Let me first begin by saying that I do not consider myself to be “politically correct“. The term is laughable; it’s a pejorative term coined by conservatives to argue against the concept itself, and so I think it’s unfortunate that there are liberals who accept the usage of the phrase without considering where it comes from or why it originated. In using the term at all, we are allowing our opponents to frame the debate and to define it. This is not in any way an effective political strategy (and, on a small US political tangent, exactly the reason why I dislike the Democratic party so intensely).
It has the connotation that people are somehow being “forced” (either by law or social disapproval) to curb their freedom of speech in order to avoid offending others, which is ridiculous and a lie. The oppressed people and the small minority of privileged allies aware of their status who insist on use of respectful language within their own circle do not have the power to “force” anyone to agree with them. We do not have the numbers to “force” anything legally in a democratic society, and forgive me for being skeptical about the claim that society at large has any concern for the feelings of the oppressed.

Beyond the connotations and history of the term which disincline me to make use of it, I do not see why it should be a bad thing to consciously attempt to use language with which marginalized people are more comfortable. There is no defensible or noble reason for purposely using offensive language in an effort to offend. The reason usually given is one of convenience — it is more trouble to be at least a little polite and respectful to others than it is to be a complete asshole. It is too much effort for those in a position of social and hierarchical privilege to acknowledge the feelings of others. At best, this excuse is simply rude, and at worst, inexcusably cruel.

This is the only real reason I can see for opposing the concept of using the language others prefer to describe themselves. It is because people want to avoid looking at their own privilege. It is because people are cruel, and sexist, and racist, and otherwise hold every other type of prejudice imaginable. (Too many to list.) I think that the majority of people are ignorant and also unfortunately fond of loudly expressing themselves, so that they see any attempt to gently inform them of the effects their words have as an attempt to force them to abdicate their freedoms. And I think that there exist those, thankfully fewer in number, with more malevolent reasons, people who sincerely understand what they are doing and continue to want to hurt others despite it.

When you say “I’m sick of being PC”, what you’re saying is “I’m sick of treating others as equals”. When you say “It’s so much trouble to make sure I’m not offending someone” what you’re saying is “It’s too much trouble to be kind”. (And when you say “I hate that everyone’s trying so hard to be ‘fair’ to every group out there”, you’re not only being totally horrible, but obviously living in a delusional alternate universe, but that’s neither here nor there.)

No no expects anyone to always know the answers. I admit that I may not be aware of certain aspects of my use of language, so if I unintentionally use discriminatory or offensive language, I expect to be called on it. This is how we learn. It’s a process of trial and error, and I understand better than anyone that it is embarrassing to realize that you are wrong, or to be called on a self-righteous manifestation of privilege, and that this is often expressed in the form of an indignant “Well you didn’t have to jump all over me!”

At the same time, it’s nobody’s responsibility to educate me. I will work hard to try and understand these issues, because I am interested in being a more-or-less compassionate and fair human being. The rights and dignity of others are far more important than my own self-conscious desire to appear all-knowing and infallible.

This is in no way an effort to force others to agree with me or conform with my worldview; in all honesty, some of the people I insist on showing respect to would not return the favor. I am not attempting to tell others what they can and cannot say; it would be nice if other people agreed with my priorities and sympathized with my opinions. I believe in absolute freedom of speech, but also that decent people should have a few limits on what they will allow themselves to say. And freedom of speech is not freedom from critical analysis, freedom from criticism, freedom from opposition.

Freedom of speech is also a responsibility. Since I have the power to say whatever I like, I also have the responsibility to say things that I think are well-reasoned and respectful. This does not mean that I will not argue, will not disagree, will not pass judgment. This does not mean that I will not express ideas which many people probably find offensive, radical, or objectionable. It simply means I will try to express these ideas while avoiding any unnecessary use of terms purposely designed to marginalize or misrepresent already oppressed people.

Anyone who is remotely interested in justice and human rights needs to adopt the same attitude. And those who claim not to care at least need to understand the horrific gravity of what they are saying.

…wait, yes, they have, and it didn’t work then, either.

Discussions on race with most people tend to really, really disturb me. It’s creepy how little people seem to actually know about history — and if they do know about history, they seem incapable of making the connection to the present day. So that the rest of you thinking people can share in my total bewilderment, I present some brief examples of this thinking in action, courtesy of the scary people I’ve talked to on a perfectly average day at work:

Statement 1: Those damn Mexicans, taking our American jobs BLAH BLAH BLAH

My Reaction: Yeah! And don’t forget those filthy Irish immigrants, taking all the underpaid, unsafe factory jobs that Americans don’t want! This is just like the Industrial Revolution! We should send them all back to Ireland! Or Mexico! Wherever!

…yeah, whatever. Blame everything on the popular scapegoat at the time. Same old. This has only been happening in the US since the country was founded. Immigration happens. Get over it.

Statement 2: We ought to round up all those Muslims and lock them up! Damn terrorists.

