Kyriarchy!
For starters, you should know that I enjoy neologism in general, and thus words such as heteronormativity, which most spell-checks deny and privileged little white gamer boys cry over because they can't wrap their brains around it, delight me beyond reason. I like having a word specifically for the occasion.
Until recently (like a year or back, I'm a bit late in hearing this word), we've been stuck with the term "patriarchy" to talk about systemic rules of certain groups over other groups, namely, male over female. The problem is that with third-wave feminism we have a LOT of black and chicana women authors stepping in and there has been a stronger focus from queer theory and third world feminism and of course Marxism, whether you want to be a communist or not is such a powerful theory that a lot of people use it to watch the capitalist machine go! Thus, to just say men have all the power is both simplistic and inaccurate. It's not helpful to talk about the role of the poor or the role of a white woman in power over a black man, and on and on. Even more so, it makes you feel like a second-waver when we're probably moving past third at this point.
Kyriarchy - a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for "lord" or "master" (kyrios) and "to rule or dominate" (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination...Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.
This word makes me excited. :)
Because when explaining theoretical politics to anyone the first reaction, no matter how delicately you explain, is usually going to be something along the lines of defensiveness: "I'M totes not racist!" or "Well, I didn't grow up privileged!!" However, I find words to be useful to better understanding, and once you get someone past defensiveness, privilege is actually a nice little concept to help roll around these ideas in your head. And I think that kyriarchy has been picked up as another useful little concept because it helps us articulate what we mean better.
I'm under no delusion that the "feminism means matriarchy/man-hating" comes from a defensive place. My mother's first reaction to me saying I was taking Intro to Women's Studies was "But you don't hate men!" No, I just want to study women (not like that) for a little while after 12 years studying mostly men's deeds and writings, and my mother should really, really know better. My students may have more excuse since 1) They're pretty young and haven't had a chance to think about much on their own, for the most part and 2) They weren't damn pot-smoking hippies like my mom was. They still tend to call any author that points out white privilege, either using those terms or not, as racist or hateful to white people (no matter how calmly worded), or any feminist author as 'angry,' 'divorced,' and 'probably a lesbian.'* Affirmative action is "revise Xism" because it is threatening to the people in power who are entitled to those jobs.** You get deep into your bell hooks, and you're reading about the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy and unless you're pretty open-minded already, that can be an intimidating term, and we haven't even added homophobic onto that lovely adjectival string.
This brings me to two essays newly on the blogosphere that help to explain this "man-hating" (and if correctly applied, white-hating) for what it is:
The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck
I hope those men will hear me when I say, again, I do not hate you. I mistrust you. You can tell yourselves that's a problem with me, some inherent flaw, some evidence that I am fucked up and broken and weird; you can choose to believe that the women in your lives are nothing like me.
Or you can be vigilant, can make yourselves trustworthy. Every day.
And in response:
There's a concept used to describe being in a position in which one is not exposed to or is protected from things like this. It is based on the English word describing the possession of an advantage not afforded to others. Privilege. This concept describes this complete lack of constant attack, an acceptance of one's form, structure, an actions as fine, as default, as unchallenged. It can be a component of bigotry, but it is not bigotry in and of itself. Privilege is a sparing from this constant challenging of one's existence and place in society, a sparing of the challenging of one's validity. One may have privilege in one area but lack it in another. Unfortunately this doesn't mean that a person will be able to see past their privilege in the former area just because they comprehend it in the latter. Because privilege is invisible and it is a component of a self propagating system.
Those are who not prejudiced or bigoted still defend their privilege because a lack of perspective that is so immense that those who respond to marginalization seem unreasonable, even hateful and bigoted towards them. When Melissa above says she doesn't trust men, many men would think to themselves, "but that's so bigoted! There are lots of trustworthy men!" and that would arise from their privilege of not having to be subjected to the awfulness that she is every day by people who profess to love her and care for her.
If the people you love constantly attacked who you were, without even realizing they were hurting you and were surprised or disbelieving when you said they were hurting you, would you be surprised if you stopped trusting them? And if all of those people were of a particular group, would you be surprised if you took a cautious wary tact with them from now on?
...I was shown, completely (and perhaps embarrassingly) how little perspective I had on what society does to women. And that is why I understand how insidious privilege is. It is silent, it is crafty, it sneaks up on you, latches on and makes it impossible to even question it without seeming nuts. And there's the problem. We aren't nuts.
