Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

Also I agree being socialized to be "nice" has seldom done me any favors.

http://www.lds.org/images/Magazines/NewEra/Archive/neweralp.nfo:o:167b.jpg

Jesus wasn't always "nice," Mormonad! They certainly don't teach women to talk to people like he did.

Nice work Mormonad stealing one of the fundamental tenets of Rave!

Big fish, little fish, cardboard box (containing five loaves)

(no bad reason to link this song tbh)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPvsHo4NPNo

(er, except possibly on this thread - Scooter's video makers are not necc. widely read on feminist theory)

i agree with being good, in a social-justice sense of the term, rather than "nice," but at the same time I can see where that might, and historically has, lead to serious trouble that has to do with definitions of good re: morality, politics, religion, class, the usual power issues of who decides what's right and what's wrong, what's "good." but obv the writer makes tonnes of sense.

also the Gavin De Becker book about fear is really freakin interesting and has actually affected me on a day-to-day level even though i have only read a few chapters and excerpts online and in a store. for me this has mostly been about listening to my intuition, the gut feeling that isn't general anxiety but is actually prickly-feeling instinct, even if it isn't outright fear in all cases - steers me right.

liked that SJL piece, especially the points it makes about the difference between giving offense and oppressing

this is a little ott ('ambivalence. indecision. fear.') but i've no doubt that it is a thing and i'm curious about ppl's thoughts on the matter

when motherhood never happens

ugh

^^pretty much

that article gets written every five minutes, btw. see susan faludi, backlash.

i think the only fear i have about not having kids and not wanting kids and pretty soon being physically unable to have kids is that a future potential partner might want them, and it would ruin the relationship, but there are so many other potential dealbreakers in life it doesn't bother me much.

Can't believe everyone ignored Fizzles' post, guess it's too late to help now?

was a good post, and i read it at the time but had no idea what to say in response. i don't know much about such documentation, employee management, or the differences between US & UK office culture. also, it seems to me that "low-level tolerance" is what makes workplace life bearable, more or less, so i figured i should probably keep my mouth shut

off-topic but I dunno where else to post this... my 4yo daughter's been in nursery school for the past year, and seeing some of her classmate's decisions about their gender identity and how the adults have handled them has been pretty interesting. there's one kid who (not sure what nouns are appropriate here, forgive me) was born a boy but identifies as a girl - wears girl's clothes, wants to be called a "girl-boy", etc. Everybody's cool with this, altho my daughter was a little startled when he/she hiked up his dress and peed standing up like any other boy would. Another boy who has apparently professed to like other boys and is, I guess, identifying as gay (altho I dunno if he knows that term, specifically).

On the one hand it's interesting to see how deeply rooted these things are early on - on the other hand, toddlers say all sorts of random shit about themselves so I kinda wonder sometimes if the parents' are taking some of these things too seriously/bending over backwards to be sensitive. We shall see, I guess.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2012/5/12/1336836377234/Graphic-008.jpg

Guardian covers 'The Second Sexism'

also the Gavin De Becker book about fear is really freakin interesting and has actually affected me on a day-to-day level even though i have only read a few chapters and excerpts online and in a store. for me this has mostly been about listening to my intuition, the gut feeling that isn't general anxiety but is actually prickly-feeling instinct, even if it isn't outright fear in all cases - steers me right.

OTM – I read this book last week and it has a ton of very good advice. It's also a really gripping read. I'd recommend it to anyone. It strips away all the socialization to be "nice" when being clear about boundaries. In the chapter called "I Was Trying To Let Him Down Easy," he says this:

Let's imagine a woman has let pass several opportunities to pursue a relationship with a suitor. Every hint, response, action, and inaction has communicated she is not interested. If the man still pursues at this point, though it will doubtless appear harsh to some, it is time for an unconditional and explicit rejection. Because i know that few American men have heard it, and few American women have spoken it, here is what an unconditional and explicit rejection sounds like:

"No matter what you have assumed until now, and no matter what reason you assumed it, I have no romantic interest in you whatsoever. I am certain I never will. I expect that knowing this, you'll put your attention elsewhere, which I understand, because that's what I intend to do."

There is only one appropriate reaction to this: acceptance.

Can't believe everyone ignored Fizzles' post, guess it's too late to help now?

― Also unknown as Zora (Surfing At Work), Friday, May 11, 2012 2:52 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

Actually it is! But for complicated reasons not worth going into here. I did wonder whether I'd made some colossal error of judgment posting it when things went a bit quiet. In terms of 'help' - wd say I consider this thread and related ones are helpful anyway, critiquing a lot of assumptions and structures that cause things to stay the same, but which aren't seen because they are too big, seem to many to be 'just the way things are'.

contenderizer - agree with you about low-level tolerance being important in an office. shd perhaps clarify I meant low-level tolerance of minor humiliations, minor reinforcements of male or male-centric office power, acceptance rather than zero tolerance of behaviour that is bullying or designed to put a person (any person really) in their place. All of which leads to a continuation of how things are, and also discourages people from speaking out (seen as weird/troublemakers). Never sure how far to take this - do we really want what might be considered a heavily policed workplace? My feeling, these days anyway, is yes - cos it's not really policing, it's a detailed redressing of all the minor bits of behaviour that constitute inequality. To codify that behaviour is in a way also designed to let men know what is and isn't appropriate - can help prevent such behaviour even before it starts. Also, in general the worst offenders are massive arseholes, so, y'know, deserve all the kicking you can deliver imo.

