Dealing With Cretins

Feminism, while not easy in theory, in way easier in theory than in practice. In practice, you have to deal with cretins on a pretty much constant basis. These leads to dilemmas, like:

“How to I tell Uncle Willy to bugger off about my not changing my name?”

“How can I  deal with the guys who tell sexist  jokes?”

All of these dilemmas – there are tons more – are dilemmas because of some unspoken assumptions. One is, “I should educate them.” Another is, “I should be polite while doing it.”

Here’s a different way to deal with the  cretins. First of all, take a tip from a French saying and save your saliva when it comes to incorrigible cretins. When it comes to ones who may not be incorrigible, forget politeness. It’s Quiz Time:

“So, so-and-so, how many feminists can you name?”

“Hmm, interesting. Ever actually read, say, Gloria Steinem?”

The answers to these questions are always a) “Uhh…” b) “No” or c) ["smart"ass remark].

Your counter-response: a contemptuous pursing of the lips and something along the lines of “So, you actually have no idea what you’re talking about” or “figures.”

And there you go. Uncle Willy and dumbass acquaintances / co-workers will at least keep their mouths shut around you from now on.  And if every person takes this tack, eventually, they’ll have no-one to make their dumb remarks to.

The Burden of Knowledge

Does someone want to talk to you about how Sarah Palin is a feminist Role Model who just doesn’t fit feminist stereotypes?

Does someone want to whine about the massive sexism they thinks undermines boys’ achievement (it couldn’t possibly be macho ideals)?

Does someone want to carp at studying women’s literature and history?

Tell them that the burden of proof has been replaced with a burden of knowledge, and that burden’s on THEM.

Ask them to give some indication that they’re familiar with the word “feminist” beyond FOX and National Review’s pablumized vestigial memory of two things they read once about Betty Friedan.

See if they can name three feminist thinkers. That’s all, just three.

See if they can name two schools of feminist thought. That’s all, just two.

And then after the silence, tell them to shut the fuck up.

The Hook-Up Culture

Independent Women’s Forum loves to talk about hook-up culture and how it damages women. The latest essay on this subject is a representative entry: Kylie Harrell, Duke student, argues that casual sex takes an emotional toll on women because women produce a hormone during sex called oxytocin. This hormone produces a sense of bonding, which is why women feel “heartbroken” when their male partner doesn’t want to turn a one-night stand into a relationship. Conclusion? “There is a biological explanation for the way you feel and the way he doesn’t feel,” writes Harrell, but this truth is being obscured by a “radical feminist agenda.”

Interesting, but oxytocin also is associated with reduced stress – so, if women are heartbroken the morning after he doesn’t call, they should by the same token recover that much more quickly. (Or, hell, maybe women should just become lesbians / woman-identified women — but something tells New Feminist that that logical extension of Harrell’s argument would be classified as “radical feminism,” so it must be stupid).

Furthermore, focusing on some hormone ignores other explanations for these women’s sadness. Maybe they feel used because they were used, not because they’re chicks.

Men implicitly get a free pass in this article for the highly scientific reason that they’re dudes and dudes do dude stuff. Evidently the conservative-leaning IWF doesn’t believe in free will.

In short, Harrell’s, and the IWF’s, insistence on biologizing everything is questionable and one-sided.

However, having said all that, New Feminist actually agrees – sort of – with Harrell’s conclusion, though not her premises. Casual sex isn’t a good idea. The very definition of casual sex is sex without emotional attachment – that is, using another’s body to pleasure oneself. In a responsible situation, the using is mutual, a bargain struck – I’ll let you use mine if you let me use yours. But it is still using.

New Feminist isn’t a fan of people using people. To NF, this comes under the heading of objectification, which doesn’t get any better just because more people do it, or because people agree to it. If consent were all that mattered, then every battered woman who says, “Well, I was asking for it,” would thereby make her own situation A-OK.

Consent is not enough – objectification is not good. It’s a moral and feminist issue and biology is frankly irrelevant. Is it easier for men to use women and treat them as objects? Interesting, but they still shouldn’t do it. Is it harder for women to use men and treat them as objects? That’s nice, and they shouldn’t do it either. They also shouldn’t give men a free pass and blame their failure to feel good after getting entangled in patriarchy on their lady-hormones.

Against “Against the Theory of ‘Sexist Language’”

The word “sex” — clearly evocative of an unequivocal demarcation between men and women — has been replaced by the pale and neutral “gender,” and the words “man” and “he” — now avoided as if they were worse than obscenities — have been replaced by the neuter “person” and by grammatically confusing, cumbersome, or offensive variants of “he/she” or “she” alone as the pronoun of general reference.

Since it was never even remotely in doubt that when used as a general referent, the male pronoun included females, this change was never designed to prevent confusion. The change has, on the contrary, often created confusion. Its purpose is solely ideological.

