, and heterosexist.
END OF POST.

Friday, May 22, 2009

White people are STILL "discovering" people of color's neighborhoods: and guess who wins in the end?

[image, the rear end of an 1887 medallion found during a rubbish tip excavation in South Australia, is from here]

Let's consider the ways white folks with any middle class or upper class values like me, like any whites folks with any chosen (not forced) states of "mobility", like me, continue to act out what seems to be a viciously political and genocidal cultural imperative: to move into and take over pieces of land upon which people of color live. From the founding of the US, and back to the many imperial conquests rooted in Europe, then forward to the influx of mass weaponry into nations and regions where people of color live, to gentrification, we see this pattern: whites believing and acting as if we have a right to various forms of eminent domain. We have a right to murder, or displace people of color from their homes and homelands.

We have this right (or is it a wrong?) because of what, exactly? The structural and institutional power and support to do just what we want to do, much to the demise of people of color across the globe, and also to poor white people too.

All of this is done, here and there, to make the murder of the people who are not white more efficient, to perpetrate new and old genocides with direct ties to white-dominated countries without owning that this is even happening, to gross cultural appropriation/exploitation/thievery, such as stealing American Indian and First Nation traditions and practices, as well as objects, and those from Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and South America, to adorn our homes, because we're so "multi-cultural".

The post linked to below calls some of this shit out. And may it be called out again and again, until "genocidally mobile" white folks go back where we came from.

I just read this discussion over at the blog, Having Read The Fine Print. It is what inspired me to take on this subject, yet again, and not for the last time. Here's the link: http://guyaneseterror.blogspot.com/2009/05/white-people-like-to-discover-things.html
END OF POST.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

When WILL men stop "butching" about feminists and start dealing with the actual world of oppressive horrors?

[cartoon is from this site]

I've just spent probably WAY too much time responding to some fools over at an antifeminist site.

I don't generally waste my time at such places--can you say "spitting in the wind"?-- but decided to give up an hour or two to comment there, just to see if anyone there is capable of actually dealing with "how things are". Here's the discussion, thus far:

May 18th, 2009 at 11:15pm Posted by Daran | Complicity, Genocide, Gynocentrism, Hate, Radical Feminism | 4 comments

Julian Real:

I believe we men must not only call each other out systematically on what we misogynistically do but we also ought to “take out” those men who should be taken out…

[…]

If men spoke out against, intervened upon, and/or killed off every man who is a rapist, every male pornographer, male pimp, male trafficker, male batterer of women, male incest perpetrator and/or molester of girls, and every man who is a street harasser of women, and every other patriarchal prick who tries to violate, subordinate, control, intimidate, exploit, and harm women in any number of ways–if we men did this, as an organised or not-so-organised practice, to every perpetrator of male supremacist atrocity against womankind we knew of–atrocities named as such by women, with men being fully accountable to women–I think the world would look quite different and be quite different for women.

(My emphasis)

Julian commits the standard fallacy of assuming affiliation between men based upon their gender: having a penis makes him part of the great “we”. Well include me out please. I am not part of any “we” that includes him merely because an accident of birth gave us similarly-shaped genitals.

On the other hand, a person’s choice to self-identify as a (pro)feminist is a voluntary affiliation. If (pro)feminists accept them as one of their own, then they are in a “we” relationship with them, and they should call out, speak out, and invervene on them. If they do not accept them, then they should be willing to disavow them publicly.

This comment thread is the “No Hostility” thread. Please read this for the ground rules.

Comments content of the page:
4 Comments »

1.

Comment by Jim | May 19, 2009 at 7:03 am

I agree there is a need for intervention and calling out, but not on the demographic this Julian is talking about. There is a very strange psychological dynamic going on here, and he needs help. He has a serious prophet complex and it is only a matter of time before he starts to act out.

2.

Comment by Danny | May 19, 2009 at 8:14 am

First question (because I’m sure I’ll have more):

Since most feminists claim to want equality for everyone does that mean killing off every woman who is a rapist, every female pornographer, female pimp, female trafficker, female batterer of women and men, female incest perpetrator and/or molester of girls and boys, and every woman who is a street harasser of women and men, and every other matriarchal b!tch who tries to violate, subordinate, control, intimidate, exploit, and harm men and women in any number of ways would also be on their agenda? Just sayin…
(And notice that he only seemed to concerned about girls and boys are thrown to the dogs. In fact it seems this Julian person is only concerned about male against female violence. I really hope he isn’t one of those people that thinks getting rid of male against female violence is going to magically solve ALL violence…) It’s a good thing feminists want equality for all people or we’d be in trouble.

