A Double Standard

Telling women that makeup, prosthetic boobs, designer vaginas, and feeling feminine don’t make them women = feminist.

Telling men that makeup, prosthetic boobs, designer vaginas, and feeling feminine don’t make them women = transphobic.

Hmmm.

Mama’s Boy

Little boys oppress little girls.

Now, there are all kinds of ways to approach that problem, but the problem itself is a fact.  Little boys oppress, bully, assault, rape, and dominate little girls.

I can understand a little bit how maybe women might see themselves as being tough enough, adult enough, strong enough to take men on – to put an emphasis on demanding that men adopt, or at least mimick, a more compassionate attitude toward women and girls and, in the meantime, to just suck up their abuse, take one for the team.  It’s not a strategy I endorse because I don’t think it’s got much chance of success.  (My own vision involves mothers accepting that there’s nothing they can do for their sons to prevent them becoming patriarchs, benevolent or otherwise, and to focus on themselves.  An acquittal, if you will.)  I mean, women have been taking men’s abuse for millenia to no avail, so it’s not something that’s likely to work, but I can understand it.

What I don’t understand, though, is why women think it’s OK to inflict their little boys on unsuspecting little girls.  And, whether or not a little boy is actually participating in any of the sexual harrassment, assault, and torment of little girls, his silence lends his support.  I do not understand why women think it’s OK to inflict their grown sons on little girls and teenage girls and other women.  Again, even if your own grown sons aren’t out there molesting, harrassing, raping, and bothering women and girls, in all likelihood, he’s not saying anything against the ones who are either, not any more than he would have as a little boy, really. 

If women want to be with men and boys, they should be with them, but why is it OK for these women to send their husbands and sons out into the world to oppress other girls and women, who perhaps do not want to be in their ominous presence?  Why is it OK for other women’s sons to go out and rape prostitutes, rape wives, rape girls, rape girlfriends, and stand idly by while their friends do the same?  Is it because the men and boys in question aren’t raping mommy, aren’t harrassing mommy, aren’t tormenting mommy, aren’t humiliating and degrading mommy?

Why are mommy’s feelings of love and joy for her sons supposedly more relevant than the actual lives and physical well-being of little girls?  Why should mothers’ feelings outweigh girls’ welfare?

I think it’s because motherhood is one of the only privileged statuses a woman can occupy in patriarchy.  So, when there are actual harms done to the oppressed (girls who obviously can’t be mothers, women who don’t mother, and women who won’t let men fuck them), they must be measured up against the feelings of the privileged – the mothers, preferably of sons.

You end up with the same dynamic of the privileged having the power to demand that grievances be aired “politely” that you do in cases of racism, which is not unexpected.  All oppressions are modeled similarly, with the complaints of the oppressed being squashed in favor of privileged constructions of politeness and benevolence, and with the privileged therefore never having to face up to the suffering others do so that they may have their love and joy.  I don’t think anyone has that right, though, to exact the suffering of others, knowingly or unwittingly, for their own pleasure and contentment.  And I’m especially ticked off at the way little girls are thrown under the bus generation after generation so that mothers of sons can chase dreams of “ideal” motherhood, “romance,” and “love,” all of which are patriarchal constructions and require the continued existence of the patriarchy.

Clarification on the “Sex Trumps Race” Issue

When I say that sexism underlies racism or that racism requires sexism for its continuance, this is not to say that freeing white women from the sexism of white men would crumble the foundation of the patriarchy. What I’m saying is that, since racism is a function of sexism, if we free the *women* most seriously affected by racism, we will have dismantled the hierarchy. You see, because racism is the result of the sexism of the high-status white male against the low-status nonwhite female, it would not be sufficient to address racism solely as it pertains to nonwhite men. Only by addressing racism as a function of sexism – the means by which sexist men interact with differently raced women and their kin – can the whole of sexism’s effects be acknowledged.

This is not the same thing as saying that we should only focus on sexism. This is not the same thing as saying that sexism trumps racism. This is not the same thing as saying that white women and black women need to work together as just women and forget about our differences.

What I *am* saying is that the sexism experienced by nonwhite women is racist. So, in order to eliminate the sexism experienced by nonwhite women, you have to address the fact that sexism is stratified by race. You can’t get rid of sexism and keep the racism, because if nonwhite women are being accorded different treatment than other people because of their skin color/hair type – THAT IS SEXISM.

What? You thought that white men could grow to accept white women as equals, but still treat black women like shit, and that that would constitute the end of sexism??? You thought that white men treating black women like shit was just racism but not sexism? Ha! Sorry, but no cigar! So long as any *woman* is being accorded different treatment than that accorded to the standard (lean, mean, heterosexual, Aryan male), it’s sexism. Period.

