Meme: five words, part 1: feminism
Mar. 25th, 2009 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottahillFrom ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kcobweb, a meme: comment on this post and I'll tell you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then you post them in your lj and elaborate.
I was given Composition. Shyness. Feminism. Singing. Parenting. I could write an essay on each, so I'm splitting them up (plus maybe I'll get more comments if I do so...I like comments.) I'll do the dangerous one first: feminism.
I was surprised to be given this word; I don't know if it's because I am so clearly a feminist or because I am so often criticizing it, or both. Gender has been a fascination of mine for a long time. In elementary school, I remember thinking that gender wasn't either/or but a scale, and that I probably lay more on the girl side of the scale because I wasn't into sports and I tended to be quiet and studious which seemed more feminine qualities to me. (Naturally, a few years later I would be repulsed by the thought that I had ever considered myself a GIRL. A few years after that, I decided that maybe there was something to it after all; now I know it's all much more complicated than my 8-year-old mind realized.) I often wonder what it would be like if I were a woman, whether I could still be me in some fundamental way, and I occasionally wish I wasn't so obviously male in build so that I could try to pass to see what it was like.
I've always taken feminism for granted, and that can get me into trouble when I don't make my implicit assumptions explicit. It's obvious to me, for instance, that women should be paid the same as men, and also that this is not happening because of a number of roadblocks built into the fabric of our society. I know that when I've talked to bosses in the past, I've never had to worry that they didn't respect me because of my gender; that is obviously a privilege. Sexism is not dead.
However, I do have problems with feminism. For starters, its name: what does it mean for a man to be a feminist? Since "feminist" has "femina" right in its title, a male feminist sounds like someone on the fringes, supporting someone else's fight. Which is great, but the same societal constructs that make it harder for women to make equal pay or to become physicists, also make it harder for divorced men to retain custody of their kids. Or for men to report domestic abuse and be taken seriously. Or for men to become stay-at-home dads or kindergarten teachers, or even just to spend time watching kids at a park, without worrying that someone will think that that big scary man is a pedophile. If a man and woman get drunk and have sex, and they both regret it when they wake up, then according to what I was taught in college the man "raped" the woman. Unless I'm mistaken, men make up the majority of suicides, homocide victims, and homeless people, and a minority of college attendees. They can be forced to join the army and fight in a war they oppose. If a man and a woman have sex and a pregnancy results, the woman can choose whether or not she wishes to financially support the baby for the next 18 years; the man has no choice in the matter. (If you say to the man "You shouldn't have sex if you're not willing to accept the consequences", then why don't we say the same thing to the woman?) Women have been placed on pedestals for generations, which has restricted them, but men have lost their lives protecting or wooing those women, who while bored are at least still alive.
In the global scheme of things, the balance of social privilege does tip in favor of the man; women are treated so badly in so many parts of the world, even in parts of the US. But then again, cancer kills many more people than Parkinson's, but that's cold comfort to someone with Parkinson's. Who is going to fight to overcome these societal inequalities that happen to favor women? I would hope that feminists would support breaking down barriers for both (all?) genders, but a name like FEMINism certainly suggests who gets top billing in their concerns-- and rightfully so. We shouldn't expect women to lead the fight for men's rights; that should be up to men. But there needs to be some sympathy between the two sides, and a belief that both have the same ultimate goal: the creation of a society where you can be who you are, and do what you are called to do, without the interference of gender-based prejudices. Calling that feminism seems sadly ironic; I've preferred "equalism".
I think there are two strains of thought in feminism: one in which gender shouldn't matter, and one in which gender should be celebrated. I tend towards the first, mostly because I haven't figured out how to celebrate my own gender: any positive characteristic I might cite about being male is either going to be shot down by my equalist upbringing ("Anything you can do I can do better.") or phrased simply as relief that I don't have the same burdens as women do (e.g. thank goodness I don't have to wear makeup or shave any part of my body), which seems more like gloating than celebration. I am proud of being a stay-at-home dad, so maybe I'm starting to get a glimpse of what "Women's Pride" is supposed to be about.
But anyway, I'm basically an equalist, and that means trying to raise my daughter in as gender-neutral a way as I can. I told my family "NO PINK!" which was enough to bring her wardrobe down to 40-50% pink. She doesn't wear dresses (which I think are indecent on toddlers anyway, at least without tights-- diapers are underwear and shouldn't be shown off). Actually, it's really pretty easy to raise a girl in a gender-neutral fashion, at least in the early years. Dress a girl in blue, and you might have people come up to you and say "What a cute little boy!" but they're easily corrected. Dress a boy in pink, on the other hand, and...well, I don't actually know what the reaction would be. My gut feeling is that it wouldn't be good. There's still a lot of pressure to treat the masculinity of little boys as extremely fragile, easily destroyed by a doll or an article of clothing. That has an anti-female connotation to it-- one might argue that people believe males are superior to females, so it is understandable for girls to want to be like boys but unthinkable for boys to be "slumming" in the feminine domains. But on the other hand, boys only get half the experiences that girls do, and so are left at a disadvantage which carries over into adulthood.
