While waiting for my rickety C-1000 super-automatic espresso machine to kick out the morning’s first cup of life-giving mud, I decided to skim through the responses to yesterday’s brief installment in the “Liberal Dudes Are Knobs” series. I was not surprised to see that some of the commentary reflects a somewhat unsophisticated grasp of the cornerstones upon which men have built our culture. Bandied about is, I am sorry to report, a bit of the old “blame the victim” palaver.
I find that feminists of the empowerful, slo-mo kickboxing variety are sometimes impatient with women who have been publicly screwed over by the Establishment. These feminists seem actually to be critical of women on the wrong end of a beatdown. Their motto is that the wronged women should open up a can of whup-ass on the thugly oppressor. Otherwise, men might take it into their heads that women can be kept in line with intimidation. According to these feminists, the women who cry uncle have allowed themselves to become “victims rather than people.”
But look here. Who are they trying to kid. Women can be kept in line with intimidation, and the whole world knows it. Aren’t people who have been raped and intimidated and harassed and threatened with death “victims”? What the fuck is wrong with that word? It describes the situation perfectly.
Do you guys get, I mean actually get, that our society is a patriarchy? Patriarchy isn’t just a gimmick for a blog. It really exists. There are actual implications. Do you get that a patriarchy is predicated on exploitation and victimization? It’s not a joke! It’s not an abstract concept dreamed up by some wannabe ideologue making up catch-phrases while idling away the afternoons with pitchers of margs. Exploitation and victimization is the actual set-up! A person is either an exploiter or a victim, or sometimes both, but never neither.
This means me! This means you!
This means that, until patriarchy is smashed, we ain’t got a chance.
Meanwhile, do you guys see that there is no other possible outcome, in a society based on exploitation and victimization, than for the Don Imuses and the Daily Koses of the world to shit, frequently, on members of the lower castes? Shitting on the lower castes is a privilege built into the system. When exercised with macho aplomb, it attracts advertisers. It creates prestige. It makes money. It entertains the masses.
If, by some Stone Age fantasy-world turn of good fortune, our society had not been permitted by the clumsy aliens of the planet Obsterperon to devolve into a patriarchy, Kathy Sierra wouldn’t have done anything wrong. The Rutgers basketball team wouldn’t have done anything wrong. They would have just been human beings, doing whatever the fuck they felt like doing.
But it is a patriarchy. And in a patriarchy, where women are the lowest caste, a public woman is always wrong. Which is why Sierra and the basketball players and lard knows how many others over the millennia have been victimized by a gazillion patriarchy-enthusiasts. These women attempted publicly, in a society in which they are devalued as dirty jokes, hysterics, babymommas, and receptacles, to behave as sovereign human beings. It is one of the first laws of patriarchy that insubordinate females should be jeered at and harassed, from the moment they dare, as members of the sex caste, to step into the gray subumbra of proto-celebrity, to the moment the last blurb is written by some feminist blogger who criticizes their behavior as victims-who-let-the-terrorist-manbags-win.
Do you get the implications? Even the feminists — we’re as poisoned by establishmentarianist dogma as anybody else — operate under the patriarchal paradigm. Thus, even some feminists think we ought to criticize Kathy Sierra for not taking her reaming like a man. We recognize that victimhood does not equal personhood, but beyond that we’re constrained by some dim twilight denial. We can’t believe, even though it is true, that victimhood the only available outcome, so we say insane things like, “don’t act like a victim, you idiot!” But for chrissake, what do we want from her? Do we seriously think she can take down the dominant culture by “standing up” to it, with only a few wan ‘you go, girls’ from the sidelines to mark the occasion? Without a revolution to back her up, all the whup-ass in the world will only get her locked up.
Do you get it yet?
Without revolution, the oppressor won’t stop oppressing. Without revolution, there is no happy ending.
Thanks for this Twisty. I tried to write a response to the comments but got a bit stuck. All I could think to say was the Kathy was in a lose lose situation- if she backs off she lets them win, if she continues to blog to show them she is not backing off, these comments are still impacting on her actions, and she still loses. I got a bit depressed at that point and decided not post. Bring on the revolution!
I entirely agree. I never understood really why the victim-word causes such a big problem. Being a victim does not mean one cannot think straight anymore, it does not mean that suddenly one’s identity is wiped out. To say that Kathy Sierra should stop playing the victim-card is the second victimization. One time bashed by the deathtreads, second times bashed by the not being allowed to be a victim. It takes away the idea she actually ‘might have been hurt’ by what has happened, psychologically and otherwise, it denies the idea that pain had been caused to her and it makes her invisible for the second time. It minimizes the actual harm.
The whole hateful dialogue on the internet has made me feel quite depressed and despondent. The tubes reflect on real life after all. Hateful assholes can express their contempt for women with impunity and other assholes cheerlead them. I feel that helpless rage that all women feel at one time or another, if they haven’t managed to suppress it or pretend it doesn’t exist.
Your take on Kathleen Parker’s Op-Ed got me to thinking. It is not a new idea to the radical feminist that women are complicit in their own opression. The fact that women are joining the patriarchy (AKA military) rather than smashing it, is just another example. The military is nothing more than a hyper-patriarchy. Aren’t foot soldiers the army-patriarchy’s women, after all? I want to see the day when war comes to an end because nobody is willing to sacrifice for whatever Dear Leader happens to be in charge.
*clapclapclapclapclapclapclap*
Thanks, Twisty, for the welcome bit of fresh air.
I recently started a personal vanity blog, intending to avoid controversial subjects, but I seem to be genetically programmed to open my big yap about stuff. I posted something about the Sierra/Kos dustup, and I’ve started the watch until crazed comments come in.
Thank you, Twisty.
Thank you thank you thank you!
I’d love to get the revolution going. The only problem is I’ve got my pitchfork and torch but I don’t know the way to the castle keep. Everyone seems to have a different idea on which building it is, and others say we should smash and burn everything.
What’s a peon to do?
Fucking-A-Yeah!
I’m so lazy, I have to give myself little treats every time I have to do something remotely unpleasant, like my state and city taxes.
So when I’m sitting at my desk, I play a game of freecell or hit the refresh button on my browser a lot. Thanks, this was a big treat. Maybe I can even make it through the rest of New York State Resident Income Tax Return IT-201.
yrs, B. Dagger Lee
Bravo! As usual.
Revolutions are for the most part the only way to change society and civilization. I think that Kathy Sierra did the right thing by reporting the death threats to the police. I find it detestable that she, through no fault of her own had to cancel her public engagements due to these threats. The real criminals are the jackasses that perpetrated these actions and they should be locked up.
Wow. This is pretty effing amazing even for you, Twisty.
By the way, I like the new additions to the about section, especially the very special message. I can’t tell if The Anne Richards Memorial Wine Bar is real or not, but if it is, congratulations.
I get it.
I have one question though.
“A person is either an exploiter or a victim, or sometimes both, but never neither.”
you mean as a function of the patriarchy, or inherently?
In otherwords, could this ever change? Is it possible for human beings to exist in such a way that that dominance and exploitation didn’t happen? Do human being lust after power naturally, or has that need just been created for them? And if they want power, then “obviously” a hierarchy needs to be created.
