A few years old, this is not at all a message that is close to expiring. From the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), this short video is called:
Men's Responsibility: Ending Demand for Sex Trafficking
Showing posts with label manhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manhood. Show all posts
Monday, March 7, 2016
Friday, February 19, 2016
Is John Stoltenberg Wrong? On Andrea Dworkin, Sex Difference, and Gender Dominance
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| image of book cover is from here |
What follows seeks a careful, thoughtful read of Andrea Dworkin's early writings. I hope to make two points:
1. Andrea's view of 'woman' was directly and politically tied to the female body—unambiguously.
2. John Stoltenberg decontextualises or overvalues key points in some of her early work, points she later abandoned or came to understand as politically problematic. In the process, the core of her work is ignored.
In John's article, "Andrea Dworkin was not Transphobic", he stated that her early views were profound and life-changing for him. From "Andrea Was Not Transphobic" at Feminist Times:
One passage in Woman Hating changed my life forever:
“The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman” are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both.”
That is the opening of the last chapter of the book, chapter 9: "Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking, and Community." Also from that chapter, page 175:
This is a crucial point for John in his work. The insight also informs the work of others, many of whom are neither radical nor feminist.
Gender, sex, and sexuality as "a vast fluid continuum" is pursued by many white sexual Liberals and Queer Theorists in the following decades. I describe them as Liberals because, unless exceptionally, they are not engaged in efforts to eradicate colonialist patriarchy from the roots up. And too often they seek to distance themselves from those who do. A problem occurs when focus on sexual fluidity or continuums becomes the primary work, not in collaboration or coalition with radical and feminist activists.
Achieving greater dignity and visibility to those who are intersex or transsexual is a worthwhile endeavor—life saving for some. But seeking visibility in an unchallenged status quo was not the objective, even in this early work of Andrea's. We are being led to consider the following:
People, usually those atop various political hierarchies, are far too satisfied to avoid and ignore the most heinous realities: they can also better afford to do so. I know of no one who occupies various positions at the bottom of several political hierarchies who are Liberal or who believe that only reforming colonialist patriarchy is sufficient to save their lives.
Yet, Liberals can and have worked with Radicals; the problem is that because Liberals don't actively pursue radical transformation, they instead attack Radicals and their theories and agendas, often as being illiberal and even conservative. To the extent that people seeking to reform the status quo only endeavor to create more text, more identities, or more laws within patriarchy, they are liberal and a problematic form of post-modern. Academic discourse aside, it means they are invested, often without intent and usually without awareness, in the mass subordination, enslavement, and murder of women and girls.
According to Andrea, "redefining human sexuality", or "defining it correctly" does not, by itself, leave us with something other than "the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism", unless we build it. Dworkin, in this abandoned early theory, is calling for a more complex, non-hierarchical mythology of gender and sex as part of an overall program of dismantling patriarchy. It is not an end unto itself. The goal is not "more genders". The goal is the end of gender-as-hierarchy, and all expressions of male supremacist violence. So if we don't get there by changing terms and sexual categories, how do we?
Far less frequently quoted than some of what is above, is this: Andrea states, "I think there are a lot of things really wrong with the last chapter of Woman Hating." See, Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky (1998). The quote is from page 139, in her notes to chapter 3. Her point is not thoroughly discussed so we do not know all of what she meant.
As already indicated, I do not believe "life beyond gender", per se, was "a core" of her work. The distinction may appear subtle, but here, John is conflating his own literary and political project with hers, implying a mutually reinforcing intellectual pursuit and activist agenda. We are deliberately told the chronology of their early writings. But the thing is, he has not strayed from his earliest points. She moved on.
The speech he links to above appears as chapter 9 in Our Blood, "The Root Cause". I shall excerpt a substantial portion of the speech, here:
Advocating the addition of other genders, while leaving unchallenged the tyrannical sexual hierarchy that is globalised, is not a revolutionary effort. It is liberal to the core. The big mistake is thinking Dworkin sought to separate women's resistance to patriarchy from being female, or men's efforts to transform themselves from being male. What Andrea sought was the end of any association, presented to us as both truth and reality, of being a woman with being feminine and submissive, or being a man with being masculine and predatory.
And from page 186:
... The first question then is: What of biology? There are, after all, men and women. They are different, demonstrably so. We are each of one sex or the other. If there are two discrete biological sexes, then it is not hard to argue that there are two discrete modes of human behavior, sex-related, sex-determined. One might argue for a liberalization of sex-based roles, but one cannot justifiably argue for their total redefinition.
Hormone and chromosome research, attempts to develop new means of human reproduction (life created in, or considerably supported by, the scientist’s laboratory), work with transsexuals, and studies of formation of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes. That information threatens to transform the traditional biology of sex difference into the radical biology of sex similarity. That is not to say that there is one sex, but that there are many.The issue, in part, is this matter of whether there are "two discrete biological sexes". Beginning on page 176, she offers the following evidence of the two not being "discrete", or polar opposites, biologically:
The words “male” and “female, ” “man” and “woman, ” are used only because as yet there are no others.
1. Men and women have the same basic body structure. Both have both male and female genitals —the clitoris is a vestigial penis, the prostate gland is most probably a vestigial womb. ...
2. Until the 7th week of fetal development both sexes have precisely the same external genitalia. Basically, the development of sex organs and ducts is the same for males and females and the same two sets of ducts develop in both.
3. The gonads cannot be said to be entirely male or female. Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey writes: In their somatic organization, the gonads always retain a greater or lesser amount of the opposite-sex tissue which remains functional throughout life.
4. Chromosomal sex is not necessarily the visible sex of the individual. It happens that a person of one chromosomal sex develops the gonads of the other sex. Gonadal sex and chromosomal sex can be in direct contradiction.
5. Chromosomal sex is not only XX or XY. There are other chromosomal formations, and not much is known about them or what they signify.
6. A person can have the gonads of one sex, and the secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex.
7. Men and women both produce male and female hormones. The amounts and proportions vary greatly, and there is no way to determine biological maleness or femaleness from hormone count.
8. One hormone can be transformed by the body into its “opposite, ” male into female, female into male.
9. It is now thought that the male hormone determines the sex drive in both men and women.
10. The female hormone (progesterone) can have a masculinizing effect. Dr. Sherfey writes:
We may have difficulty conceiving it, but natural selection has no difficulty using sexually heterotypic structures for homotypic purposes. For example, progesterone is the “pregnancy hormone” essential for menstruation and the prolonged pregnancy. It is as uniquely a “female” hormone as one can be. Yet progesterone possesses strong androgenic properties. It may be used to masculinize female embryos. In 1960, Jones (27, 63) demonstrated that progesterone given to human mothers early in pregnancy to prevent threatened miscarriages. . . severely masculinized a female fetus.
11. Visible sex differences are not discrete. There are men with tiny cocks, women with large clits. There are men with highly developed breasts, women with almost no breast development. There are men with wide hips, women with no noticeable hip development. There are men with virtually no body hair, women with much body hair. There are men with high voices, women with low voices. There are men with no facial hair, women who have beards and mustaches.
12. Height and weight differences between men and women are not discrete. Muscle structures are not discrete. We know the despair of the tall, muscular woman who does not fit the female stereotype; we know also the despair of the small, delicate man who does not fit the male stereotype.
13. There is compelling cross-cultural evidence that muscle strength and development are culturally determined. There are cultures in which there are no great differences in somatotype of men and women...
14. There are hermaphrodites in nature. Robert T. Francoeur, in Utopian Motherhood: New Trends in Human Reproduction, admits: The medical profession and experimental biologists have always been very skeptical about the existence of functional hermaphrodites among the higher animals and man, though the earthworm, the sea hare, and other lower animals do combine both sexes in the same individual.We are not being told two sexes don't exist, in nature or otherwise; we are being told they don't exist 'discretely'. Any casual observations of humans around the world, and even within one culture or region, bears that out: females and males are not "opposites" or entirely physically different kinds of people. Due to that, she concludes, "[w]e are justified in making a radical new formulation of the nature of human sexuality. We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete."
