#AskMoreOfHim is #NotEnough

As The Independent and other media have reported, David Schwimmer and David Arquette, among other male celebs, have put forth a new campaign in response to #MeToo* and #TimesUp. It is called #AskMoreOfHim.

I find the moniker and actions the hashtag calls forth to be seriously problematic for several reasons:

• It doesn't identify whose responsibility it is to ask more of men.
• "Asking more" of men is not what is needed. Women have asked more of men and demanded better for centuries. That's about as watered down and spineless a call to action as I can imagine. 
• There's no accountability or acknowledgement of the problem being men not holding one another accountable or that men, alone, are responsible for male supremacist violence.
• I cannot imagine how it makes women safer anywhere for men to do what the hashtag requests. Ask more than what?

Phrasing is important, perhaps especially with social media-initiated efforts. The actual content of their call to action has some teeth in it:

"We believe that men must speak out against sexism, even as we engage in our own process of critical self-reflection, personal growth and accountability."

"So consider this our pledge to support survivors, condemn sexism wherever we see it and hold ourselves and others accountable. As advocates, actors, writers, producers, and directors, we hope that our actions will inspire other men to join us. Until now, only a small number of [men] have been actively engaged in this effort. This must change. It’s time we #AskMoreOfHim."

To Hollywood men and other wealthy prominent men:

Put forth an overtly activist and "money where your mouth is" campaign and reflect that in your name. It may be called, #MenCallOutMen, or #MenNameHim, or #MenDemandMenStop or #MenPayUp, donating money to grassroots organisations that seek to end men's violence against women and girls across class and race. With the unfair advantage celebrity men have in accumulating wealth, it's time such men not only publicly call one another and other men out by naming names and supporting their removal from industries. It's also imperative that men with resources fund women's efforts to assist and empower one another. And that men do so with full accountability both to disenfranchised and more enfranchised women.

The Privileged Rapist: Brock Turner

Before some assessment and analysis of this case, I'll begin with this snippet from NBCnews.com:

It was the epitome of white privilege, the narrative went — a student and star swimmer at prestigious Stanford University is arrested on rape-related charges, and after more than 16 months, he's sentenced to only six months.

And the authorities refuse to let the public see his arrest photo.

Until Monday. Here it is:

This is attributed to the Santa Clara Sheriff's office

Prior to that we got variations on this image:

This is attributed to Stanford University

One set of questions pertains to the assumptions behind the lack of release of the mug shot. Does wearing a blazer and tie mean someone is safe to be around? Does a hoodie and unkempt hair mean someone is more likely to rape? These are typically classist and racist media and cultural inferences. 

If he were poorer and Black, he’d be called ‘a wild animal’ or ‘a vicious thug’ among other white supremacist coded language for ‘normal Black man’.

Thank goodness two Swedish male students intervened on her behalf, witnessing the rape. Thank goodness he was caught doing such vile violence to her. Here is the statement by one of them, Carl-Fredrik Arndt:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/swedish-hero-recounts-nabbing-stanford-rapist-brock-turner-n587421

And another link to both their statements:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/emaoconnor/meet-the-two-swedish-men-who-caught-brock-turner?utm_term=.oinMKRrK3#.lp94EBZEb

Thank goodness he was caught doing such vile violence (vile-lence) to her. Sexual violence has a long raced, classed history in Amerikkka, against women white and Black, Brown, and Indigenous. From the rape of Indigenous women being slaughtered, to the battering and rape of slaves, to the forced sterilisation of Brown poor women.

What the predator can be thankful for is his race, class, and ethnic background. And his status as a male college student at an elite school and a star athlete to boot–in a predominantly white sport at that. And a few rape culture apologists and accomplices: judge, a father, and a friend who not only have been more than willing to ignore the woman behind the dumpster, but also toss her squarely under the bus.

Brock's father, Dan A. Turner, reportedly also a former Stanford student, issued this inhumanely callous statement, completely obliterating the humanity of the assaulted woman:

“His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve...” “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.” 

“He will never be his happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile,” the letter says, noting that the former Olympic hopeful is now a registered sex offender.

No mention of being ashamed at what his son did ‘for 20 minutes’. No acknowledgement it was rape, even though there were witnesses. It morphs into a politically and morally neutral 'action'.

Let's replace "His" and "He" with "Her" and "She" and reread the statement.

Her life will never be the one that she dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. 

She will never be her happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile.

Here is John Pavlovitz's response to Dan Turner:
http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/06/06/to-brock-turners-father-from-another-father/

Judge Persky has acted on behalf of rapists before. Read about that here:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/brock-turner-judge-aaron-persky-controversial-history.html

Most importantly, here is the statement from the victim:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/da/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/NRA2016/Turner-Sentencing.aspx

As Andrea Dworkin once wrote, "the punishment for getting drunk and going in a frat boy's dorm room should be a hangover, not rape."

Or being outside. Or at home. Or being anywhere when inebriated. Or not inebriated. What patriarchal rape culture does so well is punish women for simply being.

John Stoltenberg's and Cristan Williams' The Conversations Project: Some Final Thoughts

graphic is from here

Note: When I heard Prince died earlier on Thursday, what I recalled was how much Andrea Dworkin loved his work.

The message in the above graphic was never anything 

The Conversations Project endeavored to do. 

Yet they insisted they were a radical feminist group.

I may be writing more about this, but just wanted to update you that after four months of very engaged involvement, I've been purged without notice from The Conversations Project Facebook group started by John Stoltenberg and Cristan Williams, although John was largely absent.

Here are a few concluding thoughts:

1. The group was steadfastly anti-radical feminist, but couched this as
anti-T--F, as if those radical feminists who are against the liberalism and male supremacy in trans politics should and can be separated out from those who are or were not.

2. There was consistent refusal to admit that they were misusing and misunderstanding the early work of Andrea Dworkin while ignoring all of Dworkin's later work (like, at least 11/12ths of what Andrea wrote). The only passages of hers they ever referred to (a lot) were Dworkin's most liberal points in Woman Hating about multisexuality and androgyny. They refused to acknowledge Andrea's mid-70s discussion of androgyny was something that wasn't specific to her, and something that was of political interest during that decade, but never thereafter. (As was the case for so many white feminists in that period: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, and Marge Piercy, for example.) They refused to consider why Andrea later rejected the last section of Woman Hating as politically and intellectually problematic. They clung to a few early ideas because dealing with anything else--such as pornography, prostitution, male privilege, male power, white and male supremacy, the process of subordinating female bodies such as through intercourse, battery, and rape--would have implicated some of their own politics as more overtly pro-patriarchal and white supremacist. The only snippets of Catharine MacKinnon's work they paid any attention to were from a grossly overly-steered interview Cristan did with Catharine. As if that's what MacKinnon's thirty plus years of radical feminist activism should be reduced to.

3. There were less than five pro-radical/pro-feminist people in the group. One person, a white transsexual (not transgender) woman, left the group only after about a week being there due to the incessant liberalism, anti-radicalism, and anti-feminism. Now there are no radical feminists in the group, although one member, Margo, who identifies as a white lesbian feminist, has consistently advocated for feminist values and sisterly approaches to dealing with the Turf War, and I respect her very much for that. And one man there has been consistently affirmative of radical feminist perspectives on gender and sex. When Margo posted things that called for respect and regard for all feminists, few to no members "liked" her comments. Cristan and John never "liked" them.

4. The group was so white (how white was it?) that the only posts made about women of color, or even more generally, people of color, were exploitive: John and one other member, early on, posted links to Navajo understandings of gender, not because he ever discussed or linked to how to end white colonialist-patriarchal genocide, but, disturbingly, just because such ideas might be useful to or of interest to whites.

5. The white members of the group (the great majority) refused to center women of color. They refused to center an examination of how their race, sex, and class privileges shaped their views, their values, and their agendas. Doing so was considered 'off topic'. Supporting white, class-privileged transwomen was always on topic. No one white and trans in the group ever made it a point to name how they had white privilege.

