Anger

I’ve written a lot about how revenge is not a worthy goal, and more to the point, not an effective way to make positive change, and therefore, we shouldn’t dwell on it. Not in our criminal justice system, not in our personal mistakes as activists and privileged people. But I don’t want to give the impression that I think people who are oppressed or silenced or ignored or have crimes committed against them should not be angry.

We all have the right to be angry when we are wronged. We do not have the right to react to the wrongdoing, to the anger, in any way that pops into our heads, specifically not in any way that violates human rights, and we would be wise not to react in ways that are counterproductive to our goals. People think anger means violence, but it doesn’t have to. You can choose what to do with it. It can incite you to fight people or it can incite you to fight injustice.

Anger is not the most pleasant of emotions to feel or to see in others, but it is a real and critical part of movements for making the world better. Just look at how many blogs are about angry people. I’m angry, too, although less now than I was when I started, simply because I’ve gotten better at recovering quickly from the rush of anger that certain stories bring up in me. But it still comes.

Sometimes people say that anger is poison, and you have to let go of it to get anywhere. There’s some truth to that, but I’m wary of taking to to the extreme. Anger is often a healthy sign of something else, like pain. People who can’t feel pain and thus find the cause of the pain, the thing that’s harming them, are at risk of getting injured very badly. People who don’t acknowledge the anger of others and look for the cause of the anger instead of dwelling on the anger itself and/or blaming the anger on the psychology of those people are at risk of injuring society quite badly. Sometimes psychology is to blame, but not always.

This is personal for me, because although the oppression I have experienced is mild compared to what’s out there, I know how much it sucks to see a problem and react with horror and yes, anger, and be told by people I trust and rely on that they care about me and hope I feel better…and that’s it. They hope I feel better about the problem, they don’t hope the problem will go away. They’re sorry that there’s something wrong with me and unwilling to entertain the notion that there might be something wrong with our religion or with society. My anger was not and is not proof of a problem, because it was based on a belief and an understanding of events that may or may not have been accurate. (I continue to believe it was accurate, but again, can’t prove it.) That’s how I went from not being angry to being angry, by changing what I believed about the situation. But I think my anger warranted at least a glance at whether or not there was something worth being angry over by the people who were so concerned about me. Especially if they respected my opinions and considered me in any way intelligent. But they preferred to protect their beliefs from any risk of corrosion.

This is an issue for all oppressed groups, as the claim that they have no good reason to be angry is tantamount to justifying their oppression and therefore key to keeping the powerful in power. The issue is aggravated when women are the group being oppressed (comment if you see ways that this works for other groups). That’s because human emotions are divvied up between men and women, since we’re so totally opposite that we can’t share anything, and women got most of the emotions, but anger was given to men. So when women express anger, it’s seen as unacceptable because of their gender, in addition to the other reasons (oppression, beliefs about the unhealthiness of anger) that also apply to others. People mock female anger (”you’re cute when you’re angry” etc) because “real women” don’t have the capacity to get really angry. They mock women who leave no room for doubt that they really are angry for transgressing gender roles (”ball-busting bitch” etc). They act like real female anger is overwhelming even when it’s a level of anger that would be considered understandable coming from a man, just because women aren’t ever supposed to get that angry (”she’s scary!” etc). They advise women not to be angry or show anger because it will lose them popularity and influence. You’re right, some people tell me, but don’t sound so angry about it or no one will want to listen to you. Yeah, I’ll try to sound like sugar and spice when I talk about rape, good idea. These are all ways to focus attention on the anger itself rather than on the cause of the anger, which helps cover for the real cause, especially when the real cause is sexism.

But it’s a really special tool of the patriarchy to tell women and others that it’s a virtue to let yourself be walked over with a smile on your face. (Other “virtues” I reject: chastity, blind faith.) People love the turn the other cheek line in the Bible. That’s the kind of stuff that makes non-Christians admit that the Bible is a good guide for how to live even if they happen to think it’s fiction. But I disagree. I reject the idea that it’s a virtue to let someone take advantage of you, to be an enabler, to support a system of oppression. It’s not always a sin, because the oppressed don’t always have a lot of options. But a virtue? I don’t think so. And I defy you, people out there, to prove that you really do think it’s a virtue. Do you live that way? Do you want to? Would it make any sense? It’s really interesting to watch people do mental gymnastics to interpret that part in a way that doesn’t mean they have to give their car to the next person who tries to steal their car radio. Once I saw a priest say that when someone hits you, it makes your face look one way, and if you turn the other cheek, you have to pass through a position of looking the person in the eye (not necessarily true, but ok), which is a position of equality, and so the message of the turn the other cheek line was that you shouldn’t let people take advantage of you, take away your dignity. He failed to explain how that accounts for the rest of the passage:

38“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’^[a] 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Not quite so up for that interpretation anymore, is it?

