Commenter Marja Erwin posted a comment that included this very interesting link. She tells us she got into a flamewar over it. I’ll bet she did.
The comic shows a young woman on a park bench doing something on some kind device. A man who she thinks is “Eeeewwww….gross!” sits down and looks at her. She pulls out a gun and splatters his head in a spray of blood.
Oh the righteous female anger of the oppressed raised in opposition to hegemonic masculinity.
Under the comic and a comment about it, Valerie Keefe makes a comment of her own. She slams the comic and the commenter, calling one one or both “cissies”. (Best new word of the week) That’s gets it exactly right.
Commenter Stoner With a Boner said:
I know it’s just a comic but….
The “reaction” is WAY outta proportion to the “crime.”
Crime? What fucking crime? A man sat next to her on the same bench. The horror!
He was using the term “crime’ metaphorically as part of a set phrase, but the comic does in fact treat a man daring to sit next to a young woman as a crime worthy of summary execution.
You know where this kind of thing is considered a crime or some kind of gross offense? In India, as when an Untouchable or someone too far down the caste scale gets too close to some high-caste person.
And that’s the mentality we are seeing here, a gendered caste mentality, the notion that men are unclean and horrible just by fault of existing and that a girl has a God-given right to kill a man just because she feels like it.
This is a KKK mentality. There was a time when a black man presuming to sit down next to a young white woman, as in the cartoon, was taking his life in own hands, or more likely just throwing it away.
The comments on this were a zoo. More than one idiot called thought to point out that this was “just a joke”, that pathetic weak old tired lying excuse, that she didn’t actually kill anyone. I don’t see how they get that interpretation, and I don’t see how that matters except to expose their own man-hatred and how dishonest they are willing to be to excuse man-hatred.
This is as far down the road of toxic damseling as you can go, as deep the Pure Vessel Victorianism as you can go.
Read Valerie’s comment in response. As usual Valerie Keefe lays the smacketh down on exactly the right spot.
Valerie, you say stuff like this makes you feel ashamed to call yourself a feminist. I say your response to this should make you feel proud to be a feminist.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
Ginko, note I used ” ”
“Crime” being invading someone’s personal space….
not a crime at all
the “reaction” of blowing someone’s head off as a reaction that would be appropriate to save one’s life, not offended sensibilities….
anyways….
this is a part of something bigger…
look at how some definitions of misogyny include the mistrust of women as well as dislike hatred whereas most definitions of misandry are merely the hatred of men and boys….
If the definitions were weighted equal and mistrust was part of the definition of misandry, then Schrodinger’s rapist would be misandry…
SWAB, I mentioned that you were using it metaphorically. I know better than to think you thought that man committed some kind of crime.
‘Ahem’
‘Ahem’
‘AHEM. Miss, you have to move, we’re doing landscaping here.’
‘You bastard! You weren’t admiring my goddesslike feminine charms? I is insult! *blam*!’
Stoner with a boner,
Schrödinger’s rapist is misandrist anyway, as in the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, the cat is alive and dead at the same time, so in analogy the strange man is a rapist and not a rapist at the same time. Calling all men rapists is definitely misandrist and not the same as saying: “I am afraid.”.
Now it is especially interesting how being male intersects with other factors in those “Schrödinger’s rapist” scenarios. Often ageism and lookism play a role, but the original piece is obviously classist (I really wonder, how so many justice people can look past this.)
Quote from “Schrödinger’s rapist”:
“unusual standards of personal hygiene” reads as “looks homeless”,
“prophet of your own religion” reads as “insane”,
“tattoos of gang symbols” reads as “comes from a marginalised culture”.
Jupp,
To be blunt, as someone who is visibly mentally disabled (unless I expend a *LOT* of effort into passing), I know for a fact that women who do not know me personally often get creeped out by me. I have been accused of “looking like a rapist” for minding my own business drinking a beer by myself in a bar (when I was younger and still drank alcohol), or a cup of coffee in a cafe. I used to think that this meant that men like me should simply not go out in public. Later I have decided that all it means is that I must maintain distance to women and never talk to them unless they talk to me first (unless I have a very good reason to). I do not want to creep anybody out.
Valerie, you say stuff like this makes you feel ashamed to call yourself a feminist. I say your response to this should make you feel proud to be a feminist.
You are totally gonna give me a swelled head. Someone asked if I could call myself a feminist since I totally discounted this woman’s experiences (PS: I didn’t. I’m sure she’s had a bad day and would like to have the world leave her alone. This same feeling is often what causes the genesis of road rage, but silent public spaces are often hostile public spaces). My response follows:
I can totally relate to her situation, both pre and post transition. I cannot relate to her response. My particular favorite was a woman in her early 50s who thought she politely asked me how much I weighed and had gleeful anticipation in her eyes whilst awaiting what she had hoped would be an elucidating response.
I love how some ciswomen (see my nomenclature policy) think they, and sometimes womyn, but only if they’re mistaken for ciswomen, are the only people on the planet who are treated like public property. I especially love how these entitled twits then proceed to call their acts of narcissism feminism. That’s not feminism. That’s an argument for a mobile enclosure act. ohgawdsomeonecoughedinadoucheywaytogetmyattentionthat’ssomuchworsethanthesentencinggap
PS: My nomenclature policy is a response to decades of cis unidirectionalist feminists, and their trans kapos, hoping to have their womonhoods validated by the approval of cis people, acting as though CAMAB womyn are honourary womyn at best, ignoring us, keeping us closeted, and generally saving their ‘misandry’ for those who don’t fit masculine norms, a pretty good percentage of whom are womyn.
Meanwhile ciswomen, not having been exposed to misogyny unalloyed by cisfeminine privilege (which has been enacted as a patchwork over decades, centuries even, in an attempt to compensate for masculosexism, while still preserving cis-and-heterosexism) really only have their vaginas to speak to their female experience. They have not had the clarity that surviving dysphoria or asserting onesself without social support brings. They have not been homeless and turned away from a women’s shelter, they have not had someone express attraction, until they learned about her genital morphology, and she ceased to be the perfect and desirable object they had believed her to be, they have not had doctors deny them medicine that, while aiding their presentation, would also lower their risk of death generally.
If cis unidirectional feminists refuse to understand this, and accept womyn with open arms, instead continuing to assert, explicitly or implicitly, that they are somehow more women than those women who are CAMAB, then I will join the argument. By every metric they advance, womyn have faced far more female socialization than ciswomen ever will, and ciswomen’s incomplete experience of femaleness is something I will continue to remind them of, until they raise the requisite consciousness required to treat their sisters with respect.
Wow, that was a long PS.
@Rocketfrog Later I have decided that all it means is that I must maintain distance to women and never talk to them unless they talk to me first (unless I have a very good reason to). I do not want to creep anybody out.
No, it means ciswomen must unrustle their jimmies and understand that you’re a human being with a right to inhabit public space, and that their being uncomfortable is not the same as being assaulted, or for that matter, their restricting your equal access to public space.
Also, on creeps:
http://goodmenproject.com/noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz/the-first-meditation-on-social-awkwardness/
In the comments, one commenter says that men with speech impediments are creepy, and another says that homeless men are creepy. Nobody points out that this is ableist and classist – but on the other hand, this is the GMP, so it is impossible to tell how much just got lost in moderation.
Valerie,
I know for a fact that I have creeped out at least one transwoman merely for being present and looking weird, so it has nothing to do with any collective fault of “ciswomen”.
Unfortunately my body clearly shows that I did not escape the ravages of testosterone (which might also be the reason for my defective mind) – this, combined with the fact that I am visibly mentally handicapped, means that my mere presence evokes “creepout” in women.
I do not think cismen generally get creeped out by me though, probably because I also look like someone who it would be quite easy to take out in a fight. I am very clumsy and it shows. The only transman I know has never been creeped out by me to my knowledge.
Also, no women, cis or trans, have ever restricted my access to public space. I have, in periods, restricted my own access to public space to avoid offending.
Rocketfrog, using social pressure to make you feel guilty for being somewhere is restricting.
What shoutybloke said.
Also, while I know it’s hypocritical, using cis or trans as prefix instead of adjective is generally not a good idea… the radfems do it with trans women, so I respond in kind, but it’s rhetorical, not standard and appropriate day-to-day nomenclature.
Valerie, it would not be a swelled head. You deserve ceredit for making a very solid but apparently controversial point. Thank you.
“Someone asked if I could call myself a feminist since I totally discounted this woman’s experiences (PS: I didn’t. )”
No you didn’t, but that is considered such a damning silencing tactic that you just had to know it was going to be used on you.
“Cis” as a prefix means “to the nearer side of X” as in “Cisalpine Gaul” = Gaul this (the Roman) side of the Alps. So “ciswoman” would mean someone who is to the manward side of being a woman. First off “butch” already exists so a second word would be redundant, and second I don’t think that what people who say “ciswoman” mean to say that.
“Quote from “Schrödinger’s rapist”:
This means that some men should never approach strange women in public.”
Translation: Bwa, did you just look at thet whaaat woman theer?
Valerie,
Since you wrote “ciswomen” with “cis-” as a prefix in the post I was responding to, I assumed that that was your preferred usage. I am sorry if I get confused over the rules for this.
I have known English-speaking trans people who preferred either form. In Danish it is always used as a prefix.
anyways….
it seems like this has that element where a feminist seems to think she is a “mindreader.” I don’t know if that is privilege, but I guess I’ll label it condescending arrogance ™ –other examples of this include when Clarisse Thorn wrote about Pool Hall Dude and Amanda Marcotte’s reprehensible comments on the feministe thread with the sleeping man….
“Cis” as a prefix means “to the nearer side of X” as in “Cisalpine Gaul” = Gaul this (the Roman) side of the Alps. So “ciswoman” would mean someone who is to the manward side of being a woman. First off “butch” already exists so a second word would be redundant, and second I don’t think that what people who say “ciswoman” mean to say that.
Yeah… it’s the antonym of trans, so I just go with it… and it works for me in terms of crossing from presenting/identifying as one’s CASAB to something more genuine.
No you didn’t, but that is considered such a damning silencing tactic that you just had to know it was going to be used on you.
Yeah, someone else called me whorephobic, which is incredibly odd, since I’ve been of, and repeated, often to my peril, the opinion that sex work is work, and that the same inherent rights and responsibilities exist… I’ve spent a lot of time arguing with the radfems, who, frankly, want a monopoly over women’s bodies, that if they’re so against survival sex, they should be pushing income supports, not banning one form of high-paying survival work. She also called me an abuse apologist, which, as a survior of an abusive home, was interesting…
There was no point-by-point rebuttal, because, you’re right, all they have are silencing tactics where the charge screams louder than the verdict.
At any rate, she said:
Wait. Am I right in interpreting Valerie Keefe’s commentary to mean that women have to be nice to men who harass them because any and all of them might secretly be trans women, and therefore they are allowed to harass whomever they want? And also that other women not letting her harass them was/ is transphobic? If this is the same whorephobic, racist piece of shit Valerie I think it is, I guess I can’t say I’m surprised. But still. WUT.
And then I replied:
No. But nice duckspeak. My point was:
You don’t have the right to advocate violence against people who are annoying.
That while a bit rude, someone interjecting in public space does not rise to the level of harassment, and as someone who’s been harassed in public, I like to think I can tell the difference.
Three, that despite our heterosexist society, and the implicit heterosexist attitudes of the comic’s author, that not every conversation someone male-presenting initiates with someone female-presenting is intended to be sexual.
That oftentimes, problematization of CAMAB social interraction is swimming in masculosexism (or femmephobia if you really have to be sanist about bigotry, and apparently you do), and DISPROPORTIONATELY targets and affects womyn. But again, it’s the raindrops’ job to fall around ciswomen, innit?
And whorephobic now? That’s a new one, again, already dignified with the response of the activism I’m engaged in and have been engaged in for some time. Sex work is work, I’ve been pretty consistent on that one for a long, long, time, but please, feel free to educate me on how ignoring someone in a vulnerable position to prove a point is totes progressive, and if you can do it in a way where the words don’t sound like they’ve come out of Animal Farm, that would be double-plus good.
@Gingko: ““ciswoman” would mean someone who is to the manward side of being a woman”
Does this mean that a woman saying that would mean the opposite? Man, this sure would get confusing.
Anyway, yeah, the comic. I’m amazed she was able to tell so much about a person without looking at them or hearing them speak. Also I’m guessing she’s never had an itch in her throat, and tried to clear it discreetly rather than just letting rip.
as to many of the, ahem, interesting things I’ve witnessed at the clothing optional beach….
There was this one gal who constantly got in conflict with the “perverts.” Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a group of guys who march up and down the beach looking for vajayjay’s to stare at and regularly put their towel 5 ft away from women when there are hundreds of feet of open sand, however….
This particular gal would often set up near the regulars, then do little bootie dances, then get really mad when random single guys would wander by. Before I got to know her routine–One time I had tried to politely speak to her and she basically told me to go f*ck myself. I’m not dense and don’t need to be told twice so I stayed away from her. I also noted that there were women whom I’d consider more attractive who seemed to have less drama. They’d set up in their area with a few friends and never seem to have any problems. By about the second summer I saw her around, she still had a few white knight orbiters but didn’t seem to hang out with the big group so much. I’d mostly ignore her but would catch her glare of distain as I walked by. One day, I was exiting the water au natural. I walked by her towel, I probably looked like some kind of barbarian to her. She had her glare, I covered my junk and extened my middle finger. I looked back up to make eye contact, she looked away with a furious look on her face. I’m not a mind reader, but if i was drawing a comic, the thought bubble would’ve read, “How dare that dirty POS male use MY schtick against me, I have the vagina, I make the rules. Who the hell is he not to follow like the est of ’em.”
“How dare that dirty POS male use MY schtick against me, I have the vagina, I make the rules. ”
Yeah, that’s what so wretched about this nonsense.
What do you want to bet the women going on and on about harassment and groping don’t ever consider that they should respect a man’s modesty and personal space?
And if they respond by saying ‘well I don’t make advances’, pray tell why do *they* get to hover about in the presence of men they find attractive without being upfront about their sexual interest?
Isn’t that being a creepy, sleazy ‘nice girl(tm)’?
TB… wow, completely never thought about that. I tend to walk around with my head in the clouds, so I never noticed girls hanging around waiting for sexual attention from me. As I grew up, I started noticing and actively ignoring these women, because I didn’t want to deal with that. But I never thought about it like that. These were nice-girls… paradigm shift… I find I’m needing to collect my brain up off the floor
@ Equilibirium
“These were nice-girls… paradigm shift…”
You have two choices in the mating game. Attempt to express your sexual interest overtly or wait to have someone express overt sexual interest towards you.
According to feminists if men express their sexual interest overtly they deserve to be judged harshly if it’s unwanted, even due to factors beyond the man’s control–looks, natural smell, social disability–and based entirely on the woman’s subjective ‘comfort’.
But if a man stays in a woman’s company without expressing his sexual interest overtly in the hope that she will express overt sexual interest _in him_, he’s also judged for being sleazy, deceptive and creepy.
So we’re back at condition one, men must express their sexual interest openly. Yet if he expresses his sexual interest openly and the woman he’s expressing it to does not share that interest, he deserves to be assassinated socially as a sexual harasser(and probably a rapist!)
