The Mother as Monster: The Demonisation of Nadya Suleman

The written material here in this blogpost is copyrighted 2009, by Julian Real. All Rights Reserved. [This is a revised version of a recently posted piece titled "Conceiving Misogyny: the Top Ten Steps Toward the Demonisation of Nadya Suleman".]

Social scorn hath no fury greater than that aimed by media at women for doing little to no harm relative to what men do in abject abundance with impunity.

THIS IS WHAT RACIST, CLASSIST MISOGYNY LOOKS & SOUNDS LIKE. [WARNING: The following three videos are of P.R.I.C.K.s, saying what P.R.I.C.K.s make sure they have plenty of time to say, ad nauseam]:







The media's overt and undisguised hatred for a woman seen as a thing, in this case a person named Nadya Suleman, has been upsetting and bewildering me for the last couple of weeks. I seek here to unravel or separate out some of the strategical strings that comprise the noose that dominant media have put around her neck. There is a vicious collective will at work that is manufactured and manipulated by and through the media. We are welcomed to hope she will fatally fall or, barring that, that she'll have [at least eight of] her children taken away from her because she's one or more of the following terms:] selfish, stupid, irresponsible, inhumane, psychotic, and/or a freak.

This post is not focused on the politics of over-population, an ecocidally serious topic indeed. To approach that issue, I'd start with a critique of people at the top by focusing in on privileged white heterosexual nuclear families and other politically non-threatened, socially unstigmatised kinship units who are determined to make sure they maintain dominion over the Earth, nonhuman animals, and people who are not so powerful. Nadya Suleman, viewed from the ladder of social hierarchy is--reality check--in the "not so powerful" category.

One secret wish buried inside the hope of Nadya having at least eight fewer children, a wish made considerably less secretive through death threats, is that she'll then take her own life and rid society--finally--of the Greatest Threat to Humanity by a Creature since Godzilla. According to many, she is an out-of-control beast, an entirely irrational human being. Her current media moniker, "Octo-mom", reflects this contemptuous dehumanisation and demonisation of her.

I have been considering her imagined crimes against humanity and their relative impact on the globe given events that have occurred over the last eight, sixteen, and thirty-two years, including fairly contemporary actions by only one human being, such as the case of the grand thief, Bernie Madoff. His actions and their consequences are considerably more harmful to humanity and the Earth than anything Nadya may hope to do in her lifetime. This example demonstrates how the least powerful, the poor, are systematically accused of doing what only the wealthy are capable of doing: stealing tax dollars, hiding millions of dollars that would otherwise be taxed, corruptly wasting our money, ripping off the middle and working class in ways the poor cannot even dream of doing. When news stories like the one about her hit analog airwaves and digital networks, it's enticingly easy to lose an international/global perspective regarding urgently important dangers and atrocities. Put simply, Nadya Suleman is not more dangerous and unstable than nuclear waste, or the U.S. government and its corporate-owned economy.

The media, let's not forget, is a group of human beings with political and technical power. They control a great deal, including the degrees to which some human beings can think of themselves as being unconditionally estimable, lovable, and wonderful. When a poor woman of color is systematically negatively targeted for contempt, such as in the ways Nadya Suleman has been grossly mistreated, it is never an attack on one person alone: it is an assaultive attack against a gendered class (women), a raced class ("non-whites"), and an economic class (the poor). It functions as a warning, a reminder from the elite social groups and the media that spreads their values. Such groups, which overwhelmingly comprise the populations that own media, have incessant institutional control over how we are perceived, treated, and live our lives. One of the messages in the media is that women are not really women unless they birth children.

There's irony here, given that Nadya, in the eyes of alleged pro-Lifers, has committed many egregious sins: she was born female and grew to be a woman (it would be a different kind of sin if she grew up to be a man), she is single, she is of color, she is poor, and she is reliant on relatively few tax dollars for child support (compared to people with Swiss bank accounts or corporations that take their mailing address and/or business off-shore). No woman in any of these category goes unscrutinised or unstigmatised, while super-rich individuals and corporate execs behave with little to no public awareness or any form of accountability to U.S. tax-payers.

Taking one of these categories of appropriate womanhood, being a mother, we can note an overtly discriminatory, oppressive, and misogynist double standard. The standards set by media for being 'a good mother' have all the flexibility and compassion of steel trap. To be a good father, on the other hand, one must simply be present some of the time, earn some income, not be a drug addict or alcoholic, and not be an active or caught incest perpetrator.

To be a good mother, one must approach sainthood, daily--I'm sorry, I mean hourly--with a dominant cultural clock with video capability, ticking and clicking away across the land, especially noting the actions of women who fall into one or more of the above mentioned categories of social contempt. Women struggling to balance childcare and pay-work are not only criticised, but their very existence is blamed on feminism. Systematically in the media, feminism, not our misogynist, racist economy, is "to blame" for women having to make these choices. Never mind that prior to the emergence of a Black middle class, African American women always did both. Hey, media-makers: this means before the appearance of the white middle-class feminisms of the 1960s and 1970s.

