Wouldn't turn around and break it
And anyone who's ever played a part
Wouldn't turn around and hate it
Sweet Jo. Sweet, sweet Jo.
Who said in a comment:
"If these are the principles that define feminism, then we are all feminists now. "Absolutely! I believe that every reasonable person in this country is a feminist, regardless of if they realize it or not.
Darling, you probably shouldn't visit Metafilter:
Is there any need for a Men's Movement?Or Plastic:
Or is the struggling existence of such organisations, and the sporadic publishing of Achilles Heel magazine, for example, evidence that organised groups and 'movements' for men are redundant? Maybe it's evidence that 'men's' needs are still under rated and unsatisfied, and that we don't focus on our needs because we are working too hard?
'Deadbeat Moms', Appearing In A News Bulletin Nowhere Near You
"The subject of 'Deadbeat Dads' is well-known for regular flogging by the media. So where are the stories about Deadbeat Moms? This is the first I've ever seen. Numerically, more fathers are remiss in child support payments, simply because mothers are more often rewarded custody of a child in the US courts. Playing the percentages reveals a different story, however: 57% of mothers required to give up at least some, if not all of the money they owe vs. 68% of dads who pay up. Moms also get about 60 percent of what they are owed, whereas dads only get 48 percent."So why is the Deadbeat focus always on the Dad? Are mothers somehow considered too sympathic to be the subjects of these stories? Or, is it simply the catchy lure of an alliterative label?"
Discussions that start off with the assumption that women are treated equally as men (or black people are treated equally as white people, or queers are treated equally as breeders [go on, start shit]) usually end up in some fairly bizarre territory. You get these weird comparisons, like men's movement vs. women's movement, or deadbeat moms vs. deadbeat dads.
Which aren't given quite as much of a funny vibe as, say, The National Association for the Advancement of White People (who have been held back for too long in this country/society/planet). On the other hand, there's the Defense of Marriage Act.
I'm usually more interested in how people talk about such things than about the topics themselves, because all sorts of interesting little biases come bubbling to the top. Like in the Plastic discussion, where someone says:
Feminism captured all discourse about gender in the 70s, and hasn't let go. Any attempts to discuss gender apart from feminist categories is roundly mocked and denounced, even if that discourse is not anti-feminist. The reaction to the Men's Movement of the early 90s is a good example of this.
Feminism itself, of course, is never, ever mocked and denounced. Just think of all the women who proudly call themselves feminists on tv and in movies. They're always portrayed in a positive, saint-like fashion. Characters like. . . ok, help me out here.
Or, in the MeFi thread:
Women working is simply a return to the norm of all human history from the strange upper-middle-class interlude of the late 19th and most of the 20th century, where technology and money reduced the burdens of homemaking to the point that many men could conceive of themselves as the sole support of their family, instead of a partner who completely depended upon his wife's contribution.As for power in the family, I think that in a well-functioning family, power always has been largely equal ... and where the power wasn't equal, it was with the woman quite frequently, not the man. (Source: the domestic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries ... )
Which is probably more proof that you shouldn't base your idea of the past on domestic novels than anything else; otherwise the writer probably believes that slaves were quite happy, and queers did not exist until fairly recently.
The really scary bit about that last one is that it sounds like an enlightened attitude, but it's so ahistorical that it's actually, um, not.
Or he's right and I'm wrong. If only there were a historian in the house. . .
Anyway, social movements putting the ignored needs of straight white men front and center are obviously a necessary counterbalance to the current domination of our society by women, queers and people of color.
There are people who believe that. They resent it when you giggle at them.
All the more reason to do it, then.
Before anyone accuses me of being a dirty feminist, I'll have you know I snickered when the NPR announcer mentioned flooding in Europe was leaving "rain-soaked dykes" across the countryside, and immediately I thought of flash-flooding during MWMF. So there.
Update: As usual, the throwaway jokes produce as much discussion as the supposed topic. Not sure if this is a good or bad element of my writing style. . . Over at VASpider's, talk about word choice, connotation vs. denotation, the role gender plays in determining what's funny and what's insulting, and the time Peppermint Patty and Marcie borrowed Linus's. . . no, that joke is dead.