This shit is real.
Let's do a little activity.
Step One: Roll your eyes. What feeling do you get from rolling your eyes?
Now roll your eyes and sigh.
It just feels dismissive and disrespectful. Doesn't it? Is there any way to roll your eyes and sigh without feeling that way?
Now imagine rolling your eyes and sighing heavily at someone you've told that you love and respect.
What do you expect that person to feel? How would you feel to be thusly dismissed and disrespected by someone you care about or have to work with daily? Now, finally, imagine that any time you say something that you feel is important, the people around you roll their eyes and sigh, without even letting you finish what you were going to say.
Imagine this happens once a week. Once a day. How about it happens almost every time you speak?
What are you going to do about it? If you feel like you're fighting for respect any time you bring something up, and it will be dismissed before you even have the chance to try to explain anything... Maybe you don't know who is going to automatically roll their eyes and sigh, not take you seriously, use the fact that you are angry or passionate as a reason not to listen (What, are we all Vulcans here? Srsly.), or pick apart random, unessential parts of what you are trying to say without ever engaging the meat of the discussion.
If a person gets angry because of that situation, they don't have to be a feminist. Or a race activist, or a fat acceptance person, or someone interested in queer rights. They really could just be human, reacting to a wall of rolling eyes and jabbing fingers. Gasping that you don't automatically have a person's trust until you've given them reason to believe that you're willing to try to listen in this instance seems a bit entitled. There are plenty of reasons that I put things behind filters, and I think that people do have the right to establish their own barriers off of LJland.
This is not to say that I've never rolled my eyes at someone I cared about, but I did feel bad about what a little shit I was being.
And to talk about this from an angle of race, although this was not part of the discussion but posted individually: Racism and Power (This is, however, a short manifesto, not a novel. Don't expect piles and piles of endless qualification that derail the point she is trying to make.)
We are encouraged not to speak about race or racism. We are specifically taught to look at acts as individual instances, as though they do not amount to a society dedicated to a hierarchy of bodies, that relegate some to lives of obscurity and marginalization. Refusing to connect these actions with the power of Whiteness*** to act systemically, means that its actions remain neutral in the public consciousness. It is this very neutrality that forms the basis of Whiteness being considered the norm and therefore omnipresent, while maintaining a near invisible presence.
In the end, why is it important to talk about racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc. systemically? Because if we look at it as though there is an abstract group out there, Those People, then we can say, "Those people are the racists, those people are the misogynists. It doesn't have anything to do with me or my kind. It's Those People who wear the white sheets and the men who beat their wives. We have nothing to do with those extreme and singular cases." And then we're totally off the hook for ever examining our own actions! When you watch the news and they tut-tut about the racism of this or that party, and dismiss it as something that, again, Those People do, it detracts from the reality that racism is an everyday occurrence and that there are still battles to be fought. It reinforces my students' belief that all those Isms are something that happened a Long Time Ago and there's no need to be vigilant anymore. Everyone's equal now! Those crazy activists are all just angry and irrational nutjobs!
But also, in explaining the kyriarchy, we have to emphasize that this doesn't mean that we hate you (or other groups hate me) or that we or they are bad people. Rather, because it is a system, one that has been chugging along before all of us (except maybe vampires or gods) were even born, it is something we all inherited and have the joy of dealing with, and our level of privilege in one area or the other allows some of us to ignore or exploit this inheritance. Others have no choice but to deal with it every day.
Which means you're only a bad person when know better and then continue to exploit it. I certainly went through a stage in which I had nothing but anger and no way to express anything I could do about it. I had a stage (continuing) in which I wonder if anything I say about this is even close to right or helpful. That passes, though. Eventually, some will come to the conclusion that any flailing I do trying to get to something productive can't be worse than letting myself remain ignorant and useless, and the best thing I can do to be an ally is continue to learn and take over the teaching of some concepts (especially ones that don't make me so personally vulnerable) whenever I can. Along the lines of what I tell my students when they ask me if it bothers me if other people aren't vegetarians (although I really don't care if they are, the concept is the same)-
"Go recycle a can. We all do what is within our power to do to make things better."
So, to repeat a few lines:
This shit is real.
you can be vigilant, can make yourselves trustworthy. Every day.
Constant vigilance!
*I think my experience in fandom speaks quite loudly to the fact that gay women can totes love on a guy (Rosenbaum!) as much as they love women.