I could write a lot more, but I think that's enough for now.
Addendum: Since our wonderful conversations here, I've been reading some of the feminist blogs (Shakesville, Feministing, Broadsheet...basically the blogswavyarms told me to read :). They're not as frustrating as I was afraid they might be, since much of the discrimination they report and discuss are just flat-out wrong and heartbreaking. I was reading the comments of one article, however, and the topic of Men's Rights groups came up. Now unfortunately, many men's rights organizations are made up largely of bitter men who despise feminism and perhaps women in general; I can't stomach what I read on their websites for very long. However, the contempt that some of the feminist commenters have for the notion of men's rights is very sad as well. As I think about it, men's *rights* issues affect only a small fraction of men: most men are not divorcees who had to fight for child custody, or are victims of spousal abuse, or so forth. By comparison, a lot larger percentage of women have to deal with discrimination and harrassment in the workplace, violating their rights; I think that's the source of the contempt. However, as feminists point out when talking about relative strength or spatial skills or whatnot, the variation within one gender can be much larger than the difference between genders, and we need to take that into account. Even if the average male is more privileged than the average female, there are going to be cases where this is reversed: the female CEO and the male secretary, the henpecked abused husband and the domineering wife; heck, Martha Stewart and some homeless guy. It's easy to say "those are the exceptions", but they're not exceptions, they're people. And when such a man has been screwed over by the system and then told all about his "male privilege"...well, you've just created an enemy for the movement. If for no other reason than simple politics, feminists should be reaching out to the men's rights groups, saying "We agree that these are injustices that need to be remedied, and we support you all the way." It's *not* really the job of feminists to support men's rights issues, I've decided-- that's like asking the American Cancer Society for money to fight heart disease-- but they should be more supportive as a movement. (They, they, they, of course...who is they? Consider this an open letter to those contemptuous commenters and all those who agree with them.)
kcobweb, a meme: comment on this post and I'll tell you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then you post them in your lj and elaborate.I was given Composition. Shyness. Feminism. Singing. Parenting. I could write an essay on each, so I'm splitting them up (plus maybe I'll get more comments if I do so...I like comments.) I'll do the dangerous one first: feminism.
I was surprised to be given this word; I don't know if it's because I am so clearly a feminist or because I am so often criticizing it, or both. Gender has been a fascination of mine for a long time. In elementary school, I remember thinking that gender wasn't either/or but a scale, and that I probably lay more on the girl side of the scale because I wasn't into sports and I tended to be quiet and studious which seemed more feminine qualities to me. (Naturally, a few years later I would be repulsed by the thought that I had ever considered myself a GIRL. A few years after that, I decided that maybe there was something to it after all; now I know it's all much more complicated than my 8-year-old mind realized.) I often wonder what it would be like if I were a woman, whether I could still be me in some fundamental way, and I occasionally wish I wasn't so obviously male in build so that I could try to pass to see what it was like.
I've always taken feminism for granted, and that can get me into trouble when I don't make my implicit assumptions explicit. It's obvious to me, for instance, that women should be paid the same as men, and also that this is not happening because of a number of roadblocks built into the fabric of our society. I know that when I've talked to bosses in the past, I've never had to worry that they didn't respect me because of my gender; that is obviously a privilege. Sexism is not dead.
However, I do have problems with feminism. For starters, its name: what does it mean for a man to be a feminist? Since "feminist" has "femina" right in its title, a male feminist sounds like someone on the fringes, supporting someone else's fight. Which is great, but the same societal constructs that make it harder for women to make equal pay or to become physicists, also make it harder for divorced men to retain custody of their kids. Or for men to report domestic abuse and be taken seriously. Or for men to become stay-at-home dads or kindergarten teachers, or even just to spend time watching kids at a park, without worrying that someone will think that that big scary man is a pedophile. If a man and woman get drunk and have sex, and they both regret it when they wake up, then according to what I was taught in college the man "raped" the woman. Unless I'm mistaken, men make up the majority of suicides, homocide victims, and homeless people, and a minority of college attendees. They can be forced to join the army and fight in a war they oppose. If a man and a woman have sex and a pregnancy results, the woman can choose whether or not she wishes to financially support the baby for the next 18 years; the man has no choice in the matter. (If you say to the man "You shouldn't have sex if you're not willing to accept the consequences", then why don't we say the same thing to the woman?) Women have been placed on pedestals for generations, which has restricted them, but men have lost their lives protecting or wooing those women, who while bored are at least still alive.