There may be a place for this kind of reaction, and in some cases it may have an emotional effect on the “evil person.”  But by and large, being an enabler is not virtuous. It doesn’t help any of us in any real way if a woman who is being abused by her husband turns the other cheek. The Civil Rights movement was more virtuous than it would have been for a black man to willingly submit to a lynching. Just because something hurts you doesn’t mean it will help someone else because life is not all about zero-sum games. (Keep this in mind when thinking about the morality of sex, please. Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I know we all get that idea from the jokes about stuff that’s good for you tasting bad and vice versa, but just because people say it doesn’t make it true. Some veggies are tasty, some poisons are not.) But the belief that it’s a virtue to be so humble that you don’t even demand your RIGHTS, which is to demand that people live in a way that is fair to everyone and thus benefits everyone, this belief can and has been used to shut up uppity people. I’ve seen it in action in Christianity. A woman who I really do love and respect but who believes in things I do not once said that since being a priest is a form of service, there’s no reason to argue about letting women be priests; if you’re willing to be a servant, you shouldn’t care what kind of servant you’re going to be. That is a really difficult argument to face if you’re trying to be humble and obedient and selfless. And this ignores the fact that telling not just individuals but groups, like women, to relinquish their right to fairness, creates not just a little humble suffering for one person, but systemic inequalities that go deeper than just how important you feel as a priest or a nun. To keep with the priesthood example, the fact that women can’t be priests doesn’t just mean that sometimes they feel that their role is less important, it means that they can’t be in any part of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which means they have no say in who is the Pope, and they have no say in the rules that the Church makes. Women still don’t have suffrage in the Catholic Church, so to speak. And so these things affect more than just you, and when you shut up about them because you think it’s virtuous never to be angry except when people try to sell stuff in the temple, you’re allowing other people to be oppressed. Tell me, is that the goal of selflessness?

Is racism a feminist issue?

Preface: I use the stories of Romona Moore and Sean Bell in here to make my points, and this post is really not about the content of those stories so I don’t go into them much besides talking about where they should be covered. I just wanted to say that I find their stories tragic and I hope we learn lessons from them, and that I don’t mean to come off as callous or make light of their stories by talking about them this way.

My post All or Nothing was my attempt at finding concrete ways to react to recent criticisms of the feminist movement, to figure out what we need to do to not be racist and to be inclusive. But I just came across a post by Cara on Feministe saying that the Romona Moore rape and murder case shows that racism is a feminist issue, and now I think I finally get what the argument is about. But I’m not sure I agree with her (on that topic - I’m with her on the good people doing nothing part). I have a lot of respect for Cara, and I’m a little concerned about disagreeing with her because I want to be on the anti-racist side, but I also don’t want to say I believe something just because it’s “popular” (I know, it’s not that popular, but where I read, it is). Before you react, just read the rest, and then if I’ve missed something huge - which is a real possibility given that I’ve never read the books on intersectionality and all that - let me know.

I see two reasons for naming racism a feminist issue:

1. Because if we don’t consider these things feminist issues, feminists will ignore them. From Cara:

There’s a big difference between saying “things that happen to women of color are not feminist issues” and “things that happen to women of color because of racism are not feminist issues.” I have never, in my life, seen anyone argue the former. I have seen them argue the latter. And I don’t think that they’re really all that far apart, regardless of how it’s intended.

But I believe all feminists should be believers in human rights for ALL first. That means I think all feminists should be anti-racists. I don’t think we have to label anti-racism A Feminist Issue in order to say that it matters and that feminists need to care about it.

These issues do intersect, because people have lots of characteristics and can be oppressed for any number of them, so feminists have to be aware of racism and all the other types of oppression to 1) avoid personally being oppressive, 2) avoid oppressing members of their own movement, 3) avoid advocating policies that would have unforeseen oppressive effects, 4) advocate policies that will help women of color (and others affected by other kinds of oppression) in cases where they are affected by sexism differently than white women are, 5) use feminism and anti-racism (and other kinds of activism) at the same time when dealing with the case of a person who is oppressed by both. And I tried to address all of these things in All or Nothing, without having to name racism a feminist issue. Instead, I named racism and feminism both human rights issues and said that that’s where we need to start, with a belief in human rights for all. It just seems feminism-centric in a world of lots of issues that matter equally to say that naming something “a feminist issue” is so important and to spend so much time arguing about how related to feminism something is.

From Cara’s quote, I think she’s concerned that if we relegate things that happened because of racism to anti-racist blogs, feminist blogs will, perhaps unintentionally, stop including the oppression of women of color and focus only on white women. But rest assured, women of color are oppressed by sexism. If we’re determined not to ignore the ways in which they are oppressed by sexism and not to silence them, we should be able to keep reporting on the sexism against them even if we’re not reporting on straight-up racism. In cases where both are present, we should report them on both feminist and anti-racist blogs rather than each disowning it. (And for the record, I am all for feminist blogs posting on issues that aren’t feminist issues. I just don’t think it’s necessary for a feminist blog to do so to be ethical.)

