On Compassion and Confrontation: Part 3 of White Heterosexual Male Privilege: a True and Not So Simple Story

[photograph of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was found here]

[Here is part one]

[Here is part two]

PART THREE:

What I learned tonight is that white heterosexual men like to believe they are "just individuals" even while they compartmentalise women (and queer people, and people of color) into all sorts of categories and genres for consumption and exploitation. Even while men disdainfully exclaim, "Women!", and stare at women's breasts or buttocks or other body parts day after day, they insist to the rest of us: "Please don't forget, every white heterosexual man is only an individual, each one unique in every way, unlike any other." (This shows a glaring level of willful ignorance about the existence of the Whiteboy Brotherhood.)

The triple combo of privileges and entitlements due to whiteness, manhood, and heterosexuality makes this demographic particularly resistant to many things; gross stigmatisation is one; oppression by sexuality, gender, and race is another. Knowledge of what most of the world's human beings experience as universal human experience, that W.H.M. rarely experience at all, is another.

Men being lumped into one gendered group in any way that isn't worshipful or deferential, that doesn't stroke the ego or the cock, is cause for any man to sound the alarm of being "stereotyped", mistreated, and not seen as a human being. Dudes, the problem isn't that WE aren't seen as human beings. The problem is that we don't see WOMEN as human beings, each one individual, each one unique in some ways while sharing at least one condition of oppression, most women sharing at least two conditions of oppression: by race as well as sex.

We men get pissed and we sulk. We punch and we pout. Either way, it is usually women who have to attend to the man who is so insulted by a woman having done to him what he habitually and oppressively does every single day to every other group on Earth: turning them into "a demographic", a set of stereotypes, making them two dimensional, each one the same as the other. And I can hear Thoman chiming in "I'm NOT one of THEM." And perhaps he isn't. But my reply to this, in my own imagination, as well as posted to this blog is, "Yeah. Ok. Fine. You're not. And now tell me how, exactly, you challenge the men who ARE like that, to make the world safer and less oppressive for women?"

A socially dangerous idea that goes unchallenged among men, generally and usually, is men believing "women want to be raped". The idea that "women hate men", as noted in other posts on this blog, is not one that is socially dangerous. The first produces conditions that make all women feel or be unsafe, that targets women to be potentially and actually physically and psychically assaulted, one woman every three minutes in the U.S. The second is a bit of foolish hyperbole passed around as if it had weight in the world. Whether or not any women hate any men, or whether some women hate all men, there is no man who can tell me that, as a consequence of "this feeling of man-hating that some women have", women act on it by systematically shoving something violently into men's body cavities in order to reach orgasm with the knowledge they are humiliating the man, seen as existing for such abuse.

I cannot begin to tell you how many white men, myself included, have felt "the greatest insult and hurt ever" when we are treated as "a demographic" by those we oppress, which is to say, when we are called out for behaving in ways that are, in fact, very typical of our population.

When Donna told me that Thomas is hurt at not being seen as a friend, and instead as a demographic, I wanted to go to him and say, "Thomas. I'm a demographic and I'm your friend. We all are all, every one of us, both part of some demographic and individuals too. You don't get some special anti-demographic status just because you're not used to thinking of your race, your gender, and your sexuality as carrying great privilege and power. And, I love you. Sleep well tonight, ok?"

He was way too sulky and withdrawn, and I was too angry and perplexed about what the most woman-supporting thing to do would be, to put in the effort to "reach him" and confirm my love for him, and hear out his hurt and pain, and validate it, and probably not get around to telling him how what he did was really grossly insensitive to do in front of a woman who has been sexually harassed by men all week, and in front of a gay man who has a history of being sexually assaulted.

I know Thomas well enough to tell you this: he is not a survivor of sexual assault. So there's an experience that many of us have, a disproportionately female population, who know rape not as an idea, but as a traumatic act of invasion and violation, as a spiritual betrayal and irreparable breach of trust. If you only know of rape as an idea, it can be on par with every other idea you have. This partially explains why Thomas could actually think his perception of "the two offenses" were not morally or politically different. However, it mbust be stated unequivocally, that "being prevented, as an oppressor, from entering the space of the group your people oppress" is NOT THE SAME and is NOT MORE IMPORTANT than "being raped". And the language of men's entitlements and privilege--"I should get to go anywhere I want! I should never be prevented from entering a space!" is overtly rapist speech.

Double standards abound. White men want to be taken care of emotionally by women whenever we are hurt, in any way. Whenever we feel wronged, whenever we feel mistreated, whenever we feel victimised.

It is the case that some of us bind our identities to the ways in which we've been harmed, forgetting about the privileges we still carry. There are are several groups of people who are renowned, in my own experience, for doing this: white gay men, heterosexual men of color, and white women--both heterosexual and lesbian. It is dangerous to those we structurally oppress to forget we are positioned to be oppressors every moment of lives. And, it is utterly infuriating to be repeatedly told, by those who structurally oppresses you, that you are overreacting to what happened to you.