–if we men did this, as an organised or not-so-organised practice, to every perpetrator of male supremacist atrocity against womankind we knew of–atrocities named as such by women, with men being fully accountable to women–I think the world would look quite different and be quite different for women.
So the actions of some men are the responsibility of all men and men are supposed to be fully accountable to women. Does this mean that all women have to take responsibility for the actions of some women against men? Nice how only certain groups are held to this standard. What is that feminists are always saying when shown not so glamourous members of their movement? Something about a monolith I think….

3.

Comment by thebigmanfred | May 19, 2009 at 12:48 pm

Danny:

Does this mean that all women have to take responsibility for the actions of some women against men?

Nope. Women don’t have agency and women are not a monolith so they can’t be held to the same standard. That’s at least what I would imagine his summarized point would be.

The more I think about what Julian wrote the more I wonder if he’s some sort of anomaly. Is this really what feminists think and are saying often?

4.

Comment by Daran | May 19, 2009 at 1:31 pm

The more I think about what Julian wrote the more I wonder if he’s some sort of anomaly. Is this really what feminists think and are saying often?

I was in a hurry to leave the house, when I posted that. Given the restrictions I was under at the time (a system that could take tens of minutes to render a page) I couldn’t expand on this.

I don’t think Julian is typical of feminists or profeminists. My point was about feminist complicity, which tag I will shortly add to the post.

Responses to each of the above, by Julian -- May 21, 2009:

To Jim,
Rule number one in the Oppressors' Handbook for Discrediting Critics whose core realities you'd rather not deal with: psychoanalyse the speaker/writer. You've studied the handbook well, I see.

Once we dispense with the psychoanalysis we inconveniently have this to contend with: what is men's collective role in the oppression of women, including its expression in the form of gender-specific and sexualised violence? If we agree (and of course we may not) that men, far more than women, perpetrate subordinating and degradingly harmful acts against women both intimately and institutionally, what should men do about that? I put forth one view, a suggestion. That's one voice. Nothing prophetic about it; it's called "one person stating an opinion". In the country in which I live, that's allowed, with some qualifications.

If you were at all familiar with the blog from which those excerpts (tactic number two in the Oppressors' Handbook: take things out of context) were copied and pasted, you'd know that the sphere of concerns include genocide, racism, misogyny, ecocide, and heterosexist violence. So which "demographic" are you assuming I'm speaking about, on the blog, that is? And if, in one post or many, one chooses to focus on what men, globally, do to women that women do not do to men, systematically and with impunity, in what sense is that irresponsible?

To Danny,

Nope. Women have plenty of agency. And you'll never hear otherwise from me. The question is this: who controls the institutions and systems which largely determine what anyone has agency to do? For example, can a woman walk down the street and have the agency to not be harassed? To not have a reason to fear rape? To not be concerned with whether or not the man she just met has a history of battering women? Do men have the agency to actively support women's right to freedom from male supremacist violence and not be considered "wusses" [or whatever] by other men? Men and women have plenty of agency, and exercise it in a multitude of ways. That's a no brainer.

And the number of men who date women who carry those concerns mentioned above into first encounters... what percentage of men is that? How many men leave heterosexual bars wondering the safest route to the car, because of the social reality of "women who street rape men"?

To answer your "just sayin..." paragraph, please read Catharine MacKinnon, "Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, or "Are Women Human?" to get a grasp of how your liberalism is getting in the way of adequately critiquing what I'm discussing. "Equality" is not a term that means solely or primarily "treating social-political unequals as if they were equals". There's no level playing field here. The way you frame up the "problem of sexism" shows something quite significant is missing in your observations about the world: that it is, for example, white and male supremacist. That men relative to women control resources and institutions; that whites relative to people of color control resources and institutions. In both cases, with men and with whites, it is they/we who determine, primarily as a group, not as individuals, who has power, what forms of power, and how that power can be exercised.

Your "just sayin..." question is hypothetical to the point of being absurd. It isn't located in social reality. I recommend we start there. (Exactly how many female rapists have you seen convicted, charged, or identified as such?)

As for me seeming to be throwing boys to the dogs, you are obviously not familiar with my writings, except for one tiny excerpt. Note on my relatively recent blogposts regarding the two eleven year old boys who committed suicide after being harassed and tormented at school. Sorry to disrupt your facile conclusions with the realities of my stated concerns.

I don't speak for feminists. I speak as and for myself. You apparently view my opinions as monolithic, and I'd recommend you familiarise yourself with what else I speak about before you draw such simplistic conclusions. I reckon my opinions are about as monolithic as any man's.

Re: "So the actions of some men are the responsibility of all men and men are supposed to be fully accountable to women."

