Livre d'Or

I think I might be a feminist after all.

I've probably been headed in this direction for a while now. My sporadic habit of delving into feminist writing seems to have developed into an ongoing interest, and I've been finding myself more and more taking feminist lines in discussions I've been involved in. At the same time, I've been getting increasingly angry about sexual violence in various forms. I am not completely sure that feminism is the optimal way to address this problem, but there's not much else available in the way of movements organized around the issue, and it's important enough that I feel I have to do something. I can't just dismiss it as somebody else's issue when so many women's lives are constrained by the fear of rape, and when that fear has proved justified for so many of my friends.

There are undoubtedly some people who define themselves as feminists who are not at all nice or even rational people, but I've become increasingly aware of feminists I strongly admire. (Not just people I admire who happen to be feminists, but people I admire because of the way they live as feminists specfically.) It's never a good idea to judge an ideology by its worst adherents! Several people on my flist have influenced me in this direction, but

redbird in particular has inspired me. Partly, in fact, by not being terribly evangelistic about feminism, but just being an example of someone who is compassionate and thoughtful and makes sensible and enlightening comments from a feminist perspective.

The immediate cause for making this decision now is to do with the discussion around and reaction to the incredibly stupid Open Source Boob thingy. I found myself following links and reading posts about it almost compulsively, and some of it was really amazing and insightful, but some of it was incredibly, crushingly depressing. I'm not going to talk about it much because really absolutely everything original that could possibly said has already been chewed over about five hundred times. But the point is I was feeling more and more strongly that I want to be on the side of the people who are making insightful and compassionate analyses all over the place, and not on the side of the people who keep coming out with crass and depressing comments.

( further wibbling )

Recanting a long-held opinion is a bit painful, isn't it? Last time I went through a process like this was in my early teens, when I realized that caring about the long term environmental effects of my lifestyle was actually morally important, and not just some stupid trendy bandwagon. It's a big part of my self-image that I am capable of changing my mind if I'm convinced by better evidence or arguments, and that allows me to overcome the cognitive dissonance and just general embarrassment of admitting, actually, I was wrong.

I posted a slightly tongue-in-cheek essay to my OKCupid journal recently, on the topic of men who whine that women on OKCupid are rude to them. I give several possible reasons why women might be rude in an online dating context like OKCupid: ( summary of the essay )

The version I posted on OKCupid was a lot less harsh than this. I filled it with disclaimers about how I'm sure all the men doing the complaining are basically decent people, and how I understand that it's really upsetting if a woman is rude to you because of other men being jerks to her in the past. Even so, within minutes I got a comment from a guy whining that I was expecting men to be omniscient, and how unfair it is that women are so mean to him. (I suspect this is partly a ploy, he wants me to come back to him and try to prove that I'm not like those mean horrible women that he's complaining about.)

I'm also reminded of this long and tangled discussion on Making Light. There was a thread that was vaguely about feminism, and a commenter showed up with an anecdote about an incident of fairly standard harrassment of a woman by men. The reaction to it was kind of amazing. Many women started talking about how she might have been in physical danger, and ways to assess the probability of and hopefully avoid really extreme things like gang rape in that sort of situation. Many men started talking about how the guy sounded like he was a bit clueless but he didn't mean any harm, and there was no need for her to overreact so much, she should have been more polite. (Her supposed rudeness, by the way, consisted of: So I take off the headphones, look him dead in the eye, and say, "I would like to be left alone. I thought by now that would be obvious. Good night." And I put the headphones back on.)

Now, the discussion wasn't divided purely along gender lines, but the gulf was definitely significant. The thread unfortunately devolves into people yelling at eachother, with some trying to frame the whole discussion with standard feminist theory and others not understanding the asusmptions of said feminist theory, and I don't think any of that is helpful. But I think it's part of the same phenomenon I'm talking about in this post. Men just don't know what it's like to go through the world being female, and don't understand why a lot of women make an assumption of malice when an unknown man approaches them. Also, they don't see malice when it actually exists; the guy in Nicole's story wasn't just socially inept, he was getting off on having power over her, but he was keeping his threats deniable.

I've never been offended by a man chatting me up or expressing interest in me, if it's genuine. I am offended by men being sleazy and lechy because they can get away with it. I really don't like having to be wary of men; by nature I'm very friendly and will chat to pretty much anybody who approaches.

In a discussion in a locked post, someone mentioned those stupid "statistics" about how often people think about sex. Because I am incurably nosy (and also procrastinating), I decided to make a poll.

