male privilege

Retraction: Turns Out Donna M. Hughes Is Not a Neoconservative Dupe Because...

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Fri, 2010-05-07 13:28

Y’know how it is with stereotypes? You hear someone’s a boomer-generation anti-prostitution crusader and a women’s-studies professor at a New England college and you just assume she’s part of a tradition of radical, 70’s-era feminism that was hardened by constant battle with a culture that wanted women, and men, right where they’d been for up to 6,000 years: subservience for women, domination by men, men providing goods and services in the domestic sphere, women providing obedience, clean socks, children, and sex whether they want it or not. You also tend to assume a couple of other things. That they’re going to be race, age, class, and orientation tolerant. That while they’re going to be impatient with and sometimes exasperatedly hostile to the clueless sense of entitlement expressed by “librul doods” they’re nevertheless generally supportive of progressive political policies. And you generally expect them to be somewhere between suspicious of and viscerally opposed to traditional, privileged, patriarchal institutions.

Superficially Professor Donna M. Hughes appears to fit that bill. But as I’ve said often enough on this blog, while stereotyping is probably unavoidable, falling unconsciously for stereotypes makes one an assholes. I fell for the stereotype. This makes me an asshole.

But I am not the only asshole in this story.

Having fallen for the stereotype I made what I believe, passionately, to be the right case to attempt to unify that brand of “old school” activism with more contemporary activism in hopes of reducing a destructive schism in gender activism that’s moving into its second century in America.

And having fallen for the stereotype I made an assumption that if Hughes was making common cause with regressive, patriarchal institutions it was in error… an error driven by a perhaps understandable but nevertheless unnecessary blind sense of urgency, anxiety, and powerlessness.

What I didn’t consider until I started digging even deeper than I had previously, was that rather than being a dupe of social conservatives, the religious-right, and neoconservative political activists she might herself actually be a right-wing neoconservative activist! Rather than being a “useful idiot” of neoconservative and religious-right activists who made the conscious decision to use trafficking as a partisan Republican “wedge issue” against progressives, Hughes might instead have been right up there on the front row cheering them on.

Y’know how she’s lately been calling Maymay a pedophile, a sexual predator, and a sex trafficker?

Turns out that put him in extremely rarified company.

Back in 2002 Hughes wrote a post in that renowned bastion of human rights, the neoconservative National Review Online denouncing participants of an anti-human-trafficking conference organized by political opponents of the Bush administration.

There are some wolves in sheep’s clothing among those who claim they are fighting the trafficking of women and children. In their disguise they speak loudly against trafficking as one of worst human-rights violations in the world — which it is — to conceal their goal of normalizing and legalizing prostitution and the transnational flow of women into sex industries.

...

The upcoming conference in Honolulu “The Human Rights Challenge of Globalization in Asia-Pacific-US: The Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children,” scheduled for November 13-15, offers an example of this phenomenon. ...

If the listed keynote speakers, which includes Hillary Clinton, remain true to past form, they will passionately denounce the trafficking of women as a modern form of slavery, but steadfastly avoid mentioning prostitution as the demand that drives the trafficking.

...

These presenters and their colleagues couch their arguments in terms of human rights and women’s rights. But that is a smokescreen for their true agenda. They do not represent the interests of women and children. Normalizing prostitution and the transnational movement of women for prostitution does not advance women’s status or rights in the world. Instead, it turns women and children into sexual commodities that are raped, beaten, and exploited for the profit of a few.

She said it here, in the fucking National Review!

Yup. Maymay and Hillary Clinton, they all look the same from NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez’s office.

By the way, Kathryn, I should mention that National Review Online played an important role in shifting the focus of the trafficking and prostitution debates. In October 2002, NRO published my article entitled “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing,” which exposed the agenda of some of the liberal feminist, leftist anti-trafficking activists. They were using the anti-trafficking debate to advance their efforts to legalize prostitution.

She said it here.

Yup. Us liberal feminist, leftist anti-traffickers just looove us some pimps, and brothels, and madams, and traffickers. Like Hillary Clinton and Maymay.