I do agree that the patriarchy needs to be smashed–gotten rid of, destroyed. Until that happens women will never achieve full human status. But then what? How do we keep human beings from exploiting eachother?
Sorry, this was a little incoherent.
I think it is a function of patriarchy that we have to conceive of relationships between human being in terms of power. I am not convinced that there is any aspect of identity that is ‘natural’- we are all the products of our cultures and societies that dictate what humanity is. The changing (and often very different) meanings and understandings of something like gender over history in a single country are enough to suggest that if there is anything natural about humanity it is very deeply hidden. I think that any lust for power that humanity has is a product of the fact that a)so many of us don’t have any and b) we haven’t been socialised to understand how to operate in a ‘power free’ society.
Crap. This has been an awful couple of weeks. Every time I picked up a paper and saw my beautiful, strong sisters on the cover looking so damn sad and hurt I have found myself trying to verbalize the depth of the despair I have felt over this and other recent anti-woman stories. But you have captured it perfectly. And it is a bitter pill, indeed.
I applaud you. You’re on fire.
Thank you so much for this. It is beyond the pale to me why blaming the victim is so popular. “But it’s a two-sided street! Some women are, just face it, MORE LIKELY to be victims than others!” I never know what to say when a so-called feminist shoots that out.
It’s actually some of the beef I have with the term “survivor” over “victim.” Do we hate victims so much that we can’t acknowledge that being a victim is a necessary step to being a “survivor” and that, once deemed a “survivor,” you are/were still actually a victim, too? Blame blame blame.
I just want to say that was a really great post.
I think that was one of the best posts I’ve read on this, or any other, feminist or otherwise blog.
I needed this post. Thank you.
Beautifully put. Thank you so much!
When you’re a white man sitting on the very top, the whole idea of being oppressed is some abstract notion that you react to by being even more patronizing and smug than usual. Looking at racial politics makes this very clear. When a black man acknowledges his blackness by using racial slurs with his black friends, the intimacy of it all is absolutely invisible to a white man sitting there saying “Why can’t I say that?”
Do you share the oppression? Then you can’t create a bond of sympathy with someone who does by appropriating a racial slur.
Men can’t just flip the script and say that human beings need to react as human beings to threats by a dominant sex to an oppressed sex.
And it’s a very serious thing that, to someone who has no idea what it is to be oppressed for just being what you are, seems trivial. White men all think they have a very good idea of what it feels like to be oppressed, because anyone can feel oppressed because of some detail about who they are, maybe because they are poor or never finished high school or aren’t a member of the rich boy’s club or whatever.
But this superficial take on oppression doesn’t equate real oppression, which is when something completely and ineradicably part of your being is oppressed, like race or gender. So white men will continue to react in the same ‘rational’ way to accusations of oppressive threats, insults and jokes. They really can’t see what the big deal is about, because they have never been oppressed thanks to their status in the world, a status that is only visible to them when it is being challenged.
Ooh, ah. I advocate revolution and am told I am a right winger who believes in pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps. I would never have known that these were my beliefs if I had not been told. But now I have been told, I know.
Thank you. I have to admit that I don’t understand why “victim” is such a dirty word. I think, maybe because, as a victim, it means you are a loser. And no one wants to be a loser. In the patriarchy especially, we are taught to think that our positions as the oppressed are also the best ones for us, that we have somehow won too.
Does that make sense? This is my first comment here.
Wow. That’s why I come here. You rule. Or, anyway, you should.
Is that a line from a song I don’t recognise? If not, anyone musical/poetic care to use it to start a Blamers’ Anthem? We will be needing one to herald this revolution.
“A person is either an exploiter or a victim, or sometimes both, but never neither.”
Dumb. Just straight up non-factual and a horrible/narrow way to view the world to boot.
I just can’t express enough, how ridiculous all of your anger is when you surely must realize that everyone’s life is hard. You can’t just lump everyone into two categories. There’s plenty of situations where people mutually benefit from their interactions.Including those between Men and Women. Also, to say that the world has never benefited from exploitation would also be wrong.
Listen,Your viewpoints aren’t being expressed on a political level? Boo fuckin’ hoo. Maybe you should talk to 90% of the world that in the exact same boat, or the other 8% that only think their views are being expressed.
I, personally, think women can be strong, important and awesome. You’re idea that they are all trained to be victims or powerless is your own fantasy. It used to be that gender roles were a hell of a lot more important to our societies functioning and survival. Nowadays there is education and careers everywhere and machines that make life ever so simple, but 300 years ago and beyond, being at home to take care of your kid was pretty god damn important or else they would just fucking die. Be thankful that there have been so many women who weren’t educated or on the fast-track to becoming a wealthy entrepreneur so that your great-grandparents didn’t die of pneumonia or starvation or a broken leg. People get raped, robbed, murdered, taken advantage of, sick, hungry and all those other crappy things that happen every day, but you’re saying that maybe the real problem is the way Men treat women, because they’re all victims? Life is a lot more complex then, “you are an exploiter or a victim.” Think about the big picture rather than just yourself, or whatever friend of yours that was raped and felt used for one moment out of trillions.
Grow up and stop whining.
Alex, your compassion for your fellow human being is underwhelming. Now that you’ve pointed out that the patriarchy is merely a fantasy, I can simply replace it with an alternate reality. Gee, thanks for that poorly written tripe!
“Children are our future. Unless we stop them now.”
–Homer Simpson
PS
I do realize that my statements don’t take into account many people’s bad feelings. I just haven’t found in my experience that the universe’s functionality is based upon the idea that every human being should feel great all the time, or even most feeling great most of the time.
Oh My Fucking God.
I’m sorry. I can’t even respond. Alex, what the hell are you even doing here? If you want to play, go figure out what we’re talking about first.
And God hath spoken….
Amen, my sisters.
Thank goodness we have dudes around to remind us of how mislead we are- thousands of us posting and lurking, and yet we need that enlightened dude… I guess it’s a good thing Alex believes that “women can be strong, important and awesome”. I cringe to think what would get posted if that weren’t the case. Too bad she/he doesn’t believe women are human after all.
Twisty- give a call about the revolution. I’m ready to go anytime. This really was an awesome post.
Death to the patriarch!
This was a great post for a generally miserable week.
And who would have guessed that an object lesson would have had to post his thoughtful response.
Alex, darlin, you know fuck-all about oppression, right? No, no, don’t deny it, I see it in your eyes. So whyfor you come around and lecture people about it all pompous-like and patriarchal, huh?
“I just haven’t found in my experience that the universe’s functionality is based upon the idea that every human being should feel great all the time, or even most feeling great most of the time.”
Yeah, objecting to and dissecting patriarchal privilege and its effects is the same as whining about not feeling great.
You know, saying “women are awesome!” means NOTHING. It just tells us you know your argument will be even weaker if you admit that you think women are lesser beings. And if you don’t think women are lesser beings, why would you tell women what their experience really is, as if you would fucking know?