2. Because something is a feminist issue if it oppresses women. From Cara:

You know, I’m one of those feminists who thinks that racism is indeed a feminist issue, just like poverty, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and much more are feminist issues, simply because these are factors that oppress women on a daily basis and prevent them from living lives freely, safely and to their full potential.

In her defense, there is a difference between ‘bad things that happen to women’ (like, when you’re unlucky) and ‘the oppression of women’ (caused by systematic injustice), and this distinction means that some criticisms I’ve seen are straw arguments. But still, I don’t define my feminism as ‘fighting that which oppresses women.’ I define it as ‘fighting sexism, misogyny, and patriarchy.’ Often, that does mean ‘fighting that which oppresses women.’ But both definitions include things that are not included in the other, so although they overlap, they are different ways of approaching feminism. Here’s why I choose the definition I do:

a. It’s the injustice that makes it worth fighting, not who the victim happens to be. I’m not just out to help women. In my capacity as a feminist, I want to help all people oppressed by patriarchy, and sometimes that means men. Some men’s issues are, in my book, feminist issues. On the flip side, not all women’s issues are feminist issues to me.

b. I think the way to solve a problem is to figure out what’s causing it and fix that. This isn’t a radicals vs. liberals thing, it’s about whether you divide up movements based on their causes/origins or based on their victims. I think it makes more sense to do it based on their causes. Therefore, I could be persuaded to call LGBTQI issues feminist issues, and vice versa, because I think they’re all caused by patriarchy. But I am not currently aware of a root cause that is shared by sexism and racism that is not shared by all oppressions (eg, xenophobia, pursuit of power), so I see no reason to group them together any further than I already do in putting them both under the umbrella of human rights issues. They have some things in common, but they’re also different, which is why people tend to come to such messed up conclusions when they compare them too much.

Interestingly, I think looking at things this way allows us to undercut the arguments of MRAs that men are really the more oppressed gender, because we can say that regardless of who is more oppressed (and I personally am convinced that’s women, but whatever), the cause of the oppression of men is the same as the cause of the oppression of women: patriarchy. And patriarchy was set up by and continues to be run by men. So in this case, finding the root cause of the oppression of men and fighting it means feminism, whereas finding the people hurt by the issue at hand and standing by them no matter what means being an MRA (although I’ll grant that they add in a few illogical steps to get there, like assuming that if men are the victims, women must be the culprits). I think you can guess which one I think works better.

But to show you what I mean with my points a and b, consider the hypothetical situation that all sexism is eradicated but other oppressions are still around. Yes, there would still be plenty of women who would be oppressed. For the moment let’s just consider the women of color who would be oppressed by racism, although there would be lots of other problems, too. This situation wouldn’t convince me that racism really is a feminist issue because these women of color aren’t free yet. On the contrary, it would convince me that feminism isn’t enough to free all women. It would be offensive to the people of color who didn’t identify as women if I said I would fight the racism that was oppressing them for the sake of freeing women. It’s not being a woman that makes you worth freeing, it’s being an oppressed human being that does. It would be silly for me to say I would fight that racism under the banner of feminism. Why feminism? Just because I’m attached to that word? These people wouldn’t be oppressed for their femaleness, even if they were female; they’d be oppressed for being people of color. We need different tools to fight racism (although some are the same) than we do to fight sexism.

The way to free all women, and in fact all people, isn’t to make feminism include everything, but to include more than feminism in our own tactics.

The Apostate wrote a post on Sean Bell counter to the one linked in Cara’s quote. I don’t agree with the whole post, but I think this part is in line with what I’m saying:

If anything that affects women either 1) equally with men (such as rising gas prices) OR, 2) second-hand through men (such as Middle Eastern men being arrested for minor visa infractions and being imprisoned without charge - they have mothers and other female relatives, I suppose), is a feminist issue… then what, pray tell, is NOT a feminist issue?

Why must we call this “feminism” if it includes everything?

And as for Romona Moore’s story, it just seems forced to me to say that racism is part of sexism just because sometimes they happen to the same person and affect the same incident. We can’t, and shouldn’t, tell Moore’s story without mentioning both, but that doesn’t mean we have to present them both as one thing. Their interaction is important - for example, we have to be aware of racism to fight rape properly, thinking about the racism in the criminal justice system before advocating lots of prison time for rapists or advising women on what to do if they’re raped. But to me, that’s still an intersection of two different things, with different causes and different solutions, rather than one big Feminist Issue.