My Reaction: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? World War II, anyone? Does ANYONE remember WWII? You know, that little part where Asian-American citizens were rounded up and put into internment camps and they lost their jobs and their rights and they were beaten and killed and malnourished, and it’s only, oh, recognized as one of the most horrible things that’s ever happened in this country, ever? Something that most people now universally recognize was evil and wrong and totally unwarranted?

WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS THE EXACT SAME THING. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU??

Statement 3: Racism would go away if people stopped making a big deal about it. OR, racism doesn’t exist anymore.

My Reaction: See statements 1 & 2 and then shut the hell up.

Statement 4: Damn Mexicans! We need to build a wall across the border so that they can’t sneak in!

My Reaction: Great idea. That’ll totally work. And we totally have the money to spend on that, too, since our government isn’t, like, bankrupt or anything. Why don’t you go quit your job and do that? And then, why don’t you go toil in a field somewhere for pennies an hour since we won’t have anyone else willing to do it? HAVE FUN. Or, alternately, why don’t you go buy free trade organic whatever and complain about how much stuff costs when people actually get paid for their work. Oh, but you don’t want to spend more? Thought not.

Statement 5: Those people in the Middle East are filthy and uncivilized pigs and BLAH BLAH BLAH

My Reaction: The savages! We’d better invade and civilize them with our Christianity! That’s totally worked throughout history!

Oh, wait, you think we just ought to nuke all them? BRILLIANT IDEA! Nuclear winter ROCKS!

…no, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you that you’d make that kind of statement?

Oh, and one final note: Just because you think I look white doesn’t mean I am, and it doesn’t mean I’m not going to call you on your racist bullshit. Just, yanno, saying.

I’ve already talked a little about the word queer and how I identify with it. I love being queer. It can mean anything, so long as it’s out of the ordinary, not what’s expected, not what’s supposedly “normal”. It’s open enough that it doesn’t have to put me in a box according to whom I might or might not find attractive (straight? hell no! lesbian? not entirely. bisexual? binary systems = evil. pansexual? no one knows what the hell it means) — instead I can just be me.

But the other word I love is “dyke”.

Dyke is not about what box other people can put you in. It’s not a convenient label to allow other people to tell you who you are or should be. Dyke is an attitude. Dykeness is a state of mind, a way of life, a woman who likes women and won’t take shit about it from anyone.

A dyke is a woman who knows she doesn’t need a man to be complete. A dyke is a woman who, confronted with the idea that she needs to dress, talk, act a certain way in order to land Mr. Perfect, Prince Charming, just laughs out loud and walks away. A dyke knows she doesn’t have to do anything to impress anyone, but certainly not guys. She dresses how she wants because she wants to, not because it’s supposed to make men want her. She’ll wear what makes her comfortable, whether that’s high heels and a skirt or lumberjack plaid and tennis shoes. She’ll act without restraint, sometimes in situations where such behavior might not be appropriate, because she doesn’t care if people think she’s ladylike, demure enough, good enough to find a man to marry her. She is who she is because that’s who she is, not because a man made her that way.

This isn’t to say straight women let men dictate their lives, but when they don’t necessarily need to be in the picture, it’s so much easier to laugh off their attempts at control. Why worry what any man thinks? You don’t need him. Who wants most straight men, anyway? There’s so much more to life than pleasing them. A dyke doesn’t need to make men like her, because a dyke is a woman who loves women.

That’s the other thing — a dyke loves women. Really loves. The way some straight men say they do, but they don’t mean it, they don’t understand what it’s really like to love a woman because they aren’t one. It’s not the same at all. There a very few men who can truly adore a woman the way another woman can, really understanding, really appreciating her, really taking her in, because a woman knows. A woman knows what other women’s lives are like, what we are when you tear the patriarchy down, when you take away the social conditioning and the expectations and all the other bullshit. Only a woman is capable of really beginning to know what another woman is really like, beneath it all. Oh, men can try, and it’s admirable of them really, but I don’t know if it’s really possible for them to truly empathize, no matter how supportive they are.

And that’s what “dyke” means to me. That’s why I like to call myself a dyke, even if I’m not technically just a lesbian, because I’m a woman who loves women and knows I don’t need a man and, hell, doesn’t much care about landing one. I’m queer. I’m a dyke. Everyone else can just get the hell used to it.

I don’t have a car. I hate driving and it’s probably safer for everyone on the road; I’m incapable of both getting the car to move in a straight line and also paying attention to a million different things going on at once around me. As a consequence, if any place I want to go is within a few miles, I’ll walk. I get rides from people or take the bus.

