This post at Pandagon and some of the comments my posts about makeup, etc., have sparked really make me wonder. Common words people are using to describe certain socially-accepted practices of grooming and dressing seem very problematic to me. Specifically, people keep referring to this concept of the “feminine”. Feminine fashion. Girly dress.

And everyone seems to have at least a slightly different idea of what “femininity” entails.

This is why I purposely try to never use the words “feminine” and “masculine” in this context unless it’s tongue-in-cheek or I’m making it clear I’m using the popular understanding of words that I don’t particularly like. “Girly” has a particular place of loathing deep within my vocabulary because it sounds very dismissive and basically infantilizing, but I understand it’s not always used that way, so it’s not that I get angry at people for using it (unless it’s obviously in a pejorative context).

What’s “girly”? Why is makeup “girly”? Not all girls wear it. Not only girls wear it. Not only girls can wear it. Is long hair “girly”? Because even if it’s not as in fashion in America today, in plenty of places throughout history men have worn their hair long, too. There is no intrinsic definition of this word that has anything to do with the state of being female or identifying as a girl/woman.

Similarly with masculine/feminine. Any application of these words to certain ways of dressing or grooming or whatever seem entirely arbitrary to me. I usually treat these words as basically meaningless and highly subjective descriptors. I have no way of knowing what other people consider masculine and feminine, because it varies from person to person and culture to culture. There’s enough of a basic understanding of what is meant that people continue to use them, but it’s a serious pet peeve of mine, especially in this kind of discussion, because the words are usually too vague to really impart much.

(A note on usage: When I use these words in this kind of discussion, it’s usually in the context of gender roles, expected, enforced, or discouraged behavior and personality traits — and I’ll make clear to clarify “masculine gender role” when I use it as such. The other context I use it in is to describe gender identity, which isn’t necessarily a standard usage but I think using “men” and “women” and “masculine/feminine gender ID” makes it clearer when I’m talking about gender rather than physical sex characteristics, when I try to use the terms “male” and “female” to describe biology. Obviously one’s gender identity and sex usually coincide so there is some overlap and a little confusion, and I’m not always sure which word is appropriate. But if the discussion involves gender vs. gender roles vs. physical sex I always try to make the distinction, and that’s the only time you’ll hear me use the words “masculine” and “feminine” seriously.)

If “feminine” is what women do, how women dress, what women typically are, that doesn’t get us any closer to a standard definition than where we started, because individual women have so much variation in preferences and personality that I’m not sure there even is what we could call statistically average behavior. Men and women and everyone outside the binary act in pretty much any conceivable way possible regardless of physiology or psychology. Average where? When? Within which subcultures or groups? Even people who more-or-less conform to their assigned gender role typically exhibit a wide range of personality traits and interests. (And this definitely includes fashion sense.)

If femininity is what women are, then clearly whatever is typical for me can be labeled feminine. Therefore it is feminine to be geeky, obsessed with science fiction, into computers and video games, to enjoy action movies, read comic books, to be loud and aggressive in conversation, and to argue with people a lot.

If I’m not typically feminine, something I think few would accuse me of, I must be masculine…for a female. So it must be masculine to have long hair, wear skirts, cook, be willing to compromise and defer to others’ needs, write romance, watch musicals, love classical music, and read poetry. Oh, yes, and if I’m not feminine it must be a deeply masculine trait to be concerned with social justice, particularly queer issues and feminism.

If you’re going to disagree with either of the preceding paragraphs, if I’m not masculine or feminine, what am I?

What do “masculinity” and “femininity” mean to you and why? What do you mean when you use the words? If you know what you mean, why don’t you just state that definition instead?

Not the most important issue in the world; it just seems like something worth thinking about.

