Because We Are Women

[Boze]

Anti-intellectualism?

Well, son, if you really don't care for gender segregation maybe you should do something about it and take on some of the big boys who don't bother to show the canadian women's hockey team winning the world title, or maybe you should do something about the seventy cents for every dollar stats, or maybe you should stop talking and try to "get it".

Okay, yeah, hockey, that sounds like a real big deal...not.  I haven't a clue what to do about the favouritism of men's sports over women's sports.  It's because the sports networks are pitched at men I guess?  Overthrow them, get rid of them and the companies and executives that run the whole industry, it's a multi-billion dollar diversion and indoctrination industry.  I am right there with you on wages.

You think I'm bigoted? Well, that's a fine case of the pot calling the kettle black. You're an elitist prick if you want the flat-out truth. Who are you to tell any woman she should read the however many points to make it easy to understand...

Just read your own posts!  When you are on some rant, you are always directing your "you"'s at men in general!  What the fuck is that!  Like really, who the fuck are you speaking to, honestly?  And, while I would never tell you who to address, who are you to tell me that I can't tell women this and that (and I don't, since my comments are pitched at everyone and not directed at women) when you do it to men?  Tell me the difference, Anne.

And when I post a link, I am not being elitist, nor am I speaking at women specifically.  You said the theory wasn't in plain english language, I responded that it is in fact in plain english language.  Okay, pretty simple argument structure.

I don't shrug off what you wrote.  That was a very moving post (in which YOU all but accepted the label of bigot) and as I said it's a shame, and in fact a real bizarre feeling, because I agree with so much (the need for consciousness raising), yet am outright turned off by the hate.  And it is hate, and I am not the first to tell you so nor will I be the last.  And I'm not talking about people that throw that misandry shit around casually because Anne, you're something special.

If you want to see things as "we" and "other," at least don't assume I'm doing the same.  To reiterate my original main point that has never been responded to, I am not pitching my comments at women or feminists and neither was the author of the post that caused a stir on babble talking about women or feminists.

Also, "son" is patronizing.  This is what I mean.  You do not apply to yourself the standards you apply to others.  And you can dish it out, but not take it.

[Berlynn]

Debraaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!  Isn't it almost morning time in your neck of the woods?!?!?  I'm losing my patience with the newbie who thinks he's THE ENTITLED ONE!!!!!!!!!

[Boze]

Entitled to what.  I haven't even posted outside this thread.

If Debra does want to ban me upon reading this, all I can say is thanks for the chance I guess.  How anyone can read Anne's posts and not find them misandric is beyond me, because it is real blatant and I'm not the only one who has said so, and even though Anne doesn't care what I say, I am sure that there are those whose opinions do matter to Anne who will find her writings misandric, because they simply are.

You're right though, it is late, I am audi 5000.  See you tomorrow.

[brebis noire]

erm, good morning.

I don't have much to add except that I'm very glad anne's here. On the web, there aren't that many voices of experience - I mean true life experience - that extend back past a few decades, and it's so very important for women to have that voice of experience. Where are all the other women  to tell us how things used to be, with the energy and the observations and the sense to put it all together? I'm guessing that they are tired, burnt out, too busy, and sometimes even bullied or habituated into being nice and quiet about their opinions and experience. You have to be patient and listen a lot, but every one of them has something interesting and enlightening to say about "how it used to be".

There aren't that many older women on the web, but we certainly aren't lacking in (young) male voices to tell us how it is, should be, etc. A lot of them start to sound the same after a while, and I for one certainly haven't learned much about life from them - as a matter of fact it's part of the reason I'm so turned off from most of the blogosphere, TV shows, movies, etc. There's a lot of space for their povs already.

So that's a lot of words to say that I'm always happy to read what anne writes, even and especially when it's put in such colourful language. It's a great antidote to what's "out there" - casual misogyny in movies and on TV, sexism-lite in conversation and daily experience, etc.

P.S. anne - you gave me credit for words that aren't mine. TooMuch has the same avatar as me. I'm not that smart.  :)

[skdadl]

Happy belated twin birthday, Scout and kuri!   !:

Well, there's no way I can catch up fast at 6 a.m., but manohman, it all comes back so fast, eh? Shall we show off to one another? Shall we compare sizes? Because that is their friggin' game, their whole friggin' game. :roll:

Boze, you don't know me, although you are about to meet me. One thing you should know about me is that I almost never swear. Like, for me to swear means that I must have been building up some monumental fury while reading through what got written last night.

