"White Men as The Problem" by Joe R. Feagin

[above image of Donald Trump is from here]

[above image of John McCain is from here]

What follows is just a portion of a post from racism review. I greatly recommend going to the source and reading the whole piece.

[All the text that follows was posted by a man named Joe R. Feagin. A bit more info on the two men who contribute to the site follows the excerpted piece*:]

Unusual numbers of photos of elite white men are in the news lately, since the financial crisis hit. Almost all perpetrators of our “second great depression,” as with the first, have been white men. White male business “geniuses,” often with top-college educations. It is odd that no one yet, to my knowledge, has featured the whiteness or white-maleness of these malefactors of great wealth as a central feature of the life-devastating economic “problem” we face globally. One can be sure that if these agents of destruction were women or men of color that the reality of their gender and racial characteristics would be a constant topic of conversation by pundits and politicians, especially in the media. (Remember that Hillary Clinton is still blamed for failures in health care reform quite a while back.)

Come to think of it, white men (they named themselves “white” in the 17th century) created the modern Western (now world) economic system. They created the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Or should we say, the Predatory Ethic and the Spirit of Exploitation. Arrogant greed seems to be a major motivation behind the labor/land expropriation and exploitation euphemized by historians as “overseas exploration” and “settlement.” Certainly, white men created, expanded, and maintained the often genocidal taking of millions of indigenous peoples’ lands in the Americas and the Holocaust-like Atlantic slave trade. Mostly white men created the oppressive realities of modern capitalism and North American slavery, and have made huge profits and wealth off of it, now passed along to their descendants.

In recent centuries, elite white men have caused much death and destruction, probably more than any other elite group on the planet. White men are certainly not the only major sources of “democide” and related despotism, but they do seem to lead the list. (Consider not only the many indigenous genocides and Atlantic slave trade, but the Holocaust, Soviet gulags, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two world wars). While white men are not alone in such actions, the consequences of their actions have been more far-reaching, especially for the planet in general than have those of despotic not-white actors.

White men set up the Western legal systems reinforcing modern capitalism and North American genocide targeting millions of indigenous Americans and enslavement of millions of African Americans. They created the white racial frame to explain and rationalize these savage operations. The white frame is a dominant worldview that a great many white men, including elite political-economic leaders, still seem to be operating out of as they today exploit the world’s majority, the 80 percent of the planet that is not white.

And it was these self-named white men who reinvigorated a very strong white-patriarchal frame, with its “great chain of being” notions (God at top, then angels, then European men, then European women, then European children, then “other races,” then animals). In the North American case, they easily extended this to the system of racial oppression they had devised for Native Americans and African Americans.

These men, centuries ago and now, see themselves as heroic and virtuous, even as they have created great destruction and misery for many people. Ronald Takaki speaks of this view of white men as “virtuous republicans.” Note that in this centuries-old process most white men have had little sense of their own weakness and venality, but have almost always accented their virtues. Today, as in earlier centuries, most white men generally do not see their group’s lack of virtues, their major weaknesses, and their major errors. They certainly do not like to admit error. Indeed, white men now often blame the victims, as in the case of this white male commodity trader who recently blamed homeowners and moaned about “losers” with troubled mortgages, and not the banks now being bailed out with billions for playing the central role in creating the housing crisis.

So we are rapidly moving today to the second of their “great depressions” in this country’s history, yet the arrogant framing and actions of a few hundred, or perhaps thousand, of elite white men have yet to be problematized. Indeed, one cannot do so in the public media and discussions of this society. It simply is not possible to problematize the ruling group, as they have too much control to allow for significant problematization.

