Kyle Payne and the Problem of Profeminism

It's not new news.

In fact, it's a story that has been extensively discussed in some circles of the blogosphere: Kyle Payne, a white anti-racist, anti-globalization pro-feminist has been charged and convicted for sexually violating a woman over whom he had complete control. She had no meaningful agency at the time of him violating her through entrance of her room leading to him touching her and photographing her, for his own sexual purposes. (He wasn't documenting bruises for a police report, for example.) He did what he did while she was unconscious from inebriation.

The gist of a quote by Andrea Dworkin comes to mind: the consequence to women of getting drunk ought to be a hangover, not date rape. Kyle, according to the news story, did not commit date rape: they were not on a date, and it remains unclear exactly to what degree he violated her body. But he did use and abuse her in various ways that are abhorrent and outrageous, and antithetical to profeminist values and practices.

Kyle's job, as RA, was to make sure she was safe and secure in the dormitory. His job, as a white male supremacist, is to take advantage of his many privileges and entitlements, including having access, on demand, to women's bodies.

What led to her inebriation is not part of this story; it is irrelevant to what Kyle did. The fact of her being so inebriated is indeed an important factor: it means she didn't have the agency and ability even to shout, "Get away from me, Kyle." Our patriarchally mythic childhood stories tell us that men get excited because a woman is a catatonic thing. "Is there anything more alluring?," male supremacists ask each other, men who disgruntledly must do the extra work of violating women who move and speak.

In Western patriarchal mythology, and in the societies which perpetuate them, women are supposed to be used and abused in ways men desire, which, as Dworkin notes:

Antifeminism defends the conviction that the male abuse of women, especially in sex, has an implicit logic, one that no program of social justice can or should eliminate; that because the male use of women originates in the distinct and opposite natures of each which converge in what is called “sex,” women are not abused when used as women — but merely used for what they are by men as men.

– Andrea Dworkin, Right-wing Women

If we pay attention to a range of white Western men's tales (or if we live in reality), we notice it is women of all colors, across the globe, who are there for the taking. Men act on these entitlements with frequency oppressively effecting millions of women and girls directly; this fact is, depending on how you look at it and experience it, horrifically alarming, or frustratingly commonplace. The Kyle news may be met with a comment like "that hypocritical f*cker!" or "of course: what else is new?" I tend to have both responses when I hear about stories such as Kyle's abuse of a woman student, perhaps in part to my knowledge of what other profeminist men have done, and of what antifeminist men do with considerably less anxiety.

The problem of profeminism is that its practicioners don't state what our principles and values are, exactly. Given the variety of forms feminism takes, to whom are profeminist men accountable: the women we call feminists? Time and again, when arguing with the sort of white heterosexually active man who speaks "progressively" of his use of pornography featuring Asian women, or his enjoyment of sadomasochistic sex, including calling his sexual partner his sex-slave, he'll use the line, lying or not, self-servingly at any rate: "My girlfriend is the one who suggested it" or, at least "she enjoys it." Perhaps she did and perhaps she does. And perhaps there is more to the story than that.

My positition as a radical profeminist is that those of us who call ourselves profeminist had better be clear on what our politics, practices, and values are. The fact that some women are drawn to or introduced to sadomasochism by men or pornography, are ethusiastically engaged in or compulsorarily acting out sexist heterosexuality, or being femme in heterosexist ways, does not alter my understanding of how patriarchy works; rather, it confirms it. This doesn't mean I am entitled to tell women with whom and how to be sexual or social; to believe I am entitled to do so is utterly patriarchal, and not at all profeminist. I believe, instead, in calling out men who use women's feelings, experiences, and conditions inside patriarchy to defend our own patriarchal behavior.

The problem of profeminism is that Kyle may be seen as a deviant in our midst, a betrayer to the rest of us allegedly "good boys." The harsher truth is that most men, profeminist or not, remain fully entitled to behave in ways detrimental to the goal of achieving women's liberation from patriarchy. And a key component of that entitlement is that it not be addressed and challenged by men. Men do not, as a rule, accurately name what we do, let alone take responsibility for it. Rarer still is the phenomenon of men making the commitment to see to it that our male supremacist entitlements are revoked, or that the price paid for acting on them is so high as to make men fear for their lives.

The problem of profeminism is that the presence of The White Brotherhood's own value system--its politics and practices--are not sufficiently identified, challenged, and collectively rejected as antithetical to our work as profeminist activists.