6. The dominant membership always positioned some radical feminists as THE enemy. They did not critique or focus on white men (as a structurally positioned enemy class). When white men were critiqued, it was without the same disdain and derision as they demonstrated for some white radical and lesbian feminists. (I call that blatant misogyny, anti-lesbianism, and anti-feminism.) They never, ever considered what trans-critical feminists were arguing against or for. It was always only viewed as "hatred" and "wanting us dead". As if white and male privilege and power--including theirs--doesn't result in the deaths of women across many differences.

7. The group was never committed, even vaguely, to an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, or anti-colonialist agenda. Never. Ever. Ever. In this sense and others, the group was willfully and determinedly liberal yet being called liberal was considered an insult, for reasons which remain unclear. If it is so blatantly what you are and is all you want to be, own it and be proud of it, for god's sake. I conclude they valued the term "radical" because it allowed them to discuss the rare liberal points of Dworkin and MacKinnon as if those were radical. I think it gave them a kind of cache to make it seem as if they were distinguishable from their more honest liberal comrades. When I linked to useful ways to understand historical radicalism (as an actual political stance against institutionalised oppression), they rejected or ignored them. Sadly and outrageously, there was nothing about their perspective that was radical. Nothing. And their name revealed this from the start: no group that is seriously radical (that I've ever been aware of) makes a point of cramming the term into their title twice.

8. The group never considered what it is that causes the mass deaths of marginalised women of color. It was beyond their vision, their call to action, to do so. All they could come up with is transphobia. As if.

9. It became crystal clear to me that Cristan, and more surprisingly John, did not understood the traditional political meaning of "radical" when it comes to radical feminism. Again, John was largely absent as an active member, although he read a lot of the comments. But what became distressingly clear was that he could not articulate what Andrea's radical feminism meant or was. He was and is only concerned with prioritising the points of view of white and/or male-privileged people, over and against lesbian feminists. He refuses to see that Andrea never divorced 'woman' (the patriarchal construction) from what actually happens, oppressively, violatingly, demeaningly, to almost all female people from birth to death. Instead, he believes that what Andrea said about "multisexuality" in 1974, or this, from 1975, "it is not true that there are two sexes that are discrete and opposite, which are polar...", were in fact radical things to say. They were radical things to read--for him, a white man. What the group seemed to mean by 'radical' was allegedly post-modernly complex or intellectually ground-breaking. 'Radical', for him, only addressed acts of speech or ideas in writing, not political campaigns or efforts at social change. (For some discussion about Andrea's later abandonment of such 'radical ideas', please see the notes in a book called Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky.) I repeatedly pointed out, if these are such 'essential' points of Andrea's, why do they never again appear in her work, over the next twenty years? Crickets chirped. This was a stubbornly anti-activist group. The only allegedly 'radical' action John engaged in was introducing young people to a liberal idea of multisexuality. Campaigns to end violence against women? Nope. How to organise against heteropatriarchy? Nope. Talking to college students about being colors in a color wheel: that's where it's at for John.

10. Also, members had no interest in supporting or working towards a truce between some white radical lesbian feminists and some white liberal trans activists. Only Margo, and the transsexual woman who left in disgust, explicitly welcomed this as a goal. The rest were intent on demonising some feminists (not just some of their views, but their personhood), while ignoring how their own political perspective was misogynistic, racist, and, yes, anti-trans.

The Conversations Project: The Radical Inclusivity of Radical Feminism should be titled:

"John and Cristan's Project: Radically Ignoring Radical Feminism".

Sad. And predictable. There's this old expression, 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them.' Yup. Everything I first experienced in that group in January proved to remain the case in April. Lesson learned.

Please sign this petition in support of Marissa Alexander, who fired a gun in the air to ward off her abuser and got twenty years in prison

 All that follows is from *here*.

care2 petitionsite

PARDON Abused Mother Marissa Alexander for Standing Her Ground

• signatures: 75,533
• 
  
• signature goal: 100,000

• overview
• petition

• Target: Florida Governor Rick Scott
• Sponsored by: Susan Vaughan

The Stand Your Ground Defense failed domestic abuse victim Marissa Alexander - who didn't shoot anyone.

Only after enduring a year of violence from her husband Rico Gray, who has a documented history of abuse, did she arm herself for protection.

The next threat came just nine days after giving birth to their daughter. Gray, in a rage, cornered her and threatened to kill her. But instead of shooting him, she aimed upward. The only thing she hit was the ceiling.

Gray ran into the street, claiming she threatened to kill him and his boys. Marissa, on his word alone, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

For protecting her life and children she was just sentenced to twenty years in prison, even though Gray has since admitted his intention to harm her. There's no excuse for Florida to deny this responsible mother her freedom.

Marissa is currently in the process of appealing her conviction. Tell Governor Scott to PARDON Marissa NOW!

Click the following link to sign in support of Marissa Alexander: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/503/600/056/dont-imprison-marissa-alexander-for-standing-her-ground/#letter 

The Questionable Ethics of Outing People Online, and Other Topics for Discussion Between Julian and a White Feminist Friend

image is from here

One criticism I have of myself is that there is sometimes a lack of openness and a use of analytic thinking to avoid other ways of being. It's not that I'm invulnerable; it's that being vulnerable has made me open to a great deal of pain and trauma and so I'm careful about where I'm vulnerable. Like so many other people, I was bullied. Many males and a few females were the perpetrators. It went on for seven years in my childhood and adolescence. To this day, when I hear people laughing in a group near me, I assume they are laughing at me and my first reaction is to feel humiliated.

Social networking sites don't feel very safe to me in part because of the bullying and meanness I've seen happen there. In my experience, that has happened especially and most egregiously to women of color, by white men, by men of color, by white women, and by other women of color. The thing about bullying is that anyone can be a perpetrator, even the victims of bullying. I tend to behave in rather invulnerable ways when at such places, when I'm there, which is rarely. So, with that said as sort of a personal preface, on with the conversation:


What's on your mind, Julian? Why did you want to get together to have a talk that will be public?

Well, there are few things distressing to me at this moment, other than the usual list of atrocities. Thanks for being willing to engage with me--people being willing to engage with me, respectfully, is one of the things I want to get to today.

Who is engaging with you disrespectfully? 

You know me well enough to know I won't name names. I'm not about that. Suffice it to say that some people have, and some other people have been saying things about me that are not true to the very best of my knowledge and recollections. They're not all saying this to me. In some cases it's being said about me in places when I'm not around.

What's being said about you?

That I have either outed women online or have supported women being outed online. And that I have supported women being called misogynist names.

I know you well enough to know that's not very likely. 

I don't believe I've ever done it, actually. But if someone has specific information to the contrary, I'd certainly hear them out. I welcome them to contact me and I will listen, with care. We may disagree about some things or have different recollections. But I'll listen and really try to get what their experience was and not dismiss it.

Julian, I gotta say this before we go on. I'm not a fan of you showing up in feminists spaces to voice your opinion in a way that triggers, annoys, or bores women. But I've never known you to "out" any woman. I know you're deeply concerned about how women have been terrorized by male supremacists online and offline.

That's what I generally stay very conscious of when writing about women here. If I have any doubt about whether naming someone--only as they publicly name themselves--might cause them to be more socially vulnerable to verbal attack or to other forms of abuse or threat, or to economic distress such as losing one's job, I won't name them.

What I have not taken to heart enough, nor to mind enough, are the ways some of my social behavior has been triggering to women. There's no good reason for me not considering it. I can say this: most people don't know when I'm triggered by them because if the triggering leads me to feel threatened or unsafe, I'm likely to simply not want to engage with them at all. My own triggering is specific to me but is also not atypical. And men can trigger me in various ways. I've grown immune to some things, such as men sending emails to call me a f*g or the classic "mangina". When someone is that ridiculous, it's kind of easy for me to just write them off as behaving like a jerk. But what you've helped me understand is that my anger, no matter what it's about, can be or may be or IS triggering or troubling for some women, for reasons having to do with sexual politics.

Yes. It can be, it may be, and it is. I know before I knew you better, I felt uncomfortable with your intensity at times and it gave me pause when considering whether to take a risk and get to know you better. 

Yeah. I'm glad you were willing to do that, but I'd also have understood if you didn't. I'm quite supportive of women not giving males energy.

I know you are. Which makes you showing up in feminist spaces more perplexing, honestly. Why do you do that, Julian?