The only way men can please the feminist construction of the mating game is to all be high status, socially adroit, handsome telepaths who only approach women when they pick up, telepathically, that the women are interested in them. In other words, the only way men win is by being exactly what women want of them every millisecond. And if they fail, it’s because they’re patriarchal assholes who deserve to be beaten with the rape whip. (Men’s frailties and inabilities are ‘patriarchy’; whenever a man fails to give a woman what she wants, he simply _must_ have done it intentionally, not because he _can’t_.)
It’s such a sickeningly abusive dynamic, it boggles the fucking mind.
I’m going to do a shamus tacticus on this.
Stoner wrote:
” it seems like this has that element where a feminist seems to think she is a “mindreader.” I don’t know if that is privilege, but I guess I’ll label it condescending arrogance ™ –other examples of this include when Clarisse Thorn wrote about Pool Hall Dude and Amanda Marcotte’s reprehensible comments on the feministe thread with the sleeping man….”
It’s not privilege, it’s a cognitive distortion common to people with certain personality disorders, such as Narcissism and Paranoia.
To be fair, it is not exactly specific to feminists. In my experience, not only do many people seem to think they can read minds), they also assume that others do so as well.
This reminds me. I was bringing back some library books downtown last week… turned around, there was a guy who was kind of close to me, and the following conversation ensued:
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Kinda personal, but whatever, “Um… no.”
“Would you like me to be your boyfriend?”
“Sorry, I’m not into boys.”
“Okay.” And he walked away.
That was mildly unpleasant and mildly bemusing, but it wasn’t really anything I’d think should be opposed or combated. It was someone expressing romantic, and likely sexual, interest, in me, in a public place, where he was not in a position of trust, and he took no for an answer, once he realized I had some core objections that additional information would never assuage. That’s exactly what should happen… just that girls (me included) should ask more.
I didn’t shame him for making me mildly uncomfortable, especially since I get commercial appeals in public that are far more discomfiting than that, and for that matter, I had nothing to fear, so any fear was irrational and beyond his control far more than mine.
So, yeah… that was way less traumatic than the woman in her early 50’s, with some female-presenting child in her charge, who asked me, as though she had a right to know, how much I weighed. My response was to ask who on Earth had ever taught her that she had a right to ask that, especially in front of about 20 other people. That was treating me as an object. THAT is worthy of response. Someone expressing attraction is not.
To be fair, it is not exactly specific to feminists. In my experience, not only do many people seem to think they can read minds), they also assume that others do so as well.
Well said, Rocketfrog. Neurotypicalism is not a uniquely unifem trait… just one unifems think they’re immune from.
Oh, I certainly know allllll about the two roles you can play in the dating game, and I am painfully aware about how the only way to “win” the dating game as a man is to be, as you precisely put it, “exactly what women want of [the man] every millisecond”. The other option you have is to not play at all. I think that is a reality that unfortunately every het man here is familiar with, or even every man who has been or has been expected to be in a het relationship.
I have lived in Sweden for a while, and while Sweden is not exactly an egalitarian paradise, the women of Sweden long ago decided that they would take equal freedom and equal responsibility in the sexuality sphere. Initial and a few follow-up dates are always split, and not even 50/50. You only pay for what you order, nothing more, nothing less. Of course, this can lead to people haggling with each other over appetizers and how much of said appetizer was consumed by each person (more common in groups), but in general, it takes away the obligation of the woman to “give” sex as a result of continued courtship. Which is the freedom part of the equation.
Sadly, never having dated a swede, I can’t say from personal experience how this works as the relationship evolves.
“So, yeah… that was way less traumatic than the woman in her early 50′s, with some female-presenting child in her charge, who asked me, as though she had a right to know, how much I weighed. My response was to ask who on Earth had ever taught her that she had a right to ask that, especially in front of about 20 other people. That was treating me as an object. THAT is worthy of response. Someone expressing attraction is not.”
Note also that your response was not to pull out a gun and vaporize her head. Your response was proportionate to the offense.
Note also that your response was not to pull out a gun and vaporize her head. Your response was proportionate to the offense.
I never had the inclination… I was too amazed that someone who said something like that was able to board a bus without assistance, or for that matter, without getting her ass kicked earlier.
I think many folks on this commentary missed the explanation under the comment where the writer was being followed by someone who then sat down next to her and continuously tried to get her attention.
The comic does not advocate violence as an answer. Instead, it’s about figuring out ways to deal with the frustrations of sexism without being outwardly violent, which some people can and do result to. It’s about turning violent frustration into something creative.
I think those points have been missed.
When the title is People who Deserve to Die, I’m pretty goddessdamed sure that most of us got the dehumanizing context of the comic. She may not be in favour of murdering ‘street harassers’ or in this case, interjecting coughers, but she contributes to an environment where that is acceptable.
I’ve known a feminist for the past 10 years who has often expressed wanting to kill sick people who get their germs on her. She would also get horrible road rage and drive recklessly until finally last year she wrapped her car around a tree. I don’t know that it has much to do with feminism except 1) when it’s presented in an obviously gendered manner, and 2) when they don’t know where their immature emotions end and their feminism starts.
I will also add that intent and impact are not often the same. While the intent of the coughing person is unknown, the impact of it was a triggering based on repetitive street harassment. Criticizing someone for the way they (nonviolently) react to a trigger doesn’t seem to be moving anyone forward.
That said, clearly a lot of the comic and it’s explanation were missed. Just as people are criticizing the writer of the comic for possibly jumping to conclusions, I don’t see anyone criticizing her doing anything much of anything differently.
And perhaps that’s for the best, because it’s not going anywhere good.
Criticizing someone for the way they (nonviolently) react to a trigger doesn’t seem to be moving anyone forward.
As trans women have been at pains to explain to cisessentialists who want to ban us from women’s spaces based on a nebulous, and disingenuous, fear of triggers, I take significant exception to that statement.
By moving anyone forward, I mean that it’s not conducive to change making and any kind of social justice. Those are places I identify as good.
Additionally, you can never tell where people’s journey’s will lead them. Fortunately and unfortunately, there are some of us who become really angry and violently minded about issues of privilege and oppression. For some of us, it helps us feel safe with the bombardment of oppression daily. This is not to say that anger and violence is the answer or the goal. It is to say however that it’s very much a part of many people’s struggles with being invisible, ignored, etc. I’m quite possibly sure that many people who have commented on this blog have felt anger and/or violent inclinations. I have been lucky to exist in many spaces based on the spectrum of privilege and oppression that I experience based on my identities. That has allowed me to see ciswomen angry at cismen, people of color angry at white people, trans folks angry at cis folks, disabled people angry at temporarily able bodied people, and the list could go on for days. However, it’s also allowed me to see people turn anger into righteous indignance that motivates their struggle towards human rights, social justice, equality, and liberation. Therefore, I’m not one for criticizing where people are in their journey. I’m more for meeting them where they are and figuring out how the skills they have and want to offer can, at some point, be utilized for liberation.
Intent is not magic and the object of my derision is a thinking being who has had a time to adopt an ethical code… I really don’t want to go along with coddling stuff that, again, is a narcissistic response to a bidirectional phenomena.
Valerie, you said “As trans women have been at pains to explain to cisessentialists who want to ban us from women’s spaces based on a nebulous, and disingenuous, fear of triggers, I take significant exception to that statement.”
I hear that absolutely. I’ve, luckily, never found myself in a space like that, but I can completely imagine one existing. Perhaps then, I should clarify. I did not and will never mean don’t push back, don’t question, don’t call people out. Far too often, we don’t do that in an effort to make people “comfortable” or to create a “safe space.” I do think, however, we sometimes undermine other people’s feelings of being marginalized because of our own and I think that can be a dangerous place to go. Oppression olympics will never be my goal, which leads me to feeling this way.
@ Alicia Bell
“Oppression olympics will never be my goal, which leads me to feeling this way.”
Yet you still give the gold medal to cis women over cis men.
Likely without even asking many cis men about the experience of their own lives.
For example, how do you think cis men feel about having violence against them in response to them making cis women uncomfortable normalized?
You think the comic is unique? Turn on the tv. Women’s violence against men in response to men making them uncomfortable is normalized; hell women’s violence against men for any reason is normalized.
‘What did he do to deserve it?’
Oppression Olympics is a phrase used where the words, “Please do not attempt to quantify the marginal utility of different kinds of privilege and oppression because if we did that, I might have to re-examine some of my preconceptions regarding what exactly is privileged and what privileges and oppressions are actually such that they distort the political powers of some oppressed people vis a vis others.
While I’m all for beginning at X > Y, A > B, ergo X+A > Y+B, I’m not for ending there.
Oppression Olympics is a phrase used where the words, “Please do not attempt to quantify the marginal utility of different kinds of privilege and oppression because if we did that, I might have to re-examine some of my preconceptions regarding what exactly is privileged and what privileges and oppressions are actually such that they distort the political powers of some oppressed people vis a vis others…” should go.
While I’m all for beginning at X > Y, A > B, ergo X+A > Y+B, I’m not for ending there.
@TyphonBlue
Do you think I live a life void of cismen? I talk about intersectional identities all the time. Oppression olympics is different than recognizing privilege. I currently live in the US and in the US, there’s male privilege. Recognizing that ciswomen and trans folks don’t benefit from male privilege is not giving anyone a gold medal. Cismen are not the target of cissexism or sexism but can be the target of racism, heterosexism, classism, etc depending on other identities they carry with them.
Additionally, I agree that violence is normalized. While there are cismen who appreciate consented violence, there are many who don’t appreciate violence sans consent. This, however, doesn’t undo sexism.
Valerie, again, I’d have to disagree with you. Examining and reexaming privilege and oppression is something I do all the time. Being a part of multiple marginalized identities absolutely compounds upon itself. I know this from experience. However, comparing my racial marginalization to someone’s immigration status marginalization and deciding that one is a better or worse kind of marginalization does nothing for anyone.
@ Alicia Bell
” Oppression olympics is different than recognizing privilege.”
…
“Cismen are not the target of cissexism or sexism”
You are playing ‘oppression olympics.’ By definition you are saying ‘I believe my problems are worse then those of a group of people I have no direct knowledge of.’
I’ve given you an example of systemic sexism against men. The idea that female-on-male violence is acceptable. This concept is everywhere. On tv. In newspapers. All over stories and fiction. It’s even in your comic.
Now you’ll say that the acceptance of female-on-male violence by society is not sexism against men. Because… patriarchy, right?
Of course patriarchy theory–the idea that not only are men in power but men in power benefit other men–has not been proven. It is an article of faith whose function appears to only 1. erase male victims 2. justify abusive behaviour against men.
Incidentally, just because you know cis men doesn’t mean you’ve ever listened to them.
“Recognizing that ciswomen and trans folks don’t benefit from male privilege is not giving anyone a gold medal.”
One of two things just happened:
1. You just referred to cis women as women and to trans women as ‘folks.’ A microaggression I’m rather attuned to.
2. You actually believe that trans men don’t benefit from male privilege, which is just wrong, for reasons I’ve already spend a lot of time explaining on this site.
My reason behind utilizing folks is that some of the trans people I know wouldn’t identify as trans women, trans men, etc but instead identify as trans and sometimes identify as gender queer. Trans folks for me includes all of those people, but if you experience it as a microagression, I’d be interested in hearing why.
Additionally, my experience has been that transmen don’t experience male privilege in the same ways that cismen do. I don’t think people’s experiences can be wrong experiences. However, I am interested in hearing your experience regarding transmen and male privilege or if you don’t want to explain it, feel free to link me to wherever else it is you already explained it.
I will also say that I know some transmen who have experienced male privilege and others who haven’t. I guess the issue comes in using transmen as a catchall term.
As a trans woman, I’ve experienced female privilege.
Particularly the being protected (more) from physical violence, and having people be more reluctant at inflicting said violence, regardless of my capacity to defend (for the record, I was unable to defend myself before, and so am I now, my body muscle mass is roughly the same (very little), but no one afforded me protection before).
This is just one example.
I experience problems due to being trans that don’t balance female privilege, but it sure feels better than before. And given I was trans before too…does it matter?
Why are misandrists not considered “creepy”?
They certainly creep me out. A lot.
Aych, I don’t know your sex. It appears that only women can assign a value of “creepy” to someone. Society does not accept a man’s feeling of being creeped out as having any value.
@ Aych
“Why are misandrists not considered “creepy”?”
At ‘avoiceformen’ a commentator even _saying_ that he or she would shoot someone in the head would be perma-banned.
While on feminist sites advocating violence _in the original posts_ goes on unchallenged.
Yet avfm is a ‘hate’ site.
But, of course, the double standard is not systemic sexism against men.
To be fair, it also doesn’t mean that any of them knew what they were talking about 😉
There’s a host of behaviors that women engage in on a nearly constant basis, but which are considered creepy when men do it, even seldom.
Take passive behavior, “hovering” around a man they like. Girls that I am not attracted to routinely make vague, ambiguously-sexual remarks that make me uncomfortable around them. They often talk to me about “some other guy” who won’t ask them out in spite of the fact that they’re constantly dropping hints for me to do it. And then there’s the jealousy and bad-mouthing of other girls, the ones I’m actually attracted to.
Or just take the very fucking assumption behind Schrodinger’s Rapist – that these random guys on the street, such as myself, are actually interested in them in a sexual manner. And it triggers them. They can just look at you from across the street and tell that you want them. Sometimes, many times in fact, I’ve been directly accused of sexualizing a blatantly unattractive woman, some very angry person to whom the thought of me being attracted would be laughable if it weren’t just so sad.
And then, there’s just the ones who size you up and treat you a certain way – like an nerdy female coworker who goes to a bar with me and then makes constant put-downs and other condescending remarks about my dating life and various sexual shortcomings when in fact she doesn’t know the first thing about me. This is why I can’t stand most of the female geeks I ever seem to come across – snappy, arrogant, sarcastic, and pretty much used to putting down all the men who they’re normally surrounded with, who must be used to always getting put down. That’s pretty much my mental image of feminist women, anyway. “Creepy” and judgmental people who think they know more about me than I do.
@ dungone
I would add all the conversation regarding women ‘defining’ men to be predatory and creepy.
‘Women civilize men’; ‘men are nothing without women’; ‘women are more moral then men’; etc. etc.
@TB, here’s one. A cranky feminist walks by a homeless man masturbating and tweets about it, which then morphs into a homeless man masturbating while looking at her without her consent, which then morphs into her having been forced against her will to take part in a sexual act, which then concludes in her having a right not to be grossed out. What about the poor homeless man whose sexual fantasy she inserted herself into? Where are his rights? 😉
http://bitchspot.jadedragononline.com/2012/10/15/mccreight-fails-again-privilege-and-masturbation/
Public masturbation puts someone quite firmly in the ” Danger to others/self” category IMO.
@Shoutybloke, that’s because they’re most likely mentally ill. Not because they’re ravishing a happless damsel in distress with their sexist, Patriarchal eyes. The authorities should be notified in order to hopefully get that person into a safe environment. What’s really disturbing is when instead of treating it for what it was, someone will resort to using a homeless person to draw attention to her own sexuality. Because you know what the first thing I’d do if I saw a homeless woman masturbating? I’d tell all my friends about how she was raping me with her imagination!