There have been a few interesting posts in response to my post Eyeliner, Razors, High Heels, and Bras. I really think that much of what different authors are describing is tangential to my original post, but…that doesn’t mean I didn’t find what they had to say interesting.
To sum up: it bothers me when feminists claim that women aren’t under pressure to dress/groom/act a certain way, and seems pretty akin to saying “sexism doesn’t exist anymore” because it’s plainly untrue to anyone who critically observes the world. It also bothers me when feminists assume women have no agency because of those social pressures, and set up a feminist anti-standard which says you can only be a “good” feminist if you don’t shave/don’t wear makeup/burn your bra/etc. The problem is that women have to make a “statement” politically in an arena which should be a matter of personal comfort and preference. Women are unable to make informed decisions for the sake of their health — shaving is bad for the skin, and so are many cosmetics, people fry their hair into submission rather than styling it in a way which keeps it healthy, and wearing or not wearing certain shoes or bras is uncomfortable for different women. The problem is that we feel we need to choose one way or the other, either for sake of fashion or feminism. Neither is the solution.

I think part of the problem is that I didn’t try to pretend to offer a solution other than “maybe we all ought to carefully examine our motivations before claiming that social conditioning doesn’t affect the way we present ourselves”. People can read a lot into something when you don’t pretend to know the answer; therefore, it seems that people had some wildly divergent ideas of what I was trying to get at when I was mostly making a pretty focused point (I’m sick of people claiming social pressure on women to dress/groom a certain way doesn’t exist) rather than a broad one (do I know how to fix this? hell no. dress how you want).

Right now, since I don’t want to make a massive post from hell, I’ll just address what Bitch | Lab had to say:

I don’t think young folks believe it — though it may still exist — but there was pressure on feminists to wear a kind of uniform. Anyone who wore make up or a dress? She had to have a really good fucking reason to get away with it and it would only be something temporary — like making your parents happy for their yearly visit. Your car should be appripriately “green” or a Volvo. Certainly not a beat up Plymouth that I had to crawl into from the passenger side.

But those things really aren’t the issue — though they are signposts marking the path I took to get to where I am now. Signposts that mark a rejection of what some might otherwise call hypocrisy. I was interested, not so much because it was hypocrisy, but to wonder why it existed at all. What seemed to make it impossible for us to not reproduce taste and style, even a feminist taste and style, which was enforced with its own judgments about what was feminist and what wasn’t, who belongs and who didn’t? Why, in spite of wanting to get away from that, did we reproduce it?

Where I differ is with Earlbecke is with the seeming certainty that it might be possible to create a world where everyone just wore whatever they pleased because they possess a self capable of making those decisions based on their little ol’ desires. It is a potentiality, this self, but it is a potentiality that’s being banked on: the potential for a self untouched by society in the self’s expression of its _true_ desires.

On this model, our true desires are like something we carry around with us in a little knapsack. In an ideal society, we’d be free of social structural systems of oppression and the stufff in the knapsack — our desires — would magically express who were are. We’d have this self beneath all the gunk and junk of oppression. It’d be our own special, unique self.

This really isn’t much different than the famous billiard ball model upon which classical economic theory is built. The little selves just bang up against each other: there are no internal relations. They carry around their properties and attributes, unfazed by banging up against all the other little self-encapsulated monads in a Leibnizian universe. (Leibniz is a philosopher who spoke of a world composed of monads)

On this model, we have our monad selves with attributes called preferences. We whip those preferences out of our knapsack when we go shopping, making decisions based on those preferences.

From a lefty perspective, the problem is that those preferences (desires) carry with them the mark of a structurally oppressive society. That society shapes our preferences and desires. We aren’t free. Our freedom is constrained by the demands of the system. We are, in other words, ideologically blinded by hetero/sexism, racism, ablism, and class exploitation and oppression.

Here, the problem is the knapsack — structural forms of oppression — that crush our true desires like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that got tossed around in a poorly designed knapsack.

But the problem, for me, is that this assumes that we just need to fix the knapsack so it doesn’t crush the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That, underneath the massive weight of those oppressions, there exist selves that could otherwise be free to have and express true needs and desires. They’ve just been prevented from expressing their true desires.