In the global scheme of things, the balance of social privilege does tip in favor of the man; women are treated so badly in so many parts of the world, even in parts of the US. But then again, cancer kills many more people than Parkinson's, but that's cold comfort to someone with Parkinson's. Who is going to fight to overcome these societal inequalities that happen to favor women? I would hope that feminists would support breaking down barriers for both (all?) genders, but a name like FEMINism certainly suggests who gets top billing in their concerns-- and rightfully so. We shouldn't expect women to lead the fight for men's rights; that should be up to men. But there needs to be some sympathy between the two sides, and a belief that both have the same ultimate goal: the creation of a society where you can be who you are, and do what you are called to do, without the interference of gender-based prejudices. Calling that feminism seems sadly ironic; I've preferred "equalism".
I think there are two strains of thought in feminism: one in which gender shouldn't matter, and one in which gender should be celebrated. I tend towards the first, mostly because I haven't figured out how to celebrate my own gender: any positive characteristic I might cite about being male is either going to be shot down by my equalist upbringing ("Anything you can do I can do better.") or phrased simply as relief that I don't have the same burdens as women do (e.g. thank goodness I don't have to wear makeup or shave any part of my body), which seems more like gloating than celebration. I am proud of being a stay-at-home dad, so maybe I'm starting to get a glimpse of what "Women's Pride" is supposed to be about.
But anyway, I'm basically an equalist, and that means trying to raise my daughter in as gender-neutral a way as I can. I told my family "NO PINK!" which was enough to bring her wardrobe down to 40-50% pink. She doesn't wear dresses (which I think are indecent on toddlers anyway, at least without tights-- diapers are underwear and shouldn't be shown off). Actually, it's really pretty easy to raise a girl in a gender-neutral fashion, at least in the early years. Dress a girl in blue, and you might have people come up to you and say "What a cute little boy!" but they're easily corrected. Dress a boy in pink, on the other hand, and...well, I don't actually know what the reaction would be. My gut feeling is that it wouldn't be good. There's still a lot of pressure to treat the masculinity of little boys as extremely fragile, easily destroyed by a doll or an article of clothing. That has an anti-female connotation to it-- one might argue that people believe males are superior to females, so it is understandable for girls to want to be like boys but unthinkable for boys to be "slumming" in the feminine domains. But on the other hand, boys only get half the experiences that girls do, and so are left at a disadvantage which carries over into adulthood.
I could write a lot more, but I think that's enough for now.
Addendum: Since our wonderful conversations here, I've been reading some of the feminist blogs (Shakesville, Feministing, Broadsheet...basically the blogs
wavyarms told me to read :). They're not as frustrating as I was afraid they might be, since much of the discrimination they report and discuss are just flat-out wrong and heartbreaking. I was reading the comments of one article, however, and the topic of Men's Rights groups came up. Now unfortunately, many men's rights organizations are made up largely of bitter men who despise feminism and perhaps women in general; I can't stomach what I read on their websites for very long. However, the contempt that some of the feminist commenters have for the notion of men's rights is very sad as well. As I think about it, men's *rights* issues affect only a small fraction of men: most men are not divorcees who had to fight for child custody, or are victims of spousal abuse, or so forth. By comparison, a lot larger percentage of women have to deal with discrimination and harrassment in the workplace, violating their rights; I think that's the source of the contempt. However, as feminists point out when talking about relative strength or spatial skills or whatnot, the variation within one gender can be much larger than the difference between genders, and we need to take that into account. Even if the average male is more privileged than the average female, there are going to be cases where this is reversed: the female CEO and the male secretary, the henpecked abused husband and the domineering wife; heck, Martha Stewart and some homeless guy. It's easy to say "those are the exceptions", but they're not exceptions, they're people. And when such a man has been screwed over by the system and then told all about his "male privilege"...well, you've just created an enemy for the movement. If for no other reason than simple politics, feminists should be reaching out to the men's rights groups, saying "We agree that these are injustices that need to be remedied, and we support you all the way." It's *not* really the job of feminists to support men's rights issues, I've decided-- that's like asking the American Cancer Society for money to fight heart disease-- but they should be more supportive as a movement. (They, they, they, of course...who is they? Consider this an open letter to those contemptuous commenters and all those who agree with them.)
