[Content Note: Misogyny; objectification; rape culture.]
Another trend I'm seeing in the Roger Elliot think pieces by self-described nerdy or geeky guys is the use of the phrase "out of my league," or the associated concept.
This idea—that there are some women, generally by virtue of their proximity to kyriarchal beauty standards, are inaccessible to certain men, by virtue of their deviation from kyriarchal beauty and/or traditional masculinity standards—is absolutely toxic. It is also bullshit.
It feeds the narrative that women are a sex class, whose only value to (straight) men is their sexual desirability and availability. It feeds the belief that physical attraction is the only component of attraction—or, at least, the only relevant one. It feeds the idea that entitlement to women is only a problem when men feel entitled to women whom they don't "deserve."
That is not a comprehensive list. That is only the mere tip of a huge iceberg of fuckery that's embedded with "out of my league" rhetoric.
For a moment, let me speak to my own experience as a woman who deviates from kyriarchal beauty standards in multiple ways, not least of which is being fat. I've been fat for my entire dating life, and I have never thought that anyone was "out of my league."
Already I feel the fingers itching to send me missives that I'm a delusional narcissist. (Aren't I always?) But the reason I've never thought someone was "out of my league" is because it's dehumanizing junk to impose on another person. Putting someone on a pedestal is just the flipside of considering them less than.
And because, although I'm aware that there will always be people—irrespective of their own appearance—who won't be attracted to me for a variety of reasons, physical attraction among them, I have enough solid attributes as a complex person that I never thought, "He's too good for me."
Which is a very different thought indeed than, "He might not be into me for any number of fucking reasons."
And, the truth is, "he's out of my league" presumes that a man I don't even know is good enough for me. Like it doesn't matter if he's a piece of shit, as long as he's good-looking.
I look for a little more than that in a partner.
As it happens, I've been with attractive dudes with whom I've connected in important ways who would have been deemed "out of my league" on looks alone, but they weren't "out of my league" because I'm awesome.
That's a joke, of course—the point is that they thought I was awesome, because instead of holding them in rapt adoration from afar, I let myself be known. One human being to another.
And the men who haven't found me awesome? Well, that is their right. Which seems like a pretty silly thing to say, when a fat woman says it, because no one would ever think anything else than that an idealized man has the right to reject a fat woman.
Yet the "out of my league" stuff is embedded with the idea that idealized women don't really have the right to reject men on the basis of anything but their looks, and that idealized women couldn't possibly reject a man on the basis of his being a shitbird with a lousy personality.
Sure, maybe some dudes wouldn't be into me because I'm fat. But there are dudes who wouldn't be into me because of my personality or politics or something else that is about who I am.
And because I don't feel entitled to anyone's affections, no less everyone's, I'm good with that.
That's not about "leagues." That's about human compatibility. Of which physical attraction is only one part.
"Out of my league" is a very convenient trope to avoid having to examine why it is that someone might reject you for reasons other than your appearance, and avoid respecting that, if they do, that's okay, because no one is entitled to another person's attention, or desire, or love, or friendship, or any piece of their humanity.
There's really just no such thing as objectively out of someone else's league. That's a projection onto attractive (or rich, or white, or popular, or WHATEVER) people to mask one's own insecurity and tendency to idealize and dehumanize other people.
To lazily dodge making oneself lovable, if one wants to be loved.
The thing about guys who claim they've been rejected exclusively because of their looks is that it's pretty evident, just in the way they report this assertion, that there are reasons why a woman might reject them which has nothing to do with their looks.
Does anyone really imagine that Elliot Rodger wasn't attractive to women because of his appearance? Does anyone really imagine if only he'd "gone after" slightly or significantly less attractive women, he would have had women lining up to date him?
I mean.
Listen, of course there are people who reject other people exclusively because of looks, but maybe those people aren't "out of your league" so much as they are simply "not interested."
That's really not a cause for frustration and resentment, if you don't feel entitled to the reflexive affections of anyone in whom you convey interest.
