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AlterNet is one place where feminists get to speak truth. And, not surprisingly, all the standard patriarchy-deniers and pro-pornography apologists come out of the woodwork to try and put other words in the feminist's mouth, as if her own words don't have the meaning they have, or carry the weight of truth. If she's a scholar, that's used against her. If she's an activist, that's used against her. She cannot be "an expert" some say, because she hasn't spoken to every woman on Earth. When you speak simple truths to embedded power, your speech must be derailed as something other than truthful. It cannot possibly be descriptive without having a secret agenda to silence people. Only feminist speech silences people, according to some of the commenters below: never the actions or speech of pornographers and pimps, who rape at will, without consequence. Feminists speaking out about social matters that promote and rely on rape are seen as dangerous, while pimping rapists silencing women is seen as universal and inevitable, existing in a kind of space-time that cannot or ought not be defined. G-d/dess help the feminists who do so.
You will note in the many comments that follow the interview about the content of the book Pornland, how few of Gail Dines' critics bother to cite her at all. They instead tell us what Gail is REALLY saying, as if her work is disguising a secret agenda.
Anyone who knows Gail's work might have some criticisms of it--should graphic pornography, in all its racist, misogynistic ugliness, be shown or described by feminists to demonstrate exactly how hateful to women it is? The actual discussion among feminists for decades has been "What will the general public bear witness to, beyond the consumers of pornography?" Will they be able to look at what their boyfriends, husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons view and masturbate to, and feel anything other than horror? That's a legitimate discussion. I personally try never to encounter images of the pornography that is increasingly mainstream. I find it to be utterly disturbing in its sexualised, callous violence. But accusing Gail, as many below do, of being a censor, a fascist, right-wing fundamentalist, or a prude is about as far off the mark as it gets, and one wonders who planted these notions in the heads of the commenters. Here's one answer: the pornographers did.
Decades ago, I remember meeting a man in a progressive environment. He was very clear that capitalism was oppressive, and that racism (if the harmed people were male) was harmful. When I asked him if he'd ready anything by Andrea Dworkin a strange look came over his face--one of disgust. I asked him if he'd ever read anything by her. No, he hadn't. I asked him if he consumed pornography and what pornography he consumed. He said he was a fan of Penthouse. Ah, well. Bob Guccione, among other renowned pornographers, had been telling lies about her and other feminists for years. He literally and figuratively bought Guccione's racist-misogynistic propaganda, and obtained orgasms from it regularly. When men want to objectify and violate women, visually or physically, and want to feel nothing but entitled to do so, they will lash out against feminists (or the occasional profeminist), who have the audacity to speak truth to power--the power of pornographers to possess, control, and regulate human sexuality, rather tyrannically, and usually for great profit.
You might note that one person accuses me of threatening him with scissors! That's news to me. I've asked him to produce evidence of me doing this--he says it happened online. I'll let you know if he ever comes up with anything other than libelous speech.
About the interviewer:
Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit that funds health, educational, and training projects for Afghan women. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.
MEDIA AND CULTURE
Should We Worry Whether Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality?
September 11, 2010 |
As an example, Dines quotes from the introductory text on a typical porn Web site:
Do you know what we say to things like romance and foreplay? We say fuck off! This is not another site with half-erect weenies trying to impress bold sluts. We take gorgeous young bitches and do what every man would REALLY like to do. We make them gag till their makeup starts running, and then they get all other holes sore -- vaginal, anal, double penetrations, anything brutal involving a cock and an orifice. And then we give them the sticky bath.This is not the extreme end of a complex porn continuum -- it is typical of today's mainstream porn freely available online, often to boys as young as 11. Not only does Dines go to great lengths to research the depth of porn's standard fare, but she also details how the porn industry is consumed with profits, and the effect this has on its male viewers. Says Dines, "The pornographers did a kind of stealth attack on our culture, hijacking our sexuality and then selling it back to us, often in forms that look very little like sex but a lot like cruelty."
Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women's studies at Boston's Wheelock College, where she researches the hypersexualization of the culture. I interviewed her recently about her book.
Sonali Kolhatkar: I have to say it was very difficult to read your book, and I had to skip parts where you describe mainstream pornography. This is not your father's Playboy or Penthouse magazines and videos. What we're seeing in porn today, and mainstream porn, is completely bizarre. I mean, how do you handle it in your research?
