For the Menz
July 12, 2007 by Kevin
by Kevin, AKA Thin Black Duke
In keeping with her man-hating, feminazi ways, Thinking Girl has graciously allowed me and all my manly dewdness to say a thing or two on her blog. Thank you, Thinking Girl, but I see through your little scheme here. You want to lure me into your patriarchy hating trap. You want to oppress me. And the menz! What about the menz?! Oh please! Stop oppressing us poor menz! We have it soooo bad! I mean, that one chick wouldn’t date me and I really was a Nice Guy™, but instead she dated that other guy, who is obviously an asshole because he’s not me, the real Nice Guy™. I’m NICE, damnit! And just to show you how nice I am, I’m going to treat you like an object to be possessed or won. I’m going to call you a beeyatch and a ho because you’re not attracted to me. Or better yet, maybe you’re one of those dreaded lesbians. It’s really all about us, the menz! The MENZ! DAMNIT! And if we don’t get everything we want then it’s just not fair! NOT FAIR!
Why can’t you understand that we’re really on your side?
*Cough*
A little over the top, yes, but seriously, that’s how some of you male commenters here sound, which is to say: like fools.
To be serious now, I truly am honored to be allowed to say a thing or two here at Thinking Girl’s blog. For my first post, I’d like to share 10 Things Men Can Do To End Men’s Violence Against Women
1. Acknowledge and understand how sexism, male dominance and male privilege lay the foundation for all forms of violence against women.
2. Examine and challenge our individual sexism and the role that we play in supporting men who are abusive.
3. Recognize and stop colluding with other men by getting out of our socially defined roles, and take a stance to end violence against women.
4. Remember that our silence is affirming. When we choose not to speak out against men’s violence, we are supporting it.
5. Educate and re-educate our sons and other young men about our responsibility in ending men’s violence against women.
6.”Break out of the man box”- Challenge traditional images of manhood that stop us from actively taking a stand to end violence against women.
7. Accept and own our responsibility that violence against women will not end until men become part of the solution to end it. We must take an active role in creating a cultural and social shift that no longer tolerates violence against women.
8. Stop supporting the notion that men’s violence against women can end by providing treatment for individual men. Mental illness, lack of anger management skills, chemical dependency, stress, etc… are only excuses for men’s behavior. Violence against women is rooted in the historic oppression of women and the outgrowth of the socialization of men.
9. Take responsibility for creating appropriate and effective ways to develop systems to educate and hold men accountable.
10. Create systems of accountability to women in your community. Violence against women will end only when we take direction from those who understand it most, women.
From A Call to Men
A direct question to TG… Do you, as a feminist, really support this approach? Really??? I mean, it only seems to replicate the patriarchal logic it claims to be against. The message seems to be: it’s up to us men to help liberate these women, our powerful position can be turned towards good etc. The problem is that this turn towards the good is only going to reinforce patriarchy. The object of seduction is turned into the object of liberation.
I am also slightly disturbed by the ‘gradualist’ implications of ideas such as educating young men about ‘our’ responsibility to end this violence. Imagine, for instance, a 1930s German advising his fellow countrymen to start educating the young people to take responsibility for ending violence towards Jews!
As far as I’m concerned, the approach to the problem of domestic violence outlined in this manifesto is a secondary-formation on the back of a failure to intervene directly in the business of the family. Instead of simply saying we must stop violence against women, we end up saying that we must change the culture which allows such violence to take place. The men who actually commit this violence do not seem to be the group addressed by this manifesto. Indeed, the manifesto enacts the very form of deferment and complicit silence which it critiques. Instead of confronting the perpetrators directly, it places the responsibility for this confrontation on an intermediate group i.e. the men who do not actually commit acts of violence against women, but whose silence makes them responsible.
So, given that the message seems to exclude the possibility of directly challenging the men who are committing these acts of violence, why is it a ‘call to men’, specifically? Presumably, when gay and bisexual men remain silent about domestic violence, they are supporting it. But, if this is so, then why aren’t the women who have no first-hand experience of domestic violence and who remain silent about it as equally guilty?
Though I don’t doubt the (conscious) good intentions of this group of men, I do wonder if they are - by taking responsibility so vocally - trying to absolve themselves of a deeper, more unconscious, guilt associated with their own complicity in patriarchy more generally. Ultimately, the Modern Family is the domestic violence equivalent to the Nazi concentration camps. And the Modern Hetero Family is what remains uncritiqued by this manifesto - because that’s where the true guilt lies.
I disagree with the foucaultisdead. I think the average male’s silence really does compound the whole problem. I’ve seen men do this time and time again when they’re in a ‘pack’ and the majority of them are uncomfortable with the sexist language etc. If men are educated by men (and let’s face it, that will have a much bigger impact at this stage) to break that tradition, let go some of the fear that’s entrenched in the pack mentality, then attitudes will start to shift. I do however, think the focus of the points given need to be more inclusive of some general sexist attitudes. I think many young men would read this and switch off halfway through thinking that they have never been violent towards women so it’s not relevant to them.
The fact that so many women stay silent is something that infuriates me no end. If there is any group, men or women, addressing this, then all peace to them!
I really don’t see how this is going to reinforce patriarchy. I didn’t see how what they are advocating is “up to us men to liberate these women” at all. If we finally have real men attempting real change are we going to reject them on the grounds that they are men? That seems so retrograde to me.
I’m sort of at a loss here.
On one hand, my intuition agrees with foucaltisdead here: “…the problem is that this turn towards the good is only going to reinforce patriarchy. The object of seduction is turned into the object of liberation.” He’s got a good point here, people! If we *rely* on men to liberate us, this is only going to aid our objectification…
Yet, I will also agree with Simonne that the average male and female silence *does* compound the problem: unquestionably. From a pragmatic point of view, silence=complicity+enabling. I won’t argue this point, because it’s absolutely true.
Perhaps my American socialization is interfering here, but my final stance on the matter seems to be: “Trust in attracting men to help us, but keep our gunpowder dry.”
I think the important thing is for women to rely on *ourselves* and do everything in our power while not waiting for the men to do it. BUT. Some to many men are going to want to jump in and help, and they should be *welcomed.* A combination of self-reliance and welcoming allies seems to be the best approach…
First of all, thanks to Kevin for guest-posting. For some reason, this template doesn’t identify the author of the post. This is a problem. So, I guess for now, perhaps the thing to do is to sign our initials at the bottom of our posts? do you agree Kevin?
Second, here’s what I think, since foucaultisdead asked.
I think that there is absolutely no way that violence against women will end without women’s resistance, women’s truth-telling, women’s strength. BUT. I also think that there is absolutely no way that violence against women will end without men stopping beating on women. After all, the violence women experience in domestic arrangements, romantic/sexual relationships, and in the street is predominantly at the hands of men. And so, women can resist all we want, tell our stories of abuse and assault all we want - but unless men stop beating on us, it ain’t gon’ stop.
I don’t see this as an either/or situation; I see it as a both/and kind of deal. I agree with Simonne that men who do not commit violence against women should act as intermediaries, because I think this message might come through stronger from men than from women. Men who support women’s rights should be leading by example in the ways suggested here.
If men simply were to stop beating on women, violence against women would end (for the most part - not counting female-female fisticuffs, and not discounting the violence some women experience at the hands of their female lovers).
I liken this to rape: the responsibility for rape lies on the rapist, not the victim/survivor. The responsibility for violence against women lies with the men who are committing the violence. BUT. all of us have a responsibility to end the culture of rape/violence that is so deeply embedded in our society. We all have a part to play: those women who have experienced VAW need to speak out and truth-tell their stories, those of us - men and women - who have not experienced VAW need to speak out against it and provide space for women victims to be heard, and men who have committed VAW need to fucking stop beating on women.
[...] core assumptions behind following is related to the core of violence): look at this great list of Things Men Can Do to help end violence against [...]