**You don't have to agree with AA to be a good person, but disagreeing for these knee-jerk reasons is problematic and not the same as having political theories in which AA is the type of government involvement that just isn't a good idea. My students rarely have that evolved a concept of why they don't like AA. I've not gotten an essay yet that wasn't based on the line of logic "But this isn't fair to white people!"
***From the author: Whiteness is about the power to act along racial lines. Race is very much a construction and therefore who may or may not be accorded with the label fluctuates over time.
I totally stole some of these lines from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
akiko. Thanks!
Do not respond to this post with complaints deconstructing the articles if you haven't read them because I will beat you to death with teaspoons :)
For starters, you should know that I enjoy neologism in general, and thus words such as heteronormativity, which most spell-checks deny and privileged little white gamer boys cry over because they can't wrap their brains around it, delight me beyond reason. I like having a word specifically for the occasion.
Until recently (like a year or back, I'm a bit late in hearing this word), we've been stuck with the term "patriarchy" to talk about systemic rules of certain groups over other groups, namely, male over female. The problem is that with third-wave feminism we have a LOT of black and chicana women authors stepping in and there has been a stronger focus from queer theory and third world feminism and of course Marxism, whether you want to be a communist or not is such a powerful theory that a lot of people use it to watch the capitalist machine go! Thus, to just say men have all the power is both simplistic and inaccurate. It's not helpful to talk about the role of the poor or the role of a white woman in power over a black man, and on and on. Even more so, it makes you feel like a second-waver when we're probably moving past third at this point.
Kyriarchy - a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for "lord" or "master" (kyrios) and "to rule or dominate" (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination...Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.
This word makes me excited. :)
Because when explaining theoretical politics to anyone the first reaction, no matter how delicately you explain, is usually going to be something along the lines of defensiveness: "I'M totes not racist!" or "Well, I didn't grow up privileged!!" However, I find words to be useful to better understanding, and once you get someone past defensiveness, privilege is actually a nice little concept to help roll around these ideas in your head. And I think that kyriarchy has been picked up as another useful little concept because it helps us articulate what we mean better.
I'm under no delusion that the "feminism means matriarchy/man-hating" comes from a defensive place. My mother's first reaction to me saying I was taking Intro to Women's Studies was "But you don't hate men!" No, I just want to study women (not like that) for a little while after 12 years studying mostly men's deeds and writings, and my mother should really, really know better. My students may have more excuse since 1) They're pretty young and haven't had a chance to think about much on their own, for the most part and 2) They weren't damn pot-smoking hippies like my mom was. They still tend to call any author that points out white privilege, either using those terms or not, as racist or hateful to white people (no matter how calmly worded), or any feminist author as 'angry,' 'divorced,' and 'probably a lesbian.'* Affirmative action is "revise Xism" because it is threatening to the people in power who are entitled to those jobs.** You get deep into your bell hooks, and you're reading about the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy and unless you're pretty open-minded already, that can be an intimidating term, and we haven't even added homophobic onto that lovely adjectival string.
This brings me to two essays newly on the blogosphere that help to explain this "man-hating" (and if correctly applied, white-hating) for what it is:
The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck
I hope those men will hear me when I say, again, I do not hate you. I mistrust you. You can tell yourselves that's a problem with me, some inherent flaw, some evidence that I am fucked up and broken and weird; you can choose to believe that the women in your lives are nothing like me.
Or you can be vigilant, can make yourselves trustworthy. Every day.
And in response:
There's a concept used to describe being in a position in which one is not exposed to or is protected from things like this. It is based on the English word describing the possession of an advantage not afforded to others. Privilege. This concept describes this complete lack of constant attack, an acceptance of one's form, structure, an actions as fine, as default, as unchallenged. It can be a component of bigotry, but it is not bigotry in and of itself. Privilege is a sparing from this constant challenging of one's existence and place in society, a sparing of the challenging of one's validity. One may have privilege in one area but lack it in another. Unfortunately this doesn't mean that a person will be able to see past their privilege in the former area just because they comprehend it in the latter. Because privilege is invisible and it is a component of a self propagating system.
Those are who not prejudiced or bigoted still defend their privilege because a lack of perspective that is so immense that those who respond to marginalization seem unreasonable, even hateful and bigoted towards them. When Melissa above says she doesn't trust men, many men would think to themselves, "but that's so bigoted! There are lots of trustworthy men!" and that would arise from their privilege of not having to be subjected to the awfulness that she is every day by people who profess to love her and care for her.