Gail Dines: Well, what's interesting is that I, like the viewers, get desensitized over time. I mean, obviously I couldn't have the visceral reaction I had in the beginning to it. But I put those descriptions in because often people say to me, you know, why are you getting so upset by images of naked women? And what I want people to understand is that pornography now looks nothing like it did 10, 15 years ago -- that it is now brutal and cruel and is absolutely based on the degradation of women. So this is why I walk people through the porn industry. Also, often anti-porn feminists are accused of picking the worst of the pornography. What I wanted to do was go into the mainstream pornography that the average 11-year-old would get once he put "porn" into Google.
SK: Can you trace the history of the pornography industry, both in terms of who has run it, and its content?
GD: There's always been pornography floating around our culture, but I really put the pornography industry at 1953, starting then. Why? Because it was the first edition of Playboy, and this was the first time pornography really became industrialized, really became a product. Now, Hefner was very smart. He started in '53, post-Second World War America. And what this country needed to do was jump-start the economy. Now, women were taught how to buy through television. There was nowhere to teach men. And remember in the '50s you had to teach people how to be consumers. I know it sounds bizarre today, but then...
And so, in order to teach people how to be consumers, you needed to show them what it was to buy products they didn't need. This is where Playboy was so successful. The advertising in Playboy was about telling men that if you consume at this level, then you will get the real prize, which is the women in the magazine, or women who look like women in the magazine. So what he did–he didn't just commodify sexuality, he sexualized commodities, which is his brilliance.
Also in 1969 in the New York Times there was an ad for Penthouse, and that was Penthouse trying to come in and dislodge Playboy from its number one position. And between 1969 and 1973, you had a war between Playboy and Penthouse to see who could be the most explicit. Now in a way, Playboy lost the battle but won the war. The reason is that it didn't go as explicit as Penthouse. Penthouse was so explicit that a lot of the advertisers ran and were nervous about putting their images, their products, in there.
Now, during the battle between '69 and '73, they opened up the space for what was acceptable pornography. It's no accident that in 1973 you saw the first edition of Hustler. This absolutely pushed the limits of what could be mainstream, hard-core pornography. So you had Playboy staking out the soft-core, then you had Hustler staking out the hard-core. Those were -- and I can't believe I say this -- the good old days. Today, I mean, Hustler is mild compared to what you see in the mainstream pornography.
SK: Because of the Internet.
GD: Absolutely. The Internet changed the industry. It made it accessible, and it made it affordable. So remember, when the average age of first viewing pornography is 11, when the 11-year-old boy puts "porn" into Google, he's not looking at your father's Playboy, he's looking at a world of cruelty, and a world of brutality. So what I ask in the book is, "What are the long-term effects of bringing up boys on violent images when you think about pornography as being the main form of sex education in our society?"
SK: And I want to get to that question, but let's talk about the effects on women. Because as the industry has changed, the women participating in that industry have gone from, you know, being photographed naked to now being literally brutalized -- physically brutalized. What does the average female participant in the pornography industry go through in terms of her physical degradation and her physical health?
GD: If you watch pornography you see that immediately. What you see is a woman being penetrated brutally vaginally, anally and orally. As that's happening -- three men at one time, four men at one time -- she's being called vile, hateful names, she's being sometimes slapped, sometimes her hair is pulled... Even the industry said that many women have a hard time being in the industry for more than three months. Why? Because of the brutalization of the body.
SK: Three months?
GD: That's what the article says in Adult Video News. Also, I've interviewed somebody who worked with AIM, the health care organization that takes care of the health of porn performers, and he was telling me just what happens to the bodies of these women. For example, he said one of the big things are anal prolapses, where literally their anuses drop out of their body and have to be sewn back in because of the brutal anal sex. He also talked about gonorrhea of the eye, and the latest thing -- because you have something called [ass to mouth] -- they put the penis into the anus, and then into her mouth without washing. They're finding now that women are getting fecal bacterial infections in their mouth and throat.
So, you've got a whole host of issues that women have to deal with in the porn industry, and what's interesting is nobody seems to be interested in these women. Instead we get some ridiculous documentary saying women like it, they choose it. Absolutely not. You know, you're looking at working-class women who think they know what pornography is, who see Jenna Jameson and think they're going to be the next Jenna Jameson, when Jenna Jameson is one in 10,000. And really, Jenna Jameson has been an important recruitment tool because she suggests this is what you can do if you go into pornography. And what do you know? You're 18, you think you know what you're gonna get into, and then you get on the set and everything shifts and changes.