This is a crucial point for John in his work. The insight also informs the work of others, many of whom are neither radical nor feminist.
Gender, sex, and sexuality as "a vast fluid continuum" is pursued by many white sexual Liberals and Queer Theorists in the following decades. I describe them as Liberals because, unless exceptionally, they are not engaged in efforts to eradicate colonialist patriarchy from the roots up. And too often they seek to distance themselves from those who do. A problem occurs when focus on sexual fluidity or continuums becomes the primary work, not in collaboration or coalition with radical and feminist activists.
Achieving greater dignity and visibility to those who are intersex or transsexual is a worthwhile endeavor—life saving for some. But seeking visibility in an unchallenged status quo was not the objective, even in this early work of Andrea's. We are being led to consider the following:
"...the concrete implications of multisexuality as we find it articulated in both androgynous mythology and biology necessitate the total redefinition of scenarios of proper human sexual behavior and pragmatic forms of human community. If human beings are multisexed, then all forms of sexual interaction which are directly rooted in the multisexual nature of people must be part of the fabric of human life, accepted into the lexicon of human possibility, integrated into the forms of human community. By redefining human sexuality, or by defining it correctly, we can transform human relationship and the institutions which seek to control that relationship. Sex as the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism, is what we know now. Sex as community between humans, our shared humanity, is the world we must build."Isolated from her core message, some of the above can come across as post-modern and Liberal Queer Theory-making. It is important to note, the problem with post-modernism isn't its discursive critique of colonialist patriarchal modernism; it is its belief that changes in language adequately lead to sufficient changes in culture, and therefore society. The problem with Liberalism isn't that it necessarily refuses Radicalism. The problem is that people are seduced by speaking and writing projects that don't disturb the major power-brokers of society. And, it is easier to target radical activists than be accountable to them. It is also pro-hegemonic to ignore those who are most harmed by systems of exploitation and violence, effectively protecting and preserving the status quo.
People, usually those atop various political hierarchies, are far too satisfied to avoid and ignore the most heinous realities: they can also better afford to do so. I know of no one who occupies various positions at the bottom of several political hierarchies who are Liberal or who believe that only reforming colonialist patriarchy is sufficient to save their lives.
Yet, Liberals can and have worked with Radicals; the problem is that because Liberals don't actively pursue radical transformation, they instead attack Radicals and their theories and agendas, often as being illiberal and even conservative. To the extent that people seeking to reform the status quo only endeavor to create more text, more identities, or more laws within patriarchy, they are liberal and a problematic form of post-modern. Academic discourse aside, it means they are invested, often without intent and usually without awareness, in the mass subordination, enslavement, and murder of women and girls.
According to Andrea, "redefining human sexuality", or "defining it correctly" does not, by itself, leave us with something other than "the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism", unless we build it. Dworkin, in this abandoned early theory, is calling for a more complex, non-hierarchical mythology of gender and sex as part of an overall program of dismantling patriarchy. It is not an end unto itself. The goal is not "more genders". The goal is the end of gender-as-hierarchy, and all expressions of male supremacist violence. So if we don't get there by changing terms and sexual categories, how do we?
"We must destroy the very structure of culture as we know it, its art, its churches, its laws." — Andrea Dworkin, "The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door", page 48, Our Blood.The project isn't primarily discursive (one of creating new theory) or one of expanding identities (as liberal genderqueer proponents do). It is eradicating male supremacist violence, including as it expresses itself through culture, art, religion, and laws.
To appreciate the implications of anything she wrote, one must face this fact:
Andrea's writing was a radical and feminist political act; she wrote as an activist, building revolution into her prose and nonfiction. She wanted patriarchy dead as soon as possible, accomplished by ending all forms of sexual violence against women and girls—against their spirits and minds, and against their female bodies. This, more than anything else, was what I believe Andrea wanted to see achieved.
We must also keep this in mind. With Nikki Craft alone, over a period of years, Andrea carefully selected the contents of the Andrea Dworkin Online Library. The section from Woman Hating now being promoted by John as, according to him, dis-identifying womanhood with femaleness, was not chosen by Andrea as something she wanted to have preserved in cyberspace. What she did choose was a portion of part 2, "The Pornography" as an introduction to a full chapter called "Woman as Victim: Story of O", pp. 53-63, from Woman Hating, copyright © 1974 by Andrea Dworkin.
From "The Pornography":
Andrea's writing was a radical and feminist political act; she wrote as an activist, building revolution into her prose and nonfiction. She wanted patriarchy dead as soon as possible, accomplished by ending all forms of sexual violence against women and girls—against their spirits and minds, and against their female bodies. This, more than anything else, was what I believe Andrea wanted to see achieved.
We must also keep this in mind. With Nikki Craft alone, over a period of years, Andrea carefully selected the contents of the Andrea Dworkin Online Library. The section from Woman Hating now being promoted by John as, according to him, dis-identifying womanhood with femaleness, was not chosen by Andrea as something she wanted to have preserved in cyberspace. What she did choose was a portion of part 2, "The Pornography" as an introduction to a full chapter called "Woman as Victim: Story of O", pp. 53-63, from Woman Hating, copyright © 1974 by Andrea Dworkin.
From "The Pornography":
Pornography, like fairy tale, tells us who we are. It is the structure of male and female mind, the content of our shared erotic identity, the map of each inch and mile of our oppression and despair. Here we move beyond childhood terror. Here the fear is clammy and real, and rightly so. Here we are compelled to ask the real questions: why are we defined in these ways, and how can we bear it?Now, the opening paragraph from "Woman as Victim: Story of O":
The Story of O, by Pauline Reage, incorporates, along with all literary pornography, principles and characters already isolated in my discussion of children's fairy tales. The female as a figure of innocence and evil enters the adult world—the brutal world of genitalia. The female manifests in her adult form—cunt. She emerges defined by the hole between her legs. In addition, Story of O is more than simple pornography. It claims to define epistemologically what a woman is, what she needs, her processes of thinking and feeling, her proper place. It links men and women in an erotic dance of some magnitude: the sado-masochistic complexion of O is not trivial—it is formulated as a cosmic principle which articulates, absolutely, the feminine.What is epistemically existent is the colossal and subordinating violence done to women's female bodies by men. This, not the separation of female bodies from women's lives, is what Andrea exposed.
Far less frequently quoted than some of what is above, is this: Andrea states, "I think there are a lot of things really wrong with the last chapter of Woman Hating." See, Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky (1998). The quote is from page 139, in her notes to chapter 3. Her point is not thoroughly discussed so we do not know all of what she meant.
John's article continues:
That belief in the possibility of life beyond gender was a core of both her work and mine. A speech I gave within a few months after our meeting was published as Refusing to Be a Man (the title I gave my first book). In a speech of Andrea’s written about a year later she drew a distinction between reality and truth in order to say that:
“while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true…. [T]he system based on this polar model of existence is absolutely real; but the model itself is not true. We are living imprisoned inside a pernicious delusion, a delusion on which all reality as we know it is predicated.”
The speech he links to above appears as chapter 9 in Our Blood, "The Root Cause". I shall excerpt a substantial portion of the speech, here:
One basic principle of reality, universally believed and adhered to with a vengeance, is that there are two sexes, man and woman, and that these sexes are not only distinct from each other, but are opposite. The model often used to describe the nature of these two sexes is that of magnetic poles. The male sex is likened to the positive pole, and the female sex is likened to the negative pole. Brought into proximity with each other, the magnetic fields of these two sexes are supposed to interact, locking the two poles together into a perfect whole. Needless to say, two like poles brought into proximity are supposed to repel each other.
The male sex, in keeping with its positive designation, has positive qualities; and the female sex, in keeping with its negative designation, does not have any of the positive qualities attributed to the male sex. For instance, according to this model, men are active, strong, and courageous; and women are passive, weak, and fearful. In other words, whatever men are, women are not; whatever men can do, women cannot do; whatever capacities men have, women do not have. Man is the positive and woman is his negative.
...
