Are ANY Men "Natural Born Rapists"? (And if not...)

[image of two rapists who, together, repeatedly raped a 65-year-old woman. Shockingly, they have been jailed for life. They were UK nineteen-year-olds David Humphrey, of Middlesbrough, and Lee Beazley, of Hemlington. They broke into the woman's home in September of 2005. Even the press doesn't blame biology: it blames drugs and alcohol. Nor does the press identify white male supremacist society as an influential factor. The rest of the horrifying story with that image is here]

This blogpost tackles two issues:

1. The misquoting of some white radical feminists about their views on sex and rape.

2. My own perspective on this matter, including what I think creates the rapist societies in which is functionally and effectively a form of both terrorism and subordination of women as a class relative to men as a class.

We can clear up the first matter rather quickly; this information applies as much to Andrea Dworkin's work and speech as it does to Catharine MacKinnon's:

From Snopes.com, in their "questionable quotes" section:

Rape Seeded
Claim: Feminist Catharine MacKinnon said "All sex is rape."
Status: False.

A portion of the explanation and history of this false statement is below:

MacKinnon never made the statement which has been attributed to her. (The quote she never gave has been variously rendered as "All sex is rape," "All men are rapists," and "All sex is sexual harassment.") Critics of MacKinnon's work argue she implies all men are rapists, but the quote given here was created by MacKinnon's opponents, not MacKinnon herself.

MacKinnon claims the first reference to her alleged belief that all sex is hostile surfaced in the October 1986 issue of Playboy. According to MacKinnon, the statement (which had previously been attached to feminist Andrea Dworkin) was made up by the pornography industry in an attempt to undermine her credibility. It became inextricably linked with MacKinnon's name after she began working with Dworkin in the early 1980s to write model anti-pornography laws.

(the above was written by Barbara "ms. attributed" Mikkelson)

On to part two of this post:

Are men*, due strictly to nature and general anatomical features, not due to social forces, "designed" to be rapists. Another way to ask this is: Is it inevitable that male human beings will be rapists, particularly endemically against women? (*I define "men" here as follows: socially defined adult male-bodied human beings with specific and abundant male privileges and entitlements assigned to them at birth, upon inspection of their crotches, at which point they were determined not to be females or infant girls and instead the only other sex imaginable, boys.)

Emphatically, I say NO, men are not born with the desire or understanding of rape as a practice, as an act of humiliation and violation, as a form of sex, and as something that will likely become desireable upon hitting puberty, or inevitable at all. But most men I've known disagree with me, saying they think rape is inevitable and will never stop. Meanwhile, most MRAssholes get upset at women who despair about men not stopping this practice, at women who dare to be angry at men for our insistence on keeping rape on the scene.

One of the people most accused of seeming to think this way--a woman who is accused of believing that men are inherently evil or monsters, is Andrea Dworkin. Oh, how the MRAssholes love to go on and on about her in ways that demonstrate they have never read one single book by this activist-author (or if they have, they have not comprehended the thoughts in it). Many men I have met and read are far more upset at women who claim men might not be able to stop rape than the men who do the same exact thing. Why is that?

I challenge anyone reading this blogpost to produce one sentence from any speech, essay, or nonfiction book of Andrea Dworkin's that says "Men are natural-born rapists", that "rape outside of patriarchy is inevitable", and that "all [heterosexual sex[ual intercourse] is rape". Just to save some of y'all the time searching, I'll let you know you won't find any passages that say any of those things. You won't find this in her books, in the parts written by her, because she never said or wrote it as a declaration of something she believed was true. If you want to know some of what she did say about men, sex, rape, and biology, you can read these two essays (actually written by her, not mistranslated through antifeminist, or woman-hating or over-intellectualising academic/anti-activist lenses:

From reading these two speeches, you will actually discover what Andrea Dworkin said:
Speech one on biological superiority.
Speech two on how men can stop rape.

For those scratching their heads wondering "Geez, how is it that I have believed this distortion about her and other radical feminists for so long?!?" I'll offer up one quick answer: men lie about what feminists have done and do, including what feminists have said and say. And Academics are not primarily interested in promoting radical activism, they are primarily interested in doing what they need to do to keep their academic careers going strong, which means discussing the ideas of people who do radical activism.

And, especially, men's lies to ourselves about how undangerous men are, to women and to each other. If honest, we will admit we don't have very great expectations that men will work to make the world a safer, more respectful place for women. If honest, most of us will admit we think rape is not likely to end any time soon, if ever. And we think it, in part, because we foolishly believe men are somehow naturally wired to be rapists. Or we illogically think "[some] animals rape, and men are animals, therefore men rape" or, more horrifically, we think "women like rape, so men will keep raping to satisfy women". (How incredibly selfless of us! NOT.)

Each of these beliefs are ours, men's, not women's, not feminists'. And it's about time men started owning our own psychological, political, social, and economic investment in this notion: that we, men, will continue to rape until such time humanity is no more. And it's about time we stopped projecting our CRAP onto women, and onto feminists in particular. This projection is but one of many ways men demean and degrade women and behave in an antifeminist manner. There are so many other ways, including the accessing images of raped women and reaching orgasm by looking at raped women. Including the physical act of rape that men unrelentingly commit against women. It is not because our penises (and objects we hold in our hands) are embedded with some code for misconduct. Penises and the human men who build their identities on having one, can be enveloped in sex by a female partner; they needn't aggressively penetrate a person. Dworkin notes this in her book, Intercourse. It's not one of the passages MRAssholes get pleasure from misquoting, however, because it reveals they are liars.