SK: What are the long-term effects on our sexuality as a result of this new era of brutal sexual assault that masquerades as pornography both on men and women? Have there been studies?
GD: There's been studies for 30 years -- on men, mainly -- and what they find, and what I found in my interviews, is that the more pornography men watch, the less able they are to develop intimate relationships. Also what's interesting is they lose interest in real women because the pornography is so hardcore -- it's industrial-strength sex -- anything less looks bland and boring. Also, the men think they should be performing like the men in pornography, they think their penises should look like that, they think they should be able to sexually perform for hours like the men do. What they don't realize is a lot of the men in pornography are on Viagra, that's why it's so possible... And they begin to really see women in terms of objects. Not as somebody to have relationships with, but as somebody to do something to. Sex becomes something like making hate to a woman's body. They don't make love in pornography, they make hate.
SK: Now, this is an aspect that gets debated over and over again. The pro-pornography viewpoint is that what you see on your video screen is a fantasy, and that we are human beings who are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, and we don't carry over what's in our fantasy to our real lives.
GD: Well, it's very interesting we say that because, you know, as somebody who studies media, and as somebody who's progressive, when we study right-wing media we don't say it's fantasy. We don't say, "You know what, don't worry about Glenn Beck, don't worry about Rush Limbaugh -- people can distinguish." No, we understand that media shapes the way we think. It shapes our reality, it shapes our perceptions of the world. Pornography is one more form of media. It's a specific genre which, by the way, is very powerful because it delivers messages to men's brains via the penis, which is an extremely powerful delivery system. So I think the idea that it's fantasy just isn't borne out given the studies that we know about how porn, and how images in general, affect people's view of the world.
SK: What about the profit motive here, and how has that changed? Because, of course, in the early days of Playboy and Penthouse, profit was the motive, and profit is a motive today as well, but how has the industry become so fiercely capitalistic that, in a way, it's almost a victim of itself?
GD: Well, it's always been a capitalist industry. I mean, this is another thing that we don't want to think about -- that pornography, in reality, is profit-driven. It's not about fantasy, it's not about play, it's not about fun. It's about money.
When I went to the [annual porn] expo in Las Vegas, I interviewed a lot of pornographers. What was amazing is what interested them is money. They don't talk sex, they talk money. They talk bulk mailing, they talk mass advertising. What we forget when we talk about pornography is that these are not fantasies created from nowhere that drop from the sky, these are fantasies created within a typical capitalist market. What you see in pornography is a need to keep addressing that. Now what's happened is that as more and more men are using pornography, they're becoming more bored and desensitized with it, which means that they want harder and harder stuff. And the pornography, because it's profit-driven, has to meet their needs. What's interesting is that pornography is actually in a mess because they don't know what else to do, the pornographers. They've gone about as hardcore and as cruel as they can. They've done everything to women's bodies short of killing her. So the question is what can they do next to keep an increasingly desensitized audience interested?
SK: In an interesting way, pornography seems to almost be a metaphor for capitalism in general, right? Basically unchecked growth...at some point there's a limit, at some point you hit a wall, and you can't grow any more, you can't go any further because you've gone as far as you can.
GD: That's the whole issue of capitalism in our society as well. It's how much more can we continue given what's happening to the environment. But I would say that there's still room for the niche markets in pornography, and in my book I talk about specific niche markets. One of them is called interracial porn, which is black men and white women. Another one is what I call pseudo-child pornography, which is women who are 18 -- I'm pretty sure of that -- but they look younger, and they behave in a younger way. So what you have are men who are bored with adult women looking out for these pseudo-child porn sites. And I've interviewed child rapists, and some of them actually started looking... They didn't want to go to illegal child pornography, so they started with the legal so-called child pornography, and then basically matured into child pornography. And for some of them, the distance between looking at child pornography and raping a child was six months.
SK: Wow. What are the long-term effects on our society in general? Not necessarily just effects on the men who consume it, but how has pornography 'pornified,' to use Pamela Paul's term, our culture?
