gender equality

Rebecca Traister: "True Gender Equality Means Not Just Women to Vote For But Women to Vote Against"

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2010-11-02 15:24

Via Amanda Hess, Rebecca Traister of The Washington Post says of ‘winger extremist candidates like Christine O’Donnell, Michelle Bachman, Sharron Angle, and Sarah Palin

Even if you don’t like them, it’s not fair to suggest that their presence on the ticket represents a step backward for women. ... In the pursuit of true gender equity, people across the political spectrum need not only women to vote for, but women to vote against.

Source: The Washington Post

Yup. Sort of like “the answer to unpleasant speech is more speech,” the answer to gender and sexual equality isn’t fewer asshole women in politics, the answer is larger numbers of honest ones.

I have to say it took me a really, seriously long time to get that. Waaay back in the old days (like, the 1970s) back when both popular, academic, and even some feminist culture still really did imagine women were essentially more peaceful, cooperative, virtuous, and superior by nature instead of by lack of opportunity, whenever I’d hear about a woman getting into a position of authority and then abusing it I’d just shrug my shoulders and say it made sense. Real equality, I’d say ruefully, means more assholes too.

While that was and is technically true it’s also bloody defeatist. Which is why I’m really happy to pass along Traister’s far more optimistic point.

Repost or Like this

It's About Putting Shoes On Both Feet, Not On the Other Foot: Courtney Martin on the Myth of the Fairer Sex

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2010-08-01 16:38

Courtney Martin of TAPPED has an excellent, excellent post up about the pitfall of gender essentialism both outside feminism and (to a lesser extent as its influence wanes) in it.

Bitch Magazine co-founder Lisa Jervis wrote of this tendency in her powerfully original 2005 piece, “If Women Ruled the World, Nothing Would be Different.” She describe a disturbing rise in “femmenism,” in which all women, just by virtue of being female, are to be elevated and glorified. Instead of focusing on gender, as radical feminists should, she argues, feminists have become obsessed with women. This, she writes, “causes sloppy thinking, intellectual dishonesty, and massive strategic errors.”

...

There has been a lot of buzz in international development and feminist circles as of late about the rise of girls and women. Last year a video called “The Girl Effect,” produced by the Nike Foundation, went viral faster than a cute-cat clip, solidifying the suspicion that development dollars in the hands of girls and women are more bang for the buck. Microlending, Greg Mortenson’s girls’ schools, and community-education models like Tostan — all of the most beloved trends in the social change of the moment — are fueled by a belief in the goodness of girls and women.

As they should be. I, too, am perched upon “the girl effect” bandwagon, feminist flag flying high, wallet open, and heart happy. But just because we champion the notion that girls and women, when empowered — economically and educationally, have the capacity to change the whole dang world, it doesn’t mean that we have to deny their twin power for destruction. Just as we take female empowerment personally, we must take female cruelty and immorality personally. We must, at the very least, admit that it exists.

She said it here.

Yup. In places where gender equality is horrifically out of balance its tremendously effective to invest things like girl’s schools, women-side microlending, healthcare, legal reform, wage and workplace reform, and the whole power-balancing shebang.

But the reason repairing the imbalance is so effective specifically isn’t because women are somehow magically superior to men but because women aren’t meaningfully different from men. The differences being superficial, it makes no sense to withhold power or resources from women that are available to men.

But! Because the differences aren’t meaningful it also makes no sense to imagine that when women have equal resources and power to men they’ll be any more (or, of course, any less) responsible with their use of them.

The same would be true if the shoe were on the other foot — men kept in subservience would also be seen to have the qualities ascribed to women: wisdom, patience, resourcefulness, compassion. (See the cartoonish treatment of the eponymous character in Rudyard Kipling’s Gunga Din, the waterboy who proves to be “a better man than I am” in the eyes of the Colonial narrator.) But I digress…

Speaking of shoes and other feet, though, a good analogy would be what kind of assumptions one might make about a society which, for whatever mad reason, had shoes only for their left feet. Yes, you’d quickly note that everyone’s right feet were more tender and delicate, more sensitive, more vulnerable, even more tentative when walking or working. And you’d also notice that when violence was perpetrated kicks would inevitably be delivered with the rough, tough, and shoe-wearing left feet. It would be silly, though, to imagine that there were essential differences in the feet themselves rather than the fact that they weren’t treated equally.