Anyway, without getting too personal about anyone else I’ll just reiterate that I’m not the only asshole referenced in this post.

—-

Nor, I ought to add, am I the only person to fall for stereotyped assumptions about what it means to be a women’s studies professor at a New England college. Without naming names I’ll just say that more than one person has pointed to Hughes as an emblem of what’s “wrong” with feminism. And, especially, what’s wrong with “radfem” radical feminists.

I’ll just point out that Hughes’s fellow neoconservative, fellow Iraq-war apologist, and fellow Bush/Cheney apparatchik Richard Perle used to repeatedly claim he was “a registered Democrat.” Well fine if he says so. And to the same extent it’s fine if Hughes chooses to think of herself as a “registered” feminist.

But while nearly everyone recognizes that pointing to Perle and saying “that’s proof that Democrats are all evil, nuke-hungry, human-rights-scorning war-mongers like Richard Perle,” it’s actually fairly common to see people like Hughes pointed at as “proof” that the only thing that matters to feminists are other narrow-minded, mean-spirited, privileged, upper and upper-middle-class white women like themselves.

That? That would be another mistake. That? That she might either deliberately or even inadvertently encourage that mistake in others would be a bigger transgression in my mind than all the slander, lible, and neoconservative sucking up in all of Eastern Standard Time.

I’m not the only asshole mentioned in this post.

—-

Update: And speaking of the accusations of lies and slander Hughes has launched at Maymay (and Hillary Clinton and the whole rest of the panoply of “liberal feminist, leftist” individuals who’s policies for addressing the problem are different from her right-wing and neoconservative cohort?) From George Bush and Dick Cheney all the way down to convicted felon Charles Colson, party strategist Michael Horowitz, and the cast and crew of National Review’s online operation the bread and butter of neoconservative rhetoric is, has been, and because its ingrained in their character probably always will be lies, innuendo, slander, and false accusation, not to mention disproportionate aggression and “preemptive” attacks. These are the people she aligns herself with, and NRO is the media organ she chooses to editorialize for. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

And one last thing: I’m not calling Hughes’ feminism into question any more than I’m calling Perle’s Democratic affiliation or, for that matter, Dick Cheney’s profession of tolerance of homosexuals or George Bush’s religious faith. The just don’t mean very much in the face of the compromises and subordination the political philosophy that unites them demands of its adherents.

When I first heard about this I felt sorry for Hughes for getting tangled up with the Salvation Army. I now feel sorry for the Salvation Army!

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"Vajazzled" Vulvas: Privilege Rorschach Test?

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Wed, 2010-03-10 19:33

Lisa of Sociological Images succinctly describes the concept behind “vajazzling.”

In any case, the video below, in which a woman documents the vajazzling of her “vagina,” reveals that the term refers to the placing of a field of tiny crystals where your public hair would be. So, first you essentially replace your pubic hair with shiny objects.

See the video, and read Lisa’s text in context, here.

Succinctly but not completely. That should read shiny, sharp cut-glass crystal objects! Which at the very, very least would tend to limit one’s partner’s interest in face-to-face intercourse. And assuming men are being honest who say they don’t want pubic hair in their mouths ought to be just even more balky about chipping their molars on Swarovski crystals.

My guess is that the hair-in-the-mouth thing is a red herring. As Holly says, if men are so all-fired indiscriminating and sex-crazed they sure are a demandingly picky bunch. And nothing says demanding like “scrape off your pubic hair with a razor, or pull it out with hot, sticky wax,” I’m guessing saying “and encrust it with jewels instead” just seems extra special.

My second guess, though, is that it’s scarcely any of my business how an intimate partner chooses to groom herself and no business at all of mine how anyone else goes about it. Part of privilege would be assuming people who get themselves vajazzled are interested in men’s opinion in the first place.

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Palin, Huffington, Rice -- Speculating on the Imbalances in Public Reaction to Prominent Women

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2009-11-22 14:39

Summary: Speculation about the peculiar gaps in application of sexualized slander against highly-visible women. With a quick allusion in a note at the end about the soft underbelly of privilege.