On Geek Guys' Elliot Rodger Think Pieces, Part 2
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by baby robins.
Recommended Reading:
[Content Note: Discussion of triggering material] Here I am, along with four other folks including the amazing Soraya Chemaly, debating whether trigger warnings have a place in academia in US News & World Report.
Angus: [CN: Discussion of triggering material] Why I'll Add a Trigger Warning
Fannie: [CN: Misogyny; violence] Misogyny and Nice Guys
Dani: [CN: Misogyny; abuse; disablism] Fine, We'll Talk About Autism and Misogyny
Amanda: [CN: Misogyny; violence; disablism] Stop Making Every Murderer into Someone Who Is 'Sick'
Tressie: [CN: Racism; violence; privilege] Allies, Friends, and the Value of Utopian Visions
Abigail: [CN: Food insecurity; class warfare] Indianapolis Will Give All Students Free Breakfast and Lunch
Shantell: Lupita Nyong'o Options Rights to Film Based on Americanah
On the Geek Guys' Elliot Rodger Think Pieces
[Content Note: Misogyny; objectification; rape culture.]
In the past few days, I've read a bunch of pieces by self-described nerdy or geeky guys, who identify with aspects of Elliot Rodger's resentful, entitled misogyny and/or identify with his expressed frustration at not being able to "get laid." None of the pieces I've read have justified Rodger's violent rage; all of them have, in fact, explicitly condemned it.
(That is not to suggest there are not plenty of pieces that do justify or even laud Rodger's violent rage. I just don't read them.)
And one of the things I'm seeing over and over in these pieces, despite their ostensibly being about how acknowledging women's humanity and agency is important, is a distinct failure to acknowledge women as anything but the sex class. That is, there is very little discussion about how straight men should and do have other reasons for interacting with women than trying to have sex with them.
I'm sure many of the men writing these pieces would argue that should be taken as read: Of course I believe that. As though it's self-evident. But it is not self-evident to the many men who treat women precisely like this every day, and to the many women who are treated every day like we have no value beyond our willingness to fuck men. Or their desire to fuck us.
To truly and meaningfully challenge the dynamic of entitled misogyny, the men who write these pieces need to make explicit that women do not exist to be sex toys for men.
In all of these pieces, where men talk about their days longing after women from afar, they are talking about objectifying women. And then they come to the denouement, where they finally figure out how to talk to women, huzzah, but individual men figuring out how to talk to women is not a solution to the systemic oppression and attendant objectification which produces men like Elliot Rodger.
They never get to the part where the cultural solution, beyond their individual success, is humanizing and visibilizing women in a nonsexual context. They never get to the part where the opportunity and obligation to interact with women in a way that isn't sexual is something that every man needs in order to undermine the narrative of women as a sex class.
They never address that that is both an opportunity and obligation that many men do not have, because our entire culture is set up so that most men don't have to interact in spaces that center female humanity if they don't want to.
Many of the men writing these pieces speak of being "lucky" that they didn't take a similar path to Elliot Rodger, or imagine some sliding-doors alternate reality in which maybe they could have gone down a similar road.
But it isn't luck, and it often isn't personal fortitude, that stops people primed with resentful, entitled privilege from enacting violence against the marginalized people they scapegoat for their frustrations.
It is usually the opportunity and obligation to interact with those people in a way that makes it impossible to maintain the illusion those people are responsible for your unhappiness.
Meaningful, humanizing interaction.
Passages in many of these pieces that essentially boil down to "once I realized I wasn't entitled to women, I got one, and that saved me" merely entrench the notion that women are prizes for straight men to be won, if only they figure out the magic combination to get in a lady's pants.
That's not a message which in any way supports women's humanity and agency. It still treats us like a sex class. Like prizes. Like property.
If you want to help bust the fuck out of the toxic culture that produces men like Elliot Rodger, you have to stop writing pieces that effectively explain how there's a "nice way" to be like Elliot Rodger.