For some reason the past few years I’ve been victim to an explosion of random harassment on the street. No one ever used to bother me until about three years ago, when all of the sudden I was suddenly subject to unwanted attention by guys trying to intimidate me into going out with them, or men shouting at me or honking on the street. I’m not a person who deals well with this. I freeze up. I want to crawl into a hole in the sidewalk somewhere and just die. It’s the most I can do to simply ignore it and not give them the satisfaction of a response; forget confronting anyone, yelling “fuck you” or flipping them off — I wish to God I could. My reflexes aren’t that fast and it upsets me too much to immediately react. And maybe I’m a little afraid to. I think my attitude is enough to keep people from confronting me, generally (apparently I scare and intimidate people), but apart from that, I’m a very small person. I feel tiny, and I’m very aware, sometimes, how vulnerable that makes me.

Anyway, I hadn’t had any problems since August or September, so I suppose I assumed that it had somehow stopped. But I think the assholes were just waiting until spring to emerge.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been honked at many times and even had one idiot stop in the middle of the street (residential neighborhood, so not a lot of traffic) and slooowly cruise by, making sounds which I honestly thought at first were a pigeon or something. (I swear this is true. Sexy, huh? He sure thought so. Dumbass.) He finally drove away when I refused to acknowledge him at all and people behind him got pissed off and started honking. But none of this has ever really bothered me. Sure, I didn’t like it, but I can forget it and keep going about my day.

Today, while walking to work, I had some guys zoom by and scream at me. Some unintelligible but almost certainly obscene statement that ended with the word “bitch”. (At first it really bothered me that I couldn’t make out what they’d said. But I’m pretty sure I’m better off not knowing.) I have no idea what I did to deserve being called names. Maybe they’d tried to get my attention and I didn’t notice. Or maybe they were just pathetic scum with nothing better to do with their day than assault random people. Scratch that — women. People don’t do this to men. And that is an act of violence. It is a violation. To not feel safe in your own neighborhood, half a block away from, of all things, an elementary school, with kindergartners running around and everything.

That did upset me. I got to work and wanted to cry. It took me most of the day to even begin to forget about it. Being called a bitch on the street ruined my day.
Tell me that’s a compliment. Just try to tell me I should appreciate that they found me an attractive target for their aggression. I fucking dare you.

It’s not any different at all from when men cat-call or whistle or say other things which may not involve such rude language or names. It’s the same sentiment, it’s just that these guys didn’t feel the need to hide their utter contempt for women. It’s not a compliment. It’s not about being found attractive. It’s about men asserting their power over women — and except on the most superficial level, it’s not even sexual. It’s violent. It’s unbridled hate for simply being born what I am. An object to be despised except when I can be used.

This reminded me of an old post by Echidne on misogynists and how feminism brings them out of the woodwork. Basically this post argues that misogynists are less common than we think, it’s simply that outspoken feminist bloggers attract more trolls and give us an inflated sense of how many men really, truly hate us.

And while I think it’s a good post, and it has a point, I think it’s absolutely not true. I think misogynists are pretty fucking common. I think more men totally despise women more than we ever want to admit. Because I’m not doing anything to attract unwarranted attention when I walk on the street. I’m not spouting my politics, I’m not dressing or acting in any way which could reveal that I am a feminist or the uppity broad I am. If anything, I look average, I look feminine, and I’m the farthest thing in most people’s mind from a queer feminist stereotype. And yet I encounter this shit just as much, sometimes more, in daily life, in apolitical contexts, than I do online.

Misogyny is totally ubiquitous. It’s all-pervading. It’s everywhere, all the time, and I, at least, am being constantly bombarded with it. What makes this worse is that this behavior is perceived as normal. I don’t know what other conclusion I’m supposed to come to except that the majority of men hate women, otherwise, this wouldn’t happen constantly, and it certainly wouldn’t be seen as okay.

Yeah, I know, it could be worse. This place is better than some.

But it’s still bad.

Or, you know, you can. If you’re a masochist. As I apparently am.

First, via Daily Dose of Queer, a young man who is surprisingly insecure about other people’s gender identity. Apparently, allowing people to check “male”, “female” or write in an “other” as their gender on a college application is the end of the world. Or, at the very least, marks the other as “psychotic”. But what I really love about this editorial is that parts of it are right on the mark. The author knows what he’s talking about. It’s pretty entertaining when it’s not so stupid it’s infuriating.

For example:

There are, to be sure, rare individuals who are born intersexed (possessing attributes of both sexes), but in the Western world corrective surgery assigns a distinct sex soon after birth. [Note: Yeah, and I consider that “corrective surgery” to be mutilation, but that’s neither here nor there.] …

The push for recognizing “gender variance” has little to do with genuine biological aberrance. Its goal is not to treat those burdened with physical forms that are imperfectly realized more charitably, but to abolish sex by destroying the normative standard.

Well, speaking for myself? Yes. And? I’ve run across so many articles which talk about the feminist agenda of demolishing gender roles, establishing gender and sex as a continuum, etc, etc, and, without fail, these articles simply cite that as if it’s some self-evident flaw in feminist reasoning. They have never explained to me exactly why this is a bad thing. I assume this is because there’s no argument against the idea other than stubborn adherence to principle.