This diseased view of woman as the negative of man, "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities," infects the whole of culture. It is the cancer in the gut of every political and economic system, of every social institution. It is the rot which spoils all human relationships, infests all human psychological reality, and destroys the very fiber of human identity.Here we see the core theme of her work, well reiterated, consistent with the quote above from "The Rape Atrocity". "The diseased view" is not that woman has a female body. "The pathological view" is not that women are female. The sociopathology is the uses and abuses to which women's female bodies are put, in patriarchal cultural mythology and in hard-core practice.
This pathological view of female negativity has been enforced on our flesh for thousands of years. The savage mutilation of the female body, undertaken to distinguish us absolutely from men, has occurred on a massive scale.
Advocating the addition of other genders, while leaving unchallenged the tyrannical sexual hierarchy that is globalised, is not a revolutionary effort. It is liberal to the core. The big mistake is thinking Dworkin sought to separate women's resistance to patriarchy from being female, or men's efforts to transform themselves from being male. What Andrea sought was the end of any association, presented to us as both truth and reality, of being a woman with being feminine and submissive, or being a man with being masculine and predatory.
Addendum:
Many people I know, respect, and love are intersex, non-binary, or transsexual. There is no unspoken claim here by me that Andrea was anti-transsexual or that she denied the existence of intersex people. She was an astoundingly empathic and compassionate human being, very much against cruel stereotyping and hatred of any group systematically targeted for violence and socially marginalised by the powerful. She wrote in Woman Hating, page 182:...whatever we choose to make out of the data of what is frequently called Intersex, it is clear that sex determination is not always clearcut and simple. Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University has basically isolated these six aspects of sex identity:
1. Genetic or nuclear sexuality as revealed by indicators like the sex-chromatin or Barr-body, a full chromosomal count and the leucocytic drumstick;
2. Hormonal sexuality which results from a balance that is predominantly androgenic or estrogenic;
3. Gonadal sexuality which may be clearly ovarian or testicular, but occasionally also mixed;
4. Internal sexuality as disclosed in the structure of the internal reproductive system;
5. External genital sexuality as revealed in the external anatomy, and finally;
6. Psychosexual development which through the external forces of rearing and social conditioning along with the individual's response to these factors directs the development of a personality which is by nature sexual.At this point, Dr. Money is more commonly known to have been a child abuser and pro-predation.
And from page 186:
Transsexuality
How can I really care if we win “the Revolution”? Either way, any way, there will be no place for me. A transsexual friend, in a conversation
Transsexuality is currently considered a gender disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt identity.
Since we know very little about sex identity, and since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judgment that transsexuality is caused by faulty socialization. More probably transsexuality is caused by a faulty society. Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions.
She goes on to discuss Transvestism, Bestiality, and Incest, although not in the pro-predation, pro-perpetration ways that MRAs claim. But it should be quite clear that what she proposes here was later rejected for several reasons, in part because it is victim-ignoring, politically naive, and speculative relative to her later work. For example, this, from page 180 of Woman Hating:There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency (see p. 185) as a transsexual. There are 3 crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.
It is interesting here to speculate on the perceptions of men like Lionel Tiger (Men in Groups) who in effect project human cultural patterns of dominance and submission on the animal world. For instance, Dr. Sherfey tells us that “In many primate species, the females would be diagnosed hermaphrodites if they were human” (Italics hers.) Most probably, we often simply project our own culturally determined modes of acting and perceiving onto other animals—we effectively screen information that would challenge the notions of male and female which are holy to us. In that case, a bias toward androgyny (instead of the current bias toward polarity) would give us significantly different scenarios of animal behavior.Nothing too dangerous happens to non-human animals if we don't bother to notice that female and male are not the only presentations of sexed being. A lot happens to them, and to us, if we fail to challenge the ways female human beings across their lifetimes, as girls and as women, are harassed, threatened, beaten, raped, and murdered, precisely for being female women. Colonialist patriarchy is a core problem in the West and beyond. Girls across the globe are imperiled right now, but more generations of girls will continue to be if we ignore the bulk of what Andrea so truthfully described in her work across the 1980s and until her death, about entirely unspeculative gendered atrocities.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Two books: Sexuality and War, by Evelyne Accad, and Unmaking War, Remaking Men, by Kathleen Barry
I'd like to bring attention to this 1992 book by feminist-author Evelyne Accad, titled:
and to this 2010 book by long-time white feminist-author, Kathleen Barry, dealing with related themes and issues:
And I'd like to thank both women for all their many years of work.
One thing that is worth noting, is how it is feminist women, first and foremost, who make the critical connections between men's wars on one another and men's war on women. Masculinist/masculist men, traditionally, make the connections in practice, uncritically.
I'll add this: I have noted to some het men personally, how it is that the ethics and power abuses of their sexual practices are protected by them in a presumed right of privacy, the same right used against women in all manner of atrocious ways. When I challenge het men to speak out and speak up about how they abuse or exploit women using sex as a means of control or harm, they get very silent very fast.
I am reminded of how men who return from war don't speak freely about what they do in military warfare: we are led to believe that this is because the experiences are too painful to recall.
And I'll add this: I live in a society that sets up a culture of dishonesty and protectionism of men's abuses of women and girls. When men do commit violations against female human beings' bodies, these men can be supported by attorneys to not tell the truth about what they did, whether or not they fully understand the political meaning of it.
That said, Accad and Barry explore far more themes far more in depth that I will ever do here. So I welcome you to read both books and bring discussion and activist challenges to the issues they explore.
Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East
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| photo of Evelyne Accad is from here |
Unmaking War, Remaking Men: How Empathy Can Reshape Our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves
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| photo of Kathleen Barry is from here |
And I'd like to thank both women for all their many years of work.
One thing that is worth noting, is how it is feminist women, first and foremost, who make the critical connections between men's wars on one another and men's war on women. Masculinist/masculist men, traditionally, make the connections in practice, uncritically.
I'll add this: I have noted to some het men personally, how it is that the ethics and power abuses of their sexual practices are protected by them in a presumed right of privacy, the same right used against women in all manner of atrocious ways. When I challenge het men to speak out and speak up about how they abuse or exploit women using sex as a means of control or harm, they get very silent very fast.
I am reminded of how men who return from war don't speak freely about what they do in military warfare: we are led to believe that this is because the experiences are too painful to recall.
And I'll add this: I live in a society that sets up a culture of dishonesty and protectionism of men's abuses of women and girls. When men do commit violations against female human beings' bodies, these men can be supported by attorneys to not tell the truth about what they did, whether or not they fully understand the political meaning of it.
That said, Accad and Barry explore far more themes far more in depth that I will ever do here. So I welcome you to read both books and bring discussion and activist challenges to the issues they explore.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Are Women's Rights also Human Rights? An Answer for James Huff and Any Man who Denies Patriarchal Atrocity Exists
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| image is from here |
In my conversation thus far with James, it has become clear that his views of the world are shaped by his experiences, with what he reads and otherwise studies being an integral part of his experience. I offer what follows as expansive education for James and for all men who minimise the frequency and effect of patriarchal atrocities also called "normal life". It is my contention that people who are structurally positioned to not know about those of us who are located elsewhere (structurally, not necessarily regionally), routinely utilise privileges and entitlements to refuse to know, to ignore, to deny the very harsh and horrific realities of most other people on Earth.
Men don't have to know what women experience as terrorism from men. Whites don't have to know what people of color experience that white people and white supremacist institutions make impossible for people of color to ignore and deny. Non-Indigenous people can believe genocide is only something that has happened decades or centuries ago in most places around the world, not currently; it happens currently, globally, to Indigenous people, and part of non-Indigenous people's education ought to include knowing the means by which contemporary genocides are unrelentingly occurring. Heterosexual males don't have to experience the worst of heterosexism, and therefore can believe that being lesbian and gay is just another way of being and not also a particular way of surviving heterosexist norms, including normalised violence. I have begun to let James know about this, and he has been movingly receptive.
Refusing to know something is difficult when it is punched into your face, rammed into your body, or robbing you of your homeland, culture, and future. The statused refusers get to name misogynist-racist-heterosexist reality one thing while it is named something else entirely by those of us stigmatised on the receiving end of the force. Part of how privileged people name reality is to frame it as a set of intellectual ideas and limited experiences.