Don't write a piece about how you learned how to get laid. Write a piece about how you learned that women are human beings.
If you have.
[My thanks to Shakesville Contributors Aphra_Behn, SKM, and Hallelujah_Hippo for the conversation we had which led to this piece.]
Daily Dose of Cute
"No, YOU'RE fuzzy!"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There is a strobe-light effect in this video.]
Rebecca Black: "Friday"
(Lest anyone thinks I am posting this to make fun of it, I am not.)
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
President Obama has accepted the resignation of Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki following revelations of what Shinseki described as "an 'indefensible' lack of integrity among some senior leaders of the VA health-care system," which resulted in "systemic" problems including Veterans Administration officials having "falsified records to hide the amount of time veterans had to wait for medical appointments."
[Content Note: Guns] The House of Representatives has passed "a small appropriation that will improve the accuracy of the national database used to conduct background checks prior to many gun sales. It's a modest step forward, given significant loopholes in the federal background system which allow many felons to evade background checks altogether—Congress has not yet addressed these loopholes. Nevertheless, this appropriation is a significant victory for supporters of gun regulation during an era when the National Rifle Association appears to have a veto power over legislation."
[CN: Guns; violence] Meanwhile, Joni Ernst, a Republican Senate candidate from Iowa referred to Elliot Rodger's killing spree as an "unfortunate accident" in the middle of defending gun rights: "[W]hat happened in that shooting and that stabbing is an absolute tragedy. However, I remain firm in my commitment to the Second Amendment. I have been endorsed by the NRA in this race, and again, just because of a horrible, horrible tragedy, I don't believe we should be infringing upon people's Second Amendment rights." Asked about her political ad that "contains violent imagery pointing a gun directly at the viewer and vowing to quote 'shoot [her opponents] down,'" and whether she'd change the ad, she said, "I would not—no. This unfortunate accident happened after the ad."
[CN: Violence; police brutality. Images of injury at link.] Nineteen-month-old toddler Bounkham Phonesavanh was severely injured during a police raid, when a SWAT team raided the family's home in the middle of the night and used a stun grenade, which "landed in his playpen and exploded on his pillow right in his face." Police say "they bought drugs from the house, and came back with a no-knock warrant to arrest a man known to have drugs and weapons. 'There was no clothes, no toys, nothing to indicate that there was children present in the home. If there had been then we'd have done something different,' [Cornelia police Chief Rick Darby] said." I don't even know where to begin.
Heads-up: "Ford Motor Co. is recalling 1.4 million SUVs and other cars in North America to fix steering, rust and floor mat problems." If you have a 2008-2011 Ford Escape or Mercury Mariner small SUV, a 2011-2013 Ford Explorer SUV, a 2010-2014 Taurus sedan, or a 2006-2011 Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, Lincoln Zephyr, or Lincoln MKZ, check out the details of the recall at the link.
Former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer will reportedly purchase the LA Clippers from Donald Sterling for $2 billion.
And finally: HAPPY GREYHOUND!
Quote of the Day
"Even critics are acknowledging that the ACA is bringing health care to those who desperately need it. In short, it's working. ...In fact, over 421,000 Kentuckians have signed up for health insurance through 'kynect'—about 75 percent of whom didn't previously have insurance and about 52 percent of whom were under age 35. That's almost 1 in 10 Kentuckians. Those numbers—and the testimony of the people behind them—contradict the mindless nattering of partisan-minded critics who need to leave their Washington D.C. echo chambers and talk to the people they represent. Because if each of the over 421,000 people who signed up via 'kynect' could grab 10 minutes of Sen. McConnell's time to explain what health care coverage means for their families, and if the Senator had the endurance to listen 24/7, it would take eight years to hear from each enrollee. That's longer than the entire new Senate term he says he deserves."—Democratic Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear.
BOOM.
Police Knew About Rodger's "Disturbing" Videos; Didn't View Them
[Content Note: Violence; guns; self-harm; misogyny; racism; disablism.]