That rich white men and women often do not raise their own children is not considered a systematic form of child neglect and abuse by them as parents. Class-privileged children are sent to live out their young lives in physically and emotionally abusive boarding and prep schools; that's not deemed parental neglect: that's what the responsible wealthy parent does. Children have also been forced into boarding schools across racial lines, with no negative stigma attached at the time to those who did the forcing, even while those children were corporally punished and otherwise treated more like slaves than students.

There are bewildering paradoxical messages given to all women, though, as long as the women appear and behave the way rich media mogels tell women to be heterosexual. The media-acceptable woman must be sufficiently heterosexual. This includes being personally and legally attached to a man, perceived by media as striving to achieve white status, be at least middle class, and overvaluing a nuclear family model of kinship.

If the woman is culturally categorised as heterosexual, media messages vary from the compulsory and mandatory to the 'merely' routinely repeated and manipulative. Within the spectrum are the following proclamations: You must be chaste until such time that you are wedded to a man and then you must not be chaste; You must be sexual with only one man for to do otherwise is a sin against God and 'Man' (God being a man, and 'man' being a god); You also must be sexually attractive to men, whether married or not. Because if you can't do what women who have been trained by pimps can do, you might lose your man. Married, partnered, or single, women should present themselves as appreciative of all heterosexual men's adoration, seduction, exploitation, by being made unconscious, or, if conscious, through brute force; You must bring forth children from your own womb, and if the little ones are determined to be male, or have fleshy genital parts that sufficiently resemble or can be surgically constructed soon after birth to be a penis, all the better. If you do not succeed in these areas, be prepared for social rejection and scorn. Note: raising an intersex child who has no medical issues, without employing surgical intervention, marks you as a bad parent as constitutes child abuse.

Women who parent must also limit the number and moment-by-moment monitor the behavior of men who have access to their children. If a father, step-dad, grandfather, uncle or male neighbor turns out to have perpetrated child sexual abuse, the mother of the children is summarily blamed for this happening, not only by society but often by the incest or molestation survivors. There is absolutely no expectation that men will or even should report their own sexual interest in children, let alone their perpetration. Lorde knows the child molesters never report one another to the police, nor take responsibility for their inhumane crimes. The world of men behaving badly is taken for granted as an unshakable social given. Men have the entrenched entitlement to have sexual access to just about anyone of any age. The sphere of motherhood is expected to negotiate that patriarchally mined and perp-protecting terrain as if there is a map pointing out dangers here, here, and, don't you see?, two over there.

One spank of a toddler's butt, or yank of child's arm in a supermarket parking lot is enough to outrage the misogynous, misopedic public, a public that has been spanking and yanking children, and doing far worse, than we collectively care to admit. (I am opposed to all forms of physical and emotional abuse of children; the point is that those who point fingers hypocritically do what they are upset with "caught" mothers for doing. As in the case with Nadya, being caught in the spotlight makes you a target, and all rights to a private life may be revoked.)

That men secretly, privately rape their daughters and sons is less "controversial"--such stories come and go in the media, but there's no sustained effort by the media to prevent this from happening inside the home. And the difference here is not that the "problem behavior" isn't recorded on video; it's that because the video was made by the rapist and is often networked to other child rapists, it becomes "one of those awful things men do and can't be stopped from doing", not worthy of the kind of mass ridicule and murderous contempt reserved for, say, a poor women who has sixteen children. Social scorn hath no fury no greater than that aimed by media at women for doing very relatively little (or no) harm relative to what men do in abundance with impunity.

In the days, months, and years following mid-September of 2001, Amerikkkan masterminds and their media have been able to project what the U.S. does with impunity (except on Sept. 11, 2001) onto the existence, intentions, and purposes of what has been termed "Islamic Terrorism" or "Islamofascism". (Now please explain to me why 'white Christian Terrorist' and 'white Christofascist' and aren't commonly used terms?)

That Nadya Suleman is reportedly of Iraqi descent on her father's side, only makes this story more appropriate in garnering the around-the-clock attention of the massive U.S. media.

It is necessary to note a sequence of commercial manipulations that is now so repetitive as to be predictable. This is how misogynist media frenzy operates:

We begin by being misled as to who, really, is in charge. Morning and evening 'news' shows and channels, entertainment and talk shows are made by corporate officials to convince us that the wrong people are to blame for what ails us.

Meanwhile, the mass media--in harmonious concert with every other dominant social and cultural institution which comprises the political fire in the belly of the U.S.--remains controlled by rich white men. White male dominated politicians and press habitually get into bed with CEOs, COOs, and CFOs. They engage in "immoral and unnatural acts" while curiously opposing any loving interpersonal, non-commercial union that is not between one [allegedly] heterosexual man and one [allegedly] heterosexual woman.