But I can explain why seeing gender, and even physical sex, as a false duality, as a continuum, is a good thing. With gender, recognizing however people define themselves is only polite and respectful. With physical sex, the differences are not as clearly-cut as most people would like to believe. Why construct these broad categories which often don’t apply? Obviously, there is benefit to constructing categories which fit most people, but the problem is that usually this ends up forcing everyone else into one or the other, which is marginalizing and often physically or psychologically damaging. This is a problem in the case of, say, the discrimination that transgendered and non-gender-normative folks face. This is a problem when intersex children are mutilated before they’re old enough to understand their own gender identity and express it, in operations which often compromise future reproductive or sexual function, which often lead to trauma when a child who identifies as one gender is raised as the other and/or that child learns what was done to them. (Though “trauma” seems an inadequate word if one means crippling depression and eventual suicide.)

But wait! It gets better:

If I approached the director of the student government’s Queer Affairs Task Force and I claimed to be an eggplant trapped in a man’s body, she would smile, nod politely (she is a nice person), and then call for friendly people in white coats to haul me off to a padded cell. But if I claimed to be a woman trapped in a man’s body, she would force others to act as if my view were correct. In short, psychosis is considered quite alright, provided it obliterates sexual norms, traditions, and taboos.

Do I even have to say anything about this quote? Really? Yeah, I think it speaks for itself. This isn’t even good or logical writing.

And, of course, the obligatory strawfeminist:

Believing in the modern liberal view of sex must require at least an hour of practice each day. How else can they believe, for example, that masculinity and femininity are social constructs with no relation to the biological differences between the sexes, while also holding that homosexuality is inherent? Or that gender is unimportant, except when someone insists that he or she is stuck in a body of the wrong gender?

The problem here, I think, is that someone a) doesn’t understand the terminology being used and b) doesn’t care. Masculinity and femininity are gender roles. Anyone can act in a way society deems “masculine” or “feminine” regardless of being male or female, man or woman, intersex or genderqueer. Gender is an internal identity, a state of mind. Sex is an inherent physical characteristic which can be medically altered to a certain extent. These are not interchangeable. That is how I can believe all these things at once; because they are not synonymous. And believing that gender should be unimportant so far as social or legal issues go, that everyone should be treated equally, is not opposed to the idea that people’s right to self-define is important.

The rest of the editorial kind of veers off into a bunch of pseudo-philosophical crap that I admit I got bored and stopped really reading closely. (I skimmed!) But apparently “Our culture has become so oversexed that it is abolishing sex.” I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, since it’s confusing the two totally different definitions of the word sex: namely, that which is related to reproduction and all its happy perks, and…innate physical characteristics that don’t necessarily have anything to do with definition number one. As I said before: logic? Decent writing skills? Anywhere to be found?

And then there’s this awful thing someone linked to in the feminist LJ community. I can’t even begin to articulate how much this article pisses me off. Whatever one thinks about Ariel Levy (Personally? I think she has some good points to make, but I don’t think she’s a very good writer from articles I’ve read. I haven’t read the book, just excerpts and articles she’s written about the book which make me disinclined to read it. I expect I’ll get around to it sometime.), I hope we can all agree that whoever wrote this thing is living in a different universe. Observe:

We’re not trying to be empowered. The twentysomething women I know don’t care about old-style feminism. Partly this is because they already see themselves as equal to men: they can work, they can vote, they can bonk on the first date.

Putting aside the myth that women have never been allowed to work outside the home (as women of color and poor women and just about any woman who wasn’t rich and well-off have always been forced to work rather than having the luxury of staying home with the kids); men and women are hardly on an equal playing field. Things are better in many ways, but it’s not equal. This remains true of all civil rights struggles. And sure, women can bonk on the first date, it just means everyone will call her a “slut”. Being called degrading names! Empowering!

Oh, but it GETS BETTER. By which I mean, much, much worse:

Another reason for the rise of raunch is that women are rediscovering the joy of being loved for their bodies, not just their minds. … Instead of desperately longing for the right to be seen as human beings, today’s girls are playing with the old-fashioned notion of being seen as sex objects.

I defy anyone to seriously argue that women are now valued for their minds at the expense of their physical characteristics. Or that women’s minds are valued. Or that women are valued. I don’t know about you, but this twentysomething girl is still at that desperately-longing-to-be-seen-as-a-human-being stage.

And you can read the rest if you really want, because there are so many gems in there I didn’t want to bother quoting. I’ll just close with this explanation on why sexual harassment in the workplace is the greatest thing ever:

If a thong makes you feel fabulous, wear it. For one thing, men in the office waste whole afternoons staring at your bottom, placing bets on whether you’re wearing underwear. Let them. Use that time to take over the company.

I would, personally, prefer if no one except possibly a sexual partner spent any time thinking about my undergarments. If they can’t help themselves, there’s no need to speak about this thought aloud. I can’t be the only one who finds this quote extremely nasty.

People who ask this question obviously don’t understand what is meant by the term “sexual objectification”. No, I don’t want to be objectified, not ever. Not by random people on the street, not by an intimate partner.

