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Feminism 101

  
  

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Aertho
14:42 / 01.03.06
DM is not hir sense of humor.
 
 
alas
14:48 / 01.03.06
I, for one, am glad you came back to this Celane, and I think your last post rocks.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:00 / 01.03.06
I'm sorry. It's cheap and unworthy, but:

I'm currently "girlfriend-less"

No shit.
 
 
illmatic
15:02 / 01.03.06
I share some of Alas's exsaperation with Dead Megatron, not just for his comments in this thread but elsewhere on the board. However, rather than rot this thread, I'm going to PM him about it, and have a sensible discussion.

So could people avoid flaming him or so forth in the time being.

Dude, expect a PM.
 
 
Spaniel
15:04 / 01.03.06
these fora are accepted as a primarily male-identified bastion, and posters who choose to identify themselves as other than the dominant group are basically choosing to wear a little badge that says, "Look, I'm weird!"

Celane, I think there's something in this but I think we also need to avoid homogenising the male-identified contingent and keep in mind that 'lithers, at least in my experience, approach masculinity in a variety of ways. We also shouldn't neglect the board's small but vocal trans community.

In addition, I think it's not unreasonable to view the 'lith through the prism of sexuality. Barbelith has many members that identify as homo and bi sexual, and many that, whilst not adopting those terms, recognise that they fall somewhere outside of the sexual norm. To me it seems that this diversity opens up other possibilities for identification beyond gender.

Just some thoughts. I'm not very good with this stuff.
 
 
*
15:09 / 01.03.06
Dead Megatron— alas stated that, IF IN FACT you have had intercourse with a woman without having any idea if the experience was demeaning to her, THEN you MAY HAVE participated in an activity akin to rape— by which I assumed that the implication was that either you have a better understanding of whether sex is inherently demeaning to women than you previously imagined, or you have engaged in activity that places you in a position where you could rape someone without intending to. In your recent post, you asserted the former— that you have a better understanding of whether sex is a demeaning experience, at least to your partners, than you let on in your query. If true, then it is less likely that you have committed rape unintentionally. But you cannot justifiably get angry at alas for suggesting that, if a certain premise held true which you allowed as a given (i.e., that you did not know if the sex you have previously had with your female partners was demeaning to them), THEN you might have committed a rape, on the grounds that the premise is not true in the first place. Okay?

If she had said "Based on your asking that question I know you have committed rape," then your response might be more justifiable. In the meantime, you're providing a great example of the irrational behavior which men often exhibit when we're accused of improper behavior toward women. Which is not to say that I wouldn't have reacted the same way, because seeing the words on a page "you may well have committed rape" is just a fucking scary experience. It's scary for me to write it. But it's also scary to me to contemplate that you might have engaged in sex with women which you assert they enjoyed without ever knowing whether they were instead/also demeaned or degraded by the experience. I know now that that was just a hypothetical premise designed to get people to answer what turned out to be a rhetorical question, but for awhile it was quite shocking.

So I'd suggest in the future with matters that serious that you not pretend to be lacking knowledge or personal experience that you in fact have, in order to make a point.
 
 
*
15:11 / 01.03.06
Sorry, Ill— cross-posted. Although I hope that won't be seen as a flame.

Boboss— I agree but I want to be careful to avoid conclusions like "I can't be sexist. I'm GAY!" and "I can't be sexist. I'm TRANS!"
 
 
Sekhmet
15:11 / 01.03.06
You know, there is something that strikes me as very strange in the way we as a board are reacting to DM.

Agreed. The impression I got from his initial post was that he had read the line about intercourse and rape, was thrown off-balance by the concept, got confused, and responded with an incredulous "Huh, what? Somebody help me" question.

I do understand what alas was driving at - largely due to the subsequent discussion thereof - but I think she may well have mistaken the tone of his post.

By the same token, DM, you really should read the rest of the thread and reconsider your reaction above.

Let's all take a deep breath and try not to lash out at each other. This is a sensitive issue, obviously, but surely we're cabable of having a civil discussion.
 
