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June 17, 2009

Stunted and Misshapen by the Priesthood

The concern I closed my last entry with was this:

I began to wonder if it was the fact that I DIDN'T have the priesthood, and therefore DIDN'T have a certain respect for it, that has made me willing and able to call these guys by their first names. I wonder if men respect the authority of the priesthood more because they have it.

In 2002, Sunstone published an essay of mine in which I recount standing up in a zone conference and saying to my second (as opposed to my much cooler first) mission president, when he got Melchizedek on our asses and started issuing punitive, brutal directives, "President ___________, why are you doing this? This is stupid. It's wrong."

This was analogous to a private standing up during a briefing by a colonel about a military mission and saying, "Why are you commanding us to do these backasswards things? This is stupid. It's wrong."

In other words, it was a big fucking deal. Now, to my mission president's credit, although he responded by shutting down the meeting in order to shut me and everyone else up, he also admitted right then and there that I was RIGHT, and he never said another word about the horrible policies he had once wanted to institute.

We discussed the incident later, when I apologized. As I wrote in the essay,

Even though I felt that what I'd said was right--and as I realized upon reflection, he hadn't contradicted me after I said what he was doing was stupid and wrong; what he'd said was "You're right, Sister"--I still knew that the rule I had broken by saying it was simply too important. "I'm so sorry, President," I said. "I was wrong to disagree with you, and I'm sorry I made a scene."

"Well, mostly I was hurt," he replied. "I thought that you of all people understood me better than that. You should have known that it had nothing to do with you. When those elders started nitpicking about how to keep the rules in the most precise way possible, you should have just ignored them and me and sat and read your scriptures, and then when it was all over, you should've just gone about your business the way you wanted to. I know why you do what you do, and I wish you would've trusted my motives a little more too."

But how could I have understood him as well as he wanted? I know now that any person or institution that requires unquestioning obedience forfeits not only the right to be understood, but the possibility of it: understanding can happen only after questioning, comparison, exploration. Men in the Church, I was told often enough, were in authority over me; I should not try to be on an equal level with them. But exerting the authority of the priesthood seemed to render men not larger and stronger, but stunted and misshapen, unworthy to demand from me the mutual respect and understanding I felt ought to exist between me and other women, who were my equals. The good relationships I achieved with men occurred when they sought to minimize their authority, not when they sought to enlarge it as President Bertram had done that day. (emphasis added special, for this blog entry.)

I realize that the process of leaving the church differs for everyone who goes through it. But I confess that I have never understood a certain deference to or interest in the priesthood. It's not just what Jonathan points out in this comment, that the priesthood is largely administrative; it's that seems to hurt all but the strongest, most moral of men--same as political power. I don't know if there's something extra pernicious about the priesthood itself (I'm perfectly willing to believe that there is), or the sense of entitlement it so often involves.

This sense of entitlement plays out not only in the fact that men with positions of authority feel they have the right to tell others how to live, to chastise or excommunicate them when they misbehave, to ask about the details of sexual activity--you name any of the conventional ways priesthood leaders "exercise" that authority. It's also obvious in the ways that even men who see the limitations of the priesthood still focus on men's concerns, at the expense of women's, and privilege men's voices to the exclusion of women's. This is something I've written about repeatedly: Even at Sunstone, there are more straight men participating in panels on how to make life better and more just for gay members of the church (admittedly, a very important topic) than there are men on panels about how to improve the lives of women (which should also be an important topic). Furthermore, most of those panels ostensibly about the concerns of gay members of the church (though there's rarely a mention of lesbians) are filled entirely by men. Gay men often feel entitled to claim and retain the privileges of the priesthood at the expense of their wives' happiness and well-being. It's fucking INFURIATING.

I know, I know--most of these guys are NICE guys, and they can't be expected to understand certain things about others' experience, because (as a member of my family told me) empathy is just too difficult to strive for. (This was before political conservatives turned empathy into a liability.) That's a position I critique here.

I don't have priesthood envy, mostly because I don't think the priesthood is good for people. This is not to say that I don't want to see gender equality and parity--I do, not only in the church, but everywhere else. But I really doubt that extending to women the priesthood, at least in its current form, is going to help with that. I think it would be better to abolish the priesthood, or to reinvent it. I realize that's never going to happen, but I still think it would be a good thing.

The thing is, Jonathan is right that "Women in the church can heal others, perform ordinances and miracles" but what he doesn't acknowledge is that HUMAN BEINGS can do these things--in and out of the church. We don't need these old gits in Salt Lake City or Rome or wherever to give us permission to develop our potential as human beings.

So what I want to know is this: why, even after we realize that, do we defer to them? Why does it often take time and work, beyond merely leaving the rejecting the doctrines of the church (which theoretically should be enough, right?), for people to feel they are the equal of the person who, however blameless or generous or honorable his (and it's virtually always a HE) motives in wielding this coercive authority and acting on behalf of a repressive institution, is, nonetheless, wielding coercive authority and acting on behalf of a repressive institution?

That's the first question. And the second is, Does holding the priesthood make it harder or easier to question and/or reject the authority of the priesthood?

Posted by holly at 6:46 AM | Comments (2)

June 16, 2009

Men with First Names and Sweaty Palms

In John R's account of the conversation with the stake president in which said SP informed him of his impending excommunication, John wrote

This is the first time I've stood toe-to-toe with a Mormon leader and felt like his complete equal in every way. It's liberating to not feel beholden to Church authority and priesthood power.

In her discussion of John's post, chanson responded to this statement by writing

This jumps out at me because it's so alien to my own experience. Have other former believers felt like John has here? The last time the church leaders held any power over me, it was at BYU, where they had power to do real things to me, like expel me and withhold my transcripts, not just woo-stuff like withholding the keys to the Celestial Kingdom, etc. And before that, church leaders had authority over me because they were grown-ups and I was a kid. To me, John's statement would be like me being surprised that high school teachers are now my peers, when once they were so intimidating.

in a comment, I stated that I was nonplussed by John's statement. First of all, John has the priesthood (at least currently, whether he chooses to exercise it or not); he is the equal of certain church leaders in ways that I as a woman never would have been in their eyes. (Note: after I had drafted this entry and was finding all the links for comments and so forth, John responded to that, stating, "even if I (supposedly) held the priesthood, a) I was never comfortable with it, and b) in the Church I was still placed firmly in hierarchical relationships with other men.")

In this entry I'm going to provide all of what I said in that comment on Main Street Plaza, plus a little extra stuff, mostly as background and because I want a record of it here, but really this is all preliminary stuff to get to a discussion about gender and the priesthood.

Anyway. I certainly felt that I was the equal if not the superior of a great many Mormon leaders throughout my life.

It was, interestingly enough, a Mormon leader who helped me see this clearly and acknowledge it explicitly. Before my mission, there was a meeting in which a couple of men flexed their priesthood muscles and said, "Things are going to be the way we want, because we're in charge and we said so."

Afterward I complained to my favorite institute teacher, who had also been in the meeting, saying that these guys abused their power. He said, "I'd like to draw a distinction between authority and power. Those guys, they have authority. You have no authority. What you have is power. None of them has the personal power you have, which is why they got so upset when you disagreed with them. They could never stand up to authority; they can only wield it."

After my mission, before I finally left the church in my mid 20s, I went toe-to-toe with Mormon leaders all the time, who were often outraged by my refusal to shut up when they told me to. And rather by accident, I learned how deep their sense of entitlement and superiority was. Since I didn't respect some of these guys or their positions, it was rather natural to begin thinking of them as "Bob" or "Jim" instead of "President Smith" or "Bishop Jones." But when I slipped up and actually used their first names aloud, oh my god! It was like I'd assaulted them! How dare I! How dare I presume a level of equality! How dare I address them as they addressed me!

After that, except for a few really remarkable men who had treated me with respect and equality from the get-go, they were all just middle-aged dudes with first names and sweaty hands I'd prefer not to shake.

And even the good ones--well, if I was ever in a situation where they invoked their church authority and I wanted to show that it didn't much carry much weight with me, I would use their first names. Admittedly, THAT felt weird. One night, almost six or seven years after my mission, my first mission president tracked down my parents, got my phone number in Iowa where I was going to grad school, and called me, so he could ask me about entropy, a concept I had introduced him to once during an interview on my mission. It was nice to catch up with him, and of course by habit I called him "President Carlson" at first. But then at the end he said that he "was worried about my soul and wished I would come back to church" so I wouldn't go to hell (that last bit about hell was implied rather than stated explicitly). It was kindly meant--he really did care about me--so I responded to that kindness rather than the judgment and told him that I didn't worry about that, but I still ended the conversation by saying "Good night, Monte" rather than "Good night, President Carlson." This even though I continued to call him President Carlson in my mind (and in the occasional blog entry).

So I was really interested by this comment from John (which follows a really funny comment you have to read for its own sake) in which he says

I couldn't bring myself to address him as "President", so I called and introduced him as "Doctor." So I guess even if it took me three years to finally shake off my irrational fear of ecclesiastical authority, my inerudite lips still pay homage to the power of the institutionally bequeathed title

I would have called the guy by his first name. We both would have found it weird, but that's what I would have done. That's what I DID do in similar situations.

And as I thought about this, I began to wonder if it was the fact that I DIDN'T have the priesthood, and therefore DIDN'T have a certain respect for it, that has made me willing and able to call these guys by their first names. I wonder if men respect the authority of the priesthood more because they have it.

p.s. Please also read The Priesthood is Magic.

Posted by holly at 7:42 AM | Comments (8)

April 9, 2009

Reason "Dollhouse" Is Misogynist Bullshit #3: Sex + Violence = ?

