 |
| image of book cover is from here |
As Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller's book details, men advocating for women's rights and women's liberation from patriarchal oppression isn't new. I don't have much of a sense of the state of profeminism today. Perhaps one day they will write a new book with profeminists from around the world. A common misconception both about radical feminists and radical profeminists is that they're/we're all white. Most radical feminists I know are not white. And I know of a few men who are profeminist, but only one of them is white, and only one of them lives in North America. So I imagine there are many more men out there in the world advocating for women's liberation, hopefully in ways that are meaningfully accountable to the women in their own communities.
What follows is a fictionalised
conversation between two adult white males who identify as profeminist and who value radical social
transformation.
Jeremy: I have been reading some of
your posts and share your wish for society to be radically different
than it is. What I am sometimes critical of is how you focus on what
some women but not all women experience. From my point of view, all
women are oppressed by men, and discussions by men that focus on
other oppressions or other dimensions of life in patriarchal
societies tend to do what anti-feminists do—take the focus off of
how Men.Oppress.All.Women.
Julian: So are you saying that
profeminists who write about women's struggles for liberation in—or
from—patriarchal societies, have an ethical obligation to write
about how men oppress all women?
Jeremy: Yes.
Julian: I don't disagree. Should my
work or the work of other profeminists stop confronting male power
and the many insidious and lethal forms it takes, I'd question the
veracity of any male's claim that he is, in fact, profeminist. Males
must counter the systematised male-bonding acts of men and boys as they
limit the world of women and girls through ridicule and rape. To value
bonding with men is to value misogyny to at least some extent; so even
while gay, I make it my political and spiritual business to make sure my
closest relationships are with women. I do this not with a sense of
sacrifice; I have gained much more from my friendships with women than I
have in any kind of relationship with men; and if I weren't asexual my
choices would probably be different in some regards.
I
believe we need to focus our energies on what other males do that is
oppressive to girls and women, and to publicly challenge systems of
male supremacist reward and punishment that benefit men-not-women.
And it is white supremacy, too, that allows men to oppress women and
girls, and this point is not one I see emphasised enough in white,
anti-status quo, politically active communities. So, to respond more to
what you bring as critique, Jeremy, I'll ask if you have noticed how
many Western and white men and women
who critically discuss the oppression of women, while perhaps intending
to speak
about how men oppress all women, instead do one or two other things,
thinking that they suffice: they
speak about dynamics among whites, as if white people represent all
people—as if white men represent all men, and as if white women
represent all women? We do that, or we may speak without
awareness as whites about how men of color oppress women of color and
white women—acting on a structurally very white and very male
entitlement to speak about populations of
people we don't know much about. We speak out about what others do, when
it is what we do that we most need to be clear about, and stop. We
speak as whites or as men in ways
that make ourselves seem like the heroes or the saviors of the world.
Have you noticed any of
that?
Jeremy: I've seen plenty of examples of what you're talking about. But do you think white men
shouldn't call out how men of color hurt and oppress women of color?
Julian: I think white men should only
do so when in relationships of accountability to the women of color
they claim to be concerned about. Or when supporting organisations run
by women of color doing anti-oppression work. And I think if white males
are going to do so, we'd better be very clear about how we oppress men
of color, women of color, and white women.
I think this is shocking: I see very few whites of any sex
being truly accountable to women of color, honestly. Very few. What I
see happen a lot is white liberals, white progressives, and white
radicals deciding what the appropriate
courses of action are, self-determining our own values and practices with little to no regard for how such courses
of action actually impact women of color. I see whites consistently speak about
ourselves as if we are unraced and unclassed, as if our lives are less
intersectional than the lives of women and men of color. Given that
everyone is raced in a racist system, and that everyone occupies some
structural place on social hierarchies of sex and class, how could
the lives of some people be less intersectional than others?
Jeremy: Well, I think that
someone who doesn't have to deal with white supremacy—who doesn't
have to fight against racism from the vantage point of being harmed
by it, I mean—might have a sharper, less complicated view of male
supremacy for just that reason.