To make this more concrete:

If you want to post about Sean Bell and other racism-related stories on a feminist blog, I think that’s great. But I personally would rather you just say, “Here’s a story on racism, because feminism alone won’t save the world” instead of “I swear, it’s somehow related to feminism, so you should read it” or “So this dude was shot and stuff…and his female relatives are REALLY suffering! Stop racism so there will be less bereaved women!” (I made those up and am not accusing anyone of saying things like that, just trying to make my point. Also, the bereaved women certainly do deserve sympathy, they just wouldn’t deserve to be the center of attention in a story about a man who was murdered.) And if you don’t want to post about Sean Bell’s story on a feminist blog, I think that should be fine, as long as you take the stance that your readers should also learn about racism somewhere else. In fact, I think you should do that no matter what. I think it’s better to have people read a blog dedicated to racism than to let them rely on a few occasional posts about racism on a feminist blog, first because the anti-racist blog is more likely to go in depth and cover more things, second because the feminist blog is likely to spend half its time arguing over how related this is to feminism, which has nothing to do with how worthwhile it is, and third because for white women like me, it’s important to learn to put ourselves aside and read about racism because it’s unjust instead of because sometimes it’s related to MY oppression. And writing this has convinced me that I need to make much more of an effort on that front, so I don’t claim to have gotten it right yet. I let myself feel like I’m covering my bases by reading feminist blogs that mention racist issues, but when I go to sites that are just about racism, I can feel the difference.

There’s also an issue of efficiency here. I don’t have a problem with occasionally including other stories in a feminist blog, because I haven’t seen it really take away from or change the purpose of the blogs I read. But since we talk mainly about racism when we talk about making intersections into Feminist Issues, we overlook what that would really mean if we did it thoroughly. Since intersections apply to every kind of oppression, every blog that is about a kind of oppression would have to write on every other kind of oppression to follow this principle. The result would be that we would have a million general human rights blogs and no specialized blogs. There’s a place for general human rights blogs, absolutely, but I think there’s also something useful in having a place that is dedicated to one kind of thing. It’s more efficient in some ways, because it can focus on one issue in depth and the writer(s) can get deeply educated in that one issue, and then it can be your go-to point when you want to show a friend that such-and-such really is a problem.

I know, I know, you’re saying people just won’t do it, they won’t go and read other blogs, they won’t really acknowledge intersections in their own movements. Some won’t, that’s true. But look, that’s how it works in activism. We can’t make people do anything. We point out problems and offer solutions, and then it’s up to each person whether or not they’re going to follow through. But the least we can do is offer solutions that are solid in principle, and I think the principle I’m supporting makes more sense.

By the way, there’s a rare respectful conversation from different sides of the debate here.

And all that being said, I do think police brutality can be a feminist issue, when you’re talking about gender-based police brutality and how sexism and gender roles keep us from paying enough attention to police brutality against women.  It is also a racism issue and a trans issue, and you can find more information at INCITE!.

Why the vice-versa test isn’t enough

1. If an employer makes sexual advances towards an employee, is it the same, ethically speaking, as if an employee makes sexual advances towards his or her employer?

2. If one person hits another several times and then the second person hits the first back, are they equally guilty?

Question 1 shows how a power differential in a relationship means that things that go one way aren’t the same as things that go the other way. If the employer asks the employee out, the employee may feel pressured to say yes to avoid being fired. If the employee asks the employer out, there is no threat of firing. Therefore, it is more unethical for an employer to make advances on an employee than vice versa (although it may be unwise in both cases). In some situations, the employee may be irreplaceable and so may back up sexual advances with the threat of quitting, so this doesn’t necessarily apply to all employer-employee relationships, but the unbalanced power is still present in this second scenario, so the overall principle remains: if there is a difference in the amount of power people have over each other, their actions, even the same actions, may not have the same ethical quality.

Question 2 shows how the past can impact the ethics of situations in the same way: the same action may be worse in one case than in another due to what has happened in the past. Hitting out of self-defense is not as bad as hitting on the offensive. Hitting after being provoked over a period of time is not as bad as hitting unprovoked.

Power and the past are two parts of the context of these ethically charged actions. We have to keep in mind when discussing politics that the actions we discuss and the policies we debate do not exist in a vacuum, but rather in a context full of people with differing amounts and kinds of power, a context that includes a long past of different types of injustices.

That’s why when someone says “How come they can say n—– and I can’t? That’s racist!” or “You wouldn’t get so angry if a woman said that about a man instead of vice versa” and so on and so forth for a very, very long time, you have to stop and look at the context rather than just accepting the vice versa test as a universally valid tool of logic. They can say n- and you can’t because you (white people) have racial power and they don’t, and because the past of that word involves a lot of white people using it to hurt black people. I don’t condone any sexist remarks, any stereotypes based on gender, but I acknowledge that there’s more power behind sexist remarks from men to women, and a past of oppression of women that there isn’t for men. It’s unlikely that these remarks will make men suddenly start to be treated as property, but it’s not unlikely that they will reinforce long-standing beliefs that women should be treated as property. This principle applies to affirmative action, too – in the past, people of color were strategically kept poor and uneducated. Now, we’re trying to undo that. That’s more like self-defense than offense.