If you haven't noticed the sexualization of violence against women, you haven't been paying attention. A defense in rape trials is often that the accused was just doing what the victim liked: giving her violent sex. Women, our culture tries to tell us, like it rough.

But the truth is revealed by the fact that in images of women subjected to violent sex, the woman is rarely happy. She's crying. She's terrified. She's pleading and/or fighting for her life. The violence isn't a turn-on for the woman; it's a turn-on for the person or people about to harm her.

And it's a turn-on, apparently, for audiences. And anyone who intentionally and explicitly links sex and violence in order to titillate an audience is not only not a feminist, s/he is a misogynist. I'm talking to YOU, Joss Whedon.

Which brings us to Reason #3 that Dollhouse is Misogynist Bullshit: sex made violent and violence against women made sexy; sex and violence linked so closely you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

There are snippets of this in every episode, but the most explicit and extended is in Ep 2, "Target" the horrible, stupid version of "The Most Dangerous Game" that all sorts of people raved about. Echo is programmed to be an outdoorsy girl so she can accompany hot young thing Richard on a rafting trip. They make it through the rapids, shoot wild (and possibly illegal) game for dinner, have vigorous, energetic sex in a tent, and before the sweat covering their bodies has even cooled, Richard tells Echo that she better get moving because he's only giving her a five-minute head start.

It's totally gross. It's not just that he intends to hunt and kill her, it's that he gets off on horrifying, hurting and confusing a woman he's just had sex with by casually informing her that he intends to hunt and kill her. He makes her vulnerable; he asks for her trust; he tells her he really enjoys being with her; and then he says, essentially, "It's going to be really fun to track and kill you." His goal all along has been to kill her.

That's misogynist. And please don't try to tell me that Joss is being misogynist on purpose, to show that it's wrong. We all know already that it's wrong to kill and hunt another human being. What makes this episode extra misogynist and evil is the way sex is used to heighten the violence, and the way the hunter gets off on the mixture of sex and violence. That is NOT critiqued in this episode; at no point does the show deconstruct what Richard did. And as the ep progresses, Richard continues to talk to Echo like a lover, using endearments, telling her that "his father would have really liked her" and that "she really is the perfect woman."

The fact that she manages to kill him is NOT some sort of feminist victory; it's a necessary conclusion if the show is going to continue and Eliza Dushku is going to keep her job. The good guys never win here, because Echo is not fighting for the good guys; in this case, she is merely fighting someone who is even more sadistic and awful than the people who own her mind and body for a minimum of five years.

The other really, really gross linking of sex and violence is in "Man on the Street," the ep Joss wrote all by himself and is thoroughly proud of. Sierra's handler Hern has been caught forcing Sierra to have sex with him while she's in her "blank-slate" state, a huge violation of trust since Sierra has programmed to trust him completely and to believe he will never harm her. As a result of her programming, she does not resist at all his demand that she let him do what he wants to her. Hern, of course, is relieved of his duties when this is discovered, and beaten up, and assumes he might even be killed for damaging Dollhouse property. And then we get this conversation between Hern and Adelle DeWitt:

DeWitt: Did it make it better, that she didn’t struggle?

Hern: No. It made it easier.

Then the topic moves to Mellie, the woman with whom FBI agent Paul Ballard has been discussing his investigation of the Dollhouse:

DeWitt: I need her killed and it can’t be clean. This is you chance to avoid the attic. You may even consider it something of a promotion. After all, this one will, probably, struggle.

Get it? Killing a woman is a promotion for raping another. Yes! There's a discussion of how Mellie will, probably, struggle, and there is an immediate cut to Mellie moaning and shouting, her head thrown back--oh wait, she's having an orgasm! She's suddenly in bed with Paul! (How did those two fall madly in bed with each other, given that he was so dismissive of her earlier? I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the writers didn't give a very full treatment of that relationship's development.)

The planning of her violent death and the fact that she will struggle is juxtaposed with her in orgasm. Given that Hern's in trouble for rape, this deliberate sexualization of the impending violence is really, really, really GROSS.

If you don't believe me, if you think I'm making a big deal out of nothing, think how different the scene would have been if the transition had not been from Adelle talking about how Mellie will struggle when being murdered, but to Sierra having her memory wiped yet again, and THEN and only then was there a cut to Mellie and Paul in bed having pillow talk, without the vivid sights and sounds of Mellie's orgasm.

The orgasm is there to make the violence sexy. But it doesn't work. It just makes the sex violent. It doesn't make the depiction we see of of the intersection of sex and violence a feminist study; it makes it hateful misogynist crap.

Now, someone will probably point out that Hern isn't really sent to kill Mellie; he's sent to be killed by Mellie, who is a sleeper active who turns into a ninja killer when she hears the phrase "There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is green.” But the violence goes on for a while before that phrase is uttered. Mellie could have been activated the moment Hern walked in the door. Instead, we get to see her terrified for her life, running, being caught and dragged by her feet. The emphasis is on the fear of this woman, not her power.

Yeah. That's a good way to sum it up. Buffy was about female power; Dollhouse is about female fear--not the eradication of it, but the creation of it, because that's what keeps the series going. That's misogyny--AND bad television.

See Reason #1 here, Reason #2 here, and an overview of the problem with "recreating violence against women isn't misogyny if you're doing it to educate" argument here.

Posted by holly at 1:01 PM | Comments (10)

April 5, 2009

Free Speech, Bad Arguments, and Violence Against Women

Yesterday, after feeling nauseated and violated after seeing another episode of Dollhouse (nauseated and violated is how I feel after watching any episode of Dollhouse), I picked up Heartbreak, Andrea Dworkin's memoir, a gift from a friend that I had somehow managed not to read for a few years.

I read it in two hours, and it was a perfect antidote to Dollhouse, because it also left me nauseated, because it gave me a portrait of someone who was TRULY trying to fight violence against women, and who wasn't using the fact that violence against women existed as an excuse to depict more of it.

Dworkin's work made me remember ways I have been violated, but it didn't replicate the violation and tell me it was edgy entertainment.

After I finished reading it, I did some on-line research, and I found this image, which to me is a pretty damn good analogy for Dollhouse.

In other words, I might have to respect, on both legal and logical grounds, a person's right to produce images depicting the profound degradation, exploitation and torment of women, even if such images make me feel nauseated and violated. But don't expect me to believe that you're significantly different if you're also producing similar images, even if you argue that your agenda is to call attention to the fact that such images are being created in the first place--as if any of us didn't really realize that already, except for people who don't WANT to know. You're still offering as entertainment images of women being sexually exploited. You're still offering as entertainment images of women in fear for their lives. Instead of offering solutions to the problem you claim you're exploring, you've become part of it.

Posted by holly at 7:32 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2009

Do Fetuses Have More "Personhood" Than Women?

Watch it and try to keep your jaw from dropping.

Posted by holly at 1:47 PM | Comments (1)

July 29, 2008

What Every Beacon of Liberty Needs

check out this cartoon by Ann Talnaes,

Posted by holly at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

July 1, 2008

Sexism, Subtle and Overt

I was going to post a recipe for green beans today, but my inbox was too full of links to depressing stories about sexism, so the beans will have to wait. (They're worth waiting for, and I really will post the recipe, I promise.)

First of all, the sort-of good news: a graduate student named Sezgin Cihangir cares enough about sexism to study it and its effects. His doctoral dissertation concludes that "Women suffer more as a result of subtle sexism than as a result of blatant gender discrimination. The subtle forms of discrimination affect one's self-image, which lowers performance. Victims can come to think that they have been justifiably rejected." The findings aren't good news, but the fact that he has documented this phenomenon IS good news.

Now on to the bad news: Katha Pollitt writes about the Backlack Spectacular against women and feminism that she is seeing in the US, citing evidence including the fact that Washington University has given Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree, that the supreme court denied women the right to sue over unequal pay, and women's shelters are closing left and right for lack of funding.

Kira Cochrane writes about the backlash in the UK, citing the unbelievable statistic that "the rape conviction rate in Britain has plummeted from 33% in the 70s to just 5.7% today, and that the 14,000 rapes reported each year are thought to be the tip of the iceberg - Solicitor General, Vera Baird, suggested that only 10%-20% of all cases are brought to the attention of the authorities." She also writes that

In interviews earlier this year, Alan Sugar, Amstrad founder, Apprentice star and government business adviser, repeatedly challenged a law instituted more than three decades ago. This law was one of the big wins of the 1970s feminist movement, making it illegal for women to be asked at interview whether they plan to have children, on the grounds that it is clearly discriminatory: a chance for employers to weed out any woman who wants to combine a family with work. "You're not allowed to ask, so it's easy," said Sugar, "just don't employ them."

Yeah. I have to go iron someone else's shirt now.

Posted by holly at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2008

More Proof That Sexism Is Tolerated in Political Campaigns and the Media, While Racism Is Denounced

The guy who created that horrible racist button I mentioned earlier has apologized and withdrawn it, and the Texas Republican Party is DONATING TO CHARITY (probably the only time in the history of the organization it has ever done such a thing) the money it collected by leasing a booth him at the party's convention.

But all his nasty pins insulting Hillary and her gender? Those you can still buy.

Posted by holly at 9:12 AM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2008

The Easiest Targets for Violence

The easiest targets for violence are women and female children.

I don't know what to say about Nicholas Kristof's editorial on rape as a weapon. Of course I've known about things like this for ages; of course my understanding that this sort of thing happens is one reason I'm a feminist. I guess I'll quote a passage:

it has become clear that mass rape is not just a byproduct of war but also sometimes a deliberate weapon.

“Rape in war has been going on since time immemorial,” said Stephen Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador who was the U.N.’s envoy for AIDS in Africa. “But it has taken a new twist as commanders have used it as a strategy of war.”