*about us
Posted by admin on Sep 10th, 2007
2007
Sep 10
Contributors to RacismReview are scholars and researchers from sociology and a number of other social science disciplines and a variety of academic institutions across the U.S.
RacismReview is intended to provide a credible and reliable source of information for journalists, students and members of the general public who are seeking solid evidence-based research and analysis of “race,” racism, ethnicity, and immigration issues, especially as they undergird and shape U.S. society within a global setting.We also provide substantive research and analysis on local, national, and global resistance to racial and ethnic oppression, including the many types of antiracist activism.
Launched in 2007, RacismReview is produced and maintained by Joe R. Feagin, Texas A&M University and Jessie Daniels, CUNY- Hunter College.]
END OF POST.

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part six

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Email #4 from USguy: (Passages of Aussieguy's prior email/s are in italics below, just for a bit more clarity as to who is saying what.)

Re:
(Isn't it revolting to agree so wholeheartedly with each other...;)

lol. Yes. And it's also very rare!

I'm not sure I fully understood some of what you last wrote, and will comment on the paragraphs or sentences that I found problematic. Let me know if I didn't comprehend what you were meaning, so I can then correct my reply, if need be.

Re:
I have been thinking about privilege and power a fair bit lately and I think there is more to it than the fact that privilege persists despite our being opposed to it, even though that is very true. I think that the power that privileged people have is only power to exercise and enjoy our privileges. We do not have unequal power to create justice. When we genuinely act to undermine the unfair power we hold and the system that gives it to us, we find ourselves as disempowered in that moment as any person standing up to injustice. But instead of discouraging me from taking action, that experience makes me more committed because it is only when I work with others to resist oppression that I ever step down from my plinth so we can be truly equal.

If I'm understanding you, I don't agree with some of what you are saying above. First, "privilege persists despite our being opposed to it" refers to the few people who do that. Most whites don't oppose white privilege, nor do most men oppose male privilege, in my experience anyway. They/we may pay lip service to our woes as white men, but bottom line: we arrange our lives so we are not accountable to those we oppress. And bottom line: we don't, generally, interrupt or disrupt or stop other whites/men from behaving in racist/sexist ways. And also, I'm not convinced "the interpersonal realm"--the social and private spaces--are where most of the violence happens, although tons of it happens there. With racism and sexism being institutionalised, we needn't "act like jerks" all the time or even most of the time for the systems of oppression to keep on keeping on. Male supremacy, for example, can sustain many men being "against sexism". It can, it does, it always has, perhaps.

So, in response to this specifically: "I think that the power that privileged people have is only power to exercise and enjoy our privileges. We do not have unequal power to create justice. When we genuinely act to undermine the unfair power we hold and the system that gives it to us, we find ourselves as disempowered in that moment as any person standing up to injustice."

I don't agree. The power privileged people have is not only to enjoy our privileges. Our power is to maintain systems of oppression, and sometimes that takes hard work. Sometimes that isn't all that enjoyable. Whites don't necessarily "enjoy" behaving as white supremacists, for example. For many whites, the behaviors that are harmful come from irrational fears and stupid bigoted ideas. Some whites and men behave irrationally, in this sense, and are not having much fun in the process. AND, in my view, anyway, no matter what, we always maintain our social position over those we oppress. We don't ever, really, "find ourselves as disempowered" as the oppressed who are standing up to injustice. That understanding of "disempowered" for me, is woefully individualistic, psychological, and ignores that men and whites ALWAYS have great institutions backing up our views of our oppressive ways of being human. Yes, interpersonally, at any given moment, on any given day, one or both people in, for example, a heterosexual relationship, can feel disempowered. But even if I feel that way, I'm socially/structurally bolstered in a way that women are not. And in some heterosexual relationships, and in lesbian ones and gay ones, there are various ways power plays out between people. But no matter how "powerful" the more powerful woman is in a lesbian relationship, men have more power than her, structurally and institutionally--both gay and heterosexual men.

Re:
When you said "If she blames herself, it's one way to be less terrified, because once she realizes she didn't do anything to contribute to what happened to her, it can leave someone feel VERY vulnerable to future assaults." that was suddenly very clear to me. I have had a related vague feeling about how it's dangerous to confess to women instances of when I have objectified them or violated them without their knowledge, not because of the consequences for me but because they might feel afraid. Your explanation clarifies it really well.