Ready? *smiles sweetly*

Ye gods and little fishes! Anne is a bigot? Anne?!? And that charge is levelled by the arrogant minnow who wrote this?

Also, you know those shirts that say "this is what a feminist looks like"? It's not just women that wear those. Yes, that does shock the older generation of feminists, but shocking older generations is fun period. Especially when the behaviour is something that shouldn't be shocking, like smoking pot or wearing a radical shirt.

In political terms, older women have zero social privilege, less than zero. In political terms, older women are very close to being utter non-persons and all women are headed for that condition, daily getting closer, while, as we all know, the reverse is true for men for a very long time (until they become dependent  -- and don't you dare to lecture me about taking care of dependent older men, or you won't know what hit you, I promise you).

But you dare to stomp into a community of women who range in age from late teens to seventy, many of us in our forties, fifties, and sixties, who have built a genuinely generous, creative community here, and toss off an adolescent sneer meant to drive a wedge between us, meant to reinscribe all the childish male competitiveness of the places you come from, the drive to insult and triumph over others, and then you top that off by calling Anne a bigot?

You effin' arrogant little twerp. You think older generations need some shocking? From you? When you are the stuffiest stuffed shirt anyone has seen in these parts for ages, if ever? You're the one who needs the shock, junior.

You are trashing the lives of a lot of women here who were reacting yesterday at several very deep gut levels to a story that reduced many of us to open sobbing, and yet a story we were all still trying to think through rationally. You don't understand how you defiled that discussion; you clearly don't.

So f**k off.

(Damn: why can't I type it? I have advanced to being able to type "fart." I feel I'm making progress.)

[Debra]

Anne's writings are not misandric, they are pure feminist writing and you should take each and every word and read over and over again until you grasp the concept.

I am not anti intellectual, but I will say it bugs the shit out of me that men who like to call themselves feminists also like to squirt reams and reams of text book talk all over everything.

The voices you are not hearing are the voices that are living with the bullshit day after day. You think you have all the answers...you haven't even figured out the questions yet.

I mentioned I thought you might not be a good fit for this board and the fact that I am having to write this proves that.

So don't think of what I am going to do as a banning, think of it as a visit that has sadly come to end.

[skdadl]

erm, good morning, brebis noire.  

"erm" is about how I felt too when I first caught up.  :lol:

What I want to do right now is go back and read those stories about Dua Khalil over again. I don't think I wrote in a very good way yesterday. I was just so shocked, but shocked in different ways, and I couldn't write sincerely. I think that what I wrote was too pat.

By the way, Toe, and anyone else who didn't click on joss's opening link: I wouldn't have clicked at first either -- I just couldn't look at what I thought was going to be there -- but he tells you later on that the link won't be what you fear, and it isn't. It takes you to the site of Equality Now.

[fern hill]

First things first: Happy Birthday, Scout and kuri! Mimosas all round. :

Next, I have to take some responsibility for Boze's appearance here. Seemed to me that he should have a chance to reply when he was being addressed here. Sorry, Boss, your call was correct.

But I hope he's still reading. I don't know whether a man can be a feminist or not. I go back and forth on that. But I do know that the best candidate for the 'title' would not insist that he was.

Where's that cartoon that GDKitty took her handle from?

So, sorry it didn't work, Boze.

[skdadl]

I'm not opposed to giving Boze a chance to respond, and I've always liked our rep as the place that doesn't have to ban (much) ...

But I've also always liked the reality of the place, which has mostly conquered the need to ban.

Hi Boze,

Maybe this bit from Debra's poem will give you some insight into why Anne's post is not misandry.

If I feel that dangers real while
While walking down the street
I'm unfairly demonizing men
That I have yet to meet.

My own experience of violence
Being neither here nor there
I should put that all behind me
Walk around without a care.

And then there's this bit:

Our stories are that which shape our lives
They've lead us to this day
And those stories can not be silenced
Nor our spirit borne away.

