I wasn’t posting for a few extra days after my trip because my internet subscription ran out in Paris, and I didn’t renew it because I was leaving. Did leave, in fact. I’m hooooooome! But I’m also out of the loop a little, because I wasn’t reading blogs and all that, so I have surprisingly little to rant about right now. I’ll be posting, it’ll just take a little while.
Are my next destinations and the reasons why I won’t be around for the next week. I doubt anyone will notice, but if your comment isn’t approved for a while, that’s why.
A lot of people like to throw around phrases like “playing the victim” and even “victocrat” to criticize movements like feminism, anti-racism, and so on. The thing is, you’re not “playing the victim” if you are a victim.
Scenario A. You’re in a class and you don’t study enough and you fail a test.
Scenario B. You’re in a class and you study enough but your teacher hates you and gives you a failing grade.
In scenario A, you’re not a victim. You’re just lazy. If I convince someone in scenario A that they’re a victim, they’re likely to think it wasn’t really their fault. That would be unhealthy because it would make them think that there was nothing they could do to get better grades, which is false. If they believed that, they’d see no reason to try harder, when in fact trying harder would be exactly what they needed to do. Since no one is actually victimizing them, they’d never find the reason for their victimhood, so they’d resign themselves to their fate of getting bad grades, which is totally unnecessary.
If you’re in scenario B, you are a victim, of your teacher’s unfair bias. If I told someone in scenario B that they weren’t a victim, they’d have to assume that the bad grade was their own fault. They’d study harder and harder and harder and never see improvement in their grades, which would likely make them feel like no matter what they do, they’ll never be good enough. That would be untrue; they would be good enough the whole time, they would just be in an unfair situation. Trying harder isn’t the answer, fighting the injustice is. They’ll never get good grades until that teacher is either replaced or learns not to be biased. But if they’re convinced there’s no injustice, they’ll let the teacher get away with victimizing them and probably others, while they beat themselves up for something that’s not their fault. And since they won’t find the real cause of the problem, they won’t be able to fix it; they’ll keep getting bad grades.
People like to say that you can’t solve anything by dwelling on victimhood, but the real obstacle to solving problems is misdiagnosing them. If the cause is not victimhood, that’s totally accurate, but if the cause is victimhood, then ignoring victimhood is just as bad as making it up when it’s not really there. This is closely related to the way people choose interpretations of discrepancies in successes in life, like wage gaps and glass ceilings and so forth. Is it because women suck at science, or is it because people in the science field suck at being unsexist? Is it because black people suck at analogies, or is it because the makers of the SAT suck at not being culturally biased? In the victim talk and in the caused by biology/caused by sociology talk, people tend to go in with assumptions about the real causes of problems that fit with their politics. I’m in favor of checking for decent studies and I urge caution in attributing anything to the inherent deficiencies of a group, because that can be and often is used to justify racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression, and clearly I think these oppressions are pretty bad.
But the victim talk can also go into things like (I know you didn’t see this coming) rape. Acknowledging that I could be a victim of rape tomorrow is not playing the victim, it’s facing facts. I can make better decisions and I can more effectively work against rape if I’m not in denial. Acknowledging that people who have been raped were victims of rape will help something; namely, it will help them not blame themselves, either for what happened or for being upset about it. That’s important in and of itself, but then, once they’ve accepted that they were a victim and not a perpetrator or someone who brought it on themselves or someone who’s overreacting, they can find the real cause of the problem and go fight it. (Obviously, non-victims of rape can fight it too.)
I know some people prefer to talk about people who have been raped as survivors rather than as victims. I use that sometimes, but often I find it to be suggestive of only certain kinds of rape (the nearly homicidal kinds) when I want to include any kind of rape. I respect the desire to take back agency and to not sound weak and pathetic, and this post is really not at all aimed at people who prefer the term survivor, those people are not the problem. But I do think it’s legitimate to call a rape survivor a rape victim. The word doesn’t have to have any implications for the character and attitude of the victim. In fact, if we really understand that a person is a victim of something, we won’t attribute their victimhood to their personal failings, but rather, to the crime of some perpetrator(s).
Being a victim doesn’t have to mean sitting at home feeling bad for yourself. It just means being on the receiving end of injustice. Yes, being a victim makes people feel like they don’t have control - because in that instance, they don’t. Yes, they have to take back control once the victimizing situation is over, and not feel like they are perpetually a victim in all areas of life. But that’s still just a matter of correctly diagnosing what is in our power and what is not. I think the people who refuse to see this and malign everyone who admits that some people are victims of certain injustices are just trying not to have to face the possibility that they’re supporting some of the victimizing, or that they’re benefiting from it, or that they’re better off relative to the victims through no credit of their own. We’d all be more comfortable if we lived in a meritocracy where you really could just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but we don’t. There are some things we can do, and I’m all for us doing them, but telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps while someone is forcibly holding them down is just setting them up for more failure and covering up for the crimes of the people who are victimizing them. If a victocrat is someone who’s on the side of real victims rather than on the side of people who victimize them, I’d be proud to be one.
In other words: skip the victim talk with me. Instead, you’ll either have to argue that the issue (the threat of violence, the difference in rates of success, etc) isn’t real, or that it isn’t caused by injustice.
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.
Allllll that being said, I need to go back to homework, and if I check my blog I won’t do that. So I’ll be gone for a few days, comment as much as you want, but don’t expect a reply right away.
Sometimes I wonder if I would be more motivated to do my homework if I wrote it in this little box for writing blog posts instead of on Word. Like if I could convince myself it was procrastination instead of work…
