tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post7954969883607371890..comments2024-03-13T11:14:26.768-04:00Comments on A Radical Profeminist: The Danger of the Single Story: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, on being Middle Class, living in a Colonised CountryUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-91259843672250980052009-11-07T23:17:15.298-05:002009-11-07T23:17:15.298-05:00I think of how the white Religious Right, and whit...I think of how the white Religious Right, and white conservative to liberal men write single stories about women, using force, coercion, and manipulation, movies, literature, and science to make sure that narrative, that script doesn't ever make women "for" themselves not for men.<br /><br />This includes pornographers putting words in women's mouths. This includes pimps training teenage girls how to behave for procurers/purchasers of girls and women. This includes what men tell themselves about the images of women they look at on computers, at pornography sites. Men sit in agreement with the pornographers and pimps, collectively stating: "Yes, these women are here for me. They exist for me. They want to be displayed like this. They are enjoying this, including me looking at them right now."<br /><br />Men's and whites' single stories about those they structurally and interpersonally oppress exist in societies in which institutionalised white and heteromale supremacy are dominant ideologies. The ideologies carry the single stories, and back them with power, should some oppressed person seek to break free from that story, and speak her own mind.<br /><br />And those women who do speak their own minds are collapsed by single-minded oppressors into another single story: the man-hater, the feminazi, the b*tch. And then they complain like whiney brats when those of us who notice their single stories call them out on it.<br /><br />Liberals will hear this speech and think it applies "both ways" as if there were some sort of "lateral" hostility and bigotry going on. There isn't. It's top-down hostility that hurts human bodies. Women's anger generally hurts women. Men's anger generally hurts women. That's not lateral hostility. That's male supremacy at work.<br /><br />And that men also hurt men, usually men they oppress, doesn't make male supremacy disappear or become something else. It means it can morph to put down men it sees as woman-like, and women who are seen as too man-like, and white men can believe themselves superior to all other men.<br /><br />Women, by and large, continue to take care of men and boys in ways men do not, socially, generally, globally. Whites expect people of color to cater to them or carry bizarre notions about what certain groups of darker skinned people are. Women of color are seen by their oppressors as existing for everyone but themselves.<br /><br />I have told more that one Black woman: taking excellent care of yourself is a radical act. But taking care of oneself is difficult when you need work, are ignored, invisibilised, or turned into grotesque things by oppressive people around you. Self-care requires a caring community, and relief from a white man's world that would have women of color be white men's mistresses, mammies, and slaves.<br /><br />To the male oppressive holders of "the single story" about white women, about Black women, East, SE, and South Asian women, Latina women, Native women, Arab women, Muslim women, Jewish women, and women who are heterosexual, trans, genderqueer, and lesbian, I say this: take your single story and choke on it.Julian Realhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02933612851144914687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-16495028429480239382009-11-07T16:26:53.917-05:002009-11-07T16:26:53.917-05:00Rejecting the single story is what women have been...Rejecting the single story is what women have been doing for centuries.<br />What amazes me is the resiliance of the single story that men tell, or the ideas people have about countries they have never visited.<br /><br />I particulary like Adichie's comment, "Show people as one thing over and over again, and they become that thing."<br /><br />I would add, they become that thing in the eyes of the oppressors who show that same story over and over again.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com