Julian: I think just about everything
that informs such an assumption is profoundly fucked up and not only
racist but misogynist to the core. Let's start with the assumption that
“less
complicated” means “sharper”. What if surviving multiple linked systems
of abuse and subordination is what women are enduring? How does
simplifying that, focusing only on class, only on sex, or only on race,
become an example of seeing reality more sharply? I've been hearing this
nonsense for decades: male
supremacy is a political reality that somehow exists beyond or outside
the world of white supremacy or other raced systems. And to adamantly
maintain this position somehow allows for greater
clarity about what is happening to women worldwide. These are
assumptions only
the masters in a raced or sexed system can afford, it seems to me. I
seriously doubt that perceiving oneself as only oppressed or only
oppressive in one regard allows for greater clarity about what is
happening to women of color. If we're addressing conditions Indigenous
women are facing in Australia or in the Americas, or what Black and
Brown women are facing across Africa or the Americas, or what Asian
women are facing across Asia and beyond, or what women in Pacific and
Caribbean Island nations are facing, it would distort reality grossly to
pretend women's condition is only encountering patriarchy, or only
racism, or only economic oppression and exploitation.
Jeremy: How do you explain white women
being able to so effectively name the intricacies of sexualised male
supremacy—women such as Andrea Dworkin, Mary Daly, Catharine
MacKinnon, and Sheila Jeffreys? Isn't their ability to do this shaped
in part by not also having to resist and survive racism?
Julian: I think what white people do
who speak about the condition of “women”, is make a very
incomplete and simplistic assumption that either male supremacy
doesn't exist at all, or that it is a system of brutality that can
and ought to be understood as separate from other systems of
oppressive harm and horror. Only for white power-protecting white
people can such an assumption pretend to have radical validity; it
therefore doesn't surprise me at all that any number of Western white
women, such as the ones you name—each one offering brilliant
analysis and insights, might describe how male supremacy works as if
it was not bound to white supremacy. And of those women, only Andrea
Dworkin—not irrelevantly the only Jew among them—refused to
ignore the danger to women (and men of color) of white supremacy. She
maintained, from her earliest work to her later work, that for
feminism to be radical and revolutionary it must overthrow class
power and white power as well as male power. That white, Jewish woman's
challenge to other whites has gone generally unheeded, including by
those who love to quote her. The two US women she chose to
acknowledge as exemplary revolutionary feminists in the introduction
to Woman Hating were Black women: Sojournet Truth and Harriet
Tubman; that's not by accident--she didn't choose white women for a
reason. Neither of those revolutionary women focused on "sex", per se,
in their liberation work. She
understood that women positioned politically, socially, structurally,
to know much more about how race and sex and class harm women are far
more likely to bring that knowledge into an organised plan of
resistance and revolutionary struggle.
I
think the reasons why some white women have focused on sexuality as the
central site and source of male supremacy is complicated. One reason is
that it was the work that needed to be done at the time; it is what
those writers had to say as they brought political insight to practices
promoted by men as allegedly apolitical. Another reason, I believe, has
to do with how the sexuality of white women is discussed and analysed by
whites as an unraced while political experience. I wonder if this has a
silencing effect on people whose sexual lives are known to be a product
of both white and male supremacy.
While
I've read a great deal by some of the white women you mention, I see
how the sexualities--and the larger lives--of women of color are
systematically being ignored, marginalised, tokenised, distorted, or
exploited by whites and by men in writing and in life. When women of
color write about sexuality as intricately and historically tied to
supremacist systems based on race and sex, their work is too often
ignored by those who don't want to deal with how all of our sexual lives
are shaped by both.
Audre
Lorde and Alice Walker spoke against sadomasochism and pornography due
to how they are tied to racism and misogyny, yet when progressive to
radical whites write against sadomasochism and pornography, only the
patriarchal features are discussed. That white, self-termed 'sex
radicals' are untroubled by those patriarchal features, while also
ignoring the raced aspects, only shows how the term 'radical' can
sometimes mean ultra-conservative.
I think there have been many men of
color who have had brilliant insights and analysis of white
supremacy, but when you consider that their contributions usually
leave out observations and critiques of their own male power and how
that is exercised against women of color, including the women of color
in their intimate lives, you might come to the
conclusion that their analysis is in service to their male power over
and against women of color. We can also note how so few white men
critically understand or are even moderately aware of how white and male
supremacy along
with economic exploitation, shape the lives of women and girls
detrimentally.