These very unnaturally corrupt and oppressive acts, with the generous support of their apologists and less generous support of their lawyers, get short-term media attention. (I mean, really: is there anything more boring or repugnant than watching CEO-madmen "coupling" with mostly male Senators, or in threesomes with Press people?)

While their selective stories are breaking news, doused are the incendiary details and perspectives which might clarify why we keep catching blurry glimpses of this endless line of competitors. Part of the dousing procedure involves replacing statused public figures with another far less corrupt perpetrator, one who has little to no impact on the global human community, the Earth, or its many nonhuman inhabitants.

The replacement might, for example, involve a disappeared North American white girl, usually blond and always class-privileged; a succession of pornographic details are periodically strewn about so as to keep the depth of her humanity, and therefore the humanity of all girls, under wraps.

Better yet, a story about a woman, preferably of color, and even better for distraction: let's hope she's poor... oh, and without a male partner!! We also need an angle on the story, something that makes it "unusual".

Enter the story of Nadya Suleman. The facts, being only partially relevant here, are as follows: a woman who grew up lonely as an only child wanted to have children, and lots of them. She prepared for this by arranging to have many of her eggs fertilised and frozen. On occasion, some of these eggs would be surgically implanted in her womb. Usually most of the eggs wouldn't thrive, and one or two babies would eventually be born. Until recently she had six children. Nothing about this story warrants special media attention.

She then decided to have another child, maybe two more at most. An utterly corrupt unethical doctor implants her body with six of her eggs at one time. All take hold, draw on Nadya's body for nutrition, and grow. Two of those eggs split, and thirty weeks after implantation, something that has never happened before in recorded history occurred: she birthed eight living babies who have stayed alive to date.

Everything else the media has done with this story is misogynist, racist, and classist scapegoating of this woman as a Demon.

A misogynist media-fueled frenzy ensued.

The only newsworthy story, if there is one, is that someone birthed eight living octoplets. Given the odds against such a birth, the story of note isn't even how this fertility doctor could make this remotest of possibilities possible. Please note: many doctors implant many eggs into many women. He is not special. His ethics don't differ significantly from many other fertility doctors. His ethics don't differ in the least with countless plastic surgeons who will perform procedure after procedure on any woman who has the cash or insurance to pay him. Where is the media outrage at the doctors who perform hundreds of breast implants? Or at routine and medically unnecessary hysterectomies? Or at the history in this country of forced sterilisation? The medical establishment is a greedy, woman-hating community. Nadya's life was put at great risk by a doctor who could have refused to put six eggs into her body. That she didn't want to selectively abort speaks to her values about fertilised eggs, fetuses, and lack of self-regard.

Giving birth to multiple children is dangerous to any pregnant woman; carrying eight fetuses is likely to be fatal for her. The patriarchal Right-wing rule about banning abortions is they are to be banned only when the woman carrying them isn't killed along with them; killing hundreds of pregnant women in Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Korea, and Japan, to name but a few places--of color--White Rightists also systematically prevent the birth of otherwise viable fetuses, en masse, through barbaric woman-killing. White men have also been ruthlessly creating and enforcing laws and policies that force U.S. women of color to be sterilised.

Putting birthing over any pregnant woman's own well-being is the patriarchally correct thing to do. Making the possibility of women of color having healthy babies much less a probability than for white women is one of white male supremacy's agenda items. A poor woman of color who has values that preclude her from selectively reducing the number of viable fetuses in her womb is not praised for her integrity, because women aren't supposed to have integrity, including physically. Her body should have been reprobed, the media shouts, to take out some of those fetuses!

One might ask: if she only wanted one more child, why didn't she just adopt? Nadya didn't have the option to adopt just one more child because she's publicly if not also legally categorised as "unfit" to do so.

The period of scrutiny of corrupt rich white men by the public generally lasts as a central spectacle, as a phenomenon, for about four days. (If the U.S. Right is personally going after a man left of centrist, the spectacle may go on for years; sometimes the criminal characters have to be recast while the story continues. But for such a story to continue, there must be "bad women" involved in the primary or secondary plot lines. Our attention, in other words, even while supposedly on men's sexual behavior, is habitually fixed on the 'questionable' behavior of women. If we can focus only on a woman or on women, this works much better; we needn't notice the evil-doing men behind or around the curtains, beneath desks, and between sheets.

Keeping all this in mind, we can see how this story of a woman of color, a poor single woman, and a mother whose fitness for parenthood is called into question.
According to the 'universal law' of misogynist media frenzy, given each of her 'crimes' her story can be expected to stay in the headlines for weeks if not months to come.