In the immediate aftermath of Elliot Rodger's violent spree, during which he killed six people and injured thirteen others before taking his own life, police spokesperson Kelly Hoover said that "the sheriff's office was not aware of any videos until after the shooting rampage occurred."
That was not true.
Law officers who visited Elliot Rodger three weeks before he killed six college students near a Santa Barbara university were aware that he had posted disturbing videos but didn't watch them, and they didn't know about his final video detailing his "Day of Retribution" until after the deadly rampage, officials said.But of course we already know why. The four deputies, police officer, and trainee dispatcher who spent 10 minutes at Rodger's residence interviewing him concluded he was a "perfectly polite, kind, and wonderful human."
...The guns he used in the killings last Friday were stashed inside his apartment at the time, but police never searched the residence or conducted a check to determine if he owned firearms because they didn't consider him a threat.
The statement [issued Thursday] does not explain why the videos were not viewed or whether the deputies knew anything about the contents beyond a description of them being "disturbing."
That seems to be an assessment which might have changed, had they viewed any of Rodger's videos, which his mother told them were "disturbing" in requesting the safety check.
Instead, they simply asked Rodger about the videos, and he told them the videos were "merely a way of expressing himself."
Rodger wrote in the manifesto about the April 30 visit by the deputies and said it prompted him to remove most of his videos from YouTube. He re-posted at least some of them in the week leading up to the killings. He wrote that the deputies asked him if he had suicidal thoughts, but "I tactfully told them that it was all a misunderstanding and they finally left. If they had demanded to search my room that would have ended everything."Over and over, we see that deference to armed authority by men who are not black is presumed to be indicative of decency, while even the most willfully misinterpreted "resistance" to armed authority by black men (Jonathan Ferrell, Oscar Grant, et. al.) is presumed to warrant deadly force. These are both deadly assumptions.
Rodger was a predator—and predators prey. They know how to evade detection by working the tropes of a patriarchal culture to their favor. They know that all it takes it looking like a nice guy in order for most people to assume that they are one.
This is a high-profile case, but lots of police routinely fail to bring charges against rapists or domestic abusers because they seem like nice guys.
A key part of the prevention of violence against women is police doing a thorough fucking job and not substituting for a real investigation their personal impressions of a dude who's been red-flagged.
In the earliest reports on Rodger's spree, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown called Rodger "severely mentally disturbed." The "crazy gunman" stuff is not only a red herring to avoid addressing violent misogyny; it's also to avoid addressing accountability for the sort of police failures that abet violent misogyny.
Like believing a killer is a "wonderful human," because of his privilege.
[Related Reading: Feminism 101: Your Underdog Lovelorn Romantic May Be My Rapist.]
* * *
UPDATE: For those who aren't on Twitter, some additional thoughts I shared on Twitter are Storified below the fold. Content Note for domestic violence, rape culture, rape apologia, murder, homophobia, police misconduct.
Winners!
Last night, the first time in 52 years, two competitors in the highly competitive Scripps National Spelling Bee tied for the win.
Sriram Hathwar of Painted Post, New York, and Ansun Sujoe of Fort Worth, Texas, shared the title after a riveting final-round duel in which they nearly exhausted the 25 designated championship words. After they spelled a dozen words correctly in a row, they both were named champions.The greatest! KIDS TODAY! Get ON my lawn! ♥
Earlier, 14-year-old Sriram opened the door to an upset by 13-year-old Ansun after he misspelled "corpsbruder," a close comrade. But Ansun was unable to take the title because he got "antegropelos," which means waterproof leggings, wrong.
Sriram entered the final round as the favorite after finishing in third place last year. Ansun just missed the semifinals last year.
They become the fourth co-champions in the bee's 89-year history and the first since 1962.
"The competition was against the dictionary, not against each other," Sriram said after both were showered with confetti onstage. "I'm happy to share this trophy with him."
The boys will each get their own trophy to take home, and they will not be obliged to split the cash and prize winnings that come with being the bee champion. They'll each get their own complete winner's lot.