There are two reasons for this. First, mass rape is very effective militarily. From the viewpoint of a militia, getting into a firefight is risky, so it’s preferable to terrorize civilians sympathetic to a rival group and drive them away, depriving the rivals of support.

Second, mass rape attracts less international scrutiny than piles of bodies do, because the issue is indelicate and the victims are usually too ashamed to speak up.

I guess I'll say this:

Violence against women takes many forms. It is often deliberate. Sexual violence against women and girls has been used not only because it is so effective, but because it has often been seen as sex rather than violence. This attitude persists in our country--evidence of that is the frequency with which rapes aren't reported and the difficulty in proving rape: if a victim's unconscious, it's not rape, it's just a date; or if she was drinking, then it can't be rape, because drinking on a date is a way of consenting to sex.

Violence against women is a continuum. The treatment of Hillary Clinton in the recent campaign was not, of course, equal to a rape camp in Darfur, but it was born of the same hatred and contempt for women, as well as the belief that when sexuality or gender is used against women, it's not violence, it's sex: a Hillary nutcracker is appropriately funny, because it shows how Hillary is threatening or unappealing to men. Who cares about the fact that it actually involves violence against an image of Hillary, forcing something large and hard between her legs before you squeeze them as hard as you can? Men's sexuality and well-being is what has to be defended, and it's OK to attack women's sexuality in order to do that.

In fact, to some, it's OK to attack and/or exploit women's sexuality in order to give men anything they want: an orgasm, offspring, an income (WHEN did it become so cool to be a PIMP, for god's sake?), control of a particular region of the world. Women's sexuality is always fair game, and women's attempts to control their own sexuality must always be resisted, despite the fact that the world would be a better place for ALL OF US if women controlled their own sexuality and reproductive rights.

If you can't acknowledge that this is an attitude that persists in the world, you can't acknowledge something fundamental about the world we live in, and you're not really all that interested in justice or freedom or human rights. This is why I got so fed up when Mr. Nighttime (he of the endless ellipses........) discounted Katie Couric's pretty damn mild critique of the sexist treatment Ms. Clinton received from the media. (Every so often I wonder about when she stopped being Hillary Rodham, the name she went by until her husband began campaigning for president, and when she stopped being Hillary Rodham-Clinton, the name she went by when he was first elected. Obviously, our country couldn't even handle a female figurehead who didn't buy into all the trappings of conventional marriage, including giving up her maiden name.)

So the next time someone complains about sexism or misogyny, listen. Don't deflect the issue; don't try to discuss some other form of oppression. Don't be as slow on the uptake as the UN and its members, which are only now "recognizing the fact that systematic mass rape is at least as much an international outrage as, say, pirated DVDs."

Because systematic mass rape isn't some new invention or strange aberration. It's an extreme expression of an attitude towards women that exists everywhere on our planet.

Posted by holly at 7:49 AM | Comments (2)

June 12, 2008

More On Why I'm Glad Hillary Ran, and Hope We Keep Talking About Gender

Katie knows what she's talking about:

Posted by holly at 11:18 AM | Comments (11)

June 11, 2008

I'm Glad Hillary Lost, But I'm Also Glad She Ran

I liked this little editorial from Salon:

Posted by holly at 6:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2008

What I Read This Morning That Made Me Want to Go Back to Bed

So, the first thing that upset me was this article on mountaintop removal. I remember my sister, the hardcore Republican whose favorite channel is Fox News and great idol is Bill O'Reilly, telling me a few years about some tv show she'd seen on mountaintop removal, how horrible it was, how she wept as she watched it.... But did it make any difference at all in the way she shopped, consumed energy, thought about politics, or voted? Not a whit. She just thought it was too, too bad that these lovely mountains she'd never see were being destroyed. But she'd never see them, so why should SHE sacrifice or change anything about her life to save them?

Then there was this story about people facing economic hardship abandoning their pets. It struck me in part because I'd recently written something about the Mormon practice of stockpiling a two-year supply of, ideally, everything you need for two years: food, water, clothing, toilet paper, dog food. Yes, dog food: because, as I wrote, "You can't neglect to feed your dog just because Armageddon comes along." Hard times aren't Armageddon, but people are still throwing their cats out on the side of the road, tossing puppies down garbage chutes. I guess if people really don't have the money to feed their pets or get them veterinary care, they really don't have the money, but until it's truly a matter of feeding the dog or feeding the kid, couldn't they forgo some other luxury and honor the commitment they made in adopting the animal in the first place?

Finally, there was this piece from Salon called Little Girls Gone Wild, featuring an interview with M. Gigi Durham about her new book, The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It.

You have to have a subscription to read Salon, so you might not be able to see the article. But there's some pretty good stuff in it, for instance, this:

Salon: What are some of the distortions that girls learn from magazines and advertising about what girls' sexuality is all about?

MGD: If you've got it, flaunt it. Sex is only about baring the body, and exhibiting the body, and especially girls' bodies. That's a very narrow definition of what sexuality is. At the same time, you can't express yourself, you can't enjoy your body, you can't feel like your body is sexual unless you've got this perfect, sex goddess anatomy, which is something like a Barbie body. That's ridiculous, too. It makes girls end up hating their bodies, and not enjoying their own sensuality and sexuality. That's a real problem.

Then, there's this insistence that younger and younger girls are sexual. There's this huge emphasis on linking youth with sexuality. People mature sexually throughout their lives, and there is a lot of scientific evidence that women who are past menopause really enjoy sex. Children who are 12, 13 years old are not in a position to understand or cope with their sexuality very well. Linking sex to youthfulness is really dangerous.

Girls are always supposed to be changing their bodies and dressing up in order to attract male attention. There is not much emphasis on girls enjoying their own bodies, or even any reciprocity where boys might be thinking about what they could do to please girls. It's not very mutual.

So read all that if you want to feel worse too.... Or maybe I feel better, because at least someone is confronting the problem, getting the word out there. I don't know. MGD also advocates talking to children--even two-year-olds--about what marketing is and how it works, as in this:

I've done it. If they're watching a commercial on TV, and there is a toy, you can just start talking to them: "Do you think that toy is as good when you bring it home as it is on TV? Do you know why they make it look so fun, and like these kids are having so much fun? Because they really want you to spend money on it."

They understand.

Posted by holly at 9:00 AM | Comments (5)

May 13, 2008

Yogurt: What Else Could a Woman Possibly Need?

I found this on Salon's Broadsheet--it's too good not to share. It's "'substitute for human experience' good," at least for "the class that wears gray hoodies," sporting the "'I have a master's but then I got married' look."

Posted by holly at 8:58 AM | Comments (8)

May 7, 2008

It's ALWAYS Her Fault

I can't even comment on this story about a man who faced no charges or prosecution for killing his wife's lover, while she was tried and convicted for involuntary manslaughter, so I'll let columnist Jacquielynn Floyd and blogger Melissa McEwan do it instead, and provide this link to background on the case.

I will only add, that if the jury in Texas were to decide the Johnny Vegas business, I'm sure they'd figure out a way to make it all the fault of the woman he had hauled on stage. Don't punish the man with the gun or the power; punish the woman. At all costs, punish the woman.

Posted by holly at 9:05 AM | Comments (14)

May 2, 2008

Hey, Don't You Know Sexual Assault Is FUNNY and FUN?

Good god. Some British "comedian" has apparently... I don't know what to say. Go here and read about some piece of shit with the stage name Johnny Vegas who got up on a London stage last week, announced that he had no material, and so decided to have some woman from the audience carried on stage so that he could sexually assault her. Mary O'Hara, a writer for the Guardian, saw the "performance" and wrote a blog entry about all the ways in which it "crossed a line." And of course people come along in the comments and defend Vegas, and explain why it WAS funny AND entertainment to see a young woman assaulted and humiliated in front of an entire audience.

And then there's the nightmarish story of Josef Friztl, the Austrian who kept his daughter Elisabeth in the cellar for 24 YEARS, during which he repeatedly raped, beat and brutalized her, and father seven children by her.

OK, one was intended to be an evening of "comedy" where what really mattered was that the man doing the assaulting got off on it, while the woman being assaulted did not, so that eventually the assaulter wanted to be hidden from public view (he asked that the curtain go down so no one could see the end of his "act"); one was intended to be a way of life where what really mattered was that the man doing the assaulting got off on it, while the woman being assaulted did not, so that eventually the assaulter wanted everything hidden from public view.

Anyone seeing the connection here?

Posted by holly at 8:29 AM | Comments (30)

March 27, 2008

Feminists on Film

Posted by holly at 9:56 AM | Comments (5)

March 12, 2008

Women's Magazine Pays Misogynist A**hole to Insult and Demean Women in Print

Thanks to the media news digest I get every morning, I was able to spend several hours following the links detailing the sordid history of How Glamour Fired Nasty Male Blogger after its readers demanded the magazine do so. Turns out some self-proclaimed narcissistic asshole had a blogging gig at Glamour, which he used as a forum for writing about (among other things) running out on a woman after she made dinner for him because he assumed that some sort of small sore on her lip meant she had herpes, and how he then went to a Foo Fighters concert with her a week later, only to use it as an opportunity to feel up some other chick, and how being SUCH a jerk has been really emotionally HARD on him, especially since he forgot to the get the phone number of the anonymous chick at the concert.

The bile rose in my throat as I read about the events from the perspective of the woman who actually bought this creep a ticket to the concert. I'm glad to say that I've never dated anyone this awful, though I was sickened to realize that some of what the guy said echoed lines I heard from my evil ex Adam.... No. Won't go there. It's in the past. Anyway, after all his asshole-ry, this guy has the nerve to claim he's still the wronged one, that he would sue this crazy bitch, except she's crazy--really crazy, and he's afraid of her and for her--if he took legal action, she might hurt someone--even herself, and that would make him sad, because he's both an asshole and a guy with a big heart! As for the other details, well, Jezebel knows and analyzes the whole situation well enough that I don't feel obligated to attempt it myself.