If, in fact, Kyle is us and we are him, where does he, and where do we, go from here?

To cast him out of our "club" is to do what? Pretend we are now purified of men with pornographically rapist tendencies and histories? To sympathetically support him is to do what? Reinforce his entitlements and pretend that what he did is not an act of gross inhumanity?

For me, the radically profeminist challenge is take a third approach: to demand that he be accountable to feminists. To demand that he be in regular contact with profeminists who are directly accountable to feminists who work against the atrocity of rape and the harm of pornography; to make sure he doesn't violate another woman, to the best of our abilities; to make sure he learns all he can from what he did in order to become a humane and responsible member of the profeminist community; to let him know what the consequences will be if he violates another woman; and to follow through with those consequences should he violate a woman again.

Feminist bloggers immediately discussed the Kyle Payne case. It is not surprising to me, and it is outrageous, that so few male bloggers will take this matter on, critically. This absense of action reveals the extent to which The White Brotherhood demands our silence on all matters about which we should speak up and otherwise act in ways that are distinctly and radically antipatriarchal.

Welcome

There are too few blogs moderated by men with discussions leading to activism that seek an end to rape and racism, to name but two atrocities.

This will be a space to report news and have constructive, pro-activist (not elitist academic or abstract) discussion about how to dismantle white supremacist, ecocidal Western patriarchal societies and the ideologies and violence that bolsters and defines them. I hope what appears here is useful to radical activists, particularly to Womanists and feminists.

No comments will be accepted that promote misogynistic/male supremacist, racist/white supremacist/anti-Indigenist, homophobic/heterosexist, ecocidal or other pro-oppression, pro-"death culture" stances and actions. The goal is to compost CRAP: Corporate Racist Atrocious Patriarchy; I'm a sucker for pithy acronyms--what can I say?

I am a white, gay, class-privileged Westernized man. I have many of the privileges and entitlements that come with being a man, being white, not being raised in poverty, not being physically disabled, and not being a child or very elderly. I also benefit by having English as a first language in an English-speaking region of the world, and by having an "education", as defined by Academics. (I do not equate "being educated" with being wise, knowledgeable, perceptive, or intelligent. Some of the most ignorant people I know have a graduate degree.)

I find the Internet to be a particularly despicable place, often. It has taken me years to decide to have a blog, because I never wanted to be committed to being here as often as bloggers are, if attending to their blogs regularly and responsibly. Not that this news is going to shock anyone, but cyberplace is filled with industry-produced pornography, and also has many misogynistic, racist, and misopedic websites and web networks designed by men, predominantly white men, to participate in and gain pleasure from the rape and torture of women and girls. (Boys, trans, and intersex folks are also made into objects of abuse also at these sites and within these networks.)

As for my own history of participation in white male supremacist activities:

I once used what used to be termed soft-core pornography; I have never enjoyed pornography portraying "sex acts" between people--or between people and nonhuman animals. And I haven't spent any money on pornography in a very long time, and never online; I used to look at some "adult" magazines geared to gay men, and later at Internet images--still and video--of young men jerking off, or going "solo" as it's put in gay sex website lingo. I endeavor not to look at these images and videos again. Will I ever seek them out? We'll see. I'll state here if and when I do. Putting this statement out to you is one form of accountability.

My experience of heterosexual men who use industry pornography is that they are threatening to women's self-esteem and dignity, interpersonally, at least. I don't give gay men a pass because we don't desire to look at images of objectified women. Gay pornography, as has been noted especially by Christopher Kendall, contains all the elements and values of a racist, patriarchal, consumerist sexuality. Replacing an image of a Photoshopped woman, presented as if she has no history or intellect, with a Photoshopped man, presented similarly, doesn't make those images liberating or radically empowering; the fact that they now proliferate commercial mass media is a sign industry pornographers have done one part of their job, with a healthy paycheck to prove it.