Imagine that. Because it surely isn't happening in the social world.

Re: "Nice how only certain groups are held to this standard"

Meanwhile, back in reality, poor people, women, people of color, and lesbians and gay men, are held to drastically different standards. Every Black person in the U.S. who is profiled or followed around in a store knows that. Every Mexican American person who is assumed to be "an illegal alien" knows that. (Never mind that virtually every white person in the US is "an illegal alien", depending on whose laws and customs you consider sacrosanct.)

Every woman is expected to not have visible facial hair except for eyelashes and manicured eyebrows, even when many women do have facial hair on other parts of their faces. If she has facial hair, or, heaven forbid, untweezed eyebrows, she is considered ugly. So the YouTube phenomenon Susan Boyle had little choice but to alter her appearance once lots of people started commenting on her face and choices of appearance. Andy Rooney, however, gets away with his bushy eyebrows no problem, year after year after year. So, what is the "beauty" standard for men in this regard?

The standard for rich folks is that they don't have to prove their worth as human beings because their fat financial portfolios seem to imply something called "human status". Whites, relative to people of color, don't have to prove they are "like the average person" in a white-dominated country such as the US or UK. They are assumed, by whites, to be "lesser than" until shown otherwise--and even then! Women are assumed, by men as a group, not necessarily by each man as an individual, to exist "for men" in a way that men are never assumed to exist "for women". Men's lives, relative to women's, get to be for other men or for oneself. There is no multi-billion dollar a year industry pimping and pumping out the idea that all men are whores who exist for women's sexual gratification, even if, and especially when, such gratification demands that men be degraded in any number of ways. Heterosexuals don't have to fight for the right to marry, or to engage in "civil unions" because their sexuality is assumed to be unnatural and sinful, especially if acted upon.

In my view, such actual, socially significant double standards are far from "nice".

To thebigmanfred,

No, that's not what feminists are saying. You can note this by seeing that I wrote it, not a feminist.

To Daran,

Perhaps you are correct about me being an anomaly. Once you conveniently categorise a social critic as "an anomaly" does that then allow you to not contend with what the person is discussing? And I've never said women, feminist or not, don't act, at times, in ways that are problematically complicit with male supremacist violence against women and racially unstatused and/or "effeminate" men, as well as girls and boys.

Andrea Dworkin has written about this problem of women's complicity with patriarchal atrocities quite extensively.

To all of the commenters above:
I am a Jew. I oppose all forms of "final solutions" as that terms is so often used to mean "taking a fascistic, inhumane approach to wiping society clean of those people who are considered dirty". Many antifeminist men comment ad nauseam about how "fascistic" some feminist views are, forgetting, conveniently, that the feminists and profeminists I have known or read don't support raping and killing of men because they are men. Feminists I have known and read don't support women treating men the way men treat women; and I am well read in the work of both Dworkin and MacKinnon, and welcome anyone pointing out where either woman calls for women to treat men the way men often and routinely negatively and oppressively treat women. Feminists, in my experience, believe in something called human dignity that ought to apply to all people.

From Andrea Dworkin's speech to men, titled "I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape":

'I want to talk to you about equality, what equality is and what it means. It isn't just an idea. It's not some insipid word that ends up being bullshit. It doesn't have anything at all to do with all those statements like: "Oh, that happens to men too." I name an abuse and I hear: "Oh, it happens to men too." That is not the equality we are struggling for. We could change our strategy and say: well, okay, we want equality; we'll stick something up the ass of a man every three minutes.

'You've never heard that from the feminist movement, because for us equality has real dignity and importance--it's not some dumb word that can be twisted and made to look stupid as if it had no real meaning.'


It may disappoint antifeminists who toss about terms like "feminazis" to remember that German (and other) Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s were the controlling political party, had access to institutional power, to both the military and the police, to media and academic institutions, that feminists have never had in the entire history of Western civilisation. What some feminists have managed to get is a "Women's Studies" department. Or a sexual harassment law. Or some control over how they cope with an unwanted pregnancy. Or the right to not be forcibly sterilised.

Reality check: an academic department and a few laws IS NOT EQUIVALENT to control of society's institutions and systems of power allocation. (Duh.) So this practice, among some antifeminists, of going on and on about how "fascistic" some feminist women are seems to reveal something quite astonishing: that these men are woefully ignorant about history, about humanity, and about how fighting for freedom from oppression isn't the same thing as fighting to kill off everyone you oppress.

Anyone speaking out against men's endemic rape of women, wishing rapists would just die, now, is not the same thing as white men systematically raping, trafficking, and murdering women and girls across the globe. Dontcha just hate it when the truth of actual events get in the way of "the truth" of misogynist rants?