And what does this remind you of? Well, it reminds me of the essentialist gender categories that Butler worries about. Butler says that, even while social constructionists recognize that gender is largely socially constructed, you can still read an essentialism. It’s not just imported into the theory by accident. It’s also not simply a mark or trace left over by an ideology that hasn’t been completely erased from the theory. Rather, it is an essentialism that is constituted by social constructionist thought itself. Not shaped, but actually constituted by it.

Which is a fair enough point, and, I think, important to keep in mind when arguing just about anything. (Have I mentioned I love Bitch | Lab? Well, I do. She’s, like, so much more educated than I am.)

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I find it bizarre that so many people apparently think that makeup (that is, specifically, the conscious decision not to wear it) is not a feminist issue.

Okay. I am not attacking anybody here. I do not care what you do with yourself, that is your business. You are allowed to dress and act however you like and I will not try to stop you. I may, however, question why you feel the need to conform to popular images of ideal beauty and ideal femininity, if in fact you do. I am not saying that you are doing anything wrong, per se, but I do believe the pressures which make you want to achieve the popular beauty ideal are wrong. Largely, I couldn’t really give a shit what you want to do with your body or how you rationalize it if you can extend to me the same courtesy.

But when [American, can't speak for anyone else] feminists insist that the standards of insecurity which are shoved down every woman’s throat every single day don’t exist, I get irritated. When feminists insist that there is no pressure forcing women to wear makeup, shave, wear skirts or high heels or bras, etc., I get pissed off. When feminists who do conform to what just happens to be fashionable take it as a personal affront that I insist on my right to not give in, I get angry.

Whenever the issue is brought up, some people will get defensive and feel the need to explain exactly why they do whatever the thing is which is the subject at hand. “I prefer the feel of smooth, hairless skin.” “I see wearing makeup as artistic expression.” (However, I do accept the fact that bras are comfortable for some people and uncomfortable for others so I’m not bringing that one in here.) Fine. Explain your reasons, but understand that in many cases, you are diverting the subject at hand, namely: that’s great if it works for you, but can’t you support those of us who can’t or don’t want to conform? After all, that was the whole point why we brought it up.

I don’t believe it is possible to freely choose to wear makeup, wear high heels, shave, etc., etc., in society as it stands today. I do not think this free choice exists. It would be great if it did and then everyone could express themselves visually however they cared to and no one would judge them as “filthy”, “disgusting”, “not taking care of herself” or a “dyke”. How wonderful that would be. But things aren’t that way.

Don’t you ever wonder WHY wearing makeup “makes you feel pretty”? WHY you “prefer the feel of smooth skin” or why not shaving makes you feel “grungy” or whatever else? WHY you feel “exposed” if you don’t wear certain undergarments if you really don’t have to for medical or comfort-related reasons? WHY short women “need” to wear heels for the extra height?

You probably won’t like the answers, but don’t worry, really: it’s not a reflection on you. Internalizing the standards pushed on you isn’t your fault and doesn’t make you a bad person, but you still ought to acknowledge the reasons why.

As an example, let’s go down my personal “beauty standard conformity checklist”. I don’t like makeup. Bras are uncomfortable. Heels kill my feet and I can’t walk in them. Two of the three here are strictly comfort-related issues, which makes it pretty easy for me to just say no.

But then…my dirty little secret: I have been known to shave. Not all the time because I have thick hair and sensitive skin so it takes forever and causes irritation or ingrown hairs. My skin would be healthier if I never did it. But I do anyway. It’s hell on my legs.

Why do I do it, then?

I could say it’s because I think skirts or swimsuits look bad with hairy legs. But why do I think that? Because I’ve internalized the message that it’s wrong and bad and I can’t seem to get over it even though I know that a) it’s bad for me personally because of my sensitive skin and b) if people can’t deal with it that’s their weird hangup that has nothing to do with me.

I acknowledge that this is an issue I have trouble with. I acknowledge that it’s hard to actually resist every aspect of the reigning standard. I don’t think it’s hypocritical to oppose something in theory, something little like wearing makeup or shaving, and then do it anyway because of the social pressure. I just think it sucks that anyone feels the need to do it at all if they’d rather not.