Meanwhile, back on point, Kathy Sierra’s actions are perfectly understandable and I think effective. She recoiled and moved to protect herself. I try to believe that at least some people will get the point: that a savvy longtime webuser took these actions due to the ugliness and immediacy of these threats. Maybe that’ll convince some folks (not Kos, evidently) that there really is some there there. It convinced me.
(Some self-blame along with the rest for my former denialism)
“
I just can’t express enough, how ridiculous all of your anger is when you surely must realize that everyone’s life is hard.”
*Boggles*
You didn’t read the FAQ at all before you opened your yap to tell us how we were doing it all wrong, did you, Alex? Have you even been to Twisty’s site before? Read any of the posts? Do you even know what feminism is, let alone radical feminism as espoused here on this blog?
Didn’t think so. Come back when you’re older/wiser and have some idea what you’re talking about, eh? At the moment you’re not even worth debating.
I would also like to add that these really offensive lecturey types seem to only come out of the woodwork when the liberal dude icons get smacked around; castigating regular ol’ right-wing tools doesn’t generally get the same response. So I guess it’s best to make sure the liberal dudes keep getting smacked around or it’ll just prove that these nasty little reprimands are effective. Hope yall are up for it! Good luck!
Amazing. I’d started another long (winded) post in repsonse to yours, Twisty, about Kathy Sierra with the word revolution, then deleted it thinking no, it’s women, I’ll risk any repercussions and for what?
Then this. Thank you.
Lexia
Oops- patriarchy, I really mean patriarchy. Patriarchs don’t have to die- just go away somehow, like magically removed from the planet by aliens. Or maybe have a real epiphany about their behavior and stop screwing around with the rest of us. Or bears coming from the mountains and taking over dude-civilization, letting us get on with the revolution…
Bottom line: a simple typo can turn anyone into an evil life-threatening idiot. My apologies.
Alex, if you’ve got a free moment you can verify that the patriarchy does in fact exist. You can look at all sorts of statistics ranging from average wages to the number of honor killings to verify that women are treated as second class citizens throughout the world. You can log into a chat with a feminine-sounding handle and watch the abusive comments mount. You can ask a Fundamentalist of any religion via IRC (there are still IRCs right?) what he thinks of women. (And no, these aren’t just the opinions of random wackos. In every country, fundamentalists are gaining the ear of politicians.) You could read the testimonials of women fleeing from abusive partners–no matter the country these women always meet with police officers who run the gamut from clueless to downright abusive. Read any testimonial written by a woman in the first world trying to get Plan B, a condom in the third world, or an abortion anywhere in the world. Patriarchy is a global force. The fact that women have a modicum of freedom in tiny corners of the world doesn’t mean we’re living in a golden post-patriarchial age. This simple and easily replicable experiment will verify that what the commentators here experience is a real phenomenon and you, sir, are an illogical ass for thinking otherwise. The real question here is not if patriarchy exists, but whether you find patriarchy to be a violation of fundamental human rights.
Alex, Twisty has set aside an entire page for you.
click
Does anyone else spot the doublespeak of Kos’ bigotry, specifically hyper-sensitivity? Bigots consider the existence of women and girls to be an offense on par with evil. Imus, for example, saw young black women playing b-ball and felt the need to angrily attack (Mind you, anger results from feeling victimized). He saw their existence was a cruel injustice! Sensitivity overkill. Why doesn’t Kos and Imus just get over it: yes, we exist. Kos hailed “freedom of speech” as a reason to allow cyber-bigots to post hate speech and terrorize women into silence with credible threats of violence. Worse, he equated private measures with government censorship. Most Americans haven’t a clue that only the goverment can censor (Bill Maher believed freedom of speech was at stake with the Imus affair). It’s amazing how men will scream about the possibility of their hate speech regulated on a few sites and yet mock women and girls who face such fierce, brutally violent regulation that their very lives are routinely in danger. Deleting comments that are pathetic ad hominem attacks or deleting a life for existing as a non-male: close call. Oh, and that “playing victim” card is usually played when the victim says enough’s enough and fights back.
Ladies (and men), I am serious: we need to write letters and e-mails to campaign for sexism and misogyny to be referred to as bigotry, extremism, intolerance and hate, not “disrespect,” and for bitch, whore, and the like to be called out as slurs not “foul” language for us to be taken seriously. I wrote actual letters to NPR, NYT (again), BBC, Time, The Nation, and others after the Imus scandal. Only when our language changes (extremism glamorizing ultra-violent hate crimes is “cartoon violence,” “toruture porn,” or “sexually explicit,” for ex.) and speaks truth to power will we have a chance.
I feel obliged to reply, having been — for better or worse — quoted in Twisty’s post.
In it, she said a lot of things that I agree with as a matter of course, and a few significant ones on which we differ. Rather that try to respond directly to all of her post, I’ll instead focus on the idea distilled by Feminist Avatar into the first reply in this thread: that Kathy (and, really, all victims) have just two options.
We all agree (I think?) that one option is to stand her ground against the threats, with questionable support set against very real concerns. While there are certainly people online, like Markos, who think this is the only option, they are wrong in that regard.
But the point I tried to make, perhaps not eloquently, in the other thread, is that there is another option that to take the role of the “victim” (I regret my previous lack of scare quotes). You can retreat without running.
Being a victim, in a neutral world, means that someone has made you the subject of a crime. Being a “victim” is much more complex in the patriarchy’s connotation. My point is that you can be a victim without being a “victim” — even if you cannot be (for whatever reason), in Twisty’s words, a revolutionary who stands up to your attackers.
A victim might work with police and venue organizers to reschedule public events and to secure their locations. A “victim” might summarily cancel them, and so forth. A victim is someone who has been the target of the ugly means by which the patriarchy controls those who threaten it. A “victim” is someone who lets everyone else see that those means of control work. There is no problem with being a victim (other than the sad state of affairs that causes there to BE victims to begin with), but being a “victim” is how the patriarchy wants its oppressed to behave.
And the difference is worth noting.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article1642008.ece
The above is a Times of London article on film’s passion for sexual sadism so disturbingly cruel (a young girl having her eye gouged out with a blowtorch or a naked woman being impaled in her genitalia, for starters) that I honestly kept crying as I read the article. I am so shaken by this–and helpless. As I told you before, a college aquaintance of mine was brutally killed recently and just thinking about what she must’ve gone through has haunted me. The fact that audiences are cheering on and rabidly defending violent extremism targeting women and girls that matches, even exceeds, any al-Qaeda propaganda has left me paralyzed with fear and confusion. Why does everyone refuse to believe that it is possible–just possible–for bigotry to be gender-based, with subsequent hate crimes? Why do people refuse to accept scientific fact: women and girls are human beings? What the fuck can I do to stop it?! The constant and relentless terrorism has gotten to me.
Simply *smashing* post.
I had a similar argument with my now-ex over the word “victim.” He asserted that feminism was largely “women acting like victims” and such was the reason he didn’t like some of the sites I pointed him to. He couldn’t wrap his tiny little patriarchal-terdlet brain around the statistics and the stories and even MY own experiences which were nothing conducive of an “act.” He didn’t understand that when men leered at me or became sexually suggestive it wasn’t their brain and eye circuitry dripping into their balls–it was the massive brainwashing (you know I promise myself I will never again date men who say “It’s how we are made”).