Life in the U.S. prior to President Obama's inauguration on January 21st, 2009 is meant to be a fading neo-fascist nightmare. The media helps this process of forgetting along by focusing on what a fashion plate Michelle Obama ought to be each and every day of her life; what Paris Hilton is doing; which female celebrity is sporting a 'baby bump'; which heterosexual stars are getting married or divorced; where the Jonas Brothers are currently performing; who ought to be the next American Idol; and whether or not Jennifer Aniston has bumped into her ex, Brad Pitt. The media relies on us maintaining no historical perspective and having increasingly short attention spans.

If we mentally resuscitate the recent past and are willing to take in material that is longer than a sound-bite, text message, or typical YouTube video, we can remember that G.W., Dick, and Donald committed copious impeachment-worthy breaches of the U.S. Constitution, accomplished so many unfathomably cruel and horrific acts of genocide, and violated any measure of International Human Rights, all with a very well-rehearsed plan. This plan is designed to make wealthy mass murderers richer and strengthen their control of more landmasses and their natural 'resources'. They have been doing this while children, women, and men, predominantly of color, as well as Earth's many other nonhuman beings, have been poisoned and slaughtered. That such men are pro-Death should go without saying.

Unasked are a few questions which I think are pertinent.

Why do white men, one man at a time--a man named Bernie Madoff--not garner as much public vitriol as Nadya Suleman?

Why selectively call out Nadya on bearing children with an emotional agenda that saddles her newborns with a job--to fulfill unmet needs cultivated in her lonely, siblingless childhood--and not also call out men who impregnate woman after woman, or the same woman, so as to have an emotional claim to immortality, to have a son who will carry on his name? Is this not at least as common an emotional agenda that also saddles newborns with a job?

Given the proclivities of rich white men to procure women (and pubescent girls) for sexual use and abuse, women and girls on the streets, women and girls in brothels, women and girls in far-away "exotic" places, women and girls next door, women and girls at home, and given that one of the things wealthy men like to do is have unprotected intercourse with women and girls, and given that once the "rental period" of the woman or girl has ended, what are we to make of his routine impregnation of these women? Is this not an ethical issue for him? How can it be that this behavior doesn't demonise him?

Many men who have casual sexual intercourse with women, once, occasionally, or serially, engage in behavior that gets women pregnant. The men I know in this category do little to nothing to assist in the nurture and support of those babies from birth through adulthood. Are those men demonic for bringing countless children into this world in an irresponsible manner?

If father/daughter incest is the most common form of child sexual abuse, why is it not seen as "unfit" for men to father (here meaning "raise") one or many daughters? Is there nothing more demonic (if we're going to use such a term, and apparently with women we are) than a father or father-figure crawling into the bed of his daughter to violate her sexually and traumatise her physically and psychically?

For me, this is the moral conclusion I arrive at:
What men often do (by engaging in unprotected, coercive, and/or unwelcomed heterosexual intercourse), that frequently results in women becoming pregnant, and leaves women with the trauma of sexual assault, is a form of evil. So to is what the U.S. government and military does. So too is what globalisation, The World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund does.

Nadya is doing at least one of the three interrelated things Western patriarchies tell her she exists to do: be beautiful according to media standards, be sexually available to at least one man, and have babies. Seen this way, it appears her 'crime against patriarchy' was that she didn't have heterosexual intercourse in order to conceive. Get out the stones, and consider throwing them instead at the windows of media centers: Nadya Suleman did nothing criminal nor evil.

Heterosexuality Is Unnatural, no matter what Sex Essentialists say

What follows is a book review from Achille's Heel: The Radical Men's Magazine

The Invention of Heterosexuality by Jonathan Ned Katz

Twelve years ago, Gore Vidal asserted that "there is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or hetero acts." He repeats this hypothesis in an argumentative foreword to Ned Katz's book. But Katz seeks to dig deeper than this and questions the assumptions that lead us to divide people, acts, relationships and feelings into binary opposites. Starting with the first appearance in the United States of the word hetero-sexual, in 1893, he shows how it has moved from its original medical definition to its use in describing "normal", different-sex eroticism.

The original definition is important in the argument that Katz develops. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, attempts were made to identify and name various deviations from the procreative norm. "Hetero-sexuality" described one type of non-procreative perversion involving different-sex desire. Erotic attraction was seen as a healthy sexual instinct when procreation was its aim, but not if it involved only the satisfaction of lustful impulses. It was these drives and impulses that were taken up by Freud, from 1905 onwards, in the development of his theories of sexuality.

It is difficult to imagine a time before knowledge of the powerful concepts and images that Freud put before us. Katz shows how the presumption of a predominantly male, heterosexual norm pervaded Freud's writing, creating an assumption of the biological and historical roots of the hetero/homo divide. In a similar way, Freud displaced the procreative norm and replaced it with the concept of sexual libido and its satisfaction.