It would also be silly to imagine that if the shoes were literally on the other feet that people would be any less inclined to kick their neighbors than before. And it’s just as silly to imagine that women with power and resources equal to men would be any more (or any less) virtuous than men. That’s no reason not to give everyone two shoes, though, any more than it’s a reason for women not to have the same power and resources as men. The benefits in all cases tend to far outweigh the differences.

Repost or Like this

The Social and Verbal Problems With "Sufficient" Equality, and the Expected Benefits of Actual, Complete Equality

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2010-07-01 10:34

Years ago a friend of mine went to the local, rural-county courthouse to file some sort of licensing request. It was an uncommon request — something like wanting a temporary trailer license so he could tow an antique truck behind his car or something. Anyway, when he got to the county clerk’s office he was told “well, it’s legal if you do it this way, but it would be more legal if you did it another way.” Which left my friend to ponder how one thing could be more legal than another thing that’s also legal.

That’s what came up for me while reading a post by Irin of Jezebel points to a false dilemma in gender perceptions. Particularly male perceptions. (Emphasis mine.)


A 22-country survey found that while both men and women value gender equality, they differ widely on whether it’s been achieved. In the U.S., many more men believed sufficient progress had occurred, whereas women thought more action was required. [NYT]

She said it here.

WTF is “sufficient progress” when it comes to equality? You’re either equal or you’re not.

I happen to believe, correctly, that there’s been incredible progress, sure. But sufficient? WTF does that even mean? Just as something’s either legal or it’s not, you’re either equal or your not. And I think “sufficiently” in this case means “closer to my comfort level” rather than “closer to equal.”

Which is a shame. The social transformation that comes with equal would be pretty profound.

A little bit ago I posted about Scott Adam’s contention that we’ll be better off overall when technology advances to the point that there’s no cash and no privacy, and how our current situation where we’re 95% cashless and about 50% no-privacy is actually particularly bad. Well, I think men’s reservations about 100% equality derive from a similar fallacy to the one that no cash or no privacy would be worse than where we are now.

The reason, I think, is that when men say there’s “sufficient” equality they tend to mean “if there was any more equality I could never ‘get’ sex from women.” Because in a transactional model of heterosexuality men believe they have to get sex they have some sort of leverage, in the form of flowers, sincerity, offers of security, or more ominously, alcohol, drugs, or money, or even more ominously, blackmail, threats, or violence. And in each case the assumption being that women can always subordinate their libidos for material, social, or interpersonal gain.

In the transactional model of heterosexuality, sex is currency, a resource, of more interest and importance to men than to women and therefore subject to arbitrage. Inside that model women mustn’t just be junior parters in the equality patrol, they also literally embody the medium of exchange!

In that model full equality cuts off both opportunities for leverage but also eliminates the currency altogether.

Which is sort of similar to what Adams says would be a consequence of eliminating cash

In particular Adams posits that without cash and without privacy

Violent crime will greatly diminish too, because so much of society’s violence happens in the context of criminal enterprises that will no longer be profitable or practical.

He said that here.

The other big component of violence, of course, is sexual violence. And virtually all sexual violence is about a) equality and/or power imbalances in relationships or b) exploitive reduction of human beings to their sexual exchange value*. Which, again, goes part and parcel with the transactional model of heterosexuality**.

It’s a dumb model.

It’s not that in a truly equal society heterosexuals will have that much more sex, any more than we’re likely to have less. Instead, when it really isn’t a currency we’ll value it less. That we’ll also almost certainly enjoy it more, however much that turns out to be, will be just one of myriad beneficial side effects of actual rather than “sufficient” equality.

* Note: while I agree with Susan Brownmiller and Co. that rape and other forms of sexual assaults are abuses of power and not sex itself, I also believe that sex is the chosen vehicle for power abuse because of the object-value of women’s sexuality.

** The transactional model of heterosexuality obviously often extends into non-heterosexual interactions as well.

Repost or Like this

"Comprehensive" Meaning "Boys Too"

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2007-12-24 12:16

The problem being that, according to quite a lot of research, Abstience-Only education works perfectly well… well, at least until he says


I can’t stop this feelin’ deep inside of me
Girl, you just don’t realize what you do to me
When ya hold me in your arms so tight
You let me know everything’s all right

I-I-I, I’m hooked on a feelin’
High on believin’ that you’re in love with me

Source: “Hooked on a Feeling” by B.J. Thomas

Or she says…

Heaven’s just a sin away, oh oh just a sin away
I can’t wait another day, I think I’m giving in
How I long to hold you tight, oh oh be with you tonight
But that still don’t make it right, cause I belong to him

Oh way down deep inside, I know that it’s all wrong
But your eyes keep tempting me, and I never was that strong
Devil’s got me now, oh oh gone and got me now
I can’t fight him anyhow, I think he’s gonna win
Heaven’s just a sin away, oh oh just a sin away
Heaven help me when I say, I think I’m giving in

Source: “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away” by The Kendals

Quickly following up on the end of abstinence-only funding in Washington State...