But it does beg the question: how, in this largely affected world, do we get the needed revolution going? Has it begun, in small circles, as with the blogs and women’s studies academia?
I would love to hear other’s opinions on what actions promote the “revolution” and what things, if any, people are already doing.
I, of course, have some ideas/behaviors of my own.
My first suggestion is mandatory daily IBTP reading for ALL.
Any takers?
My own thoughts (courtesy mostly of Simone de Beauvoir) on why people have such a problem with victimhood;
To be victimized is to have been made subject to the will of another. To have had one’s subjectivity denied, ignored or actively attacked. It is to be objectified and dehumanized.
Patriarchal culture lauds those who can impose their will on others. Those who are subjects. In turn it loathes those who have been subjugated, objectified and therefore dehumanized.
Try reminding the “it’s natural” apologists that: 1. nature does not require violence to reinforce it (defies the definition of “natural”); and 2. even if it was an inherent tendency dismissing it depends on the assumption that women and girls aren’t human.
I doubt it’ll work. Logic never does, as it goes against their religion. According to them, being female is a crime against Nature. Sure, we’re necessary for the survival of the human species, but that’s beside the point.
Side note: There was a report in India documenting rampant child abuse of girls (nearly 3/4). More than 1/2 of girls reported that they wished they were boys. Of course, that would mean penis envy. Hmm…if I went all Lorena Bobbitt and carried a severed penis like a good luck charm to block prejudice and ward off violent bigots, according to Freud it should work, right?
I am ALL OVER beginning the work for another revolution. I’m in, people. It’s high time.
Even if it’s about letter-writing campaigns, links to an erroneous patriarchy-serving article or blog where we could post our own rebuttals en masse, boycotting and excoriating ads, companies, businesses, etc. or starting up the consciousness-raising groups again in earnest, I’m in. I do what I can where and when I can. I am planning to be a high school teacher just so I can open the eyes of thousands of students - young women - to their own situations, and I plan to do so even if it means losing jobs and getting blacklisted.
Given the nature of male violence and how it works against women as individuals, I would never in a million years advocate for the idea of taking the high road in life. I would much rather teach a young woman how to save her own life than to trust a justice system run by misogynists, watch her die at the hands of another misogynist, and go wild with grief and anger at the thought of what she, as a human, must have experienced in the last minutes before she became a statistic.
Incidentally, my own view on the military is that yes, it is the culmination of destruciveness in institutionalised male worldviews and actions, but unless we start hobbling boy children, there is no stopping what’s already the thriving existence of the patriarchy. We can educate our male friends and our brothers and our sons but the masculine culture is alive and well and it will swallow them up no matter what we do. Nobody is going to hand feminists or pacifists our due. Non-violence worked for Ghandi and for the Civil Rights movement, but how many men out there would love to see the few feminists beaten down and killed? How many men secretly think most women need a good smack in the gob for being “uppity,” which is what they think we are being when we demand to be treated like humans? Women are everywhere, women are in every nation, women are divided against women of other nations and of our own nations. No matter how much we espouse non-violence and reason, the men in the world are going to continue killing us and trying to kill us and fantasising about killing us. I agree that we won’t achieve anything with a senseless violent gun-toting attack on the patriarchy, but we sure as hell can’t sit back and allow ourselves to be brutalised as individuals as we try to achieve things as a group.
I see the need, given that patriarchy is a germinating force in every male, living, dead or incubating, for women to learn self-defense as a group. Those of us who can’t defend ourselves can be defended by our sisters. I believe that femininity is NOT inborn sweetness and light: what it is is an ATTITUDE that we are brainwashed into by the males of the world who need us to be dependent and weak-willed. Men need us to be different because they don’t want to admit how alike we all are underneath the gender roles and the hormones. Nothing in history has even been won without a fight, and we need to work AS A GROUP. We need to figure out what we, as women, agree on, and work from there. At the same time, we need to learn how to defend ourselves as individuals while helping other women who haven’t had the opportunity to come to feminist consciousness to defend themselves, and help them come to the same realisations that feminism has given us. I think that the revolution of the 60s had many of the right ideas in the first place, and I believe that a massive backlash has convoluted so many, many things in the world that the younger women who benefit from the rights that the 60s movement won for us are helping to turn those same rights into a prison, aided by men, who never wanted women to have rights in the first place. Taking a postmodern stance on things will only plug us deeper into the hole that men have dug, because if we do what THEY want and like and call it “reclamation,” they still benefit from it and we still lose. The only difference is that a woman can convince herself that she is doing it for HERSELF, not for the men. The men still take, and take, and take. They still hate us no matter if we do things that will benefit us as a group or if we do things that will benefit them as a group. We might as well do what will benefit US. Clearly, the new pluralism is not working. Things get worse every year. I’ve been watching it get worse and worse as I grew up in the wake of the second-wave feminist movement. The successes of that movement are being nibbled away at, day by day.
We can have a revolution that includes men in our manifesto. Men will benefit from feminism too in the long run, they just can’t see it because they feel like we are the enemy, and act like we are the enemy. They feel that way whether we are taking anything from them or not. Our revolutions are only in response to their hatred, and they need to be made clear on that. But really, we are going to have to get together and fight as a united front, or we’ll continue to watch the few rights that were won swirl down the big old patriarchal toilet.
Ah, it’s the old blame-the-victim schtick. Where victims are made to feel ashamed to be victims. Implying that they are at fault and responsible and to blamed for their own victimization instead of the victimizer. Which implies that might makes right and that the strong deserve to take and do what they want and if victims would just be strong enough instead of so pathetically weak, they wouldn’t be victimized. Which totally ignores and denies the political, econonomic, societal and cultural power gaps that exist between groups of people and implies that we’re all equal now and playing on the same level playing field. And totally ignores the fact that nothing of the kind exists and conceals the hierarchies and power structures.
In order to argue that social change must be made, women must get the point across that social disparities do exist and those disparities have affected women negatively. IOWs, women must explain that society has victimized them and that they have been afforded less than others by virtue of their sex, so that society can rectify it. Because if it didn’t exist, there would be no need for feminism. It is the very recognition that women are victims which raises consciousnesses and inspires our fight for equal treatment and full respect for fundamental liberties that are of importance to us. In other words, realizing that one is a victim of prejudice and subordination is a necessary step towards empowerment. To deny it altogether is to hand that power back to the victimizer in spades.
I think the problem here, and what was pointed out, is that this is yet another instance of blaming the victim. Patriarchy’s wrongs should not be measured by its victim’s responses… one should blame the patriarchy, not the woman… clearly, obviously.
If some woman is a victim and a ‘victim’, then its probably because she’s been oppressed her whole life - blaming her isn’t going to help. Those women who do stand up, usually get beaten down, so it’s hardly surprising that many are too scared to stand up anymore. This is not to say that women, and indeed men, shouldn’t stand up to patriarchy, but to blame those who don’t is clearly wrong.