In terms of individual development, the choice of sexual object (same- or opposite-sex) was not fixed or restricted, but Freud made it clear that a heterosexual outcome would be both normal and preferred. Homosexuality is seen as "fixated" and "immature" and an undesirable developmental outcome. This impression of an essential, historical and biological truth focussed negative attention on abnormal homosexuality. More importantly, it directed attention away from the heterosexual norm. Katz invites us to check the relative invisibility of discourse on heterosexuality by browsing the indices of relevant seminal texts. As an example, he cites the standard index to Freud's complete works. This contains only one reference to heterosexuality but more than a column of references to homosexuality. Katz goes on to show how heterosexuality grew rapidly from a preferred developmental outcome into a universal, cultural norm. He places Gore Vidal's distinction between persons and acts as post-Kinsey in that Alfred Kinsey's research, reported in "Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male" (1948), described a range of behaviour and practice that did not fit neatly into exclusively homo- or heterocategories.

In the same decade, the words "gay" and "straight" were being used as descriptions of sexual identity, with "straight" meaning "not homosexual". The concept of a gay or lesbian identity and the growth of identity politics have been instrumental in affirming the feelings and lifestyles of those who are glad to be gay. Ned Katz recognises the importance of this movement, but is pessimistic about its potential in the breaking down of the heterosexual norm.

Acceptance of genetically-determined sexual orientation is compared with similar biological "evidence" used to justify the practices of slavery, racism and sexism. Rather than argue on these grounds, he sees a way forward, through a focus on what is held in common and not through an emphasis on what makes us different from each other. His model for this is based on challenges to the dominant male, heterosexual culture posed by liberal, radical and lesbian feminists since the early 1960s. Katz draws together the strands of a feminist de-construction of heterosexuality, from Betty Friedan's dissatisfaction with arbitrary sexual designations, placing limits on women's potential, to Adrienne Rich's explicit criticism, in the early 1980s, of institutionalised heterosexuality.

Katz looks forward to a time when homo- and hetero- distinctions will become redundant. As Lisa Duggan points out in her afterword, this is bound to make some readers uncomfortable, if not downright hostile.

Conservative "essentialists" will perceive an attack against the institutions of marriage and the family. On the other hand, those working for lesbian and gay rights may feel that their position is undermined and that it is better to argue for equality on the basis of gains already made. Katz and Duggan both suggest that an acceptance of "difference" can lead, at best, to a state of tolerance, whereas true equality can only come if we "change the notion that heterosexuality is normal for the vast majority of people, and shift social, cultural and political practices based on that assumption".

Ned Katz's main aim in this book is to focus attention and to encourage debate on the problem of heterosexuality. In this respect, he has produced a valuable resource. "The Invention of Heterosexuality" distils almost fifteen years of discussion, research and writing. It contains a wealth of notes and references that will provide an excellent platform for further study. But, above all, this is an essential read and a fascinating journey through the sexual politics of the 20th century.

Andrew Martin

Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
END OF POST.

Prostitution, Education, Ecocide, and Speaking Out

Among the men I know who are profeminist-identified there is disagreement about many topics, which is understandable given that within large groups of people who identify closely with a collection of related political perspectives--such as Catholic Christians, Secular Liberals, or Sex-positive people--there is generally and usually disagreement. This myth that "profeminism" is "one point of view on the entire world" is made up by Western liberal academicians and the white heteromale supremacist media's spokespeople. In my experience, "profeminists" are grossly pro-civilisation, especially pro-Western civilisation, and grossly silent and "unactive" about the many oppressive conditions women of color--incluing Aboriginal women, Native women, and Indigenous women--experience that are distinct. Other profeminists seem not so pro-feminist as pro-men who speak positively about aspects of feminism. I am thinking at the moment of the inclusion into the academy of Men's Studies programs that are run by whites. Speaking only for myself, I'm not especially interested in making a career out of "studying men" and depending on what, exactly is being studied, and for what purposes, I wouldn't even term this career choice "proWomanist" or "profeminist". Robert Jensen is one man who is profeminist, and who gets criticised by many different groups of people for taking the positions he does, or, for the manner in which he takes these positions. I think it is important for men to not "speak as women" or "speak for women". And I think it's very important that men who listen to women who have been harmed by men in various ways, both institutionally and interpersonally, speak out the best ways we can. While some things Robert Jensen says or does do not resonate with my understandings of "being profeminist", I do believe he is an important voice, a rare voice, as a white man who speaks often about the politics of being both male and white in a white male supremacist system. I applaud him publicly for that. As I've expressed to many people, we men are likely to speak as men, in the politic sense. We are likely to want to speak for people we do not know or represent, to speak in ways that are experienced as (or, well, are) obnoxious, self-congratulatory, and ill-informed. I include myself in the group of men who is likely to speak in those ways. And I try, here, to make space for Womanist and feminist women's voices to be heard not "through me", but rather by linking to or quoting what various women actually say.