If you have read each of those two Dworkin's speeches carefully, you will hear her belief in and hope for men's humanity, and her wish for men to stop one another from raping women. We men suppose ourselves to be so very smart, so tactical and strategic, and so goddamned superior. Surely if we can send men to the moon, can (with women) create new methods of treating many cancers, we can figure out how to end rape without women's help, right?

But most men, almost without exception, do not share this wish--or if we do there's scant evidence of it in terms of how men really do respond to one another's actions that use and abuse women, that violate and degrade women. (How many men do you know--get out just the fingers on one hand, who let other men know that "using heterosexual pornography" is in fact making the decision to support an industry, financially or ethically, by consuming images of incested, molested, raped, and/or pimped women? I have heard exactly ZERO men ever say this to any heterosexual man I know in my presence. I've had heterosexual male friends all my life (don't worry about me for doing so: men's heterosexual misogyny is not medically contagious).

You'd think in decades, maybe, one heterosexual man might let one other heterosexual man know what using pornography REALLY is and does. You'd think maybe, just out of sheer odds, like with monkeys typing at computer keyboards, some heterosexual men might slip up, get the words wrong, and tell heterosexual men they know that their behaviors of predatory voyeurism, visual violation of women-- "eye fucking" as Divine Purpose puts it--are wrong, unethical, not acceptable, unnatural, harmful, and ENDable. Instead I hear men make excuses all the goddamned time for our violating and degrading behaviors towards women, as if we're all in agreement not to call one another out. In a society where men's rape of women is endemic, HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? (This is not a rhetorical question, fellas. Those among you who take rape seriously as a crime against humanity, and those of you who do not, are welcome to offer your comments here at this blog. I'll only publish the ones that are not woman-hating and woman-blaming, though.)

But there's more. Yes, it get's worse. There's a book--not one I've EVER seen MRAssholes take the least bit of interest in. I've never seen them vehemently and self-righteously denounce this particular book with all the histerical passion and froth at the mouth which seems to be saved up for dissing and hissing at feminists. This book argues that rape is natural and inevitable. No boys, the authors are not Mary Daly, Robin Morgan, or Valerie Solanas. These are two people from YOUR group: privileged white heterosexual men.

This is the book: A Natural History of Rape, by Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer.

What's the matter boys, cat got you tongues? Where's the outrage, fellas? Or are you only upset when you project onto women that they, en masse, think the worst of you? Drop the histeria, deal with your "brothers" and get rape to be a thing of the past. I hope we can do at least that.

No men are natural-born rapists, because rape is a social-political act, not a biological one. It is an act motivated by a desire to humiliate another person, not by a desire made up of hormonal chemicals. It is an act of gynocide, not genetics. It is an act that can only happen if men are not accountable to women, and one another. When men stop men from raping before they do so, when men convince men that all the CRAP we espouse that supports men raping women is bullshit, when we men take responsibility for our actions and stop claiming rape wouldn't exist as a social problem if only feminists would just shut up about it, then rape will end.

END OF POST.

bell hooks says "God is a feminist" to a college audience

[photo of bell hooks and the article below are from here]

Gender, race, media and hooks
Written by Betty Chaney - Life & Arts Editor
Wednesday, 14 October 2009

Behind the dark, heavy curtain, bell hooks sits in a metal folding chair before she took to the stage in Button Auditorium [at Morehead State University in Kentucky], Tuesday night.

“I describe myself, first and foremost, as a seeker on the path,” she says. “Really it’s spirituality that occurs at every aspect of my life. Writing is my divine calling and feminism is the political movement, the theory, and the practice that helped me to fully de-self-actualize,” she says.

Hooks was born in Hopkinsville and is now a professor at Berea College. Hooks says she does not capitalize her name.

“When the feminist movement first began, people were trying to get away from the ego and we were doing all this at a time where a lot of Westerners were looking to the East for a spiritual guidance,” she says. “There was so much, like, it’s not important who is speaking but what is being said.”

Hooks says she gave a lecture this year about whether or not God is a feminist.

“My answer was, of course, God is a feminist because if we accept that God is a god of love then we know that God fully intends for females and males to be self-actualized, self-empowered and full of self esteem,” she says.

The media has definitely has an impact on society, she says.

“You find yourself wanting something without knowing why you want it and then you remember you’ve been listening to a particular kind of commercial,” she says. “The media has a powerful influence. Part of what I speak on is how the media makes culture.”

Dr. Ann Andaloro, associate professor of communication and theatre and director of women’s studies, was excited about having hooks come to MSU.

“Hooks is a prolific writer and scholar,” she says. “We’ve been reading her work for years and now we get to hear her speak those words. I got e-mails from Amsterdam today asking me to pass messages on to her.”

One of hooks' ideas is how many elements are interconnected, Andaloro says.

“Feminism includes race and class,” she says. “It’s all interlinked. You can’t think about one without the other.”

Andaloro says she thinks hooks’s program will be good for the university.

“One of the university’s objectives is a diversity initiative, teaching and learning different factors,” she says. “A discussion of race here will help to enhance our campus.”

Hooks’ message would be really beneficial for students, Andaloro says.

“Students are here because they want to lean and understand the world around them,” she says. “It could be really important for students from a small community who maybe haven’t been exposed to race or race issues so much. It’s the importance of understanding equality.”

Junior Sharon-Marie Boggs attended the event as a requirement for a class.

“My professor said there would be stuff on the next exam that would come from hooks’ speech,” she says.

Boggs says she found the event surprising.

“It wasn’t what I thought it would be,” she says. “I was afraid it would be this dry, droning thing but it wasn’t. I thought hooks was a very good speaker. She kept the audience interested and motivated. She made it humorous while touching on real issues at the same time.”