To all W.H.M.: If you aren't oppressed by gender, by race, or by sexuality, how can you possibly know what constitutes "an overreaction" to misogyny, racism, and heterosexism? If you are not oppressed in each of those ways, or in any of those ways, who the hell are you to tell someone who IS oppressed what "the appropriate response to my oppressive behavior" should be?! Or to be so arrogant as to name your own behavior "not harmful"?

It is extremely likely that when anyone who is oppressed is observed expressing the ways they've been harmed as victimisation, they will be immediately reprimanded by the insensitive or arrogant others--those who need every wound attended to with care and respect--to "stop playing the victim". Rarely, very rarely, will anyone in the same class as the oppressor of someone so hurt and victimised say "I'm sorry you are harmed traumatically and systematically. I'm deeply saddened that the pain of that trauma follows you and is intensified each new day by callousness and cruelty. I cannot know your pain, but I can see you are in pain and I offer you my personal apology for doing so little to prevent it from happening to you and to others."

After Andrea Dworkin spoke to a group of 500 anti-sexist men at a Men's Conference, several of them returned home to start activist groups putting out the word that men can and must stop rape.

If you are a white man, I invite you to be similarly inspired by reading that speech found here.

From one white man to another,

Julian

White Heterosexual Male Privilege, A True and Not So Simple Story, part 2 of 3

[Here is part one]

[Here is part three]

PART TWO:

This is the part of the story where things get, how to say, "interesting".

The three of us are led into a discussion about the need for women to have safe spaces, and that spaces completely free of men are often experienced by some women as profoundly different, profoundly more safe, far less sexist, and much more enjoyable than spaces with men among them. I mention to Donna and Thomas The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival as one small portion of time and space where women strive to get this annually: a man-free zone and a space where one can, if possible, drop one's fear of being stranger raped by a man.

Donna's eyes light up. She works in a place where she is harassed by men daily, sometimes also more overtly threatened at work and afterwards, and if I'm reading her non-verbal cues correctly, I get the sense she'd LOVE to have this experience at least once.

Meanwhile Thomas balks at this, saying "I'm offended by those who would organise a space to be exclusive. All events should welcome everyone."

I say: "You don't respect the fact that women might want a space that is man-free so they can, for a relatively short period of time, feel safer than they do when among men?!" And "How often do women get the chance to live in such a space?!"

Donna adds: "What's your objection to women having a woman-only space for a couple of days?"

He responds "I'm offended by there being spaces I can't go into."

I am fuming inside; the pot is about to boil over. But I steady myself enough to ask, "Are you saying that the offense you'd feel by being excluded is just as important as the right of women to have space that is rape-free?"

He says, "Yes."

I reword my question, feeling horrified, infuriated, and slightly frightened, but I'm not really aware of feeling frightened until later. What I want to say is this:

"Well fuck you and your white heterosexual male privileges! Guess what? You DO get to go just about anywhere you want, and there aren't many spaces you're likely to encounter that will exclude you! Meanwhile, women are harassed and raped all the fucking time! And you think it's REASONABLE to equate one 'offense' with the other????!!!! Thomas, get this: rape is an atrocity, a gendered one men perpetrate against women en masse. You not being let into a women's gathering is, well, an most, an inconvenience. ATROCITY and INCONVENIENCE: NOT THE SAME THING!!!"

What I do say is, "Explain to me how the harm to you of being excluded from a group because you're a man is EQUAL to the harm of a woman getting raped."

He says, "I didn't say that."
I say, "Well that's what I heard you say!" (And proceed to tell him what he said a few moments ago.) "Tell me what you meant to say then?!"

He says, "I just believe we should live in a world where people aren't excluded."
I say, "OK. And meanwhile we're living here, now, in a world where virtually every woman I know has been harassed or raped." (And where there is, as Andrea Dworkin once noted, functionally a police state, in which women are not supposed to be out once the sun goes down, and if they are, well, then they asked for what they get, even rape. Which of course is about a fucked up and male supremacist and rapist as view as it gets.)

Donna says, "I'm harassed every day at work, at least once. And the other night I was followed by a creepy man."

I ask her, "When was that?"
She says, "Two nights ago." (I hadn't talked to her in a few days, and it was deeply upsetting to me that in that short period of time she's already had several more experiences of being verbally or physically threatened by men. I am fully enraged at dickhead, privilege-denying men, and am also very sad she had to experience that.)

He says, "I guess I don't want to accept how the world is."
I say, "Then your values don't have real meaning, because they aren't located in the real world."

He gets silent, and begins a long period of brooding. This pretty much ends our verbal contact for the evening, which is awkward, because we're not in a very large space.