@Dungone
Christ on on a cracker. I’m glad the blogger there pointed out that the homeless guy probably didn’t have anywhere to go, could have been severely mentally ill, etc. As for Jen, instead of having compassion for him as a homeless person, giving him the benefit of the doubt, or, at the very least, calling the police to take care of things, she immediately put on her victim suit and started dancing around in it. She was more concerned about herself and whether she “consented*” to what was obviously her own insertion of herself into a fantasy he may or may not have been having than she was about the mental condition, life and situation of a person living on the street. I mean, I can understand being grossed out by seeing a person masturbating when one doesn’t expect it and reacting immediately, but one would have to live in a pretty ridiculous bubble of self-aggrandizement and hate to do what she did. What the ever-loving hell?
This is why I can’t take so many feminists seriously. They could see a man being torn apart by wolves in the middle of the forest, screaming and reaching a hand our for help, and I swear sometimes their first thought would be, “Oh my god, that creep tried to touch me.” You know, instead of exhibiting any kind of human decency.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Not all feminists are like that**, but still. How and why can this misandristic (and just generally misanthropic) crap have such a following and not be picked apart by every last feminist who isn’t?
* I don’t actually think anyone needs to get consent to sexually fantasize about another person. The idea is preposterous. Masturbating in public is obviously verboten, but the implication that she’s making takes it beyond being disgusted at public masturbation.
** Look at me, trying not to offend other feminists. I hate how I feel like I always have to put a disclaimer like that after something.
Alicia Bell:
I just went back and read the text under the comic to make sure, and I can find no reference to being followed. The writer appears to indicate that she was already seated with a sketchbook when she first set eyes on the individual in question. The only observed behaviors attributed to this individual are sitting down on the vacant portion of a public bench in a public park, which is designed to seat multiple people, and coughing (this latter growing gradually louder over time). The writer characterizes this coughing as “passive aggressive” and clearly regards it as an affectation, but we cannot reasonably accept this as a premise in analyzing the situation because the author provides no observable details in support of this belief. The text you indicate clearly identifies this person as belonging to the category of “street harasser”, but none of the evidence provided in the text or portrayed in the comic suggest than there was even an attempt at communication, let alone a transgression of normal personal boundaries. The illustration of the individual in question suggests that they are likely homeless, a fact which, if true, would significantly raise the likelihood of the coughing having a purely physiological cause. As to personal space, the illustration (which must be, if anything, an exaggeration of the reality) shows the ‘offending’ individual taking a on the opposite end of the public bench, as far as possible from the writer. This being the case, if the writer feels that this action infringes upon their personal space it can only be because they believe themselves to have a greater right than others to the use of public property intended for the free use and enjoyment of the entire community. In short, nothing in the text you indicate points to the extenuating circumstances you suggest being any more than chimerical, and the supposed “street harasser” appears far more likely to be an economically disprivileged person, possibly suffering from a medical condition, who is merely minding their own business.
As to your suggestion that fantasies of violence and declarations that a given group of people should die are acceptable ways for an adult in this society to deal with frustration, I reject it utterly. As a prepubescent child it was physically beaten into me (by the ideological brethren of the author you defend, no less) that such behavior is not acceptable even from the physically and emotionally immature. I will certainly not look the other way when it is done in so hypocritical a manner as this and by a person who claims not only maturity and agency, but a superior moral position from which to lecture others. Those who would preach must hold themselves to a higher standard, or they are nothing but dangerous children.
I would ask you further to consider a parallel situation, drawn from my own life: I participate in the subculture surrounding Japanese animation and comic books, and have done so for some time. The fandom for Japanese comics has far greater gender diversity than that for the majority of their Western counterparts, and some surveys would even suggest that women are a slight majority. At clubs, events and conventions I not infrequently encounter women, usually young (younger than me, and I just turned 23 a few weeks ago) who display an exuberant disregard for the personal space of others. They routinely go so far as to lay hands on complete strangers, myself included, and I consider such intrusions to be most off-putting and unwelcome. Naturally, social and legal custom restrain me from taking any physical action to prevent unwanted contact, and verbal appeals are sometimes ignored (and in any case can only be made too late, as these people do not ask permission). This behavior falls far more clearly within the definitions of harassment than the invents depicted by the comic in question, but would you consider it reasonable for me to create and publicly post images depicting the violent and callous murder of these young women, or to suggest that they belong to a class which ought, by force, to be exterminated from the human race? I certainly would not deem it an acceptable response, and I feel confident that the vast majority would be behind me in that position and ready to condemn me if I took such action.
Shoutybloke:
I guess we better go and lock up Ozzymandias, then. Zie has admitted to having engaged in that activity on multiple occasions and not being caught thanks to zir having a vagina rather than a penis.
Honestly, I agree that it falls under the category of things that it is unacceptable to do in a public place and that people have a right to react negatively to it, but I find it difficult to connect the action directly with danger to anyone. Perhaps some criminal psychologist somewhere will correct me on that, but I kind of doubt it.
I just looked at that comic again.
There is a METAL MOTHERFUCKING DIVIDER between the seated man and the seated woman. He is sitting in a separate, clearly demarcated section of the public bench, which is segmented precisely so that multiple, unrelated people can make use of it simultaneously without infringing on each other’s space, as he is doing. I’m sorry, but if I had to pick one of them to ship off to demolition, it wouldn’t be the coughing man.
@Alicia Bell
I will also say that I know some transmen who have experienced male privilege and others who haven’t. I guess the issue comes in using transmen as a catchall term.
No… you see, that’s not how it works. And again, trans men, two words. The portmanteau is meant to degender.
Trans men enjoy male privilege, and in some sporadic cases, enjoy conditional cisfeminine privileges before and after transition. What you’re referring to, however, is the intersection of cissexism with those oppressions. We’re a species with far more implicit communication than one would be able to immediately recognize and people are implicitly gendered by it, which, of course, was the genesis of the abuse I received through adolescence, including my favorite horrible story to relive: My very public sexual assault… in front of 200 people, who did nothing, as someone fondled my breasts The ones that grew in more than 12 years before I started medical transition, while I said stop, into a live microphone… it wasn’t the assault but the collective indifference to it that was what truly hurt.
A trans man can no more lose his male privilege by being read conditionally as cisfeminine than a straight man can lose his straight privilege by pretending to be gay for the purposes of a thought experiment.
@Shoutybloke
Public masturbation puts someone quite firmly in the ” Danger to others/self” category IMO.
1. Homeless people don’t have a lot of walled-off personal space, due to classist policies generally denying them such. Usually to be able to satisfy biological needs, like going to the washroom, in a public place, you have to have money. Businesses are loathe to grant the homeless access to their facilities and there are very few publicly-funded facilities available, at least where I have been.
2. People don’t stop having sexual needs in a crisis situation.
3. But again, the circumstances of just how public the masturbation was, and just how much it was Jen McCreight’s radar being up because, homeless man, which given gender prevalence of homelessness is near-redundant…
I guess it’s me… I consider homelessness far more of a crisis situation than the public masturbation that results from our indifference to the homeless.
“You think the comic is unique? Turn on the tv. Women’s violence against men in response to men making them uncomfortable is normalized; hell women’s violence against men for any reason is normalized.
‘What did he do to deserve it?’”
just remember Sharon Osbourne hooting and howling about the man who got his penis cutt off…
I’m not trying to blame the guy for being homeless, I’m pointing out that he’s likley so mentally ill as to require involuntary comittal.
Hiding:
“I guess we better go and lock up Ozzymandias, then. Zie has admitted to having engaged in that activity on multiple occasions and not being caught thanks to zir having a vagina rather than a penis.”
Gets my vote
“Honestly, I agree that it falls under the category of things that it is unacceptable to do in a public place and that people have a right to react negatively to it, but I find it difficult to connect the action directly with danger to anyone. Perhaps some criminal psychologist somewhere will correct me on that, but I kind of doubt it.”
IIRC, it is one of the danger signs that someone commiting indecent exposure may well graduate to violent assault, but I can’t provide a cite, and it’s been a long time, so my information may be out of date.
“Take passive behavior, “hovering” around a man they like. Girls that I am not attracted to routinely make vague, ambiguously-sexual remarks that make me uncomfortable around them. They often talk to me about “some other guy” who won’t ask them out in spite of the fact that they’re constantly dropping hints for me to do it. And then there’s the jealousy and bad-mouthing of other girls, the ones I’m actually attracted to.”
I’ve had experiences over the years where a woman I know complains about a guy I know endlessly. At the time I thought this was just “friendzoning” or using me as a free therapist. More and more, looking back it seems like some kind of passive aggressive dating strategy where I was supposed to “man-up” and prove I had a whole set of different traits and then make a (non creepy) move. Their constant complaining and talking bad made me less attracted to these women. Sometimes they’d graphically berate said man and how he was in the bedroom. I would’ve responded much better to them if they showed their interest by lightly touching my arm and saying they found me interesting/attractive/whatever and wanted to get to know me better-yeah, I know, a ballsy move for a woman to make…
“IIRC, it is one of the danger signs that someone commiting indecent exposure may well graduate to violent assault, but I can’t provide a cite, and it’s been a long time, so my information may be out of date.”
yeah, this is an ezine article so take with a grain of salt…
http://ezinearticles.com/?Exhibitionism-and-Violent-Sexual-Crime&id=2175044
anyways, even if there is correlation between exhibitionism and violence, I don’t know that what the homeless guy was doing was exhibitionism. Homeless people poop and pee on the street because that’s the only place they have to go, not because they want to make a feminist’s day because she gets to voyeuristically watch them go cacca like a dog being walked….
It’s sort of creepy to cast a masturbating homeless(and probably mentally ill) man in your ravishment fantasy.
@Stoner:
I stand corrected.
Actually, just to belabour the point.
Let’s imagine a man walking past a homeless woman who is masturbating. This man watches this woman masturbate and decides that she’s masturbating _to him_ thus violating him sexually.
How quickly would it be pointed out that 1. he doesn’t know what she’s thinking 2. she’s most likely mentally ill or 3. has no where else to tend to her bodily needs and 4. it’s sort of fucking creepy for him to mentally insert himself into her sexual act and then take offence at the possibility she’s mentally inserted him in her sexual act.
Alicia, it’s very simple. Reverse the genders. Would it be misogynist? Yes? Then it’s misandrist.
(Cue: “It’s different. One’s floppy…”)
The more of a privilege differential there is, the less useful these reversals are.
For example, let’s consider the last example in terms of economic class. I don’t know how the original author is doing, but imagine a moderately comfortable man publicly masturbating as a homeless womon walks by.
I think it’s likely that the homeless man is just doing his business and might rather have more privacy. I think it’s likely that the comfortable man is deliberately creepy. So reversal doesn’t work for economic class. And some feminists wrongly think that sex class is a more extreme unidirectional privilege differential than economic class. So they wouldn’t expect reversal to work for sex class.
dungone,
“Or just take the very fucking assumption behind Schrodinger’s Rapist – that these random guys on the street, such as myself, are actually interested in them in a sexual manner. And it triggers them. They can just look at you from across the street and tell that you want them.”
Ah yes….delusions of attractiveness. I am convinced that is what is behind about 2/3 of the hyperventilating about the “male gaze”.
How liberating would it be if we were to teach our daughters, especially the “conventionally attractive” (> White) how attractive they really are not?
The majority of females are attractive enough to at least occasionally attract unwanted sexual attention.
And it’s how that attention is expressed which can, indeed, wonder into harassment territory.
That being said, the nuclear reactions to even mild transgressions gets old rapidly.
I remember first going to Hollaback NY’s website around 3 years ago. They had several videos used to tell their stories and some of the women did indeed, gain my sympathy.
Then there was that one video. Pretty asian girl. What was she complaining about? Well, she had a habit of putting a flower in her hair. She was complaining about all the remarks she got about how pretty the flower in her hair looked.
Bitch, please.
About 10 years ago I read Jack London’s The People of the Abyss, in which is a nonfiction account of him embedding himself with the homeless in London’s East Side slums at the turn of the 20th century. One of the more dystopian memories I have of that is the way well-dressed Victorian couples walking through a park would make it their pastime to throw rocks and slurs at the homeless men in order to let them know that they weren’t welcome. 110 years later, the same Victorian ethos is alive and well in the feminist mindset. That a homeless man can actually be perceived as oppressing a rich white woman, of insulting her sensibilities through his despicable derelict presence, is the ultimate self-parody of what feminism really represents within Western society – what it has always represented from the very beginning.
In the words of Valerie Keefe, “Well, obviously, if we stop being angry people will then address the issues they had no problem blithely ignoring for the past sixty years…
The logic of ‘angry activist hurts cause’ when we have a debate that needs a little bit of polarizing always falls flat with me.”
Being angry doesn’t mean you have a valid point, or that people hadn’t already heard you when you were being polite. And, as it is blatantly obvious in this thread, being angry doesn’t prevent you from becoming a self-parodying hypocrite who is completely blind to anything but her own navel. What’s happening is that, slowly but surely, the most recent generation of feminist activists are revealing themselves to be a complete joke.
“Then there was that one video. Pretty asian girl. What was she complaining about? Well, she had a habit of putting a flower in her hair. She was complaining about all the remarks she got about how pretty the flower in her hair looked.”
Completely Americanized into complete inanity. How sad.
@ Alicia Bell
Men’s Rights Activists have to be very careful about advocating violence. I have _never_ seen anything approaching the nastiness of that cartoon on any self-identified MRA site.
Yet they get labeled hate groups and the anger they do display is mocked and vilified.
Because… patriarchy, I guess.
Or, alternatively, like every other system in history the people on top are the ones who can’t be criticized.
There is, IMHO, a distinct difference between “angry activist” and “person who has found a cause justifying their violent tendencies”; and there is a huge difference between “expressing anger because one is angry” and “expressing anger to silence disagreeing voices through intimidation”; and then there are activists whose attitude is “my anger is righteousness, yours is VIOLENCE!”
I’m all for people being allowed to shout at the internet how pissed off they are, but that doesn’t mean that fantasies of committing violence while doing so are unproblematic, nor does it mean that whatever it was that made them angry is automatically problematic behaviour that demands a societal solution.
Alicia,
It seems like you understand the point the community is making here that the comic dehumanizes men, especially low status men, and normalizes violence towards them. In doing this, it also gynonormalizes gender interactions by arguing that a man’s behavior towards a woman is worthy of death (obviously artistic hyperbole, but the end result is the same) if that behavior is deemed annoying/unacceptable/creepy/not desirable by the woman.
Being a little bold by putting words in other peoples mouths, the reason we are upset by this type of thing is that it reinforces negative stereotypes of men (as disposable, violent and immune from being victims), but more importantly, it is done by someone who claims to know better. Society (NOT the “patriarchy”) has had these stereotypes long before feminism ever reared its head, but feminists, by and large, reinforce, actively or passively, these hateful ideas. And then they turn around and tell us:
1) Check your privilege
2) Feminism is about gender equality
3) “Patriarchy” hurts men, too
to which our response is, quite simply, don’t piss on my face and tell me it’s raining.