“Why?”

By definition, what is an object? An object is something inert to be manipulated by others. An object exists only for the purposes it was made and can only passively fulfil that purpose through its use by an active party. A grammatical object is the part of a sentence which indicates what is being manipulated by the subject; linguistically, an object has things done to it but does nothing on its own.

In more concrete terms, what are objects? Objects are items that exist outside of ourselves which we put to specific uses. A banana is an object. It’s a plant which has been domesticated so that its only purpose is to be consumed by human beings. The plant can no longer reproduce without human intervention, so its natural biological purpose has been subverted and it no longer has a real function outside of the uses humans design for it. When we plant grass in our yards to look nice, this is an object. The only real purpose of grass is to grow and spread, but we add cultural baggage, assumptions about class and aesthetics which we attach not only to our lawns but to their color and health, their maintanance, their growth. A car is an object; it is for transportation. A stove is an object; it is for cooking. Food is an object; it is to be cooked, it is to be eaten. A baseball is an object; it is to be thrown within the specific context of certain games.

Objects are things.

A woman is not an object.

Let me ammend that: people are not objects.

Women do not exist solely to be sexually manipulated, used, abused. When a woman is objectified she is made into a passive thing — she is not an individual with thoughts and ideas, with ambitions and goals and principles. She is simply something to be used for the pleasure of the one who objectifies her. And do things have feelings? Does anyone care what an object thinks or wants? In a very real way, objectification is dehumanization. Dehumanizing a subject, making them into an object, allows for their feelings and thoughts to be completely disregarded. Does consent matter when dealing with a thing rather than a person? Does anything matter but the pleasure and whims of the user, the abuser?

Other people are made into objects, too. It’s not just women who are made into objects in order to fulfil the fantasties of others; parents make their children into objects, too, assuming that the child’s only purpose is to live up to their expectations, to do as the parents would like the child to do. Politicians and advertizers make people into objects: we are a passive audience for them to manipulate, to do what they want us to do for their benefit and not for our own — we are a means to an end and we are not human when we do this. We are objects to be used and manipulated and then discarded when our usefulness is through.

So not all objectification is sexual. None of it is good, beneficial, or in any way desirable. I am a person, not an object. I take particular exception, however, to being made into a sexual object. My sexuality — the firing of neurons in my brain, the combination of feelings and sensations moving along my nerves, my body, my breasts, my vulva — does not exist for the pleasure of anyone but me. This is not to say that I’m selfish, that I would take pleasure from another while denying them pleasure from my body, my sex — it is to say that if I find it pleasurable to give pleasure to a particular person, that is my business. It is nothing that can be taken without my express will, my explicit consent. My body does not exist specifically for the visual or physical stimulation of others, especially those to whom I do not give permission to use me in this way.

“Don’t we all like to be objectified sometimes?”

No. I don’t. I don’t enjoy being made into a passive object to be manipulated. I don’t enjoy being made into something less-than-human. I don’t enjoy being ignored and overlooked as the individual that I am and instead made into something else against my own will.

Do I enjoy being found attractive? Yes, of course. Everyone does. But too often these two phenomona are conflated and confused. Being objectified, being verbally or sexually abused, is often said to merely be the same thing as attraction. It’s a compliment, it’s an honor to be harrassed on the street. Being a desireable object is confused with being a desireable human being. Being made into a thing to be used, which exists solely for the purpose of this use and is judged only on its usefulness, is not the same as being found attractive at all.

When a person finds another person attractive, that other person is still human. They are an active participant in all interactions. No one can have a relationship with an object; relationships are a dynamic, mutual process on the part of all involved. Relationships are an active process. In the dynamic of objectification, only one party retains active personal agency.

There is something to be said for the desire to submit, the desire to be passive, in a sexual or romantic dynamic. Some people feel more comfortable in dominant or submissive relationship roles. But this is still an active, consensual decision, and that is the distinction. In my relationships with my family, I enjoy caring for and taking care of others, I enjoy cooking and don’t mind cleaning because it makes everyone’s life more livable. If a young sibling is ill I will nelgect my own desires, my own plans for the day, in order to ensure that they are comfortable and all right. I would be absolutely the same if I were in a romantic relationship, because this is my personality and it is what gives me pleasure. I do not do this simply because it’s expected of me (it’s not), but because it is the role I am most comfortable expressing. This submission to the needs and desires of other people is an expression of love. If this submission is forced, rather than an active expression of the person in question’s authentic personality and desires, as it often is, that relationship is abusive.

A real relationship allows for everyone involved to act however they like, to fill whatever role they like. Objectification does not. Objectification forces a role and a purpose onto the object which, even on theoretical occasion that this role and purpose might conicide with how that particular person expresses themselves, still limits that person’s ability to be anything outside of that narrow set of expectations. It is still wrong, and it is always wrong.