Thursday, May 14, 2009

"White Men as The Problem" by Joe R. Feagin

[above image of Donald Trump is from here]

[above image of John McCain is from here]

What follows is just a portion of a post from racism review. I greatly recommend going to the source and reading the whole piece.

[All the text that follows was posted by a man named Joe R. Feagin. A bit more info on the two men who contribute to the site follows the excerpted piece*:]

Unusual numbers of photos of elite white men are in the news lately, since the financial crisis hit. Almost all perpetrators of our “second great depression,” as with the first, have been white men. White male business “geniuses,” often with top-college educations. It is odd that no one yet, to my knowledge, has featured the whiteness or white-maleness of these malefactors of great wealth as a central feature of the life-devastating economic “problem” we face globally. One can be sure that if these agents of destruction were women or men of color that the reality of their gender and racial characteristics would be a constant topic of conversation by pundits and politicians, especially in the media. (Remember that Hillary Clinton is still blamed for failures in health care reform quite a while back.)

Come to think of it, white men (they named themselves “white” in the 17th century) created the modern Western (now world) economic system. They created the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Or should we say, the Predatory Ethic and the Spirit of Exploitation. Arrogant greed seems to be a major motivation behind the labor/land expropriation and exploitation euphemized by historians as “overseas exploration” and “settlement.” Certainly, white men created, expanded, and maintained the often genocidal taking of millions of indigenous peoples’ lands in the Americas and the Holocaust-like Atlantic slave trade. Mostly white men created the oppressive realities of modern capitalism and North American slavery, and have made huge profits and wealth off of it, now passed along to their descendants.

In recent centuries, elite white men have caused much death and destruction, probably more than any other elite group on the planet. White men are certainly not the only major sources of “democide” and related despotism, but they do seem to lead the list. (Consider not only the many indigenous genocides and Atlantic slave trade, but the Holocaust, Soviet gulags, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two world wars). While white men are not alone in such actions, the consequences of their actions have been more far-reaching, especially for the planet in general than have those of despotic not-white actors.

White men set up the Western legal systems reinforcing modern capitalism and North American genocide targeting millions of indigenous Americans and enslavement of millions of African Americans. They created the white racial frame to explain and rationalize these savage operations. The white frame is a dominant worldview that a great many white men, including elite political-economic leaders, still seem to be operating out of as they today exploit the world’s majority, the 80 percent of the planet that is not white.

And it was these self-named white men who reinvigorated a very strong white-patriarchal frame, with its “great chain of being” notions (God at top, then angels, then European men, then European women, then European children, then “other races,” then animals). In the North American case, they easily extended this to the system of racial oppression they had devised for Native Americans and African Americans.

These men, centuries ago and now, see themselves as heroic and virtuous, even as they have created great destruction and misery for many people. Ronald Takaki speaks of this view of white men as “virtuous republicans.” Note that in this centuries-old process most white men have had little sense of their own weakness and venality, but have almost always accented their virtues. Today, as in earlier centuries, most white men generally do not see their group’s lack of virtues, their major weaknesses, and their major errors. They certainly do not like to admit error. Indeed, white men now often blame the victims, as in the case of this white male commodity trader who recently blamed homeowners and moaned about “losers” with troubled mortgages, and not the banks now being bailed out with billions for playing the central role in creating the housing crisis.

So we are rapidly moving today to the second of their “great depressions” in this country’s history, yet the arrogant framing and actions of a few hundred, or perhaps thousand, of elite white men have yet to be problematized. Indeed, one cannot do so in the public media and discussions of this society. It simply is not possible to problematize the ruling group, as they have too much control to allow for significant problematization.

*about us
Posted by admin on Sep 10th, 2007
2007
Sep 10
Contributors to RacismReview are scholars and researchers from sociology and a number of other social science disciplines and a variety of academic institutions across the U.S.
RacismReview is intended to provide a credible and reliable source of information for journalists, students and members of the general public who are seeking solid evidence-based research and analysis of “race,” racism, ethnicity, and immigration issues, especially as they undergird and shape U.S. society within a global setting.We also provide substantive research and analysis on local, national, and global resistance to racial and ethnic oppression, including the many types of antiracist activism.
Launched in 2007, RacismReview is produced and maintained by Joe R. Feagin, Texas A&M University and Jessie Daniels, CUNY- Hunter College.]
END OF POST.

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part six

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Email #4 from USguy: (Passages of Aussieguy's prior email/s are in italics below, just for a bit more clarity as to who is saying what.)

Re:
(Isn't it revolting to agree so wholeheartedly with each other...;)

lol. Yes. And it's also very rare!