Poverty is experienced as an idea by rich people. Genocide is something that isn't happening in North America and globally to Indigenous people, according to most whites. Rape culture is experienced as theory by men. Domestic terrorism is not a term that is even used by men, unless referring to how men threaten each other's governments within one's own country.
Denying the most potent aspects of reality happens in marginalised communities too. The few trans activists who are getting to the microphone are pretending "gender" is solely a matter of difference, with the problem being the rigidity of a two-sex binary. To radical feminists, the problem of gender is one of dominance, with meaning and substance communicated through force, coercion, violation, and subordination--by men against women. To deny that gender, in the West and elsewhere, is about dominance more than it is about difference is to refuse to know a whole lot about what is happening to girls and women around the world. It also means one cannot know much about what is happening to oneself on the social-political level, if one is transsexual.
Some of us who are marginalised socially participate in the systems of denial defended by social dominants. We can do this more easily if we are denied the analytic tools and activist means of taking on the deeper issues. Trans people's and non-trans people's rejection of radical feminism's key insights is one way to perpetuate and promote this denial. I'd argue that only the most privileged trans people can afford to not know that gender is domination and subordination of human beings designated as girls and women by people who identify as men. For the few trans people who physically transition their gendered identities within the hierarchy, the violence that visits women for being women, instituted by men, will likely show up. There is a collective cost to humanity when any group denies the systemic and systematic violence visited on some of us.
James is someone who has as much privilege and entitlement as anyone can have in the US; he could be wealthier, perhaps. But he and most of his MRA brothers who make themselves known have economic entitlements and privileges (such as to ignore poverty as a systemic political problem). He and most of his MRA brothers have race entitlements and privilege (such as to pretend that whites don't describe and treat Black, Brown, and Asian people in ways that are dehumanising: including classist, misogynist, heterosexist, and racist). He and most of his MRA brothers have gender and sexuality entitlements and privilege (such as ignoring how lesbians, gay and trans people experience the world due to being on the receiving end of the force, coercion, insult, degradation, and domination of heterosexism).
Indeed, if James wishes to, he can deny there are such things as political privileges and social entitlements all together. He and his brothers can pretend those unjust rewards and unfair advantages are distributed based on structural social location (and not biology or nature). He can fundamentally deny there is patriarchal force operating in the world. His brothers regularly do. He can also deny whiteness means gross dominance over and against people of color.This means and his brothers likely prefer to see whiteness as a natural occurrence, like having light skin with little pigment.
When privileged and entitled white men hear me discuss whiteness and manhood as political forces, they often and mistakenly pretend I'm being a bigot, rather that describing structured, institutionalised social reality. It is useful to privileged white men to ignore these realities and to deny them, and to refuse to learn about them: they get to think what happens to them that appears to be unfair or unjust is the most terrible thing happening on Earth. This is one point at which social denial turns into dangerous delusion.
I offer the following to James, and other privileged men, as descriptive of one key part of what's wrong with the world we are living in: it is ruled and regulated by men, against women with no systemic relief or radical reform for women as a class.
What follows is from *here*.
Are women's rights, human rights?
By Kali Goldstone - posted Friday, 17 June 2011
Gender persecution is "aggression against and exploitation of women, because [they] are women, systemically and systematically." Even though women can be abused similarly to the ways in which men are abused, women are also violated in specific ways in which men are not. Notably, if men are violated in such ways, they become the exception to the rule.
Many of these "sex-specific violations are sexual and reproductive" including rape, sexual murder, battery, 'honor killings,' suttee, dowry burnings, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), prostitution, forced abortion, sterilization and motherhood and sexual violence of any kind. A 1989 UN report declares that the "risk of violence and violation within the household is one thing women, irrespective of their social position, creed, color or culture, share in common."
So this begs the question, how come the international legal order is not predicated on the need to address such crimes even though many are expressly prohibited in international law and all of them within armed conflicts? Why is the presence of this pattern of destruction of women, as women, a reality, but absent in international law?
It's a Man's World:
Perhaps some of the answers lie in the fact that violations of men are better understood within the dynamic of human rights violations, as such ideas were based upon the experience of men. Law was created by men, whose perceptions were translated into ideas that were analogous with the male orientated experience. In turn, this experience dictated national and international conceptions of the human rights dynamic.
Domestically, the state is male, in that it chose to perpetuate the pre-state civil society distribution of power and resources, whereby women were dominated by men. This dichotomy was accepted as normal, neutral and good and characterized as a state of equality.
However, these state paradigms are not neutral at all. They are a self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to men as a group. These men did not provide for those who did not have such rights, like women. This was not even contemplated. The fact that they denied rights to women, for example the right to vote, is not in their interest to acknowledge. This was the beginning of the manifestation of gender blinded law.
In reality, domestic law rarely acknowledges that women are violated in these ways. For example, 33 of 50 U.S. states regard spousal rape as a lesser crime with the perpetrator charged with related crimes such as assault, battery or spousal abuse. In some countries, women are even criminalized for the behavior perpetrated against them. In Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, if a married woman is raped, she will often be charged with adultery and the penalty for such a crime can be death.
As Catharine MacKinnon suggests "gender is an inequality of power, a social status based on who is permitted to do what to whom." Humankind maintains a legal way of thinking about equality which was created by Aristotle: legal equality is to treat similarly situated people alike. Therefore, 'equality' becomes the right to be treated like the white male given that white man's culture is the dominant culture.
History dictates the subordination of women to men and thus women's enforced inequality is a reality of which is mirrored in domestic and international law. "When men sit in rooms, being states, they are largely being men."
Throughout the world women have had, and still have, so little voice and influence in public debate and within their governments.
Moreover, women are routinely violated every day, in every country, in times of war and peace. Even though atrocities like rape and sexual murder are officially illegal, these practices are commonly permitted under domestic and international law. They are permissible and understood as an "excess of passion in peace," or the "spoils of victory in war," or as the "liberties . . . of their perpetrators."
In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defined what being human is and the rights associated with being a human. It has been 63 years since its inception. Yet, within the human rights paradigm, what is perpetrated against women is viewed as either "too specific to women to be seen as human or too generic to human beings to be seen as about women."
The State vs. Women:
In terms of men's private acts against women, a legal exception exists in wartime. Atrocities committed by soldiers against civilians are always, in essence, state acts. However, "men do in war what they do in peace." In this way, the lack of acknowledgement and action that defines peacetime continues in war when it comes to the treatment of women, regardless of international humanitarian law.
The parties to the conflict and the atrocities perpetrated are covered by international humanitarian law. Yet, as we can see unfolding in Darfur and the Congo, rarely are international instruments, invoked to prevent or stop the atrocities or hold the perpetrators accountable.
The more a conflict can be defined as internal, as domestic, as social, the "more feminized the victims become no matter the gender," thus reducing the likelihood that international human rights will be established as being violated, irrespective of the reality of that war.
It must be understood that this is not because women's human rights have not been violated, it is because the violations of women have been obscured.
This shroud occurs in two distinct ways. Firstly, when women are violated like men, the abuse is not characterized as violations of women's human rights. For example, when women, with men, are murdered and buried in mass graves, beaten and tortured, these women are defined in history as part of a group, as Colombian (nationality) or Jewish (religion). The specific crimes that they as women faced, are lost in the identity of a more readily distinguishable group.
Secondly, in peacetime, contained by daily hostilities, women are raped and assaulted by partners, family and friends. However, these atrocities are not distinguished as human rights violations, their victims become the "desaparecidos of everyday life," and what is done to them "smells of sex."
Thus when a husband abuses his wife in her home, humanity is not seen to be violated.
Link Between Gender Based Crimes and Human Rights Law:
No international instrument expressly prohibits gender-based crimes. There is no enumerated ground in any international convention that includes 'based on sex or gender' as an element.
An example of this is the Refugee Convention, which fails to reference gender as a ground for persecution. Article 1A(2) explicitly marks "race, religion, nationality, membership to a particular social group or political opinion" as reasons for persecution. Therefore, a woman cannot receive surrogate protection from another country on the basis that she is being persecuted because she is a woman.
