, a radical feminist and professor of American Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, author of of the best-selling media textbook, (2nd edition, Sage, 2002), used in over 200 colleges across the country, and co-author of (also reader of my blog, yay!), was recently invited to appear on the Paula Zahn Now show on CNN to discuss the Duke rape case. She agreed in part because the pre-show screening interviews and discussions went well and the questions she was asked were intelligent and thoughtful.
She was told the show would be done in two, possibly three segments, and that under discussion would be historical and contemporary issues of violence against black women in the U.S.
What happened to her, to another guest, journalist , who was a guest on the show, to the Duke stripper, to feminists and feminism, and to women in the United States and everywhere when Dines went on that show was yet another display of male terrorism, of the way men on the Right and men on the Left, men of color and white men, are more than willing to set aside any political differences they have when it affords them an opportunity to bond over the brutalized bodies and lives of women, women of color, white women, all women.
The first inkling that something wasn t going according to plan was on my ride from the airport to the makeshift outdoor studio at the Durham courthouse. A different producer called to tell me that although I study both race and gender, they don t want this show to be about gender. I answered that this woman was brought in as a stripper and is charging that the lacrosse team sexually abused her how could this not also be about gender?
Yes, yes, yes, she answered, but the show is focusing on race. I know enough by now not to argue with a senior producer an hour before taping, and so I simply agreed.
The second clue was one of the people on the panel with me the Rev.
Jesse Lee Peterson, an African American man who has made his name by slandering blacks for their racism against whites and their continuing unwillingness to climb out of poverty. For Peterson, black men have been emasculated by black women, and his project is about making black men real men again. The one saving grace was that the other guest on my panel was Kristal Brent Zook, an insightful journalist with Essence magazine.
As it turns out I was on camera for less than five minutes, and most of that time was taken up by Peterson railing against the alleged victim for setting these poor white guys up. Kristal got to make a few points but also was cut short. Zahn was clearly more intrigued by Peterson than either of us; her body language and eye contact focused on him.
As I tried to interrupt his tirade, she cut me off and returned to him. He got the last word of the segment, saying that the stripper has no humanity, no morality (she had children out of wedlock ) and should be jailed for what she has done to these athletes. As I got up to leave the studio I ask Zahn how she could do a show that once again leaves this woman stripped of her dignity and rendered invisible as a human being.
Zahn smiled and offered her hand as a way to tell me they are done with me.
When I got back to the hotel 30 minutes later, I already had a few emails from enraged men informing me that I am a bitch dyke, dumb feminist and nigger lover who is an embarrassment to the academic profession. By the next day at noon, it was a flood of emails, each one more hateful than the next.
After most television appearances I get some hate mail and some support, but never such a consistently negative barrage in such a short time. It is only when I sit down to watch a tape of the show that I understood why everyone was so upset.
Rather than being about racism and sexism in the media, the show had been billed as an examination of the rush to judgment on the part of the media and society.
The possibility that these men were guilty had been proved wrong, as the victim is clearly lying and motivated by money. The case is framed as a race issue, which for producers meant that blacks are out for revenge for past misdeeds by whites. Jumping on this bandwagon, so the story goes, was the District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was trying to curry favor with the black community in a re-election year.
The consensus on the show was that if anyone is guilty here, it is the lying, immoral black stripper and the amoral, politically motivated DA. The victims here are the upstanding white men who have now had their reputations tarnished first by a stripper and then by gullible fools who believed her. And of course, within the framing of the show, I appeared as not just a gullible fool, but even worse, a gullible fool with a feminist agenda.
My anger at the way the media humanized these men as victims and dehumanized the woman as the perpetrator of a lie clearly stood out from the rest of the show. And this was, I am now convinced, the producer s goal. I was set up in the show to be an example of the problem white liberal elites who have taken political correctness too far.
I was not brought on as a researcher or activist but as an example of how feminists rush to judgment in order to further their man-hating propaganda.
Virtually every email I have received blasts me as a conniving feminist who didn t even bother to know the facts of the case. These men yes, they all were from men explained to me that the facts show without question that nothing happened that night, which I would have known if I were not so busy trying to further my feminist agenda.
Read the entire (great) at Dissident Voice.
(Note: I ve been trying to write down my thoughts on this issue and have found it incredibly difficult. I seem to be only able to discuss my truths in prose or poetry.
My grandmother is Papua New Guinean. She and her sisters were taken from their parents during the second world war by white nuns. My grandmother cannot speak her language.
She identifies as a white person although her skin is black. I do not see her as a passive victim of assimilation but a woman who has survived the battle of two patriarchies. I get very confused and angry when black women attack white women as being the agents and benefiters of black oppression.
I really loved (I read it in ). Anyway this is a poem I wrote which was inspired by MacKinnon s article and by something I read of bell hooks which attacked Radical Feminism.)
and in speaking of my skin as raped down to almost white, do I not afford that every woman has been raped down to almost white?
a paler version of our original Selves. in this confidence, do I rob myself of the integrity of speaking as a Black? but though I see the blackness in the pictures of myself, I also see the altered image that a woman always presents.
I do not see a person, I see sex. but hold. this woman does and does not have white skin.
it is the storm cloud of living in between. and colours all collected. but I do hold that she has been raped down to almost white.
I am a paler shade of that I should/could/would have been. my grandmother has the darkest skin but this does not drive a wedge between us.
I will say this bond is more than blood and more than skin and you diminish me by trying to deny it.
the white man raped her but did not make her his. the white man raped her daughter but did not make her his. the white man raped me but did not make me.
I can deny you this.