I'm not sure I fully understood some of what you last wrote, and will comment on the paragraphs or sentences that I found problematic. Let me know if I didn't comprehend what you were meaning, so I can then correct my reply, if need be.

Re:
I have been thinking about privilege and power a fair bit lately and I think there is more to it than the fact that privilege persists despite our being opposed to it, even though that is very true. I think that the power that privileged people have is only power to exercise and enjoy our privileges. We do not have unequal power to create justice. When we genuinely act to undermine the unfair power we hold and the system that gives it to us, we find ourselves as disempowered in that moment as any person standing up to injustice. But instead of discouraging me from taking action, that experience makes me more committed because it is only when I work with others to resist oppression that I ever step down from my plinth so we can be truly equal.

If I'm understanding you, I don't agree with some of what you are saying above. First, "privilege persists despite our being opposed to it" refers to the few people who do that. Most whites don't oppose white privilege, nor do most men oppose male privilege, in my experience anyway. They/we may pay lip service to our woes as white men, but bottom line: we arrange our lives so we are not accountable to those we oppress. And bottom line: we don't, generally, interrupt or disrupt or stop other whites/men from behaving in racist/sexist ways. And also, I'm not convinced "the interpersonal realm"--the social and private spaces--are where most of the violence happens, although tons of it happens there. With racism and sexism being institutionalised, we needn't "act like jerks" all the time or even most of the time for the systems of oppression to keep on keeping on. Male supremacy, for example, can sustain many men being "against sexism". It can, it does, it always has, perhaps.

So, in response to this specifically: "I think that the power that privileged people have is only power to exercise and enjoy our privileges. We do not have unequal power to create justice. When we genuinely act to undermine the unfair power we hold and the system that gives it to us, we find ourselves as disempowered in that moment as any person standing up to injustice."

I don't agree. The power privileged people have is not only to enjoy our privileges. Our power is to maintain systems of oppression, and sometimes that takes hard work. Sometimes that isn't all that enjoyable. Whites don't necessarily "enjoy" behaving as white supremacists, for example. For many whites, the behaviors that are harmful come from irrational fears and stupid bigoted ideas. Some whites and men behave irrationally, in this sense, and are not having much fun in the process. AND, in my view, anyway, no matter what, we always maintain our social position over those we oppress. We don't ever, really, "find ourselves as disempowered" as the oppressed who are standing up to injustice. That understanding of "disempowered" for me, is woefully individualistic, psychological, and ignores that men and whites ALWAYS have great institutions backing up our views of our oppressive ways of being human. Yes, interpersonally, at any given moment, on any given day, one or both people in, for example, a heterosexual relationship, can feel disempowered. But even if I feel that way, I'm socially/structurally bolstered in a way that women are not. And in some heterosexual relationships, and in lesbian ones and gay ones, there are various ways power plays out between people. But no matter how "powerful" the more powerful woman is in a lesbian relationship, men have more power than her, structurally and institutionally--both gay and heterosexual men.

Re:
When you said "If she blames herself, it's one way to be less terrified, because once she realizes she didn't do anything to contribute to what happened to her, it can leave someone feel VERY vulnerable to future assaults." that was suddenly very clear to me. I have had a related vague feeling about how it's dangerous to confess to women instances of when I have objectified them or violated them without their knowledge, not because of the consequences for me but because they might feel afraid. Your explanation clarifies it really well.

I want to qualify that statement, however. Because victims blaming themselves is a crucial mechanism in making oppressive violence effective. It's not "only" a way for some survivors to "feel" more in control. Shame and self-blame are what survivors are left with. And I'd strongly argue that the shame that men feel for perpetrating is relatively minor compared to the shame that someone who has been victimized carries. As someone on both sides of some of those fences, I speak that as my truth, anyway. The shame I have felt for visually violating a man can go away in moments. I'm done visually violating him, so the shame dissipates rather quickly. But if I've been visually violated by a man, that shame or mortification, depending on the circumstances, can last a lifetime. It's like perpetrator's shame, in my view, comes and goes like the tide, but victims' shame is etched into us, branded into us. And the only time a perpetrator may get a taste of that level of shame is when, rarely, he is identified as a perpetrator to everyone in the town where he lives, and is made to never hide that history from anyone. And how many men, by percent, have THAT happen to us? One thousandth of one percent? If that?!

You wrote:
That comes back to a point that my partner [woman's name deleted] (better change her name if you publish this, too) made to me once: that men don't ever deal with this shit among ourselves. I am much more likely to confess this stuff to a woman than to a man. It's not because I'm afraid of being punished over-harshly by men. It's because I expect very little response and more likely even an attack for thinking there's anything wrong to confess and a defensiveness because they all have the same habits too. But actually, it is necessary for us to be confronting this behaviour ourselves and not leaving it for women to take on against men's threats (not idle threats) of violence.