But people tend to get confused about where the line of scrimmage is, if you’ll let me take that defense/offense talk a little further. Because they don’t know the past, in which their “team” bullied its way far into the other team’s territory, or because they know that happened but think that the other team has already regained its lost territory, they assume that where they’re standing right now is the line where things are fair, the rightful border between their space (their rights) and the other team’s space (other team’s rights). So when the other team pushes back, the bully team thinks the bullied team is on the offense, when really they’re on defense. (For instance, Bully team: “I mean, fine, they’re gay, I can deal with that, but why do they have to be PROUD about it and shove it in my face?” Or, Bully Team: “They won’t let us have [teachers lead official] prayers in [public] schools! Christians are being persecuted in America!” Or, Bully Team: “They made me press 1 for English! Can you imagine?”) The bully team reacts with what it thinks is defense, but is actually even more offense. And since this isn’t an actual sports game (of some weird derivation of American football or something), offense is not a sign of being a good player, it’s a sign of limiting people’s rights. This is an illustration of how privileged people who are genuinely or willfully ignorant of their privilege play politics. (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Ok, now I’m done with the p alliteration. And the extended metaphor. My English teacher would be almost proud. Actually, my English teacher who had us debate affirmative action and was in favor of it while I was against at the time, probably would be pleased. And it appears that I really do have a penchant for p’s.)

More on why we have to fix our criminal justice system

Women in Prison

Prison and Racism is part of the point of this article about racism in the feminist movement that I found on Feministe a while back.

What do you think would be an appropriate way to handle men who commit crimes of violence against women, besides prison?  This website has some suggestions.

yes, you are

racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, and so on. Ok, maybe you’re an extra special exception, but most of us are, even those of us who really don’t want to be.

This article explains it. Via Feministing.

It does say there’s some hope for changing ourselves, so that’s nice.

All or Nothing

Sometimes when I read arguments among activist bloggers, I think I’m wishy-washy because I’m kind of hesitant to take sides. But I don’t think I have to define myself as pro-this group or that group to take a stand. I want my stand to be that I’m pro-people, and I want to find a way to promote respect for all people while acknowledging their wildly differing views. This is me trying.

Theory

There are a lot of different types of oppression out there. The different types have some things in common, but not everything, so we can learn things about the way oppression works by comparing them, but we can’t go too far with the comparison. For instance, you can’t say that because a white woman isn’t treated with unwarranted suspicion by the police, she isn’t oppressed, and you can’t say that because a black man isn’t sexually harassed on his way to work, he isn’t oppressed. Oppression looks different when applied to different people, but it’s still oppression.

Because it looks different in different cases, it would be hard to compare the severity of the different oppressions. Apples and oranges, you know. But even if we could, it wouldn’t accomplish much to have a rating of which type of oppression is the worst. Perhaps it would give us a list of priorities in our fight for justice; start with the worst, the more mild forms can wait. But these issues are tangled up in each other, so it’s not as simple as saying, we’ll eradicate cissexism first, and then when that’s all gone, we’ll tackle ableism. Their causes are related and their victims overlap. And, as I’ll get to in a moment, the activists against each could be critical in helping eradicate each.

It’s tempting, though, to pick priorities. We’re all afraid of the issue that affects us or speaks to us the most being left behind, so we seize opportunities to declare it the most pressing. The oppressors try to convince everyone that the oppression doesn’t really exist, so we all know that part of our job is to show that it does, but sometimes we want to go further and claim that it’s not only real and bad, but it’s the most real and the worst. But that’s really not necessary. Saying it’s real and bad will suffice.

Some people don’t stab other causes in the back for political gain, but just out of ignorance. They know their cause (let’s call it anti-x-ism) matters, but they haven’t stopped to realize that y-ism sucks too. So they keep making y-ist jokes and doing y-ist things and excusing y-ist policies while waxing self-righteous about their own (actually worthy) cause. They need to be called out (respectfully – it’s not smart or effective to hate people for ignorance) and taught better.

Some people try to get the oppressors on their side. We know we’re pushing our luck as it is, asking people to give up their privilege. We figure if we make our demands as limited as possible, helping one group but not others, we have more of a chance of squeezing them through, of persuading the people that it won’t rock their boat too much to change this one thing. It’s easier to get them to identify with a few more people than to get them to give up on privilege altogether, so people say, Look, you can keep thinking you’re better than all these other people, but let MY group join your privileged club. That’s hypocritical.

It’s probably also counterproductive. People who want to keep power over other people are already in power; they don’t need our help, they need to shut us up. If every group is willing to throw any others overboard, the chance of any of us making sustained progress is slim. People who believe in human rights will make better allies than people who want to protect their own privilege. Let’s be people who believe in human rights, and let’s make alliances. Let’s not make ridiculous compromises to appease ignorant people about things that just inexplicably make them queasy, and let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that the people who really are just out to protect their own unfair share of power are going to treat us fairly even as we get ever more uppity. The only people who can win the Oppression Olympics are the oppressors.