It seems like one benefit of comprehensive sex education besides giving girls and boys the tools necessary to know when they’re really ready for sex, as opposed to when “...your eyes keep tempting me, and I never was that strong” or “I can’t stop this feelin’ deep inside of me…” is that unlike abstinence-only education they recognize that boys need sex education, that boys can make informed decisions… if they’re informed, that boys need freedom to choose for themselves (instead of believing they’re obliged by “instinct”) as much as girls are.

Abstinence-only education begins and ends with

C’mon angel my hearts on fire
Don’t deny your man’s desire
You’d be a fool to stop this tide
Spread your wings and let me come inside

Tonights the night
It’s gonna be alright
Cause I love you girl
Ain’t nobody gonna stop us now

Don’t say a word my virgin child
Just let your inhibitions run wild
The secret is about to unfold
Upstairs before the night’s too old

Tonights the night
It’s gonna be alright
Cause I love you woman
Ain’t nobody gonna stop us now

Source: “Tonight’s the Night” by Rod Stewart

Which sends not just one but all the wrong messages to both girls and boys.

“Comprehensive sex education” means “comprehensive.” And “sex education.” And “for everybody.”

Repost or Like this

What attracts many of us to feminism

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2007-11-04 22:20

Via Lynn of Noli Irritare Leones here’s a quote by Mythago of a comment she made on Hugo Schwyzer’s blog

What attracts many of us to feminism is a rejection of the shaky theory that men and women are binary opposites, with virtually no overlap in their biology, behavior or abilities–practically might as well be separate species–and that a woman who is ‘like a man’ (or a man who is ‘like a woman’) is a freak, pervert or both.

Mythago’s comment appears here.

That just puts it so succinctly. The differences between men and women are, of course, real, but real the way twenty and thirty year olds are different, different the way basketball players and ice skaters are different, different the way left handed and right handed people are different: different, sure, and depending on particular circumstances even significantly different, but no more polar opposites than are musicians and poets, Pennsylvanians and Virginians, or pharmacists and chemists.

As Shulamith Firestone puts it in the last chapter of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, the goal of feminism isn’t to draft women into parity in a male world, or drafting men into one that is female (as so many seem to dread) or homogeneously unisex. Instead the goal is the elimination of gender as a class distinction such that gender matters the way age matters, or handedness matters, or profession or hometown, or vocal range matters: handy and even essential where appropriate (as when recruiting for a barbershop quartet or professional position) but otherwise unremarkable and unremarked.

Repost or Like this

David Brooks revisits "the rules" for young women

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2007-07-10 15:33

Dana Goldstein of TAPPED fishes the one coherent line from a by-all-accounts totally wiggy op-ed from arch conservative-in-RINO-clothing pundit David Brooks.

[Contemporary western women] hit puberty around 13 and many don’t get married until they’re past 30. That’s two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships and shopping around. This period isn’t a transition anymore. It’s a sprawling life stage, and nobody knows the rules.

I think the reason he thinks it’s important to distinguish young women from young men between 13 and 30 is that whereas there have been other times when women have waited as long as their early 30s to marry (according to, for instance Stephanie Coontz) there hasn’t been a comparable tradition for women who are substantially economically and reproductively emancipated relative to their male cohorts.

Young men in those shoes, of course, have had rules for millennia.

Now comes the tricky part: many of the rules for men have been predicated on a patriarchal structures that treated women as economically and reproductively constrained, which in turn allowed them to be treated as transferrable property.

Consequently it probably wouldn’t be terribly productive to just extend traditional young-men-based rules to young women. On the other hand 1) being has how young women are now in a position to have some sort of actual say in the matter of how they conduct themselves, and 2) being as how their having a say substantially invalidates any traditions their young male cohorts might have been able to draw on it seems, again, 3) unnecessary for Brooks to distinguish young women as the ones who have to learn new rules as opposed to both young women and young men.

I would also say that only a conservative would consider it a problem that young women have a first-time opportunity to forge new rules for the fairly significant years of 13-30.

Repost or Like this

User login