Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Hugo Schwyzer takes conservative nepotism beneficiary Jonah Goldberg to task for arguing that women should be given a little more power in “backwards” cultures. You’d think that would be a good thing but Goldberg’s arguing only that women should have only enough power to be more effective “gatekeepers.” (Emphasis mine.)

Jonah concludes his piece … with this gem:

“Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow. “Liberate” men from those expectations, and “Lord of the Flies” logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow.”

Give Jonah credit. He’s not blaming women directly for their failure to civilize men. Rather, he’s blaming certain cultures that fail to give women sufficient authority with which to do their civilizing. But that doesn’t change the basic problem in his argument, based as it is on pseudo-science, Victorian sentimentality about women’s “nature”, and a William Golding novel about pre-pubescent boys.

Read the quote and Schwyzer’s analysis in context here.

Goldberg says “Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow.”

Which would be… Goldberg, a man, setting expectations for male behavior. Very low expectations, sure, but not ones set by women.

Which is, of course, the nice little trap men like Goldberg want to set for us: expect to be able to indulge your more infantile and/or animal impulses; then either blame women letting us live up to the expectations we ourselves set, or else resenting women for using sexual access (the only leverage we permit them to have) in order to get us to act like actual adult men. The minor “upside” for anti-feminists like Goldberg is that men are absolved of all responsibility for, well, responsibility. The infinitely larger downside is that women are expected to have all the responsibility but none of the authority (we just call them “bitches” when they try to make us do the task Goldberg assigns them.) The end result isn’t even zero sum, it’s negative sum: grown men and women are reduced to Cathi Hanauer’s acute phrases The Bitch in the House and The Bastard on the Couch

Quick question for Goldberg: what does he imagine, say, Aristotle, or Augustine, or, Confucius or, I dunno, Maimonides, or even Tolstoy would think of his assertion that women are a civilizing influence on men? I happen to think all those gentlemen were dead wrong to believe men are uniquely moral and civilizing compared to women. But Goldberg and his desperately anti-feminist ilk just as wrong to imagine their fantasy of essential gendered women’s morality is any more real.

Another quick question: Goldberg, like Satoshi Kanazawa and millions of other anti-feminists, believes women’s magic lady part… and their “power” to withhold it... are the only thing that civilizes men. To which I’ll just rephrase Holly’s observation: Does that all those gay artists and writers and politicians and freakin’ gay fry cooks for that matter never get around to contributing to society because they’re way too busy not withholding sex from each other?

In fact we men set expectations all the time. In fact the whole idea that women don’t have anything better to do with their own sexuality than to use it to manipulate men’s behavior (coughno-sex classcough) is a completely male expectation.

Screw Goldberg and the coin-operated horsie he rode up on. I expect better of him.

Pluralist of Feministing Community has a really cool post up about the near side of non-consensual “gray area” sex.

What makes it a great illustration is that the sexes were reversed! (Emphasis hers.)

Since November my best friend has been having relationship problems. She is cis and het as is her boyfriend and they’ve been a committed and monogamous relationship for about 4 years now. The whole story is too long to recount, but as of a week ago they began a “break they need in order to stay together”.

Suffice it to say the first two days were hellish as I talked to one of the loves my life breaking down over the phone. But during one of the more lucid moments, she told me that – among a lot of alleged grievances – she had (unknowingly) forced her boyfriend into sex.

Apparently he had said things along the lines of “I’m too tired right now, let’s just go to sleep” and she had continued to proposition him thinking “welll, this will help you sleep better!” My immediate reaction was that there was no way she had coerced or pressured him into sex. After all, he should’ve just said “No really, I don’t want to do this right now” if she kept at it. It was his fault for not stopping the encounter.

And then I realized that had this been a woman in his place – not to mention my best friend – I would never have given this consideration. I was victim-blaming, basing my assumptions in tropes of male hypersexuality and female passivity. She didn’t handcuff him to a heater and force-feed him viagra . She’s a nice girl, she couldn’t have done that!

Read the quote in context here.