Serpent’s Choice: I find it mildly repulsive that you sneer at women who are, to use your term ‘victims’. You say that “A “victim†is someone who lets everyone else see that those means of control work”. Of course it bloody works - if it didn’t work, there wouldn’t be a problem. What you’re doing is putting the blame on the abused rather than the abuser - which isn’t at all dissimilar to the sentiment of ‘he hit me because I….’
There are all manner of ways in which we can fight patriarchy, but to expect those who are threatened, abused, oppressed and crushed to take responsibility and blame them if they don’t, is fucked.
Although at times I still struggle to understand/accept some of Twistys positions, definitions and claims “en toto”, I am also forced many times to accept their public manifestations.
This last fall, when the newly elected conservative alliance government was forming, two newly appointed ministers were forced to resign under an intense media scrutiny.
I personally enjoyed the humiliation of the conservative swedish government and the spectacle of staid swedish politics resembeling Italian carousel politics.
At the time several other swedish ministers were exposed for similiar and much more serious economic offenses, and I eagerly awaited a continued series of resignations and the continuing further humiliation of the conservative parties.
My wife commented the situation by saying ” the women will be forced to resign, the men will stay”
Both ministers who were forced to resign (and rightly so)
were women and ministers of soft departments (culture and such.
They resigned, the men stayed (finance, foreign department etc.),although their violations were as serious or much more serious, and the media baying slowly died down. Occasionaly someone will mention that it does seem to be somewhat inappropriate to have a foreign minister that is seriously compromised by his economic interests in Russian gas lines (Holy Haliburton, Batman!) but otherwise all is forgiven. The finance ministers exploitation of immigrant labor without taxes is never mentioned even as he urges single moms to “work more”.
My wife was right and so are you Twisty.
Sometimes we just don´t want to believe what we know.
Although having reached adulthood during and achieved the warped orbital direction of my life because of the sixties and seventies I am very slow to trust calls to revolution.
But I still dream of a humane, secular and less fear inducing world.
For some reason, this post made me think of this incident from my life:
I was working at the start up of a new research group, where all of us were female. Our MD asked for input about how each woman thought the group ought to be organized and run. The nurse (who was the only one of us with research experience) drew a circle and put dots inside it and said, “Here you go. We all work together as equals, because all of our responsibilities are interdependent.”
When the MD stared at her blankly and then proceeded to draw a hierarchy top heavy with department males WHO WOULD NOT EVEN WORK WITH THE RESEARCH GROUP, with all of us staff females (who would actually be doing 95% of the work) at the bottom, some light somewhere went on for me, and I’ve looked at things differently ever since.
I think this was the first time I really realized how firmly entrenched the patriarchy is, and how difficult it is for people to even attempt to step outside of those societal bonds.
“[O]ne should blame the patriarchy, not the woman… clearly, obviously.”
Look, let me set something excrutiatingly straight here. The people making these threats and the societal structures that encourage them to do so are indefensible. Threatening to rape, strangle, and kill someone because you don’t think they should be talking, or talking in public, or talking about the things they are talking about — whether you claim those threats are “justified” because of their skin color, their accent, their religion, or their gender or that of their sexual partners — is so wrong as to be beyond the weight of words. I could call those people names by invoking colorful invective. I shouldn’t have to, especially not here.
But the point of looking at the patriarchy as The Patriarchy, and not some inconvenient assemblage of socially disfunctional men is that it is pervasive. Women are ensnared in this system, too. Doing something about it means having something TO do about it … and I’m not willing to give credence to the veiled implications of a semi-violent call to arms a few posts above me as a serious solution to patriarchial domination. Discussing ways that victims of crimes, even — no, especially — those crimes that cut to the heart of the manner in which women are manipulated really ought to be part and parcel of any strategy to create real, long-lasting change.
Not once, not in any one of my posts about this topic, have I said that Kathy should have stood up against the threats. Not once did I say that she was wrong to be afraid and to be intimidated. Why? Because none of that was wrong. What I have fault with is the next step, the way in which she reacted to that intimidation, to that fear. Is that because I have some deep-seated desire to foist disdain on her for her actions? Like hell. It is because there are going to be other women put in the same position she was put in, who are going to feel the same intimidation, the same fear and who aren’t able to step forward and confront it directly, but who maybe, just maybe want to find a middle ground, a way to “fight back” that isn’t really fighting but is something they can do with comfort in themselves. Because that’s the only way anyone is ever going to win against as pervasive a social force as millenia-old patriarchy: by small measures and middle grounds. And some of that means looking back at times we have been made victims and saying, “Hey, I could have done that better.”
On the other hand, the times I want some women to look back on her abuser and say, “He hit me because I…”? Not. Even. Fucking. Once. That’s the difference.
This is why I’m often uncomfortable with the term “strong woman” (as in “Buffy is a progressive show because it features strong women”). It’s as if to say, “Well, we could get interested in women, if only they were strong.”
Strong can mean many things, of course, but in its literal sense, it is a physical attribute, and every time we praise someone for being “strong,” we imply that strong is inherently better than weak.
The average woman is physically weaker than the average man (though if I had to guess I’d say the overlap between the two is greater than is generally acknowledged by our patriarchal society). Feminists have long countered claims that women are “frail” by insisting that we are not frail. This is a valid argument because, generally speaking, we are not frail, but suppose we were? Would that somehow magically disqualify us from humanity–as patriarchy seems to suppose?
Frailty has long been considered the (primarily privileged white) feminine trait par excellence; liberal dudes now say approvingly, “She’s a strong woman,” which is too often just 21st century code for the nineteenth century compliment decried by Margaret Fuller, “She has a masculine mind.” A strong woman, like an articulate black person, is not the rare thing that such comments would suggest. But a weak woman or an inarticulate black person is still human.
I reject the premise that weakness makes one less than human, a premise that has undergirded the oppression of women, but also children and as those with illneses or disabilities, for centuries. It’s bullshit, and IBTP.
I have successfully stopped myself from ranting about Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance. But I tell you, it’s related.
While I’m all for the blaming, in the case of the basketball players, viewing entrenched racism as merely a sub-set of the evil patriarchy is entirely too simplistic for my liking.
Purple perplex, your point is well taken — I didn’t mean to equate the two. I was invoking the “articulate” example (referring to the Barack Obama thing) as an analogous example of a member of an oppressed class being condescendingly offered honorary white dude status. I do BTP for its complicity in racist discourses, but I didn’t mean to suggest that sexism and racism are altogether consubstantial; they aren’t.
Serpent’s Choice: I agree with you that it would be lovely if every oppressed woman stood up and defiantly said ‘fuck you’ to all that attempted to threaten and intimidate her, and I don’t suppose that you are advocating that women deserve to be threatened and intimidated; but I can’t help but see the correlation to situations wherein “of COURSE it goes without saying that the rapist is to blame, but if you’re gonna wear a skirt that short then… you know… *shrugs*… not that it’s her FAULT or anything, but…” I don’t think that this is your intent, but i do think that what you’re saying is, in effect, blaming the victim.