I want to qualify that statement, however. Because victims blaming themselves is a crucial mechanism in making oppressive violence effective. It's not "only" a way for some survivors to "feel" more in control. Shame and self-blame are what survivors are left with. And I'd strongly argue that the shame that men feel for perpetrating is relatively minor compared to the shame that someone who has been victimized carries. As someone on both sides of some of those fences, I speak that as my truth, anyway. The shame I have felt for visually violating a man can go away in moments. I'm done visually violating him, so the shame dissipates rather quickly. But if I've been visually violated by a man, that shame or mortification, depending on the circumstances, can last a lifetime. It's like perpetrator's shame, in my view, comes and goes like the tide, but victims' shame is etched into us, branded into us. And the only time a perpetrator may get a taste of that level of shame is when, rarely, he is identified as a perpetrator to everyone in the town where he lives, and is made to never hide that history from anyone. And how many men, by percent, have THAT happen to us? One thousandth of one percent? If that?!

You wrote:
That comes back to a point that my partner [woman's name deleted] (better change her name if you publish this, too) made to me once: that men don't ever deal with this shit among ourselves. I am much more likely to confess this stuff to a woman than to a man. It's not because I'm afraid of being punished over-harshly by men. It's because I expect very little response and more likely even an attack for thinking there's anything wrong to confess and a defensiveness because they all have the same habits too. But actually, it is necessary for us to be confronting this behaviour ourselves and not leaving it for women to take on against men's threats (not idle threats) of violence.

It is so rare for men to confront one another, and it alone would be a cornerstone in bringing down male supremacy, if it happened consistently, and over a long period of time. Again, this would need to happen from male leaders of business, by CEOs, by presidents and prime ministers of countries, by male religious leaders, by those who own and operate news media, etc. This particular action, of men holding men accountable for what we do that harms women, would have to include and move way beyond "friends calling each other out." And, importantly, friendships and familial relationships would have to end, over this issue. I've lost friends and left friends due to them being unwilling to deal with their race, gender, sexuality, and class privileges.

Getting back to an earlier point, men acting to interrupt men's sexist violence IS one of our privileges. We have the privilege to do it and just maybe be taken seriously. Whites and men's words and actions carry more political clout, in a racist/sexist State. Me speaking out strengthens my voice, a voice that is already strengthened by centuries of mythic "heroism" and "greatness" by "people like me."

John Stoltenberg and perhaps also Robert Jensen speak of "acting on behalf of one's ethical self, against the interests of one's politically harmful self" or something like that. I think such analyses ignore how whenever men speak, we speak with power, and with a kind of presence that is often silencing of women, or which society, on the whole, listens more carefully and attentively to.

I think your story about the friend of you and your partner who justifies his use of pornography is a perfect example where one could, and I'd argue ought to say: "As long as you are not in struggle with this issue, as long as you think it is just fine to use raped women's bodies to produce your orgasms or arousal, as long as you consider objectifying women 'natural,' we cannot be friends."

Your partner's analogy works quite well for me, regarding arguing that "someone is empowered by global capitalism if they start a small business." We are all trained to not see the blood on our hands, if we are oppressors who only or primarily commit atrocity by proxy. All whites commit genocide daily, and all men commit gynocide daily. There is no way not to be a murderer. The question is only: do you know you are one? And what are you going to do about it? Read Andrea Dworkin's speech, link below, if you haven't read it several times already.

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html

By the way, what have you read by Andrea Dworkin? And what other feminist writings have you read? Just curious.

When a man argues something like this to me:

"Implicit in some of his arguments was an accusation that we were interfering in his private life and trying to take away his only source of sexual pleasure while he was single. Afterwards, he said 'Wow. I don't think I've ever been part of such a conservative discussion about porn.'"