There are only rare references to sex or gender in international humanitarian law or to any crimes that include sex as an element. Crimes against humanity, which can often be gendered, for example rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and forced pregnancy, are not a component of treaty law, they are characterized as international customary law. Hence there is no duty to prevent such atrocities and very little impetus for one state to interfere in another's internal affairs.
However, it must be noted that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) changed this. In article 7(1)(h) the ICC defined persecution on the basis of gender as a crime against humanity, while in 7(1)(g) "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" are considered crimes against humanity when "committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population."
Furthermore, while many international crimes are based on sex, for example, rape in war and trafficking in women, international law has a tendency to "suppress their gendered element." There is no international crime that acknowledges the "destruction of women as women, as a group or as members of the group."
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) classifies such discrimination against women in "largely gender-neutral and referential terms." CEDAW guarantees the enjoyment of rights "on a basis of equality of men and women."
However, this has been construed non-substantively and claims by individuals or groups, claims against governments who remain inactive, and claims against private parties, have been regarded as impermissible.
Nevertheless, the CEDAW committee has finally recognized violence against women as a type of sex discrimination, thus making states accountable for 'private acts' if they fail to prevent, investigate or punish discriminatory acts of violence. But this is impossible to enforce.
While Art. 3 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), guarantees sex equality, only the Optional Protocol allows complaints by individuals coupled with state parties. Nonetheless, only those states that have expressly signed and accepted this Optional Protocol can enable individuals or groups of that state to report breaches of the Convention.
Many states who are signatories to the ICCPR have not signed onto the Optional Protocol. For example, the United States has not signed or ratified the protocol and only after the war did the former Yugoslavian states separately sign on. The ICCPR cannot be interpreted retrospectively, thus successfully denying victims of the war in the former Yugoslavia from reporting past atrocities.
Furthermore, the International Court of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has inherited the present construction of humanitarian crimes in its founding statute, which seeks to diminish women's harm and has yet to expressly distinguish gender based crimes.
In Art. 5(g) of the ICTY statute, rape is only established as a crime against humanity, not as a tool of genocide. Like other domestic and international forums, the ICTY is hindered by "legally institutionalized sex inequality," is easily manipulated by the historical denial of sexual and reproductive harm to women, and is obligated to grant institutional deference to states.
Yet again, state sovereignty is used as a tool by the international legal order to ensure that the ICTY does not effectively address sexual and reproductive atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia and does not provide justice for those who are left without effective recourse for violations of their human rights.
Hence there is only a limited practical and bona fide link between the types of sexual and reproductive atrocities committed against women, as women, and the international human rights law available to such victims to hold the perpetrators accountable or to seek surrogate protection.
It is glaringly obvious that if a society does not grant you rights, so that a state does not have to even deny them to prevent you from possessing them, then the fact that they are somewhat expressly guaranteed in international law, is useless.
The law must liberate itself from this "essentialist circularity." One way of achieving this might be to empower women to confront the state committing such human rights violations against them, through international and domestic forums coupled with the ability to directly challenge men in society who harm them.
It must be recognized in law that the violation of women sexually and reproductively is a "form of unequal treatment." The links between marriage, battery, sexual harassment, rape, prostitution and sexual humiliation in the home, at work, in pornography, in brothels and in the streets, must be made in order to fully grasp the unequal treatment of women by society and thus the law.
Cultural practices like aborting female fetuses, female infanticide and the deprivation of nutrition to girls and women, which guarantees that millions of girls are never even born or mature to become second class citizens, needs to be incorporated into the human rights discourse and instruments.
Further, rape in genocide must be understood to be what Andrea Dworkin coined as "gynocide;" the destruction of women as women, as a group or as members of the group.
Catharine MacKinnon urges that grounds like ethnicity and sex be joined so that crimes against humanity like suttee, FGM, honor killings and rape perpetrated in rape/death camps can be defined as what they really are: "destructive acts against women "in part" on ethnic grounds combined with sex."
Perhaps then, women will be granted legal avenues for prevention, recourse to and accountability for reproductive and sexual crimes committed against them. Perhaps then, when a woman is harmed reproductively or sexually, in war or in peace, humanity will be understood to have been violated.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Exposing the HeteroPatriarchal Agenda and Values of Father's Rights Activist, Jackie Anderson
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| image is from here |
A fellow blogger has written commentary appropriately interrupting the text of a dangerously heteropatriarchal dood. His name is Jackie Anderson, and he's a Communications Director for StudentsForLifeofAmerica. He'd be more dangerous if he made sense, but perhaps not. Perhaps we don't live in a time when making sense is all that important. The more I think about it, the more it appears that nonsense sells, and the more the nonsense taps into racist and heteropatriarchal memes, themes, ideals, and myths, the more adored it will be by the pro-status quo masses.
The Hermes' Journeys blogger has put his critique and commentary in brackets and italics below. I'll put my own comments in the cross-post in bold, [brackets], and also in a pretty color. I was welcomed to do this by the host of Hermes' Journeys.
To link back to the original pro-feminist intervention, please click *here*.
To link to the original post containing this Fathers' Rights nonsense UNinterrupted, please click *here*.
Only the text in the pretty pinkish color is mine. To be honest, I really don't like pink, or blue. And, in a preliminary response to what follows, I don't like tea parties or toy trucks either. -- Julian
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Unofficial Month of Men!
My brain almost exploded when I opened up my email this morning. See, I subscribe to the mailing list for this ridiculously well-funded and well-organized Arlington, VA-based pro-life group called Students For Life, in order to keep tabs on their memes and tactics. You can pretty much guess what their emails are normally like. But today's was special. Today's was designed to make sociologists apoplectic.