 
Spaniel
15:11 / 01.03.06
It's amazing how people forget to read qualifiers and suchlike, isn't it?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
15:13 / 01.03.06
I don't think that was flaming, id. Flaming is shouting "Alas, FUCK YOU!"
 
 
Sekhmet
15:15 / 01.03.06
Crossposts ahoy. Is this the fastest-moving thread in the history of Barbelith?
 
 
Spaniel
15:15 / 01.03.06
I agree but I want to be careful to avoid conclusions like "I can't be sexist. I'm GAY!" and "I can't be sexist. I'm TRANS!"

Deffo. I just wanted to draw Celane's attention to some stuff I thought she was missing.

By the way, Celane, I really hope you carry on contributing to the board.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:23 / 01.03.06
Indeed. Personally, I think the "oddness" in the reaction might, even for those who have engaged with DM elsehwere, be explained by the fact that he is still talking about Dworkin with relation to the idea that "all (penetrative) sex is rape", an idea which very fucking early on had been identified as not Dworkin's and, for that matter, not feminist. He's not really paying attention to the detail of the discussion, which when the discussion is about something as potentially emotive as rape seems like a sign that the board is being used, as mentioned before, as a receptacle for whatever thought happens to be spurted out in response to the odd stimulus here or there. Again, with difficult or emotive subjects this is not really permissible behaviour, especially if you're going to use these odd stimuli aas the basis for an abusive tirade.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:26 / 01.03.06
Fantastic post, Celane.

And form me, you've captured some stuff that I have been trying to articulate.

The distinction between discrete, visible cases of mysogynistic speech and tendencies/attitudes, which are far less tangible, is a very useful one here.

This is not to say that these two phenomena are not connected, of course they are, but it's more about identification, response and change.

Barbelith does ok, in my opinion at responding to explicit statements with mysogynistic content. Could do better, could do worse.

Wbat I think Barbelith fails abysmally at, at times, is recognising and analysising tendencies in its own culture. Which are much harder to provide specific examples of.

I'd agree with statements made already about how there is a devaluing of female-identified posters.

I also take very seriously statments that have been made here and elsewhere to the effect that we are losing prominent female posters, or that female-identified posters, having arrived, then leave pretty quickly.

It is very difficult to pinpoint tendencies in culture, and I would ask that people who are feeling threatened by this try to remember that because it's not easy to demonstrate, it can be pretty difficult to decide to raise this issue at all.

But, having a number of long-standing posters explictly state that they feel that there is an issue here to be discussed, would, I hope, convince people to at least attempt to give some space for that discussion/credit to the feelings being expressed. And credit to the fact that it takes guts and determination and time (this has taken me a good ) and energy to make these statements, and we do it because we care about and want to participate in this community. Not to carp.

Far easier/less stressful in fact to just walk away.

Got stuff to do but will be back to try and be clearer on this.
 
 
Sekhmet
15:28 / 01.03.06
True 'nuff. Careful and thorough reading of the discussion, and perhaps a few minutes' thought before hitting "post", would be advisable for all concerned, methinks.
 
 
Dead Megatron
15:31 / 01.03.06
I don't think that was flaming, id. Flaming is shouting "Alas, FUCK YOU!"

I did over-reacted a bit there. I apologise. It's just that I always made a point of being respectful to women in my life, including during sex, and it really offended me that posting a question would prompt so much assumptions about my character and I lost my coll.

Alas, i'm sorry for the outburst

But, if I did engage in activities that were demeaning to women, they were in no way forced into it. In fact, they never expressed any sentiment in that direction. They never said to me "stop, I'm not enjoyning this". They did say on ocasion "I don't like this,let's not do it", to which I always complied. What is, after all, the definition of "rape" that's being used here?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
15:33 / 01.03.06
Have you read every word in every post in the entire thread yet, DM?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:33 / 01.03.06
Very true, GGM - in fact, I think I'd like to see a Policy thread on just that kind of cultural tendency when dealing in particular with female-identified posters. I agree entirely that picking people up if they say "bitch" is good (although, again, nobody has ever been banned for it), but it's not necessarily complete.

There may be other reasons for female-identified posters to leave, including possibly differences in how women and men use the Internet, but that's just a hypothesis, and not one I have the knowledge of bulletin boards to exemplify.
 