It is so rare for men to confront one another, and it alone would be a cornerstone in bringing down male supremacy, if it happened consistently, and over a long period of time. Again, this would need to happen from male leaders of business, by CEOs, by presidents and prime ministers of countries, by male religious leaders, by those who own and operate news media, etc. This particular action, of men holding men accountable for what we do that harms women, would have to include and move way beyond "friends calling each other out." And, importantly, friendships and familial relationships would have to end, over this issue. I've lost friends and left friends due to them being unwilling to deal with their race, gender, sexuality, and class privileges.

Getting back to an earlier point, men acting to interrupt men's sexist violence IS one of our privileges. We have the privilege to do it and just maybe be taken seriously. Whites and men's words and actions carry more political clout, in a racist/sexist State. Me speaking out strengthens my voice, a voice that is already strengthened by centuries of mythic "heroism" and "greatness" by "people like me."

John Stoltenberg and perhaps also Robert Jensen speak of "acting on behalf of one's ethical self, against the interests of one's politically harmful self" or something like that. I think such analyses ignore how whenever men speak, we speak with power, and with a kind of presence that is often silencing of women, or which society, on the whole, listens more carefully and attentively to.

I think your story about the friend of you and your partner who justifies his use of pornography is a perfect example where one could, and I'd argue ought to say: "As long as you are not in struggle with this issue, as long as you think it is just fine to use raped women's bodies to produce your orgasms or arousal, as long as you consider objectifying women 'natural,' we cannot be friends."

Your partner's analogy works quite well for me, regarding arguing that "someone is empowered by global capitalism if they start a small business." We are all trained to not see the blood on our hands, if we are oppressors who only or primarily commit atrocity by proxy. All whites commit genocide daily, and all men commit gynocide daily. There is no way not to be a murderer. The question is only: do you know you are one? And what are you going to do about it? Read Andrea Dworkin's speech, link below, if you haven't read it several times already.

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html

By the way, what have you read by Andrea Dworkin? And what other feminist writings have you read? Just curious.

When a man argues something like this to me:

"Implicit in some of his arguments was an accusation that we were interfering in his private life and trying to take away his only source of sexual pleasure while he was single. Afterwards, he said 'Wow. I don't think I've ever been part of such a conservative discussion about porn.'"

I respond by reminding him there's nothing conservative about the position I'm taking: it's actually quite anti-conservative, if by conservative we mean "that which is in the best interests of wealthy white men." And someone I know says: men are not entitled to privacy when that privacy is used to violate or otherwise oppress women.

That men think we are entitled to this is something created and protected by patriarchy. But it's in no way just, or humane.

Re:
"I think his justifications amount to nothing and that if he cant have a wank without using porn, he's not using enough imagination."

I think there's way more going on when men defend their right to use pornography. I think it is one arena of conversation where men are asserting their male supremacist power, authority, rights, entitlements, and privileges, which is one reason I believe in strongly going after any man's words that make that case. That his orgasms depend on rape-for-profit is one issue. That he thinks he can create "safe space" around him where his "complaints" or whatever they are, about not being able to enjoy masturbating without using pornography, is a very political matter, and oppressive when he's doing so in the presence of a woman like your partner. He's pissing on ground, marking his terrain, intellectual and physical terrain, even if it's in your home. Beware of men doing this.

I don't discuss my views on women using pornography with other men, usually. How women survive a pornographic society is for each woman, and women collectively, to determine. It's not for any man to determine, in my view. This is not to say that if a woman asks me for my opinion on whether I think it would be a wise decision for her to give up bar tending and become a stripper, I won't weigh in with my view that the price she's likely to pay for stripping, in many ways, on many levels, is too high, in my opinion. I will ask her what she would most want her sister to do, given the choices and financial dilemmas she's facing, or her mother. And this can be a very shaming thing to ask a woman, whose sister or mother or friend may well have had to engage in some form of professional male sexual exploitation of women, in order to survive. And she may have already begun stripping, but is feeling out how I feel about the issue. And being a bar tender, if young and female, usually means dealing with sexual harassment daily, as is the case with women being out in public spaces, working as servers, working in high-paying jobs, as managers, as heads of companies, and as women who are working in the industries which most graphically and unapologetically exploit and degrade women as a class. But that decision is hers, not any man's.

I look forward to hearing your therapist's answer, if and when you confront him on what he's doing to end men's sexualized domination of women, in his life outside his practice, and in his therapy practice.