GD: Well, I think when we talk about a porn culture, we talk about the images and the messages and the ideologies of porn filtering down into mainstream media. I mean, you just have to turn on the television, flip through a magazine, go to the movies, and what you see is a pornographized version of the world. Now I think this is true for women as well. If you go to Cosmopolitan, the places where women read, you'll often see articles about why you should have pornography to spice up your sex life. So what we're seeing is, the pornographers have really taken control of the discourse around sexuality.
There's nobody else who's getting any voice who's coming up and saying, "Look. This is a particular type of sex that pornography's representing. It is brutality, it is based on the debasement of women. There are alternative ways of being sexual in our society that are not based on the debasement of women." But where do you hear this in the media? Because the media is increasingly becoming pornified, and you have the pornographers and their hacks in the media defining what our sexuality should be.
SK: And the effects on young girls and boys -- you mentioned that the average age of a boy who views porn on the Internet today is 11, which, as the mother of a boy, is just heartbreaking to me. So the effects on young children, both boys and then girls who see these pornified images on billboards and in magazines...what are we doing to our children?
GD: We're distorting their sexuality. We're forcing them into early sexuality this way, and we're turning their sexuality into a commodity so we can sell it -- commodify it and sell it back to them. I think one of the interesting things about how girls and young women are affected by the porn culture is they date these men who themselves have been shaped by pornography. What I found in my interviews with young women was that many of these men wanted to play out porn sex on their bodies. They wanted anal sex, they wanted all sorts of other things that they'd seen in pornography.
And a lot of the women, they don't want to do it, but they don't have the vocabulary to express why they don't want to do it because everywhere they go in this society they're told, "If you don't do it, you're a prude." And what teenager or adolescent do you know wants to be defined as a prude? So the boys are pushing, nagging, cajoling girls into performing porn sex.
SK: Gail, let's talk about the feminist debate, and where it stands over pornography. This is a long-standing debate, this battle within feminist circles over pornography. On the one hand, there are feminists who point out that pornography is degrading to women and should be an issue taken up by feminists; then on the other hand, are those who say women in the pornography industry are empowered, or they're sex workers who ought to be respected like any other workers and we shouldn't be prudes or man-haters or 'feminazis,' which is a common term I'm sure you've been called -- I've been called that. Do you see that conversation changing given that the landscape of mainstream pornography has become so brutal? Or are we still blind to its brutality?
GD: This is a great question because as pornography becomes more brutal, you would think that the conversation would get around to brutality and what happens to the women. It's amazing, I think, those feminists who support the porn industry–they don't look at it as an industry, they look at it as a collection of women being empowered by the industry. Now, I'm not saying there aren't some women who can't make this work for them. However, what I'm interested in is the macro-social and systematic effects of an industry, not of individuals working within it. What I study is the mainstream industry where women are not empowered. Women come and go, they enter the industry thinking they're going to be Jenna Jameson, they leave scarred, they leave emotionally affected by what's happened to them. And I think as feminists we need to start looking at the effects on women both in the industry and outside the industry because, as I said, these women are dating the men.
I think also there's areas in feminism where no one really sees the reality of women's victim status, that we say women are no longer victims. Well, if you look at the level of violence against women in this society, you look at women struggling to feed their children, you look at women living in poverty, you know, we need to have feminism with politics. And what's happened, I think, is that politics have been bled out of feminism, so now you get this idea that we got what we wanted, or at least we can be empowered as individuals. I'm sorry, but you cannot be empowered as individuals when women as a group are systematically discriminated against. And even if I'm OK. My feminism was saying, "You know what? I walked that distance for you because you're not OK." That's what sisterhood was about. Not about looking at individuals and saying, "You're OK, so that's a sign that women are empowered."
SK: Finally, where is the good news in all of this? Where's the activism and what are some avenues by which people can take action?
GD: There are a few places they can go where we've got resources online. My Web site, gaildines.com, also stoppornculture.com, which is an organization that I co-founded, has a list of resources. You can also download a 50-minute slideshow with a script and images that you can give in your communities, you can give in your schools. It's been given across the country, in lots of different other countries as well. And you can join on, and we have conferences, and we actually train people how to give the slideshow as a way to start building a grassroots activist movement. I often get letters from women all over the country telling me this has happened to me, thank you for doing this work, I'm now joining your organization because my husband, my boyfriend, or whatever has been using pornography and I've been affected by it.