Heh, that beginning bit amused me.
You know, two of the biggest feminists I’ve ever met in my life are men. They are teachers of mine, actually. I go to a very liberal, very diverse school, and unlike in many other environments, gender expression and equality are very much encouraged, both by students and faculty members. Normally, I think a male would be reluctant to call himself a feminist, but it’s something that’s very respected in my school community, and as I said, these are two of the strongest feminists I know.
Usually, I think it’s difficult for men to understand the feminist movement because they feel alienated from it and perceive it as a threat. It’s important for them to realize that’s not the case and that all we are fighting for is gender equality, and that they can join in this fight. However, it’s just as important for us women to include them and be careful not to give the impression that we are man-hating feminazis. They need to acknowledge sexism and male privilege in order to see how it affects women and to fight against it, but they also need to understand that by those terms, we are not implying that each and every individual male on this planet is guilty for being born male. I think that’s a big problem here. The key is to make everyone feel included, and not to sound too harsh or judgmental, as it hurts our case. There are some great things on this list that men can do to help, but there are also lots of things that we can do as women to motivate men to follow what’s on this list. As you’ve shown here, both men and women are needed in this fight against oppression.
As a compulsive nitpicker, I have to object to the word “all” because it’s not clear that “all” forms of violence against women have such a foundation. Universal claims are hard to prove, as you only need one counterexample. (One could try to get around this by claiming that all acts whatsoever have such a foundation, which is a somewhat different issue.)
For example, if the goal of a violent act was to steal money, is that necessarily a manifestation of “sexism, male dominance and male privilege”? Would it matter if the robber did not use gender as a major determining factor in choosing a victim? Could there be one point to other foundations for this act?
Furthermore, there must be some cases, however infrequent, of violent acts against women being committed by other women, and it is somewhat less obvious to me that such acts necessarily have a foundation in “sexism, male dominance and male privilege.”
I admit that I’m just doing stupid nitpicking here (and you probably should delete this post if it’s distracting from something more important) but isn’t there a better way to word this that doesn’t require the dangerous word “all”? Something like “Acknowledge and understand how sexism, male dominance and male privilege lay a foundation for violence against women.”
The rest of the list is really great, though.
Thinking Girl:
I can see your both approches method is a good one. Let me add my take. I see the world of interpesonal interaction a little different from you. Rather than say this should be done, I will ask why would someone wish to do this.
So the biggest answer to the question is another question.
How do you make all the subsets of men want to stop beating on women.
The vauge but starting answer is three fold.
1. Positive: Make it attractive to support women.
2. Negative: Make it cost too much to not support women.
3. Repulsion: Make it feel repulsive to the man to abuse women and make other men feel repulsed by abusive men who abuse women.
To be succesful constant action by both genders is a must. Any feeling of moral high ground or ” I am the victiom don’t blame me” attitude will sabotage success. A practicle approach of it needs to be done so everyone equaly applies attraction and pressure is the answer.
Steve
Hi folks. I’m Kevin, the author of this post.
I think foucaltisdead raises many good questions. As for groups of men replicating the very patriarchal systems they claim to be fighting against. Yes, that’s a real possibility and often a reality. I won’t deny that. But I don’t read this as “it’s up to us men to liberate women.” Men do need to speak out more against violence against women. The list explicitly says that men need to be a *part* of the solution, not *the* solution. #10 explicitly states: “Create systems of accountability to women in your community. Violence against women will end only when we take direction from those who understand it most, women.” That doesn’t sound like men trying to take over Feminism to me. That’s saying we don’t get to call the shots. We don’t get to decide when we’re being sexist, or violent.
It’s true that the list and the group are talking mostly to men who don’t commit violence against women, but is calling for men to step up to the plate and call the violent perpetrators and the dudes with sexist attitudes out really a bad thing? I don’t see how this list excludes the possibility of directly challenging the men who are committing violence. If anything, it’s saying we *need* to directly challenge the men who are committing violence. It’s advice for men who are serious about ending violence against women. It’s asking that we give up the lip service and start taking action.
Now I admit that a lot of my thoughts on this are informed by the work that I’ve done in anti-racism. In fact, I discovered this list from a Woman of Color blogger, feminist, and anti-racist activist who has been discussing violence against women in communities of People of Color. That could very well be the wrong way to go about it. I’m open to criticism here; but I also believe that White folks need to take an active role in the fight against White Supremacy. I’m happy to see blogs like Ally Work, which is written by White folks for White folks, with the intent of eradicating White Supremacy. I don’t see them as saying “it’s up to us White folks to end White Supremacy.” They’re simply taking responsibility. I think groups like A Call to Men are doing a similar thing and I support that.
Hi Kevin. Thanks for responding - it sounds as if we might be able to have a reasonable debate about this, which is good.
You write: “If anything, it’s saying we *need* to directly challenge the men who are committing violence.” But it’s precisely this “we” that I’m concerned about. I’m assuming that, really, you are talking “to” heterosexual men, as they are the ones who belong to the cultural system which produces domestic violence i.e. the modern hetero family.
So I think the failure to specify that we are talking to heterosexual men obscures what should be our true target: the family as the only form of social organization in which this sort of violence emerges. And it is my belief that heterosexual men cannot take responsibility for domestic violence without FIRST addressing their complicity in the social organization which is responsible for reproducing that violence. It seems to me that not only does the proposed manifesto ignore the relationship between “the family” and violence, it actually constructs a gradualist, cultural approach which addresses virtually every issue EXCEPT issues related to the family.
The problem with the manifesto is that it is simultaneously under-ambitious and over-ambitious. It’s under-ambitious because it excludes the possibility that we can intervene directly in the social structure which causes domestic violence to emerge; meanwhile, it is over-ambitious because it assumes that we can end domestic violence by changing the cultural conditions surrounding the social structure (i.e. the family) which the manifesto is hesitant to say anything about.
Perhaps I should say that this objection runs parallel to, but is not the same as, my other objection that the manifesto objectifies women to a certain extent, by presenting them as objects of liberation.
[...] I came across this ‘call to men’ over the issue of domestic violence. (See also the discussion brewing-up at Thinking Girl.) This call takes the form of a manifesto, the first five points of [...]
If it is truly about gender equality and truly about stopping violence, why not change your ten steps to be gender neutral and just call on all people of all genders to no longer tolerate violence of any kind?
As as already been stated, women commit violence as well as men. And as has not been stated, 95%+ of all violence is against men, not women. I can’t help but read “calls to arms” like this that focus solely on 5% of the population of victims as violence while ignoring the greater problem as hopelessly missing the big picture. And it is also what you would call “patriarchal” because it reinforces the stereotype that only violence against women is wrong (the chivalry meme where men are taught that it is always wrong to hit a woman, even if that woman is actively attacking you) but says that violence against men is ok and “boys will be boys”. You are actively reinforcing that “patriarchy” (as you would call it) by focusing on only 5% of the victims of violence and ignoring violence against men. In essence, you are being “silent” on that issue here, the very thing you are criticizing as the problem.
Why not just call on all people to stop tolerating violence, period? It seems to me doing that is the only thing that could be effective anyway, ultimately - stopping just the 5% of violence against women and leaving in place all the violence against men still leaves a very violent society.
I’m all for eliminating violence. ALL violence. Not just “what about the womenz?” violence.
Hmmm… I love the idea that gender equality should start by pretending that inequalities don’t exist…. fabulous, we’ve never heard that one before.