I talk a lot more about the paradigmatic social assumptions that women belong to the “no-sex” class — sugar, spice, everything nice, sure, but also possessing no autonomous sexual agency. Unless they’re somehow “broken,” or “damaged goods.” I don’t talk so much about the other side, the equally strong assumption that men are the sex class — obligate, reflexive, indiscriminating, and single-mindedly ready for sex. Unless, again, there’s something wrong with them. But it’s just as big a deal.

Inside the dominant paradigm it’s as unheard of for a man to say “no” as for a woman to say “yes.” Inside the paradigm, with it’s bogus Two Rules of Desire, the ratchet of initiative alway clicks in one direction.

This too has its consequences. It doesn’t just assume women never mind not having sex, it also assumes men never mind having it. One consequence would be Pluralist’s friend assuming her partner was having a momentary brain fart or something therefore his “no” couldn’t possibly really mean no. So she kept trying.

As I said up at the top this is way over on the near side of the “gray area.” A little persistence, especially in a long-term relationship where one partner’s behavior is perhaps uncharacteristic, is an unfortunate failure to recognize that no means no, but not an appalling one.

That said, whereas it’s way over this way verging into “no harm then no foul” territory, as Pluralist hinted and one commenter stated very clearly, however mild-sounding the incident

Obviously, something went wrong in this particular case if the guy is bringing it up as a grievance.

Therefore not “no harm then no foul.”

So if her failure to acknowledge or respect his decision wasn’t appalling it wasn’t benign either.

So there’s definitely still something to talk about.

In comments over at FeministCritics, where I’ve been trying to explain why I think skepticism about feminism is way, way, way less important that skepticism about mainstream anti-feminism ought to be, typhonblue said

My problem with feminism is where it doesn’t challenge ‘patriarchial’ notions of male disposability, responsibility and moral inferiority. Additionally, it’s very obvious to me that ‘patriarchal’ notions of male disposability lead to a situations in which a woman is valued far, far, far more for her femaleness then her personhood; which I find profoundly offensive.

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I also find the notion of ‘patriarchy’ incoherent.

Maybe it’s just me but I think the notion of patriarchy is actually pretty straightforward. Here’s what I think it means (or at least where it came from) and how I think both the ideas of women’s value as property and men’s disposability come from values handed down from that system.

Formal political capital-p Patriarchy was and in some places still is the organization of society into extended multi-generational families, “houses,” or clans. Inside that system the extended family is held to be more important than any member in it. Except, maybe, whoever was the titular head. (Though even then it’s presumed their privilege comes from the decisions they make on behalf of the family.) That the heads of those houses were almost always men isn’t as important as the fact that they were the most senior relative in their particular branch of their family. They were more likely to be grandfathers or, occasionally, grandmothers of extended families than fathers or mothers of contemporary nuclear families.

Under political/economic patriarchy alliances are made through marriage — the idea being that if your children are married and, more important, their children are both descendants of the respective household heads, then betrayal would be literally an abandonment of one’s own flesh and blood.

Technically under patriarchy children of both sexes are “given” in marriage to form alliances with other houses. In theory (and often in practice) subordinate family members were given no more real say in who they were to marry than a suitcase full of money or a deed to piece of property would be.

In practice, though, women family members were often given in marriage to particularly “worthy” male outsiders — soldiers, say, or wealthy individuals. The stereotypical example of the latter would be when a king announced his daughter’s hand in marriage to whoever won a major tournament. (Or, in mythology, slew a dragon.) In other words it was possible for an ambitious or particularly infatuated man to “earn” a desired woman (or at least an alliance to her family) by pleasing her father and family interest.

And if the striving man dies in battle? Well, that’s male disposability for you — the king gives his daughter to the guy (possibly even the enemy who killed the first guy) and even though the first guy is dead and the daughter has to put out for and have offspring by some guy she has no interest in (and in the case of war might not even speak the same language as) the family, and its leader, come out ahead.

While that sort of formal organization isn’t as major as it once was you can still see it in operation of it in, say, the polygamy of the FLDS where wives are used as a way to accumulate property and/or influence and where marriage is denied to “excommunicated” men and boys. You can also hear about it from time to time in Afghanistan when “clan leaders” a.k.a. family heads settle violent disputes by “giving” female family members to rival families.