He goes upstairs to a guest bedroom, where he and Donna spent last night. I talk with Donna. She is surprised by what came out of his mouth. I say, "I'm not. It's typical of white men who don't get that they are privileged." (And who assume the world is made for them, and who don't get just how exclused most groups of people are, every damn day, while white men bounce around on jets, fucking children of color. AS IF white men being "excluded from places" is even on "the top 100 list" of things that are wrong with this world!!!! White men NOT being excluded from places is the reason many atrocities continue at such alarming rates. As noted in another post, I believe U.S. white men, by and large, should NOT be allowed to travel to places where they are known to rape and purchase children and women for the purpose of chronically raping them.)

She and I spend some quiet time together on a couch, during which I place my hand gently and lovingly on her stockinged knee. I am sensing non-verbally that she is ok with that contact at that moment. Even so, I ask her, "Is this ok?" She says "Yes" in a genuine, peaceful tone. We have always been very in tune with one another, often knowing what the other is feeling without either of us saying a word. We also have a history of doing massage and other healing body work, such as Reiki. Both our bodies carry a lot of emotional "stuff" from the past and present, that we have spent years trying to discern and help one another release.) We frequently massage one another's necks and shoulders, for example, to work out whatever stress is being held there. We both have strong fingers and thumbs that seem to have a way of locating knots and tight areas in the muscles. She and I feel very safe with one another physically and respect each other's boundaries. It is a rare and beautiful relationship.

While she reads in a book I had with me, by Pema Chodron, I can tell she is deeply absorbing parts of it, and also finding parts of it humorous. I find that Pema writes that way, utilising humor in a wonderful way to assist the reader in getting through what is generally serious and emotionally painful content. Donna tells me about the parts that she just read were helpful to her, explains a bit more about that, and adds, "I'd really like to read this book." I say, with a bit of humor (given that I've had the book for a few days already), "So would I." I got it from the library, and inform her that "You've read more in it at this point than I have." I then ask her to explain something to me that was eluding me from what little I'd read prior to coming over there to be with them. She explains it and it becomes comprehensible to me. I am now looking forward even more to reading the book.

She then goes to see how Thomas is doing, and then she comes down and quietly tells me they are going to go for a walk, to talk. When he comes downstairs he avoids making eye contact with me and as they are about to leave, she and I hold a loving look between us before they go. She is someone who is like a daughter to me. I love her in abundance. She is certainly my spiritual kin.

While they are gone what keeps going through my head, aside from flashes of anger at what he said, is: "I know I can be intense. He's relatively young. Maybe I came on too strong; my energy can be fierce at times, the fury in it palpable." But I stayed calm with him. I argued, but didn't call him names or tell him he was being absurd. (Though I imagine that's what he felt. And given that so much of what is communicated between people happens non-verbally, I can get why he might feel that way, assuming he even does. As for his age, I've known younger men who get what he doesn't get. I've known teenage boys who get what he doesn't get, so it's not really an age thing. And I wasn't abusive, just confrontational, direct, unwilling to take emotional care of him while making my points. (When we men experience this, particularly from women, we feel greatly mistreated or "abused". We have no fucking idea what it is to be abused by gender oppression. No fucking idea.) Yet I am frustrated that my directness was perhaps overwhelming to him. I get the sense he's not used to being challenged in the manner in which I challenged him. I have a habit of being challenging and confrontational in ways white men are not used to being challenged and confronted and held to account by other men. I do this because since being a boy, I gave up the idea of "being like them" and I identified much more with girls. I do this because I'm a radical profeminist who understands how much and how easily men betray women, by not calling out other men on their bullshit. And I do this because I have no respect or regard whatsoever for The White Brotherhood and it's many codes of racist/misogynistic atrocity-maintaining conduct among white men. When I see these codes, in behavior, playing out, I want to tear them up into shreds. And, I also feel responsible for what happened, mostly due to being the older one who, as Donna notes, has been engaged in this activity, this struggle, for a long time. How clear was I on this stuff when I was his age. Well, a lot more than he was, but I was far more prone to be unintentionally white supremacist (racist) than I am now, far more unchallenged in my position on trans politics than I am now. I wonder if I should attempt to make peace with him, to mend things, to heal whatever has been wounded in him by our exchange. I don't relish him hurting. And also I want him to feel better in large part for Donna's sake. I mean think of what she is now doing--going for a long walk, helping him process his feelings. She's having to do that because of what I did. No, wrong. Because of how he interpreted and experienced what I did. He didn't have the skills (yet?) to know how to stay present, to listen carefully, to not get defensive, to not move into the "I'm so bad" stance.