I know this is idealistic and I know politics is a very different thing from ethics. I don’t refuse to vote for politicians who make compromises. But this idealism should at least be our goal. If you’re not a politician, I see no reason why you need to give up on idealism. In the US, the state of politics is just silly. I won’t even go into the stupidity of the war between Clinton and Obama supporters, but the fact that Republicans try to prove their conservatism while Democrats try to prove their moderateness even after 8 years of Bush is ridiculous. We need an alliance big enough to be able to say, “We’re demanding human rights and we’re not settling for less,” instead of having to tiptoe around people who think gay marriage will make their marriage certificate dissolve. We shouldn’t be having actual debates over whether it’s ok to torture people, for crying out loud. (Not that you shouldn’t keep arguing with people about that, but we shouldn’t have to.) We need to raise our standards.

Practice

No one can do everything. Each person should decide what they have the drive to work on, because this kind of work is not easy, you have to be motivated enough to stick with it in the face of depressing news and stinging insults, if not worse. Each person should decide what they have the capability to do, because we all have different skills. Each person should make their own priorities of actions to take, because there are only so many hours in a day. But no one should prioritize entire causes and tell all human rights activists to comply, like “First attack racism, then sexism, then…”.

Sometimes the different movements will conflict. We have to stick on the side of human rights, not just our own pet causes. We have to have open and respectful dialogue with people who work primarily on other causes, especially people who experience them firsthand, so that we can see other viewpoints before making judgment calls. We have to see them as our allies, we have to identify with them as fellow human-rights activists that are ON THE SAME SIDE.

We have to flesh out what it looks like to be an anti-x-ist without being y-ist. First, it means basing our anti-x-ism on the grounds of human rights, or an even larger circle of rights. This needs to inform all of our theory on our own cause. If your personal oppression brought you to the fight for justice, that’s great, but you need to use that to empathize with all oppressed people rather than seeing your type as the only important one. If your religion brought you to the fight for justice, that’s fine by me, but “God says so” is not a grounds for activism that we can all unite under. You can believe it, but our theory needs to come from human rights. And anyone who is in a cause because they think their group is better than everyone else need not apply for the alliance I’m talking about. We need to stop demanding and claiming allegiance to certain movements above others and instead stand for all human rights first. People talk about what’s required to make you a progressive. My answer is everything. We have to be for ALL human rights for ALL people. Being one of the above does not make you a progressive, it makes you biased (or as Melissa says, a fauxgressive). We can specialize, we can take a more specific label and join a more specific group; these things are politically strategic and personally healing. But we need to watch where our loyalty lies.

We need to watch ourselves: don’t say or do y-ist things. Create political opinions with human rights in mind, vote with human rights in mind, talk to friends about politics with human rights in mind. (Remember that when I say y-ist I mean every kind of oppression besides the one you work on the most - it’s not a code for one specific thing.)

And our activism: make sure our anti-x-ist policies don’t have y-ist effects. Make sure our coverage of x-ism doesn’t have a y-ist bias.

And our movements: make them more meritocratic. Help the voices of anti-x-ist people oppressed by y-ism get heard. Keep opportunities within the movement open to them.

In order to accomplish the first two, we need to educate ourselves on y-ism. We have to know the news, the arguments, the key issues, the offensive words, the common kinds of privilege related to it. Otherwise, we’ll do y-ist things, and we’ll be guilty the state though not guilty the emotion. Gotta avoid that. It’ll happen anyway, because education is a slow and continual process and we’ll never know it all, so we’ll also have to be good at apologizing and moving on. Blogs are a good way to learn, as are ____ Studies classes, books by anti-y-ists, and of course, people affected by y-ism. Here’s a list of reading material, via Feministing. I know you don’t have much time, but if you’re in the human rights alliance, this is part of your activism as much as being anti-x-ist is. At least learn the basics, and keep updating yourself from time to time. (I’m working on this, not even done with the basics. Hopefully the results will make a nice list of Excellent Blogs.)

To accomplish the second two things, we’ll have to listen to people in our movements who are affected by y-ism. Let them show the relationships between x-ism and y-ism. Let them define what x-ism means to them and what policies they need the movement to advocate, because x-ism may affect them differently from how it affects us or from what we usually see. When we want to help people who are affected by x-ism in a way that we’re not (eg, I experience sexism but not from the point of view of a sex worker), we have to listen to those people as much as possible before making decisions and not try to save people who don’t want saving. We should give those who are usually silenced, those who are in our blind spots, a voice: link to them, publish them, let them speak in meetings, make sure that leadership positions are open to them.

In short, let each person speak for themselves. Oppression thrives when a few people either ignore or define everyone else.

We should actively support anti-y-ism when we can. An alliance isn’t much good if it’s just symbolic. Voting responsibly is the baseline, and then we can move up from there as time and finances permit. (I keep telling myself I’m going to replace the time I used to spend in church by writing Amnesty International Urgent Action letters…I need to get on that.)