I posit that no, nobody ever really likes to be objectified. When people ask that question, or when people say that they like a little objectification now and then, I think it’s clear what they actually mean is that they enjoy being found attractive, they enjoy attention. These are perfectly valid wants and desires. But I am not willing to accept that anyone on Earth actually wants, of their own free will, to lose any and all freedom to define themselves or to have any real agency in their own lives. Powerlessness as a fantasy or a kink is not the same as actual powerlessness, as actual slavery and bondage. No one who actually cares about the subject would think to conflate the two while describing submission in those terms, and the fact is that being made into an object is very real powerlessness, is very real bondage to another person’s desires at the expense of one’s own.

Objectification is a forced loss of self.

No one has any right to ever, under any circumstances, inflict this on another person.

I was surfing the internet today and came across a statement to the effect of: “a woman wearing clothes that show cleavage or going without a bra is guaranteed to get male attention”. This was put forth as an advantage, a good thing, something to be desired. Context is not important here, because the fact of the matter is that I see this sexualized attitude towards breasts and bras all the time, and I can’t stand it.

Finding a woman’s breasts attractive is not, in and of itself, inherently a bad thing. It’s an aesthetic disposition that I happen to share. In general, they’ve got a pleasing shape, they’re kind of fun to manipulate, and they tend to be attached to people that I like. Thinking any particular body part is sexy isn’t really the issue here.

The issue is that I cannot choose to wear or not wear certain tops or undergarments, in order to be physically comfortable, without my choice somehow making other people feel entitled to comment, criticize, or stare. The idea is that by wearing clothes which partially reveal my breasts, or by choosing not to wear a bra even beneath “conservative” attire, or even by simply, by virtue of nature, having large mammaries (or, indeed, breasts at all), I have no right to complain if others make degrading or unwanted sexual advances. Somehow, by the mere virtue of being a female who happens to have a couple interestingly-shaped lumps of fat on my chest, I’ve given up all right to be treated with respect or dignity.

There’s really nothing one can do to avoid it. Even if I do all the “right” things, wearing horrible contraptions under my clothes that make me uncomfortable, totally covering anything that could be construed as suggestive or “inappropriate”, constantly hunching over to draw less attention to my chest (the real burden of having breasts — not the weight on your back, not the strain on your shoulders), because they are large, and noticeable, people will still sexualize them and feel entitled to harass me based on their very existence.

On the subject of cleavage? Dude, they’re big. A shirt which shows nothing on a smaller girl still ends up showing cleavage on someone with larger breasts. Unless I cover myself almost up to the neck, there’s going to be a little bit. I don’t have to wear anything with an excessively low neckline in order to achieve the effect; and I’m certainly not going to wear uncomfortably hot clothes in the summer, in 80 degree weather, or even, really, if I just don’t feel like wearing something that covers my entire body. I’m not going to try to hide them and pretend they’re not there and I’m not going to be ashamed that they exist.

On the subject of bras? I think they’re a joke. I find them uncomfortable and unbearable. I haven’t worn one in about three years. Whatever one finds most comfortable, I think, is really key. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would voluntarily wear one, but I don’t understand the appeal of smearing colorful goop one’s face or wearing shoes that are impossible to walk in that cause back pain, either. I kind of like having smooth skin but shaving’s not high on my list of priorities on account of the fact that it takes a lot of time and effort and I get ingrown hairs easily. This is my preference. I don’t really care what other people want to do to themselves. What I do care about is the social expectation, the cultural norm. The idea that I have to do these things which make me uncomfortable and cause me pain, otherwise I am “not taking care of myself” or I’m “asking” for unwanted attention — and that either way, whether I really live up to the standard or not, either way it is still an excuse that my actions make me deserving of harassment and mistreatment.

I think the real problem here is the sexualization of women’s breasts. As I said earlier, I don’t see anything really wrong with finding them sexy, but this is more of an incidental, decentralized kind of attraction, kind of like, “he has nice eyes” or “I think she has sexy elbows” or…whatever. What I mean by the term “sexualization” is the idea that breasts are inherently sexual objects (and therefore at once indecent and also the focus of sexual attention) when, really, breasts are not any more sexual than any other feature of the body. Breasts serve a very specific biological purpose: to feed babies.

Breasts do not exist to be stared at, and their very presence on a person’s body does not suddenly mean that their owner abdicates all right to respect or dignity. The fact that I have breasts is not an invitation for clearly unwanted sexual attention (mostly from straight men) or for verbal abuse (more or less from anyone). There are many issues at work here: the sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, especially on the part of many heterosexual men, but also in general; cultural conformity; the idea that women exist for the sexual pleasure and objectification of men, coupled with the idea that anything sexual is evil and bad. But I don’t have the time and energy to deconstruct all that just now. I’m too tired from even thinking about the vastness of it all.

This attitude about breasts is not really the problem. It’s a symptom of so much else that’s wrong with the world. But, in and of itself, it’s awful enough. In order to avoid this sort of attention, I should not have to try to cover all traces of their shape, their function. Is an organ developed to nurture children really indecent or obscene? What does that say about the priorities of my culture?