When they return she and I have a few moments together. She says "He feels very badly about himself." I ask her, "Is there anything you think I should say to him that would be helpful?" She doesn't have an answer for that. In a way, I am glad. I am very torn inside about whether I want to say anything to him, which I appreciate. It's not for her to figure out how to get the boys back on good terms. The only reason I would, tonight, is so things would be lighter on her shoulders. I do care that he's hurting in this way. I don't like to see him looking miserable, again, in part because that means Donna has a miserable husband, who she will, inevitably, take emotional care of. She will attend to him, help him open up and express whatever pain he is in. Without her he'd just close off and pout. (And, I'll say, albeit parenthetically, that he's very emotionally supportive of her, helps her process feelings she's not in touch with, and is generally a very supportive person in her life, and profoundly loving to her in many ways.)

I am pissed that we men act like children when we're treated like adults by another adult. Men stigmatise women as being children all the goddamned time. Most white heterosexual men I know refer to adult women as "girls". Men condescend to and patronise women right and left. I'm also extremely pissed that when while men are reminded that we are, guess what?, white men, that we resist, insisting on being "an individual".

At one point he is sitting on a couch alone. I sit down next to him, gently, and softly ask, "How are you doing?" (I think I even place my hand warmly on his shoulder when I ask this, to non-verbally emphasise the fact that while we may have periods of discord and disagreement, "that doesn't mean I don't love you and it doesn't mean I think you are a terrible person.")

He says, in answer to my question about how he's doing, while looking away from me, "All right." Short and curt and without any warmth, without being welcoming of further contact. The stance of the hurt child. Been there. Done that. I get up and leave him to be in his misery. I partly despise myself for even taking that much emotional care of him. And, again, I have to remind myself: it's going to be you or it's going to be Donna who takes care of him emotionally. He's sure not going to get through this alone, learning what he could learn about himself as a white heterosexual man, and he's not likely to reach out to anyone else for support. He's not the type of hetero guy who has misogynistic male friends, who would commiserate with him by calling women the b word and c word. Thank goodness. If he were, I wouldn't choose to have him in my life, nor, more importantly, would Donna.

They get ready to go. He makes sure not to interact with me, although I am available to give him a good-bye hug. (We all typically hug hello and goodbye. To not do so is "a sign something's up".) Donna notes his evasion to me as we make eye contact before they leave.

She approaches me briefly after he's left the house saying, "He feels he was being spoken to like he's a demographic, not a friend."

I respond, "I know. I've heard it all a thousand times before."

She says, "And he is an individual person."

I say, "Yes, and privilege manifests in many similar ways among those of us who are oppressors."

She agrees knowingly, we hug, and she leaves.

The other people there track these dynamics a little bit or not at all. The only other woman in the group is the only one I can tell has registered that "something's up". Without much surprise, the other men are either oblivious, or don't especially care, or figure "They'll work it out eventually." Which is true; we will work it out on our own. But I suspect Donna will speak with the other woman there, if she gets the chance. So his behavior has impacted at least two people in a negative, oppressive way. Donna was alarmed at his insensitivity and almost callous "values", and I realised later that he was talking to a sexual assault survivor (me), who, as a gay man, is among the population of humans who, outside of government prisons, is stranger raped, date raped, and "mate" raped by men.

White women are "a demographic" in the real world where men target women for harassment and rape. The are "the demographic" that endures the brunt of men's sexism and misogyny. Gay men, white and of color, are a demographic who are targeted for homophobic insults and assaults by hetero men. And people of color--women, trans, intersex, and men--are frequently and systematically hurt by things white folks do that we deny could have been as harmful as what happened to us once.

When will we white men collectively "get it", and begin to act responsibly toward women of all colors by challenging the systematic harm that we white men--heterosexual, trans, and gay--have a hand in maintaining?

[end of part two of three]

White Heterosexual Male Privilege: A True and Not So Simple Story, part 1 of 3

[image distinguishing the white male ass from the white male elbow is from here]

[Here is part two]

[Here is part three]

OF COURSE the day after Andrea Dworkin's birthday there'd be a reminder of what's so messed up about the way white heterosexual men (W.H.M.) perceive themselves and the minescule world they live in. Tragically for the oppressed, they rarely take full responsibility for the conditions they remain in willful denial about perpetrating, or, at least perpetuating.

I am a white man: I know how annoying and violence-supporting I can be or could be, due to my privileges to "not know much" about what most of the world experiences--as human experience. I was raised to think "white men" WERE the standard and most appropriate models for "what it means to be human". The only aspect of my social/political being that separates me from my white straight brothers is my sexual orientation and how their overtly and covertly expressed heterosexism and homophobia hurts me, invisibilises me, oppresses me, and repels me. Were it not for me being gay, I'd be "one of them". And as far as many women have experienced me, I am one of them. I accept that as truth: I have behaved with the level of ignorance and arrogance known to run amock among my hetero white brothers.