I don’t think an anti-x-ist blog is obligated to write about issues that are unrelated to x-ism. But we do need to have a “First, do no harm” mindset. An allied mindset.

Finally, a note about when you’re on the other side. Humans have a tendency to take advantage of others when they have the opportunity to, even if they’re taken advantage of themselves. We can see this in all kinds of movements. It’s not evidence of the inherent evilness of certain types of people. It’s evidence of humanness + opportunity. Fortunately, we can add awareness and effort to the mix and counteract this tendency, however imperfectly. But we have to remember: human rights can’t be canceled out; a person can be an oppressor and legitimately oppressed at the same time, and their oppression matters even if they’re an asshole. If we’re for human rights and not just for our pet cause, we’ll keep opposing their oppression even when they’re oppressing us. Doesn’t mean we have to give those people money or join their club, and I’m all for calling them out. But we can’t excuse their oppression, we can’t revoke their rights.

To think about

What BrownFemiPower said, via Jaded Hippy.

What Jessica Valenti said.

The Apostate gives a different perspective than most other women of color I’ve read recently.  Just to keep you on your toes.

I’m still processing and drafting.

While I’m gone…

Leave me a comment explaining what you do with your pubic hair, in the spirit of hair-acceptance and appreciation of variety, and also because, as you might have noticed, I’m into giving other people (even if my audience is fairly small) the opportunity to get information that I could have used but didn’t have when I was in The Wonder Awkward Years. When I found out about how girls are “supposed” to shave their pubic hair I got all worried about whether or not I should do it and how and so on, and I was embarrassed to ask any of my friends if they did and how important it was and how not to end up with an itchy bumpy red crotch. My crotch is red, mind you, but that’s from the totally awesome pubic hair that I leave there. I never understood why some people thought “firecrotch” was an insult. One time a guy asked a redheaded girl if she was one, and she said she didn’t know because she always shaved. Riiiiiight. She just sits at home with the razor waiting for a hair to poke out so she can shave it before it’s long enough to see. Lack of firecrotch pride, right there. Although I get that it’s a gamble to admit that you are one, because guys can just decide they’ll use that as fodder for sexual harassment. On the other hand, one time I was at a bonfire party and a guy made fun of a redheaded guy by calling him firecrotch, and I loudly said that everybody loves fire, and everybody loves crotches, and so firecrotches were just even better. They conceded that I made a compelling argument. I trim mine a little, though, because I find when the hair grows all the way out it gets in the way, gets caught in my panty elastic, annoying stuff like that.

And you? Everyone is welcome to answer no matter whether you do nothing to it, wax it all, or shave it into designs; the only responses I don’t want are men saying “oh, I shave my bikini line all the time, haha,” which is their way of saying “A conversation that isn’t about me? I cannot accept this. I must make a joke that isn’t even funny just to highlight the fact that I am excluded from this subject,” which is what most guys I know invariably do if girls in his presence start talking about anything that usually only applies to females. However, men do sometimes shave or trim or make a conscious choice not to and they are welcome to talk about themselves. (Surely after my recent posts I don’t have to tell them that they are not welcome to tell women what they want women to do with their crotches.)

Sweet.

Venus of Venus Speaks kindly tapped me for the Excellent Blog Award, which means I have to find 10 more blogs to tap. I’ll be thinking about it over the next two weeks, while I will not be blogging (which means I might need even longer, because I probably won’t be reading blogs either). I’ll be in Italy and Prague. You may commence jealousy. I’m thinking of trying to find one blog for each of several categories:

1. Feminism

2. Anti-Racism

3. LGBTQ Issues

4. Physical Disability

5. Mental Disability

6. Fat Acceptance

7. Religious Freedom/Separation of Church and State

8. Vegetarianism/Veganism/Animal Rights

9. Anti-Imperialism/Anti-war

10. Humor

Your ten main food groups, from Feministing to Lolcats. Except I’ll be looking for smaller blogs. (Of course there are more issues in the world, and blogs often cover more than one of these, but this is a good start.) It’ll take a while, but I hope the wait will be worth it.

Also, if anybody wants to explain to me how to get that image in my sidebar, that would be pretty awesome. Edit: figured it out.

Hairy-legged feminists

I have worn pants every single day since I’ve been in Paris, because it’s cold and I don’t have boots (which help if you wear a skirt). I don’t shave my legs when I’m not going to be exposing them, so I haven’t shaved the entire time. That’s like 3 months. It’s not a feminist statement, it’s just that I’m not motivated enough to shave unless I have to do so for other people.

Sometimes, when you mention feminism, people say something about hairy legs, and we feminists go “No! It’s not about that! We shave! Feminism is just about…” and so on with a much more accurate definition of feminism that ‘an ideology that requires women to be hairy’. “I don’t hate men” and “I shave my legs” are put in the same category of things you have to make sure people know in order to be taken seriously.

That is ridiculous.