Quote of the day (ok, from sometime last week) from Echidne of the Snakes:

It’s nearly impossible to separate Sarah-Palin-hating from Sarah-Palin-as-female-hating, and that offers a nice opening for any closeted misogynist to exercise his or her inner demons without getting caught doing it. Ultimately the whole topic turns into free-for-all about tits and power and shit, and the only valid conclusion is that we are far from an equal world when it comes to getting and using political power.

She said it here.

She says the no-win-edness of the situation makes it not worth blogging about.

I’ll just say it’s worth pointing out that you could pretty much replace “Sarah Palin” in the line above and replace it with, oh, many but not all highly-visible and/or controversial women politicians and pundits (Hillary Clinton anyone? Ann Coulter? Carrie Prejean? Janet Reno? Even Anita Bryant back in the 1970s.)

Funny thing, by the way, that gets me as I look at the list is it’s not so much the person’s looks (for instance Condoleezza Rice is conventionally attractive but rarely targeted) or their degree of partisanship (For instance “Dr. Laura” and Rachel Maddow tend to be more partisan than average but rarely targeted.)

Instead I think it’s most likely to happen when women step into new domains: homophobia in Prejean or Bryant’s case, law enforcement in Reno’s case. Activist First-Lady in Clinton’s case. Conservative firebrand in Coulter’s case. And, annoyingly, technology in the case of… pretty much every woman who’s ventured into technology. Indicative example: I seem to remember that Ariana Huffington caught quite a lot of sex-baiting when in the Clinton-activist-first-lady role with hapless former husband Michael’s arch-conservative Senatorial bid in California, but since returning to her “proper-role-for-a-woman” location in progressive politics I just haven’t seen that much sex-baiting. Even though she’s conventionally attractive, politically powerful, and reliably highly partisan. And even though her Huffington Post has a huge on-line presence I think she escapes the fate of women in technology by appearing as a media personality rather than appearing to grapple directly with technology.

All of which is poorly-informed speculation offered to support a third alternative to Echidne’s dilemma: it’s not that women are hated per-se, it’s that they’re particularly hated, in highly gendered ways, when they encroach on traditionally male turf.

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Note to self: If I have time I’ll try and post about why this rabid, sexualized reaction by (mostly) men to women’s encroachment demonstrates the freakish self-loathing and insecurity that is the flip side of (intrinsically un-earnable and thus always unearned) male privilege. And if I have time I’ll compare it to the “tough guy” conservative tendency to absolutely wet their pants at the prospect of 9/11 terrorists being tried in New York City or imprisoned on on U.S. soil even in SuperMax-security prisons. I might not have time, though, but I want to note the possibility.

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The No-Sex Class: Quotes Out Of Context

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Fri, 2007-12-28 13:56


Image via Silent-Porn-Star

Just for the record, the impression that “radical feminists” are sex negative might be mistaken, and is certainly misinterpreted, but it’s not completely insane.

While doing a little due diligence for my previous post (no, I don’t always do due diligence) I ran across this quote from 60’s/70’s feminist activist Ti-Grace Atkinson

If feminism has any logic at all, it must be working for a sexless society.

Source: Wikipedia

Perhaps not coincidentally, both the quote, and the “Take Charge” camera ad predate the work of radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin to define sexual consent for women as a valid social, let alone legal, concept.

Hard to believe since, today, he looks like a 1970s version of Austin Powers, but when that ad was current the man in it was a dead-serious male archetype! But when you hear, especially, feminists talking about male privilege, he’s embodying exactly what they meant.

Now. Are there feminists in the world today who take Atkinson’s stance on sex? Sure, just like there are still men who take the Vivitar man’s stance. Is Atkinson’s the dominant stance in feminism? Um, that would be a pretty unambiguous “no.” Is the Vivitar man’s the dominant stance among men? Err, best we can say is “we’d like to hope not.” And, if so, then is attacking feminism for positions held back when Austin Powers would have been current events the most logical possible use of anyone’s time? Me neither. But I digress…

The real big deal for me, though, is that when taken out of context, statements like Atkinsons tend to be picked up and used to reinforce the daft, dominant male notion that women as the “no-sex” class, innately disinterested in sex and from whom, therefore, sex must be… extracted. But Atkinson is not the only source of that conceit. Notice Vivitar man’s look of determination? Notice also his partner’s amused, if-you-say-so body language? So does it really matter what else Atkinson might have said?