I have engaged two younger men in physical-sexual contact since being an adult: all the sexual contact I had before becoming an adult was with age peers, was consensual, with fellow teenagers, or was in the category of sexual abuse of me by men. Given that the law doesn't understand the limits or subtleties of meaningful consent, only the abuse done to me would be actionable in court; the abuse I did to others would not be. This tells us a lot about the lack of social understanding of what abuse is and how it is accomplished. While I have never used physical force or overt coercion, restraints, drugs, or alcohol, to obtain sexual contact with another person, I have used forms of manipulative seduction that were geared to appear and be experienced by the other person as non-threatening; no one I've had sex with was afraid of me or is afraid of me; I say this not based on self-serving speculation, but on the non-sexual verbal contact I have since had with each individual I abused, which has included me owning what I did to them as abuse, apologizing for it, and them accepting my apology. While I had the means to use my entitlements, privileges, and power to obtain sex in a more overtly abusive way, I didn't do so because I didn't desire to do so. We men generally don't do what we don't desire to do, when it comes to sexual activity. And we are able to do what we do because we have the means to do it, including interpersonal and social systems of secrecy and mandatory complicity.

I am not presenting myself as someone incapable of sexual abuse, only as someone who has taken it upon myself, with full accountability to feminist friends and colleagues, to make sure it doesn't happen again: for example, I don't put myself in situations and locations where I might be tempted to objectify young (or older) men, for example; I don't have a home computer in part for that reason. For the last several years I have been celibate: there isn't an active sexuality that exists yet that I find compelling to participate in. I am gay-identified because of two things: I only desire to be sexual with men, and I see individual women as full human beings, not as body parts or things who exist for my pleasure.

There are many ways to harm women of all colors and men of color, of course, beyond sexual contact. And being celibate doesn't mean a man, in my case, cannot objectify others in violating ways. I do not practice objectification by interrupting any early stage of doing so. Objectification is a political action, not a genetic imperative. To those heterosexual [or gay] men who say, "Objectifying women [or men] is natural and inevitable" I say: Given my own experience and my work with other men, I believe you are wrong, and are self-servingly making excuses for continuing a behavior that sexually pleases you, at the expense of others' humanity.

As for other ways of being abusive, I can, on occasion, raise my voice or withdraw from conversation in frustration, hurt, and anger; I am not, generally, "a yeller." I don't like being part of loud discussions with voices raised.

I find myself feeling really irritable and annoyed when around white people and/or men with class privilege who proclaim liberal perspectives on the world while believing them to be politically useful or responsible, and that irritability is usually intuitively picked up by those around me, regardless of whether or not I speak or withdraw from the conversation. I am told that my non-verbal "energy" speaks loud and clear, and can be intimidating or have a shaming effect on those around me--leaving them with a sense of "I am wrong", or "I am bad". As I wish to engage constructively with others, I choose to not be that social, as I do not expect all my family and friends to see things from a radical perspective; and given that I also do not always see things from radical perspectives (meaning striving to get to the roots of the social-political matter) can get irritated with myself. I welcome my own lapses into liberalism or other forms of political ignorance being pointed out to me; my radical activist friends know this. But I live in a liberal society; it is easiest to maintain a liberal perspective on the world because it doesn't threaten the oppressor's worldview, nor does it demand that someone with privileges deal responsibly with the political consequences of her or his own behavior.

White men's conservatism, in the U.S., is currently alarmingly close to fascism. I oppose it as well. It is ridiculous to me that feminists, any feminists, are called "feminazis" by men. Men who use this term seriously are utterly delusional about what fascism is and has been; they obviously have never been on the receiving end of fascistic policies and practices or they don't recognize them as fascistic. (Some white men with graduate degrees use that term, feminazi, as if it made sense or had social meaning: this alone shows how little one can learn spending years in an academic setting.)

I have never struck another person in anger, or with the intention of harming them, except my older brother (who had cooties and I think still does). When we were little and he was picking on me, including physically, I would sometimes strike back, hitting his arm or shoulder. My efforts at self-defense had pathetic and harmless results: no injuries to him, no "ouch" exclaimed by him, nor even a halt to his behavior. I'm just not a physical fighter. There were and are names for boys-to-men like me, and they range from pansy to pacifist. It occurs to me now how humorously ironic it is that the word "fist" appears in the term pacifist. Ah, English: a language from a culture and civilization known for what Marimba Ani, in her astoundingly important book, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (1994) terms its "rhetorical ethic." This ethic, she makes clear, is made socially real in oppressive action; it is not simply a problem of saying things one doesn't mean. White Westerners say one thing while doing another, with atrocious and horrific results. To learn more about her book, please go to the following website, which, in the lower left, includes link to chapters one and six of the book. Chapter six contains an extensive analysis of that ethic, see here.

I'll close for now.