I have no desire to shame people who shave. Next time I wear a skirt, I’m pretty sure I will. We have to deal with patriarchy, and if I ignored everything patriarchy wanted of me, no one would take me seriously, and I’d be a feminist pretty much all by myself. That may work for some people, and that’s great, but it won’t work for me, neither for my life as a woman nor for my attempts to get my friends to be more egalitarian. It’s a compromise.

However. The people who pointed out that the leg-shaving expectation is sexist were right. I haven’t done my feminist homework so I don’t know who they were, but I agree with them on that much. It is indeed quite sexist. It tells me that I can’t be pretty unless I change the way I look first. (Something to keep in mind next time someone who likes to benefit from the exploitation and objectification of women tries to spin it as just sex-positive or artistic: “Really, you just admire the beauty of the female body? Including its hair?” Because if he says hair or any other natural things about the female body are gross and only admires the beauty of the plastic surgeried made up shaven female body, no Enlightened Award for him. Not that true sex-positivity doesn’t exist.) It tells me that a part of my body that is natural and not dirty, is dirty. I should not have to shave if I don’t want to, and clearly, I don’t. Maybe I would every once in a while for my own sake, as it does feel nice, when I don’t get razor burn. But mostly, no.

The fact that we are so accepting of people’s horror at the thought of hairy-legged feminists is disturbing. Do we think they’re right? Do we think there’s any defense for someone who would throw out a person’s argument based on the fact that they choose not to remove harmless hair from their legs? That’s insane, not to mention an ad hominem feminam argument, a fallacy.

Why do people freak out at the idea of a woman who doesn’t shave her legs? Shouldn’t it only matter to her and maybe her partner? Are all the people who talk about hairy-legged feminists talking about their partners or women they want to date? I don’t think so. I think if I chose not to shave my legs and let them show, I would get comments, maybe just behind my back, from people, male and female, who had no interest in dating me. Why is it any of their business? How could my leg hair possibly offend someone who has no reason to be anywhere near it?

It’s sexist

They would consider it their business because it would be me refusing to be put in my place. It’s related to what I talked about in “thinking through a personal experience” where I said that guys have no right to judge me just because I’m there. People have no business standing in judgment over the attractiveness of my legs unless they’re my boyfriend, who is indifferent to leg hair. But men in patriarchy require that I try to live up to their standards, to impress them, to please them with my appearance, regardless of whether we’re in any sort of relationship. If I don’t, I face harsh criticism - not just them saying “I don’t want to date you” but them attacking my credibility and denying me respect as a person. That’s not ok.

It’s heterosexist and cissexist

Also, since men are NOT supposed to shave their legs in patriarchy (which makes the hairy-legged feminist stuff even funnier, because feminist men exist), women not shaving transgresses the rule that men and women must be opposites. It’s kind of hilarious that we can convince ourselves we’re so opposite when we have to make ourselves different by changing our appearance.  But it’s one example of a whole spectrum of things people can do that don’t conform with gender roles (eg, cross-dressing, sex changes, homosexual relationships) and the vicious responses they get from people who are completely unaffected by gender non-conforming behavior except insofar as it challenges the notion that humans only come in two opposite flavors, which is a big component of patriarchy.

Yep, it’s even racist (ethnicity-ist?)

The thing is, I bet I could get away with it if I told my friends that my soft, faintly strawberry-blond leg hair really wasn’t all that bad.  But I’d like to see someone with coarse black leg hair try that.  People will say that’s just because mine shows up less and can be felt less and so is more like it’s not there, it’s not that they just prefer the hair of people with my coloring.  That may be true, but the results are the same.  If you believe that leg hair is unfeminine, and that more noticeable leg hair is more unfeminine, and that the less feminine a woman is the less acceptable she is, and that women of certain ethnicities have more noticeable leg hair, you’re going to be prejudiced against those women.  And this hair texture and color is not confined to the hair on their legs, so these hirsutially (made that up) challenged women either have to spend a considerable amount of time and money making themselves “acceptable”, or resign themselves to being criticized.  Better option: we all stop coding body hair as masculine and stop requiring people to fit gender roles.

I know that making fun of hairy women is very socially acceptable in the US, but doing so is built on a foundation of pure assholery. Point that out to people who do so; they may not realize their “argument” is based on assholery, they’re just used to it, so don’t tell them they’re the worst person in the world.  But it’s just stupid for us to accept it as if it’s in any way legitimate.

“Actually, I’m a feminist and I do shave my legs, but are you really saying you wouldn’t think my ideas were worth listening to if I chose not to shave? And what’s so bad about a woman not shaving? Does that cause breast cancer or something?”

“It’s just gross.”

“Then don’t touch their legs. It doesn’t make them gross as people.”

You can’t get every point across to people who don’t get that things like leg-shaving are cultural constructs or to people who think the gender binary is self-evident but can’t explain why. But you can say something. And we can and should support women who exercise their right not to shave, rather than implying that we, too, think they’re crazy.