 
Dead Megatron
15:34 / 01.03.06
Indeed. Personally, I think the "oddness" in the reaction might, even for those who have engaged with DM elsehwere, be explained by the fact that he is still talking about Dworkin with relation to the idea that "all (penetrative) sex is rape", an idea which very fucking early on had been identified as not Dworkin's and, for that matter, not feminist.

When I started writing the question, the post which stated the idea was not Dworkin's had not been posted yet (this thread is going really fast), so it seemed like I was not reading the thread. But that's not so.
 
 
Sekhmet
15:36 / 01.03.06
I have heard from female-identified posters that they have stopped or decreased their participation in Barbelith for precisely this reason. I think Nina can vouch for that as well.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
15:39 / 01.03.06
Sexual activities where one party does not consent to the activity (including where one party is coerced into the activity by physical or emotional abuse, even if they have also given some form of consent. Consent itself must be willing to be meaningful). Is that a start at least?

I think the rape issue is not central to the essential discussion about misogyny and sexism on Barbelith... though clearly it is a central aspect of misogyny and must be a part of any discussion of misogyny. DM, people have repeatedly said in this thread that the idea that [some feminists think that] all penetrative sex is rape/demeaning to women is false. That's why your question provoked the response it did - it was a question reacting to a straw man.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:42 / 01.03.06
Hello again, DM. While you're reading every post in this thread, have a think about this part of your tirade:

How dare I make a question about feminism

In light of the fact, as was pointed out to you, that nobody had identified the idea of all (penetrative) sex being rape as a feminist issue, as was explained to you earlier. As such, is it not the case that you read a few words, and then responded to them without really thinking about the context, having made up in your head the connective tissue to allow you to get involved in the thread without actually reading it?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
15:44 / 01.03.06
x-post above with several others, sorry. Just wanted to add that I am mulling over what I think about this issue and will return when I do know. I haven't experienced any misogyny (latent or otherwise) directed at me that I can think of, but haven't been very engaged with the board lately, so comments might not be of much immediate relevance...
 
 
*
15:47 / 01.03.06
I'm starting a new thread on rape in the conversation. As per Nina's request, let's please hold off on discussing that here.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:52 / 01.03.06
When I started writing the question, the post which stated the idea was not Dworkin's had not been posted yet (this thread is going really fast), so it seemed like I was not reading the thread. But that's not so.

Right. You wrote, as part of your attack on alas, in an imaginary conversation with your ex-girlfriend:

Me: Just asking, y'know. By the way, have you ever read something from Dworkin?


At that point, you are still associating the idea with Dworkin. By that point, since you have clearly read Alas' posts, which were posted after the Dworkin connection had been debunked, you should if you were reading the thread with any attention have noticed that.

Now, can we for God's sake stop talking about your winkie? In fact, can you stop talking completely, until you have actually read the thread, by a value of "read' not meaning "skimmed for mention of your own name or the word "winkie"? Cheers.
 
 
Isadore
15:52 / 01.03.06
Deffo. I just wanted to draw Celane's attention to some stuff I thought she was missing.

Certainly 'men' is no more a monolithic entity than 'women', and if I said that somewhere I gleefully retract. However, I do feel that the average male-identifying -- or, from what I've seen, neutral or trans-identifying -- poster is more apt to be perceived as an individual, whereas a female-identifying poster tends to get put in the 'WOMAN!' barrel of crabs. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, however.

Also, sexuality identifiers are indeed another way of categorizing the boards (although personally I fail to see where categorizing and generalizations do much good), but I find them more or less irrelevant to this discussion, which would be why I didn't discuss them. If anything, I would prefer fewer generalizations, not more. Such things as gender and sexuality belong to the realm of individual experience, not, well, barrels for others.
 
 
matthew.
15:53 / 01.03.06
So after sleeping on this for awhile, I have returned. First of all, I apologize for my... rants and crazed mutterings from earlier.