What women who suffer the indignity of being intimidated into submission need is compassion, understanding, support and, consequently, awareness. What they most certainly don’t need is blame. Blame is one of the most pervasive tools of patriarchy, and also, IMO, perhaps the most insidious (largely because it’s a tool inculcated into women themselves to perpetuate)… you know what? it occurs to me that i’m blaming you, and maybe that’s, ironically, just a subtler version of what i think you’re doing… hmmm… who to blame…
Natalia:
I agree with what you’re saying, but the geek in me won’t let that pass. Buffy is a progressive show because it features women who are fully developed characters. What’s revolutionary about it is that Buffy (and the women around her) are permitted be strong in some ways and weak in others; witness Buffy’s own immense physical strength contrasted with the complex strengths and weaknesses of her emotions; witness also her disgust at the attempts by the patriarchal Watchers’ Council attempts to reduce her to a fighting machine without any consideration of her as a fully realised human.
Anyway, on the weakness =/= bad thing, I’m right there with you. I understand, and often feel, frustration with “victim culture” - the co-option of genuine suffering by those who sue McDonald’s because they’ve spilled coffee on themselves, or film stars who atone for anti-Semitic outbursts by checking themselves into rehab, or middle-class white men who immediately leap to the “feminists are oppressing me” guns. But my contempt for that lot of bleaters does not stem from a belief that being a victim is bad. It stems from a belief that being a victim is a serious matter, and shouldn’t be debased by frivolous attention-seekers.
In this context, though I agree with Twisty, I can understand what Serpent’s Choice is getting at - not, of course, that s/he is calling Kathy Sierra a frivolous attention-seeker, which s/he has made manifestly clear that s/he is not. Victim culture is deeply depressing. Kathy Sierra, on the other hand, is not an example of victim culture; she is actually a victim of something pretty appalling, and I think her reaction has actually been incredibly strong. She has come out about it, not gone into hiding. Predictably, she has had yet more shit shovelled at her for doing this.
To my mind, Kathy Sierra has stood up to her oppressors by speaking frankly about her horrific experience, and by not apologising for feeling terrified - which, after all, is a very reasonable reaction to death threats. And, along with most other people here, I am disinclined to agree with anything that implies any censure of her behaviour. She has suffered a horrible and traumatic experience. Let her call how to react to it.
Gah! No. I know I’m being misunderstood here. I know that my viewpoint isn’t a popular one, and isn’t going to be. I even — yes, really! — know why that is. But its still important, so I’m still willing to clarify and clarify.
When someone says, sure, the rapist is a sick fuck, but the girl DID wear an awfully short skirt … that’s blaming the victim. When a man beats his wife, but she says to herself, “He hit me because of what I did…”, that’s the victim blaming herself. Both of those are wrong, and neither of those is what I’ve been saying. Before I try one more time to make my own point, let’s see what’s wrong with the things that are clearly wrong. That’s simple. They take ugly, oppressive, often-violent actions that are supported by patriarchial societal underpinnings and make the oppressed victim responsible. And that’s a load of crap. Victims (even “victims”) are not responsible for their victimizers’ behaviors. Period. To say otherwise is just to victimize them in another way.
In a better place, there wouldn’t be victimizers or victims, or “victims”. But its not, and there are. And I’m saying that we need to look at how people respond to becoming victims of the patriarchy and its ugliest, most physical aspects. Certainly, one option is to “open up a can of whup-ass” as Twisty put it, whether metaphorical or otherwise. But not everyone can do that (or should), and I’m not saying there is any problem with that reality. Again, before we proceed, I’ll point out why, so that the differences are clearer. That expectation is wrong because it demands that everyone be strong and willful and willing to put themselves and their loved ones at risk in order to make a point — an important point — but simply a point nevertheless. That is wrong because it begs the question, as asked elsewhere at IBTP, “Even if women were all ’strong’, why should ‘weak’ people be less worthy of being human?” And, of course, they are not.
What I am saying is that, when someone has been victimized and knows they are a victim, there are at least two ways to deal with it. You can adapt or you can give up. Giving up can mean a lot of things. It can mean duct-taping your house shut because you heard about bird flu. It can mean vowing never to fly again after 9/11. It can mean a rape victim who allows herself to lose all touch with human contact and emotion and become defined by the crime rather than by who she is. It can mean setting aside your entire life, your career, your public expectations, and your plans because you’ve been threatened with horrific crime. Giving up means the patriarchy wins. More importantly, giving up means the threatening, rapist, murderous abortions of human potential win. And sometimes, despite all our desires and efforts, they are going to win.
But that doesn’t mean we should be happy about it. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be able to say, “Hey, there are other ways Kathy could have dealt with this situation.” The Rutgers women have put a good face forward. They didn’t attack Imus, they weren’t the ones motivating for his removal (that is, they didn’t “stand up” and attack back), but they didn’t give up; they didn’t quit. It isn’t about needign to rise up and say, “Fuck you, attacker.” It’s about sitting back down after you’ve started to run and saying, “I’m going to make sure this doesn’t change who I am.”
Especially regarding Catherine’s comments above my last long post:
“[Kathy Sierra] has come out about it, not gone into hiding.”
It was my understanding that she had disavowed blogging and cancelled all her speaking arrangements, amounting to a hasty retreat from the public eye. If her statements about what has happened have been part of an effort to re-evaluate and re-integrate her ability to live her life and have her career in the wake of what has happened … then she’s actually a precise example of what I’m suggesting people DO … and the fault is mine in not following this story closely enough (there has been a LOT of news of late). Conditional mea culpa.
But I stand by the essence of my argument, regardless of whether Kathy has demonstrated what I’ve argued against or its opposite.
What I have fault with is the next step, the way in which she reacted to that intimidation, to that fear
It is not your place to find fault with anything about this woman or her actions. The only fault lies with the males who made the attacks. Any blame attached to her, any discussion about what her actions “should” have been puts the attention on her and not on the attackers. You are exactly the same as the people who blame rape and domestic violence victims, and you are part of the problem.
Serpent’s Choice: Like I said before: you’re right - it would be better if she stood up to them, it would be better if there were no ‘victims’ - we agree. Where I find fault in your argument is that you’re leaping from this ideal to the practical reality of blaming the victim, which is counter-productive. What needs to happen is you need to stand next to the victim without blaming her or making her feel like she didn’t do enough or somehow let her gender down. You need to stand next to her and accept that she’s fucking scared shitless because she lives in an all-pervasive patriarchal society that dominates her, so that she at least feels safe amongst those who oppose the patriarchy. WHEN she feels safe, WHEN she’s not judged to be less-than-okay by you, WHEN she is accepted fear and all, THEN she can begin to feel empowered. When you blame her for not doing enough or for reacting in the ‘wrong’ way, you’re pushing her further down.
Don’t you see? The patriarchy may win when she lays down; but it gets bonus points when you blame her for it.
You are a brilliant writer! A wonderful post that hit all the ‘I recognise this’ buttons on its way through the eyes and into the brain. Thank you!
Serpant’s Choice: I get you point but I actually think you are giving to much credit to the asswad’s who post such messages. They do not care about the victim, anything she does in response to their actions or the consequences of their actions. They receive power from the act itself.