That aside, DisgustedBeyondBelief has a point. (Wait, wait, wait, listen!). I disagree with how s/he gets there, but I do think that there’s something significant about acknowledging the extent to which contemporary forms of masculinity are premised upon violence. And this binds into the ‘heterosexual matrix’ (yup, I’m headed a Butler route. Pick your jaw off the floor, FiD ;-))
Violence against women (and it’s not actually specified to be domestic violence, FiD, though I take the point that DV’s a huge huge issue) is a complex matter that relies upon a particular *and inextricably bound together* construction of maleness and femaleness. They depend upon each other in order to exist (which is why I suspect that if men were to head off hunting, as FiD recommends, they’d forget who and what they are, lacking their mirrors, while women-amongst themselves…!) Not only that, but possibly *the* defining characteristic of normative masculinity and femininity is heterosexuality as Butler’s so keen to point out. But it’s also the repudiation of all that the other sex is: masculine women tend to be discriminated against a lot, for example. And for men, this becomes complicated, because their repudiation of femininity is bound up really strongly with aggressive characteristics: it’s *men* who are strong, active, don’t cry, don’t take shit etc etc. There’s the beginning point of violence, methinks, in the ways our culture opens for the assertion of maleness.
But Michael Kimmel (somewhere, if you want the ref let me know, I can find it) suggests that one of the strongest reinforcements of normative masculinity is homophobia, and he means it both in the usual sense of anti-homosexual, *and* in the literal sense of ‘fearing the same’. Masculinity at the moment is premised on a fear of other men, the fear that other men will find out about their secret femininity (which of course includes being homosexual in this logic). He gives lots of examples, but this is a comment, not a post! This is why, if you look at the 95% that DBB cites (which I have no idea about the accuracy of), you’re likely to find that it’s violence against men committed by men.
But this is where the interesting point lies, methinks. FiD’s horror attests to something very important—women *do* need to be part of the solution. Yet a solution which makes women *responsible for their own oppression yet again* by requiring that *they* take responsibility for fixing the problem is not the answer, and it denies the intertwining of men and women in the first place, an intertwining that would surely, if recognised, trouble the objectification of women either as an objects of seduction *or* liberation. Whilst men and women both need to work toward the reduction of VAW (and there’s a gorgeous and sad story about a street of women who knew that one of their neighbours was being subjected to DV, and one night every woman stood on her front step, hearing the fight yet again, with a saucepan and wooden spoon clanging until it stopped), there is also something incredibly important about recognising that men really *do* have huge amounts of influence upon each other. And this means that the violence against women that occurs is not just an individual thing (there’s the dangers of individualism again) but the function of a larger culture; Kimmel’s homophobia demonstrates that. Men who commit violence aren’t the monstrous exception, unfortunately: there’s a statistic that 1 in 12 men commit rape being dissected as we speak by Tia and commenters over at NoTickling! (http://notickling.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/a-statistic.html). Continuing to pretend that this is the case merely does as Tia says: “Once the problem is individual pathology, and not culture, Average Man is not responsible for how he supports the culture.” So in short, things that (to slip into Irigarayan) address the operation of the hom(m)osexual economy (not least its silenced underside) have a significant place in the reshaping of sexual difference and sexualised violence. So even though it’s kinda… not the activism I’d necessarily choose, I think that there’s a place for this manifesto, though honestly I wish that #10 had been #1. (Then again, I suspect that putting it last was an attempt to recognise this as *men’s* responsibilities without simply doing the ‘no, really, you show me *all* of what I’m doing wrong’ line that tends to attend all privileged groups’ attempts at ‘open dialogue’ usually followed by a ‘but I didn’t mean…’. Like Kevin said so eloquently, there are important similarities (and probably more important differences!) between race and sex inequalities).
DBB - why not list a call against ALL violence?
Lovely idea.
But a call against ALL violence, admirable as it might be, wouldn’t be able to go into as many specifics as the assumptions and cultures that breed particular types of violence. Violence against women is often motivated by sex-specific beliefs that are explicitly or implicitly supported by our society: that women are weaker than or should be dominated by men, that women “owe” men some sort of service, and on and on - a few careful analyses of womanhating crimes (such as you might find at Shakesville) could better enumerate these assumptions than I could right here. Thus, in order to end violence that is specifically directed toward women, you need some specific education on the culture that fosters those crimes.
I’d say the same is true for any hate crime. If you’ve ever seen The Laramie Project, that’s a great example of breaking down the specific cultural beliefs and assumptions that fostered both a brutal homophobic murder and a people that might have defended the murderers over the victim. That happens horrifically often in rape cases as well, so hate crimes against homosexuals are not unconnected to hate crimes against women… but on a very basic level, the two are founded by different enough cultural beliefs that it is worth examining them separately from time to time.
A call to end ALL violence would be too tragically simplistic to do any damn good, I think.
It’s all well and doing critiquing the patriarchal nuclear family unit and telling us folks that we are somehow complicit because we perpetuate it. But it’s another thing to state what to replace it with and how. Gradualist may suck, but it seems to be the only realistic way of any real change taking place when dealing with institutions of such as vast scale.
Hi again FiD - We have to remember that domestic violence is a subset of violence against women in general, though. Obviously not all violence against women occurs within the domestic sphere. Now if we’re going to talk about domestic violence specifically, then certainly we need to talk about the family. As far as domestic violence is concerned, I’m right there with you; but this list is addressing the larger culture of violence against women, which is not to say that we don’t need to break it down and discuss domestic violence, rape culture, etc. in their specificities. I just don’t think that’s the point here. Ugh, I hate to get all semanticky on you here, but I don’t read this as much a manifesto as advice to men starting out in this type of work, a stepping stone if you will. I suspect that part of your objections here are because you’ve already taken that step and you want to get down to the nitty gritty (this is, after all NOT a Feminism 101 blog). Nothing wrong with that.
And your point is taken on the risk of objectification here. It brings to mind Frederick Douglass for me. When it started to become clear to many White abolitionists that his oratory skills far surpassed theirs, they freaked, and told him that if he really wanted to help the cause he needed to tone it down, not seem so smart. It’s at that point that it becomes clear that for many White abolitionists he was an object of liberation more than a human worthy of dignity. I think that’s always a risk in ally work. I think it’s why listening to women (or any oppressed group for that matter) is so important. When a suppossed male ally gets on the defensive because a woman called him out on sexism, it’s generally a sign that there’s some objectification going on. So I ask, do you believe it’s possible to do work like this group is trying to do without objectifying women? How would you suggest that men take responsibility for their complicity with regards to violence against women, because as WildlyParenthetical says, I think it’s a mistake to place the onus solely on women. I ask because where I see a risk, you see an established fact. I would say that not all White abolitionists saw Frederick Douglass as on object of liberation, although some certainly did, and I would say the same is true with men and feminism. And like I said, I don’t see the Ally Work blog as objectifying people of color (full disclosure: I’m good friends with many of the folks blogging there. One of them is a co-blogger of mine at another blog), but I suspect you might see it that way. If not, what’s the difference?
DBB - Where in the list does it suggest that violence against men is ok? It seems to me that “challeng[ing] traditional images of manhood” means to challenge the “boys will be boys” attitude. Just because the group is addressing a specific form of violence doesn’t mean that they are excusing all other forms of violence.
Kevin - I really do not believe that members of privileged groups should be ‘helping’ oppressed groups. Members of privileged groups should be dropping out of ‘civil society’, so that the oppressed group which I, as an Irigarayian, believe is the key to the future (i.e. women) can form a new civil society. In a way, this certainly does place the onus fully on women, but it does so by men renouncing their power-interests. And it’s the Baudrillardian in me which believes that people today wish to be rid of power - for Baudrillard, this is why democracy is so successful, not because people want to be represented, but because they want to be rid of power by handing it over to politicians.
I would be really curious to know what personal motives were behind any white person becoming actively engaged in the struggles faced by black and other minority ethnic groups (as opposed to getting involved in mental health activism, prison welfare, or whatever). Especially so, when I believe that the solution to the problem of power is a form of creative (rather than destructive) forgetting.
Huh.
What would “dropping out of civil society” look like? What would “forming a new society” look like?