Re:
One thing I have done, in a kind of sporadic way, is to call myself out among my radical community for my behaviour. I haven't actually admitted the worst to them, though I have to you. I have highlighted my porn viewing and general objectification and habit of perving down women's tops but not told them about any instances of deliberately setting up perving opportunities. But it has been the early beginning of a move to get this stuff talked about and shift our expectations of men's behaviour in our community at least.

I wrestle a great deal with this. I think that there's a way men can sort of get off on "confessing our sins" to the masses. And we can use this confessing in very irresponsible ways. I think stating what one has done generally is sufficient, and if any woman wants or needs to know more, she can ask you. But telling stories in details is likely to be triggering to many women, and is also likely to arouse many men. So the "telling" might just be reinforcing male sexual domination of women, not undermining it. Of course something can do both at once, also. So it is tricky. I think as a safe policy for women, tell your stories when asked. Most women know we do what we do, because they've experienced us doing it to them.
END OF POST.

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part five

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Email #5 from Aussieguy:
Wow. I have such a jumble of emotions in response to that mail. I agree with every point you made. (Isn't it revolting to agree so wholeheartedly with each other...;)

I have been thinking about privilege and power a fair bit lately and I think there is more to it than the fact that privilege persists despite our being opposed to it, even though that is very true. I think that the power that privileged people have is only power to exercise and enjoy our privileges. We do not have unequal power to create justice. When we genuinely act to undermine the unfair power we hold and the system that gives it to us, we find ourselves as disempowered in that moment as any person standing up to injustice. But instead of discouraging me from taking action, that experience makes me more committed because it is only when I work with others to resist oppression that I ever step down from my plinth so we can be truly equal.

Look, there I am writing about politics now. It seems like now that I've told you a lot of my story, I can spend some time on opinions and discussion too.

When you said "If she blames herself, it's one way to be less terrified, because once she realizes she didn't do anything to contribute to what happened to her, it can leave someone feel VERY vulnerable to future assaults." that was suddenly very clear to me. I have had a related vague feeling about how it's dangerous to confess to women instances of when I have objectified them or violated them without their knowledge, not because of the consequences for me but because they might feel afraid. Your explanation clarifies it really well.

That comes back to a point that my partner [woman's name deleted] made to me once: that men don't ever deal with this shit among ourselves. I am much more likely to confess this stuff to a woman than to a man. It's not because I'm afraid of being punished over-harshly by men. It's because I expect very little response and more likely even an attack for thinking there's anything wrong to confess and a defensiveness because they all have the same habits too. But actually, it is necessary for us to be confronting this behaviour ourselves and not leaving it for women to take on against men's threats (not idle threats) of violence.

You said "In my experience, in the last twenty years, increasingly, it isn't "cool" to be a feminist who isn't "into" porn."

It's really true. A friend of ours who had broken up with his girlfirend a couple of months earlier was round at our place and he mentioned that he likes downloading porn. He and [my partner] got into a discussion and he totally defended his right to look at porn. I said nothing, feeling strongly that porn was wrong but also feeling unqualified to tell anyone else not to use it while I continued to have the habit. He used as justification that some number of his past girlfiends enjoyed looking at porn with him and one of them taught him to download it. He also talked about how he had found websites where women and couples posted footage of themselves having sex and it was all very empowered and consensual. ([My partner] said later that that's like saying that someone is empowered by global capitlaism if they start a small business.) Implicit in some of his arguments was an accusation that we were interfering in his private life and trying to take away his only source of sexual pleasure while he was single. Afterwards, he said "Wow. I don't think I've ever been part of such a conservative discussion about porn."

I have looked hard for websites where I think the ethics are OK and the women are not degraded and I have not found a single one. I think his justifications amount to nothing and that if he cant have a wank without using porn, he's not using enough imagination. There are plenty of ways in which oppressed people buy into their own oppression, so women being into it is not the issue either. As well as that, one woman can objectify another, or one woman can objectify women generally, for her own sexual pleasure. It doesn't make it just.

A few women I know, who have had various experiences of male sexual violence, have been making DIY porn and exhibiting it as a self-empowering response to their experiences. Several of them talk about porn as a potentially women-friendly and consent-based thing. While I see some healing value for them in getting together and making the images, I think they miss the point about the mass porn industry being based on continual exploitation and also the way the content itself contains so much imagery of violence, degradation and oppression.

