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

or for that matter one way of being a person is better than another way (man or woman, rich or poor, etc.)
this is what i mean about everything being in relationship constantly - we are always making judgments, and some of those judgments keep us alive and well, while many are mistakes (hopefully to learn from... on macro and micro levels)

(i meant working dad not day in that last post)

I do wonder sometimes about how my unconscious attitudes about this stuff are overdetermined, e.g. my father was a warm and affectionate dad, but he was also the primary breadwinner and a slight martyr about it and not there anywhere near as much as my mom. And now here I am.

the louis ck youtube has 0 to do with what i am saying. i said i would like to not have kids in part because i don't think it's possible or think it's too difficult to maintain a distribution of household/childrearing work that would be acceptable to me given how stuff is. i think it is unfair and i can avoid that challenge by just not doing it. i am not disagreeing that dads can try hard at it and do a good job and i am not offering an opinion on anyone's particular arrangement. not having kids does not mean i can't have an opinion on how i feel about myself having kids. and it's assholish to say parents > nonparents.

yeah, that's sort of why i took most of the day to post itt, trying to get where that comes from and why it makes me angry

some good (tho very new yorker) satire: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2012/09/17/120917sh_shouts_allen?currentPage=all

not that that louis ck bit isn't funny - it's funny bc it's him and he's good at being that loveable asshole 'this is my experience, disagree or whatever, that's what i see' stuff. obv he's not actually saying that non-parents don't have problems or profound experiences.

yeah i get what he is saying. he's not talking about me though because all of my complaints are completely legitimate and everyone else's are petty bullshit until they have seen for themselves what i've seen.

I like being in a marriage where we both work like a team. When J. works we both are in work mode. I wake up early, before he does, get breakfast on, put lunch together, turn on the coffee pot...he tends to August while also dressing, we drive to the job site, drop him off, get back home and start our day. In the last job we moved from a house to a motel and breakfast was not as easy to do, so he'd grab it at the yard. Errands included grocery shopping (daily, those motel fridges are small) for his lunches and our hot plate dinners, doing regular laundry and his work laundry. Then we'd wait for the call to pick him up. He'd get home and have an hour or two of down time, showering, decompressing then we'd eat dinner and hang together. Six days a week. Now that we are on a small break between jobs, there are no schedules and we pretty much hang as a family all day. J. helps with August, makes dinners... We keep each other in check, it is not without a few kinks some weeks.

Compromise and appreciation go far. In the last marriages I was all too aware of the inequality for lack of both. This team work strategy is all new to me but works.

harbl: I know what you are saying too...I felt the same for years and years.

well exactly, right - comparing our problems to other people's problems (or successes) in a more-important/valuable vs less-important/valuable way does not lead to much in the way of social equality and personal-political understanding! i see feminism as it is now saying that equality is in who we are not on a hierarchical scale of what we do or how we do it, but in being alive and in relationship with everyone/thing else. <-- maybe a bit of utopian mutual respect thinking but i'm gonna stick with it

xps

xp (to tera) That's kind of what weekends are like for us, and I always am struck by how well, but just BARELY, it works when we are BOTH in full gear all weekend getting shit done and handing off K to one another, and I always think "it would be great if it could be like this every day, but how the hell does H do this by herself?"

it's assholish to say parents > nonparents.

― horribl ecreature (harbl), Thursday, September 13, 2012 7:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I meant "harder than" not "better than" fwiw

yeah i appreciate a lot that it is hard. i don't so much mind hard stuff but i think it is too hard or a different kind of hard than i want to do.

yeah, and I think not doing it because you don't want that particular kind of hard is a very good and valid reason to not do it

I am the last person who will try to talk you into having kids if you do not want them, and I love being a dad

That Jenny Allen NYer article is pretty hilarious!

these ppl are ridiculous

http://www.1flesh.org/rebellion/

"we are a bunch of college students"

the part where they explain how contraception leads to abortion by creating a culture of not wanting children

i hope it's not bad that the part about birth control making women less stunning than usual makes me laugh.