“I thought she hit a lot of good points, like the thing about Obamas,” she says. “I like the Obamas. I just never realized what he said about whether or not Michelle will be consulted for her opinions. He can be very patriarchal.”

Another MSU junior, Cody Mitchell, was also in the audience.

“It was a very informative and moving speech by a Kentucky native,” he says. “It’s always important to hear from Kentucky natives, especially a world-renowned one, because Kentuckians are typically portrayed in a negative light, typically as being ignorant.”

The criminology major says he attended for two reasons.

“I was interested in the topic,” he says. “I’m taking several classes on race, gender, and equality and it flowed with those classes.”

Mitchell says he did learn an important lesson in the time he sat in the auditorium.

“You have to be careful of what you see and watch on television because it can be dangerous in a sociological way,” he says. “A seemingly innocent report could portray women or any minority group in a negative light.”

Hooks says there is one important thing she hopes sticks with her audience.

“I would like for folks to take away the importance of critical thinking and the importance of learning how to love because if you’re not able to love ourselves and others then you can’t have healthy self esteem or anything,” she says.

END OF POST.

Catharine A. MacKinnon Speaks Out on Rape, Prostitution, and Law

[Additional material and a link to her speech was added on 20 October 2009 by me]

[photo of Catharine A. MacKinnon was found here]

Here is a link to her speech as an MP3 file: http://www.wlu.edu/media/news_spots/catharine_mackinnon.mp3

Here are my notes taken from the speech as I was listening to it. I cannot say whether or not they are accurate transcriptions, so please don't copy and paste them as "quotes" of hers. What's in brackets was written by me.

[She begins with referencing part of the story told by Marge Piercy in her book Woman on the Edge of Time. This is among the first ten feminist books I ever read, along with Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde.]

Gender as an inequality that maps itself onto women and men.

Power is even more sexualised around the world now than it was thirty years ago.

Exposure to pornography desensitises its consumers to violence against women.

Sex-based poverty, and gender-based violence. Women have to be kept poor, some of them, must remain poor so they will be vulnerable to men who want to pay them for the kind of sex men who pay for sex want. We call such an arrangement, "consensual".

What was soft-core pornography is now mainstream entertainment in media not owned by practicing pornographers, for whom making pornography is their primary source of income.

Men are given active sexual passivity that is fed to men socially to boost their own sense of entitlement to it.

Male power is real and requires appeasement. You give men what they want in the hope that that giving will be enough to no longer be threatened and abused by men.

Children sexualise being sexually used by being sexually abused by men, usually male family members. This constitutes women's identity.

Sexually abused boys are 12% in college. My sense is that it's easily double that. About half of girls and maybe a quarter of boys, or more. In cultures where girls are kept inside at home, and boys are outside among men, those stats may be reversed.

Many serial killers, rapists, child molesters, and [misopedic] "pedophiles" were abused as boys when younger, not necessarily sexually. Raped boys might be a misogynistic and dissociated population.

Sexual abuse of children geometrically expands the incidence of sexual violence generally in the society. One male survivor can abuse many others, upwards of hundreds.

Some men identify with girls and women similarly abused. Others identify with the power of being an abuser.

Many abused children grow up to see women and men as distinct. Both sexes tend to identify their sexuality with the long-term effects of the abuse: men with being an abuser, women with being the recipients of the abuse.

Why does sexual abuse appear as it does? Sexual scripts attached to gender roles can last at least as long as the traumatic impact. This means men have their identities at stake in their expressions of power interpersonally.

Because sex it is experienced physically it is said to be natural. And extrapolated from this is that gender is natural.

"You do it, you do it, you do it, and then you become it." --Linda Boreman (survivor of many forms of abuse perpetrated by her husband/pimp, and other men, most notably in the film Deep Throat)

At this point expressing sexuality is seen as exercising freedom.

It isn't sexy unless it's unequal. Girls are defined as for sexual use, and boys as sexual users. Boys learn to despise girls, who are defined as the people to whom it is right to be sexually used. It's a crucible for society. The being that is that being is a girl. The alternative is masculinity--their way out, siding with the abusers. It is their choice whether to abuse or not.

The sexual politics of this isn't all Left and it isn't all Right. It produces a sexual politics whereby the Right is to suppress any sexuality that is equality, and the Left seeks to liberate any sexuality that is inequality.

Pornography makes this gender inequality, this sexual use and abuse, sexy.

Often we see pornography and prostitution supported liberally, as if one can be free while being socially unequal, living inside institutions of sex inequality.

I'm waiting for men to resent this--having their sexuality manipulated by this industry. That I'm weeping for their souls apparently has not inspired a [men's] movement [to end prostitution and rape].

A good many women resist knowing this reality.

One is often punished professionally and personally for not being in denial.

Psychiatry conspires to maintain sex as inequality.

This is why sexual violence is expanding. Andrea Dworkin predicted this in 1993.

This inequality of sexuality can express itself in same-gender relationships as well.

If it can't be changed, how do you explain it? Those who know gender and sex is social and not immutable. In Sweden, where the people who buy people for sex--let's call them sex predators, or users. We have been using the term "johns" because they have no name. In the Swedish law, they are criminalised along with pimps.

[me: let's call them prostitutors, or predatory purchasers of human beings who usually return what they buy when they're done with "it". Sometimes they kill what they buy.]

Giving prostituted people human rights. Mediated prostitution is pornography, prostitution shown through media.