I refuse to let you tell me that my skin affords me power. what power is this in a system I did not, have not, will not have the luxury of creating?
what is this privilege then that you talk of? when my privilege affords me the best place on the platter whereupon I will be eaten.
my grandmother ‘escaped’ from her father.
a black man who beat her. I do not call him brother. my grandmother ‘escaped’ from her potential husband.
a black man who beat her. I do not call him brother. my grandmother ‘escaped’ from her country, a black man’s country that beat her.
she ‘escaped’ with a white man who beat her. to a white man’s country that beats her still. I do not call the white man brother.
I do not call the white man’s country brother. white man would rape me paler if they could. black man would rape me darker if they could.
this is their war, not ours and they play it, kill it, script it on our bodies. I want out and I’m going to take my skin. so here, hear.
I call the black woman my sister, unmodified, her thoughts, her passions are mine also. my life, my self, my soul is diminished if I do not hold to this. here, hear.
I call the white woman my sister, unmodified, her thoughts, her passions are mine also. my life, my self, my soul is diminished if I do not hold to this. what privilege that has been afforded me was paid for in women’s blood.
past, present and future. this I will avow. more black women’s blood has been spilled than white.
this I will also avow. but it is white men that are doing the spilling and the blood of all women and the earth is flowing still. in this I do hold, that every woman has been raped down to almost white and men, white and black, would rape us further if they could.
so I’m pushing forward beyond the pale, beyond the male politics of either/or. I will not be further diminished.
(Originally posted to the Women s Space/Margins Bulletin Board, used by permission.
Thank you so much, Dani. Heart)
Since moderation issues are on my mind, I decided to lighten things up a bit and present the Best of the Peanut Gallery, comprised of excerpts from some of the comments men have attempted to post to Women s Space over the last 30 days or so. It is an interesting mix; I hope you laugh as hard over some of the comedic attempts at commentary as I did!
That way, the disturbing commentary might not be quite so burdensome.
Im a man. I searched for Brit’s crotch and I found this site.
I love the site and the discussion. It’s haunted me and Ive since had discussions about it with my feminist wife who has majored in women’s studies and I guess has tolerated my point of view all this time. I always thought of myself as a feminist, but maybe Im not.
My wife is angry with me because of my counter arguments. This missive isnt about Brit’s crotch but maybe it is. Because I found this site due to my curiosity…
To the women of this site, I ask: What is the definition of feminine minus the polution of the male point of view?
When I say “feminine”, Im talking about sexuality and the projection of such. Im not talking about equality across the board, which I believe wholeheartedly in.
What do the women who contribute to this blog find acceptable when it comes to sexuality, the appearance of sexuality and the response to said sexuality?
Please, Im not trolling here…
Maybe if he knocks it off with the aggravating anti-feminist counter arguments he is evidently making when his feminist wife takes him to task over his internet searches for Britney Spears crotch shots, they can really delve into the definition of feminine minus the polution of the male point of view.
This poster knows how to make the world safe..
Why these people get irritated when someone talk about morality. You people exposing morethan allowed any religion. Is it freedom.
I call it utterly careless attitude of a community whom goes for freedom which destroy our social life by rape, adultry, drunks, abortion and all of form of sins which is prohibited by god through his teachings. Go to Bibile. Quran or any other little moral writings.
then we all will be in safe
This would be, I believe, the first time I ve heard the term non-dick :
What a bunch of lying dicks and non-dicks, you came to this site to see pussy! so where is it??
???
And then there are all of you pretending to have “intellectual thoughts” on this search for a pussy view. Actually, in my search for a pussy shot, I’ve had a lot of fun at your expense……thanks.
This poster is concerned about Britney Spears self esstem.
Reminds me of the guy who, when one of my daughters reamed him a new one for being a misogynist jerk, said, You re ruining my SELF of STEAM.
You have to either have, self esstem issues or would have been pretty damn pissed to go out to a night club and show your privates especially with no knickers on.
Come on celebrity or not your a women respect yourself.
i watched a documentary on tv in the United States about young girls going out binge drinking and doing stupid things in public that they later regretted doing this was a classic example.
I say if your out drinking look after yourself.
I actually like Brittany Spears and i think shes beautiful and no matter what the media says about i bet shes an awesome mother……….
im glad she got rid of that no good loser KFed.
I might give him a few points for the last paragraph, if he d made some comment about the photographers taking up-skirt photos and why that was wrong. Oh well.
hi, heart. It’s that guy defending the sadists again. I don’t know if you actually read these things or what.
Anyways, I found another post by you on the same subject while I was surfing. (I swear to God I’m not stalking you.) Anyway, it was on the same subject, and in it you mentioned that some people might think sadism and misogyny don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but that’s what you think and you won’t hear arguments to the contrary.
That’s repugnant. I’m not offended by your views on the subject, I think they’re naive; but your refusal to let your beliefs be challenged disgusts me. If you don’t think you can defend your beliefs, well, god, you’re surrounded by people who can.
If you’re not emotionally able to accept my views, well then you shouldn’t have started the conversation. It’s this ability to surround oneself with nothing but like-minded people that I really hate about the Internet.
Like I haven t had 4,678,902 debates about this on the internet.
The guy can evidently find me with no problem, so I figure he should go find some of those old debates. It s so funny create one venue, just ONE, on the internet, which isn t going to tolerate endless wranglings over what might be wrong with sadomasochism and people are infuriated. They can create 15 blogs a piece, you know, and write of the joys of beating someone, being beaten by someone, the thrills of risky sex practices like fluid bonding, if they want to.
But create one venue where it isn t going to fly and they are disgusted and it s what they hate about the internet that radical feminist women have, at last, an opportunity to discuss what we want to discuss unhindered, undiverted, unattacked, without having to waste energy dealing with this kind of thing. I mean, if we want to talk to them, we can find them anywhere and talk to them, no? Do they ever think about that.
Is it that hard to believe that some men might have misogynist bedroom fantasies, while not being misogynists in real life?