Which takes us right into the emotional crisis du jour. Today's crisis began when I went to visit some white hetero friends--a whole group of 'em--totaling six in number, all of us cisgendered. These folks' ages range from mid-twenties to mid-fifties. Most of these are people I know VERY WELL except for the youngest male of the bunch, who is around 25. I've known him the shortest period of time and have probably spent the least amount of time with him, though we're off to a rather cozy start. We hit it off and care about each other a lot. But, there's not much of a history there, including a history of "how to resolve conflict".

I know what you're thinking and what can I say? I admit it: some of by best friends are white heterosexual men.... not that there's anything wrong with that.

So I sit down with the only two who are in their twenties. They are a heterosexual married couple. I've known her for years; as alluded to above, I've known him for months. He only moved into this area that long ago.

For the sake of protecting her anonymity, we'll call them "Donna" and "Thomas".

The three of us get to talking right away about the fact that he doesn't feel very comfortable in his home environment (which is not with his family of origin). For the last months he's been with white roommates who are queer in different ways. One person is trans, the other a lesbian ciswoman. Donna has been interested in women in various ways, and her ethnic background and presence is not "white". But Thomas, the roommates, and I are, in this country in particular, very white. Donna would probably not say that she is "heterosexual" although now that she's married to a man and they behave married in public, she has heterosexual privilege, which, for a straight woman, is "for better or worse". (A radical lesbian feminist friend of mine had a long discussion twenty years ago about whether or not heterosexuality in women, when and if it occurs, is "a privilege". There are strong arguments to be made for either case. Heterosexual women, more often than lesbian women, live and sleep with men. Their lives are more often bound to adult men in ways that lesbian women's lives aren't necessarily. I mention that decades old conversation because it kind of factors into what follows.)

I ask him why he doesn't feel too comfortable there. He tells me the history of the house in which they have an apartment is that it's always been queer-majority space. By that I assume he means probably for the last five years or possibly ten. Unless a group of trans and/or non-hetero friends have lived together in one space for more than ten years, few apartment buildings around town are queer-majority or queer-dominated. This isn't the gentrified part of The Castro in San Francisco, for example, where white monied gay men have been living for decades, displacing poorer queers and queers of color, and women across race, class, and sexuality.

So it seems there was this guy, a transman, who was fond of coming over to the apartment where Thomas lives, with a key, well after the time he'd moved out. He'd come in as if this were still his place too. And Thomas didn't particularly care. But the two roommates did. (Donna moved in after this part of the story happened.) The two roommates WERE uncomfortable with this transguy showing up repeatedly, unannounced, with key access. But they didn't feel empowered to ask for him to hand back his key to the place. Somehow it got arranged that Thomas would ask for the key back, and establish some needed boundaries, re: this transguy stopping by.

So the next time the trans fellow came over, Thomas did just that. And the trans guy experienced that as a sign that the house was no longer queer-friendly space. And he told his trans friends about the fact that now that there's one non-queer person in there, he's setting all kinds of new rules. (Well, no; Thomas just asked for a key to his and his roommates' apartment back, on behalf of his roommates.)

Our experiences are shaped by what we know. I can understand how the trans man would get the sense that now that there's a W.H. [non-trans] M. in the home, the space being no longer readily accessibly to him would lead him to feel that it was due to the straight cisman being there. To avoid this interpretation of reality, Thomas probably ought to have supported his roommates asking for the key back themselves, which would have left the cisman out of this, and he could thus have been spared being known as transphobic.

Word apparently spreads around parts of the trans community (and we could be talking about a dozen or so people here, to be clear), that there's "this transphobic cisman now living with my former roommates", and "only when the cisman moved in did I get a request to leave the key to the place there". Due to how this played out, what was made invisible to the transman was just how uncomfortable the other two roommates were with him coming by, with key in hand--and in lock, making himself right at home. This wasn't, any longer, his home. But sometimes when we move out of a place, we still hold great attachment to it, and I can understand the transman wanting to not cut ties to his old home. (And who knows how queer-friendly his current living situation was.)

I sympathised far more with the trans and lesbian roommates: having one's home space invaded by any man--trans or not--can be a very frightening thing; it is, at the very least, annoying, invasive, and insensitive. It seems clear he was intimidating enough to them for them to not feel comfortable asking for the key back directly. Or they just didn't want to hurt his feelings and leave him keyless and feeling rejected. Hard to know. But I certainly support any woman or women having safe space, to the degree that is possible. (This point too factors into the story.)