I always liked it when I explicitly told someone wasn't interested. Why waste your time and energy? I never read this as not being nice, fwiw.

heartless jerk, Michael White lol

The difficulty in telling a guy "I'm not into you that way" is usually more related to Nice Guy syndrome than "being nice" imo.

On the one hand it's interesting to see how deeply rooted these things are early on - on the other hand, toddlers say all sorts of random shit about themselves so I kinda wonder sometimes if the parents' are taking some of these things too seriously/bending over backwards to be sensitive. We shall see, I guess.

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, May 11, 2012 11:54 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah, it's not like homosexuality or trans* identities are so rare, and these things are often known as early as pre-school or sooner. there's a chance these kids are just having imaginations and they'll spend their teenage years angry at their parents for encouraging it, but probably not, and that's probably a much better outcome than the potential trauma of not their being allowed to identify the way they want as soon as they start to understand their identity. i'm all for modern parents being stricter with their kids but if we lived in a more decent culture this kind of thing wouldn't be seen as overly "sensitive" it would just be an acceptable standard not worthy of extra attention.

totally agree about the odds. And personally I don't think it actually IS worthy of extra attention - if that's how your kid wants to grow up, hey great! Good for them and it makes no difference to me really. So when parents break down crying about how wonderful our co-op is for being so accepting of a gay nursery schooler I sorta roll my eyes - any parent that isn't accepting of a kid's identity is just being a busybody jerk.

On a related note, been reading this lately. Has some worthwhile and possibly relevant points:

http://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Please-Revolutionary-Practices-Chronically/dp/1402206526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337031800&sr=8-1

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514t6D6URvL.jpg

before there was mansplaining, there was http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/

Wow, that piece has been popping up all over the place recently, Mother Jones has picked it up so it's got beyond the usual sort of feministosphere. I mean, it's obviously a good thing that needs to be said, so it's fine to revive something from several years ago if it's still relevant - which obviously that piece still is.

It does make me think the revival is quite timely - at a point where several high-profile men, recently, have been been determined to mansplain all over pregnancy, rape, and such issues. We need to re-name and re-examine that thing, that process.

comments are predictably infuriating

They do not all have your natural facility with mansplanation.

le sigh

http://lindsayzoladz.tumblr.com/post/29966963774/dont-blame-us-four-women-talk-about-why-they-didnt

i love that solnit article so much (and the muybridge book is great too)

spent about an hour total mentioning to dudes on another site that bickering about how the word "mansplaining" rubs them the wrong way had nothing to do with the essay, especially since that word is never used. also, said that men explaining how the author could have written a better essay was not a good look and a relatively irony-naive thing to do. then gracefully left, forevermore, so actual female commenters could say things much more relevant.

a relatively irony-naive thing to do

haha!

I thought this was an interesting discussion of the word "mansplain," if maybe a little (justifiably) pedantic: http://www.xojane.com/issues/why-you-ll-never-hear-me-use-term-mansplain

yeah, good read

http://therumpus.net/2012/08/explicit-violence/ <--read this, thread

this might be my favorite thread right now

*nods*

Shulamith Firestone, author of 'The Dialectic Of Sex' passes away.

So sad.

dialectic of sex throws some weird curveballs in the direction of race/sex intersectionality and her work definitely necessitates a cohambee river collective response, but its a pretty shocking achievement for a 25 year old painting student. i really want to see this btw: http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/shulie

I was looking for the RIP thread to post the same link. I only know her through a history of feminism I read a few years back, but remembered the name. What I found so sad was the juxtaposition of that photo right next to the details of her death.

the Rumpus piece is really something.

RIP Shulamith Firestone, you were a fucking wonder.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/09/10/natural_parenting_the_same_old_sexism_dressed_up_in_fancy_new_clothes_.html

what say you?

Breast-feeding is good for babies, but it's becoming clear that its become such a big deal because it goes back to the long-standing belief in their own moral superiority held by the upper middle class.

I've seen Slate do this little rhetorical trick on a host of different issues. Why can't it be that breast-feeding is good for babies and unfortunately not everyone has the opportunity or ability to do it? Instead if it's a choice not available to everyone, that means that those who do breast-feed are obviously just being morally superior.

that blog post seems to take place in an entire universe constructed of straw

Well it's a pretty easy BS argument to make (often on Ilx!) that the reason other people make certain decisions (diet, child rearing, moral choices, music) is bc of some desire to merely appear superior or conversely some kind of moral fAiling. Sometimes that may be true but mostly it's just a way to argue contemptuously without engaging the ideas. Realize this isnt specific to this topic of course.

It's also a blogging strategy -- find a phenomenon and point out the hidden rot underlying it

This is why studies on the effects of breast-feeding can't meaningfully separate long-term breast-feeding from the benefits of being born with class privilege

I mean, really? Link? Maybe that's true, but studies do exactly that sort of separation all the time.

really sorry to hear about shulamith firestone -- 'dialectic' blew my mind back in 2001. her second book 'airless spaces' is also well worth a read.

has anyone seen the original version of that documentary?

I seriously rarely meet any of these storied parents who either kill themselves trying to follow every detail of a trendy parenting school or "backlash" against the parenting trend. Raising a baby irl is just too goddamned hard to do anything other than settling on the compromises that work for you.