If damage to human sexuality, to human life, is seen, it is seen as
happening most significantly to men and boys. And so white men, as a
group, ought not be consulted on the matter of
how to organise or foment revolution. Because when white men do so,
their willed or unconscious protections of white and male power will
be built into the plan. We have to conclude, I think, that white women's
writing about an unraced sexuality that is male supremacist to the
core, tells us how unwilling whites are to deal with racism in our own
lives, and how little we listen to feminists of color when they speak
about the politics of sexuality.
Jeremy: So you think Western white
women who don't speak much about racism, about white supremacy, while
they are interrogating male supremacy, are supporting white power?
Julian: Yes, of course they are. How could they be doing otherwise? Just
as men of color who speak against racism as a system as if it isn't
attached at the root level to male supremacy are protecting
patriarchal power—including their own.
But
let's not forget who
benefits most here: it is white men, not white women, not men of
color, and certainly not women of color. White adult males are the
material and social beneficiaries of white and male supremacy. Everyone
else is oppressed
by at least one of those systems. Given how ignorance of our own
positions of advantage and unjust power over others works, it
surprises me not at all that along with white men, white women and men
of color also willfully
ignore the oppressive power of their own whiteness and maleness,
respectively. This is said to be done without will and without intent,
quite
unconsciously, by whites and by men. But on various levels, whites
and men know very well and very consciously how white and male
supremacy structurally benefits people atop the hierarchies. That
knowledge, accumulated over a lifetime, is often enough
repeatedly unremembered. But that is done so the individual white or
man can hold to some notion of being “good” and “moral” and
“ethical” as conservatives and liberals rather perversely define such
terms. Liberal whites and men get to think of themselves as good and
moral because they see that sexism and racism exists even while they
won't speak about how they participate in maintaining each.
Jeremy: Is that the only reason you think white people or men won't own what we do that is oppressive?
Julian:
No. I believe the refusal to publicly own what we do, the evasion of
personal responsibility, is also done so the often repressed shame of
being oppressed by race, sex,
sexuality, or economic class, for example, isn't triggered by the
very different shame of being an oppressor. Also because we are likely
to lose status among oppressors if we speak out against our political
kin.
The internal battles in many of us to
believe ourselves “good”, and to ignore how most of us stand on
other people to be where we are, leaves us unprepared to be honest
with ourselves or anyone else about who we are, politically speaking.
The US, in particular, emphasises an individualised sense of identity
while enforcing various social collectives. What if individuals'
goodness and integrity was understood first in terms of what
we-as-whites do, or what we-as-men do?
In such conditions of ignorance and denial we can and often do mistake
other oppressed people as enemy #1, when “the enemy”, if we're to
think in those terms, is found in the shape of the structures and in the
mechanisms of the systems which harm us. Structures of enemyhood, as
my feminist mentor pointed out to me, are what we have to
identify and uproot if liberation is to occur. If we don't, then we are perpetually at war not
only with those who aren't in control, but with ourselves as well.
For
example, picking up on some issues which matter a great deal to some
race- and class-privileged
people online, no matter how oppressive a lesbian feminist or trans
person acts, s/he is not structurally positioned to be in charge of
the fate of other human beings collectively. Very few people, with
enormous power
inside complex systems of gross and brutal force, are truly “in
charge”. Unless or until they are dethroned--and their systems and
institutions are radically transformed--the rest of us
fighting among ourselves will not bring about collective liberation. We
will
not co-create meaningful liberation from systems of harm and horror. As
has been stated hundreds of times by many activist women of color,
organised coalitions built by those oppressed by race, sex, region,
class, age, ability, and sexuality are our only hope.
Those few people with
enormous power and access to seemingly endless resources cannot simply be replaced. Most simply put in a way
that might be meaningful to those of us whose lives are shaped by the
experiences and traditions of Europe, killing Hitler would not have
meant European Jews were suddenly safe or free. The hands of the architects
of HaShoah were not only Hitler's. The whole of any system that
unjustly puts the few in power and keeps them there must be radically
dismantled so that they no longer obtain and maintain oppressive
power from being in such a place: the place itself as a structural location must be dissolved.