What I really want to know is this: how did such an obvious douchebag and really crappy writer get this gig in the first place? OK, I discovered that part of it is that he used to screw the woman who started the blog at Glamour--it still has her name in the address. But didn't any of the editors read this guy's stuff? Didn't they pay attention to both the misogynist content and the dreadful prose? He treats women like shit, and then writes shitty little entries detailing it all. And for this he got paid? Like, not just with hair care products or a year's supply of Turtle Wax, but with real money, that stuff you can use to buy toilet paper, dog food, hot dog buns, bleach and a place to live?

It's all further proof that most fashion magazines are written and published by people who hate women and consider them stupid. If you don't believe me, check out Jezebel's wonderful column Cover Lies, which decodes the hyped-up teasers on the covers of magazines into the sorry, pathetic messages they really are.

Posted by holly at 1:34 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2007

Calling Rape What It Really Is

In a recent entry, dizzybuzzkill wrote

When I watch 37 trailers to upcoming movies and don’t see a single one about a woman, I don’t immediately come up with “regurgitated” rhetoric that explains it, I feel it first. When I hear a CNN newscaster tell me about the sexual history of a rape victim, my heart beats fast and my tummy hurts.

My heart is still racing and my stomach is still churning with revulsion after reading an item on Broadsheet, Salon's blog for women, about

an online discussion forum called AutoAdmit that advertises itself as "the most prestigious college discussion board in the world." According to the Washington Post, this "prestigious" discussion board also included threatening, sexist, racist and homophobic comments -- including strings of online attacks against two female law students who found out from friends that AutoAdmit users, often writing anonymously, had posted messages that included photographs gleaned from social networking sites, comments about the students' physical appearances, slurs about their supposed sexual promiscuity, and rape threats.

Which is bad enough. But what really upset me was that the two women filing a lawsuit against AutoAdmit's users

named DOE I and DOE II [in the complaint] in an attempt to protect them from further harassment -- were subjected to statements like "Clearly she deserves to be raped so that her little fantasy world can be shattered by real life" and "I would like to hate-fuck [DOE I] but since people say she has herpes this might be a bad idea" (that second one was posted to a thread called "Which female YLS students would you sodomize?").

Hate-fuck.

Hate-fuck.

I've never heard the term before but I'm certainly familiar with the concept.

At least this is an acknowledgment of what rape really is. It's not overwhelming desire, it's not passionate attraction too strong to resist, it's not crossed signals or unclear communication.

It's hate-fucking. It's violence, it's cruelty, it's intended to terrorize, hurt, debase and humiliate women, and the men who engage in it like it for the ways it harms the women more than for the orgasms it provides the men.

I have to go throw up now.

Posted by holly at 12:17 PM | Comments (4)

November 9, 2007

Under the Banner of a Really Great Collage: the 47th Carnival of Feminists

The 47th Carnival of Feminists is up at Ornamenting Away from dizzybuzzkill. I got up this morning, started coffee, sat down to read. I heard the coffee maker produce this click it makes when it needs to cool down because it's been on for too long, looked up at the clock, and realize I'd been sitting for an hour without coffee, because the posts were too interesting to get up from. (The coffee is just decaf--I don't need any stimulants at all--but it's nice in the morning to have a cup of slightly sweet, fairly milky warm liquid, which is how I like my coffee.)

There is something to intrigue, inspire and inform every feminist. I'm not done reading, but so far my favorite post (and new blog) is on "the modern cad" from Feminist Fire.

When you're done reading all the posts, please scroll down past dizzy's blog roll and click on the link to her banner art, which takes you to the collages of Blondstrawberry, a totally awesome collage artist. I am lucky enough to own a collage by Blondstrawberry--if you click on the gallery page and get gallery one, you'll see two columns of thumbnail images, the top right of which is a woman looking down at something. Click on that if you want to see the collage I bought.... It's called "Sober Beacon" and it hangs in my living room. It's not huge--only 4"x6"--but it's very cool. I got it when Blondstrawberry was just starting to sell her stuff and it wasn't pricey--it cost more to have framed and matted than to buy it in the first place--but I think she's seen some significant success and realized what her stuff is actually worth, so you can't get it for next to nothing anymore. But if you like her stuff, I would definitely contact her about acquiring some.

Posted by holly at 9:48 AM | Comments (0)

November 6, 2007

Really Long Comment, In Which I Disavow the Cow Part

So, I would be happy to live my life without anyone ever again bringing Ben Christensen to my attention, but as I continue to write about the damage done when gay men court and marry straight women (particularly in the context of Mormonism, with all its attendant ideas about what an ideal family should be like), and as he continues to be a gay man married to a straight woman and to find it hard to understand the patriarchal bent of our culture and his own privilege, that seems unlikely. In a recent post, I mention that his name kept turning up in google searches that led people to my blog; MoHoHawaii left a comment there providing a link to what Ben was writing that prompted people to do the specific search I was seeing. I wrote a long comment in response, longer than a lot of the entries I've posted lately, and thought about posting it as an entry of its own, but it seems better as a comment. If you're interested, click on the link and read it; if not, well, it's relegated to the comment section of the blog and you don't have to deal with it.

Posted by holly at 3:49 PM | Comments (3)

November 5, 2007

Narcissism and Misogyny

A couple of years ago I encountered a totally bullshit argument for the preservation and even expansion of practices that maintained the patriarchal status quo and buttressed the power of men at the expense of the rights and full citizenship of women. As is standard for an argument so thoroughly by, for and to the patriarchs of the world, it not only advocated for greater rights for men, it absolutely ignored the cost of the whole thing to women--because after all, the general concerns of women are completely secondary in a major social question like whether or not uncloseted gay men should claim what they feel has traditionally been “the exclusive territory of straight men” and marry women in order to knock them up and just be regular dudes who gets to go to Mormon heaven. No, the issue of marriage between men and women isn’t a topic where a gay man needs to think about the general concerns of women in heteronormative relationships (despite the fact that he has a mom, a wife, five sisters and a daughter) while defending his right to claim the same privileges a straight dude gets; it’s a topic where what comes first are his rights as a MAN.

I think most people conversant in gender politics will agree that an argument like that isn’t just patriarchal, it’s misogynist. Which is what I called it, along with the guy who produced it. But turns out this guy didn’t like being called misogynist--with all those sisters and that young daughter, he knew it was BAD to admit to misogyny (though he still hasn’t figured out that it’s also uncool to enact misogyny). For the past year, I learned recently, he has been fretting over the topic, trying to figure out a way to clear himself of the charge. And finally, through intense intellectual struggle and self-reflection, he came up with one! Turns out he’s not a misogynist; he’s just a narcissist! That’s right! As he himself writes, “to be honest, I do all too often think of my needs before I think of [my wife’s]; but it has nothing to do with the fact that she's a woman and everything to do with the fact that she's not me.”

Once again, the guy’s inability to imagine just what his arguments reveal about him is breathtaking. What do you do with a statement that can be paraphrased, “I’m often really selfish and insensitive in my relationship with my wife, but it’s not because she’s a woman; it’s because I’m really just a jerk in general”? It’s not as if misogyny and narcissism are mutually exclusive, after all; the profound selfishness and self-importance involved in narcissism might make it much easier for a man to be indifferent to the well-being of women in general, to think that it’s OK to oppress women--or at least wait to empower them--if doing so makes things easier and more convenient for HIM, the one who’s REALLY IMPORTANT.

Now, I’m not going to argue that ALL men are narcissists, because I don’t think they are. I feel I know men who exhibit remarkable compassion and generosity. But I am going to argue that for men who don’t want to do the work of thinking about someone else’s needs simply because those needs are someone else’s and not their own, there are plenty of ways in which they’re allowed to think it’s their god-given right to be narcissists if they want to.

Consider these examples: a friend (who is still quite young) told me that recently, her husband awoke very troubled by a nightmare. “I dreamed I had to put you in a nursing home. It was awful. I didn’t know who was going to take care of me,” he said, visibly shaken. Not, “I was so upset that you were ill. I was heartbroken that we were parted.” No, he said, “I didn’t know who was going to take care of me.” And when my own mother was in the hospital with a life-threatening illness, my father went off and left her alone; my sister found him at home, crying because he didn’t know how he’d care for himself if my mother died. Even now, she’ll have flare-ups of the illness that will one day kill her, and spend a few days absolutely inert in bed. On those days, my father, who is perfectly healthy, still can’t do a lick of work around the house. OK, he’ll drive himself to Wendy’s and buy a cheeseburger and a frosty for himself and the dog, but he won’t put the wrappers in the trash after he finishes eating. And if Mom says, “Can’t you please clean up after yourself?” he gets all indignant and hurt--how dare she try to make him feel bad!

But hey, it’s not that the behavior of my father or my friend’s husband are expressions of misogynist attitudes; it’s just that these guys are narcissists--in all the ways society trains them to be, because they’re men.

Consider the matter not in terms of gender but of race. What if some white person said, “All too often, I fail to consider how certain situations will affect this really important person of color with whom I have a really important relationship, but it’s not because I’m racist; it’s just because I’m a narcissist”?