If there is a woman on this Earth who is truly free of all pressure to conform to her society’s standards, and she happens to choose to follow them anyway for reasons of personal expression and empowerment, good for her.

I don’t think she exists. I’m idealistic, yes, but not that idealistic.

These things are a feminist issue. I don’t think anyone is obligated to NOT conform if they happen to like looking/acting/being a certain way simply in order to make a statement of feminist solidarity, no. Of course not. That not solving the problem, it’s an opposite extreme. It’s imposing an anti-standard. That’s certainly not a solution and certainly not what I’m advocating. Do whatever makes you feel most comfortable, even if the reason for comfort is knowing you won’t be harassed or you’ll have it easier.

But until women actually are free from the pressure to dress and groom themselves a certain way, I’m not going to believe that most people simply “happen” to agree with the prevailing standard of their own entirely free will with no influence from the culture around them. To think that seems unspeakably naive.

Blogging to raise awareness about sexual violence.

If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention.

How many of you know someone who’s been the victim of sexual violence? How many of you know someone who’s been raped?

How many of you think you don’t know anyone who’s a survivor? I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you don’t even know it.

People always seem surprised that I can be so passionate, so angry. I’ve never been raped, right? So why should I care? The statement is baffling, the sentiment downright insulting. Why shouldn’t I care? I’m angry that people live in poverty and starve to death even though I do not. I’m angry about a lot of things I have never personally experienced and hope to keep that way. What kind of person can simply not care when others are in pain simply because it does not affect them personally? (Don’t answer that. I’m not asking because I don’t know. I’d really rather not think about it.)

If you’re not angry you probably just don’t realize why you should be.

I have friends who have been raped, you know. Too many. I know girls raped by strange men in dark alleys, by their friends, by their fathers. Some of these women are my family. I know a man who was sexually abused by his mother throughout his childhood.

Mostly the blame sits on them, not their rapists.

How does a six-year-old girl “ask for it”? What sort of sick mind says a girl systematically abused for years by her father “led him on” or “made him do it”? That may horrify any thinking compassionate person, but that’s what this girl’s family said when she told my sister and my dad called the police. They lied and said they talked to the police, who wouldn’t investigate, so that she’d drop it. When we did contact law enforcement, suddenly, she was the bad one, she’d “broken up the family” and it was all her fault.

Why would a fourteen-year-old lie about being raped at night outside her home? Oh, right, to get attention. Making it all up so that she can be the center of attention, when…it’s so very obvious there’s something wrong. Her mother wonders why she’s suicidal, self-destructive, depressed? Oh, right, that’s for attention too. There couldn’t be a real problem there, now could there?

These are only some of the stories I know, and some of them I’m merely aware of.

It’s not that people I know have been hurt that makes me angry. It’s just that gives it a face. That makes it even more important. I was angry before, but knowing what’s happened to people I care about makes it worse.

How can anyone not care about violence? How can anyone think that the only reason to care is if one is a bitter victim? Must I know someone who’s been murdered to think that killing someone is horrible?

If you’re not angry you probably don’t realize just how pervasive sexual violence is in the world, or how little is being done to prevent and punish it.

Open the paper on any given day; you’ll see a story about rape or child pornography or human trafficking or sexual slavery or something. It’s everywhere. And no one ever talks about the real problem: that sexual violence is wrong. That seems obvious, tautological — so obvious, in fact, that it’s totally ignored and obvious no longer.

Instead the discussion shifts to what people should do to avoid it, when…no one should have to go out of their way to avoid what other people shouldn’t be doing. Idealistic, perhaps, but, legally, true. That’s why we have laws. Certainly, if someone is walking alone in a dangerous part of town and gets mugged, perhaps they had a lapse in judgment — but it’s not their fault, it was the fault of the person who took advantage of that and did something that was wrong. Our hypothetical victim here is not the one who broke the law, and the person who did ought to be punished whether or not the victim put themselves into a position of weakness.