If the people you love constantly attacked who you were, without even realizing they were hurting you and were surprised or disbelieving when you said they were hurting you, would you be surprised if you stopped trusting them? And if all of those people were of a particular group, would you be surprised if you took a cautious wary tact with them from now on?
...I was shown, completely (and perhaps embarrassingly) how little perspective I had on what society does to women. And that is why I understand how insidious privilege is. It is silent, it is crafty, it sneaks up on you, latches on and makes it impossible to even question it without seeming nuts. And there's the problem. We aren't nuts.
This shit is real.
Let's do a little activity.
Step One: Roll your eyes. What feeling do you get from rolling your eyes?
Now roll your eyes and sigh.
It just feels dismissive and disrespectful. Doesn't it? Is there any way to roll your eyes and sigh without feeling that way?
Now imagine rolling your eyes and sighing heavily at someone you've told that you love and respect.
What do you expect that person to feel? How would you feel to be thusly dismissed and disrespected by someone you care about or have to work with daily? Now, finally, imagine that any time you say something that you feel is important, the people around you roll their eyes and sigh, without even letting you finish what you were going to say.
Imagine this happens once a week. Once a day. How about it happens almost every time you speak?
What are you going to do about it? If you feel like you're fighting for respect any time you bring something up, and it will be dismissed before you even have the chance to try to explain anything... Maybe you don't know who is going to automatically roll their eyes and sigh, not take you seriously, use the fact that you are angry or passionate as a reason not to listen (What, are we all Vulcans here? Srsly.), or pick apart random, unessential parts of what you are trying to say without ever engaging the meat of the discussion.
If a person gets angry because of that situation, they don't have to be a feminist. Or a race activist, or a fat acceptance person, or someone interested in queer rights. They really could just be human, reacting to a wall of rolling eyes and jabbing fingers. Gasping that you don't automatically have a person's trust until you've given them reason to believe that you're willing to try to listen in this instance seems a bit entitled. There are plenty of reasons that I put things behind filters, and I think that people do have the right to establish their own barriers off of LJland.
This is not to say that I've never rolled my eyes at someone I cared about, but I did feel bad about what a little shit I was being.
And to talk about this from an angle of race, although this was not part of the discussion but posted individually: Racism and Power (This is, however, a short manifesto, not a novel. Don't expect piles and piles of endless qualification that derail the point she is trying to make.)
We are encouraged not to speak about race or racism. We are specifically taught to look at acts as individual instances, as though they do not amount to a society dedicated to a hierarchy of bodies, that relegate some to lives of obscurity and marginalization. Refusing to connect these actions with the power of Whiteness*** to act systemically, means that its actions remain neutral in the public consciousness. It is this very neutrality that forms the basis of Whiteness being considered the norm and therefore omnipresent, while maintaining a near invisible presence.
In the end, why is it important to talk about racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc. systemically? Because if we look at it as though there is an abstract group out there, Those People, then we can say, "Those people are the racists, those people are the misogynists. It doesn't have anything to do with me or my kind. It's Those People who wear the white sheets and the men who beat their wives. We have nothing to do with those extreme and singular cases." And then we're totally off the hook for ever examining our own actions! When you watch the news and they tut-tut about the racism of this or that party, and dismiss it as something that, again, Those People do, it detracts from the reality that racism is an everyday occurrence and that there are still battles to be fought. It reinforces my students' belief that all those Isms are something that happened a Long Time Ago and there's no need to be vigilant anymore. Everyone's equal now! Those crazy activists are all just angry and irrational nutjobs!
But also, in explaining the kyriarchy, we have to emphasize that this doesn't mean that we hate you (or other groups hate me) or that we or they are bad people. Rather, because it is a system, one that has been chugging along before all of us (except maybe vampires or gods) were even born, it is something we all inherited and have the joy of dealing with, and our level of privilege in one area or the other allows some of us to ignore or exploit this inheritance. Others have no choice but to deal with it every day.
Which means you're only a bad person when know better and then continue to exploit it. I certainly went through a stage in which I had nothing but anger and no way to express anything I could do about it. I had a stage (continuing) in which I wonder if anything I say about this is even close to right or helpful. That passes, though. Eventually, some will come to the conclusion that any flailing I do trying to get to something productive can't be worse than letting myself remain ignorant and useless, and the best thing I can do to be an ally is continue to learn and take over the teaching of some concepts (especially ones that don't make me so personally vulnerable) whenever I can. Along the lines of what I tell my students when they ask me if it bothers me if other people aren't vegetarians (although I really don't care if they are, the concept is the same)-
"Go recycle a can. We all do what is within our power to do to make things better."