[Content Note: Racism]
This should be just a happy story about two neat kids, but of course, because Hathwar and Sujoe are Indian-American, a bunch of fucking racist shitbirds had something to say about that. Seriously, if your first instinct at seeing two kids do something amazing is to complain they're not white, REEXAMINE YOUR FUCKING LIFE.
[End content note.]
Congratulations, Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe! You're awesome.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker SteffaB: "What skill-based unscripted television competition series would you like to be on? (Game shows are included, and 'None' is perfectly cromulent.)"
I would love to be on The Amazing Race, but, apart from the fact I would lose every footrace to the mat, I would totally be one of those clowns who loses a leg of the race just because they don't know how to drive stick, lol.
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Paul Goldstein's Masai Mara Sunsets collection: Wildlife photographer, Paul Goldstein has spent years trying to photograph the perfect beginning and ending of the Masai Mara day in Kenya. Here, an elephant at sunset. [Paul Goldstein/Exodus/REX]
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Sexual assault in the US military.]
"[I]n Freedom of Information Act litigation that has now been pending for three years, the Pentagon argues that releasing its records regarding military sexual violence is too 'burdensome,' because it involves a large number of documents. But that raises more questions than it answers: Doesn't the volume of documents only confirm the magnitude of sexual assault in the military? Why is the Department of Defense opposing efforts to shed further light on military sexual violence, a necessary step to creating effective solutions?"—Sandra S. Park, Staff Attorney, ACLU Women's Rights Project.
Read her entire piece here.
Fat Fashion
This is your semi-regular thread in which fat women can share pix, make recommendations for clothes they love, ask questions of other fat women about where to locate certain plus-size items, share info about sales, talk about what jeans cut at what retailer best fits their body shapes, discuss how to accessorize neutral colored suits, share stories of going bare-armed for the first time, brag about a cool fashion moment, whatever.
Newsboy cap and infinity scarf both purchased from sellers on Etsy.
This is my favorite hat of all my hats. I would call it my top hat, but that would be very confusing.
I've written before a bit about accessories, and how, for me, they've always been a way for me to express my personality, even when I wasn't confident enough to wear anything—or couldn't find anything—besides dark, shapeless clothes.
I love hats almost as much as a I love shoes, and I am always keen to rock a cute hat.
I never owned or wore scarves, except my winter scarf, until last year. My friend Ari has terrific taste in scarves, and always seems to find interesting ways to wear them. She has one slate grey infinity scarf I have always loved, so finally I bought one for myself. I don't think it works for me as well as she makes her scarves work, but I love to wear it nonetheless!
Anyway. As always, this is a general thread for fat fashion, but, if you need a topic: Do you wear hats? If so, what's your favorite kind of hat? What is your position on scarves? Something something accessories!
Have at it in comments! Please remember to make fat women of all sizes, especially women who find themselves regularly sizing out of standard plus-size lines, welcome in this conversation, and pass no judgment on fat women who want to and/or feel obliged, for any reason, to conform to beauty standards. And please make sure if you're soliciting advice, you make it clear you're seeking suggestions—and please be considerate not to offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes people just need to complain and want solidarity, not solutions.
The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck
I am republishing this piece again by request.
[Content Note: Misogyny; rape culture; bullying.]
Despite feminists' reputation, and contra my own individual reputation cultivated over five years of public opinion-making, I am not a man-hater.
If I played by misogynists' rules, specifically the one that dictates it only takes one woman doing one Mean or Duplicitous or Disrespectful or Unlawful or otherwise Bad Thing to justify hatred of all women, I would have plenty of justification for hating men, if I were inclined to do that sort of thing.
Most of my threatening hate mail comes from men. The most unrelentingly trouble-making trolls have always been men. I've been cat-called and cow-called from moving vehicles countless times, and subjected to other forms of street harassment, and sexually harassed at work, always by men. I have been sexually assaulted—if one includes rape, attempted rape, unsolicited touching of breasts, buttocks, and/or genitals, nonconsensual frottage on public transportation, and flashing—by dozens of people during my lifetime, some known to me, some strangers, all men.