Yes? Misogynist in the bedroom equals misogynist everywhere else.
This is the kind of man, and logic, I find alarming and dangerous.
You also mentioned something (maybe on this board, maybe on that other board) that if you thought these guys had shown any respect for women, you might believe that they might be decent guys, but clearly they didn’t, and so on. Now, I don’t know much about online sex personals etiquette, but somehow I can’t imagine that if a woman went looking for some BDSM, she’d be all that interested in responses like, “Let’s respectfully discuss your proposal over coffee.
”
Here is a guy who has just asked me whether I think it s possible for a guy to be misogynist in the bedroom and not misogynist elsewhere. Here he demonstrates why he doesn t even believe that himself. From his perspective, if a woman is looking for an sm encounter, she must want to hear what all those guys in the Craig s List experiment had to say, no coffee and respectful discussion for her.
This philosophical dude feels we really need something more substantial than stories of women being dragged a mile behind a car, having their bodies chopped up and stewed on the stove, being raped and burned to death, being lined up in schoolrooms and shot, being basically unrepresented as heads of Fortune 500 corporations, to convince anyone that men terrorize women:
Generic man-hating isn’t going to gain momentum. Yes, men can be dogs but you have to give the public something to work with here.
Yes, the whole human experience and history is strongly influenced by and dominated by males.
Religion, law, government, as well as social and economic dissonance has developed. Some barriers have been overcome, and most of your first world countries have decreased that dissonance. Less developed countries, generally speaking, seem to be more likely to have cultures that support females as being chattel.
I think that the targeting that women get in first world countries has sublimated into forms that even they may not recognize as happening.
Personally, I think most undergarments women wear are designed exclusively by men for me. Pantyhose, bras, girdles, garters, et al all seem to fly under the radar of awareness, but in my mind are just short of something that could have been used in their own version of the Spanish Inquisition.
Even womens shoes are designed to force them to strut provacatively, meanwhile their feet are being crushed and bent in painful directions. Meanwhile, mens shoes and underwear are comfortable and functional. I have no idea why women put up with that stuff.
Make-up, to me, is all part of that nonsense too.
If women want to be taken seriously, they need to take themselves seriously. Confidence, Intelligence, Independence, Assertiveness, and the ability to make decisions under pressure will get you farther than a tight sweater and boatloads of make-up.
To be honest, it is more appealing too.
At last, the stunning conclusion:
Finally, I don’t think every pocket of the world is saturated with male dominance….if there are issues to be addressed in your corner of the world, the focus should be finding balance among elements to achieve equality.
Vilifying all that is masculine may erode power of male dominated societal view, but the view will only last as the dominance the other way is held. Education is key to a longer lasting balance.
Education is key to a longer lasting balance.
Heavy.
Glad you squared that away for us.
Sometimes women offer interesting commentary, per yay:
This site is retarded.
Heart you are annoying. Aside from the fact that I could care less about Britney’s crotch you seem to care too much what everyone’s opinion is on the subject. Like a little too much, I might add.
Shut up already moron! Here is my opinion on the matter. Britney should know better than to not wear panties and bend over in front of paparrazi or spread her legs with a short skirt on without panties knowing she is a huge star and will most definately be showing the world.
She is skanky as in no class just like Janet Jackson who likes to show her boob to children at a football game then act all innocent. Britney knew what she was doing and if she is that stupid to do everything I just mentioned without any inkling of the ramifications then maybe she will learn from her mistakes and embarrassment if she even feels any. Obviously, it was a publicity stunt and she enjoys that kind of attention and will do anything to get it.
Just so you know, i wore a really short skirt on my birthday with no panties but I was with my bf and I am not super famous so no gives a rats ass. If I were, I would be seeking attention by showing my crotch on purpose to the media. BTW, Britney you need to get some rash medication.
Good going. Lastly, everyone should just move on now because no one really cares about what Britney does as they really shouldn’t. Worry about your own crotches, fire crotches and what not.
Hell if i was papparazi and i saw that I would be clicking away with the camera as well so…. yeah. Get real!
No one got hurt in the making of this retarded publicity stunt. Way to go Britney and rock on with your bad self. Everyone has an opinion and it really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks- not even Heart or me.
So move on with your life Heart. We get it already.
Even though that commentary is Exhibit A of internalized misogyny, I can t help but laugh every time I read it.
Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.
Sorry if I was rude in my last post but I just get a little upset when people obsess over justifying other people’s mistakes (if you want to call it that)as if it really matters. What she did was her own doing and every single person has a different opinion on the matter and yet it still doesn’t matter what any of us think.
We don’t know Britney or what she thinks on a daily basis. The only support she needs is her real life friend’s and family. You all go on and on as if you are making a difference when all you are really doing is wasting your time and energy about annoying papparazi that are like roaches and will never go away.
I am sure she has adjusted to the lifestyle she chose as most people do. And i really didn’t see any rash in the pictures. I was just being sarcastic.
I wish Britney well and don’t care about her crotch and I hope she isn’t affected by this too much. Who knows? Maybe she was drunk.
And even finishes with season s greetings!
There are much better things to worry about and discuss and think about like Christmas in a few days and being with loved ones. Take care and be well.
Merry Christmas all
Tei Tetua, who if I m not mistaken is a men s rights guy who posts at Alas sometimes, wrote the following in response to . In a bedazzling example of precisely that phenomenon, Tei Tetua thinks it s important to focus in on which Boston paper published the article (I named the wrong paper) and the bad company feminists are keeping publishing the article there. Forget about atrocities against women, whatever, atrocities against women happen.
Get used to it. Also, forget about the fact that mainstream newspapers don t publish articles about atrocities against women as atrocities, which was the whole point of the article I linked to.
That article was from the Boston Phoenix, not the Globe.