I have a confession to make: I did this too, when my ex reported that she was sexually assaulted. I thought she had put herself into a dangerous situation which she should have been smart enough to avoid, and to some extent I still feel that way, but… it’s not her fault that he committed a crime. That doesn’t excuse what he did to her. I don’t care if she was high or if she should have been smarter than to be in a room alone with some creepy older guy, or if I was a little pissed that she didn’t listen when I told her not to do stupid shit because she’d get hurt; he shouldn’t have touched her. No one can ever be held responsible for the violent acts perpetrated by others, no matter what they did or didn’t do, “should” or “should not” have done. There are circumstances under which, perhaps, sexual violence could have been prevented, but it’s not the victim’s fault if it happened. It is never less wrong if the victim’s foresight and actions weren’t perfect or didn’t fit into some flawless formula. Questioning the thought process or actions of the victim only leads to shifting responsibility from where it actually belongs: the one who committed the crime.

Why aren’t more people angry? How can people honestly not be angry about the fact that sexually violent acts happen, every minute of every day, all over the world?

Why isn’t everybody outraged?

I know the answers to these questions, of course, and a critique of rape culture and the idea of women as a sex class will have to wait for another day. But I think that most people aren’t so malicious as those answers would imply. I think most people really…don’t notice, don’t see the problem, don’t understand why rape is wrong and what it does to people. It’s a crime so horrific that people want to pretend it doesn’t happen.

I said before if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention, and sometimes…it’s not that people are willfully ignoring things. It’s that they honestly don’t know. There’s such a stigma against the victims of sex crimes that many people never engage in honest dialogue about the subject. People repeat what they’re told without ever thinking about it.

So we need to talk. We need to repeat what people still haven’t heard, again and again until victim’s voices can be heard and not judged.

Are you listening?

Are you learning?

Are you paying attention?

Are you angry yet?

“Privilege” is a word much bandied-about in the online feminist and pro-feminist community. What it means varies depending on the context in which it’s used: white privilege, male privilege, class privilege, hetero privilege. Sometimes these various forms of privilege intersect, and sometimes people are privileged in some ways but oppressed in others.

What does it mean, in the most basic sense, to be a recipient of social privilege, in any or all of these areas? What, exactly, are these privileges that the privileged party receives?

First and foremost, I think, is the privilege to self-define and to define others. Oppressed people do not have the power to insist that they be labeled and perceived as they are by society at large; instead they are stereotyped. Individuality is a privilege that powerful groups can claim. Privilege is invisible to those who have it; therefore being privileged, that group is seen as the default: white, male, heterosexual, gender-normative, middle class. Anyone who varies from this mold is “Other”. They are marked as Different. Different people are defined by what they are not: the so-called “normal”, the “average”. Being defined by what they are not, rather than what they are, the Other is defined in narrow and confining terms.

This can be seen in representation in the media. A white man in a movie is just a man. He could be anybody. He is the Everyman. A black man in a movie can’t just be anybody, no, he’s the Black Man; he cannot be made the universal protagonist because he is something Different, with Different concerns and Different history and Different thoughts than what is the “average” white experience. (Nevermind that any actual differences in life experience between a white man and a black man are mostly due to the fact that a white man benefits from privilege — this is why it is invisible. It’s not that the black man is inherently different as a human being, it’s that the average white man is utterly oblivious as to how or why his life is easier; it’s not the black man’s fault if the white man can’t relate to him.)

A woman can’t be just anybody. She is defined in relation to her heterosexual interactions with men, real or hypothetical. Women are defined as the mothers of men’s children, or an objects with the purpose of men’s aesthetic, romantic, or sexual appreciation. She is somebody’s mother or somebody’s love interest, and if she is neither she is considered remarkable only in that she rejects these stereotypes. A man can be a father or a love interest, and he can be neither, but he is still a man. A female character who does not fit the traditional roles is usually referred to by her similarity to men — because if she does not fit the role of the Other, the things which men are not (or not supposed to be), then she must be aspiring to the Default. She must be trying to be like a man.