Comments:
Gail Dines is absolutely correct feminism has been depoliticised and apparently feminism is all about a woman's choice. Apparently all women are free to make informed choices and if as often happens these 'choices' are not as 'free' as is claimed - why then the individual woman is at fault - never our white male supremacist society.
ReplyDeleteIt's a case of 'if I'm fine as a woman then all women must be "fine" and doing well.' Well feminism is not about individual choice it is a political idea, namely that women as a group are oppressed by male domination and male control. We do not live on individual islands wherein we are not subjected to socio-economic constraints which are always male-centric.
Ah those old, old claims - that Gail Dines is not an 'expert' etc. because she has not interviewed every woman living on this planet.
What I find most interesting is the virulence those predominantly male commentators engaged in. They believe any criticism by real feminists - those who oppose porn because it promotes the lie that women are not human, are somehow curbing their pseudo right to watch images of men systematically sexually torturing women and girls.
What it tells me is that male domination is never 100% total over women because there will always be one woman or more who will not be silenced by these misogynists.
However it is very depressing reading the outright male hatred and male contempt for women contained in those commentators responses. Certainly some of the commentators are women but they too are imitating the male hatred and refusal to accept that porn is never 'fantasy' but always filmed prostitution.
There are no imaginary penises being forced into women's bodies - but there certainly is immense male sexual violence being inflicted on women and girls in these images, just so that innumerable males can reinforce their pseudo belief they are superior and women are what?? Dehumanised sexual service stations and nothing else.
Has our male supremacist society become more civilised - read Gail Dines' book or take a look at some of the mainstream porn and you will see our male supremacist society is not remotely civilised. It is just as women-hating as it has always been and that is what feminists are challenging - male hatred and male contempt for women. Dehumanise a group (women) and this makes it so much easier for sadistic (male) cruelty to be carried out because 'no humans were harmed!'
Yes, Jennifer!
ReplyDeleteThe contempt expressed directly to Gail for her interview--an excellent one, I thought, on a progressive site like AlterNet is especially grievous, not that I expect anything different.
But at least AlterNet has enough of a feminist presence to take a stand against pornography as an industry of racist/misogynist social-political harm to and sexual violence against women--much to the dismay of all the male supremacists on AlterNet.
My comment is too long for one posting, so here is Part One...
ReplyDeleteI see one of the commenters on that article trots out the old chestnut of "Porn is about fantasy". And yet another says, "...this ("this" being the prevalence of rape and misogyny in the porn world and in the world in general) fails to bring a nuanced view to the problem, paints the industry with too broad a brush, and makes altogether too many assumptions about sexual development,the sexual preferences of both women and men,..."
Actually, it's porn itself that makes altogether too many assumptions....or, rather, it makes specific demands..... about sexual development and the sexual preferences of both women and men.
Although I won't deny that porn is about fantasy, what porn is actually doing is telling (mostly) men what their sexual fantasies SHOULD BE! And because, according to porn-scripted fantasy, ALL women LOVE EVERYTHING that a man could either do to them or have them do to him, there is no room for her to have any sexual preference other than doing what it is that he wants her to do or wants to do TO her. And then somewhere along the way....possibly because sex, one way or another (i.e., having it, wishing you were having it, not having it, wishing you were not having it, etc.) is such an integral part of most everyone's life..... the line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred. And when he (generic male viewer) has been fully hijacked and decides to "bring it on home", there is no line of "open communication" for her (his partner), no matter what that one poster (Uriah) seems to think. He (back to the generic male viewer) KNOWS what she wants and what she needs, because porn has told him so! How could sooooooooooooo many women possibly be wrong about what it is that she wants and needs!! HE's the man.......HE's the sexual maestro!
And he'll blame her, cold fish that she's become, when their relationship becomes increasingly devoid of enthusiastic sex or of sex altogether. But it's he that will not listen (at best) or become outraged or even abusive (at worst) when she tries to tell him that his newly acquired "preferences" aren't hers or that his newly acquired "techniques" aren't bringing about the desired outcome.
I think that this wanting to bring porn techniques into the boudoir combined with the refusal to hear or believe that those techniques aren't pleasing to one's partner is quite high on the list of why women resent the existence and usage of porn.