Hopefully you can also understand that a piece of art can both be a form of self expression and self empowerment and a hurtful, ugly piece of shit.
Alicia, welcome to the blog!
“The logic of ‘angry activist hurts cause’ when we have a debate that needs a little bit of polarizing always falls flat with me.”
Well it should. It may fall flat with you because you are willing to look at issues and get serious about them without some sharp affront to grab and concnetrate your attention.
But I have seen it work because not many people are that assiduous. There was a lull in progress in the Civil rights Movement after that advances of the early 560s culminating in the Voting Rights Act. Things just ground to a halt basically because white people thought everythingwas all fixed now. The response to that was the Black Panthers in looking menacing black leather jackets with long guns posing for the camera with hostile, resolute expressions on their faces, and that’s what it took to get the conversation started again, and in a much different direction.
It was basically a question of re-branding and re-framing.
As far as I’m concerned some girls and older woman stare at me like I’m a piece of meat and they dont give a rats ass if it makes me feel uncomfortable, so I’ll keep on staring at woman I find attractive thank you very much. I know some girls would say, ‘that’s totally different woman cant hurt you physically!’ And I call BS to that! Just last year outside a place I was working a woman stuck a knife into her ex boyfriends stomach, and let me tell you, that knife must not have been feeling too sexist that night because buddy died on the concrete just the same.
Welcome, Redthunder!
“As far as I’m concerned some girls and older woman stare at me like I’m a piece of meat and they dont give a rats ass if it makes me feel uncomfortable, so I’ll keep on staring at woman I find attractive thank you very much.”
Your eyes, your choice. It’s about boundaries and passive-aggressivedominance tactics – people who don’t want to be seen shown take steps to ensure they won’t be seen. Perios. it’s their responsibility and no one else’s to realize their prefeences.
“I know some girls would say, ‘that’s totally different woman cant hurt you physically!’ And I call BS to that! ”
First off, that’s a dishonest deflection, secondly women are quite capable of inflicting physical harm on a man and thirdly, that claim is an appeal to the sexist, toxic femininity trope of “frail, frill fainty dainty damsel who would never hurt a fly” that any woman should be ashamed to make.
But you know they make that claim. I’ve heard maybe three girls say, ‘you don’t have to worry about a girl raping you, in fact you would like it, we girls have to worry about nasty creepy men!’ Now…don’t get me wrong…I’m not vouching for these girls intelligence, lol.
Random, although not entirely off-topic.
But I’ve had people tell me that I look like a serial killer. Strangely enough, I’ve had females who have at some point admitted to finding me physically attractive also admit that they think I look “dangerous” and/or like a serial killer. It’s bizarre to me, that I would look like something that isn’t even CLOSE to being who I am. I am strongly anti-violence, sometimes to the point of pacifism. The people who know me, know that I’m an affectionate individual with a warm heart. I treat animals and children with kindness… And yet… Serial killer.
Kind of goes to show you how wrong we can be about someone just by looking at them. And how maybe, just maybe, we are less likely to view positively the actions of people who look a certain way; and are more likely to assume the worst of their actions instead. A ‘dangerous’ looking dude sitting on a bench next to you and coughing loudly… Must have bad motives and intentions. Could never be that he’s sick…
Heard that so many times. As Ginkgo said above,
In order to claim that women are inherently victimized by creepy men, they’re actually being creepy.
And it gets worse. Because you can’t tell them otherwise – they’d get insulted! They might do something sexist and discriminatory, like refusing to see a male midwife because they think he’ll sexualize them, but if a man reminds them that they’re not all that, they respond with, “why… I’d never!” “You’re not helping!” “Ugh!” “How insulting!!”
@Typhonblue, didn’t you comment on that reddit thread about the male student being banned from a breastfeeding class because the women felt uncomfortable with him being there?
Oh those girls have no issue being real creeps. An attractive guy with good charisma and a good bank account AND good social status? Are you joking me? They will stalk, they will rapid text, they will Facebook, twitter, get to know friends of his they will keep his picture in their phone, even though he doesn’t even know the girl, they will masturbate whenever they can, always thinking about him and to top it off they have NO shame of doing it but a man who does this? He must be ashamed! They are frinkin animals who act like animals with no restraint when it serves pleasure, with no thought whatsoever about any negative consequences to anyone else ESPECIALLY men, but then like to call on social justice when something annoys them like a guy they dont find attractive looking at them. Rotten rotten rotten scumbags!
As a male, or more generally in what I would expect to be true for all well adjusted human beings, I haven’t been socialized to expect other people to go out of their way to make me feel comfortable. I can’t even relate to that mindset. I have the expectation of being tolerant of others and to use various conflict resolution strategies to diffuse a bad situation.
It does 2 things for me. Firstly, I don’t go around acting like a bigot to other people because they make me uncomfortable. Secondly, I don’t work myself into a tizzy and blow shit all out of proportion as if holding my breath and stomping my feet were the only way I’d ever been taught to get what I want.
@Alicia Bell
In the words of Valerie Keefe, “Well, obviously, if we stop being angry people will then address the issues they had no problem blithely ignoring for the past sixty years…
The logic of ‘angry activist hurts cause’ when we have a debate that needs a little bit of polarizing always falls flat with me.”
Yeah, but that was discussing cissexism, an oppression which unquestionably works on a unidirectional axis, and, in reference to professional feminists, on the axis of classism as well. I don’t believe in bowing and scraping, but nor do I believe in attacking the most marginalized members of an alleged enemy group in the name of fighting oppression, and I do see that spilling over into prophylactic cissexist-misogyny (not a big fan of portmanteaus when I can help it). This wasn’t about fighting an oppressor group. This was about ignorance of the human condition. Most cis feminists would gain scads of perspective if they had to present male for two years, land a service-sector job, and see how people act towards them. It would cut out all the statistical noise that gets analyzed into cismisogyny.
And if you’ve read my work, Alicia, you would know my evaluation of many of those instances. There’d still be misogyny there, because a male-presenting girl comes in for far more flack than when she gets to hide behind cisfeminine privilege. There’s no shield that excuses her actions, her cadence, her dialect, her mannerisms. She is, quite simply, raw meat to the wolves.
We live in a masculosexist society, I don’t argue with that, but it’s one that’s also rife with cissexism, and thus the belief that the CAFAB aren’t as capable as being masculine as the CAMAB, and thus protections for CAFAB folk, focused on feminine concerns have been, and are, enacted. It is the intersection of those two sexisms that leaves gender-power relations between cis straight men and cis straight women as bi-directional, and it is also the genesis of unifem pushback against anti-cissexism.
They understand that that’s where their privilege comes from, where their license to be relatively less masculine (and when you look at the brutality and instability and danger of masculinity, any good utilitarian cannot blame them) which is why most of the stuff they write targeting CAMAB folk targets amasculine CAMAB folk. They have to invoke the source of their power, they have no other choice.
Valerie:
I forgot to congratulate you on the comment which inspired this post, so I’ll do that now: Congratulations, it was really good. Ginkgo says this should make you proud to be a feminist, but I think it should make you feel proud of yourself feminism feel lucky to have you, since you were the one who did something.
Speaking of the kind of dynamic you’ve been describing from cissexual feminists, have you seen Naomi Wolf’s insane new book? Most people just seem to be focusing on the terrible science or the female supremacist angle, but it seems to me that the ideas she’s throwing around go even farther in erasing trans women from the category ‘women’ than most previous bigots (specifically everything about the vagina-brain connection).
@Dungone
As a male, or more generally in what I would expect to be true for all well adjusted human beings, I haven’t been socialized to expect other people to go out of their way to make me feel comfortable. I can’t even relate to that mindset. I have the expectation of being tolerant of others and to use various conflict resolution strategies to diffuse a bad situation.
Yeah, most women, cis or trans, get this, which is why there’s been a decline in feminist identification (which is a shame, since there’s so much more work to be done, but again, I don’t blame them), not because somehow cis women all got tricked into thinking abortions and pants were the sum total of sexism, but because increasingly, the protestations ring hollow… turns out there’s only so much unidirectional sexism a critical mass of society will tolerate these days.
@HidingFromTheDinosaurs
Speaking of the kind of dynamic you’ve been describing from cissexual feminists, have you seen Naomi Wolf’s insane new book? Most people just seem to be focusing on the terrible science or the female supremacist angle, but it seems to me that the ideas she’s throwing around go even farther in erasing trans women from the category ‘women’ than most previous bigots (specifically everything about the vagina-brain connection).
That seems to be about as much trans erasure as usual these days. Cissexual feminists have gone from actively trying to kill us to pretending we don’t exist until they’re called on it then of course their work was meant to be trans inclusive, but they just didn’t think their audience would get it… that or engaging in, to steal from the new words and twist them to my own uses, cisogyny, taking an example of terrible misogyny against a trans woman to trumpet that misogyny still exists, and is still, obviously, a threat to cis women, even though no cis woman would have been subjected to that kind of abuse without massive pushback.
Feminist identification is immaterial to women’s progress. Women can just as easily organize around a different set of ideas. For starters, any set of ideas that is based on the premise of women taking responsibility for their own decisions. Which is ironic because the original complaints I’ve heard about feminism becoming a four letter word were full of that very sort of denial – the idea that someone else must be tricking all of these women into running away.
And in related news, Hillary Clinton hates whiners.
@Dungone
Feminist identification is immaterial to women’s progress. Women can just as easily organize around a different set of ideas. For starters, any set of ideas that is based on the premise of women taking responsibility for their own decisions.
I think this idea will work just as well as the idea that unifems will stop shaming men over rape culture when men stop committing rape. I don’t think anti-sexism is going to do well by moving to the right, when really, most of the rhetoric currently floating about regarding ‘individual responsibility’ is willfully ignorant of socioeconomic circumstance.
“Let’s imagine a man walking past a homeless woman who is masturbating. This man watches this woman masturbate and decides that she’s masturbating _to him_ thus violating him sexually.”
He would likely be called a Peeping Tom and also be told he is a narcissist for thinking she was using him as “inspiration.”
Valerie, that’s not even on the level of moving to the political right. Liberals and conservatives debate about people’s responsibility for the outcomes of their effort. Feminists refuse to acknowledge personal responsibility for women’s own decisions, regardless of the outcome or the effort. What I mean is, when a feminist acts like a mindless, immature, bigoted moron and other women get turned off from feminism as a result, the feminist will neither acknowledge her own behavior or the other women’s as actually being that of their own. They will actually accuse women who disagree with them of being brainwashed victims. They will look at an incredibly sucessful female CEO such as Marissa Mayer and claim that this woman just got thrown some scraps by the Patriarchy in exchange for her complicity and submission, since she doesn’t embrace feminism.
The whole entire argument folds in on itself. If women can’t succeed by doing the same exact thing as other men and women had done and its because of societal factors that keep women from being able to take any sort of responsibility for anything whatsoever, then it’s feminism itself which is the very embodiment of that learned helplessness. Some of these women grow up and act no differently than rich trust fund kids, except that men and society are their trust fund. And just like so many trust fund kids, they fail at life and become lazy, blame shifting assholes. Yet their solution to the dilemma in which they find themselves is for men and society to do MORE.
” Yet their solution to the dilemma in which they find themselves is for men and society to do MORE.”
our solution is TO DO LESS….
MGTOW seems like the ethical response to a f*cked up system…
How do I look at the comments? All I see are notations.
@Alicia Bell
Let’s change the parameters of the comic.
“Average” white guy, in height and build.
Average black guy sits beside him, while rapping along to Ice Cube or another whiteness-averse gangsta rapped.
White guy shoots black guy in the head after black guy says, “I gotta get that money, some way, some how.”
White guy in last panel blathers something about not getting robbed today, smirks. Or, to keep in tone, “You might have wanted some gold, but all I have is some lead, fucker.”
Get it?
And, to talk a little bit more about homeless people and sex.
I live in New York City. If you make the mistake of going to any of the larger parks in this city (especially, after dark), you’ll find people having some level of sexual activity. I’ve accidentally walked or rode my bike through a dozen gay cruising sites and about 5 displays of heterosexual sex. With the exception of 3 of the gay encounters and the last of the heterosexual encounters (the gay ones involved the “bottom” wiggling his “top’s” penis and/or smiling in my direction, the straight one involved an obese woman who opened her legs in my direction as the two guys who were suckling her breasts nodded at me), I never assumed that those people were looking for me to join a “moresome”. The level of ego that it would take to assume that the entire planet revolves around me (in that respect) is unfathomable.
Angry Girl Comics
About Me
Your daily dose of drawings, rage, and rage-induced drawings, by Wendy Xu.
This is a safe zone with a zero tolerance policy for racism, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, homophobia, or any of that other bullshit. Fetishists and apologists need not apply.
Complete failure of integrity. Anybody who could produce that comic, whether fantasy or not, has no claim on the label “tolerant” and, furthermore, should seek help immediately. There is NO excuse or mitigation that should be accepted by any civilised human being.
Gwallan:
Notice she lumps “fetishists” in with all that other shit. Not exactly a sex-positive mindset, and it takes a truly monumental stretch of the imagination to try to link it to the rest. That certainly goes along way to demonstrating the bloodyminded victorianism of the mind on display here.
I remember an essay arguing that cis womyn and trans men can’t have fetishes because cis womyn and trans men don’t have sex drives.
It came up in the controversy over so-called autogynephilia, with the proponents of the theory arguing that it was only necessary to survey trans womyn, and it would be unnecessary and useless to survey cis womyn about the exact same things as a comparison group. It turns out that some cis womyn get off on feminine clothes.
I think this is a holdover from Victorian attitudes about sexuality: Men have an overpowering sex drive, which sometimes goes beyond the socially-permissible bounds of procreative marital male-penis-in-female-vagina practices, such as homosexuality, aberrant forms of heterosexuality, and fetishism. Women have no sex drive.
We’ve gotten past the rest of this, but not the hostility towards fetishes. I mean, fetishes are different from core orientation and the like, but they are mostly harmless and how would we describe the differences anyway?
@Mamu, I was walking around Penn Station a week ago when I heard the funniest sad conversation between a group of middle aged homeless men.
– It’s got a head…
– Nah ahhhhhh
. No it really does. It has a head on it.
– Noooooooooo……
– I’m telling you man, if you don’t believe me then look it up in one of those porno mags…
I’m pretty sure some of these men may have been virgins, and not the sort of perverse image of men who live in a world where women exist as paid-for sex objects at their disposal, whatever it is that they were arguing about. I’m just saying… This is where real, actual privilege comes in. When an entirely unattractive rich white girl can walk around outside and claim that just about anyone and everyone is sexualizing her, including the most downtrodden members of our society.
@ gwallan
Strange. I would say ‘Angry Girl Comics’ fetishizes female-on-male violence.
TB:
It certainly does, and it’s a fairly trashy example of it.
I still don’t even comprehend the reasoning that goes into lumping those categories together. What does she imagine “fetishists” will do on her website? The only ones who are going to talk about it are the people who share in the fetish she herself is indulging. I mean, I know women who get off to some serious guro and men who to get it on in fursuits, but that sort of thing really doesn’t have any influence at all on their normal conversation or the things they would be posting on most websites. It seems like it’s just an excuse to get in some additional sexual shaming propped up by some decidedly anti-progressive attitudes.