( poll beneath )

As usual, feel free to argue with the poll, suggest options I've left out, clarify beyond the detail of the poll options, etc.

Go back and look at the poll I posted a few days ago. I mean, totally, it's an LJ survey, it means nothing at all. But look at just how many women do the majority of the housework, and there's always a good reason for it; they just happen to be the one more bothered by dirt, or they're better at housework than their partner, or their partner works long hours so they have more time... In each individual case, it's of course nothing to do with gender, but I think there's something going on beyond just random chance here.

( lack of conclusions )

I don't have any suggestions for what can be done about this, mind you.

This is inspired by a discussion in a friends locked post. Please tick as many boxes as seem relevant, but make sure to answer only the question applicable to your gender.

If you don't define yourself as either "male" or "female", that's wonderful and liberated of you but there is no space for you in my poll. Answer in a comment if you like, and preferably don't hate me. The reason for this is that LJ polls have no direct way to link answers in two different categories, and for this particular poll I'm interested in the people who are still part of the binary gendered majority.

( ticky ticky )Oh yes, I am displacing from my own housework, why do you ask?

misia posted a poll about gender, and that meshed with stuff I've been thinking about the subject triggered by a remark of

redbird's about gender and feminism.

This will be rambly. I'll start by quoting my comment to

misia about how I define my gender:

I don't get on well with these kinds of questions, not because my gender identity is terribly complicated but because it's really trivial to me. I do understand that some people are massively upset about there only being two options for gender and want to pick something else, people who are strongly identified with being some form of genderqueer (by whatever term), people whose gender identity doesn't match their physical body. I'm not in any of those categories; I just want to pick "don't care".

I'm definitely female and more or less cisgendered. I don't on the whole get mistaken for male (or butch or any of the male-leaning genders) in person, because I have long hair, prominent breasts and hips and that sort of thing. Online I read either way and that's fine by me.

I'm not feminine or womanly or femme, but I'm not masculine or butch or manly either, and androgynous is silly because of the aforementioned physical characteristics. Plus the word implies partaking of both male and female, and I think I'm more neither than both (apart from the physical body). If I'm not allowed female as a gender as opposed to a sex, and I'm not allowed to opt out, then woman, or possibly girl. Geek doesn't feel like a gender to me, and I'm not sure whether I identify as that anyway. I like some male-related gender words, such as bachelor, gentleman (but I suspect that's partly because spinster and lady are sucky words).

If such a thing exists, I'm pretty much an agendered person in a female body. And being not really at all attached to my gender I'm not bothered that I read as female.

( exploring this further )

So far so navel-gazing. The way this connects to feminism is related to this very trenchant comment on gender presentation by

papersky.¹ One could argue that my not feeling especially female is because I'm rejecting the stereotypes about what female is supposed to mean. And yes, I do pretty much reject those stereotypes. But I do think there's more to it than that, I don't want to regard myself as agendered because I think women are restricted compared to men.

When I was a kid I felt much as

papersky does (though if I can express myself as well as Papersky does by the time I'm 100 I shall be delighted, let alone when I was seven; anyway I would have agreed strongly with her comment if I had seen it then). I was something of a tomboy, but I hated being referred to as such, or even worse, being mistaken for a boy (I had short hair, so it happened a lot). I didn't in the least want to be a boy, I wanted to be a girl who liked climbing trees and playing hockey and football and dealing with conflicts by physical fighting.

Now, though, I don't feel nearly so strongly. I absolutely believe that in principle women should be able to be scientists and be career ambitious and live on their own and express themselves confidently and all sorts of stuff that stupid misogynists think women shouldn't be allowed to do. But I no longer care that I personally should be perceived as a woman when I'm acting in ways sometimes classified as masculine. I'm simply a person doing the things I want to do, and my gender is irrelevant to that. Is it feminist to say, as

papersky does, This also is a valid way of being a real woman, or is it feminist to say, do what you like, it doesn't matter what gender you are? I have sympathy for both points of view, but lean more towards the second for myself. The question is, can I take that attitude without undermining people like

papersky?

Or am I missing the point altogether? It feels to me like feminism has something to do with this, but also that it is giving a lot of unsatisfactory answers. My usual response is to say, well, I don't care about feminism, I'm just doing what I think is right. But on this kind of issue, I don't want to be actively opposing feminism or harming the people who do feel strongly about their gender in whatever direction.

1] I'm trying to display the comment in my journal style because

redbird's original post is interesting too and my layout shows individual comments attached to the appropriate posts, but due to the weird way security works with S2, that might not work for you. So here's a link to the post in question.