This works no matter what facet of oppression you’d like to consider. I’ll run through a couple of examples for illustration’s sake. If I say that classism is a function of sexism, what this means is that if we free the *women* most disadvantaged by class, we’ll have undermined the hierarchy. This is because class stratification is a means of positioning the poorest of women in such a way as to depend upon the “protection” of poor men in the face of rich men’s predations. So, if you free the poor woman from rich men’s predations, you relieve her of poor men’s “protection.”

If I say that globalization is a function of sexism, this does not mean that if we end globalization, we end sexism. What it means is that globalization is an adjunct to sexism, in which third-world women are subject to the whims of first-world men. Because the hierarchy is, at its foundation, sexist, it would not do any feminist good to merely free the third-world men from the oppression of the first-world men. That would just leave the third-world women at the mercy of the third-world men. Freeing those *women* at the bottom of the pile, though, would upturn the whole shebang.

Every woman’s experience tells us something we need to know about *sexism* if we are willing to listen. In trying to cordon off the experiences of nonwhite (non-rich, non-Western, non-English-speaking, uneducated, disabled, etc.) women into discrete categories – one called sexism for all the experiences we share with white women, and the other categories called something else (racism, ableism, classism) just because they are not shared by white women – we are limiting our analysis of the beast. The patriarchy cannot be defined solely by white women’s experience of it. Incorporating poor/nonwhite/disabled/uneducated women’s experiences of sexism into our conception of feminism is not a distraction from our goals; it is, instead, a recognition of all that feminism should have been but failed to be. There is no amount of beating the “sex trumps race” drum that’s going to turn that failure into a victory either, so let’s try something new.

On Offering Alliance

Alliance isn’t something bestowed upon one party by a benevolent other. It isn’t a gift magnanimous people give to the needy.

To approach an interaction with the intention of *offering* someone an alliance, rather than *negotiating* an alliance or *joining* an alliance, is to bring to the table certain privileged patriarchal assumptions. To offer something means you believe you have something of worth to others, something it would be strange, if not rude, to refuse. This is why people may offer a hand with a large package, but why most socially apt people will not *offer* to be your friend, or to hang out with you, or to care about you. There is not enough evidence to determine whether or not you have anything to offer a stranger or casual acquaintance with regard to friendship or affection, after all.

Yet, when it comes to alliance building, it’s not uncommon to hear privileged individuals remark, “Well, I *OFFERED* to be her ally, but she declined, ungrateful bitch!” I want to ask these people, what on earth made you think your alliance was something that could be offered to anybody in the first place, rather than something that would be negotiated and collaborated upon amongst equals? I posit that the only thing that makes the privileged feel any differently about offering to be someone’s friend (obviously patronizing) and offering to be someone’s ally (obviously patronizing to me, but apparently not to the privileged) is internalization of the patriarchy’s value system. Only a rich person would ever presume to *offer* her alliance to the poor and only a white person would ever presume to *offer* her alliance to the nonwhite.

If an alliance is a relationship between equals, it must be come to mutually. Each side must see the benefit of working with the other. A true alliance cannot be struck when one side plays the part of the glorious samaritan and the other plays the role of the grateful charity case. What I hear when white women (ethnic or not) complain that the “alliance” they proffered to nonwhite women was refused is this: “That ungrateful nonwhite bitch wouldn’t validate my good samaritan identity.” What these women need to realize is that white women’s identity as the good samaritan has come for too long at the price of nonwhite women’s dignity. A refusal to lower myself to the status of grateful cheerleader in order to have an “alliance” on white terms is not rudeness, but self-awareness and self-respect.

GLBTQQM

What’s the M stand for, you’re wondering? Well, it stands for miscegenosexuality, a rising, hip and happening sexuality that involves having sex with people of other species. I mean races. I’m sorry. Just because the word ‘miscegenation’ enjoyed its heyday back when blacks and whites were considered to be different species doesn’t mean we can’t reclaim the word for our own purposes! People who are offended by the unironic use of the word ‘miscegenation’ to describe supposedly valid, supposedly feminist, political activism are obviously just miscegenosexual-phobic. And bigots.

You see, to us non-post-modern/non-queers out here, a female person who fucks male people is heterosexual but, apparently, this is a denial of the experiences of white women who fuck black men. Because black men aren’t *men*, silly. They’re blacks! So, to end all confusion about the vast, gaping discrepancies between sucking white cock and sucking black cock, I’ve coined the term miscegenosexual, which will prevent brave white women who fuck and suck black cock from being lumped in with the plain old heterosexuals. The oppressed have a right to their own name, after all.

What’s great about this concept of miscegenosexuality is that, like much of queer theory, it allows its adherents to enjoy the privileges of what looks on the outside like patriarchy-approved behavior (heterosexuality, matching of the proper genitalia with the proper gender roles, couplehood, etc.)*without* conceding the fact that gaining or leveraging patriarchal approval is decidedly counter-revolutionary, even if it’s sometimes necessary for survival. It’s about adopting coping strategies for appeasing the patriarchy, while denying that the patriarchy is appeased. Because if you just don’t acknowledge the smiling countenance of the great patriarch in the sky, it means he isn’t smiling, or something, which makes you a revolutionary.