Nor will men listen when women try to explain to them why it is that women tend to not critique or steer their male intimate partner in the right direction as far as pleasing them is concerned when it is apparent that their porn moves just aren't doing the trick. No, they'd rather continue criticizing the woman who had a less-than-pleasing episode with a partner.
Having read a few more articles and comments at alternet, after having read this particular article posted here at this blog, I followed a link within a comment to read this:
How not to make love like a porn star
'subtitle: Hey, guys: Are adult films making you bad at sex?'
Part Two....
ReplyDeleteIn the 35 pages of comments, one commenter, Svutlov, kept insisting that the author of the article take on some of the blame, rather than blaming porn, for the bad sex that she had with the unnamed subject of her article, even after another commenter, Anonymous_Too, stated that, "Those extolling the virtues of communication in such situations clearly haven't attempted it. The reaction can run the gamut between enthusiastic participation to violent outrage, and if there's any whiff that a guy is the outrage type, it's best to just deal with the bad sex, which isn't going to kill you, and run far and fast at the first opportunity", and a couple of other commenters related stories of what had happened either to them or to someone they knew when they told their male partner that something wasn't quite as pleasing as he thought it might or should be. Anonymous_Too finally spelled it out for Svutlov, on page 33, after he commented, "Women, if you want the sexual norms and discussions to turn in your favor, then you need to talk more about the good sex that you are having. Don't let men control the norms and discussions about what is pleasant sexually, Take Control!" (yes, clearly he is not living in reality). She replied:
"You are currently demonstrating why trying to communicate on these issues with one's partner is often
a waste of time. Examples:
Not listening to what people tell you about their own experiences of these situations:
[here she includes a couple of quotations from Svutlov]
All this does is demonstrate that you're not paying attention to what women are telling you about what their attempts at communication got them. Not always, but often enough to make them leery of trying it again. [further examples of quotes] We keep trying to tell you that bad things happen when we try. You keep ignoring that, and blaming the situation on us for not doing what we already know works inconsistently and can backfire unpleasantly when it doesn't work."
Hi Patti,
ReplyDeleteThis phenomenon of men not listening and then telling women they need to speak up, or say it differently, or say something else, or not speak at all, is really annoying and infuriating.
Over to Hugo Schwyzer's blog, he posted something referencing me, and I've been responding to him, noting the sexism in the discussion as it has unfolded thus far. I have not been alone, and in fact have been following the lead of a woman who has rather clearly and directly noted what is male privileged about his responses or non-responses.
She left when his reply to her was "I've got a lot on my plate right now, due to having a wife and a child, teaching five classes, volunteering, and [so on]. Yet he has time to write new posts and new comments. Now some anti-feminist guy named Id is claiming that I'm calling Hugo out too much and to cut the guy some slack. I think he even uses the term "Geesh". He's exasperated that I'm systematically calling out the misogyny over there. HE'S exasperated. Meanwhile at least one feminist woman was driven away out of exasperation.
It becomes readily apparent whose feelings most matter when men take control of conversations. The answer is "not women's".
I'm basically waiting for Hugo to respond, and have spelled out carefully what the sexist non-responses look like, so he might avoid using them.
It just seems like so many men want to pretend to be masters of logic but will readily make exceptions for anything at all that they do or say that a woman experiences as sexist, misogynistic, male supremacist, dominating, or hurtful. Suddenly all their logic-talk about ethical behavior and fairness and humanistic values scurries away and we are left with rather bumbling unethical guys who just roam around doing more of all that pro-patriarchal stuff.
One could conclude, without stretching the imagination hardly at all, that most men just don't really care enough about women's humanity or feelings or thoughts to "get it" about when to listen more and when to speak less. And there really don't seem to be whole groups of men out there that choose to be accountable precisely when they are challenged on these matters; they want to be accountable when they feel like it, if they want to be accountable at all. Male privileges all over the place. Watch where you step.
"This phenomenon of men not listening and then telling women they need to speak up, or say it differently, or say something else, or not speak at all, is really annoying and infuriating."