I respond by reminding him there's nothing conservative about the position I'm taking: it's actually quite anti-conservative, if by conservative we mean "that which is in the best interests of wealthy white men." And someone I know says: men are not entitled to privacy when that privacy is used to violate or otherwise oppress women.

That men think we are entitled to this is something created and protected by patriarchy. But it's in no way just, or humane.

Re:
"I think his justifications amount to nothing and that if he cant have a wank without using porn, he's not using enough imagination."

I think there's way more going on when men defend their right to use pornography. I think it is one arena of conversation where men are asserting their male supremacist power, authority, rights, entitlements, and privileges, which is one reason I believe in strongly going after any man's words that make that case. That his orgasms depend on rape-for-profit is one issue. That he thinks he can create "safe space" around him where his "complaints" or whatever they are, about not being able to enjoy masturbating without using pornography, is a very political matter, and oppressive when he's doing so in the presence of a woman like your partner. He's pissing on ground, marking his terrain, intellectual and physical terrain, even if it's in your home. Beware of men doing this.

I don't discuss my views on women using pornography with other men, usually. How women survive a pornographic society is for each woman, and women collectively, to determine. It's not for any man to determine, in my view. This is not to say that if a woman asks me for my opinion on whether I think it would be a wise decision for her to give up bar tending and become a stripper, I won't weigh in with my view that the price she's likely to pay for stripping, in many ways, on many levels, is too high, in my opinion. I will ask her what she would most want her sister to do, given the choices and financial dilemmas she's facing, or her mother. And this can be a very shaming thing to ask a woman, whose sister or mother or friend may well have had to engage in some form of professional male sexual exploitation of women, in order to survive. And she may have already begun stripping, but is feeling out how I feel about the issue. And being a bar tender, if young and female, usually means dealing with sexual harassment daily, as is the case with women being out in public spaces, working as servers, working in high-paying jobs, as managers, as heads of companies, and as women who are working in the industries which most graphically and unapologetically exploit and degrade women as a class. But that decision is hers, not any man's.

I look forward to hearing your therapist's answer, if and when you confront him on what he's doing to end men's sexualized domination of women, in his life outside his practice, and in his therapy practice.

Re:
One thing I have done, in a kind of sporadic way, is to call myself out among my radical community for my behaviour. I haven't actually admitted the worst to them, though I have to you. I have highlighted my porn viewing and general objectification and habit of perving down women's tops but not told them about any instances of deliberately setting up perving opportunities. But it has been the early beginning of a move to get this stuff talked about and shift our expectations of men's behaviour in our community at least.

I wrestle a great deal with this. I think that there's a way men can sort of get off on "confessing our sins" to the masses. And we can use this confessing in very irresponsible ways. I think stating what one has done generally is sufficient, and if any woman wants or needs to know more, she can ask you. But telling stories in details is likely to be triggering to many women, and is also likely to arouse many men. So the "telling" might just be reinforcing male sexual domination of women, not undermining it. Of course something can do both at once, also. So it is tricky. I think as a safe policy for women, tell your stories when asked. Most women know we do what we do, because they've experienced us doing it to them.
END OF POST.

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part five

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Email #5 from Aussieguy:
Wow. I have such a jumble of emotions in response to that mail. I agree with every point you made. (Isn't it revolting to agree so wholeheartedly with each other...;)

I have been thinking about privilege and power a fair bit lately and I think there is more to it than the fact that privilege persists despite our being opposed to it, even though that is very true. I think that the power that privileged people have is only power to exercise and enjoy our privileges. We do not have unequal power to create justice. When we genuinely act to undermine the unfair power we hold and the system that gives it to us, we find ourselves as disempowered in that moment as any person standing up to injustice. But instead of discouraging me from taking action, that experience makes me more committed because it is only when I work with others to resist oppression that I ever step down from my plinth so we can be truly equal.

Look, there I am writing about politics now. It seems like now that I've told you a lot of my story, I can spend some time on opinions and discussion too.