The subject was "Should Men Have A Say?" And the email starts out with a message called "A Man's Choice?" from Jackie Anderson, the Communications Director. I will reproduce it here with my comments in brackets:
June is unofficially the month of men. [isn't every month?] [And isn't this the official millennium of men, much like all the others?] Father’s Day [in the US] falls on June 17th this year. [OK I'll give you that one] The release of X-Men: First Class last week helped to begin the month with a testosterone-infused rush to the box office. [um, what the shit does that have to do with anything? are you just trying to hook in the college-aged crowd here? the X-men, if anything, are a progressive organization. The movies are basically a parable for gay rights!] [Yes, Hermes! He might like to consider what it is he's REALLY promoting. And I hope he realises women have testosterone too. And men have estrogen.] Like similar holidays [which celebrate Christian white het men's "greatest" accomplishments in mass murder, slavery, and oppression--such as Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Columbus Day, Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas], we take time this month to celebrate those whom we love [--and with FR activists that'd be "ourselves, and our reflections in mirrors"], those who have loved us from the start [statistically and anecdotally, that's not likely to be daddy], and sometimes, those we may not see as often as we wish. [Statistically and anecdotally, that would be daddy.]That's all that was in the email, but then there is a link to "read more" that, if you click on it, takes you to what is evidently a blog post from which the above text was excerpted. Here is the rest of the post:
Men play an intrinsically different role in our lives than women do. [!!!!! AHHHHH BRAIN STARTING TO MELT] [Men do not play an intrinsically different role in the lives of children who are raised by two fathers, or whose single and partnered mothers do the work of two parents; traditionally, men's role is to disappear or dominate; to cheat on one's mother; to beat one's mother; and also to beat and incest the children; I'll inquire about this blatant omission of reality further later on] From an early age, we’re taught the idiosyncrasies that make men who they are [Often enough from heterosexist media. I wonder, Jackie, are you referencing the men who are abusive, or the men who are not?], and similarly, that make women equally as unique. [FFFUUUUUUU...] [We might note the phrasing "similarly ... equally as unique" is nothing if it isn't oxymoronic. First, it implies oppositional and hierarchical uniqueness, attributed not to individuals but to ALL women as distinguished from ALL men is a form of similarity; this would mean that socially speaking, all men are clones, including genetically if you think genes greatly inform personality and actions, as men like Jackie do; are we really supposed to believe that ALL men share the exact same ideosyncrasies--like car-adoring, warring, and snoring? Does this mean that each woman shares with every other woman those OTHER ideosyncrasies --being gentle, nurturing, irrational, athletically incompetent, and unaware of what a automobile's transmission is? Isn't this is racism, classism, and hetero/sexism full throttle? When men accuse women of making such grandly irrational statements just like Jackie's, the women are called misandrists; I conclude, therefore, using anti-feminist "logic" that Jackie is also a misandrist; because he has informed us that all men are alike, all men must be like him: misandrists. Right? Isn't that how "logic" works? Like math? Let's see if I get called a misandrist for noting what far too many men say. I don't say what ALL men say, because I do recognise that all men are not exactly alike; some of us are gay, not class privileged, Indigenous, Black, Brown, and Asian, intelligent, caring, warm, nurturing, athletically incompetent, unable to distinguish the motor of a Jeep from that of a Jaguar; men, collectively, are not the shockingly homogenous, homosocial bunch who organise as Fathers Rights activists] Baby boys get blue painted rooms and toy trucks after their first sonogram [well, not the fetuses who get prematurely punched out of the woman's belly when daddy finds out she's pregnant because he didn't wear a condom, and/or because he raped her; too often the babies and the new mom's get black-and- blue]; little girls will wear pink ruffles and decide to cut their Barbie’s hair themselves. [Really? You're really gonna go there, huh?] [Internationally, including among "First World" nations, even more fetuses won't come to term if they are determined that they'd be born into girlhood] Boys scrape their knees climbing trees and girls will discover early on that a slumber party with best friends beats the outdoors any day. [Well, many girls will discover that sleepovers in the tree houses they built is fun too--some girls, like some boys, do demonstrate an ability to enjoy more one thing; but globally most girls are very poor and don't have room in their materially impoverished homes for middle class activities like "sleep-overs"; most girls and their parents cannot afford Barbies and ruffles. Does this mean they aren't girls?!?! You won't hear anything about poor people from FR activists. They're all white, class-privileged, and "First World", and base their understandings of the world as if they're the only men on Earth] Men are categorized for their power and strength; women for their gentle, nurturing souls. [This is exactly the kind of ridiculous cultural myth I take great pains to debunk in my sociology classes, and here you are just flouting your ignorance. Are you also going to ruin students' science education by telling them how obvious it is that the Earth is flat?] [It's disgusting, isn't it Hermes? Unabashedly sexist people--women and men--categorise people this way; Jackie's and other het men's stereotypes of women do not fit well with other Fathers Rights activists' stereotypes of feminists, who are, after all, women who are all equally unique--according to the incredibly logical Jackie] The question, after the aforementioned and established [by denial and delusion?] cultural deliberation, is this: when did it become acceptable to remove men from the topic of abortion? [OK so now we're on this tired trope. Obviously, you're not talking about within the pro-life movement, which is so latently patriarchal that men's input gets a premium in abortion discussions. Just google men and abortion and you'll find a host of sites encouraging men to get involved, which is of course loose cover for unabashed pro-life propaganda. Make your woman go through with birth, claim your child as your own. It's a man's highest duty to procreate and raise a family. Rather, you're talking about your false straw man representation of the pro-choice movement, and feminism in general, as something that obliterates the male perspective and privileges freedom from external control over cultural theological ideas, and patriarchal structures that objectify women and define them as baby-factories. In fact, much of the pro-choice movement explicitly lobbies for men's inclusion in abortion-related discussions.] [I rather look forward to the day when white het class-privileged men shut up on the subject. Such a day has yet to arrive in human history since white manhood and male heterosexuality has existed. Jackie might want to open his mind to the fact that often, men will demand that their pregnant spouse get an abortion and if they have the money they'll pay for it to eliminate the possibility of having parental responsibilities if she gave birth, lived, and raised the child; in case these FR doods didn't know it, that's mostly how abortion happens--it's men's choice and only men's choice; these FR guys seem to want to pretend that isn't the case, because then they'd have to be angry at and blame MEN, and they're too dick-whipped to do that.]
The basic, secular pro-life [anti-woman, pro-man] argument is founded on bedrock truths concerning biology. [Or the dusty distortions of already thoroughly refuted "truths" purported by sociobiologist and evolutionary psychologists--who, surprise, are disproportionately class-privileged white het men.] Take DNA A, merge it with DNA B and you get DNA C. [Not true. You get various potential combinations, none of which amount to "C"; the combinations amount to various configurations of A plus B.] Simple enough [one might even say, "too simple"] (though, frustratingly, not for everyone [like those who are capable of complex thought]), and with that example you have life’s simplest equation: 50% + 50% = 100%. [See: 50 plus 50 equals 2x50, not "C"] Fifty percent of us [does he mean, for example, my legs, internal organs, and skin? None of those come from my parents--only genetic information that allows for some possible outcomes; how would being half one's mother and half one's father result in a child having a hair color that is unlike either parent? Uh-oh, we just got too complex for Jackie's simple understanding of genetics and human biology; and see what Hermes says next for more outing of Jackie's stupidity] come from our mothers, [so we are exactly our DNA? we are not our choices, our circumstances, our hopes and dreams, but rather we are information in a pattern of molecules?] who selflessly and fearlessly carry us to term and raise us to be solid contributors to society. [I'm fairly certain this isn't always the case. I can think of mothers who are not selfless or fearless, and I can think of grown-ups who never learned to be solid contributors to society.] [Women are hardly fearless when they are living with a domestic terrorist who pounds her in the hopes she and the fetus will die.]
And the other fifty percent of us, as dictated by simple [meaning: inaccurate and simplistic] biology, comes from our fathers, [who art in heaven--what about what we allegedly get from THAT Father? Wait. This dude isn't Christian??? Jackie may wish to explain to believers in the Virgin Birth that it never happened and that the reason the myth is even in the N.T. at all is because back then they didn't know there was any genetic material--or other significant contribution other than the shelter of the womb--passed on to the fetus; the math then was different: children were supposed to be 100% of the father and not at all of the mother] who contribute DNA [too often by force and without the woman or girl's enthusiastic consent], late night ice cream trips for their expecting counterparts [that's cutely trivializing, really], [I hate to bust Jackie's white, middle class, Western, delusional, culturally myopic bubble but most fathers--and mothers--don't live near ice cream shoppes and don't own cars] and the strength of their own character and spirit [read: that one character and onespiritbody-type that is Woman's; and that one character and spirit that is all of Man's or a male God's, according to Jackie above] that they hope will one day be reflected in our own selves. [I'd like to hear Jackie's explanation for what it is rapists and adult male incest perpetrators hope for--and pass along to their offspring] A whole half of our mothers [the left half or the right half] is within ourselves; no more, no less. [No truth. No accuracy.] Consequently, the same goes for our fathers. [Hmmm. This would mean that each and every one of us is basically half-man and half-woman: 50/50, right? Hold on... Not the last time I checked!]
And while we’re on the topic of math, it’s 100% impossible to conceive [of this nonsense] without men. [I wouldn't be so hasty here. There's been a lot of research in parthenogenesis lately: scientists have been able to implant the cell nucleus of a mouse egg inside another mouse egg, and get them to join to form a fertilized embryo - no sperm required! And they're doing similar things with macaque monkeys, too. But I wouldn't expect you to, you know, follow developments in science or anything.] [And Lesbians do it all the time! Non-Lesbian women too: Nadya Suleman didn't have sexual intercourse with a man in order to conceive; this is partly why she is so despised by het men; although her male doctor was present for portions of the fertilisation process, but I don't think that's what Jackie is trying to say] In some way, shape or form, men are involved [read: usually in control of, as through force and coercion] in 100% of conceptions worldwide throughout the history of human life, [as opposed to the history of plant life] no matter the race, religion or creed. [Is this building up to us all singing the National Anthem or waving an Amerikkkan flag?] It’s simple biology. [Whenever you say something is simple that's probably a good clue that you don't understand it.] [LOL. Good one, Hermes!]