Audre
Lorde's essay on the Masters
Tools has been misunderstood or mischaracterised by many progressives
and radicals to be some kind of call to fight without the tools we
need to succeed; as a kind of pacifist screed. I see her essay as
reminding us that, for example,
replacing “bad men” with “good men” doesn't solve the problem
of men being in charge. Replacing white men with white women doesn't
solve the problem of whites being in charge. Redistributing wealth
inside a
system of economic exploitation and global destruction won't result in
those without money--or the Earth itself, being free from exploitation
and
destruction. And I see her essay as a reminder that institutional and
psychological structures, as well as oppressors' political locations,
must be radically transformed.
We
see what happens when the structures of enemyhood are left in tact when
white het men aren't around. It is disheartening and discouraging
to me to witness how various marginalised groups see one another
and treat one another as “THE enemy” rather than as co-crafters
of the route to liberation for all oppressed people. I see
astounding levels of disrespect and disdain being dispensed among
various oppressed people. Meanwhile, elite groups of white
men—especially white het men—retain the most concentrated control
of the many systems that advantage and empower whites, heterosexuals,
and men to maintain advantages and commit atrocities against everyone
else.
Jeremy: Do you mean marginalised groups
online?
Julian: Yes, I do; but not only online. That said, I can't
pretend that I directly what people experience who have
less structural power than me or you. I cannot easily understand, viscerally or
emotionally, what it means to be deeply threatened
and invaded by liberal or conservative political activists that you
or I might see as intellectually problematic but not “threatening” to our
communal existence.
Gay
male society isn't going to disappear because
conservative trans and queer theories take hold; only heterosexist
male rulers have the power to systematically destroy gay men. Gay men
have too much power as men to maintain the systems and cultures that
are important to them. The same cannot be said for lesbian cultures; I
think conservative and liberal forces in contemporary white queer
communities and white het ones are profoundly and aggressively
destructive to lesbian existence across race. But
when you see the battles taking place online that only or primarily
occur among whites, then you'd better be clear that one form of power
that will not be questioned—let alone transformed—is white
supremacist power over and against all trans and non-trans women of
color, including lesbians.
I take what Flo Kennedy said about
horizontal hostility very seriously, as I have seen how within
white-dominated and white-majority lesbian, bisexual, and gay
communities from decades ago, the in-fighting so often functioned to take the
focus off of the myriad ways white het men were in charge of how the
rest of us understood ourselves and experienced things such as safety
and community, or the lack thereof.
My struggles with coming out as gay
were not the ones typically portrayed in mass media. For example, my
struggle was not coming out of denial that I was attracted to men. I
knew since before adolescence that men were attractive to me in ways
that they weren't supposed to be according to the heterosexual world I
lived in. Well,
SOME men. In my late teens and early twenties, my struggles were with
assessing how gay male sexuality was mirroring the practices of het
men, and carried het male supremacist misogyny into the lesbian and
gay communities I was considering being part of at the time. My
struggle was paying attention to what it was about men that I was
attracted to that drew me to them. I was also wanting to disengage
from a culture of white gay men who were raised, as I was, to believe
white het men are the most valuable human beings on Earth. Embedded
in this belief was a king of spiritually deadly seeking of their
approval for our own well-being and self-esteem. I needed to
understand how white masculinity, while positioned as superior to
white femininity, didn't make white femininity liberatory just
because it wasn't valued in white patriarchies.
I saw the danger of white gay men
acting out white masculinity and white femininity without
interrogating how each is constructed and maintained with force by
white het male supremacist structures that live in and all around
queer and het people. Those structures and practices, to the extent
they are products of white and male power, have only ever served
white het men primarily. But the white power in them also serves to
protect the supremacy of whites across sex and sexuality, and the
male power in them also serves to protect the supremacy of men across
sexuality and race.
I also came to see that white gay men's
agenda for liberation was usually designed to protect and defend
white and male power as due to that, was spiritually and politically
bankrupt. It also ignored, rather completely, how queer people of color
were surviving not only homophobia and heterosexism, but also
imperialism, colonialism, misogyny, and racism. To hear white
class-privileged gay men speak about "our fight for liberation", you'd
think battling homophobia was the only task at hand.