Well, I don't show up in places where I haven't been welcomed to appear, by at least one woman there. And if a space is set up to be woman-only, I don't go there. But over the last decades, most feminist spaces aren't woman-only and that's a decision made by the organisers or administrators of those spaces. But because I do believe in woman-only spaces existing without male intervention and interruption, I have chosen not to go to most gatherings or discussion spaces that are woman-majority or woman-led. But that's truer now than it used to be.

Maybe because lately you don't get out much, huh?

Well, there is that! But I've been very slow to get that my presence isn't wanted by at least some women in most spaces where women gather, even if the organisers or administrators don't have a policy of being woman-only, or are explicitly welcoming of male presence. I plan to appear less in such spaces in the future. My appearance in a discussion in a feminist discussion space on Facebook was, I hope, one of the last times I do that.

But why have you done it? I mean regardless of what administrators welcome, why do you feel like it's ok to be there? You know as well as any male I know how hard it is for women to create woman-only space. And you know as well as I do that many women don't set up spaces to be woman-only because they don't feel like they have the right to do so. Or because men insist the women be liberally "fair" by being accommodating.

I know. It's such a common male supremacist argument. ... Why have I done it so often? I guess because feminist discussion spaces are spaces where the topics, the conversations, are of interest to me. I mean most of what men talk about isn't of interest to me. I've always had closer relationships--friendships--with women than men. I've always organised my private and social life more around women than men.

But you know that some women feel that you're presence is not only not helpful, but plays out some really typical male supremacist patterns, right? And the point of the conversations isn't to be appealing to you or to engage you or make your social world less small.

Well, I know. Yes. I mean my loneliness leads me to do things that I'm not necessarily prepared to do well.

Like offering to politically or more personally converse with gay and queer-identified men who seem like they are anti-racist and anti-sexist who you know you won't be able to tolerate for more than ten minutes?

Yeah. Like that. (Laughs.) A lot like that.

And like that last place: you went there, tossed out a whole lot of commentary, and then left abruptly, stating that you don't even like the space to begin with!

Yeah. I'd like to fill you in on what was going on there for me, if that's okay with you?

Sure, go ahead. I've been really baffled by that, to be honest. And pissed off with you too.

Okay, so first of all, I have been having the experience in many places that my voice isn't welcome, isn't wanted, and that even if I'm speaking to the issues at the center of the discussions, the response is to hear crickets chirping. And I'm not talking about women-majority spaces, in this case. I'm talking about male-dominant spaces. Or in places where discussions are led by men. Women do tend to respond, including by letting me know what I'm doing is male supremacist. Men often just ignore the comments.

And that's relevant how?

Well, because I have come to believe that people--in general--don't wish to talk with me about things. In my experience recently, most women don't want to and most men don't want to. And so this has led me to offer a perspective on what's being discussed, and then just leave. It shocked me that anyone actually objected to me leaving a place suddenly. I know that could sound silly in a way. But it really did surprise me. So I think that whole dynamic has led to a kind of "say what you have to say and then leave them alone" kind of approach to "engaging". Which is to say, I don't assume "engagement" is going to happen to begin with. I assume if I speak I'll either be ignored or disrespected. Because that's what's happened in enough places.

I'd think that would lead you to stop speaking up in places.

Yeah, you'd think. But I have this thing about not speaking up in spaces when something is going down that isn't okay--or, well, that doesn't feel okay to me or isn't okay with women I know well, and also with me. Almost without exception, if I'm speaking up in a space, it's because something is upsetting to me about what's being said. Like, either it comes across to me as male supremacist or white supremacist, or close friends alert me to how it is both. Or it could be profoundly liberal discourse. Those are the kinds of conversations that get me riled up.

What I haven't exactly tracked is how such conversations also upset me in ways that make constructive engagement unlikely. I have learned how to hold my tongue when I'm triggered by something--well, more often than in the past, but I have actually practiced NOT holding my tongue when something male supremacist or white supremacist is going on. Because that's what it means to be an ally, according to the radical women I hold myself most closely accountable to. It means you don't let shit fly around unchallenged, pretending it smells good.

So surely, then, you'd support women speaking up if you're presence is male supremacist, right? I mean, if the male supremacist part of the dynamic is partly or mostly yours, coming from what you are doing there, then you're not surprised if women respond negatively, are you?

I'm not surprised, no. But I have been alarmed by some ways a very few people have responded. Because in one case, a person responded with both disrespect and by engaging in terrorist tactics with me. And neither is okay with me. I mean I get how we can do things that come across as disrespectful. I'm not talking about that--shit happens. People upset each other. People trigger each other. And we can't always anticipate that. Hopefully people learn from past experience, and strive to trigger people less, or upset or hurt people less. Hopefully I learn to be less male supremacist.

As I said, I've been slow to "get it" about some of my behavior. I think that's partly because some of the people I've upset or triggered have withdrawn from me altogether--which I understand. My learning process is mine and is not for others to do for me or walk me through. I get that. I've witnessed enough males and whites saying to people we structurally oppress "Teach me!" or "Help me understand how what I'm doing is insulting or invisbilising of you" to know that it's not for the oppressed to educate the oppressor, even if oppressors are only likely to learn by experiencing the world from the vantage point of those they have structural power over.

And at the same time, people do learn best, I think, in relationship, in community where people share with one another. Me withdrawing from most spaces, for reasons stated above, and people withdrawing from me, means that I'm not likely to know what effect I'm having--I mean very specifically, to particular individuals.

I value my friendships because we do value letting each other know whether something upsetting has happened. And when I find out that what I've done is upsetting, I usually care about that and want to make amends or offer something that can be healing or productive. But I know that takes time and trust. And what I've been realising more and more is how internet spaces and many offline spaces too, don't have either time or trust as a base. So when people upset each other, or when one person--say, me--upsets a whole lot of other people, there's no agreement about how that will be dealt with. People do what seems best for them.

But you were saying that your experience is that you're ignored or insulted.

Yes. Or threatened.

So some people have actually threatened you? 

I can't really know what their intention is. I can tell you that some people--just a very few, fortunately--have employed exactly the same cyber-terrorist tactics as a way of engaging with me and mostly they've done so privately. Like there's a text book for how to do it and these people have followed the "to do" list to a T. Down to the smallest details. And that's not something that leads me to have much faith that healing or building relationship is possible with those people.

Again, I understand someone withdrawing and not engaging. And I don't think any woman owes me a damned thing. If I piss a woman off, I believe she ought to take care of herself as she sees fit. But going out of your way to terrorise someone, or insult someone, or disrespect someone--well, that's just not helpful to being in constructive, healthy relationship, in my opinion. But the thing is, it's not really "my opinion" alone. My feminist role models didn't model abusive interpersonal behavior. The women I learned radical feminism from didn't treat me like that. And they wouldn't have termed such actions as "feminist". So I took that to heart a long time ago.

You know that some kinds of meanness is especially commonplace now--on social networking sites, on blogs, at discussion sites. I mean I see it a lot in woman-only spaces. I see a hell of a lot more of it in spaces where men engage with women, though.

I know snark is valued in many spaces. And I can reflect on my own past snarkiness with men to see that when I've been in that mode it's because I didn't feel safe to engage in more honest ways. And I'm certainly under no illusions about woman-only space being utopian. I've known too many lesbian women well over the last few decades to arrive at that conclusion. But what I hear women say--you included--is that often enough there's a commitment to valuing community that often doesn't exist in spaces that include men.

So if you understand and appreciate--and support--women not engaging with men when the man, or male person, or the men have come across as threatening, abusive, hostile, or just plain annoying and typically sexist, why do you expect any woman to be honest with you about how your behavior has made her feel?

I don't expect that. And I wouldn't tell any woman she "should" talk stuff out with me. But I can want it or be hopeful about it nonetheless. I've been surprised by woman friends going the distance with me, and they've explained they're sure as hell not doing it for me: they're doing it for themselves, because having another male around who gets it that much more means their lives are that much less burdened by sexism and racism.

What do you hope for?

I guess I hope that a safe-enough space can be created with any woman I've hurt or upset or harmed in some way that was not intended by me, for us to heal some of that hurt or wounding. And to go on in such a way that the woman feels like she's less likely to encounter that from me in the future. And with the experience that I'm caring of how she's feeling.