So that’s patriarchy: a hierarchical system in which both individual men’s and women’s interests… and even their physical bodies… may be sacrificed for the “good” of the family or community. It makes (nearly all) men disposable, reduces women to the desirability and utility of their bodies, uses access to sex as a way to reward men for earning or to punish men by withholding all while treating women’s desire and preferences as a really annoying interference. Oh, and it makes marriage a financial transaction where, generally, the man brings in wealth or at least productivity and the woman brings sex and, for extra credit, childcare and domestic labor.

You can see how under that system

• it’s a really, really bad idea for women to have, say, financial independence or equal earning power.
• it would be really bad for men to ever get the idea that they didn’t have to a job, or a car, or money, or a fancy place, or else maybe lies, or pure grain alcohol in the punch, or a dark alley for women to be willing or even champing at the bit to love them or make love with them.
• it would be a really bad idea for anyone to get the idea that woman who admitted or demonstrated that she just really enjoyed sex with men because it felt really, really good wasn’t a “bimbo” or a “slut” or a “whore” or “crazy” or “wild” or “childlike and naive” or otherwise unusual and maybe broken but was instead a normal, healthy human being.
• it would be really, really bad for men to get the idea that 90-95% of women with full economic, political, social and especially biological independence and self-determination would still want and like men.
• it would be really, really bad for men to get the idea they don’t have to die for love either in feats of derring do to “get the girls” or in the slow, Willie Loman sense of grinding one’s self into an early grave to keep them.
• it would be really, really bad if men ever got the idea that wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters, and daughters — feminist or otherwise — really don’t want their husbands, sweethearts, sons, brothers, and fathers “disposably” dying young, or even early on their behalf

You can also see how under a system like that

1. any woman with a brain would take one look and think “woah, that’s fucked up, I don’t want any part of this.”
2. any woman with a brain would get pretty exasperated that men kept falling for the sucker role the system assigns them

With minor variations items #1 and #2 encompass almost all of “mainstream” feminism. Substitute “any woman or man or any age, race, class, or body” any time you see the words “woman” or “man” in clauses #1 and #2 and you’re got an emerging consensus in feminism. Of which I’m very comfortable considering myself a part: I have a brain and I think the system’s fucked up and I don’t want any part of it and I get pretty exasperated whenever men, and women, keep falling into the sucker roles the system wants to assign them.

Summary: Reflections on a pointed question from a website that’s usually not on the forefront of feminist activism.

Angry Mouse, in a toweringly angry post at Daily Kos asks a question that, post Bart Stupak and Ben Nelson, keeps gaining traction: Compared to the (literally!) lunatic fringe teabaggers W exactly TF do NOW and NARAL and Emily’s List actually do anyway?

You know those emails? The ones from NOW and NARAL and Emily’s List that declare, with great urgency and lots of ALL CAPS and exclamation marks, that you must give money right now? Stop this bill! Block this nominee! Protect Roe! Save the Supreme Court! And give, give, give!!!

And since you often agree — why yes, I do want to stop this bill; why no, I do not want that nominee confirmed — you click and give. It won’t stop this bill or block that nominee, but you will get another email at the next crisis.

And it’s always a crisis. Even under a Democratic president, with a Democratic supermajority in Congress, the nation’s biggest feminist organizations are in crisis mode, raising money but unable to deliver results. They’re just as effective as they were under Bush. Which is to say, Not. At. All.

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Remember way back in the fall of 2008, when one clever person decided to donate to Planned Parenthood in “honor” of Sarah Palin?

“Make a donation to Planned Parenthood,” the anonymous e-mail message urged. “Of any amount. In Sarah Palin’s name.”

The message, which began circulating widely on the Internet last week, had one more instruction: request that the personalized thank-you card from Planned Parenthood be sent to Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee and a vocal opponent of abortion, at the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters in Virginia.

So far, the scheme seems to be getting a strong response. As of Friday, Planned Parenthood had taken in $802,678 in donations from 31,313 people, said a spokesman for the organization, Tait Sye. More than two-thirds of the individuals are first-time donors to Planned Parenthood, Mr. Sye said, and money came in from all 50 states.

Nearly a million dollars raised for women’s health care, not by any of these organizations asking for money, but by one anonymous email. If it really is about the bottom line, if feminist advocacy has been reduced to how much money can be raised, what purpose do these organizations serve that can’t be achieved by one person with a good idea and dial-up?