Sorry if you're bored with this topic, by the way; I'm working through stuff.

So there were some visitors in synagogue this shabbat. (It's quite gratifying that I'm getting to the point where I can spot visitors as opposed to regulars I don't recognize.) Anyway, the male half of the couple asked me if I was the only woman in the community to wear a tallit. I told him that there are a handful of us, and also mentioned that there are semi-regular "egalitarian" services where women's participation is positively encouraged and that a lot more tallit-wearing women show up at those. He said something about a lot changing in 50 years but I couldn't tell whether he was being approving or critical. I didn't bother getting into an argument about whether this is actually an innovation, anyway.

It turned out that the person I'd been speaking to is rather a famous rabbi. So famous in fact that I had previously assumed (in a vague, non-specific sort of way) he was dead, as he is mentioned so much in historical accounts. And as he was leaving he said to me: Keep flying the feminist flag with your tallit! I said that it wasn't a feminist tallit, but in the conciliatory manner one uses for contradicting strangers.

I am sure the rabbi meant well (and now I know who he is I'm fairly sure he is pro egalitarianism). And no, I don't think it's insulting to be thought a feminist. It's just annoying that people should make a whole string of assumptions about my politics because of something I do for religious reasons, not gender political reasons.

( So why do I wear a tallit, then? )

Is that "flying a feminist flag"? I don't see it as such. I don't put gender politics above religion; in this particular case, I think the differentiation between men and women is not justified and that's why I ignore it. But I don't have a problem in principle with men having different ritual roles from women. (And now that I'm a bit more mature I don't think anyone who comes to a different conclusion from me on this issue is old-fashioned or sexist, either.)

Words that might need explaining: tallit is the Jewish ritual garment, often described as a prayer shawl, usually white with black or blue stripes, and where the important part is fringes at the corners tied with knots in a specific pattern. Tallissim is the plural that comes most naturally to me; it's sort of Yinglish though and probably not a "real" word.

I have always maintained that I don't care very much about the gender of the person leading services. I prefer egalitarian synagogues given the choice, but I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that many sections of the Jewish community don't believe women should take public ritual roles. With this background, I surprised myself by how strong my own emotional reaction was when I walked into synagogue on Saturday and heard a woman leading the morning service.

( being a Jewish woman in Stockholm )

While I'm on the subject, I owe my feminist friends an apology for this post. The post in my head was meant to be pointing out the incongruity of seeing these half-naked women prancing about on campus in the name of feminism. But I allowed the post by email function to tempt me into posting too hastily, and I got distracted onto being grumpy about protest marches as a way of achieving political goals, and what with a poor attempt at self-deprecating humour, it ended up looking like a rant about how feminism sucks. Which was really not my point at all.

So, many thanks to

redbird and

adrian_turtle for giving me serious and thoughtful answers and not being impatient with my ignorance about feminism. I am ignorant, but not as ignorant as I came across in that post, and I do appreciate people making the effort to explain their beliefs rather than assuming I'm the enemy. Thank you both. And my apologies to you and to any other feminists who may have read and not wanted to comment, for implying (even unintentionally) rude remarks about your beliefs.

I was really reluctant to create a gender tag, because I don't care about gender. But I find myself using it a lot recently, so there you go.

A troupe of all but naked burlesque dancers is a novel way of protesting that feminism is good and violence against women is bad. Actually, when I saw them my first thought was, guys, it's 7 degrees and raining, you really need some more clothes. My second thought was, oh, it's supposed to be "sexy". Only subsequently did I realize that they are meant to be part of the feminist demo that the college is running today.

When I first saw posters advertising the event "Demonstration about violence against women", my response was a bit, meh. Even the most sexist of chauvinists is not going to be in favour of violence against women, and having a protest about it is not going to convince the few psychos who are pro-violence. Recently, the posters with more detailed info have gone up and apparently the full title is a "Day of feminist protest about men's violence against women and children". That really put me off, because lumping women together with children as vulnerable people that one has a duty to protect doesn't seem to me to be a particularly feminist way of regarding the issue.

The girls with nipple tassles and thongs dancing in the rain with more enthusiasm than skill haven't really changed my mind on this. Violence is bad, duh. Demonstrating to that effect seems singularly pointless, and dividing up violence according to the gender of the victims is possibly even counter-productive. In as far as feminism is about working against anti-women violence, I am pro-feminist (as any sensible person would be). But if feminism is about devoting one's resources to methods that are likely to be totally ineffective, then even if the cause is worthy, I can't be bothered.

Tags