The Phoenix is a weekly paper that used to be “underground” or “alternative” or whatever you want to call it. It’s the kind of paper where each issue includes a sex section with all the ads from “escorts”, and every time, that section has an appropriately enticing picture on the cover. The same issue of the Phoenix also had an editorial slamming Jimmy Carter for his recent book comparing Israel today with South Africa in its bad old days, which I think is a topic that needs to be talked about much more (and there’s a link with “Orthodox Jewish woman beaten by men”).
In other words, some people might say that feminism isn’t in the best company in that paper.
Then this guy crawls out from under his rock to remind us all that we are, truly, surrounded by pedophiles, misogynists, dangerous men. Men who say what this man says below are dangerous men.
When men expose themselves in public they are considered as flashers and could face charges of indecency, but when Brittany Spears does it to save her dying career she’s the poor victim of men’s peversity. She has become a public figure ever since she wore her enticing and provacative school girl uniform. She put herself in the sexual market place, music videos.
It was Brittany’s choice to tie her shirt up to expose her belly,not the audience. It was Brittany that decided to put a new twist to the old school girl fantasy that has been around for as long as there has been school girls. Her twist was to put an actual girl who was still in school in a music video.
Where as in the past this school girl fantasy was usually filled by someone older posing as a school girl. Most men who buy into this fanasy usually have to pay someone to do this, Brittany just made it more acceptable. Brittany is desperate for adulation.
She using something other than her voice to attract an audience. Why would any women put themselves in that situation. Obviously she isn’t modest because she really plays up her sexuality on stage.
Take for instance when Brittany and Madonna kissed on national television. Two music celebrities selling a form of sexuality on public television. But it’s perverse for men to watch it or want to see more.
It’s perverse that men want to see her crotch now, get real. Brittany is the only one selling crotch shots. Why should men be persecuted for buying something a grown women wants to sell.
For Brittany she has decided to sell her voice and image and it seem she has developed a market for herself. Now the general public wants what she is selling. And I bet there are many lesbians out there you aren’t hating because they want to see Brittany’s crotch.
Society has come a long way accepting gays and lesbians for who they are, why can’t you get off your high horses and let men and women do what they have always done. Men have to do all the chasing after the women they love or lust after and it is the women who does all the rejecting. History isn’t written about women pursuing their mate it has always been the man.
Traditionally it has been the man who asks for the first date. I know alot of women,but I don’t know very many women who ask men out on dates. And I don’t know many women who go around in little black miniskirts witout panties.
Especially if they are going to a public function where they’ll be the centre of attention. what Brittany does with her crotch is her business and everyone is buying it. I think she would do better just doing a sex video like her moral compass, Paris Hilton.
Women’s groups aren’t exactly lining up around the blockto protest the expoitation of poor Paris Hilton. No women’s group has picked up the cause for poor Pamela Anderson or Janet Jackson. And what can we do for the exploitation of Madonna.
Face it sex sells and it is usually done by a man and a woman.Now days it done by evryone to anyone. Who knows now days.
Stay tuned for the next big production of chasing beaver, apparently it’s a bisexual thing.
With so many problems in the world why do we need to spend time on this. She is just wanting publicity.
Yeah, man. Let the poor dudes get their crotch shots, would you?
“I can’t believe there are still women who don’t get it: ALL men.
ALL men. All. It’s concealed to get laid.
It’s revealed when they lose it. Take a look at the nice men in the Craig’s List post: see the lefty cool guy with the bandana, the guys out there in ‘nature’, the grandfatherly looking guy? There will be women who they have helped across the street, stood up for in a harassing situation, loaned money to so they could buy school books for their children, spoken for when she didn’t get a promotion, agreed that women should be able to walk here and there safely.
Get real. They’re all rapists. It’s not this guy is good, that guy is bad.
Men. They are all men, and they all have the privilege. The man you are sleeping with/working with/sitting next to in your gender studies class/being a blood donor/working for community issues/saving your babies life in the pediatric ward~~~~~~~~ALL.
”
is this any different from saying all blacks steal? all blondes are stupid? all feminists hate men?
This kind of question is, again, why I moderate. To respond to this level of cluelessness would require energy, time, and bandwidth none of us has to spare, and all of us prefer to devote to women s issues. Besides that, anybody who finishes that kind of question with, just curious is asking to be spammed.
Way to go with lumping all men together in one awful sea of women hating testosterone.
Can’t you see that these are just sad wankers trying to get laid? I guarantee you that 99% of them have never taken part in any BDSM activity before and simply saw the ad as an opportunity to get laid.
The ad was specific in saying the submissive wanted cruelty and violence so that’s what they offered. The ad was graphic, so they were graphic in their replies. It’s not about hating women; it’s about meeting a biological imperative to have sex with as many women as possible.
These guys are not angry they’ve been ‘outed’ as women haters; they’re angry because they’ve been outed as sad little men who can only succeed with women who put up no resistance.
This guy is creative and original!
You all need to get laid.
fuckin’ nice.where can i get the video??
???
love to have it.oh by the way fuck you broads!
if heterosexual sex was a male dominated thing: wed have a hell of alot more people on earth.
Men think of sex every 58 seconds, women do maybe twice a day.
Here the facts-and-figures guy evidences he doesn t know the difference between rape and sex, has no clue that in fact, most rapists walk and none, in the U.S.
, is killed for rape, and doesn t get it that women bear no responsibility for their own rapes:
Concieving a child is a two-way thing, if a woman is raped than she goes to the authorities and-while they kill the man who did it- she gets counseling.
I ll include his final line because of its unique and interesting spelling of chauvinistic, kind of along the line of Jovan for Men :
P.s.
s. The Media only has “concoted” a shovanistic view of women because there are women out there that will submit themselves to being photographed, exploited, ectectect as a career opportunity.