HidingFromTheDinosaurs:
From going through her site, I’m pretty sure by “fetishists” she’s referring to “Asian fetishists”, specifically- which is, in feminist/social justice oriented circles (at least the ones I’ve come across online), the term most often used to describe men who believe in racist and sexist stereotypes about Asian women and consider them sexually desirable for that reason. The fact that this is usually attributed to “fetishism”, I think, lays bare some fascinating contradictions and tensions at the heart of feminist/social justice/”sex-positive” ideology. (Some of which are illustrated by the fact that she doesn’t even bother to specify that that’s what she means by “fetishists”.)
This particular issue is an extremely personal and painful one for me, and though I’d like to elaborate on all of this further, I’m not sure I’m in the right emotional place for it. Suffice it to say that I think that defining racist and sexist beliefs about Asian women as a form of fetishism or caused by fetishism is an analysis that both misses the mark and causes a great deal of collateral damage. It, among other things, contributes to the stigmatization of interracial couples, demonizes fetishists in general in a way that goes well beyond the specific group that it’s aimed at (after all, it assumes that the reason why these men hold racist and sexist views of Asian women is because they have a “fetish”, and I often get the impression that the word “fetish” is specifically used to describe that complex of views because it arouses feelings of disgust in so many- this would be a problem for anyone who considered themselves “sex-positive”, or so one would think), and, IMO, leads to a generally mistaken analysis of what’s going on with men who do believe in those stereotypes- I think lots of them aren’t fetishists even by loose definitions of the word, and by stricter definitions hardly any of them are.
I get the impression that “Asian fetishists” are more like chasers than like fetishists. But I’m not really sure what’s going on with that or how to avoid stigmatizing people who aren’t creepy with those who are.
“I get the impression that “Asian fetishists” are more like chasers than like fetishists. But I’m not really sure what’s going on with that or how to avoid stigmatizing people who aren’t creepy with those who are.”
Some people who appreciate trait X, even though trait X could be seen as undesirable in people, could think anyone who likes it is broken. Which kinda makes dating hard – anyone expressing interest into them is either settling, or fetishizing their “defect”.
My boyfriend likes that I’m trans. Has watched trans porn and stuff. Though I’m his first trans girlfriend, and he sees me as a person, of course.
But to some he would be a chaser, end of the debate.
Marja Erwin:
For starters, she could have at least specified “Asian fetishists” (although I also don’t think that “fetish” really the right word for what she’s talking about). I imagine a real “Asian fetishist” would be someone who is especially turned on by certain skin tones or physical features or perhaps some types of clothing particular to certain Asian cultures (of course, it would then be more specific than just “Asian”, because there are a lot of very different cultures in Asia), not someone who holds a lot of racist stereotypes. The way it’s actually phrased, I get the feeling that she’s railing against the people who are really into feet or latex or brushing each other’s teeth (seriously, that’s a real thing). The self-righteous stance she takes becomes a joke when she’s targeting essentially harmless and inoffensive people who haven’t done anything wrong and get a ton of shit from society anyway.
Schala,
There’s nothing wrong with finding trans people attractive, finding east Asian people attractive, etc.
Things would probably go better, though, if someone is attracted to something about me that I’m happy with and they’re happy with.
Things would probably go worse if someone is attracted to something about me that isn’t true, like she’s attracted to stereotypes about people like me, or if someone is attracted to something about me that is true but I’m not happy with. The stereotypes about east Asian womyn and trans womyn probably create a lot of these situations.
Not that I would know how it is for womyn of east Asian backgrounds to deal with the people motivated by the stereotypes.
I’m kinda indifferent about the presence of a penis.
I’m more moved by what problems it causes socially, bureaucratically etc than itself.
I’ve been pushed towards disavowing any liking towards it, lest it be a sign I’m not really trans, and can be denied hormones, or a name change.
I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it, and given the alternative is costly, possibly dangerous surgery with potentially questionable results (if I’m anorgasmic now, what then?), I prefer the status quo. I’ve to change my legal sex regardless though.
So while I’m not super happy about him liking me as a non-op/pre-op trans woman, I learned that it’s not objectifying me, no more than liking certain sizes of breasts or asses more is.
I’d love to change legal sex regardless though*
My friends and I in college had many discussions about this. We all used to tease my friend, who is of Swedish ancestry, about the fact that he would strictly date women whose ancestors had lived in or north of the Alps and west of the Urals. (We used to catcall him by asking him “Where the white girls at?” in our best parody of the local Chets and Chads in the frat houses miming ebonics.) We never considered it racism, in the same way that we never considered it racist that our other friend would have only dated Asians if he hadn’t already settled down with one. But I can see how a woman (or person) with self esteem issues might think that anyone who approaches her (or them) for sex is simply “fetishizing” them and only approaching them because of the differences between them and the cultural norms “average”.
Gee, I wonder what ‘angrygirlcomics’ reaction would be if the comic was redrawn to show a woman sitting down next to a man, and the man shooting the woman in the head for no reason? Would she be okay with that? Would she see it as justified? I suspect not.
“angrygirlcomics” is the exactly kind of ‘feminist’ that does far more harm than good to the cause of gender equality.
A comment on the whole “Asian fetishists” thing…I’m a white male who has always been attracted to Asian women. I’m also married to a lovely Asian lady, and trust me- I’ve heard all the clever “love you long time” and “yellow fever” comments I care to hear. Oh my, they’re just so hilarious. They’re so funny that I want to stab you in the face for making them, but I’m a polite guy and so I usually refrain from doing so.
I’ve also been subjected to endless discussion of “why” I supposedly like Asian women, and none of it has had a shred of insight or truth to it. So listen up: Do you know some men like Asian women? For the same reason we like pistachio ice cream or the color blue- it’s just what we like. Stop trying to find some secret meaning in it- there isn’t any. It’s just what we happen to like, okay?
Do you like blondes with large breasts? Good for you, but do people try to analyze WHY you have this preference? No, by and large they don’t. So please, Mr and Ms I-Don’t-Get-It, *please* just shut the fuck up about who I married. There’s nothing to “understand”, and that’s why you’ll never “understand” it. Just shut the fuck up already and go back to watching Hee-Haw.
For those of you who feel that a preference for a particular race or “look” is worthy of commenting on, don’t bother. No matter what you say or how you say it, you’re going to come across as an idiot (and possibly a racist idiot). Just accept that some of us find beauty in places you don’t, and vice-versa.
It’s a big, beautiful world. Try to enjoy it.
My opinion–lots of women get upset when men approach them for the same reason I do, they would rather do the approaching themselves. But they don’t have the guts to do this or greatly fear social disapproval, so they direct this anger about this situation (their anger at themselves, and anger at the typical gender-defined social-situation wherein the men do approaching) towards men. As a young woman, I did this too. I would get furious when men approached me, all out of proportion to the situation. It was only when I moved to San Francisco and met the Samois ladies (including the infamous Pat Califia, wooo!… and hir then-paramour, Gayle Rubin) that I had this carefully explained to me. (I was part of the Plexus newspaper staff and lived in a collective household, and one of the women was Samois, so they had MEETINGS in my HOUSE… if you think this didn’t blow my little Ohio-hayseed mind back in 1981, think again, LOL.) This was when I got to see the whole “feminist sex war” debacle up close and personal, since the first volley was when Samois was expelled from the San Francisco Women’s Building… FOR NOTHING! But I digress…
These Samois women would take the man’s side and told me, the reason you are mad is that you are angry AT YOURSELF. I knew in my heart that they were right.
I cured this by taking charge of the situation. A man who approached me was instantly off any list (and always has been), but I tried to be very nice about it. Not his fault. But never never never as a single woman did I sit around and “wish someone would talk to me”… I learned to be very direct. It helped that I considered it a feminist imperative. (I would like that to BECOME a feminist imperative.)
But a few years ago, I was on a feminist email list and I was pretty harshly attacked for blithely announcing “if you don’t like waiting around for a phone call, then get off your butt and approach him”–because most women are (for lack of a better word, okay) “bottoms” in a relationship and they felt that approaching a man sent the wrong message, that they were dom when they were not. I wondered if they were right, too.
So can a woman approach a man without being considered, you know, a top? If you are a top, no problem, but most women are not.
Discuss.
Mike, there was an Asian feminist on the old Ms boards, who I think started this meme to some extent… (this would have been 2000-2003, during the heyday of the Ms boards) She wrote tons of stuff about how she could never “know” if the (mostly white, some black, she lived in a majority-black city) men who asked her on dates were… EVILLL ASIAN FETISHISTS… and she seemed obsessed and very freaked out about it. Apparently some non-Asian man asked her to put on a kimono or something… another time she found Asian porn in some white guy’s drawer, etc. These were the incidents that stood out to her, they weren’t extreme or abusive, IMHO, but *she* was VERY distraught. It really, really upset her very very badly and she wrote whole epistles about it. Long, long meditations on not being liked “as a person” and so forth. Some of these guys seemed relatively okay to me (one wanted to marry her) –but if she even found out that they had had an Asian ex-girlfriend in the past… that was IT. Like, that was IT… I found this odd, since I know lots of white people who *only* date black men/women; it’s now very common here in the south. (Does Robert DeNiro bother anybody? Never heard a single person put him down. Yeesh!)
All the board-participants sympathized/empathized for pages and pages. She WAS very upset, no question. But this is where I noticed that (mostly white) feminists started getting self-righteous about calling out men about this preference, as being somehow “worse” than other preferences. They started calling it racist, which I found bizarre.
I didn’t contribute to any of those threads, but I read them all. This was the first place I remember this particular preference being referred to as a “fetish” specifically.
I found it grimly amusing that there were also threads about where to get boob-jobs and is this a feminist choice? Where to get them? … etc… Who the hell do they think they will be attracting with those new boobs? (sigh) Anyway….
Thank you, Daisy, for furnishing a very good post.
This bit:
“But they don’t have the guts to do this or greatly fear social disapproval, so they direct this anger about this situation (their anger at themselves, and anger at the typical gender-defined social-situation wherein the men do approaching) towards men.”
This says a lot about a lot. I think a lot of the resistance you are finally seeing in men to a lot of what feminist analysis is the sense that a lot of it blames men for women’s actions, or inactions. There is a male supremacist bias that has crept into feminists analysis since the 70s. I know why this is, it is always hard to identify let alone reject the comfortable poisonous indoctrination we grow up with, but it just has to be done.
Making the approach – by way of comparison here’s an observation from when it’s all men. Back when I was spending time in gay bars I almost never saw the usual approach-chat up-preen-reject pattern that I had seen earlier in straight bars. The reason was simple – lack of designated approachers. Without that designation, no one took it upon themselves to approach because by approaching you delcared an interest when the other guy hadn’t yet. You were taking a risk he didn’t have to, and everyone naturally wanted to be the guy getting approached. Besides, it was flattering. The guy approaching got none of that.
“So can a woman approach a man without being considered, you know, a top? If you are a top, no problem, but most women are not. ”
Are all men tops?
But they’re still expected to approach. Being submissive or a bottom is no excuse. And no, approaching someone doesn’t make you a top, or a dominant. It just means you’re more outgoing and socially comfortable.
Most men are not tops either. Most men and women are bottoms.
If you go to a BDSM website, you’ll see a similar proportion of bottom men and women, meaning the majority. And then a bit more top men than top women, but some of those top men are doing it wrong, because they think they ought to do it, similarly to a woman who pops out babies but has zero maternal instincts.
First off, thank you for your reply and your ideas on what may drive some of this stuff. I appreciate it, and it made me think.
“Mike, there was an Asian feminist on the old Ms boards, who I think started this meme to some extent”
After reading what you wrote about her, I feel sorry for her. I mean that sincerely. She sounds very insecure/conflicted. The saddest part is that she seems to be offended by men liking some of the very things that make her who she is, and that other people apparently liked too. Were guys supposed to pretend she wasn’t Asian, or claim they didn’t notice? Too weird. 🙁
I have to wonder if she has a dating “preference” (tall men, blonde men, whatever), and how she would react if members of that preference group (for want of a better term) shunned her simply for preferring them, as she does to men who seem to like Asian women. She’d probably take it very badly, but that’s just a guess. Would it cause her to have a moment of self-realization?
“another time she found Asian porn in some white guy’s drawer”
O The Horror. That definitely indicates….something. Like, oh, I dunno, that he finds Asian women attractive or something. How awful of him, lol.
“if she even found out that they had had an Asian ex-girlfriend in the past”
Errr. That’s just nuts, and it says a whole lot more about her than it does about the men that were asking her out. 🙁
“there were also threads about where to get boob-jobs”
They got boob-jobs so they could scream, “Hey! Stop staring at my new breast implants, you pig!” 🙂
As for me, I’ve always been attracted to Asian women. I don’t think they’re “better” or “worse” than any other race, it just a preference. I’ve dated pretty broadly in my life (no pun intended) and I think most women, regardless of color or race are attractive. In fact, out of all the factors I can think of, color has been the *least* important.
Beauty is where you find it, and it doesn’t come in any particular Pantone color. 🙂
Which brings me to this: I don’t *like* someone because they’re Asian…I might find someone attractive because they’re Asian but that’s a whole different thing than *liking* someone. “Liking someone” and “finding someone attractive” are two very, very different things.
No one thinks less of me for liking pistachio over strawberry, so why oh why do they feel qualified to pontificate on who I date or marry? The fact is that we like what we like, and we don’t get to pick what that is.
Ah well, enough rambling from me, lol. Cheers! 🙂
“Mike, there was an Asian feminist on the old Ms boards, who I think started this meme to some extent… (this would have been 2000-2003, during the heyday of the Ms boards) She wrote tons of stuff about how she could never “know” if the (mostly white, some black, she lived in a majority-black city) men who asked her on dates were… EVILLL ASIAN FETISHISTS… and she seemed obsessed and very freaked out about it. Apparently some non-Asian man asked her to put on a kimono or something… another time she found Asian porn in some white guy’s drawer, etc.”
She had reason. On the other hand, she had no room to talk. Asian women fetishize white men as much as white men fetishize Asian women, ask Asian men, and not just for the money.
The gay equivalent is the “rice queen” and I swear for every rice queen there are 10 “potato queens.” And they tend to like the older, hairy, pot-bellied white guys.
Schala: Most men are not tops either. Most men and women are bottoms.
I know this. Really, I do.
I am saying, this is what women worry about (even on this feminist email list), that the whole relationship dynamic would be dictated by its very first social exchange.
This is likely major reason women do not approach men, although I don’t think most can articulate it as well as the women on this list did. (The feminists on the list were used to analyzing gender relations, and thus, were more aware of their motivations and I don’t think most women are.) As you say, most women are bottoms, and so they think that means letting men approach. Men don’t think this, as Gingko correctly notes; therefore it seems to be a by-product of female socialization.