When you said "If she blames herself, it's one way to be less terrified, because once she realizes she didn't do anything to contribute to what happened to her, it can leave someone feel VERY vulnerable to future assaults." that was suddenly very clear to me. I have had a related vague feeling about how it's dangerous to confess to women instances of when I have objectified them or violated them without their knowledge, not because of the consequences for me but because they might feel afraid. Your explanation clarifies it really well.

That comes back to a point that my partner [woman's name deleted] made to me once: that men don't ever deal with this shit among ourselves. I am much more likely to confess this stuff to a woman than to a man. It's not because I'm afraid of being punished over-harshly by men. It's because I expect very little response and more likely even an attack for thinking there's anything wrong to confess and a defensiveness because they all have the same habits too. But actually, it is necessary for us to be confronting this behaviour ourselves and not leaving it for women to take on against men's threats (not idle threats) of violence.

You said "In my experience, in the last twenty years, increasingly, it isn't "cool" to be a feminist who isn't "into" porn."

It's really true. A friend of ours who had broken up with his girlfirend a couple of months earlier was round at our place and he mentioned that he likes downloading porn. He and [my partner] got into a discussion and he totally defended his right to look at porn. I said nothing, feeling strongly that porn was wrong but also feeling unqualified to tell anyone else not to use it while I continued to have the habit. He used as justification that some number of his past girlfiends enjoyed looking at porn with him and one of them taught him to download it. He also talked about how he had found websites where women and couples posted footage of themselves having sex and it was all very empowered and consensual. ([My partner] said later that that's like saying that someone is empowered by global capitlaism if they start a small business.) Implicit in some of his arguments was an accusation that we were interfering in his private life and trying to take away his only source of sexual pleasure while he was single. Afterwards, he said "Wow. I don't think I've ever been part of such a conservative discussion about porn."

I have looked hard for websites where I think the ethics are OK and the women are not degraded and I have not found a single one. I think his justifications amount to nothing and that if he cant have a wank without using porn, he's not using enough imagination. There are plenty of ways in which oppressed people buy into their own oppression, so women being into it is not the issue either. As well as that, one woman can objectify another, or one woman can objectify women generally, for her own sexual pleasure. It doesn't make it just.

A few women I know, who have had various experiences of male sexual violence, have been making DIY porn and exhibiting it as a self-empowering response to their experiences. Several of them talk about porn as a potentially women-friendly and consent-based thing. While I see some healing value for them in getting together and making the images, I think they miss the point about the mass porn industry being based on continual exploitation and also the way the content itself contains so much imagery of violence, degradation and oppression.

I agree with your points about the therapist being there to help me feel better about myself. It seemed a bit as though he was just there to help me with whatever I wanted and he would help me give up cornflakes if I told him I felt bad about it. He has offered no recognition that the problem really exists in society and that my response is an attempt to take responsibility for my own part in it. I felt a bit like saying "Well, what are YOU doing about it, then?" And in fact I will, but with less bitterness. I have the idea that you are doing good things and I'd like to get onto talking about what they are and start some activity on it in my life too.

One thing I have done, in a kind of sporadic way, is to call myself out among my radical community for my behaviour. I haven't actually admitted the worst to them, though I have to you. I have highlighted my porn viewing and general objectification and habit of perving down women's tops but not told them about any instances of deliberately setting up perving opportunities. But it has been the early beginning of a move to get this stuff talked about and shift our expectations of men's behaviour in our community at least.

I look forward to hearing back
END OF POST.

Pornography Use and Other Violations: A Conversation Between Two White Men, part four

Here are the links to the whole conversation:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

CAUTION: What follows is a conversation between two men about their abusive behaviors toward girls, women, and others. Any survivor of child sexual abuse, rape, or other form of sexual violation and objectification may be quite triggered by portions of this exchange. All violative behaviors are named as such by at least one of the two people, critically, with remorse and/or regret. Both people do not currently use pornography.