Jeremy: I grew up seeing white heterosexual men put down gay men
and women—lesbian or heterosexual, but in putting them down they
were mostly just promoting ways of being that were inhumane,
including to ourselves. Being deprived of an emotional life isn't
great.
Julian: And assuming that it is only
white het men who are deprived of an emotional life, or who live with
what's called a spiritual-emotional “straight-jacket”, means one
has to ignore all the ways that the rest of us also have to deny or
dissociate from so many aspects of ourselves and our feelings. I grew
up hearing endlessly about how white het men, in particular, suffer
in North American patriarchy. And how white women got to be so free
with their emotions. But none of the white women in my family got to
be all that free emotionally. Rape, incest, and battery, and a kind
of ever-present condescension and contempt for girls and women, were
each perpetrated by white het men who were intimately involved with
female family members. Each form of spiritual destruction and visceral terrorism ensured
that many women in my family of origin were lost to themselves or
didn't feel very safe to express very much, or were quick to be apologetic and
acquiescent to men, or were otherwise deferential to men in a deeply compulsory
way—meaning that it wasn't so much a psychological habit as much as it was survival-based behavior rooted
in knowledge that plenty of men will attack you verbally and physically if you don't obey them.
In so many ways that white het men
won't acknowledge, you all are freer than the rest of us to feel, to
emote, to express yourselves in sloppy and loud ways, and in silent
and sulking ways, that command the attention of the rest of us and
assume you will have people around you to care about your feelings
and attend to them with concern, regard, and affection. I learned at
an early age to attend to your feelings, Jeremy, to white het men's
feelings, and put them before my own.
Jeremy: I learned to do that with my
father, who was a raging alcoholic. His ego seemed to require
constant attention and soothing.
Julian: And I suspect the alcoholism
isn't necessarily the most potent element in that emotional equation.
I think the maleness and whiteness is. Because I see how males and
whites each command similar kinds of attention, or demand it, or just
expect it the way we expect air to contain oxygen. And god forbid
anyone female and anyone of color NOT show “proper” deference, or
“appropriate” compassion to someone white or male, especially
when they are struggling in some way but even when they are just
walking down the street.
Because structural advantage, by race,
class, or sex, often brings with it a kind of perennial permission to
allow oneself to be centrally attended to, to be cared about and
cared for, what we see is that whites will position ourselves as in
need of something when around people of color. And the same for men
when around women. As soon as something is asked of a white man by
someone of color and female, the white man will predictably change
the course of the conversation so that the oppressor's needs are
presented as more important. Attending to the white people's or men's
confusion about what she has said that is challenging to their sense
of self, is supposed to trump her objection to what he is
doing—including an objection to him manipulating everyone around
him to pay attention to him at her expense.
Jeremy: So what's wrong with
identifying how men manipulate women in those ways?
Julian: Nothing. Any profeminist ought
to do that. But if you put women of color at the center of your
concerns about “women”, then what you will see is that it's not
only white men, or only men, who are being oppressive, and who are
preventing women of color from experiencing socialised dignity and
institutionalised respect. It is also white women. And so if women of
color's struggles for liberation matter as much as anyone else's,
then, I'd argue, only paying attention to male supremacist harm
likely leaves women of color unsupported in their struggle to be free
of white contempt and white ignorance.
If we are going to herald the
writings of white feminists—which white profeminists generally do, then let's not forget that Andrea Dworkin said, if it hurts
women, feminists are against it. If feminism, as a lived
political practice, is supposed to challenge all forms of oppressive
hurtfulness towards women, then what whites do to women of color has
to matter as much as what men do to women of color, and register in
our minds and hearts as just as wrong and just as intolerable.
Being
profeminist means speaking out about all of it—not just against the
behaviors that implicate men of color, for example. We can't let
whites off the hook. So when I see whites speaking out about what
“those” men of color do to “their women”, what I am left
wondering is when do we speak about what we do, as whites, to those
same women? And when do we speak out about it as profeminists?
Jeremy: Well, you do that, right?
Julian: Yes, but you may notice that
when anyone does it, there are usually whites and men who will point out how inappropriate it is, how
misandrous it is, how misogynistic it is, for me or anyone else to do
so. It's no accident that, almost without exception, it is ONLY
whites and men who object, which lets me know that any challenge to
their unjust and unearned power as whites and men is what is being
objected to.