For now, some interesting links to pursue:

007b is a site with some good content, but probably NSFW (not that it really should be; it’s just pictures of breastfeeding mothers and the like). Among the highlights are a page on why women wear bras and whether or not there’s really any reason to aside from social pressure, and a gallery of pictures of normal, average breasts showing the variety of shapes and sizes they come in, to try to give the viewer a bit of a sense of perspective.

And then a link I remembered seeing linked at Alas a bit ago, which I think speaks for itself.

Finally, an old fem_rage post which perhaps describes my feelings about the matter more accurately but less articulately and with a lot more cursing.

Building on my last post, I’m reminded of Maia over at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty (both sentiments, by the way, with which I wholeheartedly agree), and her recent post Many Stones Can Build an Arch; Singly None.

What is important in feminism? In political activism? I am a person who lives mostly inside my own head. I work off of ideas. They feed me, they fuel me, and thoughts and ideas are really my chief area of concern. This is simply the way I am. This is not to say that I’m not willing to do things, to act when I think an issue is important, but it’s not really my area of expertise. I need other people to do the groundwork, to help me be effective.

This is not to say that I’m totally out of touch with the world around me. I think I’m fairly well-grounded. I both derive my ideas from and connect them back to the world I see and experience all the time. I try to make my musings useful or applicable to everyday life. Maybe they aren’t useful to everyone, perhaps these aren’t ideas which really make their presence known from day to day in the worlds of other people, but in my life, the issues that I write about manifest every day, and honestly are important to me in a very real way.

But I often find myself wondering, “am I helping anyone? changing anything? doing anything useful at all?” I’m not out there organizing and drumming up support. I’m not an extrovert and I don’t enjoy being in charge of groups of people, even groups that support the causes I care about. I don’t like belonging to and regularly attending large groups, even if I’m not in a position of leadership or responsibility, because crowds shut me down. It’s too much input all at once; it exhausts me.

I think, that while the points raised both in Maia’s post and the article she quotes are valuable, that not everyone is really able to contribute to the causes that they care about in the same way. I don’t think I’d be useful to anyone if I tried to head a group, organize a campaign, reach out to the masses. Thankfully, there are other people who are more talented in these sorts of areas, and, hopefully, they are the ones who will try to make these contributions.

What I do best is write. Writing is what I spend my time doing, provided I have no other obligations, responsibilities, distractions. Fiction, poetry, nonfiction…it doesn’t really matter to me what it is, one way or another. Every other thing I do is merely an unfortunate, necessary condition of my being able to write and continue writing: eating, cleaning, sleeping, working. If I can manage to live my life in such a way that I can spend as much time as possible writing, not needing to waste valuable hours in order to make the money I need to survive, I’ll be in heaven.

And so I think, even in isolation, this is really the best contribution I can possibly make. Some of us are theorists. Some of us are thinkers. I’m not saying that other people don’t think…but that thinking isn’t really their motivation, not the means and the end all in itself. Some of us are only useful if we’re theorizing. I can try to go out and “do” things, but I won’t be half as effective, talented, or useful as I will be writing. Isn’t writing doing? Isn’t writing a verb, an action? Isn’t writing a way of organizing? Isn’t it a form of protest?

We all have our own talents and areas of interest. We are all good at different things. I think the best contribution any feminist can make is to do whatever it is ze is best at, and do it with complete, unwavering dedication. Do what we do best, and always strive to do our best at it.

Every activist has hir pet issues. Feminists, especially. Mine are gender and sexuality.

It’s not that I don’t care about abortion rights; I do. It’s not that I don’t care about the wage gap. It’s not that my range of concerns isn’t far-reaching and wide. It’s not that I don’t care about racism, or poverty, or war, because these are all things I feel very strongly about. It’s not that I’m not keeping track of the news and not as if I don’t talk about it with friends and family, but why post about it here when there are plenty of other blogs which already do so and so much better than I possibly could?

What I mostly find myself concerned with writing about are the politics of gender and sex and sexuality. The concepts and constructs. Thus, even though I am not trans (not exactly cisgendered, either — genderqueer? maybe) I find myself talking about trans issues all the time, as an example, or reading up on intersex conditions, etc. I’ve been trying to pinpoint exactly why this is. Why should I have such a profound interest in areas which have only very little to do with me?

I suppose it’s because I’m radical. Radical feminism is critical analysis, it’s seeing the whole picture, examining the entire framework, and finding the roots. Dismantling all the false assumptions on which the entire system thrives; because patterns of thought and behavior, especially those which are deeply embedded in the larger cultural psyche, are like weeds. Ideas are a living, growing, dynamic process. You can try to cut them down by hacking away at the growth, at the visible, conscious manifestations and their results and, in fact, this is necessary in order to allow a clear view of anything. However, until you take out the roots from which these ideas issue, the growth will always spring back, again and again. This is why feminist theory is just as important as feminist action and feminist organizing.