In terms of misogyny on Barbelith, I think one has to question what we mean by that. Is there a level of misogyny, ie hatred of women, that is so intolerable, that many female posters are leaving? Or is there simply a level of inconsiderate posting? By that I mean, instead of saying that certain posters are misogynistic and the board tolerates it, perhaps we should say that there are certain posters who are being completely inconsiderate of other people, other genders, other sexualities. Being rude and ignorant of women is not misogyny. Or am I mistaken here?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:00 / 01.03.06
Celane:

However, I do feel that the average male-identifying -- or, from what I've seen, neutral or trans-identifying -- poster is more apt to be perceived as an individual, whereas a female-identifying poster tends to get put in the 'WOMAN!' barrel of crabs. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, however.

Hmmm. I think a problem right now is that there is no real way to identify wrongness on this one, because the perception of barrelment is also going to be subjective. I'd like for that reason to see a place, probably a thread in the Policy, where over a length of time female-identifying posters could share perceptions and discuss what seems to them to be oppressive but unchallenged about treatment of women on Barbelith.
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
16:04 / 01.03.06
It's just that I always made a point of being respectful to women in my life

I think that sentance speaks volumes really about a problem at the greyer end of the scale of misogyny that is difficult to deal with. One of the issues that I have with the definition of "hating women" is that it is a very strong definition that is hard to perceive as encompassing the above.

If you're making a point of doing something for women then you aren't treating them equally. It is just as discriminatory to put someone on a pedestal as it is to chain them to the oven for reasons they cannot control.

And just to clarify, I'm not condeming you and criticism isn't always a bad thing.
 
 
Spaniel
16:07 / 01.03.06
Celane, I think there might be a failure of communication here.

I wasn't attempting to categorise anyone, or make generalisations (I don't think). I was trying to suggest that there might be other productive ways for you to view the board than through the lens of gender. And I was trying to point out that Barbelith does, at least in my experience, accept, and even encourage, a degree of difference.

I'm not actually sure that I'm making any worthwhile points so I think I'm going to shut up for the minute.
 
 
iconoplast
16:07 / 01.03.06
If making innapropriate, demeaning and disparaging jokes is seen as homophobic (which it, rightly I believe, is) then being rude and ignorant of women is misogyny.

It's odd. If I hit someone inadvertently with the paper ball I was trying to get in the trash, I say I'm sorry. But if I inadvertently injure someone with my speech, I'm much more tempted to say that they've no right to be so angry as I didn't mean it that way.

Similarly - if someone says 'Psst. Your fly is unzipped', my first instinct - before I even look down - is to cringe. Because obviously that other person's in a much better position to notice. But when someone says 'Psst. You are inadvertently perpetuating the heteronormative patriarchy,' my first reaction is more along the lines of 'Nuh-uh!'. Despite the fact that the other person, observing only my speech and not the way what I said came from what I thought and what those words mean in my private language, is WAY better equipped to tell me what what I just said actually means in the world outside my head.
 
 
ibis the being
16:07 / 01.03.06
Celane, I enjoyed your last post as well and I hope you will post more often in the future.

Also, I'm enjoying this whole thread quite a bit. I think this is the most time I've spent on Barbelith since, amusingly enough, Dilemma Dilemma OMFG Dilemma.

I don't understand why there are calls being made for everyone to back down wrt DM's posts in this thread. I can understand why discussions about rape are best left to a separate thread... but this idea that we should now leave DM alone strikes me as a perfect example of how Barbelith tolerates misogyny more than it tolerates other prejudices. Any time a poster is taken to task for an implied sexist or misogynist opinion or attitude, there is a swift backlash that urges people not to pile on, please (and often, he didn't really know/understand what he was saying). Yet in other matters, pilings-on are more generally accepted as fair treatment for assholery (See: Hawksmoor). Why this discrepancy?

I personally find it difficult to let DM's recent post go without at least pointing out that nearly every sentence shows a misogynistic attitude. I feel a little "shushed" by the exhortations to leave him alone.

Well, from the bottom of my heart, Alas, FUCK YOU! Just because I made a question about a concept that seemed wrong in my experience, you assume I'm the kind of guy that just goes around grabbing women by their hair, dragging them to my cave and have intercourse with them withour even asking them if "it was good for you"?