So, to repeat a few lines:
This shit is real.
you can be vigilant, can make yourselves trustworthy. Every day.
Constant vigilance!
*I think my experience in fandom speaks quite loudly to the fact that gay women can totes love on a guy (Rosenbaum!) as much as they love women.
**You don't have to agree with AA to be a good person, but disagreeing for these knee-jerk reasons is problematic and not the same as having political theories in which AA is the type of government involvement that just isn't a good idea. My students rarely have that evolved a concept of why they don't like AA. I've not gotten an essay yet that wasn't based on the line of logic "But this isn't fair to white people!"
***From the author: Whiteness is about the power to act along racial lines. Race is very much a construction and therefore who may or may not be accorded with the label fluctuates over time.
I totally stole some of these lines from
akiko. Thanks!Do not respond to this post with complaints deconstructing the articles if you haven't read them because I will beat you to death with teaspoons :)
#1
Date: 2009-08-31 02:19 pm (UTC)From:SO TRUE!
you probably have seen this
http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/another-post-about-rape-3/
but have you read one of the comments below , like this one! from a "trustworthy man" and the awesome response of the OP:
eggplantinspace
Thank you first for putting your thoughts out there.
I got to this blog through a friend who linked me. She had gone through a bad experience and felt more comfortable about talking it out following your blog. If for no other reason, this is worthy and good.
As a guy, I have often wondered about how many women are raped. I have yet to have a serious relationship with a woman who hasnt had at least one sexual abuse scare story. It is very obvious to me that it is highly prevelant.
I am not a rapist however, and I have never had occassion to make anyone feel intimidated, be it physically, mentally or sexually. I have never stalked anyone, and have ALWAYS backed down when told to.
I have on MANY occasions tried to chat a girl up in a bar, and been LOUDLY told to “fuck off”, to a chorus of giggles from her friends.
Of course I left, of course I was humiliated, but I didnt react. I said nothing, I would return to my friends having failed embarrassingly, who would tell me she isnt worth it, or you arent good enough for her. Sometimes they would tell me that she is frigid or a lesbian, and we would laugh it off, not because we genuinely believed it, but merely as a defense mechanism for feeling so abusively treated.
Its easy to say just suck it up, but that is the same kind of social engineering you are arguing against.
In the end, all I wanted was a way out. Fine, you dont want to have a drink with me, no problems, but for gods sake, treat me with a little respect, you have no idea of how much courage it takes to walk across a bar and say hello to a girl when she is likely to act like that.
Why can you not just say, “No, thank you”.
By all means scream at the top of your voice if I keep at you, but that first time where we are defining who we are to eachother. You dont need to show me you have the power. I already know that!
I dont ask for power, but I do ask for respect. Because that is the essence our society.
At the heart of respect, at the very soul of our society is reason. You said society tells us its not okay to refuse to explain our actions, Society is right.
It is wrong NOT to explain.
Im not talking a massive treatise everytime you buy a brand of cigarettes, but when other people are involved, respect does make the difference.
Is it so hard to say “No, than you, but you arent my type”, or even “Fuck off, youre the tenth guy to ask me tonight!”, doesnt that tell them and their friends how you feel with clarity and reason.
You are right in so much of what you have said. It is obscene that so much rape is dismissed, and I hope that with new DNA evidence we will find more cases coming to court.
As a group though, we do promote this behaviour, we do still buy mysoganistic rap and country records, how many times have you heard the term about nice guys never getting the girl? You dont think that is based on fact?
We do still go into bars and clubs that do nothing to stop minor sexual abuses such as pinching bottoms.
I have a scottish friend who goes out wearing a kilt all the time. The only reason is because he knows he will recieve sexual abuse from women, he enjoys it. Whilst it is amusing to think of people being so crass, there is clearly there is something to be said about the attire we choose to wear and our expectations therein.
As a group we do little to break those stereotypes, and yet we could insist on it. We could demand more. We could even on the net find a new club that respects the individuals right to be left alone, but we dont.