And all flawed systems, it seems, from sexism to racism to organized religion, any hierarchy you can imagine, depend on artificial constructions arising from the idea of duality. The construction of false dichotomies. The framework of diametrically opposed points, when, in fact, everything is a spectrum: male and female, masculine and feminine, good and evil, mental and physical, spiritual and material. It’s not that none of these things exist, it’s that they’re not a simple binary as so many people suppose.

So perhaps my pet causes aren’t always visible in the real world, not totally apparent to the untrained eye, perhaps too abstract and theoretical for everyone to readily grasp all the time — that doesn’t mean they’re not important. That doesn’t mean that they have nothing to do with me, or only a narrow application to certain small groups of people. Theoretical constructions affect everyone and have a huge impact on how we view the world. And so the basic assumptions which make a sexist social hierarchy possible to begin with — our current narrow concepts of sex and gender — need to be challenged. It’s only when these assumptions are dissected that the corrupt system issuing from them can be effectively dismantled.

There are very few things which I think are requirements for someone to be considered “feminist”. People can believe, for the most part, whatever the hell they want. I don’t have to agree with everything every other feminist says or does. They don’t have to agree with me. We don’t have to have the same ideas on politics, economics, class, education, literature, movies, clothing, cosmetics, shaving.

I won’t say, for example, that wearing high heels and makeup makes someone a “bad” feminist. Although you’re never going to convince me that, at this moment in time, a woman who chooses to adorn herself in this fashion is truly making a choice free of cultural influence and social conditioning — it’s still a personal decision and it’s not mine to make. Things like this, the small things, the trivial things, are still feminist issues, and they’re big ones because they’re so insidious and pervasive, but they pale in comparison to the truly horrific problems that women face in this world. I don’t care how you like to dress or what kind of sex you like to have; when we live in a world with rape, domestic violence, and female genital mutilation, I’ll take any ally who agrees on the basic concept of human rights. If the only issue we disagree on is lipstick or even BDSM, we have more in common than not.

I won’t even put stipulations on most of the bigger issues. I’m a big, huge, idealistic anarchocommunist — but I won’t say that anyone else has to be. I think there’s lots of room to work with on most issues. Different people have different opinions and experiences, and I’m glad for that diversity of thought. (On that note, the people who think that feminism is one cohesive delusional body which feeds its own beliefs through a loop of unquestioning positive feedback have obviously never actually seen a group of feminists trying — and failing — to have a rational discussion on a topic like, say, sex work.)

But there are a very few stipulations which I consider essential for someone to be a “good” feminist, and if these criteria are not met, well, that person can consider themselves a feminist all they want, but that doesn’t mean I’ll respect their opinions.
One the things I think is unacceptable in a “real” feminist is transphobia.

A feminist should never reject the experience or identity of a transwoman as being invalid, of being lesser than cisgendered women, of not being “real” — in general, or until she takes hormones, or until she undergoes SRS, or whatever predefined criteria said feminist happens to have. A feminist should never insist that transwomen are actually men and thus, that they have no place in feminism and no protection under it (or that transmen are women who are “betraying the cause” in order to “gain” male privilege, as the case may be). I understand that this attitude casts a number of prominent and influential feminist thinkers of the past and present as “bad” feminists, and that’s unfortunate but, I think, also necessary. Transphobia should never be tolerated from a self-proclaimed feminist.

Let me explain why. It’s not merely an issue of respect for marginalized people, and it’s not merely because those who hold this attitude are dismissing the perfectly valid experiences of different kinds of women (as mainstream feminism has famously done not only with transwomen, but also lesbians, poor women, women of color, and so on). These side-effects are horrible and inexcusable, but the real issue is that, at the root of transphobia are all the beliefs that feminism is supposed to be fighting.

The insistence that transwomen are not “real” women, is, at its heart, fueled by the idea that biology equals destiny: the idea that one’s body parts define that person completely, that there is no individual room for change or variation, that a woman is only as good as her ability to give birth (therefore, as good as her uterus), or to serve as a sex object (therefore, as good as her vagina, as good as her breasts), or as a caretaker, a mother, a housewife, a passive decoration (therefore, as good as her ability to conform to “acceptable” gender roles).

And that, no matter how you disguise it or dress it up, no matter what excuses you might give about male privilege or socialization or experience in a transwoman’s history, is not feminism.

This is why transphobia is so deeply harmful to feminism as a whole. It hurts not only the statistically small minority of transgendered people within the movement, but also anyone else who believes in the idea that a woman is more than her vagina, more than her womb, more than her own victimization and oppression. Transphobia reduces everyone to a collection of parts, to be examined and scrutinized in order to see if they stand up to the test of being “good” or “real” enough — to see if they “deserve” rights and recognition.

Anyone can call themselves a feminist. Anyone can say they are whatever they want to say they are. But if they espouse ideals and opinions which run directly contrary to the ideology they claim to support and represent, they are no ally of mine.