Sounds great, but I’m not sure how it applies to the practical experience of empowerment.
Besides, wanting men to acknowledge and be accountable for male privilege is different from wanting them to drop out of the struggle. They’re part of it, like it or not, so it makes most sense to me to encourage men to play a positive role in struggle.
And though I am not sure I qualify as actively engaged in racial struggle, I acknowledge that as a white person I am unavoidably involved in racial struggle… and I know I’d rather be on the side of education and empowerment than on any particularly raced side.
Empowerment is precisely what we need less of. Why this strange lust for power?
Crucially, tanglethis, you misquote me by asking: what would “forming a new society” look like? I specified a new civil society - this means women taking over our political institutions, the legal system and so on. The space for this shift can easily be created by men giving-up power.
Incidentally, before someone says: ‘Ah, but taking over civil society would be a form of empowerment’, I should explain… The sort of civil society women need is one which will “give birth” to an authentic female subject-position which (unlike patriarchy) is precisely not based upon having power over another group.
FiD, the absent “civil” was a typo, but doesn’t change the lack of explanation of your concept.
I think that what I and many others mean by “empowerment” is similar to what you imply by an authentic subject position - that’s power-of-self, power to define and maintain your subject position rather than have the limits defined for you by another group… not power-over-others, as in “lust for power.” That said, you completely lose me with the suggestion that this civil society will create authentic subject positions. That takes the agency right out of the hands of the individual, where I think it belongs. It suggests that women can not currently have authentic subject positions, which is (if I may continue throwing the word around) a disempowering stance. And how would a female civil society even develop if a collectively accessible female subject position is not yet born?
Like I said, the paradigm shift you ask for sounds great but I just don’t see the practical application - unless perhaps you care to elaborate.
tanglethis - My starting point is the work of a feminist philosopher and psychoanalyst called Luce Irigaray who believes that the patriarchial system we live under explicitly denies women the space in which they could develop an authentic subject position. Of course, there are gaps, cracks and the like where women can move towards an authentic female subjectivity. And if men abdicated their power, left it all for women to take over, then I can only imagine that this would create more spaces.
I really wonder, if you don’t see any practical application of this point, how you can simultaneously think this idea can “sound” great. In what way, then, does it sound great? Or are you just inserting that “sounds great” as a defence? Think seriously about what you are defending here… Cause it sounds to me like you are defending the idea that men should continue in their positions of privilege whilst at the same time “helping” out those poor women.
Hey, FiD, can I ask something? Just out of curiosity (it *is* related, but not the most on-track of on-track comments), how much is Baudrillard influencing your reading of Irigaray here? I’m curious because (this is a recording) I don’t know the later Irigarayan texts. I know that they suggest alterations to the function of civil society in ways like you might be suggesting we aim for, but is it from her that you get the ‘men dropping out of civil society’ would make this better/easier thing? Or is that Baudrillard? I ask because it would seem to me that the ‘disempowerment’ that you’re identifying (I’m actually incredibly uncomfortable with talk of ‘empowering and ‘disempowering,’ but that’ll wait for another time) as *desirable* may in fact be a mark of privilege. That is, only those whose position is relatively stable would seek disempowerment, yes? Or no? If I’m right, then I’m not sure how men heading off to hunt (clearly that image amuses me, I keep coming back to it
) would function as any less a marker and consequence of privilege: this kind of ‘forgetting’ of privilege is incredibly harmful because it is its naturalisation. And if that’s the case, then requiring (which I hate to say it, but it sounds like what you’re suggesting) women to do the work remains a mark not of privilege ‘granted’ by men through abdication out of respect for difference (perhaps? or not? out of what then? this is the point at which I’m not sure about how your proposal differs significantly from what you’re critiquing) but of disadvantage: the work they must do if they want men to behave. Okay, that’s a lil unfair, really, taking a sledgehammer to your point, but do you see what I’m getting at?
I’m going to leave it there because I don’t want to clog the blog (teehee), but I have some more to say about privilege, disadvantage, and generosity over at mine… (now if that’s not blatant blogwhoring, I dunno what is!) I’ll trackback when it’s done.
WP, I see your point completely. Yes, of course, my notion of forgetting power is informed by Baudrillard. Where I depart from Irigaray is the idea that men should help women develop their identity (see her ‘Questions to Emmanuel Levinas’, for instance). I think men should abdicate the spaces which women may come to occupy, but as for actually helping women into those spaces - no thanks. I think here Irigaray comes very close to turning men into ‘the other of the same’ which woman was (and still is) for men. She should let men go off and do their own thing.
However, the viral subject I describe in my research (which, for me, is defined as the subject who forgets power-relations) is an inversion of the classic subject of philosophy. Whereas the classic subject of philosophy is explicitly universal, but implicitly male, my viral subject-position is explicitly male but implicitly universal i.e. it is a subject-position open to women who are perhaps turned off by how the female symbolic order develops.
I look forward to reading your post, WP!
Fid, I am aware of who Irigaray is and that you’re basing some of your philosophy on hers - you said as much above. But I disagree with one of the basic premises of hers that your working with - that women can’t develop an authentic subject position under the current conditions unless they slip through a crack (perhaps left by some careless man). I do not disagree that current conditions aren’t favorable, but I think that the claim that she makes sloughs women off into the victim category. I take issue with that. It’s one of the first things you (well, I) learn in postcolonial feminism - if women are victims, then someone has to go in and save them. If women do not have an authentic subject position, then some outside effect has to give them one because they can’t develop it themselves. That stance denies the agency that women have, and I don’t think it’s very pro-woman.
By “sounds great,” I meant just that - on the surface, the idea sounds very smart and simple. Men back off, women can blossom! Great! But I asked for more detail because, despite the focus of my graduate work, I don’t find theory useful unless it has some practiceable value. And in practice, I see more women as survivors than victims, and you won’t hear me undermine any woman’s subject position as inauthentic until the revolution comes, or whatever.
You could only interpret my comments as pro-patriarchy by misreading them.
Within her own terms of reference (which, of course, you do not accept) Irigaray is certainly not putting women in the victim category, tanglethis. So I’m not convinced that the reasoning you articulate is the best basis on which to reject those terms of reference. But Irigaray is not everyone’s cup of tea, that’s for sure.
I am not misreading the intentions behind your comments (which I take for granted are not pro-patriarchy), I am reading your comments in themselves as pro-patriarchy. If my response has made you even more against Irigaray, then so be it. Things could have gone the other way.
Psychoanalytic theory and ecriture feminine essentialize women. She makes interesting points about women needing their own language and the phallus as universal referent but is a bit too deconstructionist for practical purposes. Men only have to not exercise their undue privilege and women and men will get along fine.
I’m not going to partake in this thread any more. I refuse to get into a debate with another man about “the sort of civil society women need.”
Donna - Irigaray is not a part of the ecrtiture feminine movement; that was an early misreading of her by some Anglo-American interpreters. Likewise, Irigaray has her own very coherent rejection of deconstruction. And I’m not so sure that a refusal by men to exercise their undue privilege will actually end their positions of privilege.
Kevin - do us all a favour mate, leave the passive-aggressive stuff at the door. As a follower of Irigaray, a feminist blog like this is the perfect place to discuss her ideas and draw on them to critique the ideas of others. And I wasn’t specifying the sort of civil society women need, I was talking about men abandoning their positions of privilege in order to leave a space for women to create their own civil society. (And if men don’t discuss this, then how could it ever happen?) What sort of civil society is then created is up to women.
FiD, you *are* specifying that that ‘female’ civil society should be one without men, though, aren’t you? I’m not convinced that that’s actually the way to go (partly because I’m Foucauldian enough to think that there’s no outside to power, so it won’t exactly do enough). So I kinda get Kevin being unwilling to engage in those kinds of claims. Form and content are *not* disentangleable; that is, claiming women need a civil society without men *does* make a claim about what kind of society women need, doesn’t it?