I also sympathised with the cisman, Thomas. I told him "I'm sorry you got pegged for something you weren't doing in any intentional way". "It sounds like you were being helpful to your roommates, and now the part of the town is abuzz about you being a major transphobe." (It's clear he's NOT a major transphobe, if measured against any other white hetero men I know. He enjoys a really good relationship with his trans roommate; for him, moving into a new home with a lesbian woman and a trans person was in every way something he welcomed doing. They have never identified him as someone who is especially transphobic or homophobic either. As for the roommates themselves, the three got along great, and after Donna moved in, the foursome really clicked and they've all been good friends and respectful of one another in many meaningful ways.

Thomas is a sensitive man. He can come across as meek, is generally not at all boisterous, he's very thoughtful and caring. Donna is more dynamic in social and interpersonal spaces, as are the two other roommates. Thomas isn't often the kind of hetero white guy who loves to be the center of attention, who wants all his needs met at the expense of other's getting their needs met. He probably tips toward being the kind of guy who is likely to ignore his own needs in favor of helping someone else out. Also, Thomas was actively engaged in one trans community support effort, helping to bring in money by performing at a fundraiser. He's done more for the trans community here, than say, I have. Which in no way rules out the possibility of him being transphobic, just as a profeminist guy doing some activism to challenge male supremacy doesn't mean he can't be sexist, or act misogynistically from time to time.

I go on to speak with this married couple about the history of tensions I've experienced in the queer community here, specifically among gay men. I mention that due to my own politics, of being radically profeminist, I've been marginalised in and by that group of "my people". Or maybe I'm just making it all up; but as a point of comparison, every "out" radical feminist lesbian woman I know has been very socially marginalised here, by not being welcomed at some social events, by not being supported when doing their own cultural work, etc. I'm openly, publicly alligned with them and have defended their politics, which rub queer liberals and non-feminist trans folks the wrong way.

There is a liberal politic at work in this community, whereby "anything interpersonal goes" as long as it doesn't appear to hurt anyone. "The appearance of hurt and harm" is something the radical feminist lesbian women I know, who are white, and I, take very seriously. We're well aware that just because no one is appearing to be hurt, that doesn't mean no one IS being hurt. For example: if an almost entirely white queer group has gathered, and a racist joke gets told by a white gay man, the one or two queer people of color there may not feel safe to express their hurt and anger to the larger group; for one thing, they may be the guests in some white folks' apartment--and that alone can have a greatly silencing and intimidating effect; for another their white gay friend may be best friends with the gay man who made the joke, and they don't want to generate tensions between the two white gay men. But that doesn't mean their anger is unjustified, or that their hurt isn't real. Their silence ought not be interpreted to mean "no harm was done".

The white radical feminist lesbian women and I also have a strong and thorough enough critique of "consent" to distrust it as the primary means by which "harm" is determined to be present or absent in any relationship, sexual or not. For example, someone could be consenting to sex with a partner because s/he doesn't know how to say no, due to being an incest survivor who never learned how to do so, or for whom doing so might have meant getting beaten, more violently sexually assaulted, or killed.

Needless to say, emotionally harmful things can happen even in authentically consensual situations. For example, two friends agree to get together for lunch, and during their talk something insensitive is said, and it wounds the other person. Harm happened in that moment. The conclusion to this sort of analysis or perspective ISN'T "No one should have sex" and "No one should ever, EVER meet for lunch!" The point of the perspective is simply to not be in denial about the ways harm can happen consensually, and that what appears to be meaningful consent may not be that at all.

The radical feminist women and I believe strongly in the value of accountability: generally speaking--with some exceptions--you are responsible for what you say and for what you non-verbally do. Period. Liberal society's members, in my experience, operate out of a different ethic. I'm not sure what to call it besides a devaluing of accountability; an indulgence in acting on entitlements. It plays out in white middle class places like this: someone does something that is harmful or hurtful to someone else, without realising it. I'll make the example one that happens between two cismale friends.

The harmed person is silent about the wound, except to a close friend, who then shares the news of this wound with the one who generated it. That person get defensive, not wanting to be perceived as an insensitive and a hurtful person. Their defensiveness blocks out their capacity to stay open, to caring about what was done, to understanding what was done (intentionally or not) from the other person's perspective and through the other person's experience. For the wounder, "intention" becomes THE most important measure of whether it was even possible for harm to have happened. The wounder says "I in no way intended for anything of the kind to be inferred by what I said! It's ridiculous that [the wounded person] took what I said that way! That interpretation is just plain crazy." The mediator says, "Well, that's how he took it and he is feeling quite hurt." The wounder is now in the position to:

a. Care about the fact that a wounding happened, and to stop defending his own ego, or

b. Continue to make the case that the other person "took it all wrong", which invalidates and invisibilises the wounded person's pain and keeps the issue on "what just happened to ME!"

Typically, in my experience, when a member of an oppressor class does something "unintentional" or "out of ignorance", the expectation is clearly placed on the oppressed person to forgive and forget ASAP. And, typically, another liberal ethic, which also implies something that never exists substantively or systemically in real life: a level playing field between oppressed groups and their oppressors.