Promotion and passage of the Dworkin-MacKinnon anti-pornography ordinance would also help. Women are not sex and are not for sale. Women, in other words, are human, in the full sense of the world. With this, gender would be so transformed as to be abolished. A solidarity among women across race, class, region could be achieved.

Which of Marge Piercy's futures will manifest? In 1976 the odds were closer to equal.

We can choose equality for real and gender as we know it.

There is a fable about a sage, who could see into the future. Two boys come to her with a bird: is the bird alive or dead? If alive, they'd kill it on the spot, if she says it's dead they let it go free.

"Oh wise one, is the bird alive or dead?" they ask.
She says, after many moments, "I don't know, I only know it's in your hands."

And here's one review of her speech, delivered at a U.S. college very recently.

Activist details sexism in world legal system
By OPEYEMI AKINBAMIDELE
Issue date: 10/20/09 Section: News [source may be found here]

Catherine MacKinnon, a respected and accomplished feminist, lectured about her theories on sexism in Neville Hall on Thursday evening.

"Women are in the 50 percent mark of becoming fully human," MacKinnon said.

MacKinnon said women need to overcome denial that they are being violated because of their gender. Overcoming this denial will gear women toward the path of receiving full human status in normative society, she said.

"Whenever I ask 'have you ever been raped', most women answer, 'I don't know,'" MacKinnon said.

She said many women try not to identify with the rape victims they hear about, even though they have been forced to have sexual intercourse when they did not want to.

When MacKinnon made that point, it struck a chord with some of the female audience members.

"She made me think about my own experiences," Jenelle Lewis, '12, said. "I am one of these people it happens to and I don't say anything."

"Rape is war against women," said MacKinnon, who currently works with sexually abused Croatian and Bosnian women, said.

MacKinnon said she believes prostitution should be a sexual law and not a criminal law.

According to MacKinnon, under the criminal law, all partners involved, especially the prostitutes, are held accountable as criminals.

"I don't think everyone in prostitution should be a criminal," MacKinnon said. "They are being bought and sold for sex, as victims, it's outrageous."

She said 90 percent of prostitutes have been sexually molested as children, and are in the industry because of human trafficking, economic suppression, and are therefore victims of the industry.

MacKinnon championed for making prostitution a sexual law. According to MacKinnon, under a sexual law, the prostitutes are decriminalized and treated like the victims; instead, the people punished are the buyers and the pimps.

By lowering the buyers, "Johns," and pimps as sex offenders and raising the prostitutes' statuses as victims, sex equality can be obtained, MacKinnon said.

MacKinnon cited Sweden as having the lowest human trafficking rate because the country has adopted the notion of prosecuting the buyers and pimps.

MacKinnon said U.S. states are male institutions, socially and politically, and that is why state law is ineffective.

She said that under state law, males feel an obligation to protect their fellow males.

MacKinnon rallied for international law because she felt that the male bond is broken, and therefore males are able to prosecute more objectively.

Many people treat sex equality as a good idea and not as a statement of fact that is being ignored, MacKinnon said.

Olajede Osanyingbemi, '12, said he agreed with her in some aspects but felt that some of what she said was a bit too extreme.

"I think a lot of things are sexist, but I think it is wrong to lay the complete blame on men," he said.

When a student from Lafayette College asked how women can succeed in the legal system, MacKinnon replied: "The system isn't designed for you to succeed. You just can take any bull from anyone and always speak up when you feel violated against."

She then reflected on how she handled sexist situations during her days as a graduate student at Yale University. MacKinnon said she used to hand out a yellow card whenever she or another female was violated.

The card read: "You have just insulted a woman, this has been chemically treated, your penis will fall off."

Donasia Tillery, '11, said MacKinnon's lecture was especially meaningful to her because she was able to hear her talk about things she was unclear about.

"She is very influential," Lewis said. "After hearing her talk, I would join Break the Silence. Because I am helping on a lower level, every bit helps."

The event was sponsored by a number of campus organizations including the Women's Center, Global Studies and International Studies.

MacKinnon is noted to be one of the most highly cited legal scholars in English. She is a professor of Law at University of Michigan and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.

END OF POST.

LACK OF RESISTANCE IS NOT CONSENT!!! '... Steps to Prevent Rape' Poster, by Marcella Chester

[click on the image above to enlarge it to make it very easy to read]

A feminist blogger @ abyss2hope, linked to from my blogroll to the right, created this poster.
To see it at her blogsite, please go here.

Thank you, Marcella, for all your great work.

END OF POST.

One of Many News Stories about the on-going Genocides of Indigenous People Worldwide

 












[image is from here]

What follows is from here.

NT Intervention walkoff spokes[person] accuses government of disempowering Aboriginal peoples
Posted October 8th, 2009 by Diet Simon

Media release:

Australian government accused of disempowering Aboriginal peoples

NT Intervention Walkoff Spokes[person], Richard Downs, Harry Nelson and Michael Anderson at ANU Friday 9/10

In a statement issued today Richard Downs accuses the Australian government of disempowering Aboriginal peoples:

"The NT Emergency Response (NTER) measures have disempowered Aboriginal people. The suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act has taken away our rights. It has taken away our land rights, our ownership and control. We have no say in the running of our communities or lands. There is no self-determination.

"We are taking our message to the Australian public to let them know exactly what is happening under the NTER.

"We need to get rid of the racial discrimination policies that are imposed by the federal government!"

Richard Downs will speak at the Manning Clark Lecture Theatre from 6 p.m. Friday 9 October as part of a speaking tour. Harry Nelson from Yuendumu and Euahlayi activist Michael Anderson are also speaking.