One of my friends was a prostitute for several years. (She uses the term "prostitute"; she does not use the term "prostituted woman", or girl.) This is her story, not mine:

She was on the street as a young teenager; a pimp considerably older than her approached her and pretended to be a caring boyfriend. She was not on the street to be a prostitute. She was on the street because she ran away from home and had nowhere else to go. She was a prostitute because a pimp found her, seduced her, and seasoned her to be his prostitute. She was a prostitute because there were procurers who felt entitled to "rent" her for sex, with cash money going from prostitutor to pimp. (It is easy to forget that without pimps and procurers, or prostitutors, prostitution wouldn't exist as such. This may be evidenced in the fact that since Sweden decriminalised being a prostitute, and instead criminalised being a pimp and prostitutor/procurer, by many accounts the rates at which men seek to "rent" women for "sex" has decreased.

For much more on Sweden's approach, see here.

This friend of mine has done lots of work with other women inside systems of economic and sexual exploitation, specifically the systems of poverty, prostitution and pornography, which greatly, but not entirely, overlap. Note the "with" italicised above. It is often assumed by pro-prostitution folks that the women who work to fight against white and male supremacist systems of sexual exploitation are only Academics. The very privileged Melissa Farley, often miscited as THE spokesperson for "the anti-prostitution movement" by pro-prostitution activists, and Catharine A. MacKinnon, often miscredited with being the sole creator of sexual harassment law, are exceptions to the rule, however. My friend worked primarily with very disenfranchised, very socially disregarded women, white and of color, most poor, some illiterate, many of whom understood quite clearly--intellectually and viscerally, the links between the devaluation of girls and women, incest, rape, prostitution, pornography, genocide, and ecocide.

There are a collection of female and male bloggers and/or activists who are pro-prostitution and pro-pornography who, along with many others, claim to more accurately speak for all women in such systems.

Many who claim to speak for these women are, not surprisingly, men who engage in the practice of procuring sexually and economically exploited women for their own sexual gratification. To be clearer: pimps, whether rulers of corporations or street corners, claim to speak for prostitutes incessantly. Pimps even teach women "what to say". Prostitutors also tell women what to say out loud, because they believe they temporarily own the woman "rented".

Corporate/industry pornographers, by definition and by practice, put words in women's mouths, and make women do things that only some misogynist-racist men desire women to do. As I once remarked on the website Hustling The Left, "Larry Flynt's corporate-pimp speech is spoken with a patriarchal accent, somehow through a vagina. Exactly how is it that a woman's open vulva became his mouthpiece?"

Many of these white women and men who speak for or represent women in prostitution have various other forms of privilege, such as what is termed "education privilege".


I understand "education privilege" to mean a combination of things, including valuing the schooling and the Academy and what it does, as well as access to, entrance into, and success within the Academy, or, making it successfully (however that is defined) from nursery school or kindergarten through one's senior year of high school, or "The Sixth Form" in some upper class prep schools; I get confused by the terms the UK has for its own intellectual schooling levels. I believe obtaining a GED or high school diploma, if not also an undergraduate, graduate, or doctorate degree, counts as a form of "education privilege" because so few people around the world, disproportionately very poor, of color, and female, do not have opportunities or the stability of health and regular access to clean water and nutritious food necessary to make studying in or out of school viable. One of the opportunities is to be literate in such a way as to be able to read and comprehend the content of pro-civilisation textbooks. Most people are not literate, as defined by people who value Western white industrialised societies.

I remain unconvinced that industrialised/technologised societies are promoting and doing much more than being anti-Earth, anti-Life, anti-Indigisism, anti-woman, and pro-white supremacy. Such society's cultures, organised by written language, deeply valuing "Western literacy", grade school, and college are termed "civilisation". As Derrick Jensen and others effectively point out, being "for civilisation" and being "for life" are very, very far from synonymous.

From what I can see, a tiny fraction of people emerge from Western white male supremacist educational systems with the will and energy to challenge patriarchies, end white supremacy, confront heterosexism and capitalism, and expose the general inhumanity of Western civilisation. Due to this view and experience, I am not convinced of its usefulness in radically altering a death-worshipping society. And this is said from the perspective of someone with a lot of education privilege. Were I to have acquired the very same feelings about this society that I now hold, I suppose I'd be far less equipped to do much about it. The Catch-22s of Western civilisation are, well, quite catchy.

What I long for is something that apparently cannot happen: for every woman speak out, without fear, without shame, who understand that sexual exploitation is what pimps and prostitutors are in the business of doing, about the systems of prostitution speak out, without fear, without shame, about what they have lived through or are living through. And that "the rest of us" be able to hear them, clearly, and respond accordingly.

For among all the detractors and proponents of prostitution, very few make the case that it is not sexual exploitation, among other things. As I see it, we collectively and strongly disagree on what forms of exploitation are acceptable and worth fighting to end. As someone who is, at heart, in mind, anti-capitalist, anti-misogyny, and anti-ecocide, my values are antithetical to being an advocate for any form of sexual or economic exploitation. Which doesn't mean I speak out for women. I speak for myself, with the hope that what I say benefits rather than harms a collective group of people known as women. It is inevitably the case that women will have varying points of view about the degrees to which any man speaking out about patriarchy, white supremacy, ecocide, and misogyny are helping or hurting women.