So when you state, as you did earlier,
that profeminists ought to only speak out about how
Men.Oppress.All.Women, I have to wonder if you give a shit about how
women of color are oppressed and demeaned on many fronts as women,
including racially by white men and white women.
Jeremy: I see what you mean now. But
don't you think that white males critiquing white women's racism is a
way for those males to be misogynistic?
Julian: If white men critique white
women disproportionately—say, more than they critique white men,
then I'd question what's going on, yes. And if white males do so in
sexist and demeaning ways to white women, then yes. But, again, if
women of color matter, if women of color are “women” just as much
as white women are, then hadn't your question also better be: “Don't
you think that white males not critiquing white women's racism
is a way for those males to be misogynistic—to women of color?”
Jeremy: Hmm. I guess I hadn't thought
about that.
Julian: Do you think it warrants asking, how someone so dedicated
to radicalism and profeminism could neglect to ask such a basic question
about women's liberation? And how could it be that you didn't you
encounter these points again and again in the radical writings by
whites and men you've read over the years?
Jeremy: Where did you encounter them?
Julian: In the writings of radical and
feminist women of color. And in conversation with radical feminist
women of color who have systematically refused to allow my white and
male supremacy to go unchallenged.
Jeremy: So you were open to changing yourself.
Julian:
Yes. But someone I structurally oppress maintaining a willingness and
ability, against great frustration and exhaustion, to call me out is
only part of the story; I had to have something meaningful to offer in
relationship. Progressive to radical males and whites too often assume
that our consciousness would benefit greatly from relationships with
people we oppress, but we don't consider what we have to offer people we
oppress.
Jeremy: I don't think I've ever had a close friendship with anyone of color.
Julian:
Do you know what, Jeremy? I honestly don't know many whites who do.
This is one of many ways that race and sex are different: I know very
few males who don't have close relationships with women. But whites
really do resist friendships with people of color who demonstrate a
willingness to call whites out on their white supremacist nonsense.
It
isn't enough you or I are willing to listen carefully, change our
behavior, not consider ourselves finished with the work of being less
interpersonally oppressive, and understand that our structural whiteness
and maleness don't ever disappear. In my life, that stuff has been more
of a prerequisite for just the possibility of on-going
friendship. Deep friendship requires real giving and sharing. Before you
consider asking a woman of color for guidance or support in becoming
less oppressive, please first be clear about what you have, emotionally,
spiritually, to offer her. Don't be heterosexist in your assumptions
and actions: don't approach women for what you can get from them, for
what they can teach you or for how they can take care of you; that, for
me, would be standard het male practice. And don't ever pretend you're
not racist and not sexist; I mean don't pretend you're not a white or
male supremacist. Because we're structurally positioned to be each,
every minute of every day.
Jeremy: You don't see any difference between acting in racist ways and being a white supremacist?
Julian: In reality, in our region of
the world, there is no meaningful difference; catering to the very
political ego needs of whites might compel some of us to make such
distinctions. But in North America, if the reality that is most real to
you is that of women of color, then we must accept that there is no
distinction worth making between sexism and male supremacy, or between
racism and white supremacy. What I don't see discussed nearly enough in
communities that call themselves "radical" is how sexism/male supremacy
and racism/white supremacy cause PTSD in those targeted for harassment,
debasement, subordination, and death. The truth of male supremacist
behavior is true also of white supremacist behavior: terrorism underlies
every expression of it. Given that women of color are viciously and
normally targeted by each, we have to ask: how is racism not one more
form of misogyny when it affects women of color? Do women of color stop
being women when insulted and assaulted by white's racism?
Some
feminists argue that all systems of institutionalised power are
gendered and that subordination by sex, sexuality, class, or race isn't
just designed to degrade your humanity and limit or snuff out your life,
it is designed to feminise you as well. Any political vulnerability is
seen as feminising. Any position of power, whether sexed power or raced
power, or power achieved through acquisition or theft of wealth, is
masculinising. Seen this way, racism masculinises white people and white
supremacy becomes a form of male supremacy. I'd say the same is true
about how many forms of oppression take on raced qualities: being rich
and being male can be an experience of becoming whiter, politically
speaking--not that Oprah Winfrey ever gets to be white or male even one
day in her life, despite her wealth.