Email #4 from Aussieguy:

You make some very useful points in your mail, such as describing my first story as "A memory of violation that you experienced as sexual". That really sums up a little thing that's been nagging at my brain for a while now, about how this stuff is not sex but is linked in my mind to sex. And it focuses on the bald fact that it is a violation. I committed a sexual assault at that age.

Your reminding me to think of the experience of the girl in that story is very confronting too. I think of myself as much more alert to a woman's experience of my sexuality now but I had not properly sat and thought about that particular girl's experience. It is frightening and very sad, reminding me of images of young children holding machine guns or other cruel intrusions of adult injustice into children's lives.

The idea that "males grow up to feel pervy, for example, but don't grow up feeling like systematic sexual violators" is also very eye-opening. It is something of a relief to really open myself and understand what I have been in my life, but it I am also very deeply sad. It is not like depression or despair, more that I want to have a good cry. Perhaps I will even be able to.

I am also excited by how clearly you explain the stuff about society appearing not to condone our abuse while actually requiring it, and also the point that it is the power of male sexuality that is dangerous. That last point is like the gorilla in the room: so glaringly obvious and terrible that no-one wants to address it.

Interestingly, I don't remember ever feeling any entitlement to look at women's bodies. I may have justified it or explained it away in some way but I think that in fact I just avoided reflecting on what I was doing. I shut down my awareness of my own experiences and with it my understanding of anyone else's experience too.

I am very confused about what the woman I saw in the shower felt. I saw that she was alarmed and she must have been embarrassed but afterwards she blamed herself. I apologised to her for looking in and she said she should not have left the curtain a bit open like that. I didn't tell her that I had opened it and I don't know if it occurred to her then or afterwards that I could have set up that horrible situation. I imagine her mulling it over in her mind and feeling revolted every time she considers the idea that I might have deliberately exposed her like that.

It was a fantasy of mine to be invisible too, and only for the purpose of hiding in women's rooms or shower blocks. Spy cameras and voyeur web sites are the high-tech equivalent of that fantasy, it seems. My fantasy is not quite reality for me though because I have so far resisted having the internet at home, so I do all my porn surfing surreptitiously on public computers. I try to set myself up in places where no-one can see what I'm looking at but it doesn't work very well. I have been caught probably half a dozen times that I know of and who knows how many times someone has seen what I'm doing and said nothing. My partner told me that if she was sitting next to someone and he was looking at porn she would be disgusted but also quite scared. She would not feel safe being near him. Even that, confronting as it is, did not instantly stop me from doing it.

I think a lot of it is, as you say, because I can. I can do it and I can get away with it. Even when I have been caught, it has not led to even moderate punishment, just momentary shame and that's all.

I saw a sexual health counsellor about this problem and she suggested setting things up to restrict my access to the internet. The counsellor I'm seeing now is not a sexual health specialist but he has been quite helpful already. Two things he told that have helped are that people usually take about 4-6 weeks to break a pattern of behaviour and start a new one, and the idea of saying "STOP!" in my head when my mind goes in the direction of porn or objectifying women. It's been really good to have a specified time period when I have to be 100% vigilant and then review where I'm at after that, instead of trying to just stop, forever, instantly. To know that I can expect my brain to have made a real change in that 6 weeks is a real encouragement to be firm and stay on track. And the "STOP!" thing is a good way to divert myself instantly before I get taken up with a behaviour pattern. My eyes will wander and start looking for a woman's cleavage as she bends over or something ad I say "STOP!" and look somewhere else, whereas before I may have stared at her, then at the next woman, then gone off actively looking for women to perve on, then gone to find a website to look at or a video with sex scenes in it to watch. So it helps me catch myself at the first moment of objectification instead of having to try to fight off the urge to watch porn when I've already followed my urges so far.

It's 4 weeks now, and I've been 100% vigilant so far. It feels like I'm really digging out some deeply held stuff.

There, I think that's enough for this one.
Until next time
END OF POST.