Via F-Words, I just came across this four-year-old post by Melissa McEwan. OMFG it is made of *WIN*!
Some quotes (and I will resist the urge to quote the entire post)…
Life is hard enough without my unexpectedly smacking people in the face who trust me not to be a jerk, and it’s in that same spirit that I’ve tried to convey how misogynist language is uncool—hey, I don’t want to get blindsided with shit like that from an ostensible ally. When I highlight the use of sexist language at a male-authored blog, it’s because such language is alienating and demeaning and infuriating and I’m operating under the assumption that those bloggers don’t want to alienate, demean, and infuriate their female readers. But that, as it turns out, usually tends to be a faulty assumption.
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The truth is, if I actually spent my days actively paying attention to every example of misogyny around me, I would be a profoundly unhappy woman. Not bitchy or grumpy or short-tempered, but paralyzingly depressed. Women have to train themselves to avoid consciously reacting to every bit of misogynistic detritus permeating the culture through which we all move, lest they go quite insane. I write about the things I can’t not write about. If I wrote about all the examples of sexism I see every day, I’d never sleep.
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As long as there are men, who would ostensibly be part of the “humanist” movement, yet retain a visceral and violent reaction to the feminine, there is no foundation for a sexless, “humanist” movement. Generally, those arguing in favor of a “humanist” movement won’t say they’re arguing for men’s inclusion, instead citing what they perceive as the limitations of feminism/womanism—”But what about gay people or people of color or the disabled or the poor or…?” they ask, as if there is something intrinsic to feminism that precludes also fighting other biases. The truth is, if one is genuinely concerned with the betterment of women, one is necessarily concerned with fighting biases against any marginalized group, because, half (give or take) of all such groups are women.
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Making the personal public and political is serious business. Because women’s stories aren’t told, it’s incumbent upon female feminists to tell their own stories, to fill that void, to be unrepentant and loquacious raconteurs every chance we get, to talk about our bodies, our struggles, our triumphs, our needs, our lives in every aspect. It’s our obligation to create a cacophony with our personal narratives, until there is a constant din that translates into equality, into balance.
I missed it the first time around because I didn’t know about Shakesville (formerly Shakespeare’s Sister) four years ago. It was a brand new blog at the time.
-Actually, now I’m confused. Is that post really four years old? It is dated October 5, 2004 but includes links that are dated in 2006. :\ Oh well, whatever; the point is, the post is awesome and is a must-read.
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4 Responses to "Awesome, awesome, awesome"
Yes, and not only this but… a lot of the things women pick as examples of sexism are actually iffy. Or at least, they were for me. Before I was a feminist, things would happen and I’d wonder why they did and not know. Once I was a feminist, I found myself deciding I knew: that must have been sexism. That must have been ableism. On and on. I just knew. And if anyone told me that maybe that person didn’t like me for some other reason, or maybe someone didn’t mean it, or maybe my hair was a mess that day, or whatever… I’d shoot withering glares. When I stopped IDing as a feminist, I started to realize that in a lot of cases, I had reason to suspect sexism or “privilege-blinders” or whatever, but I didn’t have enough evidence to convince even myself I was sure that was going on.
I really think the c-r based feminisms have both been good and bad for women. Good, because they get us thinking about why people act the way they do, and make us really look at how people feel about women and how women feel about themselves. Bad, though, because they’ve encouraged us to see anything that makes us wonder or bothers us slightly as evidence of an evil and crushing conspiracy. Little sexist annoyances don’t get to just be annoyances when they prop up a worldview that says that men hate you, and getting called “sweetie” this morning by an old dude in a suit means he’s thinking explicitly of raping or otherwise demeaning you.
And yeah, weird example there, but when I got really deep into the “any mildly sexist thing is evidence someone hates women” way of thinking, I thought those sorts of things all the time: “What is this person barely keeping contained?” I felt really threatened all the time.
Now that I actually have a job doing social-justice-y things, it… well, there’s so much that just *is* obviously unfair, blatant, and stupid aimed at so many “oppressed classes” that I can’t even figure out why I ever bothered to go all wobbly over ambiguous random comments and the like.
Trinity,
I am wary of parts of the argument you make here because for me it starts to edge too close to the “oversensitive feminist” trope. Oh you’re just over-reacting, it’s not REALLY sexism, etc. I feel like we get that so much from basically every other aspect of society that I am just very wary of recreating it. I also strongly feel that the people who experience a type of oppression (I don’t really like the word “oppression” here bc I don’t think it’s totally accurate, but I have yet to come across a better term) are the ones who are the authorities on what is or isn’t a certain “-ism.”
I am also wary of the argument about things being small in scale. I agree w/ your point on one hand but again on the other hand it reminds me a lot of “Oh shut up humorless feminist, it’s not a big deal, it’s just a little thing” and the idea that unless something is the worst situation it could possibly be then it’s not worth focusing on. I know that is not *your* point but I worry about people taking it and running in that direction, I guess is what I’m saying.
Actually that *is* my point, Amber. And, well, you certainly don’t have to agree with it, but I really do feel that my time in a lot of feminist enclaves was spent revving myself up to worry, and revving others up to worry, about easy targets because going after the big ones take work. Like I’ve said at my LJ recently, I actually do some of the fighting the big stuff as a job, and it really shifted a great deal of my feelings on this “oh no, people called me *humorless*” thing.
I really do feel that people go for safe targets rather than difficult ones, and I think that’s where a lot of the passionate APRFdom comes from, actually. Because it’s easier to bicker at your “sister’s” slutty ways than to actually contemplate that wow, for really real realness, there are people dying out there. People being brutalized. It’s so much easier to turn around and roll your eyes at someone nice and safe — and someone who blog comments or e-shunning might convince to change her mind — than to really do anything likely to actually secure lasting rights for real people.
And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of feminism being nothing *more* than the place where people who don’t like vicious jokes hang around and insist that we *do* have senses of humor and everyone’s mean because they said we don’t. I just want to smack people for that lately, tbh.
I do agree that people go for safe targets - low-hanging fruit as the saying goes. Also I know that I might appear to contradict myself a lot bc I say the thing about how so-called “little things” ARE worth caring about - but I also harp on some of our online radfem pals for focusing only on porn/prostitution and not addressing issues such as the wage gap, reproductive justice, healthcare access, etc. To me this is not contradictory at all, but I know that maybe to a casual outside observer it might look that way.
Agreed, and I do not think this is in opposition to what I said or contradictory, but I feel like maybe I don’t have the words to really articulate what I mean. Octogalore has talked about it before and been excellent, so I will defer to her (not really fair bc she’s not here, but I thought of her).
Also maybe some of our differing views just have to do w/ diff. ways that we have experienced things and feminism.