Whenever I find out a woman is upset with me I do try and put myself in her shoes, to try to feel what it might have been like to be her, hearing or witnessing me be the ways I've sometimes been. But you know that only goes so far because each person has their own history, their own associations; their own wounds, their own triggers, and so forth. What's saddest of all to me in relationship is when both people are triggering the other, and wounding just gets compounded. I've seen that so much in work I've done when counseling couples. Sometimes the wounding and re-wounding is just too severe. There's not enough safe space for healing to occur.

In my case, I think some of the things that deeply alarm me, or trigger me, are so commonplace that the only solution is to withdraw in some way. I know that withdrawing is only an option for some people and I'm privileged to be able to withdraw in many of the ways I do. But I also see how people in long-term abusive situations who are not free to escape or leave, find their own ways to withdraw, such as through dissociation or being silent, or being cleverly dishonest, or getting into arguments chronically. And so when someone says something like "People should always be honest!" I often feel, "Well, being honest in some situations will get you beaten up. Or killed."

And those of us who have had our lives threatened and who have had death threats against us, if we don't want to give up publicly challenging the status quo, figure out how to go on being outspoken but also somewhat protected from the thugs and terrorists.

What I want women who I've upset or hurt or scared to know is that I'm willing to listen and that I will be caring.

I know you do care when you've upset someone. Well, if they're a woman. I've seen you not care so much when you've upset a man. 

Well, it depends on what has upset him. If me challenging his sexism or misogyny or whiteness is what's upsetting to him, then I'm not going out of my way to be too concerned about making things better. Well, unless there's a significant relationship there already. But I don't have a lot of relationships with men, as you know. But me challenging someone on their structural privileges and power isn't an open invitation to be abusive, mean, or intentionally hurtful to them. Nor to dehumanise them. According to my feminist mentors, anyway. I think Alice Walker is one person, someone I haven't met and don't know, who really models that behavior.

Do you maintain a relationship with those mentors, Julian? I'm not sure I know what happened to those relationships.

What happened, sadly, is that most of those women passed on. They died far too soon, of illness or disease. I miss them. And I miss the kind of culture that I had with them, and that they nurtured most when among women. Caring community where being mean and snarky just wouldn't fly without serious challenge. The whole reason I said, in that last conversation, that I hate Facebook, is that Facebook, in my experience, is a space that seems to encourage snark and meanness as an M.O., as standard operating procedure, for having political discussions. I am pretty sure there are plenty of conversations I'm not privy to that don't operate that way.

There are--and you're not privy to them. But there are always struggles and like you said, people do unintentionally hurt or upset one another. 

I guess the question is: Are we in the struggle together, or aren't we? If the struggle is to create safe woman-only space, then I'm not going to be in on that--other than by not showing up in woman-only and feminist-majority spaces. But if the spaces are committed to being open with regard to gender or sex, then I'd better only show up if I am in a mental and emotional space to be present, be accountable, and be caring--and when invited and welcomed, of course.

So why didn't you show up to do that, to be present and accountable, in this last case?

When I tried, I couldn't get back to it. I'm not sure why. Maybe one of the admins blocked me. I wouldn't be surprised if she did. But to also be named by other women in that space as someone who is not willing to engage, when further engagement is no longer an option, well, that feels hopeless. Because while I did engage in ways that seemed like I didn't really want a genuine exchange of ideas or perspectives, that doesn't mean that if me doing that was upsetting or alarming or annoying, that I wouldn't be open to processing that.

That's kind of problematic, isn't it? For you to want women to make some sort of exception with you? To give you some sort of benefit of the doubt when that may well be too costly to do, emotionally and politically?

Yes. It is problematic. It's outright unfair. I can be far too self-concerned sometimes.

And far too self-negating at other times.

Yes. That too. But the self-concern or prioritised self-regard--and this might also be called "being self-centered" or "typically male", when it's present, is kind of balanced with a lot of compassion and an ability to get beyond myself. I know that in so many situations, suddenly making such a process--about me and my feelings--the center of attention functions to derail the original conversation.

And socialisation being what it is, it is far too often the case that the man's, the male's, or the white person's feelings will get attended to while the sexually or racially or ethnically oppressed person's feelings will get ignored, or the assumption will be "the oppressed person exists to take care of me". But processing can happen away from that conversation and if it's mutual, then those oppressive dynamics don't have to be resurrected and reinforced.

So maybe a safe-enough conversation happens in a separate space. Maybe it happens privately. Because when it's public, that generates another set of dynamics--other people can get appropriately dismayed that any time is being spent attending to the feelings of the male or the white person. But that risk-taking to resolve or heal some negative interaction is probably only going to happen if it's worth it to the person who was hurt or upset--if it is in her own interest to do it.

I know you know what was said about you in that discussion, and what others have charged you with doing, because the conversation was sent to you after you couldn't get back in. I just want that to be clear to whoever reads this when it goes public.

Yes. That's how I know. Someone sent it to me to question what was going on there, to question the allegations, and to let me know the effect of what I'd said there initially.

And I know you get into trouble when you bring up the politics of whiteness, or of ignored white supremacy, in majority-white spaces where that's being ignored or put aside in favor of a politic that goes, "let's only talk about sex and gender even though most of us are white." 

Yeah. I'm also being accused of perpetuating or promoting "identity politics". As if refusing to be silent about race and white supremacy has anything to do with identity politics. I welcome anyone who feels that way to respectfully engage with me on my blog about that.

I know why you do bring it up and for me the problem isn't you bringing it up--it needs to be brought up and it's only the responsibility of white people to do it. The problem is that you're so intense about it sometimes, and honestly I think triggered too because of being Jewish and your own experiences with that ethnic bigotry and invisibilization, and knowledge of the history, that you do it in a way that frightens or triggers women: you become "the visibly angry man" in the space. 

Not just that. I am realising I also become the man who seems to be judging women harshly. Yet another male in the white women's lives who is judging them without knowing them well. But what I'm judging harshly is the white supremacy, not the white women personally.

You know, when this plays out with gender, white radical feminists are usually pretty clear that men should learn to take criticism about the politics of their gender and not take it personally, as if it's a personal attack. But the difference here--you know the difference, right? I don't have to spell it out, I hope.

The difference is that I'm a male doing it in female-majority spaces. I realise it's not the oppressed person challenging their oppressor, in which case the politic, the ethic, ought to be the one Pearl Cleage describes [in her book Deals With The Devil and Other Reasons to Riot]. Basically, "Listen and learn, in a posture of non-defensiveness."

Some white feminists could get the sense you go out of your way to challenge white women on racism, but let white men off the hook on that. And that you're trying to assert power over white women by doing so. Or that you're judging them as if from a superior position--like you "get it" about race and they don't.

Well, you know I also challenge white men about a lot of things including their racism. Which is why most white men won't engage with me. And I challenge men of color on their male supremacy and misogyny too.

I know that. But because that is done in spaces online that are predominantly male, white feminists won't necessarily see you do it. So I think it appears to some women like you only do this to women and that you've found this spurious way to go after women, not men.

I am realising that. Thank you for making that clearer.

Look, Julian: it's really upsetting and painful to see that racist shit play out again and again and again. Whiteness is not regularly interrogated in majority-white places. That's just the damned truth. And it's got to be different. Radically different. Andrea [Dworkin] named that shit in 1974. It was practically the first thing she wrote down when speaking as a white radical feminist. So did many radical feminists of color--correction: so DO many radical feminists of color. And there's nothing at all radical about protecting white power. And I don't think you mentioning that, as you have several times on your blog and elsewhere, is liberal, or is engaging in "identity politics." I really don't.

The same holds true with patriarchal shit in male-dominant places: there's very little commitment among men to collectively root it out. We know this. The collective commitment is to protect male power and to pretend male supremacy is a figment of feminists' imagination. I wish rape and incest and trafficking were matters of imagination. 

And the collective commitment among whites, among white women and among white men, is to protect white power, even though I've never heard any white feminist say that's what her aim is. I have heard white women decades ago say they wanted to protect "white people," though. And I have read online where men say their aim is to protect male entitlements and power. And the big-boy pornographers make a damned good living at protecting that white and male power, at promoting it as "good sex," and at unleashing it against women of all colors. It's always been the pimps and pornographers who most conflate sex and rape, not radical feminists.