It is our experiences, the actions of (mostly) men around us that have made us distrust men. Age is always irrelevant, though experience is not. Some people manage to pack a lot of experience in 20 years, not necessarily by choice, there are quite a few terribly boring 50 year olds, and vice-versa. You have no idea how old any of us here are. A man calling himself a feminist and wearing a feminist t-shirt is not shocking to us because of how old we are. It is not shocking. Period. Perhaps a little laughable. Feel free to call yourself a feminist. Words can only mean so much. It's your actions that you will be judged by. In my experience, men who want to help women will soon become men who want to protect women will soon become men who tell women what to do with their lives. So, I hope you can understand where my distrust comes from. Maybe you're different, and we should give you the benefit of the doubt. But also maybe we have been down this same road with other men who sound just as earnest and sincere, and we put our trust in them, and we were disappointed. For this reason, I strongly believe that feminism is a movement that should be led with a focus for women first, and society in general next, and it should be led by women who have the interests of women at heart. Not men who envision the world to not be segregated by gender. It's a nice dream - one that feminists can certainly identify with! - but the reality is that there are still far too many women being oppressed by men, and they need spaces where they can learn to trust again. Organizations for women by women. I understand what you mean when you say that sexism has to be fought by both genders. Nobody here will dispute that. Yes, men should get involved in feminism, it's great when they do, but when they insist on doing things their way in the feminist movement, that's when women start to sound 'misandric'. A man ran in my last union election on the platform that he supports women's rights and wants to further them. We don't want men to fight our battles for us and we definitely do not want men to speak on our behalf (we have had to put up with that for eons). We want your support, and it would mean a lot to us if you could honour and respect that wish and not take it personally. As long as greater numbers of women than men are being oppressed and sexually assaulted by men, we need organizations for women led by women. I don't know what the several different branches of feminist theory would have to say, but my experience says that one of the basic things about feminism is that it is for women by women, and one of the nice results of that is that it improves society in general - which is what it sounds like you want feminism to be. There are lots of ways men can help. For one thing, women's organizations could use more donations, especially from the gender that takes home more money.

I don't know what you mean by feminism has changed so much over the years. It has always been about women's rights. Us women who have been discriminated against are a bit protective of that domain and get our backs up when a man tries to redefine feminism for us.

Breaking down gender roles and stereotypes is already something that feminists have been trying to do for ages. I don't know why we need a new term, i.e., post-genderism, for it when feminism works just as well.

Welp, in the end, I feel good to know that you try not to be an anti-feminist.  :D

To end on a good note,

HAPPY BOITHDAY, SCOUT and KURI

 !:  

Hey, here's an emoticon I stumbled upon for Boze:
 :

(It's a joke, Boze. I'm not trying to make fun of you).

[skdadl]

Sheesh. I just went back and read that whole babble thread. At about the point where Steppenwolf Allende reappears, skdadl started having flashbacks to the mid-1960s. Sheesh. It was male lefty heavies like him who became the immediate cause of the rise of the women's liberation movement in the first place.

Boze doesn't do the macho swagger quite so much, but he does play the reverse-discrimination card, and he seems to think that there is some parallel between a political commitment to socialism and actually living a life in a way that is totally inescapable 24/7.

How do some people get out of high school?

Do read to the end. That's where you get shorter Steppenwolf Allende:

"At least I'm not Robert Pickton. At least I'm not Charlie Manson. At least I'm not Ronald Reagan. Although maybe I'm Mick Jagger."  

 :

Actually, I think he's Richard Nixon. Remember "I am not a crook"?

Or Conrad Black: "I am not vulgar."

They all end up saying things like that. They can't help it. It's called display. They might as well be peacocks for all the mental control they have over that drive.

[anne cameron]

Calling you son is absolutely not patronizing.  It is matronizing.

You don't see the importance of protesting the lack of coverage of women's sports?  You blow it off and put the responsibility on the shoulders of the TV exec's and corporate sponsors?  Oh.  Okay.  In that case why in hell does anyone ever attempt to shake the TV exec's and use boycotts and protests against the corporations?  Why not just lie down and let them continue to ravage the entire world?  Why put any energy at all into anarchism if the corporate agenda is to continue unchallenged?  We're being geared up out here for a big Olympic rah rah rah in 2010.  Many of us are being dragged unwillingly by the taxes into supporting a total bloody farce.  Millions (we'll never know how many) are being shovelled off the back of the truck to build facilities so that for ten days "the world", or at least that fraction of it which can afford to attend, can watch what we are told are games which, we are told , exemplify the best, most incorruptible (rah rah rah etc), why jeebux it's the last bastion of freedom.  And the tax payers will get the tab while the corporations suck more blood.  And women's events will not be as covered as men's, and there are still events we are NOT ALLOWED to enter, and the funding available to the women's teams is fractional, and in the last big blowout in Turin the woman who won a medal for this country had to PAY HER OWN WAY to get to the event.  Her coach had to stay home, they couldn't raise enough to send him, too.  And you think any of that is unimportant?  You think we should shrug it off and turn our attentions to more worthy things?  And you still don't understand that you don't get it?