But I don't hate men, because I play by different rules. In fact, there are men in this world whom I love quite a lot.
There are also individual men in this world I would say I probably hate, or something close, men who I hold in unfathomable contempt, but it is not because they are men.
No, I don't hate men.
It would, however, be fair to say that I don't easily trust them.
My mistrust is not, as one might expect, primarily a result of the violent acts done on my body, nor the vicious humiliations done to my dignity. It is, instead, born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark my every relationship with a man—the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the careless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreaction, the eyerolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language ("humankind").
There are the insidious assumptions guiding our interactions—the supposition that I will regard being exceptionalized as a compliment ("you're not like those other women"), and the presumption that I am an ally against certain kinds of women. Surely, we're all in agreement that Britney Spears is a dirty slut who deserves nothing but a steady stream of misogynist vitriol whenever her name is mentioned, right? Always the subtle pressure to abandon my principles to trash this woman or that woman, as if I'll never twig to the reality that there's always a justification for unleashing the misogyny, for hating a woman in ways reserved only for women. I am exhorted to join in the cruel revelry, and when I refuse, suddenly the target is on my back. And so it goes.
There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. They tell them and I can laugh, and they can thus feel superior, or I can not laugh, and they can thus feel superior. Heads they win, tails I lose. I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, "I love you." I love you, my daughter. I love you, my niece. I love you, my friend. I am meant to trust these words.
There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil's advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women's Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that's so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.
There is the perplexity at my fury that my life experience is not considered more relevant than the opinionated pronouncements of men who make a pastime of informal observation, like womanhood is an exotic locale which provides magnificent fodder for the amateur ethnographer. And there is the haughty dismissal of my assertion that being on the outside looking in doesn't make one more objective; it merely provides a different perspective.
There are the persistent, tiresome pronouncements of similitude between men's and women's experiences, the belligerent insistence that handsome men are objectified by women, too! that women pinch men's butts sometimes, too! that men are expected to look a certain way at work, too! that women rape, too! and other equivalencies that conveniently and stupidly ignore institutional inequities that mean X rarely equals Y. And there are the long-suffering groans that meet any attempt to contextualize sexism and refute the idea that such indignities, though grim they all may be, are not necessarily equally oppressive.
There are the stereotypes—oh, the abundant stereotypes!—about women, not me, of course, but other women, those women with their bad driving and their relentless shopping habits and their PMS and their disgusting vanity and their inability to stop talking and their disinterest in Important Things and their trying to trap men and their getting pregnant on purpose and their false rape accusations and their being bitches sluts whores cunts... And I am expected to nod in agreement, and I am nudged and admonished to agree. I am expected to say these things are not true of me, but are true of women (am I seceding from the union?); I am expected to put my stamp of token approval on the stereotypes. Yes, it's true. Between you and me, it's all true. That's what is wanted from me. Abdication of my principles and pride, in service to a patriarchal system that will only use my collusion to further subjugate me. This is a thing that is asked of me by men who purport to care for me.
There is the unwillingness to listen, a ferociously stubborn not getting it on so many things, so many important things. And the obdurate refusal to believe, to internalize, that my outrage is not manufactured and my injure not make-believe—an inflexible rejection of the possibility that my pain is authentic, in favor of the consolatory belief that I am angry because I'm a feminist (rather than the truth: that I'm a feminist because I'm angry).
And there is the denial about engaging in misogyny, even when it's evident, even when it's pointed out gently, softly, indulgently, carefully, with goodwill and the presumption that it was not intentional. There is the firm, fixed, unyielding denial—because it is better and easier to imply that I'm stupid or crazy, that I have imagined being insulted by someone about whom I care (just for the fun of it!), than it is to just admit a bloody mistake. Rather I am implied to be a hysteric than to say, simply, I'm sorry.