I agree with your points about the therapist being there to help me feel better about myself. It seemed a bit as though he was just there to help me with whatever I wanted and he would help me give up cornflakes if I told him I felt bad about it. He has offered no recognition that the problem really exists in society and that my response is an attempt to take responsibility for my own part in it. I felt a bit like saying "Well, what are YOU doing about it, then?" And in fact I will, but with less bitterness. I have the idea that you are doing good things and I'd like to get onto talking about what they are and start some activity on it in my life too.

One thing I have done, in a kind of sporadic way, is to call myself out among my radical community for my behaviour. I haven't actually admitted the worst to them, though I have to you. I have highlighted my porn viewing and general objectification and habit of perving down women's tops but not told them about any instances of deliberately setting up perving opportunities. But it has been the early beginning of a move to get this stuff talked about and shift our expectations of men's behaviour in our community at least.

I look forward to hearing back
END OF POST.

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part four

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Email #4 from Aussieguy:

You make some very useful points in your mail, such as describing my first story as "A memory of violation that you experienced as sexual". That really sums up a little thing that's been nagging at my brain for a while now, about how this stuff is not sex but is linked in my mind to sex. And it focuses on the bald fact that it is a violation. I committed a sexual assault at that age.

Your reminding me to think of the experience of the girl in that story is very confronting too. I think of myself as much more alert to a woman's experience of my sexuality now but I had not properly sat and thought about that particular girl's experience. It is frightening and very sad, reminding me of images of young children holding machine guns or other cruel intrusions of adult injustice into children's lives.

The idea that "males grow up to feel pervy, for example, but don't grow up feeling like systematic sexual violators" is also very eye-opening. It is something of a relief to really open myself and understand what I have been in my life, but it I am also very deeply sad. It is not like depression or despair, more that I want to have a good cry. Perhaps I will even be able to.

I am also excited by how clearly you explain the stuff about society appearing not to condone our abuse while actually requiring it, and also the point that it is the power of male sexuality that is dangerous. That last point is like the gorilla in the room: so glaringly obvious and terrible that no-one wants to address it.

Interestingly, I don't remember ever feeling any entitlement to look at women's bodies. I may have justified it or explained it away in some way but I think that in fact I just avoided reflecting on what I was doing. I shut down my awareness of my own experiences and with it my understanding of anyone else's experience too.

I am very confused about what the woman I saw in the shower felt. I saw that she was alarmed and she must have been embarrassed but afterwards she blamed herself. I apologised to her for looking in and she said she should not have left the curtain a bit open like that. I didn't tell her that I had opened it and I don't know if it occurred to her then or afterwards that I could have set up that horrible situation. I imagine her mulling it over in her mind and feeling revolted every time she considers the idea that I might have deliberately exposed her like that.

It was a fantasy of mine to be invisible too, and only for the purpose of hiding in women's rooms or shower blocks. Spy cameras and voyeur web sites are the high-tech equivalent of that fantasy, it seems. My fantasy is not quite reality for me though because I have so far resisted having the internet at home, so I do all my porn surfing surreptitiously on public computers. I try to set myself up in places where no-one can see what I'm looking at but it doesn't work very well. I have been caught probably half a dozen times that I know of and who knows how many times someone has seen what I'm doing and said nothing. My partner told me that if she was sitting next to someone and he was looking at porn she would be disgusted but also quite scared. She would not feel safe being near him. Even that, confronting as it is, did not instantly stop me from doing it.

I think a lot of it is, as you say, because I can. I can do it and I can get away with it. Even when I have been caught, it has not led to even moderate punishment, just momentary shame and that's all.

I saw a sexual health counsellor about this problem and she suggested setting things up to restrict my access to the internet. The counsellor I'm seeing now is not a sexual health specialist but he has been quite helpful already. Two things he told that have helped are that people usually take about 4-6 weeks to break a pattern of behaviour and start a new one, and the idea of saying "STOP!" in my head when my mind goes in the direction of porn or objectifying women. It's been really good to have a specified time period when I have to be 100% vigilant and then review where I'm at after that, instead of trying to just stop, forever, instantly. To know that I can expect my brain to have made a real change in that 6 weeks is a real encouragement to be firm and stay on track. And the "STOP!" thing is a good way to divert myself instantly before I get taken up with a behaviour pattern. My eyes will wander and start looking for a woman's cleavage as she bends over or something ad I say "STOP!" and look somewhere else, whereas before I may have stared at her, then at the next woman, then gone off actively looking for women to perve on, then gone to find a website to look at or a video with sex scenes in it to watch. So it helps me catch myself at the first moment of objectification instead of having to try to fight off the urge to watch porn when I've already followed my urges so far.

It's 4 weeks now, and I've been 100% vigilant so far. It feels like I'm really digging out some deeply held stuff.

There, I think that's enough for this one.
Until next time
END OF POST.