It's all disgusting and I don't fault you for finding it profoundly upsetting and for feeling a need to call it out. I know you work hard to be accountable to radical feminist women you are especially close to. And I know why most of those women won't identify as "radical feminist": because the term is used so routinely by white women who, consciously or not, protect white power. I know you work to sincerely be a responsible ally to women fighting male and white supremacy. And I do hope you continue to be accountable to the women most centrally in your life, and that they continue to consider you as a solid ally. 

But I also hope you steer clear of majority-white woman spaces dedicated to feminist discussions. I hope you've learned that your ways of being there are, often enough, too upsetting or annoying or triggering for enough women--and not only white women, to make your presence not only problematic, but more to the point: not pro-feminist.

I do get that now, yes. You won't be seeing me participate, whether more or less obnoxiously, in those discussions in the future.

Good.

Now, what do you want to eat? I'm cooking.

Damn right you are! (Laughs.) 

Andrea Dworkin, Male Supremacy, and the Persistent Refusal of Men to Engage Intelligently with the work of Feminist Philosophers

cover of book is from here

Andrea analysed the sexual politics of The Story of O in her first feminist book, Woman Hating (1974).

What follows are a couple of responses I posted to a man; I read them on a discussion-based website dedicated to the life and work of a colleague of Andea Dworkin's named Michael Moorcock. The particular discussion thread is about Andrea's political writings and views, including about The Story of O. For those who don't know about the colleagial relationship between Andrea and Michael, *here* is a link to a conversation between them, with thanks to Nikki Craft. And *here* is a post from this blog that includes a piece of writing Michael did about Andrea, following her death in 2005. 

I have deleted the name of the person who posted the points I take issue with. I don't believe in "outing" people for their opinions and viewpoints expressed online*. And I don't know if he'd want me putting his name, as it appears at that site, on my blog. To his credit, the remarks are unusually civil--while also deeply woman-hating. Most men who critique Andrea Dworkin online do so using more openly and virulently misogynistic language. It is because the website doesn't seem to encourage snark and nastiness as predominant values that I felt comfortable to post my own comments there. Most men at that site seem to regard Andrea as an important political philosopher.

*An upcoming post will deal with this a bit more.

Each response I wrote I also gave a title, as that's the format there.

Dworkin didn't say its because of our genitals that women, through sex, are degraded

---

Quote:

Originally Posted by **** To be entirely honest, as much as I can sympathize that porn, especially in the production end of its business cycle, is powerfully exploitive of women and that most forms of commercial porn focus, indirectly or otherwise, on a very narrow, often ugly bandwidth of sexuality, I find a lot of Dworkin's pronouncements baffling. When she asserts that, because of the accidental structure of the male/female genitalia, violence and degradation are unalterably implicit in sex, it's seems more the wounded mysticism of a damaged child than any reasonable argument.

I don't see that as her analysis. I see her analysis directing us to radically alter the social and political arenas in which males and females live, wherein females are regarded socially as both inferior to and "for" males. Her analysis doesn't discuss what life might be like outside male supremacy: she is dealing with the structural and systemic political realities most, if not all, women and men live in. Her work is often misunderstood and assumed to be unreasoned by people who don't take the time to read what she wrote. 

On assuming self-hate as a condition of being oppressed

---

Quote:

Originally Posted by **** It's statements of her's like that about some presumed ubiquity of self-hate among oppressed or exploited peoples that lead me to dismiss most of her arguments. It reads, obnoxiously, as if she's projecting her own self-hate onto people who conduct themselves bravely, stoically in pretty brutal situations. The Story of O has nothing to say about the legitimate sufferings of people like those of Occupied Palestine or Darfur.....

I'm wondering if you hold a similarly dismissive view of the work of Frantz Fanon, and many other anti-racism activists who write about how self-hatred and/or self-negation is part and parcel of being systematically oppressed. And I'm curious about why you move so quickly into psychoanalysing her, rather than dealing with her arguments directly including by quoting her work.

Responding to the latter part of your comment, I think there is a connection between The Story of O and literature addressing the experiences of other occupied people, if we understand the The Story of O to be a book about how deep oppression goes. The sufferings of oppressed people who deeply internalise the views of ourselves held by our oppressors is not, in my view, illegitimate. The fact that some oppressed groups of people have more physical distance from their oppressors than do women across a lifetime doesn't mean we can't examine what oppressed people have in common. In my experience, the intricacies of male supremacy are generally and usually ignored by men who benefit structurally if not also interpersonally from it. And men often address as "serious" or "important" only the forms of oppression that include populations of men as "the oppressed". When the focus is on how men and boys intimately and institutionally oppress women and girls, it is often considered "not relevant" in one way or another, to discussions and activism addressing gross systemic violence.

A Discussion about White Men's Hostility to Black Women: where ThatOneGuy proves he's a white guy just like all the other racist-misgoynist white guys

image of a white guy is from here

A friend sent me a link to a discussion at Racism Review about white het men's racist-misogyny when it comes to deciding which women to hit on (too often in obnoxious and oppressive ways, imo). Please click on the title just below to link to that full discussion.

White Men’s Hostility to Black Women: A Deeper Look

By Brittany

That post has many comments following it, including this by some white dood naming himself "ThatOneGuy". Warning: it's fucking obnoxious.

ThatOneGuy says:

June 1, 2011 at 12:54 am

I am white man who has dated women of every ethnic group, and no Swan it wasn’t because I was on an “exotic adventure” or assuming they were “hyper-sexual”. In both cases they were black women I worked with who I knew and who had made it clear that they dated white men.

That being said what I know is that the number of black women who will date a white man is small and to get to them I have to deal with black women like you. Who see me as “WHITE” before you see me as a man, who blame me personally for any negative thing that has ever happened to any black person. Your cousin is in prison for robing a Korean store owner-> my fault. Your sister’s baby’s daddy hasn’t sent her child support EVER-> my fault again he would if he wasn’t being held down by yours truly. Your Grandma died of a heart attack-> me again I was probably feeding her poison. Skipping over the fact that most of my family were Russian miners that came over after WWI but that is irrelevant to you. What is important is remembering that I am the root of all that is evil in the universe. In fact I am so powerful that according to you lesser creatures like non-white men have to be criminals they have no choice I-ME-THIS GUY RIGHT HERE forced them into it, that is how powerful I am.

On the other hand if I date Carmen or Nhung or Yuko are they going to tell me that the current state of their brothers, cousins, and fathers is my fault? No for good or bad, and in turn I don’t blame Carmen for acts of the Catholic Church, I don’t tell Yuko that Japanese Imperialism caused much of WWII that devastated my ancestral homeland? No I don’t it wasn’t her and she had no part in it.

So no it isn’t the racism of white men against black women that keeps men like me from approaching a black women. It is the hostility that so many black women, like you, have towards anyone with a white penis that does that.

So, at that website I responded as follows:

To ThatOneGuy who acts a whole lot like so many other white guys,

As a white male, I find your comment woefully soaked and bloated with white male supremacist (sexist and racist) assumptions about how you should be treated relative to people without your (and my) race and gender privileges, position, advantages, and status in white male-dominated and ruled societies. I'll delineate a bit of what I find troubling in what you wrote.

Your apparent offence at being treated as "one of those WHITE dudes, just like all the others" (rather than as the not-so-sensitive white guy you appear to be here?), reveals you are generally and usually being seen and treated as an individual. I'd argue that this usual experience being only occasionally interrupted by exceptional, atypical experiences is the cause for you even registering this as a significant offence. Your offence rests on your socially protected right to be seen as only an individual, even while your race and gender privileges have little to do with your individuality.

Let me speak to you for a moment as a gay person: I don't experience that level of "being seen as only an individual" as a gay person. I am seen as someone who probably has too much sex (while I choose to have none, in fact), and as someone who exists to entertain white het people: evidenced in the terribly problematic hit series, Modern Family, just last night.