One queer character in a story makes the story “gay”. It is assumed that all characters are straight, and any representation at all is cause for outrage and alarm among some conservatives. Even acknowledging the existence of people who are not heterosexual threatens their viewpoint that homosexuality is an immoral aberration. Anyone who defies the heteronormative conception of gender has their gender taken from them: gay men are characterized as inherently effeminate and lesbians as inherently masculine, or even as non-women, non-men, asexual creatures without identity.

It must be said that, by defining the oppressed as what the privileged are not, the privileged are certainly hurt, too. These narrow categories of “normal” and “deviant” limit the self-expression of everyone — but, though it certainly hurts, this is another privilege in and of itself: the privileged person has a chance to fall from grace. Certainly, yes, being subject to cruelty for failing to live up to what one “should” be is terrible, but what is at the root of this?

At the root of it is the fact that the privileged party is now being treated like the Other, and ze is not reacting well to that indignity. A man enraged at being treated like a woman is still drawing from a misogynistic attitude — otherwise, what should be the problem? If women were not perceived to be weaker or less then men, why should it be so upsetting to bear the same burden they do? Being perceived to not be what one “should” is essentially a problem of Othered groups being stereotyped as exactly what the privileged are not.

This is why racism is everybody’s problem, why sexism is men’s problem too, why homophobia should also be a heterosexual concern. This leads to my next point:

Ignorance is a privilege. Being able to ignore the oppression of others is a privilege. It is a privilege to be unaware of or unconcerned with one’s own privileged status. It is a privilege not to experience the same things as other groups, and so, be able to discount others’ specific concerns. Simply because one does not personally experience or see the same things others do does not mean that those things do not exist.

It is a privilege to be able to believe that others’ subjective accounts of their own experience are not valid: women aren’t subject to sexism, instead, they’re “overreacting” or being “emotional”; queers are “flaunting their sexuality”; people of color are “playing the race card”; the poor are “lazy” and simply need to “work harder”; fat people “have no self-control”; everyone is “asking for it” by daring to defend their rights and dignity, or simply by virtue of being who they are.

This is why a white gay man can be racist, people of color can be homophobic, the feminist movement has historically been both of these things, and none of these groups tend to recognize the concerns of those who are not able-bodied. (And there I go, defining a group by what is it not. “Disabled” and “handicapped” seem like a ruder way of saying the same thing; does anybody who knows more about this than me know a better word?) A person privileged in some areas and disadvantaged in others is still capable of ignoring the existence or effects of hir own privilege, even when ze ought to know better. If oppression does not effect someone personally, most people tend to ignore it, believe it doesn’t exist, or think that the oppressed are lying about the extent of their oppression.

Marginalized people do not have the luxury of believing that their own experiences are not real, are imagined, are a simple misunderstanding or a fluke. It is a privilege to be free of these experiences and so able to dismiss them as legitimate or valid or logical.

Because ignorance of others’ oppression is a benefit of privilege, privilege is ignorant and in denial of its own existence.

This is, at the root, at the most basic level, what is means to have privilege: it is a sense of entitlement, a sense of superiority, and it is the sense that one’s own life experience is the most accurate measure of the state of the world. It is the idea that one’s own problems are the only and most pressing problems. It is the idea that one’s life and attitudes are the norm and all variations are simple errors that ought to be corrected. It is the idea that other people must be what you think they ought to be, tailored to your preferences and needs to be complimentary to you, what you need, what you want, what you are not, and that those who do not fulfill this purpose are doing you real harm by being themselves rather than your fantasy of them. It is massively egocentric and dismissive of others as only privilege allows.

In reality it becomes more complicated. The way that this is expressed in the real world is reinforced by racist, classist, sexist institutions which give very real benefits to the privileged at the expense of the oppressed. Because the white heterosexual middle-class man is “normal”, therefore “good”, everyone else has to work extra hard in order to be the same, or to conform to his expectations — however, becoming what one is not is impossible, and so women, people of color, etc., etc., will never be quite “good” enough. At most they are pretenders. They are still Other. At best they are seen as imitating the Default, at worst they are seen as dangerous and revolutionary and out of their place.

That is what I mean when I use this word.

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.

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.

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.