"creating baller graphics and video"

Can't wait for these kids to all get herpes

"hormonal contraception is associated with...HIV infection" fuck these people

this is a popish plot

among ye

do these advocates of awesomecy have any experience that tells them how much more awesome this one 2 one sex is or are their results merely speculative

stopping myself from posting the latest horror from overcomingbias.com

lol, i read the headline and was like "not something i think i'll enjoy reading about here" and skipped it

it is just straight detrimental.

straight up.

so i've been reading ellen willis' no more nice girls collection and there are so many quotes i want to post to ilx. there's this particular essay where she gives a list of questions "most likely to get a group of people, all of whom like each other and hate Ronald Reagan, into a nasty argument," and of course I thought of ILX immediately. I know we've done a few of these before but i'm really tempted to make a poll thread out of them.

Is there any objective criterion for healthy or satisfying sex, and if so what is it? Is a good sex life important? How important? Is abstinence bad for you? Does sex have any intrinsic relation to love? Is monogamy too restrictive? Are male and female sexuality inherently different? Are we all basically bisexual? Do vaginal orgasms exist? Does size matter? You get the idea.

here's the other quote i read that i thought belonged on an ilx thread somewhere:

On the family, debate is now virtually nonexistent, at least in the mass media; the idea that the problems besetting contemporary families might have something to do with the structure of the institution itself -- that domestic life may need to be transformed, rather than shored up with one or another palliative - - has dropped from public view, a mind-boggling feat of collective repression.

If anything, this repression has become more complete in 2012 (the quote is from the collection's intro which i think means it was written in 1992?), esp w/ the rise of marriage equality as major cultural progressive touchstone (where Americans of all kinds seem to aspire to create new families, but families nonetheless). Um - also this one:

But the [anti-PC] campaign has hit a nerve because it gets at something real. Coercion and guilt-mongering -- the symbiotic weapons of authoritarian culture -- inevitably provoke resistance; when the left uses these tactics it merely encourages people to confuse their most oppressive impulses with their need to be themselves, offensively honest instead of hypocritically nice. Perversely, racism and sexism become badges of freedom rather than stigmata of repression, while the roots of domination in people's rage and misery remain untouched.

Anyway, I thought about posting this stuff in her RIP thread but I don't really know a ton about Willis (except that she's a really compelling, provocative writer who I enjoy reading) and I'm more interested in discussing her ideas anyway. I'm happy to move this stuff to that other thread, or to start a new one entirely though if ppl don't think it really belongs here.

i love that last quote

yeah that last one is really good.

there's all this pressure to make dynamic relationships into relatively fixed directional roles and we freak out and pile more of that garbage on them as they change which makes it all worse imo. sort of the chocolate laxative effect. i wonder if state support of gay marriage is really just state dictation of new roles (loving self-sacrificing gentle caregivers). i think this kind of boils down to: how can we form bonds without needing.

I really feel that the standard right-wing argument about marriage and family and children, etc..., stems as much from a last-ditch attempt to pseudo-scientifically defend religion, the strictures of which were, at one time, a social technology what, for better or worse, was better adapted to the biological circumstances of their times but which no longer need apply, especially when the most pro-family ppl do bugger all to actually help families with children.

feel like it could be pointed out that, at least in my understanding, the model of "traditional family" that's currently being defended by the right (the "atomic family") basically arose out of and to suit the needs of modern capitalism. although i'm not sure what that brings to the conversation exactly

reminds me of a quote by Ian Hacking in his book on multiple personality disorder (Rewriting the Soul - I mentioned it in the Sybil thread). There's an extended discussion about the Victorian notion of cruelty to children, the more modern notion of child abuse:

This leads to my first difference between child abuse and cruelty to children. As I shall elaborate below, child abuse, especially in America, was supposed to be classless. It was supposed to occur in constant proportion, more or less, in every social class. Poverty was not an issue. This was an American political exigency, for legislation could succeed - and succeed it did, with a vengeance - only if it were not perceived as predominantly liberal social reform. Hence class differences were explicitly excluded. Cruelty to children, in contrast, was presented primarily as a vice of the lower classes, prosperous examples notwithstanding. One potent force behind the modern child abuse movement has been fear about the rot in the American family, an internal fear, as opposed to fear of the smoldering poor.

Is there any objective criterion for healthy or satisfying sex, and if so what is it?