Not every man does all of these things, or even most of them, and certainly not all the time. But it only takes one, randomly and occasionally, exploding in a shower of cartoon stars like an unexpected punch in the nose, to send me staggering sideways, wondering what just happened.
Well. I certainly didn't see that coming...
These things, they are not the habits of deliberately, connivingly cruel men. They are, in fact, the habits of the men in this world I love quite a lot.
All of whom have given me reason to mistrust them, to use my distrust as a self-protection mechanism, as an essential tool to get through every day, because I never know when I might next get knocked off-kilter with something that puts me in the position, once again, of choosing between my dignity and the serenity of our relationship.
Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?
It can come out of nowhere, and usually does. Which leaves me mistrustful by both necessity and design. Not fearful; just resigned—and on my guard. More vulnerability than that allows for the possibility of wounds that do not heal. Wounds to our relationship, the sort of irreparable damage that leaves one unable to look in the eye someone that you loved once upon a time.
This, then, is the terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: Men are allowed the easy comfort of their unexamined privilege, but my regard will always be shot through with a steely, anxious bolt of caution.
A shitty bargain all around, really. But there it is.
There are men who will read this post and think, huffily, dismissively, that a person of color could write a post very much like this one about white people, about me. That's absolutely right. So could a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual, an asexual. So could a trans or intersex person (which hardly makes a comprehensive list). I'm okay with that. I don't feel hated. I feel mistrusted—and I understand it; I respect it. It means, for me, I must be vigilant, must make myself trustworthy. Every day.
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.
Just in case they're more like me than you think.
[This post was originally published August 14, 2009.]
Daily Dose of Cute
This face.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Twinkie Jiggles Broken Orchestra: "Hi, My Name Is Ana"
My thanks to Shakesville Moderator Scott Madin for passing this along.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism] New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan is expected to sign a bill passed by the state senate "to create a 25-foot buffer zone around clinics that provide abortion services. SB 319 was filed in response to over 60 complaints by patients of Planned Parenthood of Manchester since the start of 2013. The complaints detailed verbal harassment, intimidation, and passage-blocking by anti-choice protesters. It had largely bipartisan support when it was introduced." GOOD. Although 25 feet is hardly enough.
[CN: Carcerality; abuse] A whistleblower raises the red flag on inadequate healthcare in Arizona's prisons, and an investigation finds "dozens of cases of neglect in Arizona'€™s privatized prison health care system. ...Since the state privatized its prison health care, medical spending in prisons dropped by $30 million and staffing levels plummeted, according to an October report from the American Friends Services Committee, a Quaker social justice organization. It also found a sharp spike in the number of inmate deaths. In the first eight months of 2013, 50 people died in Arizona Department of Corrections custody, compared with 37 deaths in the previous two years combined."
[CN: Carcerality; coercion; racism; class warfare] Manhattan Federal Judge Jed Rakoff makes the case that harsh mandatory minimum sentences are creating a system in which innocent people take plea deals just to avoid long sentences. Naturally, "many federal defendants face the same problem, with poor black and Hispanic defendants bearing the brunt of it," and, notes David Patton, executive director at the Federal Defenders of New York, which provides lawyers for defendants who can't afford to hire their own, "the charges that carry mandatory minimums tend to be the type that involve poor people: drug, firearms cases. These are where you have the most coercive situations."
[CN: Misogyny; objectification; hostility to consent] Men Who Read Magazines That Objectify Women Are Less Likely to Respect Sexual Boundaries: "The researchers point out it's certainly possible that guys who already have 'dismissive' attitudes toward women are drawn to reading magazines that objectify women. But they also suggest that the media can contribute to larger cultural attitudes about sexual relationships." Culture: This is how the fuck it works.
[CN: Misogyny; body shaming] A Utah high school arbitrarily edited female students' yearbook photos in order to make them more "modest." Because of course they did.