If
we accept all of that as part of how these oppressive systems work and
impact each other, then the only conclusion to come to is this:
protecting white supremacy by denying its existence among white women or
among white men, or by relegating activism against it to the margins of
one's work, is a male supremacist practice. And so some of the very
people, white ones, who argue we must only focus on male supremacy--or
let's say, on capitalism, as far too many white male "Occupy" activists
do, are being male supremacist in doing so.
Jeremy: But this kind of takes us
back to where we started: isn't focusing on how to eradicate sexism, or
male supremacy, the primary work of feminists, and profeminists, given
that no other group wants to put what men do that harms women at the
center of their work?
Julian: I guess I've come to see
radical profeminist work differently. There is a kind of stigma and
denigration of social status among men if your work only or centrally
concerns itself with what happens to women. I've been called everything
from mangina to a wimp to a woman simply because what happens to women
is the center of my political work. I think we need to consider it
"radical" to put what happens to women at the center of your political
concerns and work. But I can't call activist work that ignores either
male supremacy or white supremacy, including among the activists,
"radical". There's nothing at all radical to me about protecting and
defending one's power to abuse others based on structural location. And
intentionally or not, that's what males and whites are doing when we
deny the power that inheres in our positions atop social hierarchies.
Jeremy: What do you call white radical feminism if it doesn't analyse and seek to eradicate the power of whiteness?
Julian:
I guess I'd call it a branch of white conservatism that also offers a
sometimes useful critique of some forms of male supremacy. Just as I'd
call the so-called "radical" political work of men across race,
"conservative" and "male supremacist" if that work didn't name, address,
and oppose male supremacy. This doesn't make the work only
conservative. But it makes it conservative with regard to sex. It kind
of boils down to this, for me: if someone's activism ignores race, it is
functionally white supremacist. If someone's work ignores sexual
oppression, it is functionally male supremacist. This isn't really that
difficult conceptually, and if you live it, it's rather obvious.
Jeremy: You make it sound as if you
live it--as if you are being negatively or oppressively affected by
white and male supremacy.
Julian:
The experiences of those I love become part of my experience of the
world. I think that's true for most people, except maybe for the most
self-absorbed and sociopathic. Beyond that, being a gay male means that I
encounter misogyny, woman-hating, regularly, daily. It is aimed at me
systematically because het supremacists enforce an idea that being gay
is a degraded state of being, one that puts males in the same structural
bracket, politically, as females. As a Jew who grew up studying both
the history of Jews and HaShoah, I learned that dark features are
devalued and are seen as suspect by people who are white and Gentile. I
learned that my Jewishness was raced "dark and dangerous" in Nazi
Germany. Here in North America, Jewishness is primarily an ethnicity or a
religious affiliation.
I
understand that symbologies and cultural associations that see darkness
and blackness as essentially negative and dangerous are both white
supremacist and anti-Semitic. White Jews--as opposed to Jews of color, I
mean--have to work out our mixed allegiances with people of color and
white Gentiles, hopefully building genuine, trustworthy alliance with
people of color. Gay white men have to consciously work to not fall into
the trap of trying to get what het white men have or try to possess.
I'd
say I'm undeniably and heavily advantaged--structurally empowered and
statused--due to being male and white, and I am also targeted in some
ways, in oppressive ways, for being gay and Jewish. The time and place
where I live doesn't put me in a lot of danger for being either gay or
Jewish, thank goodness. But living in a heterosexist society, and in an
anti-Semitic one, even if they aren't the most virulent in either
regard, does have a destructive effect on queer people and on Jews. Male
supremacy is a very crucial dimension of heterosexism just as white
supremacy is absolutely central to anti-Semitism. And it is an on-going
struggle to call out the sexism and racism I see in those
oppressed-while-advantaged communities.
Jeremy: This is a lot to think about.
Julian: You got that right.
Not dealing
with these issues and related ones is sometimes desirable to just about
everyone I know. But it is only possible to not deal with them if one
is only advantaged in these various systems of harm and horror. One of
the ways we can know someone is advantaged by race, or by sex, or by
sexuality, is that they never seem to need to discuss it, they don't
make it a priority to be aware of the horror, and they don't put effort
into stopping the harm.