I close this post with the voices of North American women who have been in systems of prostition.

Accountability and Profeminist Men

I have been thinking about the matter of feminist accountability among profeminist men, and how profeminist men speak honestly and challengingly about misogyny to other men without pretending to speak for women, or deluding ourselves that we can and do speak for women.

I thought about this matter especially when reading the following quote by Andrea Dworkin, which I most recently encountered here. For me, Dworkin is speaking to something that often goes unchallenged: men's ways of engaging women, men's attitudes about women and how they are expressed interpersonally to other men, and the ever-present issue of whether men think we know more than women do about women's lives and conditions under white and male supremacy, among other ideologies of inhumanity.

So, let's begin with the quote. Because Dworkin is so enthusiastically and misogynistically misread and misunderstood by so many men, in my experience, I'd like to note that she is CRITIQUING the matter of women being called stupid, when men who say or do exactly the same stuff, or worse, are called smart. THAT'S the issue. OK, boys, read on:

Women have stupid ideas that do not deserve to be called ideas. Marabel Morgan writes an awful, silly, terrible book in which she claims that women must exist for their husbands, do sex and be sex for their husbands. D H. Lawrence writes vile and stupid essays in which he says the same thing basically with many references to the divine phallus; but D. H. Lawrence is smart. Anita Bryant says that cocksucking is a form of human cannibalism; she decries the loss of the child who is the sperm. Norman Mailer believes that lost ejaculations are lost sons and on that basis disparages male homosexuality, masturbation and contraception. But Anita Bryant is stupid and Norman Mailer is smart. Is the difference in the style with which these same ideas are delivered or in the penis? Mailer says that a great writer writes with his balls; novelist Cynthia Ozick asks Mailer in which colour ink he dips his balls. Who is smart and who is stupid?

Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women, 1983

Next up is a review of Robert Jensen's book, Getting Off, the title of which repulses me, personally and politically. I know it's being marketed to white young men, but the whole cover design (which may have not been designed or chosen by Robert Jensen himself, but rather by the publisher as is usually the case) for me is counter-productive to the issue of men using pornography.

You can find the review here.

Conversation about this topic is welcome.
END OF POST.

On Revolutionary Organisations and Male Supremacy: an interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

I highly recommend checking out this interview with long-time activist, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, whose photo image is above.

From the interview:

I wouldn’t spotlight any one revolutionary organization as male supremacist during the 1960s and into the early 1970s, because they all were; they all reflected the general society that was fundamentally male (and white) supremacist. I actually was convinced that truly revolutionary men immediately would realize that male supremacy would have to be eradicated once they were made aware of its harm to revolutionary projects. I was shocked when this was not the case, or not widely. I was shocked when revolutionary men who became pro-feminist were hassled by their male comrades. I was shocked when self-proclaimed revolutionary men refused to deal with male supremacy on the theoretical level in terms of how capitalism emerged, became dominant, and persists, that is, refusing to deal with patriarchy. I was horrified when these men accused feminist comrades of being selfish and bourgeois.

Happy Birthday Yoko Ono!!!

The image above is of Yoko Ono looking at a birthday cake presented to her last year by her son Sean, on the occasion of her 75th birthday.

The cake is designed to be a replica of a famous work of art, an all white chess set, ready to be played. It speaks to me of the insanity of war, of people killing each other and the Earth, thinking that, in the end, there will be "a winner". Once you begin to begin to "play" this sort of "game", you realise the enemy and "your side" are not discernible. Brava, Yoko, for a brilliant work of conceptual/visual political art.

For Cara's whole Happy Birthday Yoko Ono post at The Curvature, and many more links and information about Yoko and her artwork, please go here. Go there also for Cara's brilliant series, Yoko Ono: a Feminist Analysis, specifically linked to here (intro), here (part 1), here (part 2), here (part 3), and here.

Many more happy, healthy, creative birthdays to you, Yoko!

On The Compression of non-white U.S. History into Months: Is the Alternative Better?

I touched on this subject not too long ago, but wanted to repost and link to a more recent discussion happening over at Racialicious, also linked to in my blog roll, which for me says a lot that needs to be heard, and further discussed.

It is safe to desegregate history?
by Latoya Peterson

Every year, in February, I receive the same two things:

(1) A bunch of targeted marketing surrounding black history month. (McDonald’s celebrates 365 black with a Big Mac! Chrysler salutes African Americans!)

(2) The predictable “When is Black History Month going to be over?” emails, requests, and newspaper articles.