How, then, is abortion strictly a “women’s issue”? [um, because that's how you've set up your straw man?] [Abortion is far from a woman's issue only when it is allowed to be a woman's issue at all; men beating up pregnant women to the point that the women or girls either miscarry, die, or have to have the fetus removed prematurely directly involves the participation of men. The mothers who want custody of children (being possessed, abused, and manipulated by bitter, domineering ex-husbands) are not praised to the heavens by Fathers Rights activists, if the disgusting things the F.R. attorneys and the ex-hubbies allege about them of is any indication.] How is the expulsion of men from a conception they take 50% biological responsibility for [I didn't realize they were expelled from conception... then how does conception happen? magic baby fairies flit around in your uterus?] [How do women cope with the fact that many 'biological fathers' are self-expelling, leaving women to decide what to do about the pregnancy all alone when those 100% irresponsible "fathers" learn that the women or girls are pregnant? So much for men's involvement; 50% responsibility goes down to zero percent pretty damned often; as it does when men are court-ordered to pay child support; funny how wealthy men don't want to cough up money when they don't possess the children] any less illogical [than what Jackie argues in this statement?] than the argument surrounding the age-old “my body, my choice” agenda? [actually, that's quite a new line of thinking that developed along with feminism over the past couple of generations. What is age-old is what it developed as a response to: the thousands-of-generations-old idea that women are property of men and have no rights to make choices about their own bodies. This is the fundamental idea of "patriarchy," which your organization advocates a return to.] [Many men seem quite comfortable with the 'my body, my choice' position as long as the body is a man's and choice is only his too]
The sad reality today is that many fathers who want to have a strong presence [a brutal presence, even] in the lives of their child are denied this fundamental right [forgetting, of course, that most men voluntarily forfeit this 'fundamental right'; it appears many men view it as their fundamental right to hit the road, Jack--or Jackie; has Jackie never heard the song "Papa Was a Rolling Stone"?], as the life of their child is snuffed out of existence without them even having the legal right to say otherwise. [No mention here of men who snuff out the lives of pregnant women] Regardless of whether or not the father had a say in his partner’s abortion, [this presumes the partner is a woman, right?] men do suffer the same damaging psychological effects after abortion that often women experience. [How can 'men' feel something that women feel?? This goes against his opening thesis that all men are one way, with the same characteristics and all women are another way. Geesh, next thing you know Jackie will start going on and on about how men get sympathy pains during labor] [Some men really don't deserve this right, see?] [<---See the link there that Hermes embedded.]
Being a father means getting to hold your brand new son or daughter [or intersex child], the newest person on the planet at the time of their birth [well, newest along with all the others born at the same time; what's with the romanticisation of having the newest human on Earth, anyway? Is the child less valuable if its the third newest? Talk about introducing one's child to the insults of ageism!] and imaging their future. [Yes, like the future that unfolds for girl babies who are incested for ten years in their childhood, until they are old enough and physically large enough to tell him to fuck off] It means scraped knees and tea parties, exorbitant texting bills in middle school, and driving lessons and boyfriends in high school. [How much you want to bet he's not talking about boyfriends and tea parties for our sons?] Picking out softball teams, colleges, and wedding dresses. [It appears we've just re-entered the white, middle-class het-only Twilight Zone] Most amazingly, it means getting to play a prominent role in this tiny person, this little ball of blankets ultimately will become. [Your grammar is falling apart at the seams! But interestingly, you've now switched from a pseudo-biological argument for men having control over a woman's body, to an argument derived from rapidly fluctuating cultural meanings of fatherhood, which is shaky ground. which is it going to be?] [Yes, Hermes. I think he meant to say "play a prominent role in the life of this tiny person"--at least I hope like hell he did, because the way he wrote it it's fucking creepy.]
The beautiful gift of fatherhood [that so many men keep unwrapped, taking it with them to their graves] and the inalienable rights [apparently they are alienable - otherwise what the hell are you complaining about?] [LOL] and attributes attached to the men fortunate enough to hold the title [including the men who refuse to hold the baby?] should be celebrated daily. [Oh, please. More patriarchal flag-waving and anthem singing. Barf] Similarly, a heightened sense of fatherhood [is this a nod to all the fathers out there who live most of their adulthoods while stoned?] and the necessity to celebrate the role fathers play in the lives of their children should be emphasized within the pro-life [read: patriarchal] movement. [Even the fathers who emotionally, psychologically, and physically scar and traumatise their children?]
It is no secret that many women who choose to abort their child do so because they feel as though their partners are unsupportive of their decision to embark on motherhood; [and, not infrequently, because the selfish prick refuses to support the new family in any way, shape, or form] it is also no secret that some men are less than supportive of welcoming a child and subsequent financial burdening into their lives. ["Less than welcoming" is code for him terroristically and self-servingly suing the mother for every cent she doesn't have.]
But what about the men who feel blessed to be a part of something so miraculous, something that could only change his life for the better? [I say have them track down all the dead-beat dads and also have them track down and beat the shit out of the rapers and batterers.]
All fathers should be celebrated for their role in the creation of a new child, and these fathers should be especially celebrated for their decision to welcome this gift into their lives for they serve as role models. [Except when these fellas serve as domineering, drug-addicted, alcoholic, two-timing, prostitute-procuring, physically and emotionally absent, physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive role models, I hope.]
This month, the staff of Students for Life of America [well, Jackie] urges you to do something special for your fathers who have all chosen to celebrate the gift you have been to them since your humble beginning [um, not all fathers have. many choose to escape from the constraints of family life]. Consider writing your father a thank you note. [Dead Daddy, thanks for fucking up my life by hitting Mommy and me with alcohol on your breath. And thanks for showing me what kind of awful man-qualities not to look for in friends and romantic partners] It’s simple and to the point, and with the whole world shifting to email and twitter, he might appreciate the extra effort. There are few better ways to tell someone how you feel than writing it down. [Yes, it was good to write it down there. The only problem is it'll need to be photocopied because I know so many women who were incested and raped by their fathers.] Men tend to be less emotional than women [good god, enough with the tired gender stereotypes, will you stop indoctrinating these kids with essentialist propaganda?!?], [we must suppose here, in his heterosexist mindset, that by "less emotional" Jackie means "vulnerable and open" not "emotional", because abusive, controlling patriarchal men demonstrate a great deal of emotion--lots of anger, moodiness, outbursts of rage, jealousy, and so on] but everyone appreciates being appreciated. [And not assaulted, dominated, or terrorised.] Find a funny card you know he’d appreciate, or devote your Facebook status to him for a day. Small, thoughtful efforts like these go a long way in shining a light on those who mean the most to us, and certainly do much to reflect a truly pro-life heart. [And, statistically, those who mean the most to us are women not because women are naturally, hormonally, or genetically more nurturing than nurturing men, but because so many men feel utterly entitled to be assholes.]
[This paragraph is by Hermes:] So there you have it. A stunningly obtuse tract defending patriarchal ideology under the guise of protecting cute and cuddly babies, and arguing for rolling back the age-old evilness of feminism (women have had rights over their own bodies, like, forEVER! and they're intrinsically treacherous!) and letting the poor, put-upon men have some for a change (men have, like, NEVER had power over women's bodies). Thanks Jackie, that sounds really great.Julian here: I want to conclude my own responses by stating that Fathers' Rights activists reveal and revel in their patriarchal politics by not confronting men who control the institutions and social, cultural, religous, and economic circumstances in which women miscarry fetuses and abort pregnancies, in which women die during childbirth, by which are coerced to be heterosexual, in which women are forced to have heterosex, in which women are dominated by men, and in which men are led to believe they have a right of access to women's bodies. Unless or until Fathers Rights activists challenge other men to stop raping women and to end rape, to stop incesting their daughters and to end incest, to stop terrorising women at home and in the world, they will have no credibility among anyone other than their own members.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
How WHM supremacists protect one another's privileges and entitlements. Cases in point: The Roman Catholic Church, Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, and David Christopher Lane
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| photo of Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber is from here |
Whatever men's ages, if men serially prey on other people for their own sexual, political gain, out of a sense of entitlement to do so, this behavior--the rapist's behavior, the child molester's behavior, the incest perpetrator's behavior, will be called "childish" and "immature" (read: not only not adult behavior, but not at all gendered behavior) and many other things that deny a crucial component of how it is men abuse so many times with so little accountability: it's because they are adult, grown men. They aren't boys if they're men, and I wish other men would stop excusing men's oppressive adult actions as if they were happening only because there's some inner child acting out, who only needs therapy, not permanent removal from society. Case in point: David Christopher Lane's pro-patriarchal analysis of serial abuser Andrew Cohen, who posed as a spiritual leader in order to gain intimate access to many victims.What has Andrew's colleague, and very well-followed author and god-figure to many, Ken Wilber, got to say about Andrew's abuses?
