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Sometimes there are things you shouldn’t get used too…
A conversation gleaned from Stardate Whenever –
“I was chatting with one of my managers and he told me he does drag performance and identifies as genderqueer. Which, you know, obviously I disagree with that terminology.
He had just been reprimanded at work for wearing makeup. In the same day that I was reprimanded for not wearing makeup.
And I just kept thinking about how while we framed it differently politically, we both were pissed that we were not allowed to do something because of our sex.
What was interesting is that he framed it as an invalidation of his identity whereas I framed it as an enforcement of my oppression. In my opinion, that is the big difference–I framed it as an oppressive system which people of my sex face, he framed is as a system he had not been allowed to opt out of. So it was the difference between an individual mindset and one of collective action.
Which of course became even more obvious when he explained to me the reasons why I *should* wear makeup to work.”
See the problem? The idea that your ‘identity’ is infringed upon and therefore the battle must be to change the rules within the system so you can validate your choices. The individual battle serves only the individual and as a by-product of the individual struggle the overall system is reinforced.
Is the quality of the choice ever examined? Is the nature of the system ever examined? Nope Nope Nope. The battle for individual identity choice is necessarily framed as making advancement within the oppressive framework of the gender hierarchy, thus to be affirmed in your choice, is simultaneously affirming the validity of the system. The status-quo is not threatened.
In this case the role of gender in society is the overarching problem for both people. Gender is an hierarchy, constructed and designed for use in society to keep one class of people favoured and the other class oppressed.
The battle that should be fought, and is being fought by radical feminists, is not for getting a better a ‘choice’ within a shitty system, but for the destruction/rollback/replacement of the toxic system itself.
“One cannot simultaneously call oneself a leftist while defending a multi billion dollar industry that profits from the exploitation and degradation of women. One cannot call oneself “progressive” while refusing to stand up against the commodification of women and while refusing to challenge an industry that depends upon the absolute selfishness of men who tell themselves that their orgasms are more important that women’s humanity. One cannot claim to care about equality while choosing to defend men’s hurt feelings over women’s hurt bodies. There is no debate. If you are a leftist, you oppose capitalism and you oppose the exploitation, commodification, and abuse of your fellow human beings. You oppose hierarchy, oppressive systems of power, and imagery and ideas that naturalize and sexualize inequality.”
-Meghan Murphy
Visit Ms.Murphy’s website – The Feminist Current.
It must be said, we are fans of Neil Degrasse Tyson here at DWR. :)
Sure, this is a twitter conversation, but I’m confident that NDT would react similarly outside of the digital world. What are men supposed to do if they cannot be feminists? You do what NDT has done right here, you identify the sexism, call it out for what it is, and then shut that shit down.
An organization for men to deal with men’s problems? How bad could it be? Let’s take a look at their manifesto:
“Wolf Pack aims to tackle the challenges of social isolation amongst adult men by helping foster social connection and new friendships through vulnerable and supportive conversations around topics of depth.
Our Wolf Pack groups will be meeting on a monthly basis, and similar to our youth programs, we’ll be diving deep into topics around our pillars of self (acceptance, esteem, love, and awareness), health (mental, emotional, and physical), and others (inclusiveness, diversity, empathy, and relationships). Don’t worry if this sounds a bit different then your usual after-work gathering – Wolf Pack is going to be a fun, engaging, and unique event every time.”
Well, doesn’t seem like a bad start. Choosing ‘wolf pack’ though, given the sheer volume of specious MRA arguments based on a the contrived notion of ‘wolf-society’ should make one pause. Is our hesitation justified? Let’s view the next line from the w-pack manifesto:
“The goals of Wolf Pack are to:
Create brave spaces for conversations about masculinity and positive, healthy ways to ‘be a man’
Break down social isolation and foster lasting connections and meaningful support with our peers”
What precisely is a ‘brave space’? Perhaps it involves blue war-paint and shouting in bad Scottish accent, “Freedom!”? Who knows, but it seems like a ham-handed way to avoid saying ‘safe space’ because as we all know feminists and women use that term, and certainly one should not be associated with unmanly people like that.
Hope for the W-pak took a bit of dip when reading the first line. Masculinity is fucking toxic. It is based on creating worth for one set of human beings by degrading, debasing, and savaging another subset of species. Trying to tease out positive healthy ways out of the vile shit-soup that is masculinity would be quite the feat. Furthermore, how about healthy ways to be a ‘person’ rather than one side of the oppressive gender hierarchy.
I realize that casting a radical feminist analysis at the wolf-pack might not be entirely fair, but these folks are getting media attention for essentially stating that they are not overtly hostile to females and feminism in general. A very large cookie for each of these embiggended and bold men daring to not threaten the status-quo in society…
“Who can participate in Wolf Pack?
Wolf Pack is open to men and anyone who identifies with maleness/masculinity looking to meet like-minded men who are interested in redefining what it is to “be a man” and make friends along the way! […]”
Way to portray masculinity in a positive light! – Because we all know how awesome the masculine set of gender stereotypes happen to be.
The Wolfpack seems to be getting some media attention for the noble attribute of not being particularly horrible. Of course, in our patriarchal society, that is all it takes. It would be more interesting to see some media coverage of women’s organizations and the women that run them, but then again males being ‘not horrible’ is judged to be the newsworthy piece.
:(
IBTP.
[Source: The Wolf Pack/ NextGen Men]
One of the frustrations that women experience is that people don’t believe them when they point out sexism in society. So, now thanks to Elizabeth Plank and Vox we can get a newscast rundown of the sexism that pervades our society and of course, the Olympic games.
Enjoy?
As always, if you’re wondering if we are even close to equality take a peek in the comments section of the video. They will disabuse you of any sort slappy-happy egalitarian nonsense that happens to be bumbling about in your neural network.
Further dispelling the myth that we don’t need feminism and equality is the lay of the land. This interview describes the situations and pressures young women face as they make there way through our patriarchal society. Read or listen to the whole interview on CBC, it is well worth your time.
AMT: We spoke to two 16 year old women from Toronto to get their perspective on their sexuality. We’re not naming them to protect their privacy. Listen to what one of them had to say about what she thinks about when she gets dressed.
SOUNDCLIP
If I want to look hot, I definitely wear something that shows my stomach. But like I feel like it has to be– there’s like a kind of like a fine line about that because again, If I wear something that’s too revealing then I’m like a slut or I’m asking for any kind of attention that I get for men…
AMT: Okay, she could have been in your study.
PEGGY ORENSTEIN: She sure could have been. You know the thing is, what one girl said to me that I thought was so brilliant was, usually the opposite of a negative is a positive, but when you’re talking about girls and sex, you’re either a prude or you’re a slut. One girl said to me isn’t there a difference between dressing sexy because you need validation and you don’t feel good about yourself, and dressing sexy because you do feel good about yourself and you don’t need validation. And I said well, sure maybe, tell me what the difference is. And she just kind of drooped and said, I don’t know, you know I spend my whole life trying to figure that out and I think it sometimes at the expense of my well-being. And we know that it actually is at the expense of well-being because one of the bait and switch aspects of thinking that sexy is the same as confidence and the same as sexuality is that self-objectification for girls is linked with all kinds of the issues that we worry about. It’s linked to cognitive deficits, it’s linked to depression. It ironically reduces sexual pleasure.
[Listen to interview here:cbc.ca]
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