And really, isn’t that the general defense of most misogyny and racism in this culture? Most men, after all, don’t think of themselves as oppressors of women; they just somehow understand that one of the privileges of being on top of the power hierarchy is that they don’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about the people below them, the people who take care of them. In other words, men just sort of know that society doesn’t require them to spend much time worrying about how the status quo protects men’s rights and reinforces women’s social subordination and economic oppression, but this has nothing to do, the argument goes, with the fact that the guys are misogynist and is simply due to the fact that the guys aren’t women. Likewise, most white people don’t think of themselves as oppressors of people of color; they just somehow understand that the privileges of being on top of the power hierarchy is that they don’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about the people below them, the people who, by and large, are more likely to do dirty work and manual labor. In other words, white people just sort of know that society doesn’t require them to spend much time worry about how the status quo protects the rights of white people and reinforces the social subordination and economic oppression of people of color, but this has nothing to do, the argument goes, with the fact that the white people are racist and is simply due to the fact that they aren’t brown or black or yellow or red.

Arguments like that are what allows misogyny and racism to remain invisible to most of the people who are guilty of them. Ethical, intelligent people in positions of privilege DO NOT let themselves off the hook with rationalizations like “I’m not a misogynist or a racist, because I’m an equal-opportunity asshole,” or “the reason I am not genuinely concerned with achieving the political empowerment of women and people of color isn’t because I’m a misogynist and/or racist, but because I’m not a woman and/or a person a color, and therefore not really confronted by the situation in a really personal way.”

And the other thing is, women and people of color do not get to cultivate narcissism as easily as men and white people; racial minorities have to learn about the dominant cultures often at the expense of studying, in any systematic or thorough way, their own. Likewise, women do not get to be indifferent to men; women do not get to ignore men’s needs and defend doing so by saying, “Oh, I’m just a narcissist.” Women are trained to put men’s needs ahead of their own in more ways than anyone can count, in everything from making out with other girls because it’s a turn-on for the guys watching rather than the girls performing, to throwing away a the wrapper of a Wendy’s cheeseburger purchased for a dog because the man who owns the dog has better things to do with his time than throw away his own trash.

The other thing the guy had to do to mitigate my charge of misogyny was to accuse me of misandry.... funny, my spell-checker recognizes misogyny, but it can’t make sense of misandry. OK, the OED’s earliest citation for “misandry” is 1909, while the earliest citation for “misogyny” is 1656. But no matter what a dictionary says, the fact is, in the current world, misandry is impossible as a political reality. Misogyny, after all, is not just the culturally sanctioned hatred of women but the general oppression that derives from that omnipresent societal hatred. There is no omnipresent societal hatred of men, so misandry is not a charge equal to misogyny, because it just doesn’t matter how much an individual woman hates or loves men in general. As a group, women can’t oppress men, just as slaves cannot oppress their masters and the employees of some major corporation cannot oppress the CEO and board. The disempowered cannot oppress the dominant power. They can harass, resist, frustrate and talk back (and they should), but that ain’t the same.

And the fact of the matter is, there’s a way in which I feel no need to dodge that charge. If by misandry someone means that I despise men who use their maleness as justification for why they should retain certain privileges women don’t have, then I am guilty of misandry. If by misandry someone means that I am SICK TO DEATH of men who would rather rationalize mistreatment of the women closest to them than actually stand up, step up, grow up and be an ethical adult, then I am guilty of misandry. If by misandry someone means that I have no compunction whatsoever about telling some asshole he’s being an asshole, then I am guilty of misandry.

Furthermore, I have my flaws, but narcissism is not one of them. Not only do I work to consider the wants and needs of others DESPITE the fact that they’re not me, I work to consider the wants and needs of others BECAUSE they’re not me. That’s the whole point of an ethos of compassion, which I think we should all subscribe to: you care about people BECAUSE they’re not you, because that’s the only way we all get to be happy and whole. I am SICK of this “I hold these really offensive attitudes, but it’s not because I’m a homophobe or a misogynist or a racist pig, it’s because I’m just lacking in compassion, imagination and spiritual maturity,” particularly when it comes in a religious context.

I’m reminded of when I guy I know really wanted to avoid the charge of homophobe, despite the fact that he worried that society’s tolerance of homosexuality would bring about the fall of civilization, a specious and ridiculous argument if there ever was one: just how many gay-friendly societies has the history of the world even produced? Seems like rampant heterosexuality (aka patriarchy) has been much more destructive--the Nazis didn’t tolerate homosexuality, and look how well that turned out; same goes for the Spanish Inquisition. Frankly thinking about this is starting to make me a bit heterophobic, when I consider how a really dogmatic adherence to conservative gender roles heralds some kind of social upheaval.... Anyway, the point is, the guy eventually just sucked it up and admitted he was a homophobe, albeit one who didn’t want to oppress individual gay people, because they might be reasonably nice. It was their collective rather than individual immorality that troubled him, but even still, he wanted to be kind to people, even when he disapproved of them. And while his stance on homosexuality didn’t really thrill me, really, what could I say about the other stuff? He was trying to be as grown up and decent as his religious beliefs would let him.

I think Mr. Narcissism could benefit a lot from that example.

Posted by holly at 10:45 PM | Comments (12)

October 31, 2007

Sex, Misogyny, and My Blog Stats

I am not religious about checking my site meter or my blog stats, particularly when I’m not blogging much, and lately I haven’t been. But I generally try to check them once a week or so, just because.

About a year ago I noticed that there was a lot of traffic to my blog from some site called Real Adult Sex. This totally freaked me out, for so many reasons. First of all, I figured it was a porn site, and I didn’t want to visit it, because (believe it or not) I’ve never consumed internet porn and sort of wanted to keep it that way, plus I have heard that a lot of porn sites infect your computer with all sorts of nasty spyware and so forth. Secondly, I couldn’t imagine why a site devoted to “real adult sex” would be linking to mine, because although I write a lot about sex, I write about things like how it sometimes sucks and how I used to be a prude (and sort of still am--hence the fact that I’ve never visited an internet porn site). I didn’t see why that would appeal to the readers of a site discussing real adult sex.

Then traffic from that site dropped off--though it didn’t go away completely--and I just quit worrying about it. Recently, however, it picked up again, and I thought, all right, I don’t care if it is a porn site; I have to know what’s going on. So I followed the links back.

And it’s not porn. (At least I wouldn’t consider it a porn site, though some people might, because it’s got photos of human bodies without a lot of clothes on.) It’s a blog about sex, written by a straight guy who uses the name Figleaf and takes feminism seriously. He refers to himself as both “a libertine prude” and “a prudish libertine,” which are each a label I think I could apply to myself, so I can see why he might find my stuff worth noticing from time to time. His blog is actually pretty great, and I feel stupid and sad that I missed out on reading it for a year because I was overly cautious about sex, in all the ways my church taught me to be. The most recent link to my blog has to do with cheese and why it’s a nice thing to lick off a body. (Just one more thing I’m really glad to know about--it sounds way better than the chocolate sauce or whipped cream business--but don’t see myself doing any time soon, ‘cause I’m feeling more prudish than libertine these days.)

I added Figleaf to my blog roll, though I had to think about where to include him, because I don’t have a section for sex. I almost went with feminism, because as I say Figleaf writes about feminism and critiques patriarchy, but decided in the end on "not so easily classified" which is not accurate, because the blog is quite easily classified; it just doesn't fit into the classifications I use. (There's a lesson there.)

The other thing showing up a lot lately in my blog stats are a score of google searches for “Ben Christensen misogynist.” Longtime readers will remember Ben--the gay man who married a straight woman in a Mormon temple wedding, wrote a really uninformed and poorly reasoned essay about doing so (which was published in Dialogue), and likes to google himself so he can see all the unpleasant things people say about him and then get angry and indignant and bothered, which led him to my blog, since I had pointed out both the dubious nature of his choices as well as the inadequacy of his defense of them.

Anyway, I’m not sure what’s up with the 20 “Ben Christensen misogynist” searches these days--probably has something to do with the fact that the most recent issue of Sunstone includes an essay based on the paper I presented at the 2006 symposium as part of the panel I organized on marriages between straight women and gay men. The essay appears in an issue foregrounding women’s voices; if you’re interested in Mormon women, you should check it out.

I’m pretty happy with my essay, which is the longest piece in the issue. There’s one subtle thing about it I wonder if anyone will notice unless it's pointed out to them: I tried to include references to lesbian experience wherever possible (which wasn’t so often because the essay is, after all, on relationships between straight women and gay men) and to privilege them whenever I mention them, writing, for instance, “lesbians and straight women” or “lesbians and gay men” or “gay women and men,” etc, so that lesbians always come first. I did this because the more I examine the issue of homosexuality and Mormonism, the more I notice how lesbians and their concerns are excluded from most discussions of the topic--so often it’s as if lesbians don’t even exist, or if they do, their experiences and concerns don’t matter as much as those of gay men. I wanted to show that although I was not focusing on the concerns of lesbians, I was at least aware of their existence and advocate for their rights.

I’m also fairly satisfied with the critique I offer of Christensen’s position, which I purposely kept pretty restrained. I talked to the editor quite a bit about how lousy and misogynist Christensen’s essay was, and how remarkable it was that the editors and respondents at Dialogue didn’t see this. I worried that some folks at Dialogue would be upset by the fact that I also take them to task ever so briefly for not seeing how truly reactionary, conservative and unenlightened Christensen’s essay is, but the folks at Sunstone pointed out to me that Dialogue published it, and they needed to take their lumps.

Anyway, for those of you who are here because you want to know why I applied the title misogynist to Ben Christensen, well, here are a few of the primary reasons:

1. He is so thoroughly the beneficiary of patriarchy that he can’t even recognize where his privilege begins. He can’t see, for instance, as I pointed out in yesterday’s post, that his decision to court a straight woman proceeded from the very beginning from a position of power and privilege.

2. In his essay, he shows that he is concerned only with the ways that hetereonormativity and its attendant customs and practices have hurt him, even though the primary victims of heteronormativity are women.