Every woman of color I know doesn't have the luxury of wallowing in offence of being treated as "not an individual", for to do so would render anyone experiencing so much systematic, unceasing objectification and bigotry just plain exhausted. No Black woman I know assumes she'll be treated as "just a person" or "only an individual" by any man or by anyone white. You and I--and people like us, with regard to race and gender--can see ourselves written into history as "important individuals who shaped the world", while people of color across gender are seen as obstacles to white men getting all the freedoms we want. And our capacity to want things, people, land, and "resources" that don't belong to us knows no bounds.

Women across race are only seen by white het men as things to be sexually conquered, to take care of whites and men emotionally. Het men, meanwhile, carry the "manifest destiny" and "imminent domain" myths into the bedroom and bar room, dance club, and motel and hotel room. 

Your comments miss or ignore the reality that there are people out in the world--most people, in fact--who not hardly ever (or are never) socially regarded by our über-privileged, structurally advantaged people as "only individuals". People who are not male and white are rarely-to-never presumed by us to be deserving of being seen as individuals, except on an exceptional basis. And when we regard someone--a woman of any color, or a man of color, as "an actual individual person" we expect to be patted on the back and rewarded for doing so.

At the same time that we may oh-so-generously recognise a few people of color, a few women, as "just an individual", we only ever regard white men as individuals--without exception, but privately or unconsciously know our relative status and wealth-acquisition (and ability to hoard wealth and resources) has nothing to do with individuality and everything to do with social custom and legal policy.

We white guys carry around an absurdly apolitical, socially ignorant assumption that being white and male means nothing other than that "we're [just] human". We are human, of course, but so too are we carriers of white and male supremacist assumptions, attitudes, actions that do, in fact, oppress other people. Want to check out how much that's the case, economically? See this website and take the test:

http://slaveryfootprint.org/

You and I support white and male supremacy in society in myriad ways. Please don't respond with the ubiquitous and predictable "Dude, you don't even KNOW me!" line. I've seen what you've written here and you've revealed far more about yourself than you perhaps wished.

I'm from European immigrant stock too--I'm first generation on one side of my family, and both sides of my white, arrived-poor family benefited greatly from being taken into this society as "white". My family wouldn't have made it into the middle class in one generation if they weren't received here as white. And whatever your class background is, it would be poorer if your parents or grandparents had come here being received socially and economically as not-white people.

You state, "I am white man who has dated women of every ethnic group, and no Swan it wasn’t because I was on an 'exotic adventure' or assuming they were 'hyper-sexual'", as if we should applaud you or massage your feet, or get you something cool or warm to drink. Or as if to prove that white men don't do *exactly that* most of the time. Your plea for exceptionalism is akin to the men who are offended when women on the street swiftly move to the other side when approached, as if "that man should be regarded as the only non-rapist of the bunch". Where in the world does such a keen ability to discern danger among unknown men come in handy? It comes in handy only for men who rape women but want to be perceived as non-rapists. Meanwhile, most men do jack sh-t to end rape, or, even, to call out the men who speak misogynistically about women they know and don't know.

I found your wording here especially revealing of the privileges you carry as a white person and a man:

"That being said what I know is that the number of black women who will date a white man is small and to get to them I have to deal with black women like you."

Yes, you are raised to think you have a right to "get to" anyone you want, for whatever reasons you want to have access to them. Denial of access by women offends men greatly, because our pro-rape society teaches all men to assume we can take what we want and any rejection is reason enough to insult her and further oppress all women by calling the rejecting woman the b-word, among other expletives; by beating her up, especially if she's in a "romantic" relationship; and by murdering her, especially if she has the audacity to leave his sorry abusive ass.

Let's consider who has to endure more: you, Mr. White Man, who has to be allegedly insulted and offended by being seen as WHITE by a few people you have the choice to surround yourself with interpersonally and intimately. Or women of color, who, particularly in the US, have to endure unending non-human status by whites, by men, by media, by politicians, and by most people ("individuals") who are more privileged. I know very few women of color who can afford to NOT be around whites or men. I know many white men who choose to be intimately involved only with other whites--and those who break out of that racist mold want plenty of kudos for being so open-minded. White men, socially and in workplaces, also choose to be predominantly with other men.

You choose to engage women of color from a position of privilege and power that no woman of color structurally has, relative to you, in the US. And you conveniently forget *that* when you are offended. It's surely your privilege to do so.

You seem to expect or want or need to not have the past actions of your people, who have committed all manner of terroristic or "only insulting and degrading" atrocities against girls and women of color in the US and internationally. Why, exactly, should anyone give you that pass without knowing you? Do you distinguish yourself as exceptional by demonstrating a fiercely public and private commitment to anti-sexism and anti-racism work? (And, even then, anti-racism and anti-sexism activist men are notoriously and grievously racist and misogynistic.)

If you don't distinguish yourself in those ways, why ought anyone regard you as anti-racist and anti-sexist when you take it upon yourself to approach them? Why don't you create around yourself a welcoming space and wait for women to approach you? Is it because your learned ways of being a man impel you to be the assertive initiator, socially?

White men continue to commit these horrible acts--with few to no white men opposing it publicly.  Most white men don't interrupt the other white men or the throw wrenches in the white and male supremacist machinery that keeps pressing down on the lives of people who are neither male nor white; white men benefit greatly from this lack of white-brotherly interference.

That's one typically white male supremacist aspect of your comment here: you are quick to note what's offencive to *you*, but are woefully silent on the matter of what white men do--including you, historically or presently--that warrants any individual woman of color being very (read: appropriately) leery of you and your intentions in approaching her.

As you make a worse-than-weak case for being treated as just an individual, when you grossly reinforce racism and misogyny, rattling off your scenarios of your own alleged dehumanisation in their eyes:

"Your cousin is in prison for robing a Korean store owner-> my fault. Your sister’s baby’s daddy hasn’t sent her child support EVER-> my fault again he would if he wasn’t being held down by yours truly. Your Grandma died of a heart attack-> me again I was probably feeding her poison."

Why should anyone reading what your wrote above want to make time to learn of your family's background as Russian miners that came over after WWI? Why ought such details be relevant in the face of such glaring, unrecognised oppressive bigotry and obnoxiousness? 

You go on:

"What is important is remembering that I am the root of all that is evil in the universe. In fact I am so powerful that according to you lesser creatures like non-white men have to be criminals they have no choice I-ME-THIS GUY RIGHT HERE forced them into it, that is how powerful I am."

Again with your demands to be seen as exceptional. In the US and in many other countries, structurally and institutionally--and also often enough interpersonally and intimately, white men do oppress women of all colors.

You, who don't have post-traumatic stress due to how you are mistreated daily by whites and men, get to preach from a truly arrogant and self-centered position:

"On the other hand if I date Carmen or Nhung or Yuko are they going to tell me that the current state of their brothers, cousins, and fathers is my fault? No for good or bad, and in turn I don’t blame Carmen for acts of the Catholic Church, I don’t tell Yuko that Japanese Imperialism caused much of WWII that devastated my ancestral homeland? No I don’t it wasn’t her and she had no part in it."

But European men are implicated, quite directly, in the past and in the present, with most militarised and otherwise violent conflicts around the world, either by instilling in those places our economic systems, weaponry, or by subverting and destroying their cultures with religion or cultural practices and values. To read about how this has been done historically, please read Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Dr. Marimba Ani.

There's a damn good reason why some African-descended and Indigenous people in the Americas refer to "The White Man" in such terms. There's little reason to distinguish among us, if The White Man is stealing or invading and militarily occupying your ancestral land while also attempting and, by the millions, effectively destroying the people who are not white.

You go on:

"So no it isn’t the racism of white men against black women that keeps men like me from approaching a black women. It is the hostility that so many black women, like you, have towards anyone with a white penis that does that."

As noted elsewhere in this discussion, you are quick to name reasoned, appropriate criticism or analysis as "hostility" without recognising or being responsible for the gross hostility in your own words here. How typically white and male of you, ThatOneGuy who is not so very different from all the others.

Why we shouldn't accept Johnny Depp's apology for misusing the term "rape"

image is from here

My commentary follows this from HuffPo:

Vanity Fair on Tuesday released a small excerpt of their upcoming Johnny Depp cover article, hoping to generate buzz for their new issue ahead of its hitting newsstands. Mission accomplished.