Ken? What have you got to say?
For more on Ken's chummy relationship with Andrew, please see *here*. For critical discussion about their work, including their work together, please see *here*, and please check if there is any discussion at all about both men's many forms of privilege, and their many entitlements to abuse because of those privileges.
It should not be too difficult to get this:
Men consuming pornography of raped and incested girls and women, men committing all manner of heinous political/spiritual violations and social degradations of girls and women, and some boys and men too, are not being boys, folks. They're behaving as men, if and when they're men, unless it is the case that they truly do not have the cognition and mental functioning of an adult, in which case they still are not boys, but are impaired men--regardless of their level of functionality, their behavior is generally registered by victims as occurring from a grown man, not a boy-child.
If a boy was doing what they were doing--sexually assaulting many other children and assaulting young or older adults too, they wouldn't get away with it. Men usually get away with it, because they have the status of being both males and adults, and also because they do very adult things to accomplish their decades of crimes, such as plan and execute financially or socially successful careers which place them in close proximity to the people they wish to abuse. (Children don't do that.) Raping people isn't a "childish" activity. It's a male supremacist adult man's activity, far too often.
See below to read one small example of how this patriarchal protection racket works. It's a White Boy's Club, all right, except that the adult members are all men. It's the same damned deal with the adult male preachers who the Catholic Church wants to pretend were not abusing children. The Church--a huge institution of patriarchal men of varying sexual orientations--has recently attempted to avoid the term "pedophile priests", claiming the victims' ages don't place the perps in that category--because the Church, which protects such abuses of children, of minors, says so. Got it.
I'm all for banning the term "pedophile" as I've stated on this blog before. We don't call rapists "woman-lovers" and we ought not call rapers of children "child-lovers". But I'm not for pretending that people who are legally children are called "not children" only when it serves a vastly criminal Catholic Church (led overwhelmingly by white male supremacist men) to do so.
Reality check:
"Bishops ignore and conceal child sex crimes because they can," said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). "So any 'reform' that doesn't diminish bishops' power and discretion is virtually meaningless." (source: *here*)It's no different with any man who abuses serially. He does it because he can, and society won't do anything to lessen his social-political power to abuse others both interpersonally and institutionally. Men form institutions inside which they can and do abuse people with less power than they support one another having. If an institution is patriarchal--whether religious, legal, political, cultural, medical, or academic--the fact of it being patriarchal means abuse against women and children is happening there, and that exact abuse is being protected by fucked up, if normal, brotherhoods of men.
Everything that follows is from IntegralWorld.net.
David Christopher Lane, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, Mt. San Antonio College Lecturer in Religious Studies, California State University, Long Beach Author of Exposing Cults: When the Skeptical Mind Confronts the Mystical (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1994) and The Radhasoami Tradition: A Critical History of Guru Succession (New York and London: Garland Publishers, 1992). For the reviewed book and its author see: www.americanguru.net
Andrew Cohen
ExposedA Review of "American Guru"
David Lane
After reading William Yenner's edited volume, AMERICAN GURU: A Story of Love, Betrayal and Healing—Former Students of Andrew Cohen Speak Out, I felt a number of emotions, ranging from depression, to anger, to frustration, to disbelief, to finally gratitude.
My first encounter with an Andrew Cohen devotee occurred several years ago when one of the editors of their slick magazine, What is Enlightenment? (now called, EnlightenNext), wrote me a personal letter asking for my appraisement of her guru. She had read a book I had co-authored with Professor Scott Lowe (University of Wisconsin) entitled "DA: The Strange Case of Franklin Jones" (Walnut, MSAC: 1995), which harshly criticized the late American guru. She clearly saw problems with Da Free John and I got the impression that she felt that Andrew Cohen was different and perhaps a genuine spiritual master.
I hesitated in writing back because I had read enough about Andrew Cohen to almost immediately realize that he, like Da Free John, suffered from an acute case of adolescent narcissism. In other words, both of these so-called spiritual teachers had yet to grow-up and act like mature adults. When they don't get their way and cannot control the behavior of their fawning devotees (which happens a bit more frequently than one might at first suspect), they have hissy fits. Da Free John would invariably go into one of his spiritual sulks or lash out in an indignant rage if he felt that his disciples didn't "get" his teachings.
In Yenner's explosively revealing book, American Guru, we learn that Andrew Cohen displays all sorts of loutish behavior when his disciples don't kowtow to his every neurotic whim. Women devotees especially receive harsh treatment from Andrew Cohen, including his own mother who eventually left him and exposed her son in her ironically titled book, The Mother of God.
What an outsider might find both unbelievable and astounding is how so many very bright and men and women can be so hoodwinked by a guru like Andrew Cohen who has never impressed me (unlike Da Free John, for instance) as being particularly intelligent or insightful. He reminds me of someone I knew in high school who got picked on and perhaps roughed up a bit by other students (for maybe not being athletic enough in gym or sharp enough in algebra class), and who vowed early on to someday get his revenge.
Andrew Cohen doesn't at all act like an enlightened guru passing on valuable gems of wisdom. Rather, he acts like a spoiled brat who suffers from a chronic case of high school insecurity and has finally discovered a way to get even.
And who does he get even with? Those spiritual seekers who are naïve enough to transfer over to Andrew Cohen their deep-seated yearnings, their love, and, finally, their wallets and purses. Even Andrew Cohen's obvious infatuation with Ken Wilber is indicative of Cohen's chronic intellectual insecurity. Cohen's and Wilber's tete-a-tete is grounded in their own self-interests, but the fact that Ken Wilber has aligned himself once again with an abusive self-proclaimed guru, such as Andrew Cohen, speaks volumes about Wilber's so-called "integrity".
Ken Wilber has never fully admitted how mistaken he was about Da Free John and his nefarious actions (lamely back-peddling, albeit slightly, only after the New York born guru was exposed in the national media). It is all too clear that Wilber hasn't a clue about the gurus he associates with or endorses. Or, to put it in a darker [read: whiter] light, it seems as if Ken Wilber will chummy up with any guru provided he or she will give him a featured section in their monthly journal.
I have read a large number of books that have exposed modern spiritual leaders and their organizations, including The Bare-Face Messiah (L. Ron Hubbard), Monkey on a Stick (the Hare Krishna movement, Life 102: What To Do When Your Guru Sues You (John-Roger Hinkins), etc. I think that American Guru is a valuable addition to the growing literature devoted to exposing fraudulent gurus.
American Guru is not a mean-spirited book. It is, rather, a refreshingly honest one. I think American Guru should be required reading for all of Andrew Cohen's past and present students. Hopefully, it will be read by every spiritual seeker before they make a choice of becoming a student of this so-called master who cannot even reconcile with his own mother.
I personally think Andrew Cohen is in deep need of long term therapy. The first step in his recovery process should be for him to sit down and read American Guru closely line by line. After doing such, he should apologize first to his mother and then to every student he has ever taken under his wing. Hopefully, he will then refund whatever money he has manipulatively gathered in his name.
I don't think any of this is likely, but I do have confidence that anyone who reads American Guru will be properly forewarned not to buy into any of Andrew Cohen's childish antics.
If you are on the fence about Andrew Cohen and his methods, American Guru will help you get off it and provide you with enough telling detail (and, hopefully, some confidence) to walk away from this spiritual poser. His mother did and so should we all.
William Yenner, American Guru: A Story of Love, Betrayal and Healing-former students of Andrew Cohen speak out, Epigraph Publishing, 2009.
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