The rape threat poster receives his power from his ability to violate a space in which the victim feels safe. He get his thrill from the act of that violation and that no one could stop him. This is similar to rapists. It is the act of rape that empowers them, thrills them. It is this act they replay in their heads, that they wish to repeat. What happens to the victim after he leaves her- even if in a woman’s mind the following hospital examination, medical treatment, psychological counselling, breakdown etc seems so much worse- he doesn’t care. When rehabiliating rapists, psychologists try to get these men to realise the consequences of their actions of the victims because the truth is after the fact they don’t give a f**k.
The posters of rape threats don’t care whether Kathy keeps posting or give up posting because they don’t care about her- they only care about their ability to assert power and they can’t do that if she is not there.
The only thing that wins by a victim’s retreat is the patriarchy, but ultimately the patriarchy has already won by because by posting the man has already violated her.
Having said this, I do think there is a place to support victims of the patriarchy and make sure that any retreat that they take whether that is from the blogsphere or the real world is not permanent (such as the support rape counsellors do every day). But in this point I follow Jeese’s comments.
Serpent’s Choice, here’s what you are saying, cutting to the point: Kathy Sierra should have chosen a different reaction to the threats made against her.
I would like to know how you have arrived at this judgement. Do you know what it’s like to be threatened with torture and death?
The cold terror of being in that situation teaches one a thing or two. Foremost, it teaches one not to pass any sort of judgement at all on the actions of a victim of such threats. Whatever she needs to do to feel safe again, if that is even possible, is the right course. And no one else has anything to say about it, other than to give comfort and stand with her in solidarity.
Imus successfully derailed the import of his patriarchal rant against the Rutgers’ team by shifting the blame to other partiarchal jerks. He basically said that the Rutgers’ team was unworthy of respect because they didn’t look or act like the Tennessee team, he used particularly vile language but his intent was to pigeonhole both teams into his exclusive world view. It is how he works and why the media and politicoes let him do it, he supports the patriarchal worldview with every vile word that he spouts and then shifts the blame whenever he is caught out. “I may have said it but society is to blame.”
Kos is faced with having to look at his own behaviour because of what happened to Kathy Sierra and he tries to protect his own patriarchal worldview. She should suck it up, she should view HER situation through the lens of how it impacts on his world and more than that she shouldn’t impose her situation on the discourse at all because it is irrelevant to him. We then fall into various camps based on how icky we feel about the situation. We decide whether or not her situation should impact on our place in the patriarchy.
The revolution begins within each of us and each of us has to fight the battle that we are in. Kathy Sierra is right to do what is right for her and the Rutgers’ team is right to prove that the patriarchy is wrong about them.
You might appreciate this WaPo review of virginity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041201918.html
“What I am saying is that, when someone has been victimized and knows they are a victim, there are at least two ways to deal with it. You can adapt or you can give up.”
Serpent’s Choice- WTF?
I don’t understand how you can divide these things up without actually being Kathy (or whomever) herself. Does a person actually say “I give up” or, “dammit, I’m going to adapt!”
You don’t know what’s going on for this woman, even if I were to buy your dichotomy of adapt/give up, which I don’t. When a violation happens, I decide one step at a time what I need, what I can do, what I want, and only in hindsight can I tell you which responses helped me, minute to minute, and were of value. If I can’t even assess this all the time accurately for myself, then who are you of all people to try it? If I were knocked down by a truck could I count on you to be there coaching me from the sidelines “get to your knees - no, that one’s broken - over a little to the left - that’s it, get your weight on your not bleeding hand”. Why do you think your outside judgement of Kathy’s experience is anything but possibly your own imagination’s attempt to deal with “something bad happened to her, and it scares me”?
Twisty, thank you.
Hey, has everyone read Chris Clarke’s “How Not to Be An Asshole?” at Pandagon? It’s being crossposted everywhere, even at a Kos diary. I think it, or some version of it, belongs in the WATM section.
Well put. I like how you mentioned that Patriarchy isn’t something that someone just made up as a catchphrase and that it actually exists, but can you, or anyone else, point me to some resources that say/show/prove that it does? The idea that patriarchy exists at all and how is what I have trouble convincing people of (especially my liberal friends).
Do you guys get, I mean actually get, that our society is a patriarchy?
Yes. And it always irritates me when people do not seem to understand such a simple concept.
“it was my understanding that she had disavowed blogging and cancelled all her speaking arrangements, amounting to a hasty retreat from the public eye.”
What else would you expect? You seem to be suggestion that she be willing to become a martyr for this cause. She was threatened, her children threatened, and it became clear that her RL identity and location were known. Unless you accept Kos theory that they are simply harmless kooks, she acted in a completely understandable way.
As for Alex, I know the response you’re expecting is, “yes, dear” but I think, “fuck you, tool” sounds much better.
Lawbitch, the Homer quote cracked me up. I have a friend who has a bumper sticker that says, “I child-proofed my house, but they still get in.”
The whole “Women are weak, thus, justifying the patriarchy yet they should use their super powers to ward off attackers” phenomena is the same tactic employed by the US propaganda machine v. the Japanese in WWII: “We will whup the Japanese b/c they’re small, impish, near-sighted men! Damn Japs!” yet after Pearl Harbor (or other successful Japanese attacks) they morphed into gorilla-like superhumans destroying innocent, defenseless Americans left trembling in their wake (Mind you, they could switch back and forth easily). The Japanese were either sub- or super-humans, never actually human. The propaganda posters are disturbingly similar to today’s pop culture politics. Society is truly at war with us, the ultimate enemy (But the Japanese had, at least, an army. All we have is the power of denial to sedate us.).
P.S. Do you think Kos covers his ears to the cries of his infant daughter? I swear I could see him doing that (not kidding).
Generation_next: one of my favourite discussions of this is over at Bitch_phd where 300 women give there examples of misogyny in real life, see the comments on http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/08/misogyny-in-real-life.html
I think my realisation of the impact the patriarchy in real life came about through a conversation with friends of the various real-life experiences of misogyny. Four of us were just sitting around sharing stories about when men had overstepped the line (my ‘favourite’ was of a group of men who at the office leaving party of a female colleague had posted her head on to the body of various very sexualised images of women having sex in various positions and then shown it during her goodbye presentation). My own story was of a male colleague who sent me emails about how much he loved me and his various fantasies about leaving his wife despite my repeated and explicit requests for him to stop.
Of the four of us having the discussion we could each give an example from our own personal experience- I suddenly realised that what I thought was just my bad luck was a systemic problem- the patriarchy. The best of it was is that I was a well-read feminist when I had this discussion so i should have already known this but I think its very easy to think of the patriarchy as something that used to exist, that still happens to other people occasionally but is being addressed if not in a perfect way. (I know- only an educated white chick would need a support group to realise she’s being oppressed!!)
What I object to most profoundly in Serpent Garden’s paradigm is the concept that somehow, there is some ‘right’ or ‘better’ action an individual victim can take to ensure that the patriarchy does not win.
Hello? The patriarchy has won.
That’s what living in a patriarchy means.
Now, if some of us feel less ‘victimized’ than others, some of that is hubris, some delusion, and a whole lot of just plain luck.