Michael Anderson says: “I hope that the visit by Richard Downs and Harry Nelson will act as a single stimulus to motivate people into calling for the Australian government to not only reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act but also that their speaking tour will act as a trigger to activate all Australians to demand Section 51(xxvi) of the Australian Constitution is put to a national referendum in order for it to be deleted:

51. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to Commonwealth with respect to: -

xxvi.) The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws:

“I am constantly commenting on this hideous section which establishes Australia as a stand-alone country, where the constitution provides the legal framework for the government to pass laws for any race it deems necessary.

“Australians need to be aware that Section 51(xxvi) can also be used to deport any race deemed necessary.

“This has been done once in Australian’s history when from 1954 onwards Aboriginal Peoples were removed from the Australian Capital Territory. The new queen Elizabeth II assented to “An Ordinance Relating to Aborigines” (ACT No. 8 of 1954) which relied upon section 51(xxvi) to make it possible for the Ordinance to remove Aboriginal people from the ACT and relocate them elsewhere.

“In the Hindmarsh Island High Court decision Justice Kirby made it very clear that Section 51 (xxvi) can be used to the detriment and not always for the benefit of any race.

“The Australian public needs to understand that there can come a point in history when the powerful can convince the public into believing, through total ignorance and manipulative lies by those who seek power, that what they do is in the interest of the nation and the dominant society. People will put them in power.

“It will be one of these types of leaders who could use this section 51(xvi) of the Constitution, without any regard for public opinion and will say ‘it is in the national interest.’ This will be a sorry day.

“It was once said in Europe that the cultured and civilised society could not possibly have experienced what they did during the Nazi regime. Let us all learn from this and make sure this will never happen again.”

Contact:
Richard Downs 0428 611169
Michael Anderson: 0427 292 492 or 0421 795 639

Background:
See: www.interventionwalkoff.wordpress.com; wgar.info; stoptheintervention.org; rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com

END OF POST.

Queer Kids of Queer Parents Resist the Marriage Equality Agenda

[image is from here]

From here.

Queer Kids of Queer Parents Resist the Marriage Equality Agenda

Posted by Martha Jane Kaufman/Katie Miles on October 13, 2009 at 11:58pm


It’s hard for us to believe what we’re hearing these days. Thousands are losing their homes, and gays want a day named after Harvey Milk. The U.S. military is continuing its path of destruction, and gays want to be allowed to fight. Cops are still killing unarmed black men and bashing queers, and gays want more policing. More and more Americans are suffering and dying because they can’t get decent health care, and gays want weddings. What happened to us? Where have our communities gone? Did gays really sell out that easily?

As young queer people raised in queer families and communities, we reject the liberal gay agenda that gives top priority to the fight for marriage equality. The queer families and communities we are proud to have been raised in are nothing like the ones transformed by marriage equality. This agenda fractures our communities, pits us against natural allies, supports unequal power structures, obscures urgent queer concerns, abandons struggle for mutual sustainability inside queer communities and disregards our awesomely fabulous queer history.

Children of queers have a serious stake in this. The media sure thinks so, anyway. The photographs circulated after San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2004 decision to marry gay couples at City Hall show men exchanging rings with young children strapped to their chests and toddlers holding their moms’ hands as city officials lead them through vows. As Newsom runs for governor these images of children and their newly married gay parents travel with him, supposedly expressing how deeply Newsom cares about families: keeping them together, ensuring their safety, meeting their needs. These photos, however, obscure very real aspects of his political record that have torn families apart: his disregard for affordable housing, his attacks on welfare, his support for increased policing and incarceration that separate parents from children and his new practice of deporting minors accused – not convicted – of crimes. As young people with queer parents we are not proud of the “family values” politic put forth by these images and the marriage equality campaign. We don’t want gay marriage activism conducted in our name – we realize that it’s hurting us, not helping us.

We think long-term monogamous partnerships are valid and beautiful ways of structuring and experiencing family, but we don’t see them as any more inherently valuable or legitimate than the many other family structures. We believe in each individual and family’s right to live their queer identity however they find meaningful or necessary, including when that means getting married. However, the consequences of the fight for legal inclusion in the marriage structure are terrifying. We’re seeing queer communities fractured as one model of family is being hailed and accepted as the norm, and we are seeing queer families and communities ignore and effectively work against groups who we see as natural allies, such as immigrant families, poor families, and families suffering from booming incarceration rates. We reject the idea that any relationship based on love should have to register with the state. Marriage is an institution used primarily consolidate privilege, and we think real change will only come from getting rid of a system that continually doles out privilege to a few more, rather than trying to reform it. We know that most families, straight or gay, don’t fit in with the standards for marriage, and see many straight families being penalized for not conforming to the standard the government has set: single moms trying to get on welfare, extended family members trying to gain custody, friends kept from being each other’s legal representatives. We have far more in common with those straight families than we do with the kinds of gay families that would benefit from marriage. We are seeing a gay political agenda become single-issue to focus on marriage and leave behind many very serious issues such as social, economic, and racial justice.

How the marriage agenda is leaving behind awesome queer history.

We’re seeing the marriage equality agenda turn its back on a tradition of queer activism that began with Stonewall and other fierce queer revolts and that continued through the AIDS crisis. Equality California keeps on sending us videos of big, happy, gay families, and they’re making us sick: gay parents pushing kids on swings, gay parents making their kids’ lunches, the whole gay family safe inside the walls of their own homes. Wait a second, is it true? It’s as if they’ve found some sort of magical formula: once you have children, your life instantly transforms into a scene of domestic bliss, straight out of a 1950’s movie. The message is clear. Instead of dancing, instead of having casual sex, instead of rioting, all of the “responsible” gays have gone and had children. And now that they’ve had children, they won’t be bothering you at all anymore. There’s an implicit promise that once gays get their rights, they’ll disappear again. Once they can be at home with the kids, there’s no reason for them to be political, after all!