One shining exception is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Black History Month. Meh.” post, where he writes:

I think people who want to get rid of Black History Month are only slightly less annoying than people who complain about Kwanzaa. Yes, it’s true–Bob Johnson and Michael Jordan weren’t what Carter G. Woodson had in mind. But the true mark of a movement’s success is its descent into hackery. Black people don’t get to pick and chose what aspects of America we want to integrate into. We have to take it all. White people who complain that there is no “White History Month,” much in the way that one might complain that there is no “Black Rapper Show”, merit no real response, except that we all look forward to a day when there is one.

Me on the other hand, I tired of black history month, circa 7th grade. True, I did do a recital of Marcus Garvey’s “Look For Me In The Whirlwind” at the “Black Awareness Assembly” in 12th grade. But mostly when I think of Black History Month, I think of being made to watch footage of Negroes getting the shit kicked out of them, and then Negro teachers extolling the nobility of letting someone kick the shit out of you. You can imagine how well that went over in West Baltimore at the height of the Crack Age. And then there was, as one of my editors put it, the “I Am Somebody” bullshit, in which you were forced to memorize a litany of black achievement facts. The goal seemed to be to prove that my history took to rote for just as well as anybody’s. I too can be reduced into a list of facts, America.

Meh, indeed. I’m only moved to comment on Black History Month when some fool is adamant that we’ve outgrown the need for it, despite showing their ignorance in, say, a letter to the editor.

So, when Carmen dropped me an email with yet another article asking if its “Time to End Black History Month,” I admit, I just yawned. I can’t muster up the same righteous indignation year after year. It is what it is, and as someone who recalls being in multiple black history month school events (as Wilma Rudolph (twice), Ida B. Wells, singing Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing more times than I can count, and reciting both “Mother to Son” and “A Dream Deferred” in my K-12 career) I can see both the arguments for maintaining black history month and quietly integrating it into the official curriculum.

Yet upon further reflection, I realized that I actually would oppose such a move. Why?

Because the way we teach history in America is guaranteed to leave people with the wrong ideas about a lot of crucial moments in our history.

The history that we currently teach is hopelessly sanitized to the point where people are still unsure exactly what happened at a lynching, and are unaware of the historical meaning behind leaving nooses as “a prank.” We learn about major people, events, and dates, but not so much the ideas behind the actions. This is why we learn Crispus Attacks was the first person to die in the American Revolution (though it was technically the Boston Massacre that sparked the war), and that he was black, but generally have no idea why he was out there in the first place, and if he was included in organizing activities or just an unlucky casualty.

Also, when history lessons focus on nonwhites, the results are fairly grim, at best. Black history month is often linked with the word “trivia,” but other months have the same struggle to create a lasting impression. Lisa Leong described what she learned about her people’s history:

Everything I learned about Asian Americans in my K-12 education can be summed up in one sentence: Chinese laborers built one half of the Transcontinental Railroad. I accepted that that was all there was. Here it was, my people’s greatest and sole contribution to the country: getting exploited.

I remember that the Chinese were good workers willing to risk their lives blowing up mountains to make way for train tracks. Some died from the dynamite blasts. They were well-behaved in contrast to the Irish workers who drank and gambled. Because of their diligence, the Chinese finished their half of the railroad before the Irish.

This is a pretty racist version of history to learn in the fourth grade. While the stereotyping of Irish people is obvious, the depiction of the Chinese laborers seems like a compliment. “Positive” stereotypes are deceptive like that. Good, diligent, and hard-working is the model minority stereotype about Asian Americans, which shades how elementary school kids learn Asian American history. Everyone who goes through the American education system gets the standardized version of U.S. history—from which Asian Americans are largely absent.

Native Americans don’t get a great shake either, being relegated to “helpers of the pilgrims” roles and the occasional exciting backdrop for “heroic settlers” to fight against. After learning about the founding of our country, the stories of American Indians fade away to the background, only vaguely remembered when “Columbus Day” pops up once a year.

They say that history is written by the victors, but this is ridiculous.

I recently started reading The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide. I started reading this book to further my understanding of wealth, capitalism, and people of color. However, while slowly working my way through the chapters, I noticed that the format of the book was amazing in its simplicity.

The chapter overviews describe what was happening in the United States during the time period examined, and each summary provides a snapshot of what was happening with Native Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latin@s. While this tactic isn’t perfect, I think it comes much closer to exploring how historical events can impact different demographics positively or negatively.

I would like to see history taught as more of a conversation than a series of events to memorize. How did these events impact different communities? How is history interpreted by different groups of people? How did these events that occurred in the past have an impact on our actions now?

Until history is seen as something to be analyzed and understood, rather than just memorized, I have little hope for anyone reaching an understanding of our nation’s past through the presentation of facts and timelines. Moreover, I don’t see how we can ever hope to fix how black history month is implemented until we fix how we talk about history.

But that’s just my opinion. What say you?

[For the original post and the comments posted to date, click here. -- JR]