Not to be dissuaded by the radical feminist nature of this blog, the politics of this blog, or the posts in this blog, ardent life offers us biblical counsel:
People are imperfect.
In fact, this is the very foundation of Christianity; people fail, ad God stepped in to save the day. People screw up every-single-day. When a person is hi-lited as a good and godly person, one that you aught to respect, it somehow amplifies there Sin as somesort of huge imposing hurricane that wipes out the importance of what that person taught.
People screw-up, get over it already. Let
God be named True, and every man a liar.
I like the part I bolded.
Yay, verily and amen to that.
I ve been brewing a post for a while about the comments I get here which never see the light of day, but this particular one struck me as particularly representative, and it is also a good illustration of why I, and other radical feminists, must carefully moderate our blogs. It s also a very good example of the thought life of a large number of American men, given the number of commments like this which I spam.
This is one of thousands of men who ended up here on his quest to see up-skirt shots of Britney Spears. It s interesting the opportunity we have, as radical feminist bloggers, to gather information and evidence as to the kind of things men want to see based on the search terms that result in their visiting our blogs. The commenter, of course, posted in full the words I have x d out.
laguna loire: well i just hope that both of u`r parents get leuchimia and your wife (cause you are a lesbian right?) get hit by a truck full of dildos and if ever you get kids i’ll hope they get kindnaped and then savagly raped by a gang off n****** with huge cocks
H.A.
Chew sent this along, published on the , written by our friend and ally, . Rock on, Stan what a GREAT article!
Here is a thought exercise.
Think of all the euphemisms used to describe the distinctly male external appendage, or eroticized acts from the male point of view, that call to mind conquest, war, or violence.
Examples: I d like to hit that ( hit as act of aggression, that as objectification). He shot his load (gun metaphor).
I knocked the bottom out of that pussy (penis as an instrument to wreck a thing, woman reduced to an instrumental body part). Bob added her to his list of conquests (self-explanatory). He made her ( he is the subject, she is the object to be taken).
Porn advertising uses very warlike metaphors, if anyone is interested in what the market says about what men find popular in the arena of sex-commodified.
Now flip the exercise. Think of all the euphemisms to describe war and aggression that are sexualized.
Examples: We re going to pop it to the enemy. Our forces will penetrate here. He made that guy his bitch.
Abu Ghraib.
Anyone who thinks for a moment can come up with her own list. Or just listen to other people, television, the radio
These figures of speech are so common that we have the tendency to overlook, and even repeat them, never stopping to think how these figures of speech devalue women, or how they construct male sexuality as conquest and violence.
Anyone who has not seen the Media Education Foundation film Wrestling with Manhood is hereby strongly encouraged to see it, and to use it as a collective teaching tool about how masculinity is constructed as violence, and how immensely popular is its misogynistic core. It shows the frothing audiences as theatrical wrestling events cheer at macho posturing, which included the feminization of enemies, at the brutality of the fights, but with the most disturbingly enthusiasm, at the staged and real abuse of women during these intensely popular public entertainment events.
Here is the problem I am having with the weaponized phallus, a problem of a more limited scale than men s deeply enculturated hatred of all things female, especially the female body (which they see as a thing to be conquered, defiled, humiliated taken).
It s that fact that so-called progressive men (people really should look up the sordid history of that modifier), those who claim to stand for justice and against domination and exploitation, engage in the self-same, woman-hating, weaponized-phallus trash-talk as right-wing men.
And here is a small step I am proposing to left-wing men. Stop that.
Stop it right now, and never do it again.
Here is a short list, with explanation, that I d like you to stop:
(1) Stop using gendered language thoughtlessly. There is a politics to language, and it is not just being PC.
That term was invented by right-wingers to fight back against things like women s studies, African American studies, and other non-white, non-male, non-imperial challenges to a racist, Eurocentric, and patriarchal canon. When you use male nouns and pronouns to describe human, you are reinforcing the idea and practice that makes male the norm. Calling the species homo sapien Man is a problem.
Calling land and ships and other things she and her, that men are seen to control, is a problem because it assigns the controlling role to males. Saying that it is colder than a witch s tit is a sexist turn of phrase. Using the term balls to describe courage, and making courage a male characteristic, is a problem.
Calling people who lack courage or strength pussies is a devaluation, as well as objectification, of women.
(2) Stop saying things that are homophobic, and stop tolerating homophobia. Homophobia, as Suzanne Pharr once pointed out, is a weapon of patriarchy.
When you make jokes about prison rape, that is homophobic, as well as buying into a notion of rape as legitimate tool for social control, and masculinity constructed as sexual revenge. The ideological basis for men s control over women is what Adrienne Rich called compulsory heterosexuality. Policing people based on the masculine-feminine binary is policing a binary of domination and subjugation.
(3) Stop saying clueless shit about sex that makes sex an unmitigated good (in reaction to the theocratic right s squeamishness about sex). It might sound liberated if you are still trying to shock you aging parents, but it erases women s experience of sex as often obligatory, manipulative, humiliating, and even frightening one of the practices in a system where they are on the wrong end of social power. A recent article by Joe Garifoli in the San Francisco Chronicle, called Anti-war couple conceive new way to generate peace, is a perfect example.
Living on their houseboat off the Marin County coast, anti-war activists Donna Sheehan and her partner, Paul Reffel, concocted a way for the world to communally create a lot of peaceful vibes.
They want everyone to have an orgasm on the same day.
They go on to say, If you re experiencing pleasure, you re not engaging in aggressive, destructive behavior.
Really? Does that mean, asks my friend De, that the rape of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim, in which three men apparently had their peacemaking orgasms, contributed to world peace?
Don t say dumb shit like this.
It betrays your own cocooned privilege, and not just become some Haitian peasant woman might be more worried about the food that s not in her belly than her daily orgasm, but because sex has been experienced as violence by millions of women imposed by men who took physical pleasure from their violence.