And Gingko, great comments… your observations about gay men made me wonder if that is why lesbian culture got so handkerchief-obsessed* in the early 80s. The social chaos of “not knowing who was who” left women not knowing WHAT to do in the bars, whereas men always knew to approach and have been socialized to do so, regardless of top/bottom. I think some of this is the “team player” ethic that men have been taught also. “Get in there and try! Give it your best shot!” –is a great value/concept to learn, and as women adopt this value more and more, perhaps this social dynamic will change? I think this is primarily learned through sports, and (up to and including) my generation of women was discouraged from team sports.
*right or left pocket determined top/bottom, also the particular handkerchief colors meant various things.
“*right or left pocket determined top/bottom, also the particular handkerchief colors meant various things.”
If I’m to believe Bailey’s “studies” into gay culture, this has existed for gay men, too.
I don’t think men inherently or socialized-ly know how to approach and/or have the guts to necessarily do so.
In het contexts, some men wouldn’t approach women even if you paid them, told them she wants it, etc. So in a same-sex context where the “you have to be a man about it” doesn’t mean as much (you’re not proving your manliness to contrast with her feminity, or any BS like that), I believe LESS men would approach,, because they’d feel more secure that someone would, while in het contexts, don’t approach is a ticket to Celibate City.
And its funny that homophobia has created biphobia in the lesbian and gay communities, by a sort of “the friend of my enemy is my enemy” thing.
Where group A, hets, shun groups B and C, lesbians and gays, but group D looks “too much” like A, especially if they date the other sex.
In short, eliminate homophobia and biphobia is going to vanish in time. Because they’re tied together.
You can’t be a “traitor to the cause” if there is no cause to have.
Transphobia is another animal. As long as either men or women want to heavily police sex-membership borders, it will exist.
Strangely enough, womanhood is incredibly policed, but manhood left “virtually undefended”, and the people at the barricade on the womanhood side are people from the left and right, men and women both.
Got to protect female virtue, only obtainable through birth with a vagina…somehow.
Even growing up in Seattle, this is the kind of thing that you just never learn about the seedy underbelly of the gay dating scene in town. The only exposure I got to that was the leers by super drunk gay dudes outside of a bar that used to be at the corner of maybe 10th or 11th and Pike. Can’t remember the name of that place and its killing me, I remember the sign though, it was pink and might have had handcuffs on it? Anyway, that memory always makes me laugh, because its the exact same look I have seen super drunk straight dudes give to women in pretty much every straight bar I’ve ever been too. If that isn’t an argument for the equivocality of gay and straight men, I don’t know what is.
Mike, I have preferences also, in fact, rather unpopular ones… so I don’t talk about them. But that is probably why I understand these things a little better than most women. I don’t think fetishes are bad. 😉
I once lost a job defending the chubby-chasers. (I am not one, but I think its perfectly fine to be one). Seriously. This is during the time I was trying to be a good Catholic and was working with good Catholics in a Catholic environment… and notably, it was a Third Order Carmelite who fired me, LOL. But they were calling this chubby-chaser a pervert, and I defended him. I dunno what came over me, but I simply couldn’t let it go. It went on at. some. length.
But you know, I had spent months listening to these women go on and on about various movie stars, as well as our customers. Tom Cruise is too short, one said, and issued a decree that men had to be such-and-such height before she would even pay attention to them. (Fittingly, her husband was VERY tall and had played basketball for the Bulldogs.) That is only one example. Another loved (that is to say–she **strongly** preferred) blue eyes, and defended Tom on those grounds. Etc. And then they are putting down the chubby-chaser? When I demanded they explain why demanding blue eyes/height was any different than preferring a big ass, they freaked out. They had obviously NEVER heard the argument before.
This being a Catholic environment, they announced I was a Moral Relativist. I replied THEY were the Relativists, since they made exceptions for their own fetishism, but not for this guy’s.
The other contributing factor was that this was during the priest/pedophile scandal, and I would not sign onto the okeydoke that it was due to letting gays into the priesthood. We sold the book “Goodbye, Good Men” by Michael Rose, which I thought was total shit, and said so. (One of these Carmelities started to hyperventilate, I am serious. She got tears in her eyes and everything. I felt like I had fallen through the looking glass.)
Anyway, it got rough in there. Aughhhh!
At least I was able to draw unemployment, since the firing was found to be without cause. So there, bitch!
But I can still remember their (((shock))) over the idea that their physical preferences in men might be considered “fetishes” too…. doncha know that dirty word is officially assigned only to unpopular/minority sexual preferences, not agreed-upon lady-preferences like Tom Cruise’s eyes!?!
That probably has something to do with the fact that manhood is earned through “voluntary” disposability: the willingness to put your own happiness/health/whatever on the line in order to protect someone else. The gatekeeper is the definition itself.
“The only exposure I got to that was the leers by super drunk gay dudes outside of a bar that used to be at the corner of maybe 10th or 11th and Pike. Can’t remember the name of that place and its killing me, I remember the sign though, it was pink and might have had handcuffs on it?”
Tiny little place? I think you are talking about the Eagle. It’s not as far as 10th or 11th, but in that vicinity.They used to have “Yellow Hanky Nights” until a few years ago. That kind of place. Leering was mild.
Or maybe there was a place on Pike and Boren where that tapas place went in about 10 yeras ago.
Who else here is from or in Seattle?
“This being a Catholic environment, they announced I was a Moral Relativist. I replied THEY were the Relativists, since they made exceptions for their own fetishism, but not for this guy’s. ”
Fired you? You are goddamend lucky they didn’t attack you in a mob with their knitting needles. Rubbing a bunch of church ladies’ noses in their own hypocrisy will take years off your life.
AHA!!!! I found it! No wonder I couldn’t find it, its called Cuff, and its on 13th and pine. Well, now that that’s settled, I feel a lot better.
Gingko: You are goddamend lucky they didn’t attack you in a mob with their knitting needles. Rubbing a bunch of church ladies’ noses in their own hypocrisy will take years off your life.
(giggle)
I was momentarily fooled because several were peaceniks! My mistake! 😛
ES,
The Cuff! It used to be rough but then about five six years ago they redid the whole place.
Are you still in Seattle?
Daisy, fools rush in….. doesn’t their toxic piety and the way they talk shit about everyone who is not in their little airless cabal tip you off about how malignant they really are?
“Got to protect female virtue, only obtainable through birth with a vagina…somehow.”
Oh, no, that would be not biological essentialism, not feminism. True Orthodox Radical Feminist theory focuses on universal female experiences: female friendship, female socialization, compulsory heterosexuality/heterorelations with men, and being torn from friendship with other womyn. As well as the social experience of menstruation, or of growing up in fear of menstruation, and the social experience of being born with a vagina, because those universal female experiences have nothing to do with biological essentialism.
I find it interesting how this theory has developed over the years to patch up the various gaps.
Daisy,
> Mike, I have preferences also, in fact, rather unpopular ones…
Same here, lol. 🙂
> so I don’t talk about them.
I don’t talk much about mine, but once in a while… 😉
Yes, I see a *lot* of hypocrisy coming from feminists (not all, but a lot of them) and yet they never ever seem to recognize it. When I point it out I’m immediately shunned, banned, or dismissed as a “tool of the patriarchy” (yes, I’ve actually had that said to me, word for word).
If half the stuff they say is true about us Evil Patriarchy members, we’d make the Illuminati look like rank amateurs. I mean, apparently we control EVERYTHING- the banks, the media, education, library book late fees- everything. But the Patriarchy has never asked me to attend the monthly meetings and I can’t even find my membership card. 🙁
Oh well, back to kicking puppies and
Operator, I was cut off! 😉
Well, since others have shared as much as they have, I might as well talk about why I find the whole “racial fetishism” issue so personal and painful…
So I’m a man, and I used to be a very staunch pro-feminist. (I still am, in a way- this site generally leans a good bit more to the MRA side than I can agree with, but I appreciate the diversity of views in the comments here.) I really was passionate about it, too- I remember my first encounter with feminist theory practically had the quality of a religious epiphany. (Without getting into my whole life story and family history, I think this was basically because I had seen the harmful effects of misogyny and ideologies of male domination on a very personal level.)
All fine and good, but there was one snag, which you might have guessed already- and that was that I’m white and I’m mainly attracted to East Asian women, and have been for as long as I’ve been attracted to women. It really is, as far as I can tell, basically about physical features for me. I don’t believe in the “submissive Asian woman” idea, or find it an attractive fantasy even- I don’t believe Asian women are any different from anyone else, I don’t think I did even as a dumb, naive teenager, when this developed. But it wasn’t long before I ran headlong into the general view of this particular preference among feminists, or at least online feminists.
To say that this was dismaying and upsetting was to put it mildly, and what became clear was that, in the eyes of the people I had come to consider, in essence, moral authorities, there was no possible way any attraction like mine could be considered acceptable in any form or under any circumstances. It was seen as inherently racist, dehumanizing, and creepy, even if I explicitly rejected the stereotypes (as I did). (More than once on feminist sites, I have seen “It’s just about physical features” specifically named as an example of the sort of creepy excuse that creepy Asian fetishists use to justify their creepy desires.) What made it all the worse was that this was universal, that every single feminist space I found seemed to take this line- this was, in fact, even something “sex-positive” feminists would say, and how terrible must my desires be, if people who take a generic “your kink is okay no matter what it is as long as there’s consent” approach view it as something inherently creepy and wrong, and never seem to even notice there’s a contradiction there or see it as one?
And the basic structure of the feminist theory I’d embraced made for a bind which was impossible to escape. I didn’t get to define what was racist or sexist, Asian women did, so if any one of them found it so, I should accept that that it was racist and sexist in objective fact. And the last thing I wanted was to be racist and sexist, I felt it was a moral duty to fight against it in oneself. And so what was the solution? “Check your privilege” and “listen to the voices of Asian women” (by which “listen to Asian women who agree with this point of view” is meant, of course), and this will somehow make the attraction go away, apparently, because obviously it can only be the product of internalized racism. So I did my absolute best to do so, and this worked about as well as praying to Jesus to be free of homosexual attraction tends to work, but it did instill lots of self-loathing and guilt. And so my time as a pro-feminist was spent in a mire of semi-voluntary celibacy, self-hate, feeling guilty about feeling guilty (because how dare I regard my suffering as anything worthy of consideration compared to that which women face) and wishing I was either asexual or had never been born, and… yeah. Basically, it’s hell.
I don’t really know if I’d call myself pro-feminist or not anymore. I still believe the same basic things about gender equality and so forth that led me to it, and feel passionately about them as ever, but eventually I started seeing all the contradictions and double standards in the specific set of theories I’d embraced, and my own experience has made it impossible to believe that those theories will lead to a better world for everyone. But what I’ve internalized still hasn’t gone away. I still feel guilty about my attractions, still exist in that state of semi-voluntary celibacy, and have a pretty negative view of human sexuality in general at this point. I think I’m probably going to become a Buddhist monk, in the end. All of this is far from the only reason why I’m considering that, but I’ll admit it’s a big part of it- I feel like my life has given me a very convincing and visceral demonstration of the first two Noble Truths.
To Daisy- thanks for your comments on all this. If feminism as a whole had embraced your view of these things, I’d be a far happier person now, I think, and certainly much more unambiguous in my pro-feminism. (Your mention of the Ms. boards really brings me back- I remember reading them religiously, back in the day, though I don’t think I remember the specific thread you talked about, though I certainly remember that hostility towards “racial fetishists”, particularly if the race was Asian. Might have been before I found them, though, as I remember them as very True Orthodox Radical Feminist, to use Marja’s term, and during the time when I was reading them I’m pretty sure that “should I get a boob job” threads would have been met with withering contempt- I’ve gathered they were less like that early on, though. A lot more I’d like to say on all that, but I’ve gone on long enough…)
Left about 3 years ago for Houston. Still regret that, although I did meet my wife down here. The most descriptive term you can use to describe Houston is “bleh” or “hot”.
“If feminism as a whole had embraced your view of these things, I’d be a far happier person now, I think”
I think a fair few feminists would be far happier too. I’d certainly be interested in what more you have to say.
I’d tend to think that non-Asians who go on about “Asian fetishists” are probably racists themselves, “yellow fever” having already been mentioned upthread. Reminds me of that Quantum Leap episode in which Sam leaps into a GI who returned home with a Japanese wife.
In regard to some Asian women’s hangups, people cannot really control what squicks them out, but it would be nice if they forbore to spread the misery around.
“So I’m a man, and I used to be a very staunch pro-feminist. (I still am, in a way- this site generally leans a good bit more to the MRA side than I can agree with, but I appreciate the diversity of views in the comments here.)”
Mike, I think feminism still has a lot to do but I don’t see any feminists interested in doing any of it – analyzing and attacking the toxic aspects of the standard feminine gender role, being honest about actual gender ineqality – and I try to address those things here. That’s the feminist side of the blog. It may not always be obvious, because a lot of that looks like adviocacy for men. Because it is.
Certainly. It’s well known that men are far less picky about race and ethnic backgrounds when it comes to dating. Asian women are one of the few demographics of non-white women who are willing to date white men. To then turn around and accuse white men of being racist (against whom??) for finding them attractive is an absurdity. I think that if there were more kinds of non-white women who were willing to date white men, then it wouldn’t be uncommon for white men to pursue them as well.
ThereWasAForest wrote:
“I’m white and I’m mainly attracted to East Asian women, and have been for as long as I’ve been attracted to women. It really is, as far as I can tell, basically about physical features for me. I don’t believe in the “submissive Asian woman” idea, or find it an attractive fantasy even- I don’t believe Asian women are any different from anyone else”
Very well said, and that reflects my feelings perfectly. I would have written almost the same exact thing. Being attracted to East Asian women isn’t something I chose, it’s just always been what I found attractive as far back as I can remember. Most people have an ideal “look” in their heads and whatever it is, it’s not “wrong”. It’s just what you like. When I look at my wife, well, for me it’s like looking at a beautiful work of art. I just like the way she looks, is that wrong? I suspect other people with different preferences feel the same when they look at their spouse/partner/whatever.
As for the “submissive Asian woman” meme that seems to be prevalent in our society, let me tell you that nothing, and I mean *nothing* could be further from the truth.
My wife is originally from Cambodia. She basically left her homeland, friends, family, and everything that was familiar to her and moved to the US to begin anew, a place where the language, culture, food, and customs are all radically different. It takes a hell of a *lot* of courage to do that and it’s not the kind of thing a shy or “submissive” person would do. My wife is a very strong lady, both in spirit and heart and if anyone told her she’s submissive, they’d hear a few choice words from her in 3 or 4 different languages.
Nonetheless, I’ve had more than a few people make those kinds of “submissive” comments. Oh, and the “mail order bride” comments as well. Heard plenty of those too, let me tell you. 🙁
On feminism: I’ve *always* been a strong supporter of equal rights and equal responsibilities- for everyone. Unfortunately there seems to be a general mistrust of men among some feminist groups, and some blatant misandry that is tolerated if not outright encouraged. (Oddly, my spell-checker doesn’t even recognize the word “misandry”, but it finds “misogyny” just fine. That’s…interesting.)
Where was I…. So, I find that as a guy, I’m instantly marginalized in the area of women’s rights, in spite of the fact that I’m a vocal supporter of gender equality. There’s nothing like telling your supporters to piss off to get them on your side. 🙁
Oh well. I’ll stop now before this turns into a novel. Thank you all for your thoughts and this discussion in general!
dungone:
If someone thinks that male sexuality is toxic, predatory and horrible, then a white man who has a preference for Asian women can be viewed as racist against Asians without it being logically absurd. That is not to say that it is right, just that it actually follows logically from that premise.