Until enough of us raised supreme shite about it the TV was more than willing to show little girls, many of them barely out of diapers, all togged up like hookers, piping torch songs like "My heart belongs to daddy".  Those disgusting displays of tackiness still happen, but not on TV any more.  And please do not waste everyone's time by pointing out to me that those little girls are groomed, coached, and entered by their moms because while that does put salt in the wound it doesn't change the fact that if the power structure wasn't willing to promote the disgusting bullshit it would never happen.  And that power structure is overwhelmingly male.

But the structure doesn't want to show women's sports.  Gee, wonder why not?  Wonder why you think it unimportant?  Because, son, women are not supposed to be able to play hockey every bit as well as men.  Women are supposed to breed hockey players, not be hockey players.  Women are supposed to be sweet and nice and above all passive.  They are not supposed to hit the ice and demonstrate that holy ole moley you can have a fast, hard-played game and not have it look like a boxing match or Ultimate Fighting.

Uppity bitches went out, played hockey, didn't put anyone on life support and won.

Women's soccer is even more obvious, the level of play is absolutely extraordinary and we seldom get to see it on TV.  Now, why would that be, do you suppose?

It couldn't have anything to do with the deliberate marginalization of women who well might be role models to a generation of girls who are NOT togged out like Anna Nicole Smith, could it?

But blow it off and demonstrate how far from getting it you are.

If you think radicalism is epitomized by your tee shirt then the word which comes to mind is "puerile".

You can tell me you're purple and can levitate but until you demonstrate you are purple and can levitate I'm not going to believe you.  You can tell me you're a feminist, but as long as you don't get it, you aren't going to convince me you're anything other than a nineteenth century brain in a very young body.

Nobody, of any age, can be fully informed on everything.  But there's no good sense in expounding on the mysteries of Egypt to an Egyptologist if you have only read a few articles about Cleopatra.

I wonder if you have noticed something?  Here we have some guys who are absolutely great, guys who have gone a long way toward convincing me we might not have to round'em all up and corral them, then spray them with something...and they're hanging you out to dry.  Some of the most committed feminists I have ever met are telling you YOU DO NOT GET IT and you are still yelping and trying to pass yourself off as an expert.

There was a time when guys , in an effort to try to prove they weren't arstles, would leap up to defend us poor little helpless wimminfolk.  The guys here know we can chop our own snakes, thank you.

I don't think you're a "bad" guy.  I think you even have some  sterling potential.  But son, they turned you loose before the paint was dry.

Even so, I'm going to rack at least some of your twerpiness up to the fact you were ripped last night.  You wanna spark up, go for it, just don't confuse what next comes out of your mouth as convincing.

[lagatta]

Is that the orful thread about the NDP where Steppenwolf Allende and the usual Stockholm are outdoing each other in the redbaiting and calling people "Trotskyites"? Sic!

I wanted to jump in and scream "ISTs" but the jerks would no doubt have thought I was defending some particular crew ... er remember Barry's crew ... that one might have no use for whatoever - not because they are Trotskyists, Catholics, Cat-lovers or whatever but because they resorted to macho bullying and manipulation... something no specific political current has a monopoly on...

[fern hill]

I don't know what's going on in that thread, lagatta, but the brouhaha started in a thread about teen pregnancy being down. Michelle locked it.

Do read to the end. That's where you get shorter Steppenwolf Allende:

"At least I'm not Robert Pickton. At least I'm not Charlie Manson. At least I'm not Ronald Reagan. Although maybe I'm Mick Jagger."  

Yea, I found that rather insulting. What a stupid comeback. Fuck, my dad wasn't Charlie Manson either, but he sure did his share of 'protecting' women and that still makes him a vile despicable person. Who knows if laws even exist to put him behind bars. He didn't murder anybody, but he destroyed a lot of women's lives. Not being Charlie Manson is hardly anything to be proud of.

It wasn't so much what SA initially said on that thread that irked me. What he said was very ill-informed (and I've blurted idiotic things like that too in the past), it was all the reactions to remind and scout that followed that I found hurtful and dismissive of women. Maybe it was the tone in remind's post that turned them off. I see it so much in real life. I work where it is highly competitive for women, men dominate. It is an aggressive line of work, women are always being denigrated and men's egos are inflated to the max. It is a sickening patriarchal field. Women who want to succeed are forced to be just as or more aggressive. And guess what, they always get chastised for that. It makes me want to vomit. I don't care what remind's tone was. I am tired of men reacting to that anger as if only they are entitled to be angry.