(4) Stop reinforcing the devaluation of women by measuring them by some media-concocted version of what they are supposed to look like. This is a tough one, because we het-men (and even gay men) have been trained very early and very thoroughly to cast the pornographic gaze on women first judging her fuckability (think about that term before we inquire about anything else).
This is a form of oppression, and until we make an intentional effort to stop that, everything we say about relieving oppression is hypocrisy. If we say we are for justice, and we say we are against oppression, and we judge women this way, we are frauds and we deserve to have no one listen to us, ever.
(5) Stop thinking it is okay to attack the enemy s women based on their gender.
When you make a sexual remark to put down Anne Coulter or Condi Rice, or crack on them about their appearance, you are attacking them based on their status as women which implicitly attacks all women. That shit is not cool. It doesn t make you a more effective progressive (or whatever).
It makes you an oh-too-typical male misogynist. You are still engaging in sexualized revenge.
This just scratches the surface, but I don t want to overwhelm anyone.
If you want to add one more step, start calling others out when they do this stuff, too.
Time to de-weaponize the phallus; let it revert to the humble pollination device it was designed to be. You d be surprised at the implications.
swaneagle and her daughter, left; Resisters blockade site of power plant on Navajo land, center; Grandma Lucy Willie, referred to in update below, right
No War Anywhere Ever Again is my daily prayer. May 2007 see a new turn among all of humanity.
Please do what is possible to spread the word about the ongoing stand being taken by Dineh grandmothers and their supporters against another acquifer draining and global warming propellant coal fired power plant in the southwest.
My heart cries for the silencing such Indigenous women face in this country that sees atrocity only as important elsewhere. We have a sacred duty to stop genocide here. Over 500 years is enough!
!!
Love, swaneagle
Dec 22 - As energy corporations closed in on Navajo territory, a cluster of elderly women and other locals rushed to greet them ˜ planting themselves in defiance on the ground they hold as sacred.
The Navajo elders, joined by native-rights activists and other supporters, formed a blockade last week in Burnham, New Mexico at the site of the Desert Rock Energy Project, a proposed coal-fired power plant. The self-described resisters say that in a land already ravaged by fossil-fuel industries, another power plant will make their environment dirtier and their communities more powerless against industrial interests.
We have to have respect for the Earth; we have to have respect for every living thing….
Our people know that and understand that, said Ann Frazier with Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (CARE). Diné is the traditional word Navajo use to describe their people.
Frazier continued, So for these big companies to come in and do this, and our tribal leaders allowing them to do that, is against the belief of the people.
In this book, Zillah Eisenstein continues her unforgiving indictment of neoliberal imperial politics. She charts its most recent militarist and masculinist configurations through discussions of the Afghan and Iraq wars, violations at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the 2004 US Presidential election, and Hurricane Katrina. She warns that women’s rights rhetoric is being manipulated, particularly by Condoleeza Rice and other women in the Bush administration, as a ploy for global dominance and a misogynistic capture of democratic discourse.
However, Eisenstein also believes that the plural and diverse lives of women will lay the basis for an assault on these fascistic elements. This new politics will both confound and clarify feminisms, and reconfigure democracy across the globe.
a passionate and exhaustively detailed indictment of the anti-woman crimes of U.
S. imperialist aggression. In particular, her work calls on women within the U.
S. to resist the claim of protection of women by a capitalist system intent on exploiting and degrading
women and sexually oppressed minorities throughout the world. -Minnie Bruce Pratt, Poet-activist
Zillah Eisenstein‘s Sexual Decoys is an incisive critique of the rightwing mobilization of gender and race for imperial designs.
The book insightfully illuminates the contradictions of war waged in the name of spreading democracy. Asking whether terrorism is the new
version of the old communist menace, Eisenstein contextualizes current militarization policies, and boldly exposes their noxious fallout for democracy. - Ella Shohat, New York University
Zillah Eisenstein‘s latest feminist text is a provocative, insightful reading of the gendered and racialized complexities of the wars in Afganistan and Iraq and the ways in which the metaphor of sexual and racial decoys can be deployed to illuminate contemporary US
government machinations here and around the globe.
Very little escapes Eisenstein‘s critical gaze: the Bush administration, Laura Bush, Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, neoliberal/imperial feminism, diversity in the academy. Sexual Decoys is sure to be controversial because of its biting critiques of both conservatives and liberals. - Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Director of the Women‘s Research Resource Center at Spelman College
1.
Gender as politics in another form
2. Re-Sexing the wars of/on terror
3. Terrorized and privatized democracy
4.
Diversifying and racializing decoys
5. Ungendering feminisms and the pluralisms of sex
Zillah Eisenstein is one of the foremost political theorists and activists of our time. She has written feminist theory in North America for the past twenty-five years.
Her writing is an integral part of her political activism. She writes in order to share and learn with, and from, others engaged in political struggles for social justice. She writes about her work building coalitions across women s differences: the black/white divide in the U.
S.; the struggles of Serb and Muslim women in the war in Bosnia; the needs of women health
workers in Cuba; the commitments of environmentalists in Ghana; the relationship between socialists and feminists in union organizing; the struggles against extremist fundamentalisms in Egypt and Afghanistan; the needs of women workers in India.
Zillah Eisenstein is Professor of Politics at Ithaca College in New York.
Throughout her career her books have tracked the rise of neoliberalism both within the U.S. and across the globe.
She has documented the demise of liberal democracy and scrutinized the growth of imperial and militarist globalization. She has also critically written about the attack on affirmative action in the U.S.
, the masculinist bias of law, the crisis of breast cancer and AIDS, the racism of patriarchy and the patriarchal structuring of race, the new
nationalisms, and corporatist multiculturalism.