Hmmm. "Healthy or satisfying sex". Since satisfaction is not an objective criterion, obv there won't be an objective measure for it. Which just leaves us "healthy sex", an odd term if ever there was one. Health can be measured objectively and sexually transmitted diseases can objectively undermine health, so I would conclude that "healthy sex" is sex that does not transmit a disease. Then again there could be certain cardio-vascular benefits from especially vigorous sex acts which might be measurable, too.

Is a good sex life important? How important?

Importance is a self-generated value. We can see this in the idea that importance is "attached" to actions or objects. Therefore the importance of a good sex life is widely variable, according to the importance each individual sees in it.

Is abstinence bad for you?

"Bad for you" has many senses. I suppose if abstinence made you unhappy, then in one of these senses it would be "bad for you". It is hard to think of any other senses that would apply.

Does sex have any intrinsic relation to love?

Love has a lot of subdivisions. We love our homes, our neighbors our chioldren, our sports and hobbies. The only subdivision of love that has an intrinsic relation to sex is the love that finds its natural expression in sexuality. Duh.

Is monogamy too restrictive?

Another ill-formed question. Too restrictive for what ends or purposes?

Are male and female sexuality inherently different?

The hormones are rather similar, but the apparatus is different. A better question would be whether the differences rise to a level where they are signifigant.

Are we all basically bisexual?

If we cannot rely on people's reporting of their own sexual inclinations, then how could we know the answer to this. If we can rely on them, then, no.

Do vaginal orgasms exist?

I have no way to know this, either way. I will defer to those who might know better.

Does size matter?

Only when it does.

Gonna disagree on the last quote. The vast majority of the time when people are throwing around "un-PC" statements it's in situations where they're unlikely to face any real social repercussions. Either their audience is sympathetic or has little power over them. There is no resistance in what they do, not even misguided resistance. Sexists/racists/whatevers react poorly to being told not to be sexist/racist/whatever, big surprise, it's not like you can blame anyone else for their persecution complex. Tbf I don't really know the context of when Ellen Willis actually wrote this but at this point anti-PC ppl do not "get at something real."

People reacting poorly to being told what to think or how to behave isn't about a persecution complex though, is it? I'd have thought more along the lines of feeling entitled to construct their own identity in the face of social approbation. The kind of knee-jerk defiance you feel when anyone bosses you around, no matter if they're right. If it's "something real" it's in the sense that it's a real feeling, a real reaction, not that it's in any way justifiable. I can't defend the notion that it *is* real, but it seems plausible to me.

If they feel genuinely oppressed by the fact that there are people out there who would rather they didn't behave that way then I would say that is a persecution complex. The people trying to get them to stop acting this way are not typically people with any power over their lives. I don't disagree that it's a real reaction, but it's not a reaction that can be blamed on anyone else. I was interpreting "something real" as meaning something deeper than knee-jerk defiance.

I think the crux of that last quote is "coercion and guilt-mongering", and she's arguing that there are other ways of convincing people not to be sexist/racist/whatever.

That's true and I guess I should have addressed that. I don't see either of those to have been a problem though. You can probably figure out from above why I don't think there is any "coercion" going on and I haven't personally noticed much "guilt mongering" beyond normal disapproval for things which are morally reprehensible.

The only place I know where 'political correctness' has acquired a mildly coercive quality (as opposed to federal hate crime types of activities) is on college and university campuses, where it has been incorporated into codes of conduct and a student could be disciplined or expelled for saying stupid, racist stuff.

seen a few people posting this on facebook today re: the iconic 'kissing sailor' photo and what's actually going on in it:

http://cratesandribbons.com/2012/09/30/the-kissing-sailor-or-the-selective-blindness-of-rape-culture-vj-day-times-square/

^^^ That photo has long made me feel weird and uncomf for that v reason and that article basically puts on screen my exact thoughts

Even though Obama's economic-plan numbers don't add up, this more than anything is why I still will vote for him over Romney/Ryan:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/real-republican-party-rape-platform

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/you-can-give-a-boy-a-doll-but-you-cant-make-him-play-with-it/265977/

I love that the article presents "Is being a gender-typical little boy or girl a pathology in need of a cure?" as a knock-out punch rather than something Sweden has considered and clearly has a position on.

the atlantic dot com, the publication of record for dumb gender essentialism

ooh girls don't wanna have truh-ucks