3. In his comments on my blog, he reveals that he is so indifferent to and ignorant of the impact of patriarchy in the lives of women that he believes, as he states explicitly, he is above it and can define his relationships with women entirely on his own, despite a list of the ways he chafes at how society defines and restricts him as a gay man.

4. As I discuss in my essay, he felt entitled to expect the support of women and feminists for his positions and arguments, just because, even though he never stopped to think about the ramifications for women of his positions and arguments. Seriously: would women’s lives be better if even more gay men decide to court and marry straight women, asking them to agree to lifelong fidelity in a marriage that forecloses the possibility of true erotic attachment, just so the guys can be dads the heteronormative way and "fulfill heavenly father’s plan," which is what Christensen’s argument boils down to? (Why not just let gay men marry and adopt, so they can be dads in a way that has far less impact on women, and makes them happier in the first place?) And is someone who expects the support of women and feminists but never stops to ask a question like that, a friend or a foe of the feminist cause and women in general (however decent or not he might be to individual women)?

5. He doesn’t bother to learn about the context.

6. In other words, he advocates for the continued privileges of men, at the expense of the well-being of women, and he does so from a position of ignorance and entitlement.

Anyway, my thanks to Figleaf for the links, and to Ben, well, I hope you get whatever you want most, because as I mentioned yesterday, I don’t know what to wish for you: that you never fall madly in love and so find it easier to stay in the marriage you committed to (even though you can admit in your writing some of the ways in which it is deficient), or that you do fall in passionately, madly in love but end up dealing with divorce. I want the world to be a place that makes it easier for you to be happy, provided your happiness doesn't come at the expense of someone else's full humanity--actually, that's what I want for everyone. I just wish you were able to want the same for women--but for you to want that, you'd have to renounce the position you took in "Getting Out/Staying In," and I doubt you're ready to do that.

Posted by holly at 7:43 AM | Comments (6)

October 16, 2007

Being a Feminist (Female or Male) Is Good for Your Sex Life

Check it out: something we feminists always knew is finally supported by researched evidence: having the courage, self-esteem and commitment to equality involved in identifying yourself as a feminist actually makes it more likely, not less, that you'll enjoy healthy relationships and find sexual satisfaction.

These are the conclusions of a study by Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan of Rutgers, published this week in the journal Sex Roles. A press release about the article states that

It is generally perceived that feminism and romance are in direct conflict. Rudman and Phelan’s work challenges this perception. They carried out both a laboratory survey of 242 American undergraduates and an online survey including 289 older adults, more likely to have had longer relationships and greater life experience. They looked at men’s and women’s perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction.

They found that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women. Men with feminist partners also reported both more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction. According to these results, feminism does not predict poor romantic relationships, in fact quite the opposite.

The authors also tested the validity of feminist stereotypical beliefs amongst their two samples, based on the hypothesis that if feminist stereotypes are accurate, then feminist women should be more likely to report themselves as being single, lesbian, or sexually unattractive, compared with non-feminist women.

Rudman and Phelan found no support for this hypothesis amongst their study participants. In fact, feminist women were more likely to be in a heterosexual romantic relationship than non-feminist women. The authors conclude that feminist stereotypes appear to be inaccurate, and therefore their unfavorable implications for relationships are also likely to be unfounded.

So there you have it: it's not only personally rewarding to BE feminists, but to date and marry them.

Posted by holly at 2:32 PM | Comments (2)

October 7, 2007

Systematic Rape on an Unprecedented Scale

If you haven't already read it, you have to read this horrifying article in the NY Times on the brutal, vicious rapes being perpetrated in the Congo. Watch the video that accompanies the article as well. As both the article and the video state, "While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon," and sexual assault is being used to terrorize on an scale and with a viciousness that are unprecedented.

I'm currently working on a paper about trauma and religion, so I've been reading analyses of trauma. One text I'm reading argues that

to be called traumatic--to produce what are seen as symptoms of trauma--an event has to be more than just a situation of utter powerlessness. In an important sense, it has to entail something else. It has to involve a betrayal of trust as well. There is an extreme menace, but what is special is where the threat of violence comes from. What we call trauma takes place when the very powers that we are convinced will protect us and give us security become our tormentors, when the community of which we consider ourselves members turn against us or when our family is no longer a source of refuge but a site of danger.

I would say that applies to the family of humanity, not just one's immediate family. You just don't expect another human being to tie you to a tree for four months and gang rape you every day. You don't expect another human being to shove a block of splintery wood so far up you that your reproductive and digestive organs are beyond repair. And you sure as hell don't expect them to do it to you just because you're female. But that's why this is happening. And while violence against women this vicious, this brutal, is not wide-spread in the US, it is by no means unknown or uncommon--just watch any crime show and see how many of the crimes depicted involve the sexual torture and intentional degradation of women.

Posted by holly at 10:26 AM | Comments (2)

September 26, 2007

Warren Jeffs Found Guilty

I was triumphantly relieved to read that Warren Jeffs, "prophet" of the Fundmantalist COJCOLDS or whatever it's called, has been found guilty in Utah of two counts of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl. He faces more charges in Arizona as well.

The arguments of the defense in all this just sound so gross. I'm glad the jury focused on the fact that the girl was 14, and that she was told that if she didn't submit to this marriage she didn't like, she'd go to hell. Those are, I think the most relevant issues in the matter.

Posted by holly at 11:34 AM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2007

Hormone-Mimickers Produce More Girl Babies

Here's a very upsetting story announcing that "Man-made chemicals blamed as many more girls than boys are born in Arctic" because high-levels of gross toxins (particularly those in flame retardants) in the food supply "can change sex of child during pregnancy," and here's another saying the same thing, but with slightly different details.

It's horrifying, how nasty and icky we've let our food supply get, and there are definite challenges to be faced in the village in Greenland where only girls have been born. But I can't help thinking that if the chemicals worked the other way--if they changed the sex of the baby from a girl to a boy--walrus carcasses absolutely laden with this gross stuff would be sold in certain countries as a way to avoid having to abort unwanted female babies--just turn them into boys during the first three weeks of gestation!

The only comfort is that the world so loves its baby boys that there will probably be swift action now to clean this nasty stuff up.

Posted by holly at 9:18 AM | Comments (2)

September 10, 2007

Using Your Granddaughter as Pin Cushion

Here's a story that has so upset me I scarcely can articulate all the reasons why: a 31-year-old Chinese woman went to the doctor because she had blood in her urine; turns out she has 26 sewing needles embedded in her body; and the likely explanation is that when she she an infant, her grandparents stuck all the needles in her because they were upset that she wasn't a boy. Some of the needles have worked their way into vital organs; one needle has broken into three pieces in her brain.

OK, I'm really distressed by the fact that female fetuses are so often aborted in India and China; I'm horrified by female infanticide. I realize that what I'm about to write is obvious, but those aborted fetuses and murdered infants don't have to live with the knowledge that their families didn't want them because they were female. I'm not saying it's better to be killed as an infant than to discover, at age 31, that your grandparents (whom you were probably trained to love and respect) were disappointed enough by your sex that they'd try to kill you, but I am saying that I find it hard to wrap my mind around how that might alter your view of yourself, your family and the world.

Of course, women do have to live with the knowledge that the world considers them of secondary importance, and largely disposable. But hey, we have our ENTIRE LIVES to come to terms with THAT fact, because basically not a day goes by when that message isn't communicated. But there's something about finding out one day that you have a needle in your brain put their by your grandparents that just takes things into a different realm for me--I can't imagine how that would change your fundamental experience of yourself and your world. I think it would make me afraid even to lie down and put my head on a pillow.

The world is a sick, sick place.

Posted by holly at 1:01 PM | Comments (1)

July 2, 2007

In Case You Have or Are Interested in Breasts

Over the weekend I read A History of the Breast by Marilyn Yalom, which should be required reading for anyone with breasts or an interest in them, which I realize doesn't cover everyone but covers a lot of people. The book was fascinating, and full of memorable illustrations and photos, including a set depicting a "Bosom Ballet." It told me many things I'd never considered which were obvious once they were pointed out to me, like the significance of the name for the kind of animal we are: mammalia, coined by 18th-century Swedish physician Carolus Linnaeus, comes from the Latin term mammae (milk-secreting organs) and literally means "of the breast." So as a group, warm-blooded animals with a four-chambered heart are named for an attribute only half of them share: the ability to produce milk for suckling their young.

It also answered a question I'd been wondering about lately: Why is that galaxy up in the sky most of us can't see any more because our night skies are so marred by light pollution, called "the Milky Way"? Why is it considered milky? Why not "the Sparkly Belt"? Why not a lot of things?

Well. Turns out we have Greek mythology to thank for the name. Yalom states,

It was believed that mortals could become immortal if they were suckled at the breast of the queen of goddesses. So, when Zeus wanted his son Hercules--whose mother was the mortal Alcmena--to have immortality, he had him placed quietly at Hera's breast while she was sleeping. But Hercules sucks so vigorously that she was awakened and realized he was not her own child. Indignant, she drew the breast away with such force that the milk spurted into the heavens and created the Milky Way.

I also learned that large breasts have not always been considered the "crown jewels of femininity," as Yalom puts it; turns out that in the renaissance, breasts were best if they were "small, white, round like apples, hard, firm, and wide apart." Thought you'd want to know.