Daisy,
“But I can still remember their (((shock))) over the idea that their physical preferences in men might be considered “fetishes” too…. doncha know that dirty word is officially assigned only to unpopular/minority sexual preferences, not agreed-upon lady-preferences like Tom Cruise’s eyes!?!”
Good point. 🙂
I’ve heard the word “fetish” defined as, “Whatever someone else does or likes that you don’t do or like”. Seems like that’s the way most people view it.
It reminds me of the way politicians try to pass laws that only affect other people- no politician says, “Pass this anti-gambling law so I can’t go and gamble!”, it’s always “Pass this anti-gambling law so THEY can’t go and gamble!”.
Personally, the word “fetish” has almost no meaning for me anymore. No matter what anyone considers a “fetish”, you can rest assured that hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) are doing the exact same thing.
There was an old cartoon that brought this home for me…a guy goes to a brothel and tells the person at the front desk, “I want to make love with a dwarf. And she has to wear a Margaret Mead mask. And she has to give me a prune-juice enema.”
And the person at the front desk picks up the phone and says, “I need a number 47, and hold the mayo!”
No, that is still logically absurd. Maybe not to you, because you tend to accept the former premise axiomatically.
@RocketFrog, to elaborate on the absurdity, here is your logic at work:
A – Bob did a good deed.
B – We believe that Bob is evil
C – Therefore, Bob did not do a good deed.
The only way in which you can rationalize your way to this conclusion is if you believe that your subjective view of Bob is evidence that refutes an objective fact about Bob, rather than being refuted itself by the objective truth about Bob.
dungone,
I think you misunderstand me. I am not agreeing with it, I am simply saying that it is not a logical absurdity, which is not the same as saying that it is right. The reasoning itself, given that premise, is not absurd.
Of course, non-absurd reasoning from wrong premises still leads to wrong conclusions.
I interpreted your “??” as genuine confusion as to how someone could think in this way at all, and was trying to explain the reasoning behind it. I have known people who speak about male sexuality with terms like “invasion” and “colonization”, and viewed from that perspective, an accusation of racism actually makes sense (even if it is still wrong, given that that perspective is wrong).
Does this make any sense? I am not agreeing with the statement that white men who are attracted to Asian women (or any other ethnicity, for that matter) are racists, I am trying to explain why some people think they are.
It’s a logical absurdity, and I’m far from confused on this matter.
Perhaps we disagree on the meaning of the term “absurd”. I understand absurdity to be defined as bad reasoning, eg. arriving at a conclusion that does not follow from the premises. So this particular statement is more like:
P1: Foo is oppressive.
P2: People who wish to subject only one given ethnic group to oppression are racist against that group.
C: Therefore, people who wish to subject only one given ethnic group to Foo are racist against that group.
The reasoning itself is not absurd, but if Foo is not actually oppressive, then the conclusion is still wrong, even if the reasoning itself makes sense.
Since it seems that I have problems expressing myself satisfactorily: I am not saying that white men who are attracted to Asian women are racists. I am trying to explain the analytical process of people who think that, even if I think those people are wrong.
(in fact – Mike and ThereWasAForest – if either of you have interpreted anything I have said here as an accusation of racism, I would like to apologize for expressing myself poorly.)
The reasoning is wrong, completely nonsensical, and full of glaring holes, and it’s not even used how you present it, anyway. What you have here is an unproven proposition that and a set-up for a proof by contradiction that’s presented as if it were a syllogism, instead. The logic is all wrong, completely and utterly ridiculous.
I’ll jump in….
Yeah at the late (not so) great Inmalafide…
All the white power dirtbags would say,
“Oh, knoes all teh eville brown skin guys are taking “our” womyn and Die-A-Lutin’ teh purity of owr race.”
The feminasties (who will never, ever admit that they might have sh*tty attitudes via racism or sexism) would say things about “yellow fever” all while denying the concept of “female hypergamy.”
As a mixed race mutt-or as the Inmalfide scum used to call me-a victim of miscegenation, I don’t really have any stake in telling other people to keep their race pure–haha, I benefit from “race mixers.”
From my point of view-the femmies are A.) demonizing a males sexual choice**…
B.) “Afraid” of competition
C.) secretly racist but unwilling to admit it….
and it’s not like we’ve never seen what they really think when they let their guard down….
http://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com/update/
(I’ll never tire of dropping that link wherever I go.)
**and this is “problematic” because maybe, just maybe, it is Asian Women as a group who prefer white men as a group and white men as a group are just “open” to whomever seems interested….
“(in fact – Mike and ThereWasAForest – if either of you have interpreted anything I have said here as an accusation of racism,”
No problem, I haven’t. 🙂
I think I understand what you were saying, basically in reference to how some people *do* reason or think about these things. I didn’t take it as your view or your reasoning.
Sadly, some people do indeed play connect-the-dots in this way. I’ve taken more inane crap from the mouths of self-described “radical feminists” trying to find a reason to dislike what I do than you can imagine. They will bend the laws of space and time in order to come up with a justification as to why my preference for Asian women is “wrong”, and logic just goes by the wayside in their attempts to “prove” it. 🙁
Stoner With A Boner wrote:
“From my point of view-the femmies are A.) demonizing a males sexual choice**…
B.) “Afraid” of competition”
I think this is part of it. In some cases I have heard indirectly that Caucasian women don’t like to see white guys with Asian women because if a guy prfers Asian women then there’s nothing they can do to ever attract that guy’s interest. In other words, the Asian woman has something that the white women simply cannot provide, namely the look (features) of an Asian woman.
I know, this is stupid. No woman (or man) can ever be all things to all people. You just can’t- none of us can. But they (the aforementioned white women) see nothing wrong with a guy preferring white women over Asian women.
Because, as Hollywood and every beauty magazine tells us endlessly, white women are the Gold Standard, the ones that are supposed to be at the top of every man’s desire, the always-preferred choice no matter what else is available.
And they have a shit fit when they see a guy who hasn’t been brainwashed into going along with this toxic horsecrap. Who, in fact, prefers something that’s not them. And this pisses them off. I know it, because I see it in the looks I get when my wife and I go out in public, in the malls, the stores, restaurants, etc etc.
Believe me, I’ve seen this look a million times from white women who somehow feel cheated that I’m not interested in them. And they let us know in no uncertain terms. It’s “The Look”. The Look that says, “How dare you prefer HER to ME! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, YOU BASTARD”.
“Does this make any sense? I am not agreeing with the statement that white men who are attracted to Asian women (or any other ethnicity, for that matter) are racists, I am trying to explain why some people think they are.”
Actually, RF, the people who says it’s racist are the ones who are racist.
Mike,
“I think this is part of it. In some cases I have heard indirectly that Caucasian women don’t like to see white guys with Asian women because if a guy prfers Asian women then there’s nothing they can do to ever attract that guy’s interest.”
This mirrors exactly what white women say they get form black women when they have black boyfriends.
“And they have a shit fit when they see a guy who hasn’t been brainwashed into going along with this toxic horsecrap. Who, in fact, prefers something that’s not them. And this pisses them off.”
This is what sexual entitlement looks like. It’s a sibtle form of rape culture.
ThereWasAForest, thank you for your kind comments. 🙂
I have heard an almost-exact version of what you have written here, only the subject was that the guy liked to spank women. He was a very “meek” and quiet sort of person, so the type of woman he tended to attract, was often the type of woman who was (at best) very surprised and taken aback to hear of this preference and (at worst) shocked in the extreme and called him names. They were never simply indifferent, and it was never taken “well”– and so he had started keeping it a secret from his partners and just sticking to porn (even during his relationships).
In his daily life, he was very cool and very respectful of women, good politics, all of that. Which I guess even further upset these women, who said they felt “betrayed”–and all of that. (Background: He was a former co-worker and much younger than me, and he told me all of this during a tarot reading, if you can believe it. I have never repeated this in any form it until now, since I don’t think he would mind. In the reading and in our friendship, I tried to be very supportive, since it was obvious that he was so conflicted and upset **with himself.**)
I just think its weird that nobody says anything about Robert DeNiro or other white men who prefer black women. I think this is because black women are perceived (also a stereotype!) as very strong and even ‘tough’. So its okay. Asian women are stereotyped as passive, so it isn’t.
Really, it does seem to come down to that. (sigh)
Mike: Believe me, I’ve seen this look a million times from white women who somehow feel cheated that I’m not interested in them. And they let us know in no uncertain terms. It’s “The Look”. The Look that says, “How dare you prefer HER to ME! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, YOU BASTARD”.
YES! I think that is common w/both white men and women, actually… it is like they are just shocked that another white person does not prefer them, when as you say, they are “supposed to”…
Young southerners, in particular (and in especially the very hip/cool ones), have been duly conditioned NOT TO SAY A PEEP about black/white relationships, lest they be accused of racism. (To southerners, black/white is the primal racial drama, the rest is secondary or nonexistent.) But the whole “mail order bride” syndrome you mention, is still open for criticism and comment, since that also involves immigrants, who are widely scapegoated and a subject of Tea Party ire, etc. So that would be another reason black/white relationships are accepted and white/Asian are not. (Natalia Antonova has written about that on her blog, how she was often taken for a mail order Russian bride when living in the USA and Europe, so it can also extend to other ethnic groups.)
I also believe, for personal reasons concerning the way I was brought up
(caution triggers for racism: http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2008/09/brute-heart-of-brute-like-you.html ) that anti-Vietnamese sentiment is still VERY strong among a certain demographic in the USA. You rarely hear about it now, but its there.
There might be people who can “spot” or “make” your wife as southeast Asian. My father certainly could have.
“I have heard an almost-exact version of what you have written here, only the subject was that the guy liked to spank women. He was a very “meek” and quiet sort of person, so the type of woman he tended to attract, was often the type of woman who was (at best) very surprised and taken aback to hear of this preference and (at worst) shocked in the extreme and called him names.”
Lol, spanking is pretty tame, really (as long as it’s consensual).
I think you’re right- the women he met may indeed have been women who inherently wouldn’t engage in that kind of play, specifically because that’s the kind of women he tended to attract.
I also imagine most of the women he got involved with were caught a bit unawares at the difference in the his outward demeanor versus his private desires (which, again, seem perfectly reasonable to me as long as it’s consensual).
As for the looks my wife and I get in public, it’s been an eye-opener. Yes, I always knew that there were people who found time to care about this stuff but being the recipient of their attention wasn’t something I’d had a lot of direct exposure to.
The sneers we get (well, that *I* get) are almost palpable, lol. Eventually after several months I mentioned this to my wife; she was mostly unaware of it, but after I mentioned it she started seeing it too. The “up-and-down” look done at the same time as the lip curls into an expression of mild-to-blatant disapproval.
Some of it is a built-in prejudice based on a combination of age difference and apparent attractiveness. Let me be honest: I’m no damn movie star, and GQ is *not* going to be breaking down my door for a photo shoot anytime soon. I mean, I don’t have to sneak up on a mirror, but I’m no hunk. My wife, on the other hand, is way more beautiful than I deserve. And somehow, this seems unfair to them- because the fact is that there is no white, American woman anywhere near as cute as my wife who would ever date, let alone marry, a guy like me. (I’d be lucky if I could get them to spit on me.) So they look at us and they’re like “WTF??”
The other thing is that my wife is also younger than me by a fair amount. Now, she doesn’t care about our age difference and I obviously don’t care, but I can show you boatloads of nosy fuckers who seem to care a great deal. Who are more than happy to opine on why they think our ages are “too far apart”. I’m 50 and she’s 30, and that makes them uncomfortable. Why they care so much about this is beyond me. It’s not like she’s a child bride or something, she’s 30 friggin’ years old! She can do what she wants and this is what she wants.
After a few drinks, a couple of close female friends (CFF1 & CFF2) explained it to me this way:
(For the sake of this explanation, pretend my wife’s name is “Jen”.)
CFF1: Most of the women who give you shit are approximately your age or maybe a few years younger, right?
Me: Yup.
CFF1: Well, they realize that if a guy like YOU (laughter) can meet and marry a younger, much more attractive woman like Jen, then their chances of finding guys to date suddenly get reduced radically. Like, to zero.
CFF2: See, they used to be, you know, in demand, now you won’t even look at them. They’re not even in the running. Compared to Jen they look like they’re from the Reject Bin.
CFF2: So they think, “Damn, if a guy like HIM (laughter) can find someone like HER, what chance do I have?”
Me: Oh.
CFF2: Plus, Jen’s nice. They hate that.
CFF1: Way too nice for you. (laughter)
CFF2: Yeah, you two walk around happy all the time and they can see it and they hate that. You could at least *look* unhappy. So they give you the Stink Eye. Cuz, you know, it’s like somehow you cheated the whole system or something.
Me: I call it “The Look”.
CFF1: Whatever.
CFF2: So really, what DOES Jen see in you, anyway? (laughter)
Oh BOY:
Wonders if Mike is going to get the Daisy ShitStorm I got when I expressed my preference for younger women – and I have the good reason that I hope to father a child.
> Wonders if Mike is going to get the Daisy ShitStorm I got when I
> expressed my preference for younger women
To be clear, I didn’t seek out a younger woman. Jen and I were introduced and we hit it off. I mean, it’s not like she was carrying a Hello Kitty lunchbox when we met- she was 26, certainly old enough to make her own choices.
And frankly, in SE Asian cultures a 20-year difference is not unusual. Her family is fine with it (we just got back from visiting them and had a great time) and we’re very happy together. Where’s the harm? As I asked a friend who opted not to “approve” of us, “What exactly have I done that’s wrong?”
> and I have the good reason that I hope to father a child.
I think that’s great and I wish you the best.
> the whole “mail order bride” syndrome you mention, is still open for
> criticism and comment
Oh, tell me about it. 🙁
As if I selected her from a catalog and paid for overnight shipping (so she’d still be fresh when she got here!) It’s astoundingly offensive, and honestly, I think a lot of the “mail order bride” comments stem from jealousy (although some probably come from simple ignorance).
> since that also involves immigrants, who are widely scapegoated
> and a subject of Tea Party ire, etc.
Ahh. Well…. “Jen” recently became a full US citizen but to the Tea Party crowd she’ll never be considered one. Not a *real* US citizen. She’s just another furriner comin’ here to take jobs away from real ‘murrcans.
(I mean seriously, do you have any idea how much time and work it takes to become a US citizen? A shitload, that’s how much. Oh, and it ain’t free, either- plan on spending at least several thousand dollars on USCIS paperwork and biometrics appointments. It’s not a hobby for the fainthearted.)
As someone who watched patiently as my wife jumped through all the legal hoops to get citizenship, nobody is more opposed to illegal immigration than me.
Mike wrote:
“As for the looks my wife and I get in public, it’s been an eye-opener. Yes, I always knew that there were people who found time to care about this stuff but being the recipient of their attention wasn’t something I’d had a lot of direct exposure to.