ReplyDeleteI know, and as I was writing out that long post, I kept thinking to myself, "Posting all this at Julian's site is kinda like 'preaching to the choir' ", and I almost didn't post it. Unfortunately, commenting is now closed on that site for which I posted the link, or else I probably would have registered and let loose there. Sure, men would love for women to speak up....so long as they're parroting what he is thinking or saying. And if she doesn't necessarily agree with him, well, she'd better couch it in terms that don't emasculate him (now THERE'S a term that I'm rapidly starting to loathe), while he remains free to dehumanize her, starting with not listening to her because she has nothing of any value to say if it conflicts with the preconceived notions that he brings to the table. Or, like the gentleman that you referenced, Hugo Schwyzer, blows her off because all of his manly responsibilities [and here, let me list them all out for you] don't afford him the time to respond to her, yet he seems to have plenty of time to spare to pontificate on other matters.....I guess her concerns aren't his and don't affect him, so why bother to continue to respond to them.
"It becomes readily apparent whose feelings most matter when men take control of conversations. The answer is "not women's"."
OMG, you've reminded me of this one woman's blog (she is a Christian who is coming to terms with the decline of her marriage to a pastor/preacher and seeking to understand what scripture is really saying, specifically in regards to male/female relationships and family) where a man (PT) entered and tried to take control of the conversation, chastising her (and the other women posting their comments there) for being disobedient and trying to usurp rather than respect a husband's God-given authority over the wife (the entire household, actually). If you have some time on your hands, have a look at these two blog postings, and especially at the commenter named Jane who just rips right into him (she starts in on him about 1/2 way down the page in the first link)....I think that you might find interesting (perhaps even amusing, in a dark kind of way) what she says to him.
wives … enjoined to live in ‘fear’ of (the wrath of) their husbands
I confess: I usurped his God ordained position in the marriage!
"One could conclude, without stretching the imagination hardly at all, that most men just don't really care enough about women's humanity or feelings or thoughts to "get it" about when to listen more and when to speak less."
I don't have to stretch my imagination at all to conclude that most men just don't really care about women's humanity, period. How many times throughout history and even today do you hear/see men speak about what to do about "The Woman Problem", you know, the fact that men are forced to have to share the earth with these creatures.
"they want to be accountable when they feel like it, if they want to be accountable at all."
Oh they want to be accountable, alright....when they're being hailed as heroes.
But I see that I have once again digressed from the actual blog topic... sorry about that. I guess that I have seen/heard/read so many ways that a lot of men dehumanize women that it's difficult for me to confine my thoughts to just one area.
No worries about digression, Patti.
ReplyDeleteIt all fits together in one rather ugly portrait of patriarchal atrocities.
Here's an excellent piece related to some of this. I've asked the author for permission to cross post it, but for now, here's the link.
Words are Not Fists: On Male Strategies to Diffuse Feminist Anger", by Hugo Schwyzer, from his blog
And thanks for those links, Patti!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome for the links and for the "okay" to digress at times, as that's just it, there are so many facets of patriarchal abuse that are intricately woven together that it's difficult sometimes to take just one facet and adhere strictly to it. I do hope that someday you get a chance to look over the content at those links, and especially at Jane's comments, as I think that what she says in many ways (other than some of her core beliefs as a Christian, which you and/or many others may not necessarily agree with totally, but she doesn't twist those beliefs to browbeat others into subhuman/subordinate status) mirrors some of the things that you have said.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank YOU for that link, and I'm glad to see that you received the "green light" to cross-post it on your blog here! I have bookmarked his site and will probably look at some of the other articles he has written (and the subsequent comments) as time permits. LOL! That's probably why my posts here are few and far between at times, because I check out your provided links and then check out other links that appear within those articles, and so forth and so on. It makes my heart glad to see that there are indeed many men out there who don't adhere to the patriarchal party line!!
Hi Patti,
ReplyDeleteI will check out Jane's comments and her being Christian isn't an issue for me unless she's a missionary about it. Some of my best friends are Christian! ;)
And I know what you mean about getting into clicking on other links and their links and their links. Been there, done that, will do that again.
LOL!! Just as some of my best friends are Jewish...and some are even Roman Catholic (one of the Christian religions that I absolutely abhor).
ReplyDeleteI don't think that she's missionary about it, but she is speaking on a Christian blog, so she does state some core beliefs matter-of-factly is all.
I recall reading in one of your articles here (or in the comment section for it) that the man Jesus is one of your heroes. I truly wish that many/most so-called Christians felt the same way, rather than expound on how Jesus is Lord and then act completely contrary to what he taught and how he carried himself in the world (i.e., without ego)
Now, off to get lost in a world of links, I go!! :-)