And I learned quite a few things that fairly upset me, one being the origin of the phrase "tits on a tray." I had always heard the phrase used to describe very upright, obvious breasts, intentionally supported and showcased to be, well, in your face. (It wasn't necessarily the most female-friendly way of talking about female bodies, but I could live with it.) But it turns out that Saint Agatha, an early Christian martyr whose death included having her breasts mutilated and removed by Roman soldiers, is often depicted in religious iconography as carrying her tits on a tray. There are two paintings of her included in the book; one shows her with her arms tied over her head to a tree limb; she's smiling and nubile as this soldier fits a giant set of clippers around her breast. The depiction of extreme and brutal violence on a woman who sports a "come hither" smile makes the painting pornographic, if you ask me, in ways the "Bosom Ballet" could never be. The other painting shows Agatha, well, carrying her tits on a tray. She's fully clothed and appears healthy, and the tits on the tray are free of blood or gore--they look like tidy little currant-adorned puddings or something, which she's preparing to serve the viewer. Anyway, needless to say, if someone uses that phrase in my hearing in the future, I'll ask them please not to do it again, because whatever it might mean now, its origins are too violent and misogynist.

Yalom discusses the fact that for most of history, discussions of the breast has been conducted by and for men, just as depictions of breasts have been generally been created by and for men. This is one reason she approves of the Bosom Ballet, which I have to say I also found hilarious; it's created by a lesbian, Annie Sprinkle, and if I understand Yalom's analysis correctly, the point is not to titillate, but to "[debunk] the traditional ‘ivory-orb' vision of breasts" by showing real breasts and the way they sag, bounce, respond to pressure, etc.

Yalom's feminist and women-centric agenda is announced in the table of contents, which includes the following chapters:

1. The Sacred Breast: Goddesses, Priestesses, Biblical Women, Saints, and Madonnas

2. The Erotic Breast: "Orbs of Heavenly Frame"

3. The Domestic Breast: A Dutch Interlude

4. The Political Breast: Bosoms for the Nation

5. The Psychological Breast: Minding the Body

6. The Commercialized Breast: From Corsets to Cyber-Sex

7. The Medical Breast: Life-Giver and Life-Destroyer

8. The Liberated Breast: Politics, Poetry, and Pictures

9. The Breast in Crisis

Yalom manages to set forth a coherent, logical chain of meaning and history that includes attention to everything from shifting attitudes towards breast feeding, depictions and exploitation of breasts during wartime (including the differences among the French icon of Liberte, also known as Marianne, the English icon Britannia, and the American symbol Columbia, as well as the practice of painting bare-breasted women on airplanes), and the evolution of breast cancer treatment, to innovations in garments designed to cover or support breasts. I was very interested and quite impressed. I'd even called it a page-turner.

Posted by holly at 10:15 AM | Comments (4)

November 8, 2006

Marriage Manifesto

My friend Troy is awesome. He is not only gay (sexual orientation) but queer (social identity) and after the four panelists had spoken in the Brokeback session at Sunstone (see the intro and the excerpt), I asked him to come up and make a comment, in part because he knew all four women on the panel, and in part because I knew he'd deliver both a queer-positive and a woman-positive message. He gets it: he understands the patriarchy is the basic problem, and claims that one reason he's such a decent, enlightened person is because he has listened to the women in his life. He also doesn't take the "oh, I'm gay and it's such a source of heartache" approach to homosexuality--he acknowledges that people go through that stage, but at some point, he says, embrace your gayness! Love yourself for who you are! Be positive about all the fabulous aspects of gayness, instead of trying to retain as many elements of straightness as you possibly can.

Troy does a radio show in Salt Lake called Now Queer This. He's working a documentary about some brouhaha in southern Utah over legislation to define a marriage as existing only between one man and one woman. He has filmed orthodox Mormons, gays, and polygamists as part of the movie.

Troy gets this as well: alternative marriage is alternative marriage, and so he supports the decriminalization of polygamy. Independent polygamists get it too: many support legalization of gay marriage between consenting adults because they realize that it will pave the way for decriminalization of polygamy among consenting adults. (Which many in the gay community find distressing.) My family, which is well stocked with Mormon Republican lawyers and judges who find both gay marriage and polygamy revolting (one is counter to god's will, and the other is entirely god's will, but not something anyone with any self esteem and a real love for her spouse would ever do if she could possibly avoid it), understand that point as well--and they're really afraid.

And all that is why, at dinner a couple of days after Sunstone ended, Troy and I began discussing how we rather hoped the issue of alternative marriage was forced in Utah, that some federal ruling made both gay marriage AND polygamy legal, not only because it would be legally consistent, but because it would be really, really fun to watch the brethren of the church squirm as they tried to decide what to do about the legacy of polygamy, this horrible embarrassment that is rejected by the church as a practice but embraced as a doctrine.

Unfortunately our position enraged Annabelle, a Mormon feminist who joined us for dinner. Annabelle is devoutly opposed to religious polygyny, as she calls the Mormon flavor of polygamy. She felt that the legalization of polygamy would ensure the repression of women.

Troy and I argued otherwise: make it legal! Shine the light of day on the whole sordid business, and make it less sordid. Insist that all plural marriages be recognized by the legal system, so that any marriage that appears to be coercive, or to involve someone who is underage, can be stopped, and the men in such cases prosecuted.

Which is a way of saying that I fully support the right of all consenting adults to marry whomever they want.

If a gay woman wants to marry a straight man and he wants to marry her, I support their legal right to do so.

If two straight men want to marry one straight woman and she wants to marry them both, I support their legal right to do so.

If two bi-sexual women want to each other, as well as two bi-sexual men who have also married each other, so that all four are married to each of the other three, I support their legal right to do so.

What I don't support--and I believe that both religious polygyny and the rhetoric of Ben Christensen (and very likely his actual marriage) are examples of this--is the invocation of religion, God's will and God's favor in support of marriages that privilege the desires and demands of men over those of women.

And since there's no way to legislate against that particular dimension, I'm left with discussing why I think such patriarchal marriages are back-asswards, foolish and destructive, even though I feel quite strongly that as long as they involve adults of relatively sound mind, they should be legal.

So, Ben et al, there you have it, just as you requested: I acknowledge your right to do as you want, and I support your legal right to marry whomever you want, to work out your sex life as you see fit, and to have as many children as your marriage can produce.

Now please acknowledge my right to find your choices in this regard every bit as foolish, naive, and pigheaded as those of someone who chooses to eat nothing but celery, lettuce, rice cakes, diet soda and laxatives, and is always defending her right to be anorexic.

Acknowledge as well my right to critique a piece published in a magazine I've subscribed to and published in for years, and to call attention to bad logic, poor writing and limited thinking when I see it.

Ben has already acknowledged that he was foolish not to imagine that there could be a feminist critique of his position--not that he acknowledged the validity of my critique, just that he should not have assumed no such critique would ever happen.

It ain't much, but considering the source, it's a start.

Posted by holly at 10:25 AM | Comments (1)

September 7, 2006

Feminist Carnival, Again

At the beginning of the summer I strayed from my commitment to blogging about feminism, but there at the end, when I started preparing for Sunstone, I got it back.... Anyway, the current carnival is up at Redemption Blues. I've perused some of the other very fine offerings--in particular I was struck by this post about the Stained Glass Ceiling: Rankism in Action on My Left Wing. The author, Breakingranks, neatly summarized my experience with Mormonism:

Lately, PR folk have been fond of the idea that markets are conversations. This implies a level playing field where people negotiate as equals and make fair exchanges. However, the spiritual authority hijacks the market. The spiritual authority stands on a platform and preaches to the masses. Spiritual authority is one (man's) vision imposed on all others, winning pre-eminence through guile, mass mobilization, and acts of verbal violence. The spiritual authority dictates reality, recording their vision on the world as if people were blank tapes. Perhaps spiritual authority does win in the marketplace of ideas and values, but perhaps we should ask ourselves why there should be a marketplace at all. And if there is a market, doesn't a diverse world imply niche markets of ideas instead of some beady-eyed guy shouting transcend, transcend, transcend!

Also wonderful: this post, Owning Beauty, on Basket of Eggs, about the significance of a beautiful blue dress she'd made.

Posted by holly at 12:26 AM | Comments (3)

August 24, 2006

Just As God Made Me

Posted by holly at 9:59 AM | Comments (23)

August 4, 2006

Old Testament Weirdness

In the comments to yesterday's post on Brokeback Mountain, CL Hanson notes that she learned at BYU that "in [Mormon] culture woman is the disposable person." That's something learned in college myself, albeit in a bible lit class, when I read this gruesome story in Judges 19, which I'm going to tell now, and then we're going to take a break from this topic, since it doesn't seem wildly popular. [OK, I lied: there's a followup here.] Plus, I'm almost done with the paper and will have time to write about something else for a while. But here it is, without further ado, one of the grossest stories from the Old Testament:

In Judges 19, we get the story of a Levite from Mount Ephriam whose concubine leaves him in order to return to her parents' house, an activity labeled "playing the whore against him," or valuing her own desires above his. The Levite eventually goes to fetch his concubine, and on their journey home they stop in Gibeah, where the men are "Benjaminites," meaning both that they are of the tribe of Benjamin and that they have sex with other men. The Levite sets up camp in the street of a city, only to be implored by an old man not to lodge there--instead, the old man offers the couple shelter for the night.

Beginning in verse 22, we read

Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him. [Note: in case you don't get it, they're using "know" in the biblical sense, this being the bible and all.]

[23] And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.

[24] Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.

[25] But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.

[26] Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light.

[27] And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold.

[28] And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.

[29] And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

Cutting an ox into twelve parts and sending a piece to each of the twelve tribes was a traditional call to war, but why cut up a perfectly good ox when you've already got a dead--or nearly dead--concubine? Keep in mind, the Levite called the tribes to war over the fact that the Benjaminites had destroyed his property--at stake was the fact that this MAN would have to get a new concubine--rather than over the fact that a woman was raped repeatedly, since he himself threw her out the door to be raped.