More and more it seems to me what’s really going on, in dating, in so-called “pick-up artist” strategies, in relationship books, in expressions of feminist frustration and anti-feminist admonitions, is that women aren’t so much anti sex as anti-phony-bullshit-designed-to-get-sex. Until we, meaning us men, recognize just how hugely different those two things are, things aren’t going to get any easier. For anybody.

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Blogger stalkers and how to go dark the right way

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2006-01-12 21:21

Just so you all know, Gigi of the (now-dark) Mamalicious has pulled the plug on her blog after someone with a suspicious email address started prying into her real-world life. Details on her site, but I’ve heard she may not be the first blogger this individual has latched on to. If it’s the same person then he or she (“friendly name” is female, actual address sounds male) will have tried to embarrass her by, for instance, contacting her church, her employer, or someone else in her community and linked her real-life name to her URL. Yikes! Who could blame her for taking down all her posts?

I’ve got several reactions to this:
1) What’s going on?
First of all, I wasn’t able to get any useful hits Googling for her assailant either by alias or email handle except for what seems to have been a very short-lived Blogspot blog. If anyone else has more information about this person, or direct or indirect experience with anything similar, could you drop me an email? Unlike some people, who are really angry about this, I’m not planning retaliation or anything. It’s just that I’d like to know if this is an isolated incident or if it’s part of a developing trend.

2) Going down gracefully
One thing that’s always especially tough about taking your site down in a hurry, for what ever reason, is the risk of losing all your hard work, your friend’s comments, and everything else. Some blogging systems make it easy, maybe too easy, to just flush everything, and when you’re in a hurry, or discouraged, or hurt, it’s a natural reaction to just click “Are you sure?” But then it’s all gone.

Just as we should all familiarize ourselves with the nearest exit when we check in, or know how to change a tire before you get a flat on a rainy night, it’s a good idea to learn how to quickly backup your blog entries to disk. It’s a good idea to backup anyway of course — remember the multi-week Indecent Blogger meltdown last year? — but it’s especially handy to know how to do it when you’re stressed out and in a hurry to clear things out. So if you haven’t done so lately, take a minute to dig around in your blog console and find the backup feature. Then give yourself a couple of fire drills so it’ll come naturally if the day ever comes.

3) Witness Protection
Those of us who blog anonymously need to remember that nothing stays hidden on the internet forever. Our ISP can be compromised, account information can be hacked, and of course we can forget to close our browser window when our gossipy neighbor drops by asking for a copy of the blockwatch list. Thus the best protection is to remember than anonymity is a screen, not a fortress, and conduct ourselves accordingly. Two things that come to mind:

- Avoid naming names of people, towns, employers. – Use Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, or some other free mail service instead of your personal mail account.

If you have other suggestions (there are TONS) please leave them in comments and I’ll add them to this list and credit you for it.

4) Witness Relocation
When you decide to move your blog, for whatever reason, you’ve got all kinds of decisions to make. If you want to bring your old posts with you, note that most of the big blogging tools can read in your backup from other blogging tools. If you’re moving to avoid hassles you have a few decisions to make about that too. Google’s wheels grind exceedingly fine and pretty quickly to boot, as too many stalker-avoiders have discovered. It’s natural to want to continue using your old alias and IM or email addresses, but again thanks to Google it’s not a very good idea. A few more ideas for preserving your new identity come to mind:

  • Be different: A determined stalker would find “Figtree’s Grown Up Sex” pretty quickly and (very unfortunately) so would any permutation of “libertine prude.” Make a complete break with that part of your past, however much it pains you to do so.
  • Tell your friends, and tell them your situation: This is another good reason to grab a backup. You can go through your list of trusted commenters and let them know where you’re resurfacing. You should also tell them that you’d appreciate it if they didn’t announce your new location or refer to you by your old name in (also Google-able) new comments. Also, since most people would like to recover their former traffic, let them know if you’d like them to blogroll your new site but also let them know roughly when and how you’d like to be added. You’ll be far harder to track down again if links to your site seem to grow organically than if everyone suddenly replaces your old URL with your new one.
  • Distort before you restore: This may be trickier both technically and tactically, but if you really want to republish your old posts I’ve got three recommendations. First, since most blog backups arrive as text files, it’s pretty easy to open it in a text editor and change names, dates, places, links, and identifying (read Google-able) phrases. Then you can either post individual entries by hand or upload them. (Do I have to say make a backup of the original first, just in case?) If you do choose to repost, consider dribbling them out over time rather than plopping them all down in a big swoop.
  • Welcome aboard: Rebuild traffic the old fashioned way. You were probably interesting before, chances are you’ll still be interesting at your new location. One nice thing about reposting gradually instead of all in a chunk is you’ll give a whole new set of readers something to think and comment about and come back looking for more of. Also, don’t just go back to your same old places and start making the same old comments. While it’s fine to comment to old friends it’s important to remember your stalker is probably bright enough to look for you there until they grow bored and go bug someone else. If you do check in, make it look as though you’re making friends with them for the first time, and while you’re at it, search around a little and find some new places to make comments… and friends. (I’ve found commenting is one of the best ways both to draw new visitors to your own site and make great new friends.)
  • One more thing: if you’ve been using Flickr or some other site to host images, audio, blogrolls, or other collateral remember to change that as well. No sense using the same old Flickr account to repost old photos in your new blog.

That’s a very short list and I’m sure you’ve got other and probably better recommendations from [a now-dark blogger who wishes to remain anonymous]:

  • change your IM screennames. Check your old one for offline messages from time to time, but change it. A must. I’m actually considering changing mine recently. Don’t just add another ID, get a whole new account.
  • DO not post from foreign computers. Don’t use school, work, or library resources. You’ll get busted. Even clearing the cache doesn’t stop someone who wants to know where that computers been.
  • If you can, request a new IP Address from your provider. Some providers change it regularly, others do not.
  • Don’t use an RSS Feed. This way you can access the IP addresses of whoever comes to your site.
  • Get a stat counter that allows you to veiw total IP adresses. Some sites request payment for this. A good one is addfreestats.com.
  • Take only the trusted few. They should be proven people or be able to prove themselves. I know that sounds insane, but you’re trying to avoid the crazies, and sometimes it’s those closest to you.
  • Build your blogroll slowly again. Those from your old site who were supposed to find you, will. I promise. And it’ll be a happy reunion for you both.

[And here’s one from Rosie —fl]

  • I’ve read where a writer will email a copy of each post to an off-line account, like Gmail, specifically set up for just that purpose. So all are preserved – known only to you.

[Thanks, Rosie. —fl]

  • USE A HARD-TO-GUESS PASSWORD! Ok, I probably didn’t have to shout like that but it sounds like someone’s started logging into people’s Blogger accounts and defacing their blogs. If your blog is called something like “Hawt Lix” and your password is either “hawt” or “lix” or (the one security experts say is astoundingly common) “sex” then sooner or later someone’s going to figure it out. Better to use a mix of upper and lower-case letters with numbers.
  • Two quick and dirty ways to make up easy to remember gibberish passwords: a) Pick a favorite sentence or song lyric and make an acronym out of it. E.g. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art though, Romeo?” becomes “RRw4atR” or b) pick an address that only you are likely to remember. E.g. “1211NEColumbusWay” where you lived when you got your first puppy or “BraxtonHall42D” for the dorm room where you lost your virginity.

Again, if you post your ideas in comments I’ll add them to the list and give you credit.

So there you go. Something to think about while I miss Gigi and bitterly regret not being able to read her wonderful stories, insights, and randy poems or see her delicious pictures. Sigh.

As Red Green says, Remember I’m pulling for you, we’re all in this together. :-)

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