The sneers we get (well, that *I* get) are almost palpable, lol. Eventually after several months I mentioned this to my wife; she was mostly unaware of it, but after I mentioned it she started seeing it too. The “up-and-down” look done at the same time as the lip curls into an expression of mild-to-blatant disapproval.”
That’s something I’ve noticed from a lot of “feminist” women- the idea that who a man is as a person depends on who they think he is, and if they get it wrong, he must have tricked them somehow. It’s arrogant and dehumanizing.
Clarence, if memory serves, you ruled out all older women, though. You hadn’t even met anyone yet, the discussion was all hypothetical.
If Mike automatically ruled certain ages out, as you did, I might feel the same. But I think he really loves Jen. 🙂 He is talking about a real person that he loves.
I am older than my husband too, but I don’t know if you can tell just by looking. He is thinner than I am!
And in general, I am just less upset by age than I was before. I think (haha) this comes with age.
Mike: I mean seriously, do you have any idea how much time and work it takes to become a US citizen? A shitload, that’s how much.
A Canadian at my workplace was recently getting naturalized, and she left her “paperwork” behind, her study sheets on govt and history. Employees started quizzing each other about the questions on the study sheets.
It was amazing how many natural-born citizens didn’t know the answers and couldn’t name both of our (terribly annoying) senators, for instance.
You know, I look at all these women who are yelling about “yellow fever” and I honestly wonder how many of them have (or have had) black boyfriends.
I used to have this friend when I was a young’un (as in middle/high school) who was… well, proud, frankly, about the fact that she refused to date white men. (She herself was blonde’n’blueyed) Her ahem “preference” was for latino men (and she did eventually marry a man who is latino, never met him though) although I seem to recall her saying she’d be willing to date black men as well.
It just goes back to the whole “men have nasty ‘fetishes’ women have ‘preferences'” thing.
Daisy:
I ruled out anyone over 35 unless they wanted to get an immediate fertility test.
But that was only “ruling them out” for marriage. Hell, I didn’t even “rule them out” for one night stands and you went on nothing but an Anti-Clarence Crusade. You’d have thought I said that all women over 35 need to be turned into catfood or something.
Actually, now that I think of it, this applies to a lot more things than just race.
Society apparently tells women that the “pinnacle” of beauty is a white woman, preferrably blonde and blue-eyed, who’s skinny with big breasts and somewhere between say 5’3 and 5’6 give or take an inch.
Women say that this being seen as the end all and be all of beauty is wrong (and you’ll get no argument from me on that point)
And yet… apparently if any man expresses any desires that *do* fall outside these qualities… he’s told he’s “fetishizing” and “objectifying”
Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about tall women or women with a few extra pounds, or nonwhite women
how exactly do they expect to widen the scope of “attractive” when every time men tell them that we don’t believe in that ideal any more than they do, we’re told to “stop fetishizing”?
Well, feminists have spent a lot of time promoting the idea that the only “legitimate” attraction consists of a deep spiritual connection based on a fundamental appreciation of the other person as a human being. ( You very rarely find them dating anyone ugly or uncool though.)
Some radfems have since decided it’s rapey, and have been mocking other feminists as developing a deep spiritual attraction and ending up with a penis inside them. I can’t remember what they actually said. One radfem seems to describe a deep spiritual attraction to yoni.
Radfems think everything’s rapey.
“And in general, I am just less upset by age than I was before. I think (haha) this comes with age.”
I am noticing the same thing. Age was never the same big deal for me as it seems to be for women, or if it was the way it manifested was very different. Maybe that’s one advantage of having stayed closeted so long, one advantage of the straight male role.
“Radfems think everything’s rapey.”
It’s just an especially blue-nosed way of being blue-nosed, and they think it’s just oh-so progressive. In fact to me it all sounds like a huge rape fantasy.
“Well, feminists have spent a lot of time promoting the idea that the only “legitimate” attraction consists of a deep spiritual connection based on a fundamental appreciation of the other person as a human being. ( You very rarely find them dating anyone ugly or uncool though.)”
Wait, what????
so you mean even though Futrelle has that awful website and makes fun of men with poor social status ™ –it won’t get him laid?
Oh, knoes the kyriarchy must’ve lied to him, teh horror teh horror….
Daisy wrote: “If Mike automatically ruled certain ages out, as you did, I might feel the same.”
It’s funny, because when my friend offered to introduce me to a “nice Cambodian lady”, I told him that she should be “at least” 35, so we’d have some kind of continuity in terms of age. I initially met Jen online and she told me she was 35. Over a webcam it’s often hard to tell, but I had no reason to doubt her.
A few weeks later, Jen tells me she felt bad because she hadn’t been totally honest with me about her age, and she wanted me to know that she was not 35. She didn’t want our relationship to start based on a fib. I thought, okay, a lot of women shave a few years off their age….maybe she’s really 38 or 40, but it was no big deal to me either way. And I told her it wasn’t a big deal. She says, “well, I’m actually 28…is that okay?” I told her, “It’s okay- you’ll get older.” 🙂 lol
Later on I came to find out that in order to get her into language school in Vietnam, her father had to fiddle the birth certificates for her and her sister…and he back-dated them a few years. *cough* So, yes, she was actually 26 when we met, I was 46.
> But I think he really loves Jen. 🙂 He is talking about a
> real person that he loves.
I do, and I am. 🙂 My wife is a sweetheart and I’m very lucky. Our friends have a running joke. They point at us and say that we’re lucky to find each other. Then they point at me and say “But you’re luckier, waaaaay luckier.”
> And in general, I am just less upset by age than I was before.
> I think (haha) this comes with age.
LOL 🙂
“Employees started quizzing each other about the questions on the study sheets. It was amazing how many natural-born citizens didn’t know the answers and couldn’t name both of our (terribly annoying) senators, for instance.”
Just for fun, take this test (URL below)…it’s what my wife had to pass, and I can pretty much guarantee that everyone here will fail it. I failed it the first 15 times I took it. 🙁
http://uscitizentest.net/
Yes, you have to know all 100 questions and you have to be able to explain what they mean in some detail. They don’t usually ask all 100, but you have to know them all or you fail.
Paul wrote… “Society apparently tells women that the “pinnacle” of beauty is a white woman, preferrably blonde and blue-eyed, who’s skinny with big breasts and somewhere between say 5’3 and 5’6 give or take an inch.”
There’s no “apparently” about it. 🙁
Every beauty magazine, every movie poster, and nearly every skin cream, lotion or potion pushes this idea.
We were in Cambodia just a couple of weeks ago visiting family and it made me sick to see that ALL the advertising everywhere featured blonde, blue-eyed white women. All of it. And this was in a country literally filled with millions of extraordinarily beautiful brown-skinned women. But these lovely women held no weight, had no voice….judging by the advertising they simply didn’t exist. They weren’t worthy of consideration (unless they were buying skin-whitening products, then their money was okay).
So I say, “fuck you, Hollywood”, and “fuck you, advertising companies” for promoting this crap-idea.
“We were in Cambodia just a couple of weeks ago visiting family and it made me sick to see that ALL the advertising everywhere featured blonde, blue-eyed white women. All of it. And this was in a country literally filled with millions of extraordinarily beautiful brown-skinned women. But these lovely women held no weight, had no voice….judging by the advertising they simply didn’t exist. They weren’t worthy of consideration (unless they were buying skin-whitening products, then their money was okay)”
WTF?!! Thank God it was different when I was in the Philippines a few years ago. THEY weren’t ashamed of their bodies, men or women. Why do you think the “commercial space” in Cambodia is so colonized? I know that Mexico has a problem with the denigration of most of its natives beauty, but Mexico is a mixed country. I wasn’t aware there were lots of powerful Europeans running Cambodia…are there?
> Why do you think the “commercial space” in Cambodia is so colonized?
I think there are two reasons, but they’re just my unofficial seat-of-the-pants thoughts:
First, for whatever reason, most Cambodians seem to like and want to emulate the US in fashion and culture. Recently this has admiration has switched to South Korea, but for decades it was the US. Anything the US did was sought after and/or emulated. I know this is crazy, considering not-to-distant history, but it is what it is.
If you’re a man or woman who’s been raised where a someone from a different race is uncommon, then someone with those very different looks my appeal to you. And a lot of Cambodian men and women seem to think that Caucasian men and women are attractive in an exotic way (kind of the same way that some Caucasian people find Asian appearance to be attractive). So, 99% of everyone in virtually any kind of ad is white. Male or female, they’re white, and they mostly look like they’re straight out of the heartland of America.
Second, and I think this plays a big part, is that they just haven’t had any time to build up any immunity to slick, first-world advertising and marketing campaigns. They simply haven’t been burned by corporate bullshit machines enough times yet to have a healthy skepticism of advertising.
In general, Cambodian culture is very open and friendly, very gentle. To the American marketers what this means is that they’re like trusting children- easy and profitable to manipulate. That’s the bottom line. Ooh, a lovely old traditional Cambodian building that’s still standing? Let’s cram a Kentucky Fried Chicken in there! (KFC is the only fast food chain I’ve seen there yet, but I’m sure the others are clawing their way through the government trying to find out who to bribe.)
The advertising companies are having a fucking field day there right now because there are no rules as to what can be advertised, how, or in what manner. There’s no truth-in-advertising laws, no consumer protection, nothing like that. It’s a marketer’s wet dream- a whole country full of generally nice people who are likely to fall for some slick, bullshit-filled marketing campaigns.
> I wasn’t aware there were lots of powerful Europeans
> running Cambodia…are there?
I’ve no idea. I’m sure there’s some European money in play there, just as from a number of other countries as well.
Clarence,
“WTF?!! Thank God it was different when I was in the Philippines a few years ago. THEY weren’t ashamed of their bodies, men or women. Why do you think the “commercial space” in Cambodia is so colonized? ”
I think Marja answered that correctly. the Philippines is probably the most cosmopolitan society on earth both because of its history as being a colony of two rather differeent empire but mostly because such a large proportion of its population has either worked overseas or has relatives overseas. There are probably more people of Ilocano descent on the West Coast than in Ilocos.
Familiarity breeds boredom. Whites aren’t exotic there, just different.
Errr, I feel I should apologize for hijacking this topic/conversation. It wasn’t intentional. 🙁
as a mixed race woman (black/white) I prefer white men with brown hair. Always have since I was a little girl. I don’t know why I just do. Men are free to prefer whoever they like, its neither racist nor sexist, its a preference. I am open to other experiences and have fallen in love with different types but it just so happened that I married my preference. Black people have said that I was racist. Black men in particular have been offended by me and my preference, they said that I thought I was ‘too good for them’ etc. I don’t object to personal preference. I object to the only value of women being placed on their youth, skinniness and blondness as a cultural NORM/IDEAL. It is not. I hate that men and women are ridiculed for finding other types attractive. And funnily enough the men I am attracted to are the cultural NORM/IDEAL (tall, dark) If I was a man and prefered skinny blonde women I’m sure the venom would be profound. It doesn’t make it wrong, it makes it wrong that there is a cutural NORM that is forced upon us by the media. There should be a better representation of everyone, it would take the heat off us all and allow us to like who we damn please.
Welcoem, Jo, and thnaks for your comment.
What you are describing in the negative reactions you experience sounds like a form of sexual entitlement to me, and it’s really objectifying. Complaining when a women of X ethnictiy likes men of Y ethnicity or vice versa is an expression of ownership. That’s objectification.
And I agree with the exeption you draw here:
” I object to the only value of women being placed on their youth, skinniness and blondness as a cultural NORM/IDEAL. It is not.”
I mean aside frorm the blondness part. It’s one thing when a man wants kids and sees a younger women as a better sopouse for that reason, or a woman wants kids and sees a man with an established career as a likelier spouse (as long as she has an equally well-established career and earning power). But I don’t think that’s what you are talking about. I take what you are saying to mean general attractiveness.
Blondeness – I think blond hair makes a hot man look hotter, and that blond hair is wasted on women. Just kidding. But blond men are hot. I like redheads too, and my partner thinks that’s goofy, just doesn’t get it. But then he is very light blond and has always gone for dark-headed men. Redheads – I joke that that’s my one kink, mutant sex.
Eww that man is totally unattractive looking, smelling, and acting. Look hes “sexualizing” me. Looking and smelling and watching me and presumably finding me attractive instead of disgusting. Don’t we all sexualize each other to an extent, as humans, as animals? Obviously you can stare at someone with your tongue hanging out or subject someone to unwanted advances after they indicated they don’t want them and thats wrong, no disagreement there. However being a sexual human being attracted or repulsed by others from a sexual standpoint isn’t. It seems there is a certain trend of ultra feminism especially prevalent on college campuses and the internet that basically considers heterosexual men disgusting just for being and having a sexual attraction to women. That is hating someone for who they were born. Many of these women are actually heterosexual themselves, I petty their boyfriends/husbands. In addition to the issue of women being treated as objects of sexual desire there are also discrimination issues with women not being hired for a job because she is not attractive looking to the employer and they want their employees to be eye candy either for their customers. Plenty of women employers engage in this form of discrimination as well. Feminists don’t talk about that one as much I suppose because who wants to be part of the Ugly pride movement. They would rather talk about the perils of having to constantly drive off horny unsuitable men because they are just so damn hot! Discriminating against men who you think are unattractive also strikes me as a form of discrimination. You don’t have to go on a date with them but you could do them the courtesy of not assuming they are disgusting, gross probably a pedophile etc and use some manners when interacting with them.
That’s the attitude feminists teach women about men – and it’s why there will always be a small portion of men who recognize why feminism is a violent, sick, hateful caste system that ought not have a single dime spent on it.
“Wait. Am I right in interpreting Valerie Keefe’s commentary to mean that women have to be nice to men who harass them”
Sitting next to someone in a public space and coughing for a while hoping that person initiates a conversation is not harassment.
“vowing silently that if he even so much as utters a single word to me I would actually give him the biggest verbal smackdown of his entire privileged life, but he didn’t say anything. He just cleared his throat and then after five minutes of no response got up and left in a huff.”
I didn’t find the cartoon particularly offensive because it’s just hyperbole. Sometimes we feel like doing violent things to people that annoy us. Big deal. But I did find the above statement offensive. Here is this guy that is approaching a girl in the most harmless way possible, waiting for her to show some sign of interest, then quietly leaving. What kind of privileged asshole thinks it’s appropriate to give a “verbal smackdown” to someone simply for daring to “utter a single word”?
[…] In a post from a long time ago, unrelated to the actual topic of the post, a very interesting discussion of sexual ownership developed. (This is why I cherish thread drift, by the way.)The issue was the way white women treat – judging, sneering, accusing – white men who are in romantic relationships with non-white women, especially Asian women.* Fairly late in the thread Mike explains: […]
Let’s get it into perspective shall we? Females are superior to males, fact. Therefore no female should never have to tolerate any kind of male behaviour that makes her feel uncomfortable. Blowing someone away for showing unwanted attention might seem a bit excessive but it if we really want to redress the balance of power, then it could be seen merely as affirmative action. Violence is a fact of life and it is the common denominator that has kept men in control for so long. Female on male violence is increasing, not only is this acceptable – it is a good thing and it should be encouraged!! Controversial I know – but we will never achieve our rightful place if we allow the male monopoly on violence to continue…