Listening to this promise, we’re a bit stunned. Whoever said domesticity wasn’t political? Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the feminists taught us that the personal is political? That cooking, cleaning, raising children and putting in countless hours of physical, emotional, and intellectual labor should not mean withdrawing from the public sphere or surrendering your political voice? After all, we were raised by queers who created domestic lives that were always politically engaged, who raised kids and raised hell at the same time. What makes Equality California think that an official marriage certificate is going to make us any less loud and queer? Oh wait. We remember. It’s that sneaky thing about late liberal capitalism: its promise of formal rights over real restructuring, of citizenship for those who can participate in the state’s economic plan over economic justice for all. Once you have your formal rights (like a marriage license), you can participate in the market economy and no longer need a political voice. Looking around at the world we live in, we’re unconvinced.

We’re also seeing another alarming story surface: If gays are ready to get married and have children, the AIDS crisis must be over! Gay men shaped up after AIDS hit, or at least the smart ones did. Those responsible enough to survive realized that they wanted children, and promptly settled down into relationships that were monogamous and that, presumably, carried no risk of HIV contraction. Come on. We reject all the moralizing about parenthood, responsibility, and sexual practice that goes on in this story. Besides the obvious fact that the AIDS crisis is not over, in the US or abroad, we realize that parenthood and non-monogamy aren’t mutually exclusive. The gay marriage movement wants us to believe that you need a sperm donor or an adoption agency to have children, but we know that there are more ways to make queer families than any of us can imagine. We refuse the packaged and groomed history that writes out the many HIV+ individuals in our lives and communities who are living healthily, loving in monogamous and non-monogamous relationships and raising children. We challenge our queer communities to remember our awesomely radical history of building families and raising children in highly political, inventive, and non-traditional ways.

How marriage equality fractures our community and pits us against our strongest allies.

We believe that the argument for gay marriage obscures the many structural, social, and economic forces that break families apart and take people away from their loved ones. Just for starters, there’s the explosion in incarceration levels, national and international migration for economic survival, deportation, unaffordable housing, and lack of access to drug rehabilitation services. The argument for gay marriage also ignores the economic changes and cuts to social services that make it nearly impossible for families to stay together and survive: welfare cuts, fewer after school programs, less public housing, worse medical care, not enough social workers, failing schools, the economic crisis in general.

We choose solidarity with immigrant families whom the state denies legal recognition and families targeted by prisons, wars, and horrible jobs. We reject the state violence that separates children from parents and decides where families begin and end, drawing lines of illegality through relationships. We see this as part of a larger effort on the part of the state to control our families and relationships in order to preserve a system that relies on creating an underclass deprived of security in order to ensure power for a few. We know that everyone has a complex identity, and that many queer families face separation due to one or more of the causes mentioned here, now or in the future. We would like to see our queer community recognize marriage rights as a short-term solution to the larger problem of the government’s disregard for the many family structures that exist. As queers, we need to take an active role in exposing and fighting the deeper sources of this problem. We won’t let the government decide what does and does not constitute a family.

The way that the marriage agenda phrases its argument about healthcare shows just how blind it is to the needs of the queer community. It has adopted marriage as a single-issue agenda, making it seem like the queer community’s only interest in healthcare is in the inclusion of some members of two person partnerships in the already exclusive healthcare system. Health care is a basic human right to which everyone is entitled, not one that should be extended through certain kinds of individual partnerships. We know this from queer history, and if we forget it, we will continue to let our community live in danger. The question of universal healthcare is urgent to queers because large groups of people inside our communities face incredible difficulty and violence receiving medical care, such as trans people who seek hormone treatment or surgery, people who are HIV positive, and queer and trans youth who are forced to live on the street. Instead of equalizing access to health care, marriage rights would allow a small group of people who have partnered themselves in monogamous configurations to receive care. If we accept the marriage agenda’s so-called solution, we’ll leave out most of our community.

Perhaps because the gay marriage movement has forgotten about the plurality and diversity of queer communities and queer activism, it has tried to gloss over its shortcomings by appropriating the struggles of other communities. We reject the notion that “gay is the new black,” that the fight for marriage equality is parallel to the fight for civil rights, that queer rights and rights for people of color are mutually exclusive. We don’t believe that fighting for inclusion in marriage is the same as fighting to end segregation. Drawing that parallel erases queer people of color and makes light of the structural racism that the civil rights movement fought against. The comparison is made as if communities of color, and black communities in particular, now enjoy structural equality. We know that’s not true. We would like to see a queer community that, rather than appropriating the narrative of the civil rights movement for its marriage equality campaign, takes an active role in exposing and protesting structural inequality and structural racism.

Rather than choosing to fight the things that keep structural racism intact, the liberal gay agenda has chosen to promote them. The gay agenda continually fights for increased hate crimes legislation that would incarcerate and execute perpetrators of hate crimes. We believe that incarceration destroys communities and families, and does not address why queer bashings happen. Increased hate crimes legislation would only lock more people up. In a country where entire communities are ravaged by how many of their members get sent to jail, where prisons are profit-driven institutions, where incarceration only creates more violence, we won’t accept anything that promotes prison as a solution. Our communities are already preyed upon by prisons – trans people, sex workers, and street kids live with the constant threat of incarceration. We believe that real, long-term solutions are found in models of restorative and transformative justice, and in building communities that can positively and profoundly deal with violence. We challenge our queer communities to confront what we are afraid of rather than locking it up, and to join members of our community and natural allies in opposing anything that would expand prisons.