Her most recent books include: Against Empire, London (Zed Books Ltd), Hatreds: Racialised and Sexualised Conflicts in the 21st Century (New York, Routledge, 1996), Global Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism and the Lure of Cyberfantasy (New York, NYU Press, 1998), ManMade Breast Cancers (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001).
Thanks to the for sending this to me.
This is what happens in patriarchal communities like ours where generation after generation of people are raised up in violent households. Wherever women are battered down, there will be children who grow up to commit murder, and children who grow up to be their victims. Wherever women are devalued and brutalized on a daily basis, as we are in the town of Nassau, there will be children who grow up out of these violent households to become policemen who commit home invasions and terrorize innocent women and their families on Christmas day.
I asked the police recruits: “Haven’t most of you grown up in violent households?” The vast majority of the class intoned, “yes.” This is a terrifying thought.
Are the vast majority of officers also the adult survivors of childhood violence? And have the majority of them never received a minute of counseling before being allowed to wear that uniform or carry a gun? This must be so.
Where do we think the children of these violent households end up? They end up both in jail, and on the police force, and on the defense force, and in the guard houses of the prison and the detention center.
6,000 women and 30,000 Nepali children die every year because of unsafe childbirth/neonatal practices.
Nepali women also face a barrage of social as well as religious hurdles to safe childbirth.
They cannot discuss pregnancy with anyone other than their husband, or seek medical help on their own.
Mothers and newborn babies are considered unclean and often forced to live in unhygienic rooms or even cowsheds for the first 11 days after birth.
This kind of discrimination greatly hampers their chance of survival, report editor Jonathan Walter said.
In addition, poor families cannot afford to pay medical bills: nearly 40 percent of people live on a daily income of less than a dollar.
Annually, this neglected humanitarian crisis claimed 25 times more lives than a Maoist rebel insurgency, in which 13,000 people died in 10 years leading up to a cease-fire earlier in April, Walter said.
In 2002, the government legalized abortion in a bid to protect women from untrained practitioners and has been trying to educate people about safe childbirth.
But Indira Basnet, who has worked as a government physician in remote western Nepal, said many families there still consider women economically less productive than cows or buffaloes.
If a buffalo falls sick the family seeks immediate treatment because it has to spend money to buy a new one if it dies, she said.
But if a woman falls ill, she is ignored because her family thinks it can get another woman for free.
A police officers orders women to leave the area near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Wednesday Dec. 20, 2006.
Senior French counter terrorism and police intelligence officials say they have no evidence pointing to planned attacks timed around the election next year, but France s terror alert level remains on red, the second highest notch, heading into the Dec. 25 and Jan. 1 holidays, and as a precaution before the two rounds of presidential voting in April and May.
(AP Photo/Francois Mori)
Link courtesy of , who says it looks to her as though the women were rounded up just because they are Muslim. It looks that way to me, as well.
The Paula Gunn Allen Fund has just been established to provide financial assistance to Paula, whose car, double-wide trailer, clothes, appliances, books, and papers burned in a fire in mid-October.
Evidently, some oily rags, stored in a shed on her newly built deck, ignited and burned her house and car. Paula, who was in the house when the fire started, suffered smoke inhalation and was briefly hospitalized after the fire. Two weeks later, her landlady found Paula unconscious on the floor of her temporary apartment.
Hospitalized again, Paula was in a coma for at least six days and in the hospital for two weeks. Since returning to her apartment, she has responded well to physical and lung therapy and her spirits are better than they have been in some time. As of today, she can walk ten steps without a cane.
This has been a hard year for Paula. Just before the fire, she had successfully completed radiation therapy for lung cancer, which doctors found in its early stages. The treatment, however, debilitated her.
Paula has given us all so much over the years through her creative and scholarly writing and her direction of the 1977 NEH-MLA Summer Seminar in Native American Literature. Your donation can help her rebuild her life.
Send your donation to The Paula Gunn Allen Fund, Account No.
0129540739, Bank of America, 228 North Main Street, Fort Bragg, CA 95437. (Include The, which is part of the fund s legal name). The donation is not tax deductible.
Paula also needs copies of books containing her essays or poems because hers burned in the fire. Fortunately, she had deposited most of her papers in the library of the University of Oregon several years before the fire.
Receiving notes and cards from her Native literature colleagues will lighten her spirit.
Mail can reach her at 5601/2 North McPherson Street, Fort Bragg, CA 95437. She will probably be at this address for at least the next six weeks, until her lot is cleared of debris and a different trailer is placed there.
Lesbian Blog Award, 2006
Nominations are being taken by for the Lesbian Blog of 2006 Award.
Thanks to for the link.
I am loving the very feminist, conscious, God des and She s CD, Reality, and have been obsessing over it for a while now. Following are some beautiful and inspiring words from their rap/song, What If:
What if I ruled the world, and shit was really basic
No one was judged, and no one was hated
Could be who I wanted to be, see who I wanted to see
We never saw poverty, cause everyone was free
We had a woman president, she protected our environment
When we had our differences, we never used our fists
No HIV, no cancer, and no disease
Instead of using guns, we d say please
No police brutality, no fucked up corporations,
the whole world was like one nation, under Goddess
We need to stop the hate before it s too late, too late.
God des and She can be so funny, too. In a rap called, Don t Be Afraid, they get me laughing every time where they say:
Bad-ass rides, and all of my dough,
I drove a Dodge Shadow, and my account was froze.
Order Reality (it will be back in stock soon) where you can also listen to clips of the above and other songs on the CD.
On that note, I m off to psyche myself for work tomorrow. At least it s a very short week for me.
xxxooo to all.