My job as a feminist isn’t to criticize ‘victimhood’, with or without quotes.
It’s to extend a hand to the victim, because we’re in this struggle together.
And even together, I have my doubts as to whether we’ll overthrow the patriarchy–certainly not in my lifetime.
But we can sure help each other bear the load a little more easily.
Re Serpent’s comments (putting on flame-proof suit):
I think what s/he’s saying is that there’s a ‘right’ response, and then there’s what actually works.
And here’s where each woman makes her choice: Do I do what I need to to be safe and keep moving forward in my own personal life, which is what I have the motivation and energy to do at this time?
Or do I go a bit further, make my own contribution to the revolution, and stick my neck out? Stand up and say what I really feel, and prepare to take the inevitable flack?
To me it’s the difference between tree-huggers who write letters to the editor from the safety of their cozy living rooms (I’m one of those), versus the ones who’ll actually lie down in front of a row of bulldozers heading toward their sacred forest.
And each woman makes her own choice. I personally feel guilty that I’m not bold or brave enough to be willing to sacrifice my own flesh and blood for any ’cause’. But within my admitted limitations, I do my best to live my own personal life by the standards we talk about here.
And it’s an endless work in progress, right? Because sometimes all we have strength for on a given day is the path of least resistance (think of Twisty’s Battle of the Sandbox with niecelet).
Some days it’s all I can do to leave the house after the daily internal battle about how much effort do I make today to conform to teh P enough to allow me to do my day’s tasks with a minimum of harrassment and inconvenience.
Maybe clearer if I’d said, “there’s a ‘right’ response in ideological terms, and then there’s what actually works.
As in, I know for a fact that many men cannot hear my words if I speak in an angry tone of voice. And while I absolutely despise the idea of being the ‘babymama’ and putting a bandaid on his booboos for him, sometimes I realize that in the interest of being heard at all, I have to sacrifice my need to be angry.
I have to speak in a calm, measured, reasonable tone, and explain things as I would to a three-year-old, while forcibly restraining myself from speaking with condescension, because I know from experience he’ll hear that in my voice and his anger and resentment will block him hearing what I have to say.
In high heels and backwards.
Last post.
Serpen’t Choice,
I get that it’s wrong to cave in (theoretically) but at the end of the day survival instincts are most powerful and we are dealing with people’s lives. Fighting back publicly rarely, if ever, works (I pray for brave Sierra). It terrifies you even more, especially when society will blame you if anything happens. A family member tried to fight back against a rapist that attacked and stalked her (a neighbor; no prior relationship) and the cops told her that there was no crime b/c 1. there’s no dead body (death threats become nullified somehow); and 2. “You can’t change your mind afterwards, sweetheart.” (I never forgot the quote as I heard him say it myself re: the rape. The neighbor told them it was consensual and they believed him, in spite of the medical reports documenting strangulation marks and head injuries and a doctor saying all signs pointed to rape). The stalker increased his violence against her after she went to the cops. For nearly two years, she lived in absolute fear (He once broke into her house, after he had tracked her down in spite of a new alias, town, and job, and beat her dog to death with a bat as a message. The cops didn’t do anything b/c she didn’t have a restraining order out of fear it would make things worse). Not until he got a girlfriend did he leave her alone. She fought so hard for so long and her victory is that she’s ALIVE today. I don’t blame her for being a shadow of her former feisty self. She’s desperate to “protect” herself, which is a fallacy but the realization that male violence is out of her control and it could happen to her again is just intolerable. Her experience changed the way I looked at the world completely.
Hedonistic: I’m pretty sure he wrote it just so I’d link to it. Which I did.
Curiouserandcuriouser: I don’t believe his anger will block him from hearing you. I don’t believe he was ever going to hear you. It’s just that he demands that you block your anger because it doesn’t serve him. blah blah blah blah is all he hears if you dispense with the anger.
Shoot the fucker down verbally, because most times, that’s all you’ve honestly got. If you have to speak to him like a child, get a child. At least you’re spending time with malleable material.
Him = men
Twisty, once again, thank you.
This is not to legitimize any scrutiny of Kathy Sierra’s responses. (It is also not to pile on Serpent’s Choice, who is, I think, articulating a wish rather than censure.) It might be helpful, though, to let go of the notion of “choice” to describe one’s immediate reaction to assault. Very few of us are capable of controlling our response to a traumatic event. We may decide beforehand that we would stand up to our persecutors, or negotiate in a rational way to reschedule our engagements, or whatever, but in the actual event, for most of us, our survival mechanism takes over, and we do what we do. The reason military recruits go through boot camp instead of classroom lectures is so that in a crisis they will respond as the military has programmed them to do. It’s the same with us, except that our programming consists of a lifetime of messages that we are helpless, worthless, and had better become invisible or risk annihilation. Choice has little to do with it.
Again, this isn’t to say that anyone has the right to judge Sierra’s response, choice or not.
There is a huge difference between making a personal decision about one’s own response to oppression, and a prescriptive response to someone else’s victimization.
It’s analogous to the difference between reflecting on the hard-earned insights one might have gained from having a serious illness, or chastising other cancer victims for not putting their suffering to good use.
One is making the best of a bad situation, the other is just being an asshole.
Again, there is no ‘right’response to being victimized.
Anyone who implies that there is some sort of moral obligation to turn shit into sugar needs to eat some, first.
Pony, I agree conceptually that ’shoot him down’ is the only way to go. But what if the ‘him’ in this case is my own brother? And of my family, he’s the only one I haven’t written off entirely for being utterly brainwashed tools (including my mother)? My dad died when I was in my early 20s, so he’s not part of this picture.
Suggestions? This ‘favorite’ brother has 3 young daughters (all under age 6) who I adore, and it pains me to watch the ways their bright shinyness is daily eroded by the slow acid drip of training to be ‘pleasers’. My sister-in-law, who is pretty fierce, and a force to be reckoned with, is nonetheless a firm believer in the ’socialization’ boot camp that eventually makes girls succumb to the doormat training, at some level.
Oh, too much to say, not able to be concise, feels like derailing the thread. Guess I’ll leave it at that.
Serpent,
I think you are seeing this too narrowly as an either or extreme.
Her situation is such that the probability of the perps being colleagues is high. Consequently, when she contacted law enforcement about the threats thay may have advised her to cancel her public appearances until the perps could be tracked down and a threat assesment made. If you want law enforcement to take you seriously, you are stuck following their advice no matter how the spirit rebels.
Regardless of the circumstance of threats it is, I think, essential that one make as informed an assesment as possible before proceeding. I thought that she made a wise choice when she advised others in her group of what was happening to her. In a similar way to the Imus bigotry, it brings out the bigots who have been passing for decent human beings.
BINGO!!!
http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=431
Fairly early in the comments on the Kos thread, someone says,
“So long as women can be frightened out of action by this they will be able to be put down and their voices stilled.”
And I thought to myself, “Yes. Exactly! Someone here is actually pointing out the function that this sort of thing serves. They recognize that it is *designed* to silence women. They admit it!”
Except I don’t think they meant it that way. Damn.