The gay marriage agenda also supports the expansion of the army, seemingly forgetting about all of the ways that the army creates and maintains violence and power. The gay marriage agenda fights to abolish the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, promoting the military’s policy and seeking inclusion. We’ve thought long and hard about this, and we can’t remember liking anything that the US military has done in a really long time. What we do remember is how the military mines places where poor people and people of color live, taking advantage of the lack of opportunities that exist for kids in those communities and convincing them to join the army. We think it’s time that queers fight the army and the wars it is engaged in instead of asking for permission to enter.

Marriage doesn’t promise real security.

As the economy collapses, as the number of Americans without a job, without healthcare, without savings, without any kind of social security net increases, it’s easy to understand how marriage has become an instant cure-all for some. Recognizing that many in our community have lived through strained or broken relationships with their biological families, through the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, through self-doubt about and stigmatization of their relationships, we understand where the desire for the security promised by marriage comes from. However, we see the promotion of gay marriage as something that tries to put a band-aid over deeper sources of insecurity, both social and economic. With marriage, the state is able to absolve itself of responsibility for the well-being of its citizens, as evidenced by the HRC’s argument that with gay marriage, the state could kick more people off of welfare. If the HRC got its way, the queers who do not want, or are not eligible for, marriage would be even less secure than before. We’re frightened by the way the marriage agenda wants to break up our community in this way, and we’re committed to fighting any kind of politics that demonizes poor people and welfare recipients. We challenge our queer communities to build a politics that promotes wealth redistribution. What if, rather than donating to the HRC campaign, we pooled our wealth to create a community emergency fund for members of our community who face foreclosure, need expensive medical care or find themselves in any other economic emergency? As queers, we need to take our anger, our fear, and our hope and recognize the wealth of resources that we already have, in order to build alternative structures. We don’t need to assimilate when we have each other.

We’re not like everyone else.

Everywhere we turn, it seems like someone wants us to support gay marriage. From enthusiastic canvassers on the street to liberal professors in the academy, from gay lawyers to straight soccer moms, there’s someone smiling at us, eager to let us know how strongly they support our “right to marry,” waiting for what should be our easy affirmation. And there seems to be no space for us to resist the agenda that has been imposed upon us. We’re fed up with the way that the gay marriage movement has tried to assimilate us, to swallow up our families, our lives, and our lovers into its clean-cut standards for what queer love, responsibility, and commitment should look like. We reject the idea that we should strive to see straight family configurations reflected in our families. We’re offended by the idea that white, middle-class gays – rather than genderqueers, poor people, single moms, prisoners, people of color, immigrants without papers, or anyone whose life falls outside of the norm that the state has set – should be our “natural” allies. We refuse to feel indebted or grateful to those who have decided it’s time for us to be pulled out from the fringe and into the status quo. We know that there are more of us on the outside than on the inside, and we realize our power.

We write this feeling as if we have to grab our community back from the clutches of the gay marriage movement. We’re frightened by its path and its incessant desire to assimilate. Believe it or not, we felt incredibly safe, happy, taken care of, and fulfilled with the many queer biological and chosen parents who raised us without the right to marry. Having grown up in queer families and communities we strongly believe that queers are not like everyone else. Queers are sexy, resourceful, creative, and brave enough to challenge an oppressive system with their lifestyle. In the ways that our families might resemble nuclear, straight families, it is accidental and coincidental, something that lies at the surface. We do not believe that queer relationships are the mere derivatives of straight relationships. We can play house without wanting to be straight. Our families are tangled, messy and beautiful – just like so many straight families who don’t fit into the official version of family. We want to build communities of all kinds of families, families that can exist – that do exist – without the recognition of the state. We don’t believe that parenting is cause for an end to political participation. We believe that nurturing the growth, voice and imagination of children as a parent, a family and a community is a profoundly radical act. We want to build networks of accountability and dependence that lie outside the bounds of the government, the kinds of networks that we grew up in, the kinds of networks that we know support single-parent families, immigrant families, families who have members in the military or in prison, and all kinds of chosen families. These families, our families, work through our collective resources, strengths, commitments, and desires, and we wouldn’t change them for anything.

Transgendered and non-transgendered being and behavior

"Women and men are made, not born" -- Simone de Beauvoir, French white cisgendered feminist.
To read an essay based on that quote, go here.


[the image above is from here, an astoundingly racist, sexist, and classist and "unaware of gynocide or genocide" webpage]

What follows is a reply I was going to post to a commenter here, but decided to make a separate post because it ended up bringing up issues that I've not brought up here before.

So, hi everyone, and hi especially to Anonymous of Oct. 17th, 2009 ECD.

Note for what I'm about to say: seeking to know anyone who is part of a of diverse population that is not seen or understood as "one's own" (by oneself), including by trying to find modes of behavior that "they" have in common, or by discerning the values of one or two or twelve or seventy people in that group is called discrimination where I come from.

That said, my conclusions about "men" are based on knowledge of thousands of WHITE men I've seen or known, and on what millions upon millions of men have done in society, in the so-called great literature they've written, in the good and bad movies they've made, and in the patterns discernible in their behaviour across eras and across continents. "Sociology" is a field as reputable as any other--or as irreputable! "Anthropology", on the other hand, is so thick with white men's racist assumptions, values, and practices, that it needs a major overhaul by antiracist, antisexist folks, by people of color and by women, and especially by Indigenous people--particularly Indigenous women, before it will have much legitimacy for me personally. When the perspectives and theories in the field of "anthropology" are fully and completely centered around the experiences of Indigenous women and other women of color, I'll start reading anthropology books again--well, the books that reflect that shift in consciousness.