I am not forgiving the acts that men do, and there is a lot in what you say about how we are engineered. It is clear that submissive behaviour leads to less accusations, and it is crystal clear that rape is still dismissed by people who often think the parties are exaggerating.
The law always moves 30 years behind society. It takes that long for children to become lawyers and judges, politicians and police officers, but it is changing, attitudes are changing and our social structure is much much better than it was even 50 years ago, when rape was hardly reported, and women in many countries still had not got a vote.
I appreciate that my concerns dont feel as important as your issues, but the truth is that if we dont deal with the minor things, if we instead teach that violence and aggression are the only ways to react and protect yourself, then we will live in a world where no ground is given.
I dont want to tell my future girls that the only way to behave is to be aggressive, I want to show them to respect everyone, but also to respect themselves first and foremost, and by all means give them the tools and resources to protect themselves when others have gone too far.
I hope you dont mind me pushing this at least a little in a new direction.
on August 7, 2009 at 3:50 pm | Reply Harriet Jacobs
Here’s the thing, man. You’re approaching this as if it were a level playing field. And if it were a level playing field, you’d be absolutely right: everybody should be treated with respect and politeness, and it wouldn’t be so hard to do.
But you, as a man, do not and will never have the experience of never being able to leave your house without being sexually harassed. This happens every day as a woman. Every day. It doesn’t matter what we are wearing, how old or young we are, or what we look like. I have had a van follow me in the dead of winter, dressed from head to toe in shapeless winter wear that showed nothing of my gender. But because my head was uncovered, and my hair was visible, it was apparent I was a female and thus subject to verbal abuse. I don’t have to wear a short skirt to be treated like shit. I can just appear female, and it comes natural.
As soon as we leave our house, somebody — a stranger on the street, on the bus, a coworker, an acquaintance — will feel they have the right to grab us, touch us, move too close to us, call us names, tell us to smile, tell us to look prettier, tell us to get into their car. It is often impossible to judge between the men who do this, to figure out which one is the “nice guy” who just wants to tell us we look pretty today, and which one is the “nice guy” who is going to start calling us an ugly whore when we don’t respond. And either way, none of it is welcome. You do not have the experience of having your physical appearance considered a reasonable subject of public debate when you walk down the street. Whether somebody is calling us pretty or ugly, it doesn’t matter — it is invasive to know that our appearance will be remarked upon verbally no matter how we look, where we walk, or what we do. That is not something men have to experience on a daily basis, but women do, and for no reason other than because we are women.
You’ve expressed a lot of anger toward women who have dismissed you in a shitty way, and that anger seems to have made you generalize that experience towards women, projecting it onto all women, as if we all have a responsibility to be nice to you, because you are nice and don’t deserve to be treated poorly.
Welcome to patriarchy, man. It affects you, too.
What you have described — never knowing whether you’ll get a decent, human, reasonable response, or be treated hurtfully, to the point where you wonder what the living hell is wrong with women and why they can’t just treat you like a human being — is exactly what women experience with men. There are two big differences, though. First, you will never have to live with the fear that a social interaction gone wrong will lead to your physical and sexual assault. And second, you can abstain from ever having one of those painful social interactions. You can leave the house without women approaching you, remarking on your physical attractiveness, and then belittling you. I can’t. I live with the constant knowledge that, whenever I am in public, men will feel they have the right to invade my physical space. Whether or not they do it nicely, or with good intentions, makes zero difference. When you cannot walk to the store for a gallon of milk without somebody calling you a bitch, there is a really big difference between your problems with women and my problems with men. And there is a really big problem with the fact that you can’t see women’s defensiveness as a reasonable reaction, and that stems from the really big problem of you not knowing about or understanding this experience of women. You don’t have the right to have this explained to you. You have the responsibility to ask, but you haven’t; instead, you’ve blamed.
You say you are a nice guy. I’m not going to say you are or you’re not; I don’t know you. But I am going to say that your protestations of being a nice guy reek of privilege. Just because you’re nice doesn’t guarantee you anything. It doesn’t guarantee that other people will be nice to you, that women will like you, that you will get a good job and a happy life. You’re right that there is a big concept out there of the nice guy not getting the girl. It’s a multi-faceted thing, but I’m going to put this to you: a nice guy who expects that because of his niceness women should have sex with him is not actually a nice guy. A nice guy who cannot accept that women get to make their own decisions, even when a nice guy doesn’t like those decisions, is not a nice guy. And a nice guy who blames his suddenly turning shitty on women is not a nice guy.