Which takes us into part two of this story. See the next post for that.

Il corpo delle donne, The Body of Women. An Italian feminist documentary by Lorella Zanardo

[photograph of filmmaker Lorella Zanardo, from here]

Warning: The film mentioned here contains lots of graphic objectification of women, but is deeply critical of it from a feminist perspective. The film was made by Lorella Zanardo.

In Italian:
Potete trovare un feminist's blog in Italia @ http://ilcorpodelledonne.blogspot.com/, che è circa la pellicola il corpo delle donna. Il documentario è circa il objectification delle donne nei mezzi italiani della televisione.

Troverete un collegamento là alla pellicola.

Usi prego un Web site quale Babelish per la traduzione.

In inglese:
You can find a feminist's blog in Italy, which is about the film On Women's Bodies. The documentary is about the objectification of women in Italian television media.

For more of an introduction, and a link to the film with English subtitles, go to this UK blog, The F-Word, linked to here.

Liberazione per le donne!

END OF POST.

A letter to Andrea Dworkin, on what would have been her 63rd birthday

[this image is from here]
26 September 2009 ECD, and also year 5770.
Dear Andrea,

It gets harder each fall to say "Happy New Year" and believe it will, in fact, be happy for over half the population on Earth. It's been another very rough year, in fact. The gynocide continues unabated, with white men as collectively self-absorbed as ever about what's going on around us, particularly what we do to other people without taking responsibility or feeling remorse. As a group, we white men show ourselves daily to be the most heartless, callous, and cruel group of bastards on Earth. And it's our astounding passivity as well as our racist woman-hating aggressive behavior that makes us so.

I remain sad and angry at the way your books are misread, misunderstood, and just plain ignored by the people who do have access to your work, who can read, but won't read it.

That people can't see your work as humanitarian, as loving of humanity, well, that alone says a lot about the fucked up ways our dominant educational systems and media teach "reality".

You fought so hard to have the most basic things understood: that women are human, for example, precisely to the degree that men are human. And for that you are still called "a man-hater".

You fought to make the case that the pornographers and their white male supremacist values and practices beyond the pornography industry, not genes, not G-d, not hormones, make men rapists. And for that you are still called "a man-hater".

I have been puzzling over that one, especially in this last year, and I wanted to share with you what I think is going on here, in a world I am at least thankful you don't have to live in any more, much as I selfishly wish you were still in it.

What I think is going on is that white heterosexual men, especially, but men generally, get really accustomed to having our asses wiped by women from a very early age. And fed all of our first meals, sometimes from women's bodies directly.

We really do believe, in those early years and later, that women are "for us". "FOR US", as if women couldn't possibly exist on this Earth for any other reasons, and not for that one at all.

We men grow up seeing all the many ways women are degraded and humiliated, often in our own homes, but if not there then from the apartment next door, or the house down the block, or from the latest news story of a husband or boyfriend killing his female partner, always, always sensationalised rather that appropriately analysed in the most powerful media. And the story of a woman killed by her male co-worker. Or the many untold stories of some random man on the street who felt like "expressing his feelings" by murdering a prostitute who just possibly may not have wanted another procurer, another renter of humans, another possessor of women, in her face that day or night; or those untold stories of the man who harasses or murders some other woman who he thinks is a prostitute, "for him", because she's Black or Brown and has the audacity to be outside on a street, talking on her cell phone, not turning in his direction when he arrogantly and predatorially beckons her to him, never calling her by her full name, never calling her by any name with respect; or those untold stories of men murdering the women someone once proclaimed "to be his" wife; or those women, lesbian or not, trans or not, who may or may not be prostitutes, who, regardless, tell him to "fuck off" for following and harassing them.

You wanted people to understand that prostitutes are human beings precisely to the degree that any man is, including the men who would use and abuse and kill her. And for that you are stigmatised as "a man-hater".

You spoke truths about men, about us as a politically active class of people, who commit atrocities few seem to want to identify as such. You were sometimes, and not very often, angry. You were usually humorous and deeply caring and deeply concerned about the state of terror and subjugation women, as a political class of human beings, live in daily.

You spoke those truths without taking care of men's feelings. You didn't write to make men feel good about themselves while they were faced with coming to terms with what we men do that is in no way good, in groups and as individual men, against and to women.

You didn't take care of men's feelings. You didn't wipe our asses or spoon feed us baby food. You expressed anger angrily. You expressed pain painfully. You expressed social truth truthfully, and THAT is why I think men call you "a man-hater" rather than a lover of humanity. Also because you focused on women's suffering under male supremacy, not men's suffering that is accompanied by privileges and entitlements to use women as if "they are for us". Because of that narrow focus on over half the human population, men can't imagine that being "humanitarian work". How misogynistic is THAT? Like I have to ask you. You taught me how misogynistic that is.