–F. Carolyn Graglia, Domestic Tranquility, A Brief Against Feminism, Spence Publishing Company, Dallas, 1998, p.154

I, for one, want to be free to refer to “the brotherhood of man” without being corrected by the language police. I want to decide for myself whether I should be called a chairman, a chairwoman, or a chairperson (I am not a chair). I want to see My Fair Lady and laugh when Professor Higgins sings, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” As a writer, I want to know that I am free to use the words and images of my choosing.

Diane Ravitch, The Language Police, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, p.169

These two quotations open Kelley Ross’s essay “Against the Theory of Sexist Language.” She then goes on to make her argument, which is essentially this:

• feminists say that language is sexist because men are more “marked,” that is, men are treated as if they have real qualities and women are treated as if they lack those qualities
• but really languages – Chinese, Spanish, English, what-have-you – treat women as more “marked.”
• Therefore language is not sexist.

Not to be unintellectual, but – what a dumb argument. It’s like the woman has never heard of logic. If she had, she would have known that the correct conclusion to her major and minor premises is that some feminists are wrong. Some. The idea that there’s no such of thing as sexism in language is not actually tackled in this essay, except in its conclusions, in part because there’s no acknowledgement of the possibility that treating women as “markedly” Other could be sexist. It’s not surprising, then, that Rogers is a fan of Christina Hoff Sommers, who “encouraged” this essay; Sommersian “argument,” too, relies heavily on cherry-picking, straw men, and patter.

Let’s go back to those quotations for a second. Graglia is ignorant; if she knew her history, she would know that the generic he was deliberately chosen over the previously-used “they,” which was both singular and plural just as “sheep” still is, and that the generic he was officially chosen by Parliament in the mid-19th century for legal documents precisely because its referent was not clear without a bill to spell out its referent. Go read a book, Graglia, instead of making history up.

Ravitch, as you in your ingenuousness goddam well know, you’re “free” to do whatever dumbass thing you want to. As the late, great Richard Mitchell once said, “You can grab a football and run to Oshkosh any time you please; you just won’t be playing football.” Don’t pretend that freedom of expression equals intelligence of expression, or that your views should be treated, a priori, as unassailable.

It is in these unintelligent quotations that the real thrust of Ross’s argument lies, despite the razzle-dazzle of Chinese characters. The essay is designed to seem learned and calm and rational in contrast to the forceful git’er done tone of the quotations, but the very choice of those quotations reveals Ross’s emotional base for the rationalizations she trots out.

Speaking of Chinese characters, Ross forgot to mention a few: the character for discord is two women (you know chicks; always catty and squabbling). The character for good is a woman with a child (get thee to a pregnant state!). The character for peace is a woman under a roof (just stay in your place; women outside the home = trouble).

But I think we can all agree that despite these minor little flaws Ross has really made a valid, impressive, learned contribution: there’s totally no sexism in any language, ever, until those ugly, shrieky, ignorant feminists dreamed it up.

Hate Feminists? You’re Gay.

A segment of the web-world loves to jabber about how dumb feminists are. Occasionally they decide to search for like-minded others, and then they somehow find this site, not realizing that the words “stupidity” and “feminism” can come up in more than one context.

These men hate women so much, and make such a point of talking about how ugly they are. Just admit it, fellas – it’s OK – you’re gay. You’re not comfortable with being gay. You can’t get a date with a woman. You’re not attracted to them. So you bitch constantly about how it’s all women’s fault and feminism’s fault instead of just admitting that women don’t do it for you. You’re gay.

Have an opinion? Leave a comment.

Christianity and Feminism, Part 2

Let’s re-state the stakes: Christianity is the West a powerful force. It is often a force antithetical to full equality of women with men. Lamenting that is useless; trying to ignore, change, or breed contempt for Christianity is also useless and often counter-productive. Feminists, whatever their beliefs, should hunker down and pay attention, not to the weeds of inequality, but to one of the big roots: stupid interpretations of the Bible. -This series, then, is not so much meant to delve into the details of each argument -of which there are very, very many – but to give feminists some knowledge of debates that influence feminism’s progress, but which feminists don’t usually talk about.

In Part 1, we looked briefly at Phoebe, the woman minister that Paul spoke of with approval. Little attempts to shrug this off by huffing that Paul does not “use diakonos in conjunction with words which connote greatness or divinity” (Silent Women), as if not being maybe the world’s greatest minister meant that one isn’t a minister at all, are patently stupid and self-serving.

In Part 2, New Feminist takes on the famous dictum of Paul that women shouldn’t teach, or speak in church. How can these two statements be reconciled with each other, and how can the second be reconciled with Paul’s firm statement that there is “neither woman nor man … you are all one in Christ”?