I'm pretty sure all (or at least the vast majority) of the lesbians I've knows would also snicker at "rain-soaked dykes"...
Just because you take shit seriously doesn't mean you can't have a sense of humor.
Upon hearing that I probably wouldn't have thought of flash flooding and at MWMF but I'm glad you thought of it and mentioned it because it made me laugh. Loudly. Thanks.
See, you all aren't helping. And you must be wrong. Lesbians are all humorless, man-hating and castrating. Talk to any conservative male, and they're experts on the subject. Every woman they ask out is like that.
And I just checked, and you can spell the word with an "i" or a "y", and it still has both senses. Worried about that for a minute. . .
As for power in the family, I think that in a well-functioning family, power always has been largely equal ... and where the power wasn't equal, it was with the woman quite frequently, not the man. (Source: the domestic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries ... )
Gyaaaaaaaah. I'd missed that thread somehow. I'm gonna have to go in and see if some competent English major has mocked that comment as mercilessly as it deserves yet . . .
The "queers did not exist until fairly recently" notion is both true and false, of course. The idea of queerness as being a distinct state of being, oppositional to straightness, is in fact quite recent, historically speaking (the earliest inklings we have of it as a notion of a "solid state" for human sexual propensities are from the late 19th century). If you want a Learned Discourse on that, just ask, but I'll spare y'all the footnotes for now.
However, playing slap-ass with someone of your own biological sex is a time-honored tradition. Human beings have, as far as we know, never tired of finding out what new fun things they could do with their erogenous zones, and sex/gender of participants is simply not always an issue for those involved. Same goes for emotional bonding. Homosocial bonding doesn't necessarily imply or require homosexual activity, but it doesn't necessarily preclude it, either.
But ya'll knew that, right?
I giggle twice as hard when I read stuff like this because I used to work as a dominatrix. You can make good money as a queer woman by dominating straight white men. In fact, many of them consider that all by itself to be satisfying an "ignored need." And I agree: there is something primally satisfying about knowing you're getting a wad of cash in exchange for whipping the bejesus out of some priveliged, sexist, racist corporate fuckknob.
"you're getting a wad of cash in exchange for whipping the bejesus out of some priveliged, sexist, racist corporate fuckknob."
Oh my.
Don't they smell like dogs and have weird diseases?
Honestly, Aaron, it's just easier for me to talk about the funny stuff right now. After the kind of weekend I had, baking in the hot sun and marinating in Actor/Renaissance Faire Drama, I don't know that my brain could handle dealing with all the stuff above without shorting out.
So I talked about dykes/lesbians and rain and blankets instead. I can deal with internal discussions right now -- the sort where you talk about the fine points with people who generally agree with you -- but anything else would probably send me into a spittle-emitting frenzy of incoherent rage. Either that, or I'd lapse into apathy, and I just can't have that.
No, it's cool. In fact, the thread at your place is pretty serious, meaning I have nothing to contribute and will just lurk around the wainscotting. I just thought it was funny that a serious conversation spun off from a throwaway joke.
Laura, I mentioned the thing about you being evil, right?
And I hold you and Neogrammarian (who I stole the Gothic Babe of the Week link from) equally responsible for Rebecca Blood thinking I'm some kind of pervert.
Hanne ain't helping none, either.
True, that. I rather like conversations about issues that start off that way rather than those that start off because of almost any other reason. For some reason, when you start out at a point of mutually-agreed-upon humor, things get resolved. Go figure.