Also, just a quick question: how is a ‘refusal by men to exercise their undue privilege’ all that different from ‘men abandoning their positions of privilege’? You think that the former won’t end privilege, but that the latter will? I disagree with Donna on both the ‘Irigaray essentialises women’ (actually, I like Grosz’s claim that understanding Irigaray as essentialist seems to her to be a “willful misreading”
and the ‘deconstructionist stuff’s not politically practical’ fronts (for reasons too big to go into here, apologies to Donna for short shrift!), but I do think that part of the conditions of change have to do with men negotiating with their own privilege. With, if you will, their own (and others’ 
masculinity.
WP - minimally, yes, specifiying that a female symbolic order without the participation of men might appear to be saying what sort of symbolic order women should have. However, I formulate this claim as a specific response to Irigaray, who says that men should be helping women develop their identity in this new order. It’s on the back of this call that Irigaray says nutty things such as men should stop engaging in noisy activities such as motor cars and rock music etc, because women and children don’t like noise. For Irigaray to be saying these things is what I mean when I say that she is close to turning men into the ‘other of the same’ which woman was (and is) for patriarchy.
As for your second question, I think it will be answered by a blog post I am formulating in response to your own recent post on privilege.
hmmm, this is all so interesting.
so if I’m understanding you properly, FID, what you’re saying is that men need to step back and allow a space for women to create their own kind of civil society. Not to define what that society would be like, but to allow women to create it themselves. and part of that involves men abandoning male privilege and power-over women.
so, how to do this? it sounds like a case for separatism to me. which I do tend to have a soft spot for. what do you have in mind? how would this actually work? I would think some of the items on the original list would be appropriate…
TG - It is separatism, but not a spatial separation. Irigaray believes women need to develop their own discourse, their own language and their own civil society. She also believes that men should have these things too - but that’s where I disagree with her, for she claims that women need men to develop an authentic identity and I disagree with that.
As for how to go about all this, stopping participating in politics is a good place to begin.
Sounds very intresting. But beyond the boundaries of campus how does this kind of discussion have any real impact upon domestic violence?
Heh, ok I lied. Here I am again.
FiD - My apologies. I didn’t mean for that to come off as an attack on you (but arguing “intent” is a lazy person’s way of slagging off responsibility, so your point is taken). Trust me. I think you’re good people and I have no problem discussing shit with you. If I thought you were full of shit and not seriously interested and invested in all of this, I would be openly mocking you. I just feel that the discussion here is straying from a “how men can work towards ending violence against women” into a “what’s best for women” discussion. That’s not a discussion that I feel comfortable having.
No worries, Kevin.
stixzz - Here’s an example: my long-term partner and I live separate lives in separate homes. The last thing we would ever consider would be to start binding ourselves into patriarchal power-relations by living together, getting more involved in each other’s lives. Hell, we don’t even consider ourselves “romantically involved” - we are friends who are also sexual partners. So the idea of domestic violence emerging in a situation like this is ridiculous, because there is a very limited degree of commitment.
A lot of my male friends (who have more conventional arrangements structuring their sexual relationships) say they envy our relationship - to which I say: ‘Well why don’t you do what we’re doing??’ This sort of thing is, for me, a starting point towards men becoming more invested in themselves and less invested in keeping a woman in their homes for company. Of course, the lack of political engagement will follow a lot longer down the line. So this is hardly the revolutionary ‘campus’ politics that you suggest.
I’ve long felt a duplex was about as close to living with a man as I was willing to do…
I’m still not seeing how to back off from society-as-it-is enough to actually revolutionize it. There are too many people who are wholly invested in the power structures that govern us, and who are unwilling to cede that power. This is the real problem as I see it - how to convince people to give up the power they have? people are addicted to their power, and it serves them well.
and sorry to say, we already have millions of people who are disengaged from the political process - what we voter turnout for the last election in Canada? in the US? as I recall, it was pathetic? And look what has happened - the US is being run by a complete despot, and Canada has elected a man who would gladly serve the other guy - and who, by the way, has severely cut funding to the Status of Women Council, to be more specific to this discussion - a group that has largely been dedicated to raising awareness and putting and end to VAW.
So, is the revolution to begin at home, by refusing to participate in traditional domestic relationships? I mean, that’s easy enough I think. will that be enough, if enough people do it, to start to affect some change?
I tend to think that the first-past-the-post electoral system needs some changing to allow for more equitable participation in government. Are you perhaps suggesting something a bit closer to anarchy?
also, if the revolution begins at home (nice slogan, perhaps?), this seems like a bit of an elitist solution. It’s expensive being self-sufficient. Some people can only afford to do things like go back to school for example if they have the support of a partner, who often cannot afford to support an entirely separate living arrangement…
I dunno maybe my simple non academic brain can’t get this. But it seems that what we have is a critique of the original post a large part of which was on the charge of it being gradualist. And then a practical solution that can only be an exceeding gradualist solution.
Not to mention impractical for the population as a whole as TG put above.
Another aspect of unequal power distrubtion across the population that seems to be getting ignored is the one between technocratic theoriticians (that dissect the problems of society and then present solutions that then get presented to the plebian) and the rest of us. These are the people that end up having to suffer the unintended consequences of what gets advocated from the vantage point of intellegensia, whilst they can dream of other solutions to deal with the problems that they have caused.
Personally, i think the original call to men article was pretty good and could be worked within the framework of the prevailing culture.
stixzz - ending the family is not gradualist. That should happen tomorrow, just as the Germans could have closed-down the concentration camps within a short period. The family is the organ of patriarchy and participation in it is complicity with patriarchy.
Of course, getting people to that point (ie. of abandoning the family) won’t happen tomorrow, just as an individual German couldn’t have ended the Holocaust.
Eh. And with that, you totally lose me.
While I absolutely think that there are people who use the family structure as a way of reinforcing harmful power differences, I’m not at all convinced that creating a family is always harmful, or that there aren’t substantial benefits to forming family units, and when you pull up comparisons between the family and the holocaust, you don’t help. Now, I find myself struggling to stay interested and involved, because you’ve implied that being part of a family- which most of us have a lot of experience with- is somehow similar to the execution and extermination perpetrated by the Nazis. That’s, I think, a bit of a tough sell.
Sorry, I’m trying to sneak these responses in during breaks at work…
Roy, I think the violence associated with patriarchy isn’t too far off what happened under the Nazis. I mean, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives. That is, when you really think about, quite shocking.
My objection to the original points is not that it would take a long time to achieve but, rather, that it articulates a solution in which the family will be tolerated BECAUSE of the length of time it is assumed it will take to end patriarchy.
And, as I said in my own post, look at the statistics in the gay community - domestic violence has increased along with gay marriage. Seems pretty damning to me.
“The family is the organ of patriarchy and participation in it is complicity with patriarchy.”
The 64,000-dollar (or yen
) questions become the following:
Questions, set 1: was the family *ALWAYS* the organ of patriarchy? Or could it have originated quite differently?
I’m thinking specifically of matrilineal families in societies that were non-patriarchal. Yes, they’re rare…BUT…they do and did exist.
Questions, set 2: does the family *HAVE* to remain patriarchal? In other words, shouldn’t feminists and feminist allies, POCs, indigenous peoples, etc., **take back the family?** Why does it have to remain a province of male domination?
The reason I’m asking *this* question is that families–extended in particular–offer immense benefits in terms of protection, ability, resources, etc. There is a reason why family units are formed–they are MIGHTY handy in terms of resource gathering, companionship, teaching, networking, self-defense, etc.
Units of families, a.k.a. clans in the Celtic, Native American, Scottish Highlander senses, etc., are *especially* what I’m thinking. And yes, surprisingly, a few to many of them were ruled by women–especially in pre-Christian Ireland and Native America (indigenous).