In the short passage, the Oscar nominee and $100 million a year actor made a rare misstep, comparing participating in photo shoots to being raped.

"Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow," he said. "Raped ... It feels like a kind of weird -- just weird, man."

The statement raised eyebrows and drew criticism, leading Depp to quickly issue a statement of apology and regret.

"I am truly sorry for offending anyone in any way. I never meant to. It was a poor choice of words on my part in an effort to explain a feeling," Depp said in the statement. "I understand there is no comparison and I am very regretful. In an effort to correct my lack of judgment, please accept my heartfelt apology."

I don't respect Johnny Depp because he's demonstrated on-going insensitivity and callousness to people who are negatively effected by misogyny and male supremacy. I don't accept his apology because Johnny Depp has publicly sided with a famously unconvicted rapist over the many who are actually raped. (And by "rape" here, I don't mean "being photographed for being a grossly overpaid white male celebrity.") He's done so with the case of child-raper, Roman Polanski. More on that in a moment.

He's fine with earning millions promoting both sexism and racism in his films--the Pirates of the Caribbean series being but one on-going example. He successfully works to support and maintain a pro-rapist white male supremacist culture, in no small part by not ever speaking out against famous and not-famous men who commit rape, and by not ever calling on all men to stop rape--whether or not they, individually, perpetrate it.

For more on his pro-rape views and values, I close this post with commentary by Alex DiBranco at Change.org. 

Johnny Depp Defends Rapist

by Alex DiBranco · February 08, 2010

Johnny, you make such a sexy Captain Jack Sparrow. And there will always be a special place in my heart for Edward Scissorhands. I have to admit, your version of Willy Wonka was just a little too creepy for me, but that didn't make me cherish your pirating days any less. Unfortunately, you've lost all your charm (and your place in my fantasies) with your defense of a child rapist.

It doesn't matter that you've joined a chorus of celebrity voices defending Roman Polanski for raping a 13-year-old. It doesn't excuse your comments that Whoopi Goldberg claimed what happened to the girl wasn't "rape-rape," although I don't know what else you would call it when a middle-aged man pleads guilty to statutory rape -- and the other charges of rape, sodomy, and drugging are only dropped to protect the victim from a having to undergo a painful and sensationalized trial. Where, apparently, a chunk of Hollywood would have come to her rapist's defense.

Depp thinks that, even though Polanski fled the country three decades ago to escape sentencing, now that we've finally convinced a country to arrest him so the United States could actually hold him responsible for his crime, we should let it go. And why? Well, because Depp thinks that his former director "is not a predator. He's 75 or 76 years old. He has got two beautiful kids, he has got a wife that he has been with for a long, long time. He is not out on the street." Um ... wait, if you don't want him in jail for his crime, doesn't that mean he is out on the street?

Not only does Polanski's current position fail to negate the crime he never served a sentence for, but, as a blogger points out on Shakesville, neither his age, wife, or status as a father mean that he won't rape again, or that it won't be another child. The Shakesville guest blogger writes, "The second man who raped me had a wife and children. ... While he was married. While his two young daughters were sleeping in the next bedroom." Depp is not only a rapist apologist, he also brushes off the rapes of women by married or older men as impossible occurrences, adding insult to injury for too many survivors. It's really the cherry on top of a constantly sickening situation.

Looks like I won't be watching Pirates of the Caribbean for the umpteenth time next weekend. It's just not as much fun when I can't get Depp's rapist-supporting remarks out of my head.

Photo credit: ATempletonPhoto.com

Alex DiBranco is a Change.org Editor who has worked for the Nation, Political Research Associates, and the Center for American Progress. She is now based in New York City.

Lesbian Separatism: A Profeminist Gay Male's Perspective

image is from here

(I write this at a time of loss of a recent friendship. The reason for the friendship ending was my own persistent insensitivity to the political-personal realities she faces daily. I ended the friendship.)

You may be wondering who in the world would want a gay male's perspective on Lesbian Separatism? Well, I'm not sure, to be honest. But perhaps out there somewhere are queer people or het men who don't understand why any woman of any race would choose to be a Lesbian Separatist and would like to know why it ought to be politically supported, not insulted, not degraded, not considered a consequence only of male violence against women, and so on.

I'll note from the start of this post that I'm white and all my experiences of Lesbian Separatism, as an outsider, are as a white gay male. The Lesbian Separatists I have known are of many class backgrounds; mostly working and middle class, all US, and all English-speaking. That's but one small population of Lesbian Separatists worldwide, and although many US people will deny this, or simply don't know it, Lesbian Separatism exists the world over.

The first time I learned of Lesbian Separatism was I was part of an urban Lesbian/Gay/Bi community, back in the 1980s. It was white-dominated, mixed class, and largely academically educated. But the L.S., as far as I knew, was not born of the Academy, which is what I've seen of other queer cultures and identities in my community, such as being trans, genderqueer, and polyamorous: I know not one person who is trans, genderqueer, or polyamorous who wasn't informed and introduced to these cultures in the Academy, which may explain why they are decidedly liberal in political viewpoint and alliances. I suppose I had a crush on the first Lesbian Separatist I knew. She had a L.S. friend who I'd encounter later in my life in a really ugly way, but this woman wow'ed me. She had children—all girls. She lived her life, as far as I know from other Lesbian women, entirely without men in it.

I was in awe. It never occurred to me that people could organise their lives to only have women in them, as the largely secular society I lived in merged women and men, assimilating women into a form of racist, heterosexist, capitalist male supremacist society that greatly enforced women caring for men, girls caring for men, and women and girls defining their ambitions and actions in terms of how men felt about them. I got how entirely fucked up that was and it led me to wear out a t-shirt that proclaimed, “A Woman Without a Man is Like A Fish Without a Bicycle”. A white Lesbian woman who was not Separatist gave it to me.

As I lived in queer community, I learned being a Lesbian Separatist didn't provide one with the ideal life I imagined—rather foolishly. To be a woman is to know what men do to women. To be Lesbian is to know what het people do to Lesbians. To be a Separatist, as I heard about it as a supporter of Lesbian Separatism, was to become the target of animosity and alarming levels of hostile judgment of not only straight men, gay men, and het women, but also of other lesbians who denounced it as hateful, bigoted, exclusionary, and so on.

So, really, it was to be marginalised in already marginalised cultures. As for the latter charge, I've witnessed few sexual cultures more exclusionary than het culture. Those of us who are not het are purged from it, are scorned and ridiculed in our youth, and are either hated outright, or are “tolerated” in the most condescendingly obnoxious ways. I've had to separate almost entirely from my white Christian het-obsesses family due to their utter refusal to acknowledge or be responsible with their heterosexual power and privileges. Needless to say, the women in my family have had much more to endure in the way of insults and assaults from men they were married to than the men have. Overall, the men have done well, having someone to wash their clothes, clean their homes, and be sexually available to them. I'm not making any determination about the women's agency here, except to note that being a Lesbian Separatist was not, ever, an option presented to them. It isn't a reality any more than being a Buddhist nun or monk is an option to them. But at least they may have seen some news stories about Buddhists who live cloistered lives; not so with Lesbian Separatists.

Corporate media hasn't touched the subject in the last twenty years, to the very best of my recollection. Curiously, corporate media is liberally reporting on trans existence--never beyond M2F and F2M white, class-privileged social circles, however. But trans issues are respectfully if narrowly reported on so much more so than on white, class-privileged Lesbian Separatist or lesbian feminist experience. For example, Chaz's physical/surgical transformation as well as the empathically told stories and political struggles of several white transsexual people are well-known to het middle Amerikkka; the work of Sheila Jeffreys and of any Butch Lesbian Feminist is not. It appears to me that CRAP-loaded media power is far less threatened by people surgically changing their gender than by Butch and Radical Lesbian women who want to demolish male supremacy and maintain sites of on-going radical resistance and woman-centered anti-gynocidal culture. CRAP-loaded media won't go there at all.

The second most exclusionary cultures I'm aware of are het men's culture and gay men's culture. Het men have loads of power with which to determine their social lives. They often organise it to leave out or exclude all women and gay men. Gay men often organise their lives to leave out het men and all women. My experience of gay male culture is that it is attached to forms of misogyny and sexism, as well as to some forms of heterosexism, that it won't acknowledge or responsibly and radically transform.