Men (and all people) have to take responsibility for their own actions, but in this culture, men often foist their behavior onto women. I got mean because she turned me down. I felt I could touch her because she wore a short skirt. I felt I could invade her space because she didn’t say no. I felt I could call her names because she didn’t want to talk to me. You make those decisions, and you make them and still call yourself a nice guy. There is a contradiction there, and you may not see it, but women do, because you are not the only “nice guy” we have ever had to deal with.
It’s not fair that men have to prove that they’re not like all the other shitty assholes out there who feel they’re entitled to women. That’s how patriarchy affects you, too, man, and you only contribute to it every time you insult women for not rejoicing in your company. Women know very well that if they decide not to talk to you, not to dance with you, not to sleep with you, you’re going to turn nasty, because you’re not the first guy to do that to them. And that’s only you proving that you are like all the shitty assholes out there who feel entitled to women. And, here’s another thing, man. This Nice Guy shtick? It’s like you’re asking to get free points for being a regular human being. You don’t get a reward for being a nice guy. You don’t get free pussy just because you abstained from insulting a woman. You’re either a nice guy because you want to be a nice guy, no matter what benefits or problems that nets you, or you’re not a nice guy. Expecting that women are just going to fall all over themselves because you’re performing the minimum requirements for being human is what we call privilege round these parts. Women get to have higher expectations of their men than “not a shithead,” and you should have higher expectations of the women you want to be with.
I’m going to throw this last bit in here: I expect you might get some dogpiling for posting this, or, if you choose to, discussing it with female friends. You’ll probably feel a deep need to get angry or defensive, because it’s going to feel like your sense of yourself as a person is being attacked. And it is, sort of — that is, your sense of yourself is being attacked, but it may turn out that there’s a different self under there that you weren’t sensing, such as a self that doesn’t have to get indignant and resentful and so fucking angry at women who won’t fuck you. That might be a nicer self. That might be a nice guy self. And that doesn’t guarantee you success with women, but it might make you happier, it might make your relationships fuller, it might open up a lot of doors that seemed impassably and unfairly closed. So I recommend, when you get responses like I’m handing you, that you hold off on responding for a week (I’m going to enforce that here by not publishing any comment you make before a week is up). In that week, you can try re-reading women’s comments here, or on other places this has been posted. Read about some of the ways women have been treated, and imagine, if you were them, how you would react the next time any man felt he could approach you in public and demand your attention. Every time you leave the house, imagine one of these stories, imagine it happening to you while you’re walking to the bus stop or the store. And every time you feel yourself thinking, “But this shit isn’t fair! It makes me feel like a bad person, like I can’t do anything right, like I’m constantly under attack and for no good reason…” I recommend you look at the women in your life and wonder if they don’t feel the same way. When you’re angry, when you feel like the world is unfair, you can spout off about it; that’s one nice benefit you’ve got. When women spout off, they get called bitches, and somebody like you comes round to tell us it’s our fault for wearing short skirts and not fucking nice guys.
Imagine if, instead of writing this response to you, instead of engaging with you, I pinched your ass, ruffled your hair, and then told you I was a nice girl and you should come home with me. And if you got pissed at me for dismissing what was obviously a heartfelt and emotional statement you just made, imagine if you saw me walk off to my friends telling them that you were obviously a fag with a tiny dick. And imagine if, after that, you went to talk to a friend about this, and they told you that, sure, that sounds shitty and all, but you were wearing jeans, and you also give off this really angry vibe sometimes, and maybe you need to start being nicer to all women so they don’t call you a faggot with a tiny dick.
You, as a man, can complain about unfair treatment from women without being told you need to be more pleasant and sexually available to the very people who treat you unfairly. I, as a woman, cannot. Exhibit A: you and your response.
I’m sure that feels angering and shitty to hear. But, here’s something: the sense of unfairness and unhappiness and confusion you have? That is a good starting point for understanding how women feel, and talking with them about it.
#2
Date: 2009-08-31 02:31 pm (UTC)From:I uploaded it for you, coz I think, its very much related to everything you said here:
Wiley.The.Everyday.Language.Of.White.Racism
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mjm04ojmrmr
I wish, I had time to go through it chapter by chapter, and talk in my DW account about it, but seeing now that I returned, the workload, I probably will never get to it :(
and additionally, I am due for next month reccing at crack_van, sighs, I need a clone...