My point in all this is that I’m willing to acknowledge that in Western culture, the family is the *organ of generation* of patriarchy. BUT. Why leave it to the patriarchialists? Why should THEY have all the benefits?
Seems to me that an extended family with a non-patriarchal focus in nations that create and enforce healthy, stiff national laws against domestic violence, and nurtured by good, self-sustaining economics in a happy, welcoming culture could actually prove to be a good INOCULATION against patriarchy. Let me provide you with an example:
The Oneida nation of the Iroquois Confederacy (who, BTW, prefer the name “Haudenosaunee”
has a family set-up that was matrilineal and extended. The eldest woman, the Clan Matron, was considered the *head* of the longhouse family. I’ll give you my thread in my next post so that you can check it out. 
http://www.angelfire.com/on3/oneida/page93.html
This is a really good thread: check it out, I was impressed!
We DON’T have to relegate the family to patriarchy. It’s not their property!
:))))
I think the original call to men article was pretty good and could be worked within the framework of the prevailing culture.
The original article is about all kinds of violence against women including domestic violence, rape, sexual harrassment, street harrassment, stalking, sexism against women online, etc. The patriarchal family appeared around the time of the Industrial Revolution if we are to believe Engels’ Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. There’s no reason we can’t try alternative arrangements such as communal or nonhierarchical living. Post-structuralists including Baudrillard and Lyotard are interesting in the academy and for mental masturbation but some even find my second wave black feminist theories too removed from life and death issues women face. Lacan, Irigaray, Baudrillard and Lyotard were extremely interesting in college but later decided they were not practical in real life.
The reason I’m asking *this* question is that families–extended in particular–offer immense benefits in terms of protection, ability, resources, etc. There is a reason why family units are formed–they are MIGHTY handy in terms of resource gathering, companionship, teaching, networking, self-defense, etc.
This is why I can’t get on the ‘destroy the family’ train. FiD is certainly right; the nuclear family (and I assume that is what he means by ‘family.’ Correct me if I’m wrong) can be and often is royally fucked up. I know this from personal experience (and I bet many others here do too). But on the other hand, family has and continues to be a source of support and protection for people of color in the face of White supremacy (particularly the extended family, as Scarred rightfully points out). Often, family is all we’ve got. It’s no coincidence that slave owner’s, faced with ‘their unruly negroes,’ first response was often to break up the families. Hell, you didn’t even have to be an uppitty negro for that to happen. It was a great way to break people down. So, I see the “abolish the family” theory as coming from a position of privilege. If you’ve never had to rely on your family for your survival (i.e. you’ve never had to rely on your family because you are of The Mold™), it’s easy to call for it’s abolishment.
But it gets more complicated. As I said earlier, I came upon this list in a post by Donna Darko that was in response to the discussions Women of Color were having about male violence against women in our communities. Obviously things are amiss. I agree that the patriarchal-based nuclear family as we see it now has to go away. So, I find myself supporting alternate forms of relationship building, whether it be the more common practice of refusing to get married or FiD’s current relationship, but…
Seems to me that an extended family with a non-patriarchal focus in nations that create and enforce healthy, stiff national laws against domestic violence, and nurtured by good, self-sustaining economics in a happy, welcoming culture could actually prove to be a good INOCULATION against patriarchy.
and…
There’s no reason we can’t try alternative arrangements such as communal or nonhierarchical living.
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
A lot of feminist theorizing (hell, theory in general) comes from a position of White, middle-to-upper-class privilege. The solutions being offered may work fine for those that already have the upper hand (by way of white supremacy, economics, heteronormativity), but they ignore the real needs of the poor, the PoC, the folks that aren’t heterosexual.
I’m sure everyone knows couples who aren’t hierarchical, couples where the woman makes more money than the man, the man does all the cooking and cleaning, etc.
How we got from eradicating violence and sexism against women to abolishing the family is unneccessary mental masturbation.
Do you know what “mental masturbation” is also known as, Donna? It’s called thinking for yourself, which you evidently don’t want other people to do.
Look, all I said was that if you want to eradicate violence and sexism against women, then you have to address the social structures which reproduce over and over again that oppression. I then highlighted the ways in which the manifesto (or whatever it is) proposed solutions which were precisely aimed to miss that target.
Now, you may disagree with this, and many people have put up some excellent points against me. But don’t pretend that I changed the subject, because I didn’t.
The list addresses how men can eradicate sexism in social structures better than anything I’ve seen before because it’s practical, simple and usable.
Eradicating the family or telling women to start their own civil society is impractical.
I read Irigaray, Lacan, Baudrillard, Lyotard and many others in college in my early twenties.
As a woman, I find them impractical for the eradication of sexism.
If dribs and drabs of people by changing their individual arrangement of relationship to something other than the family isnt gradualist then i dont know what is. It would take milenia for that kinda change to take place.
Not to mention that the ‘experiment of living’ approach that you advocate is only possible for people that can afford to adopt such a lifestyle. In our market society our scope choices are shaped by our purchasing power. As others have stated here the family is a unit whereby those are poor can afford to sustain themselves.
Obviously therefore, in order for something as radical as moving away from the family to take place to happen quicker than dribs and drabs there has to be a <force to compell those living that lifestyle to change.
The only way i can think of that being able to happen would be through something such as state intervention. But hey, that aint nothing new, just would be yet another instance that the working class have to bear the brunt of the whims of the social engineers who are confronted by social problems via the medium of a text book…..
stixzz - gradualism is not inherent to my proposal i.e. if every man agreed to it tomorrow, domestic violence would end instantly. But the proposed manifesto inherently assumes a gradual approach - educating young men, changing ‘culture’ (whatever the Hell that is).
In fact, what exactly is a “social and cultural shift” and how does one go about creating it? I mean, this is why I bring up the example of 1930s Germany - was a “social and cultural shift” required then? Of course. But no one would actually put it that way.
Likewise, Stixzz, I am utterly baffled by your idea that because some men might find the financial circumstances difficult, they might have to delay their refusal to participate in patriarchy and ditch the family. I mean, what would you say to the concentration camp guard who says: ‘Well, I would leave my job, but I have to pay my rent somehow.’ (Plus, how difficult is it for men to leave their families??? Shouldn’t a feminist be aware of how patriarchal capitalism makes it easier for men, as opposed to women, to leave their family!?)
In that sense, my proposal is no more an “experiment in living” than the ending of World War II was an experiment in living. Just as the concentration camp guard should refuse to participate in the Nazi order because it is the right thing to do, men should refuse to participate in the patriarchal order because it, too, is the right thing to do. Whether others are engaged in such resistance at the same time is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT. It’s the likes of you who is concerned to get everyone on board before having the guts to act; you’re the one who wants to create the “cultural and social shift” required to end patriarchy instead of just ending one’s own individual participation in its structures.
People:
I know there’s a lot of passion here…I know that tempers are a bit high and subjects like the family and ending patriarchy are sensitive and touchy…people here are passionate and have strong convictions, this is true–and ADMIRABLE…
However, I’m concerned that we remember that while we may have strong disagreements and attack ideas, **let’s avoid attacking each other.** Yeah, I know…I’m a **fine** one to talk because of my behavior on the PUA threads…BUT…I wasn’t dealing with feminist allies or other feminists, I was dealing with PUA apologists.
I admit I’m being hypocritical in some instances, but please bear with me here. If nothing else, use me as a negative example, if you must.
I value you ALL, and I would like all of us on **this thread, EACH ONE OF US WHO HAS POSTED HERE** that we are ALL sincere feminists and feminist allies. In other words, we don’t have any insincere trollers, we’ve got passionate people who really want an end to patriarchy and something that will benefit ALL.
Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt, people…let’s realize that while we may disagree with each other about the family, let’s find commonalities about just **what men can do** to end violence against women, the basic subject of this thread.
FiD, I **get** your passion about the family being inherently patriarchal, I **really** do. My family was nastily patriarchal, my father being one of the nastiest, tyrannical wife beaters you could imagine. **I myself** once saw my father and my mother square off with a gun and a knife, respectively. Believe me, I lived in a patriarchy that was damn near concentration-camp evil. **MY** family of origin fitted your Nazi-like description, no question about it.
BUT.
Not everyone has **had** that experience of family.
Some people have had WONDERFUL experiences of family, family no more patriarchal than, say, a herd of elephants–and **filled** with unimaginable love. I’ve visited families that were genuinely filled with unbelievable love. For some people, family really IS the only lifeline they’ve ever had to keep themselves above water.
This is especially true for African-Americans and Hispanics in my country, America. One of my best friends is an African-American in his 60s, and he talks about his family all the time with enormous pride. His **family,** you see, gives him enormous strength. And who’s the “head” of his family? You guessed it–his **mom.**
When I see him swell with pride about his grandbabies and brothers and sisters, I get warm inside…and I **learn something**–that there ARE happy families, families where everybody can grow and blossom. 
Maybe it’s a matter of semantics and connotations… When Donna, Kevin, stixzz, and others talk about family, they’ve got in their heads pictures of warm, happy, extended families with strong matrilineal/matriarchal images…or strong EGALITARIAN images, perhaps…places where both boys and girls are encouraged and loved and thrive.
Yet I’ve noticed that when you initially posted on the family, you used **this** wording:
“Ultimately, the Modern Family is the domestic violence equivalent to the Nazi concentration camps. And the Modern Hetero Family is what remains uncritiqued by this manifesto - because that’s where the true guilt lies.”
Maybe we’re talking about SEVERAL different entities.
When Donna, Kevin, stixzz, etc., use the term **family,** FOR THEM it conjures up a way different vision, I’m willing to gamble, than for YOU. You see what I mean?
For example, when you use the term “Modern Hetero Family,” I get the sense of the 1950s style Father/breadwinner–Mother/homemaker–2.3 kids, garage, and dog. Am I right?
Now, when **I** use the term “family,” I think, not of my biological father and mother–I avoid them if I can–but rather, my aunt, cousin, my ex-Army DI friend, my two friends out in South Dakota, my friend in St. Paul, my friend (20-year-friendship!) who’s coming over tonight, my biological daughter (whom I gave up for adoption), my other friends and believe it or not, my CAT.
And I’m sure other people on the thread have differing visions.
So when we talk about “the Family,” we must realize that it’s not any more monolithic than anything else…
Also, we all might have to agree to disagree about whether “the Family” is inherently the hothouse for patriarchy. IF it boils down to disagreeing about the origins of patriarchy, this **still** goes back to the question–what (else) can men do to stop violence against women?
I have an idea.
Get in touch with their feminine side!
IMHO, and yes, I’m being a little biased, every man has a **feminine** side…just as all women have a **masculine** side. The more men love their female self in the mirror, the less likely they are to hurt a woman **outside** of themselves. And vice versa. That’s a very Jungian bias, I know…but I think it’s VERY true.
What do people here think about **that idea**?
Well, I think that’s a great idea. And it is, in fact, part of the original list - “6.”Break out of the man box”- Challenge traditional images of manhood that stop us from actively taking a stand to end violence against women.”
FID, I was thinking more about the financial hardships that WOMEN would face if all of a sudden their family unit was dissolved - not the hardship faced by men in abandoning their participation in families. Interesting that you should jump there, however…??
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’m afraid I’m just not seeing how your suggestions are practical. I just don’t. As I see it now, men have too much invested in patriarchy to abandon it so simply, and I”m sorry, but it DOES matter whether others are engaged in the same resistance when we’re talking about structural, systemic sexism that is VAW. It matters a great deal. I think a culture-wide shift is ultimately necessary for feminism’s ideals to be achieved, and I really don’t believe it could ever happen overnight. Nice if it could, but seriously, I just don’t see it happening. Like I don’t see all of a sudden all the white folks in Canada giving their land back to the First Nations peoples because it’s the right thing to do, or the west simply stopping its neo-colonial globalization exploitation of developing countries, or the religious right just stopping persecuting LGBT people. Sure, IF everyone, all together, decided to stop participating in patriarchy, it would indeed be over. but patriarchy serves some people very very well, which is kind of why it’s survived all this time despite heavy resistance.
Scarred - No, I don’t think you’re being hypocritical at all. There’s a big difference between getting nasty with trolls, people that are obviously anti-women or PUA apologists, and asking for allies to take a chill pill.
I want to thank you for your comment. It says everything that I wanted to say, yet admittedly, I don’t think I could have said it as nicely as you did.
Exactly.
And ultimately, I’m still concerned here with stopping violence against women. I’m not willing to talk only about “domestic violence.” Violence against women doesn’t only occur within the domestic sphere.
I’m new to the blog and didn’t realize we’re all allies in this thread. Another thing is separatism is only affordable to upper-middle and upper class females and males. It’s great you and your girlfriend can live separately but most women can’t afford that. Men and women living separately is not practical especially for women.
In fact, my last relationship grew out of the need for someone to pay half the rent even though the reason crystallized in my mind after the relationship.
“I’m new to the blog and didn’t realize we’re all allies in this thread.”
Donna, I’m sorry. I apologize for being condescending and making assumptions. It **is** true that **I** made that assumption, and yes, I was being presumptious.
I guess what I’m scared of is seeing another feminist blogosphere war. I heard about the Genderburg Blowout, and I’m scared of that happening here. I just…oh, I don’t know.
I don’t want to see good people go at each other while letting the anti-feminists and bigots get giggles at our expense. It really bothered me how Black Amazon, Brown Femipower, and Renegade Evolution got completely vilified…it **bothered** me intensely.
I guess I made the assumption about us all being allies because it seems to me…that everyone is being as sincere as they **can** be without a hidden agenda. I admit that maybe that’s Pollyanna-ish and head-in-the-clouds…and yes, real privileged.
I guess if we’re not all allies now, I would like to see us **become** allies–the Real Deal…
Kevin: thank you bunches!
Hmmm…
Let’s redefine “family.” A “family” consists of those people who you trust, appreciate, and will support you through good times and bad. This does not necessarily include those who happen to be related to you or even those you share living accommodations with. The nuclear family living alone is actually a rather unnatural institution if hunter-gatherer societies and other pre-industrial societies are the barometer of what’s “natural.” It’s a product of our industrialized economy (much like the much maligned public school system) so there’s no particular reason why there couldn’t be a better basis for social organization. As Penn and Teller once said in their television show, “Family Values” is Bullshit.
A long time ago, back in 1997, I felt like part of a family when I posted on the USENET newsgroup alt.games.final-fantasy. The other posters there felt much more like a family than my workaholic parents. Currently, I live at home with my parents, but I get along with them about as well as most people get along with their bosses at work. (I’m currently job-free by choice after graduating from college, which doesn’t give me much of a bargaining position or a moral high ground as far as they are concerned.) It’s a cliché to say that my parents don’t understand me, and also a cliché that parents understand their children better than their children think they do, but my parents actually have told me that they don’t understand me, so I guess I’m justified in saying it. (On the other hand, my younger brother, currently not living with me, understands me about as well as I understand myself.)
In other words, I feel like people need more freedom to choose who they consider part of their family and not be bound by who they happen to be related to. You don’t choose your relatives, but you do choose your friends, and that really does make a difference. Just watch any of the children’s anime series that have been imported from Japan, such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon. Friendship, not romantic love or the “love” between relatives, is portrayed as a powerful bond that enables the heroes to overcome any obstacle. And you know, even in real life, sometimes it does.