When I first heard of Ehren’s decision to be the first American Army officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, I wondered: “What would it be like to be a stranger in one’s own country, to be vilified, hated, and demeaned?” … I have come to realize that my son, in a small part, embodies the hope of the nation to end an illegal, immoral war that has brought death and destruction to over 650,000 Iraqis and Americans.
Carolyn Ho, mother of Lt.
Ehren Watada
And rock on, my sisters, my brothers.
to outlaw affirmative action offering preferences to groups or individuals based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education, or contracting purposes.
One of the measures established English as the state s official language, even though a similar proposition passed in 1988 was overruled by the Arizona and U.S. Supreme Courts.
The Democrats are, in some ways, better than the Republicans, but that doesn t make their platform, their policies or their candidates or winners something good for women, something we can celebrate. I m glad Republicans got thumped, but I m not all that happy it was Democrats who thumped them, especially when a lot of them seem to have been anti-choice, pro-war fiscal conservatives.
Note: I originally posted a quote here which I didn t read carefully enough.
My apologies it was racist, xenophobic and sexist. Argh. Thanks to Y.
Carrington for pointing it out to me.
Although I have been preoccupied with the crises in Iraq and Lebanon, I have nevertheless been keeping half an eye on the ongoing discussion , , , , and in other places about whether the Carnival of Feminists should actually be called the white Carnival of Feminists, about woman-of-color-only space and whether or not it excludes white feminists, about the relative racism, or not, of white feminist bloggers, and about white feminist anger towards feminist women of color, black feminists, in particular, and vice versa.
I have a few thoughts, they are not comprehensive by any means, and they are kind of random, but I haven t seen anyone else talking about these things, so I will.
I think that women of color have arrived on the blogosphere. Have they ever. I ve been around the internet, posting to feminist bulletin boards and other kinds of bulletin boards since 1994.
I remember when there was precisely one feminist blog that the online feminists I knew, anyway, knew about, going back to 2001 or so, called A Feminist Blog (which no longer exists, so far as I can tell.) There were feminist websites and bulletin boards, but not really blogs back then. Then came the blogs, overwhelmingly white, at first, overwhelmingly male.
Then came the white feminist women s blogs. Then came the feminist women of color blogs, lots of them. I think they ve done a really good job of shaking things up, and I think it s a beautiful thing to behold.
There are so many fine, fine woman of color bloggers ohmygosh, I have the hardest time keeping up with reading them all and linking to them as I come across them. There are also, of course, many, many fine white feminist woman bloggers. It s a new time, it s a new day, it s a new demographic for the neighborhood.
I think difficulties and conficts are to be expected as everybody reads everybody and gets to know everybody. So I think this figures in to what seems to be a kind of acrimony that has settled in. Those who have had the power and the voice in the feminist blogosphere white feminists are having to move out of the way, are having to learn to take turns, to share, and especially, are having to think about things they may never have had to think about before, and so there are growing pains.
Those of us who have been around the feminist internet for a while remember that we went through the same process from time to time in our own encounters with feminists of color. We said dumb things, we behaved poorly, we didn t get it, we made everything about us. Sometimes we alienated good women (and men) who could have been our allies, and sometimes that never got fixed and maybe never will.
But we learned from it, which is a good thing. I am betting the same will be true for those involved in the current conflicts.
I am personally infatuated with some of the woman of color bloggers.
I really can t get enough of what they write. They are an ongoing source of fresh, challenging insights, ideas and observations. I m not going to say who because I ll leave somebody out and I don t want to.
I do want to say that I hope none of them gets so discouraged that she stops blogging (which would be understandable, I m just sayin .) I also love the way the very visible presence of women of color on the feminist blogosphere has put a long-overdue halt to ongoing racist foolishness and ugliness on the part of a few vocal white feminists. Not so long ago, whenever there was a discussion of racism on the larger white blogs and other feminist venues, there were always a few white feminists, not going to mention names, they know who they are, who would show up to defend, for example, the flying of the Confederate Flag, or Howard Dean s stupid truck remark, or who would write these lengthy posts about how slavery wasn t really all that bad, or who would argue that Sally Hemmings really loved Thomas Jefferson, or who would argue that the n-word really wasn t necessarily a bad word to use, or who would insist there was no difference between institutionalized slavery in the South and institutionalized racism in the North, or who would, with a straight face, for example, refer to non-Southern people going to New Orleans to aid the relief efforts after Katrina as carpetbaggers.
I cannot even tell you how many hours I wasted arguing and dick-ering with these people, and what a waste it was, because the truth was, cowards as many of them are, what they had found was a venue in which they could get away with this egregious shit and get a real kick out of it. I don t see that going down anymore, and I think that s because they know they can t get away with it anymore, and why? Because of the very visible and impressive presence of feminist bloggers of color.
I think this is an amazingly, amazingly wonderful thing. But again, it s a shake-up. What used to go down, isn t going to go down anymore.
If somebody tries that now, for sure, somebody is going to pop up with a hearty and resounding, Say what? That pisses people off, as challenges to racism always will, and do. But the truth is, feminist women of color have successfully raised the bar in these matters as to the internet.
And that is all to the good, for all of us, for internet feminism, generally.
One thing that really bugs me about this is, these people do know who they are, they know what they ve posted in the past, and they are sitting silently by, letting Nio and others who have stepped right into it up to their knees and hineys in some cases but still not as bad as the people I m talking about have been known to just take the (understandable and appropriate) heat, without speaking up, without saying anything, without copping to their own racism, talking about their own foolishness and the dumb things they ve said and argued for. I think that s shitty and cowardly.
But it also tells me, maybe they still hold the racist views they ve always held, they re just being quiet and sneaky about it now, which is a really bad and destructive thing. But again, bad as that is, it s better than having to read racist crap defended by self-identified white feminists on feminist blogs!
Which is all to say I m so glad the feminist women of color bloggers have arrived.
Damn, they re good.
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