You taught me that caring about the political realities: the economic exploitation, sexual violence, and social subordination by gender, sexuality, and race, of women and girls by men and boys, was, according to men on the white Right and the white Left, not WORTH focusing on. I heard you. And I believe you not because you said it, but because it is socially true. I listen in my heart for your many words of insight and wisdom. If white Christians can listen for a white Jesus or an imagined white male sky-god, I can listen for you and Audre Lorde. And I do.

Thank you for all the unbelievably hard work you did to educate us about what is and has been happening to women. Thank you for peeling away layers of incomprehension, delusion, and denial that keeps so many men from knowing, let alone feeling, what women experience individually and collectively because they aren't men--because they are women.

I await, not passively, the time when men, collectively, will feel outrage and demonstrate focused action against white male supremacists, including ourselves.

Maybe next year the report will be better. You, more than any other person, taught me to have hope for just such a time. And there will be a time after that, when white male supremacy is no more, when people--seen as fully human, not as objects or things--will be humane to one another.

Thank you for writing it down as it was (and still is). Thank you for not shying away from speaking women's truths to men's power. Thank you for so many years of radical political work on behalf of women and girls, which is to say, on behalf of humanity.

Thank you for being human in a way no man I know is: a human being who loves women so much; who refused to be silent about the terrorism and atrocity women face, endure, fight against, and still die from on a massive scale; who refused to call it anything but terrorism and atrocity. Men can be as humane as any caring souls, if we'd be willing to let go of our collective callousness and refusal to believe women have a right to be free of men's needs and desires. And to know that's not just a right. It is a reality awaiting its entrance through men's rusty locked gates of ignorance and inaction.

I love you. I'll continue to defend your work for what it was and is, and praise it for what it did and still does. I'll continue to defend and praise you, Andrea, as long as I'm mentally and physically able to do so.

With hope that you are resting in peace,

Julian

* * *

For her work, go to:
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/
http://www.amazon.com/Andrea-Dworkin/e/B000APLG8A
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OnlineLibrary.html
http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/

END OF POST.

"What Would The Average Man Do" Standard: What's Wrong with THIS Picture?

[image is from here]

White middle class heterosexual men are considered to be a population of "reasonable" people, generally and legally. It apparently hasn't crossed enough legal minds to wonder about what "a reasonable person" is.

Most white middle class men routinely and regularly access images online of incested, raped, and pimped women and girls. On and off the record, white middle class heterosexual men of many ages will readily admit they do this.

To all white heteromale supremacist assholes: this is not "a feminist" claim. It's something you all brag about and take pride in. It's a behavior you feel so entitled to that should any woman you are with recommend you not do it, you will find every reason in The Oppressors' Handbook for Dummies to try to shame and silence the women who are around you, in your lives, impacted by this behavior.

Given that white middle class heterosexual men's values are shaped by their profound ignorance about what oppressed people experience, and given that oppressed people are the majority, why does a population which admits wanting 24/7 access to raped women's bodies online, when in courts of law, get to argue that an act was not rape because "a reasonable white middle class man" wouldn't call it rape?

If we determine a demographic's values by their practices, in this case of either committing or permitting gynocide and genocide, what hope for women is there of rapists ever being charged as such?

If heterosexual men, generally, want and enjoy 24/7 acccess to incested, raped, and pimped women's bodies online, can we say that this is a population of "innocent men"? What legitimate or sensible meaning does "innocent" have in this context?

There was a story in the news recently about a batterer (surprise: a white heterosexual middle class husband!) who was found not guilty of raping "his" wife. He was found to be "innocent". The court acknowledged he had battered her. He'd been charged and found guilty of committing battery of women in the past. I believe anyone with their head up their ass all day and night ought to be able to register "what's wrong with this picture!?"

END OF POST.

Danny's Corner of His Delusional Universe... Tap, tap, tap: Hey Danny, try living in the world of systematic human suffering

[image is from here]

I'm posting this to demonstrate why men's rape of women continues. It's because men like Danny would rather spend their time blogging about insignificant shit than to deal with CRAP.

Check this bullshit out as a prime example. And please read the comments, if you can.

Here's what Danny says about his own blog, called, appropriately enough, Danny's Corner:
"Over the years I've often had lots of thoughts swimming in my head and after reading different blogs here and there on different subjects I have concluded that perhaps the best way to flesh out said thoughts is to share them with other people. That being said I don't expect this blog to only focus on one subject. There will be focusing in individual posts but there wont be any all encompassing theme to it."

He's got that right, no "all encompassing theme" at all, except, well, not dealing with reality, if ya wanna call that a "theme".

Danny, you're behaving like a P.R.I.C.K. Wake up and smell the blood on men's hands, and note that it's not from our own bodies.

END OF POST.