[CN: Discussion of disease] So, apparently a bunch of dudes have started drinking breast milk, because they believe it's like the best energy drink ever. Jan Barger, a lactation consultant, is doubtful: "Since it's designed to feed infants, she pointed out, it has a tenth of the nutrients a 200-pound man would need. When I mentioned Anthony's breast-milk rationale, she laughed. 'Well,' she said. 'We can talk ourselves into just about anything!'"
LeVar Burton launched a Kickstarter to raise funds to bring back Reading Rainbow, and they raised over $1 million in a single day! Here is a video of LeVar Burton watching the donations hit $1 million, and it might make you cry! If you are anything like me!
Today in Fat Hatred
[Content Note: Fat hatred; dehumanization.]
This is currently on the front page of NBCNews.com:
Fuck you, NBC. That man whose cropped torso you're using as a cautionary tale; the man whom you've turned into a headless fatty, as disembodied as possible while still retaining vague traces of humanity even as that humanity is reduced to its FATTY FAT FATNESS; he is a human being.
And, if he's like most of the halved headless fatties whose cropped bodies accompany alarmist news stories about the obesity crisis, he didn't give his consent for his body to be used for this purpose.
Fat hatred kills. Using this picture is not a neutral decision. Demonizing fat bodies, talking about us like we're a plague, is not a neutral decision. Dehumanizing imagery that upholds and justifies eliminationist campaigns against us is not a neutral decision.
You cannot claim to give a fuck about fat people's health when you clearly don't give a fuck about fat people.
Welp
[Content Note: Disablism; guns; misogyny; racism.]
Here is just a whole article about how Congress is too fucking useless to do anything about gun reform, so they're once again fixing to pretend like they still have a purpose on the planet by talking about mental healthcare reform in the wake of another mass shooting.
I encourage you to read the entire article, because there's a lot to talk about but I'm only going to highlight one part:
"Our mental health system has failed and more families have been destroyed because Washington hasn't had the courage to fix it," Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said in a statement over the weekend after the shooting. "How many more people must lose their lives before we take action on addressing cases of serious mental illness?"It would also make it easier for family members to take action to commit people who need treatment. The idea here, of course, is that we're meant to imagine that Elliot Rodger could have been stopped if only his family had been empowered to commit him. We're meant to imagine that every man who picks up a gun and kills a lot of people could be stopped if only their families are empowered to commit them.
...Murphy says his bill would also expand access to psychiatric treatment and it would encourage states to set a new standard for committing people — the need for treatment, not that they present an imminent danger. It would also make it easier for family members to take action.
This is a dangerous, and disablist, fantasy.
It is also tasking individuals with finding solutions to systemic problems, which doesn't work. It never works.
Even if we imagine that committing Elliot Rodger would have stopped his crime; even if we imagine that traditional mental healthcare could have meaningfully addressed the violent misogyny and racism underwriting his killing spree; even if we imagine that some finite consignment to a mental healthcare facility would have "fixed" him; even if we imagine that there was a law that empowered his family and that his family made use of that legal power and that Rodger was compliant with therapy into which he was forced against his will; even if we imagine all of these things in this one specific instance, we are required to cast aside everything we know about how our culture works.
And one of the key cultural habits which we are obliged to ignore to imagine that this sort of legislation could work is that "mental illness" is often deployed as an excuse on behalf of murderous misogynists and racists, and routinely deployed to discredit women and/or people of color who are addressing misogynist and/or racist harm done to us.
It isn't MRAs and PUAs and other lifestyle misogynists and chronic harassers and vengeful abusers who are called "crazy" by society; it's the women who are their targets. It's the woman who raise our voices in opposition to misogyny and harassment.
We are the ones who are seen as "crazy." As "hysterical." As "narcissists." As "delusional." As "paranoid." We are the ones who are dismissed out of hand by law enforcement, by human resources departments, by friends and family. We are the ones accused of seeing things that aren't there.
This is the reality of the culture into which Congress wants to unleash legislation empowering families to forcibly commit people they believe are in need of treatment—a culture in which patriarchal and white supremacist beliefs and behaviors are the norm, and challenging them gets you called nuts.