Craig Keener in Paul, Women, and Wives -among others – argues that Paul’s concern was over women’s ignorance; not being allowed access to the Torah (if Jewish) or to read at all (if, well, alive back then), women were hardly equipped to talk without interrupting the service, let alone teach. In other words, Paul is talking about how to handle a local situation – the man is writing a letter, after all, not a gospel. This fact does raise a problem for some, however: “If this … was what Paul was referring to, who could imagine that Paul would not choose words that would allow us to know what he really meant?” (Silent Women). (Yes, it is puzzling that Paul expected us to be able to think … in retrospect, Paul’s biggest mistake.) As Keener points out, the clue here is in the fact that after Paul says that women should not talk in church, he adds that they should learn the answers to their questions at home. In other words – learning about scriptural matters is A-OK for women; the problem here is not women meddling in scripture, but women’s ignorance, an ignorance that can and should be remedied.

Let’s just lay it on the line: Paul’s statement that women shouldn’t teach is explainable (see also some arguments based on the Greek text) – his bald, casual, unconcerned mention of a woman minister isn’t.

Further, drawing the line between teaching and talking is fine work indeed. The most Bible-thumping of hearts positively dotes on the sight of women teaching impressionable little children about the Bible, as Elaine Storkey points out. Women teaching women … women penning and singing Christian songs, whcih inevitably have a theological bent … women missionaries … all, somehow, just fine with everybody.

Lucy Maud Montgomery has a charming story called “The Strike at Putney” in the collection Against the Odds in which the women of a church invite a noted missionary to speak. The men forbid it as “being in direction contravention to the teachings of St. Paul.” The women strike, and when asked why they won’t cook for the church, clean it, etc., they simply reply, “If a woman isn’t good enough to speak in a church, she isn’t good enought to work for it either.”

Next up: NF will take on the idea that women can’t be ministers because they weren’t disciples.

The Problem With Politics Today

…is that too many people treat the vote as an expression of their individuality. When they vote at all.

America is filled with people who idolize self-expression. Liberal hippies (mostly educators) openly worship at the shrine of self-esteem, and conservative Statler & Waldorfs pretend they despise self-expression while valuing it just as much, only in their minds expression of a different self isn’t self-expression but something more noble/less hippie-sounding: character, maybe.

So we have the current situation: Obama has a slew of giddy, largely uninformed followers, many of whom (even the informed ones) can’t speak of him without emitting verbal jizz. McCain had a peck of desultory followers who are now energized by the addition of Sarah Palin, whose presence on the ticket finally allows them to vote, not for McCain the candidate, but for McCain / Palin, Political Symbol (thus shewing that Republicans themselves don’t like to vote on their supposedly most precious issues, like Taxes and Big Government). McCain / Palin gets to be a symbol, not of boring ol’ facts, but of self-expression:

“She’s married – gosh, I am too and I know a lot of people who are and damn it, we’re proud of our avant-garde defense of what practically everyone does!”

“He’s really a maverick – boy, so am I! It takes a maverick to defend creationism, which is what I do mentally all the time!”

Barack Obama may well have lost the election because his campaign has only one symbolic value: Change. During the primaries, when liberals were voting, such a vague ideal was perfect, because Change was associated with No More War. Now that a broader base of America is voting, the symbols need to be stronger. McCain / Palin is able to be a symbol to many people of many things: Honesty in Men, Hotness in Women, Giving the Bird to Authority, (One) Religion for All. These are popular values, and the Obama campaign, now on the defensive, needs to come up with something equally powerful. Restoring America’s Standing in the Collective Mind of Foreign Powers isn’t it. “Not Bush” may be.

Hopefully, Obama will win, if only for this reason: to avoid White House support for the extended teaching of creationism, under the justification that all ideas are equally valid and what you choose to believe is OK, because it’s just an expression of you.

Not a women’s libber? You’re dumb.

Loved your speech during the announcement. I’m a mother of 6 and you go girl!! I am not a woman’s libber at all. Infact, I blame women libber’s for me having to work outside of the home! I think it should be a choice not mandatory! I’m a realtor…wanna buy a house in CA, they are all on sale right now!
Tami Turner Anderson (Sacramento, CA)
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Sarah Palin, VP

Shooting fish in a barrel, you say? No – New Feminist is not planning a critique of such sentiments (or whatever baby version of critique would be applicable here), no matter how temptingly expressed. Instead, NF will simply use the above quotation as a springboard to point out something that should be obvious, but obviously isn’t. Here it is:

Feminism likes housewives.

There.

The media has too long cherry-picked from the roster of feminist thinkers and presented to the world only those feminists who either don’t like housewives or (more likely) can be twisted into seeming like they don’t like housewives.

In fact, if people were to actually read feminists instead of just shooting off their mouth about them, they would discover that feminists like Germaine Greer and Gerda Lerner discuss the value of the work that women do inside the home, argue for a greater appreciation of the value of that work, and warn against women buying into the idea that “equality” means being more like men.

Every nincompoop woman who bows daily before an internal shrine to Donna Reed should remember that “women’s libbers” got women every right they didn’t have a hundred years ago AND demanded that the old roles be valued even more than they are. And then they should go read a fucking book.