Scarred - I appreciate those calming words. I guess what annoys me is when those who disagree with me start to become abusive towards “theory” in general and characterize me as immature and living in some ivory tower college campus.
I have not really had negative experiences of the family as such, although I know many people who have. My judgement on the family is based on empirical evidence - 1 in 4 women, and 1 in 5 men, are victims of domestic violence. In the UK, one woman dies every week at the hands of a partner or ex-partner (and how many more, then, must be maimed and permanently disabled and so on?). And, as I said, these patterns are replicating themselves in the gay community at precisely the same moment when they are being encouraged to replicate hetero modes of relationship structure.
Now I’m sure that we all know many happy families out there, but do we know which 25% of women and which 20% of men that we come into contact with are the victims of violence? If we don’t, then that’s because people are usually silent about this sort of violence. And, of course, we should create systems which help people report such violence. But to talk about all these great families that we know without these families being completely transparent to us is to exclude the possibility that some terrible things are happening behind closed doors.
TG - I wrote about the men leaving their families because that’s who I believe have the power to do so. And, yes, I agree with you that this would leave some women in a very difficult position - but, for me, this potentially desperate situation would create the space for the female symbolic order which Irigaray describes. I mean, I don’t really get your argument that if men started to abandon the structures of patriarchy, then women would be worse off. (Of course, you may disagree that the family is a patriarchal structure, but that’s a different stage of my argument.)
And, of course, my call to men will fall on many deaf ears. But I don’t see how your suggestion of changing the “culture” of society will make the message any more compelling. In fact, what is “culture”? I know that you have done a great deal of studying at college level, TG, and I’m surprised by how quickly you’ve picked this term “culture” (which is usually disparaged as a term of analysis). You see, this is precisely why I use theory so much - so that I don’t use vague terms which might not mean anything at all. I’m not saying that your use of the term “culture” is necessarily vague, TG. But if it isn’t, then I’d like a definition, and I’d like to know which theorists and sociological traditions are informing your use of this term.
Here, if I may, I would like to explain why I think the family is patriarchal. My early academic research interests were in Lacanian psychoanalysis which aligns the “symbolic order” (the structuring of our shared universe of meanings) with paternity. Why, you may ask, is the symbolic order aligned with paternity? It’s because the maternal relation between mother and child is immediate and unchallenged. When we lived in tribes, no one doubted maternity (and rarely is maternity doubted in our own times). But paternity, because it is not a visible relation, can be challenged and requires some sort of symbolic supplement e.g. the mother’s testimony (which requires language) or DNA testing (which requires the symbolic structures of science). Thus, in most tribal cultures, the paternal functions are split between the biological fathers dispersed throughout the tribe, and the symbolic father (a sacred rock or a totem, for instance) which sits at the centre of the tribe and which binds the tribe together. So society took on a patriarchal structure as a result of the different relations between mothers, fathers and offspring. And this is why there are no matriarchal families - because there is no symbolic mother. Maternity is not split in the way that paternity is, and this is lamentable. Hence why Irigaray (as someone who trained in Lacanian psychoanalysis herself) believes that what we need is a female symbolic order to emerge.
Kevin - I stress domestic violence because that is not only where the real emergency lies (due to the statistics I have already quoted), but it is also where the solution lies. Plus, I wonder where your definition of violence will stop. For instance, Donna left a comment on my own blog which included “sexist images of women” as an example of VAW. So, to combine this with your manifesto, would this mean that everytime I pass an advertising banner with a sexist image of a woman and fail to proclaim aloud to passer’s by that this is a sexist image, my silence makes me guilty?? Who sounds a little unpractical now? Or is this the sort of quasi-religious guilt-tripping which I feel the manifesto is intended to induce us into?
Stixzz - I really don’t know what to say to you, because you are basically saying that pulling the levers in the gas chamber, executing others, is preferable to being executed yourself because you refuse to participate in an evil order. I mean, that’s the implication when you write:
“And whilst a concentration camp chap would be able to feel mightly proud of himself from leaving his job, other than him being able to feel morally superior to the rest of them, his thing would’ve made little if any difference to the people exterminated.”
[...] was a much needed break. Although I have been spending some time over at Thinking Girl’s place, I needed to take a break from blogging. At least [...]
Stixzz - I really don’t know what to say to you, because you are basically saying that pulling the levers in the gas chamber, executing others, is preferable to being executed yourself because you refuse to participate in an evil order. I mean, that’s the implication when you write:
“And whilst a concentration camp chap would be able to feel mightly proud of himself from leaving his job, other than him being able to feel morally superior to the rest of them, his thing would’ve made little if any difference to the people exterminated.”
That’s an intellectually dishonest reading if ever I’ve seen one.
The simplist reading of that statement is: A single person refusing to take part in Evil Act X does little, if anything, to ease the suffering of those persecuted by X.
The implication is that we need to find solutions that involve many people, and that are going to engage in actual change, not solutions that would be great if everyone took part but which we know few will. Saying “Well, if everyone did Y, the world would be great” is useless if we have strong reason to believe that very few people will actually do Y. That’s not to say that Y isn’t valuable, but to present Y as a solution when you admit that few people will actually take part? Well, it’s a lot like saying “If only all of the Nazi soldiers had just thrown down their arms and stopped killing Jews!”
Sure, that’s true- if they’d have done that, a lot of lives would have been saved. They didn’t, though.
“The implication is that we need to find solutions that involve many people, and that are going to engage in actual change, not solutions that would be great if everyone took part but which we know few will. Saying “Well, if everyone did Y, the world would be great” is useless if we have strong reason to believe that very few people will actually do Y.”
I agree with this, absolutely. Well spoken, Roy!!
FiD: you must understand, stixzz is an **ally**. I don’t believe FOR A NEW YORK MINUTE that stixzz would **ever** be complicit or party to evil. Let’s just say that I know stixzz well from posting, and he has shown a **real and proven bravery** in the face of evil and manipulation.
Roy - You’ve described me as intellectually dishonest. I think that might just be breach of TG’s rules about personal attacks. Now get a hold of yourself, or I might post a comment saying what I actually think about you.
But in terms of the argument, I’ve pretty much got the upper hand here - so I don’t need to start going over what people have already posted with a fine toothcomb. I invite Stixzz to come on here and tell us whether he believes that when deciding whether to end one’s active participation in an evil order (such as partriarchy or Nazism), pragmatic questions about the need for widespread action are legitimate or not? Personally, I think one should refuse to participate in any evil order - and certainly those of the magnitude of patriarchy and Fascism - no matter the cost to oneself. Even, in fact, if it means death. Or are you all saying that there is no political cause worth dying for?
Incidentally, I would urge those who wish to answer this question, not to simply reassert their belief that the family is not the organ of patriarchy. We can disagree about that, but it is a separate issue to the question of participation in - and resistance to - acts which belong to an evil social order.
And, Roy, why is it so hard for you to understand that my argument is NOT dependent on widespread action? Is it, perhaps, that my emphasis on individual action and responsibility frightens you a little, because it may mean giving-up participation in a patriarchal family or relationship situation of your own?
By nature, by upbringing, I am a Robespierre. And my target is patriarchy. One must maintain a purity of heart and purpose, so that if and when the guillotine falls, it finds only the most innocent of necks awaiting. One cannot ask any more, nor any less than that.
Roy - You’ve described me as intellectually dishonest. I think that might just be breach of TG’s rules about personal attacks. Now get a hold of yourself, or I might post a comment saying what I actually think about you.
1. I said that your reading of that statement was intellectually dishonest. I stand by that- I think it was.
2. Criticism != personal attack.
Personally, I think one should refuse to participate in any evil order - and certainly those of the magnitude of patriarchy and Fascism - no matter the cost to oneself. Even, in fact, if it means death. Or are you all saying that there is no political cause worth dying for?
I’m not sure that anyo