Perhaps it is time for women to examine whether the largest organizations that claim to represent them are really delivering on their promises.

They’ve failed to organize the millions of supporters they have into a coherent and powerful movement. ‘Cause when your movement looks like an amateur mess compared with the “keep your government hands off my Medicare” teabaggers, you’re doing something wrong.

There’s quite a bit more here.

Angry Mouse is absolutely clear the problem isn’t feminism itself. Witness her endorsement of the Planned-Parent letter and its awesome grass-roots response. Which got a lot of acceleration from non-institutional feminist and progressive blogs and websites. (I first heard about it on either Feministing or Feministe.)

It’s also possible those organizations launch tons of initiatives that… um… just aren’t very visible, exciting, base-mobilizing, or particularly cost-effective compared to their high-visibility, highly exciting (or at least stress-elevating), highly-effective but clearly not-at-all base-rallying fundraising.

Just for the record I don’t want to hear that the deck is stacked against women in politics. Or even that the “establishment” welds the whip. Deck-stacking has not hampered Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, for instance, both of whom are doing even though both are women and cordially despised by a conservative establishment that would very much prefer nice well-heeled white men like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty. That these women’s most enthusiastic support comes not from the establishment but from the very demographics that, say, NOW says is most inimical to women: MRAs, super-patriots, evangelicals, secessionists, xenophobes, skinheads, and all-round knuckle-draggers. Also for the record I don’t want to hear yeah-buts about how Palin, or Bachmann, or Liz Cheney, or Michelle Malkin, or Kellyanne Conway, or Mary K. Ham, or Virginia Foxx, or (going back a generation or two) Margaret Thatcher, Ayn Rand, Phyllis Schlaffley, Jeane Kirkpatrick, or (before her welcome but peculiar turnaround) Arianna Huffington, and on and on and on were or are just parroting, mimicking, or sock-puppeting for behind-the-scenes male power brokers. Each one of them believes that shit way more passionately than any 10 John Boehners, Mitch McConnells, or Rupert Murdochs.

And finally, from my childhood encounters with conservative protestantism it’s very often women in churches who let their ministers know when they seem to be going soft on hard-line issues. The point is that if there’s a problem for feminists it’s probably got surprisingly little to do with the fact that women are advancing the issues and way more to do with the issues. And this is why, I think, it’s a mistaken strategy in… I dunno… industrial feminist organizations to imagine that “if you fundraise for it they will come.” And why I think it’s absolutely catastrophic to wait till the bus you’re being thrown has too much momentum to be stopped before saying anything about it. You’ve got to sell it. Promote it. In advance. Sell it to women, far too many of whom are on the bus! Even sell it to men! Who are served by the status quo better than women but only relatively so and only scarcely so. (On this point: if men were that much better served then you’d expect to see neither Mary Matlin advancing the status quo nor me feeling confined by it. Instead you see similar dynamics all over the place.)

Going back to Angry Mouse’s point about the Planned Parenthood fundraiser. One email, multiplied by a thousand forwards, reposts, and retweets turned into a million dollars in donations to an organization that, however perfectly or imperfectly, actually does something. That’s a lot of pent-up interest that in turn suggests there’s room for advocacy and action.

I mean… it’s… I mean… doesn’t it says something right there that Angry Mouse’s angry thesis appeared on the only-vaguely-sorta-gets-women’s-stuff DailyKOS rather than something like, oh, say, the organization-ought-to-be-its-core-mission National Organization for Women?

I feel really, really on thin ice saying this at all but it seems like two of the possible alternatives moving forward would be for, say, some serious reinvigoration of the aforementioned groups under the leadership of new generations of unapologetically feminist-activist women like Jessica Valenti or Pam Spaulding or Jill Filipovic… or else the establishment of additional organizations that might actually do something about the adverse gender climate instead of just complain about it.

Update: I should mention, as Angry Mouse does, that Stephanie Schriock, a Gen Xer, former Deaniac, and progressive political-organizing powerhouse, has just become the new president of Emily’s List. If she’s a feminist activist as well as a political pro that could be a promising development.