The first challenge to Lesbian Separatism that I read in print was by Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider. I took in her words carefully, and have reread the essay on occasion to remind myself of her challenges and points of view, and ended up believing and taking to heart what she had to say while also supporting Lesbian Separatism as a political practice. I understand that many women, most women, who live in a secular or religious heterosexist society will not likely be able to be Lesbian Separatist.

The reason I support it is because I support women doing more than surviving het and gay male supremacist societies. I support women living relatively well in them, to whatever extent that is possible, and it does appear to be possible with greater ease among class-privileged people especially.

The single most abusive challenge to Lesbian culture that I've ever seen, other than by het and gay male-identified people, is from trans people. So severe is the social and cultural assault against Lesbians, including Separatists, that I'm not sure it can be overstated.

What has been alarming for me to witness is how liberally accepted and supported the invasion and violation of Lesbian lives and culture has been by every demographic imaginable. Well, het men actually don't seem to give a shit, but that's because they view Lesbianism as being for them. Trans activists and het male supremacists together and apart exploit, appropriate, and attempt to colonise, control, and dominate Lesbian spaces, politics, and lives. Where is the progressive to radical outrage about this happening?

Whenever I've heard trans activists—always white, almost always class-privileged—a tiny percent of the actual trans community that will never make it to the stage and the mic, I've heard how put upon and degraded trans people are by Lesbians. I've never once heard from trans people how they invade and violate Lesbian culture and community. Not once. I've never heard trans people be respectful and responsible with the privileges that have—various but apparent—to invade and violate Lesbian women.

Now, what we must keep in mind is how girls and women across sexuality, class, region, and race are sexually violated in every way conceivable—and in many inconceivable ways—by males including by boys, men, and some trans people who were born male-bodied and who remain male-bodied.

Male-bodied people are arguing that they are Lesbian, as are formerly male-bodied people. I find this beyond insensitive to Lesbian culture and community. (To come into these feelings, I have to center the experiences of Lesbians, not trans people or anyone else. To do this, I'd argue, is a radical profeminist act.) All of us are socialised—normally coerced, manipulated, and terroristically forced--to care for and about anyone who wasn't born and raised as a girl, regardless of whether or not she is female-bodied or intersex. We are all taught to not respect or regard the physical and communal integrity of anyone who is female-bodied and women and Lesbian.  We are all taught that women exist to serve and service men. Even in queer communities, Lesbian energies have been spent caring for gay men and gay male energies do not come back to reciprocate the love. Therefore it doesn't surprise me that het, queer, and trans people assume they have the right to invade Lesbian spaces, lives, and communities.

What do you call a politic and practice that privileges males or formerly male-identified people disrespecting Lesbian lives, relationships, communities, and political projects moving us toward greater liberation for Lesbian women? How does it come to pass that this is seen as regressive, oppressive, and bigoted: being female and loving females as a woman and as a Lesbian and wanting to be with females only? How is it bigoted, regressive, or oppressive for females forced to be women under patriarchal violence, who are denied social permissions and privileges to love other women, to seek to do so in peace?

I'll share an anecdote. Not quite ten years ago now, I encountered a very “educated” white male who was sexually active only with women. A white gay male I knew, who was an age-peer of his (I was older than both young men) had a serious crush on him, and hoped they'd be sexual together, but this het-active male—who identified as pansexual for some reason—never wanted to have sex with any male-bodied person. He's only ever been sexual with female-bodied people who identify as women. The gay male I knew pined for him as did a few het women. He was considered “attractive” by many people across sexuality.

Then one day he told me he was a Lesbian. Really. He did. And he made some convoluted case for this being “true”. I called his sorry ass out on it. I said, “You're always going to be socially male, socially perceived as a man, and anyone who is with you will not be with a Lesbian.” I said he'd better be responsible with his male privileges, power, and entitlements, and that among those was the power to name himself as he wished, in ways completely unaccountable to and disrespectful of women. I told him to not attempt to manipulate Lesbian and bisexual women by pretending he was Lesbian. After all, had he grown up with a female body, knowing what it was to desire people whose bodies were like “his”? No. Had he had girlhood crushes on girls, feeling ashamed or being made to feel wrong for liking people of the same sex? No. Had he encountered all the many forms of discrimination, threat, and violence that Lesbian young women face? No. But he wanted to declare himself a Lesbian. Why? Because he was a het male with all the arrogance and entitlements in place to believe he could do so and get away with it. And he was getting away with it in some parts of the liberal circles he operated in. He was not expecting to come up against any radical opposition because for the most part none existed, until he confided in me. I supported him, instead, in owning his own political location, power, privileges, and entitlements, but not abusing them.

I've also disagreed with het men and het women for telling me they were, really, gay men. I've told them I find their self-definitions an expression of gross insensitivity to those of us who are gay.

For some strange reasons which will be analysed and determined in the next generation, trans existence is being respected in ways and in places that Lesbian existence is not. I don't support one group utterly invading and violating another, and that's what has happened socially and politically to Lesbian community by trans-identified people. 

I've heard people argue the parallel to being a Jew: some people convert, and aren't they then Jews? Well, religiously and culturally, yes, but ethnically and historically no. And, here's the significant difference: Jews welcome Jews who convert. That "welcoming" is a rather critical part of the reality. If a grossly disregarded, ignored, assaulted, mistreated, subjugated people struggling for survival don't welcome you in, and if you have some privileges, media access, community support, and institutional power and resources that they do not, and you insist you belong, you might wish to consider any outsider's insistence of inclusion a form of obnoxious and violating aggressive and oppressive behavior.

But back the not insignificant matter of men's violence against female-bodied people. Can you possibly imagine what it must be like to try and carve out some relationships and social-cultural spaces free of men, free of male bodies and all the many triggers they carry, free of male privileges and entitlements showing up in all their glaring arrogance and insistence, only to have your culture and being invaded by male-bodied people claiming to be Lesbian? I cannot fully imagine it, really. But it horrifies me to consider it.

If you want to compassionately imagine it in more detail, I encourage you to read what Lesbian women have written about such invasions and violations. To put in bluntly, it's a systematic gross assault against the psyches and bodies of women who have already endured--like all women who grew up as girls--the gross assault of het men's systematic violence, in the home and outside the home. That's what it is. And while liberal, progressive, and radical-minded folks do seem to oppose violence against women, somehow all go silent when it comes to trans-invasion of Lesbian lives and communities. Or, not silent but instead aggressively and outspokenly supportive of trans people showing up wherever they choose to or decide to, claiming rights to be celebrated, cared for, and employed by Lesbians, naming themselves however they wish no matter how insulting and insensitive to Lesbians that naming and those many other actions are.

I stand with Lesbian women, including, now at a more respectful distance, with Lesbian Separatist women in opposing any and all invasions and violations, all forms of insensitivity and aggression leveled by trans-identified folks and their liberal supporters.

I have had a few friendships for not too long periods of time—from hours to weeks to months to years—with a few white Lesbian Separatist women. I have found each woman to be deeply caring, profoundly thoughtful, sensitive, and woman-loving. I support any Lesbian living her life as she wishes and as she is able, with all the threats and dangers of male supremacist/male-adoring/phallocentric, liberal, and grossly heterosexist society condemning Lesbians as essentially bigots and haters. The liberal queer community, on the whole, has done nothing to deepen our understanding of the reasons for militant resistance to trans invasion; they have done the opposite: they have perpetuated the myth that Lesbian = hater. 

Liberal queers and privileged trans activists are doing to Lesbians what men do to women' generally: portray them only as hateful, scornful, reactionary human beings without a self-determining political cause worth fighting for. When lesbophobia and anti-Lesbian bigotry is seen as just as much of a social offence, as just as intolerable, just as obnoxious, violent, egregious, inhumane, and threatening as homophobia and transphobia, I'll know something radical has shifted in the society I live in. I'll know that male supremacy, heterosexism, and liberalism have each loosened their braided cultural gynocidal death-grip on Lesbian women's lives.

For more on Lesbian Rights, see *here*.