I have known only one American Indian man intimately. I was his boyfriend years back. He did not behave the way white men stereotypically behave, AT ALL. He was raised on a res in the Southwestern U.S. among other people of his Nation. And he told me about plenty of men on the res who behaved about as oppressively towards local women as a few white men I have known personally.

But I do believe "male supremacy" is often a term racistly used in white society to mean "white male supremacy" which can and does shape everyone of every gender and race pretty much across the globe, at this point, but not entirely so. There still are people on Earth who have little to no contact with white men and white male supremacist social-economic political practices and institutions. But Japan, to name but one non-white country, is so Westernised, so infiltrated by Euro/U.S. white male supremacist culture and economics, that however men treat women there, it cannot be said to not be influenced by those practices and values of white men that are racist and misogynistic.

The only FtM trans person I know well is among the many dear, sensitive human beings I know (across gender), and clearly fits well enough into the category you said: comes from queer/lesbian community, was feminists/is profeminist, cares deeply about all women's issues, isn't "into" hanging out with asshole cismen, sexist cismen, etc.

And of course transgendered people, like any other group of completely diverse people raised in white hetero male supremacist societies, will absorb various things, be taught various things, be valued for various things, be rewarded for various things in such ways as to be shaped and influenced to behave in ways consistent with the "standards of being" in any given white heterosexual male supremacist society. I wrote "various things" to mean "very varied ways of behaving" just so I wouldn't have to type out those extra words so many times! lol (Gee: what WILL I do with all that extra cyberspace!)

I hope we all know that those of us raised in such societies may be butch boys, butch girls, femme boys, femme girls; children, teens, and adults with the very varied experiences of having AIS; children, teens, and adults with the experience of being intersex, poor to rich, of color and not of color, disabled and non-disabled, with various levels of conscious trans awareness of things like sexism, racism, and heterosexism. For example, if you grew up with a conservative or liberal or progressive known-to-be transgendered or lesbian parent I think it's safe enough to say that you will likely have more awareness about some aspects of transgender and lesbian existence vs. in a radical home with cisgendered parents. I can't conclude what sort of awareness: some kids raised by queer parents are deeply aligned with queer issues, some are not, and some become militantly anti-queer.

Also, if one is a female-born girl raised in house where she saw her ciswoman mother yelled at and beaten up regularly by her cisman father, she may grow up identifying more strongly with one or the other parent. And some lesbian batterers are women who grew up identifying with their battering fathers.

A butch boy who identified and loved his mother strongly, so much so that he 'got it' that women are mistreated and oppressed by men, socially, may be far more sensitive to gender issues than those boys who did not identify with their mothers at all.

Many MtF trans people grew up more like sissyboys than "REAL BOYS", with the stigma of being "like a girl," and never really developed the male ego structure and or acquired the complete set of privileges that many boys do achieve, especially non-"effeminate" hetero boys.

That said, I was more or less a sissyboy and I certainly learned how to absorb and act out male privileges. I've also been extremely close to women, emotionally, my whole life. The privileges I have tended to act out most were not conscious to me as such. They were pointed out to me, often repeatedly, by women in my life.

In my experience of meeting thousands of people, I can conclude a few things:

Manhood and whiteness are states of being and behaving that carry great power and generally denied privileges. These ways of being and values and practices and behaviors are encoded and enforced into society structurally, institutionally, systemically, and socially. Also interpersonally.

Being heterosexual, if a man, makes life easier than being gay, assuming both males come from the same demographic: such as being white, upper middle class, and educated through college in what are considered to be "the better schools".

Being a disabled trans woman means one will live with more challenges and lack of understanding than a non-disabled trans woman within their same demographic group: such as being Chican@ and raised among primarily Chican@ people, or likewise if Black, American Indian, or white; also working class, raised in standard school systems not "the better ones".

Trans and genderqueer people will probably live lives of greater inner turmoil than those who are gender normative, with regard to gender issues, assuming comparable levels of mental health and endurance of trauma. And gender issues may not be what most concerns any individual trans person.

I have met very obnoxious, bigoted, willfully ignorance, highly race-privileged whites, of whatever gender, who behave in MANY of the same oppressive ways that feminist women critique about the group "men". White people, in my experience, are about as willing to own their shit as men are. And among men, I know far more who are at least measurably conscious of how gender is political and socially acted out oppressively against women and who try and not act out in male supremacist ways, but do, and when they do are poorly to moderately accountable to women in their lives, whereas among white folks, I have men relatively few I can say that about. Most white radical men I know have women intimately in their lives. Most radical white women I know do not have people of color intimately in their lives.

(And I've met WAY more white people than men in my life, by far.)

I'm wondering what your thoughts are about any or all of that.

And, I have a question I've been meaning to ask SOMEONE for AGES, and now seems like the appropriate time to ask it:

Why do you use the term "woman born woman"? It seems like it's a basic tenet of many forms of radical feminism that women are not born, they are human beings raised into a world that categorises and treats them as women when they are adults and as girls when they are children.

Women are not born women. Women are born as babies.

Another feminist tenet is to not consider "womanhood" the equivalent of "girlhood" or "infancy".

So the term "woman born woman" complete perplexes me and I cringe whenever I hear it because it sounds like a term male supremacists and gender essentialists came up with. And, of course, it ain't my business what women decide to call themselves.

I'm just curious to know why you, specifically you, use that term.

END OF POST.