Besides, you could contribute. This whole "when is it funny" thing doesn't just apply to dyke jokes, after all.
hanne: *gulp* the coolnsexy points you just earned are going to haunt my sorry academic self for weeks. To make good money putting corporate jackasses in their place . . . Can I be just like you when I grow up? Look, I'll even ask really pretty and nice. Please? *puppy eyes*
Aaron: there IS an historian in the house. Humble moi. An historian of gender in premodern western culture, no less. And you're right, not him. There were lots of bad premodern jokes about women wearing the pants in the family; and, as in modern cliches about what feminists are like, they stem from the fears of the dominant gender about the difficulty involved in trying to keep half of humanity under their thumbs. Did women sometimes find ways to work around male dominance? Sure; they always have. Does that mean that the limits on their ability to use or control court systems or economic resources were not galling? That the religious infrastructres' insistence on their moral, physical, and social inferiority were not galling, and did not cause women tremendous hardship? HELL NO.
The history of gender roles can be deduced entriely from 19th century novels, huh? Bonehead.
Aaron: just let your inner pervert out to play. I promise to be nice to him.
Laura: Yes, they sometimes do. Which is why you hit them with objects, so as to keep them at arm's length.
Garrity: Don't get too excited just yet. One of the reasons I'm no longer in the business of whipping corporate running-dogs for money is that many of them feel that paying to submit to a dominatrix "absolves" them, in some way, for their consumate horribleness and powermongering ways when out of the dungeon. Satisfying as it can sometimes be to know that someone whose politics and profession you abhor will be sitting funny and walking funnier for a week, it doesn't, in the final analysis, produce the result of "putting them in their place" in any socially meaningful way, and in fact can sometimes add to their capacity to act in irredeemably nasty ways.
To say nothing of the simple fact that asking for (indeed paying for) "punishment" rather reduces its efficacy as punishment, a la "Please, no, B'r'er Rabbit, don't throw me in that briar patch!"
Aaron: If you need another card-carrying historian, just holler. I did my doctoral work in cultural history back when I was making an academic pest of myself. Garrity 'n' me can work the stacks on your behalf.
I know. It's just this: the sheer visceral bliss invovled in enacting violence upon the person of a sorely deserving corporate pig has appeal in the days just after finding out what my health 'insurance' will cost if I choose to pony up, and just before I have to go bully the medical establishment on my mom's behalf. Again.
If we really want to punish them, they should be forced to read the bibliography that we are hypotehtically putting together for Aaron.
(No meals until you've read four monographs! And NO, I will NOT just hit you instead!!)
"And I hold you and Neogrammarian (who I stole the Gothic Babe of the Week link from) equally responsible for Rebecca Blood thinking I'm some kind of pervert."
?!?
*winces at the mention of the defensable marriage act*
man, was that a hurter for the TG community.
Laura, I'm pretty sure there was something on your site that made the Willow/VampWillow nicknames seem like a good idea.
Or I'm attempting to evade responsibility for my actions by placing the blame on innocent women. I'm still trying to evade that feminist label.
Thanks for all the offers of research assistance. Of course, now I feel completely intimidated, knowing (instead of just thinking) that there are people who know way, way more about this stuff than I do reading, but, y'know, fine, no pressure.
Hanne, inner pervert? As opposed to. . .?
If my stupid-idiot archives were working, the record would show that I said I met the "beautiful and talented RB" at a blog gathering. Perhaps that is the quote?
(Lest people start to talk.)
Ok, just...let's just skip it.
isn't a dike something that holds water in holland? would the dutch boy want to put his finger in a dyke?
seriously, these arguments (all people have equal opportunity, so any movement/organization that espouses one group above the other is unfair) is as ridiculous as the concept of "reverse discrimination." as if discriminating against white people is any different than any other kind of discrimination. apparently white people are so full of themselves they have to have their own special kind of discrimination when it happens to them.
ps, i be white, in case youse was wond'rin'!
Ok, plugging "rebecca blood interestingmonstah" into Google brings up one of those Austin Powers results. My brain has officially given up for the evening.
Skippy, you'll be wantin' the second discussion over at VASpider's.
And at some point, a little voice said to me, "You never said what MWMF stands for, you know."
And I laughed at little voice, because of course I did, and it's not like I'd figure anyone visiting this site already knew.
And then I checked.
And now I can't get back to sleep.
Been meaning to watch a sunrise from the riverfront anyway. Only two hours or so to go. . .