I suppose we don't have to delve once again into the subject of what rape is since we've already established that DM has not even bothered to read the whole thread. Interesting, though, how nicely DM illustrates the way any insinuation that someone has presented a sexist or misogynist attitude is so often met with the counterargument "You are a crazy, overreacting, man-hating bitch/lunatic!"

FUCK YOU! I do ask what they enjoy, and I do my best to satisfy them. I made the question because the concept

This would of course be the fictional concept of all sex is rape.

seemed to alien to me, and the women I had sex with not only did not expressed any distaste for intercourse, but they actually sought it out actively.

Wow, they actually actively sought sex? I didn't know women did that!

I saw the [again, fictional and mythical] "intercourse a rape" line and it sound so very strange to me I just had to ask if there was something on it. I'm currently "girlfriend-less", so I had no one to ask in person,

So the only female role in your life's cast of characters is as girlfriend? You don't know any other women? How odd. Do you find women have any other social use than as romantic or sexual partners then?

I redirected the question here. But I should know better by now, shouldn't I? How dare I not to just roll over and play dead?

Ah yes, because if you argue with a crazy man-hating bitch/lunatic, she's going to rip your head off in her insane man-hating rage, so best play possum and keep quiet like all the smart husbands do with their crazy hormonal wives.

How dare I make a question about feminism (and any possible ["possible" being code, of course, for totally imagined by the man-hater] derogatory opinion about men and heterosexual sex intercourse some possible undergroung radical part of the feminist movement) in a thread called Feminism 101?

... you stupid, irrational, illogical, emotional, crazy man-hating bitch/lunatic!
 
 
Dead Megatron
16:40 / 01.03.06
ok, I already apologise for my over-reaction, but since people is still talking about it:




When I started writing the question, the post which stated the idea was not Dworkin's had not been posted yet (this thread is going really fast), so it seemed like I was not reading the thread. But that's not so.

Right. You wrote, as part of your attack on alas, in an imaginary conversation with your ex-girlfriend:

Me: Just asking, y'know. By the way, have you ever read something from Dworkin?


At that point, you are still associating the idea with Dworkin

No, I was just being intentionally sarcastic with that last line. And, up there, I was refering to my initial post, way back in page 1 and the Dowrkin interview posted a little above it, that had not been posted when I started writing the question. My reaction to Alas's post was entirely emotional, and I apologise to her.

And it was not that she implied that I was mysoginist. That I can live with, maybe even agree and change my ways. Her exact words were

Dead Megatron: If you have never asked a woman you have actually had sex with what she enjoys, what she would like, how she likes to be touched, then you may very well have raped someone.

That last line is what made me loose it. I'll say it right here and now: I did not. And do ask whatr would they like, how they like to be touched.

Can we finish this now?
 
 
Dead Megatron
16:45 / 01.03.06
one last thing:

So the only female role in your life's cast of characters is as girlfriend? You don't know any other women? How odd. Do you find women have any other social use than as romantic or sexual partners then?

Now, you're just twisting my words. No, I have a mother, a sister, more female friends than male. None of them were accessible at the time.
 
 
*
17:02 / 01.03.06
DM: I think I see a major part of the problem here. It's an IF-THEN statement. IF you are made of cake, THEN it's possible that you may be eaten. Assuming that the IF part of that statement is not true, the THEN part of that statement is not assumed to be true.

If I say IF you are made of cake, THEN you may be eaten, and you angrily respond "How DARE you say it's okay to eat me! I'm NOT made of cake!" you have misinterpreted the IF-THEN nature of the statement. All you had to do was say "I'm not made of cake." In the absence of proof to the contrary, I think so far as this message board goes, people will take you at your word.

In addition, the reaction fails to consider that even the THEN part of the statement is conditional. alas says "you may well have" meaning IT IS POSSIBLE. This is not the same as saying "You HAVE" without the "may well." So, for example, even if you are in fact made of cake (the IF clause is true) there are circumstances under which you may still not be eaten (it's arsenic cake, or you're made of crap fruitcake which no one likes, for instance).

(No offense is intended to persons made of cake. I hope I have not offended by using your situation as an example.)
 
  

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