And, so, I look forward to the acceptance of the radical miscegenosexual under the queer umbrella, where her natural identity as a woman who fucks men *of different species* – I mean races – can be respected and not downplayed, as is the wont of radical feminists.

Benevolence

I am constantly being accused of failure to demonstrate a proper amount of benevolence in my demeanor, for the tastes of the dominant class. It has been so constant a theme in my life, that I began to wonder, as it were, where the money in all of this was. Who stands most to benefit from a code of etiquette that demands of its adherents that they affect an exaggerated air of good-will all the time?

Why, the people who don’t actually have good-will, of course. You see, if what is emphasized is the importance of an outward appearance of politeness and manners, all discussion of any real physical/economic/psychological harm done can be (thankfully!) diverted to the subject of whether or not the complaint about the harm was made decorously enough for the tastes of the ruling class. The beggar petitions the court to have the king’s sons stop raping her daughters, and what is the response? “Do you expect us to take you seriously when you haven’t even a decent gown befitting of the king’s throne room? And such boorishness from a lady to seek the magnanimous aid of nobles in that bedraggled state, with angry tears coursing down your face, and in that passionate brogue! Don’t you think we’d take more kindly to your petition if you’d speak from a place of cold and distant detachment, and with an accent that doesn’t offend our ears so?”

This focus on merely the (highly class/race/sex/etc.-based) outward appearance of benevolence is a diversionary tactic utilized by the dominant class to minimize the concerns of the oppressed, of course. The only people who aren’t emotionally, viscerally invested in overturning the hierarchy – who can adopt a face of distant politeness and maintain it – are the people who aren’t directly abused by it. The only people who have enough time and energy to follow all of the rules of etiquette regarding the tone, style, dialect, volume, inflection, diction, and speed of delivery in which a complaint should be made – that is, who are able to appear benevolent – are the very people with the social clout necessary for doing great harm, and who have done just that. They have merely, because they can rewrite history like that, lied about themselves and claimed that the language and outward presentation of our oppressors is *really* an indication of pureness of heart. It’s quite the clever slight of hand, to conflate the outward appearance of benevolence with rich white men’s languages, customs, and styles of dress.

Benevolence, then, is a patriarchal ruse, an optical illusion intended to distract the eye from the brutality that has been done to the shiny, extra-magnanimous veneer. And it should always be remembered that the harm that has been done is not bygone history. It is a threat that hangs over the heads of those of us marked for persecution to this day. An outward appearance of benevolence, then, is not just a distraction from past harms done by the ruling classes, but from current threat of future harms against the oppressed.

Is it any surprise, then, that the oppressed do not seem quite so benevolent, in patriarchal terms, as the oppressors? The oppressed have no history of, and no current capacity for, systematic violence against their oppressors for which to overcompensate! Not only that, but an insistence that the only proper and polite way to interact is the way that rich white men and their women have interacted is white male supremacist and, therefore, something aware nonwhite people don’t want anything to do with.

And, so, I want to leave you with a couple of examples of times when white supremacist men and women have, on feminist boards/comment threads, demanded that I make my petitions for fair treatment in a more “benevolent” manner, as if any of us are actually in any danger of having *my* ideologies, “benevolently” worded or no, imposed upon others in real life.

The first is from the I Blame the Patriarchy forum. In this this thread on drag and blackface, I was told to be more benevolent, in so many words, with my opposition to white men wearing both drag and blackface in the name of comedy. White women in this thread so loved their drag-show minstrelsy that they were willing to sidetrack the objections of a black woman to the circular hell of etiquette approval in order to avoid talking about it. The gay men, the transvestites, and the transsexuals were all duly defended from my predations, I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear. They are all free to continue mocking black women’s bodies – our skin, our breasts, our vaginas, our hair – so far as the bigots at that forum are concerned.

If anyone remembers the other thread*, the one in which I and delphyne took our leave (and were banned retroactively), please let me know. I’d like to link it. One can never have too many examples of racist white men and women sticking together for the sake of their own laughs, to the detriment of nonwhite women, after all. What’s truly laughable is that they call themselves feminists, let alone radicals. I’d say they’re more white male capitalist supremacist than anything, though they do also have some feminist-ish leanings.

My second example is, of course, the Pandagon book cover discussion. Amanda and her cronies do everything possible to focus on the intolerableness of the delivery of my complaint.

Heart has, of course, deleted all of the back-and-forth conversations I’ve had with her on her private boards, so I cannot reprint them here. But rest assured, readers, that she has made her own share of demands for the proper aura of benevolence from me, and despite her admirable participation in the threads I’ve linked above, she has also only made these demands when confronted with her own racism. It’s all very predictable, really.

*Thanks to a reader for sending me the link.