The tale is revolting, in its homophobia, its misogyny, its unspeakable violence. It shows that homosexual acts are so abominable that to prevent their occurrence, one should offer one’s virgin daughter to be “humbled,” because in these matters, women’s health and happiness, if not their very lives, are acceptable sacrifices. Gay gang rape is unthinkable, but straight gang rape–hey, if it placates the horny male miscreants outside your door, no problem! The aftermath isn't much better. The other eleven tribes went to war against Benjamin, and killed over 25,000 of its men--only 600 men of Benjamin remained when the battle ended. It looked as though the tribe would die out, because all the men in the other eleven tribes had sworn not to give their daughters in marriage to Benjamin, an oath they could not renounce. But they didn't want to be the eleven Tribes of Israel, so they hatched a plan to provide the Benjaminites with wives: a group of virgins, the daughters of Shiloh, would be celebrating a feast off in a vineyard, and if the Benjaminites rode in, kidnapped the virgins and married them, well, their fathers hadn't broken their oath because they had not "given" their daughters in marriage to Benjamin, only allowed them to be taken.

Marriage and procreation, you see, were both duties and rights of these men, regardless of any sexual conduct they engaged in with other men. The important thing was to keep the tribe going. This is the spiritual and moral legacy we have inherited from the Old Testament, and it still lives on in Mormonism, which is why marriages between straight Mormon women and gay Mormon men still receive such praise.

Posted by holly at 8:59 AM | Comments (9)

May 19, 2006

What Was I Saying about Perspective?

I recently came across a blog editorial entitled, "Supreme Court Officially Sends Taxpayers into Early Menopause."

Just kidding! The actual title was Supreme Court Officially Emasculates Taxpayers.

That's right: Taxpayers are officially gendered male, and the supreme court has officially castrated them.

Now, I am not happy with what the Supreme Court did in this particular case, but I wouldn't call it "emasculation." The Supreme Court has decided that "State taxpayers have no standing ... to challenge state tax or spending decisions simply by virtue of their status as taxpayers." But I don't think that really qualifies as "cutting off the testicles" of taxpayers. I suppose you could argue that "emasculate" in this case simply means to "deprive of strength of vigor," but still, that definition only works if the person being weakened is male; you wouldn't say, "My grandmother was severely emasculated by her struggle with breast cancer."

So--anyone want to suggest again that I'm "overreaching" when I say that the world happens from the perspective of a man?

Posted by holly at 2:41 PM | Comments (4)

May 17, 2006

Carnival of Feminist XV

Thanks to everyone who nominated posts, and special thanks to Natalie, who organizes and oversees the carnival.

Feminism, Friendship and Fun

Carnival is supposed to be a time of pleasure and fun, so this carnival begins with a post from Mind the Gap!, pointing out that Fun Is a feminist issue:

Fun is also a feminist issue because it builds friendship. And friendship is a feminist issue. Friendship among women and their male allies is radical because women are not really supposed to be friends with one another, and they're certainly not supposed to be friends with men on equal terms. In refusing to compete and sell each other out for the attention of men, we work to break down patriarchal norms.

The post was generated as part of Blog for Radical Fun Day, the idea of Brownfemipower. On Woman of Color, she writes about her fondness for the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (which contains both feminist and uh, not-so-feminist elements) and lists all the blogs who participated. Definitely check this out!

In the spirit of feminist friendship, Pomegranate Queen creates a blog Forum for Women and Trans Writers of Color to share written work for purposes of critical feedback and support, called Securing our Writing.

Here's to feminist fun and friendship--I hope you enjoy this carnival, and find some new friends here.

Issues within and Surrounding Feminism

Is self-censoring built into feminism, wonders Becca, "with its emphasis on non-hierarchical power dynamics and discomfort with power generally - it all comes down to not wanting to piss anybody off or be a bad person by hurting others, which then comes down to another set of rules for women to follow in order to be good," and if so, what are the implications for art?

At a forum on HIV/AIDS, Artemis of One Woman Army discovers women who espouse feminist ideals but are still afraid to answer yes to the question, Are You a Feminist? Meanwhile, Niobum writes that she feels snubbed and shunned by feminists for reasons having to do with class, while Nubian at blac(k)ademic argues that "it is naive to claim that gender oppression outweighs racial oppression, or that racism is more oppressive than sexism" and suggests we dispense with the oppression olympics.

And on Women's Space, we find a list of the all-too-familiar ways even "Feminists take care of men (and the world as created and envisioned by men, really)."

Misogyny, Either Subtle or Overt

A major task within feminism is combating misogynist rhetoric and practices, and these bloggers take it on.

Verbify shows how an editorial by Rabbi Schmuley Boteach supposedly detailing "The Price of Disrespecting Women" is actually "a piece that reeks of good old-fashioned woman-hating". Grab a bottle, stick around for the comments Verbify analyzes and play the Radical Feminist (tm) drinking game with her--you'll need something to get you through all the more-misogynist-than-thou vitriol Boteach's editorial elicits from readers.

How does footbinding still figure in Asian communities? Jenn at Reappropriate responds to "Deranged and Cranky" Asian American Males who perpetuate "The act of Binding" through "the claim that if the Asian American Woman hopes to remain 'down with the community,' she should subjugate her own identity and autonomy in order to aid the Asian American Man in reclaiming his virility." Laura of I'm Not a Feminist, But... lists the actions that demonstrate male hatred of women.

Speaking of Misogyny, it upsets the Center of Gravitas of Gay Prof, who discusses its presence in a senior male colleague who instructs female students to "check [their] vaginas at the door" (!) and the new Burger King ad (as well as in jokes about women's bodies told by gay men).

Witchy-Woo muses on the fact that even public buildings aren't constructed to accommodate the needs of women--not enough toilets! Feminist Law Prof wonders if there's a male equivalent to the term Heathers.

Andrew Isreal Ross of Air Pollution critiques queer politics from a feminist perspective, arguing that an examination of attitudes towards domesticity reveal "the potential gendering of sexuality and gender themselves: that sexuality (read: male) is liberatory while gender (read: female) is constraining."

And I argue with a student who defends homophobic and misogynist insults applied to straight men as not insulting to women or gay men, because from the perspective of a straight white man, "the words themselves don't even matter."

Women and Intellectual Endeavors

Name an important French female mathematician who entered the field in the 18th century. If you can't, you're not alone--and it's not because there isn't one; it's because she's rarely acknowledged. Read about Unitari's efforts to get her department to recognize women mathematicians.

Now name a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who was lesbian and disabled. On Disabilities Studies, Temple U, we can learn about a bill introduced in the California state legislature "that would add 'sexual orientation' to the list of identity categories to be presented without discrimination in school textbooks"--disability being one of those already included.

Suzie Lipscomb reports on a Conference in honour of Meeto Malik, a scholar whose work explored "gender, religion, syncretism, violence and colonialism."

Motherhood and Reproductive Rights

Sunday was Mothers Day in the US. History News Network provides a history of the War against Mothers Day, which actually "originated to celebrate the organized activities of women outside the home."

Paula Martinac of Dementia Blues ("Funny/sad ruminations by a baby boomer on having two parents with dementia") writes about mother/daughter friendships: "maybe there is a generational thing going on - that baby-boomer mothers have fostered different relationships with their daughters than they had with their own mothers. Indeed, maybe there's a healthier and more enlightened approach to parenting among baby boomers that allows daughters to grow into adult friends. Imagine that!"

Miliana encourages some very reductive scientists trying to determine, based on a sampling of 29 graduate students at UC Santa Barbara, how women determine whether a man will be a good long- or short-term lover and/or father, to Put The Theory Down Gently and Back Away From This Idiocy Slowly.

Redneck Mother discusses efforts to educated ballpark honchos who hassled a nursing mom to the fact that Texas law "states that a woman may nurse anyplace she is authorized to be." RM concludes, "I think prudes are set off not just by the sight of a woman nursing but by the sight of a lone woman using her breasts for their intended purpose without a man around to supervise things."

Clare of Ink and Incapability writes about the condemnation being heaped upon Britain's youngest mother, a twelve-year-old girl who conceived when she was 11; the father of the child this child is carrying is 15. Clare includes a quote from the British press: "The problem to this social ill, rests at the disintegration of the family unit. How unsuprising it was to read that the girl comes from a broken home, drinks and smokes! The fact that the mother is not ashamed of this reflects the shocking apathy some strata of society have towards teenage pregnancy... "

And, did you know? Russia's population is in decline. Commenting on a plan by Mad Vlad Putin to encourage Russian women to bear more babies, Twisty Faster asks, "Gosh, was there ever a social crisis that couldn't be solved by governmental commandeering of women's uteruses?"

Apparently not. Because meanwhile, back in the US, embarrassed by the appalling child mortality rate (seven deaths per 1,000 lives births, a rate higher than that of almost all industrialized nations) in the world's richest, greediest country, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new federal guidelines asking that "all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon." Rebecca Traister of Salon's Broadsheet offers a spot-on analysis of this astonishing article in the Washington Post. As Traister points out, the crappy infant mortality rate has something to do with our crappy healthcare system, and has a racial component: "The infant mortality rate among black women is 13.5 per 1,000 live births, as compared with 5.7 for white women." But hey! Someone has an idea! Instead of fixing broken healthcare and economic systems, let's tell women to think of themselves as wombs with legs, all the time. (A subscription is required to read Salon and its blogs; if you don't subscribe, at least read the Post article and see just how important the rest of you is compared to your uterus and ovaries. Note added 18 May 06: Better yet, read the actual report from the CDC, which the WaPo neglects to mention includes the recommendation that we "Increase public and private health insurance coverage for women with low incomes to improve access to preventive women's health and preconception and interconception care." You'll find plenty to upset you in the report, but it's not as glib and clueless as the WaPo article suggests.)

Women and Aging

Dr. Diana Blaine discusses the Signs of Aging--one of which is realizing how conditioned we are to "lash out against difference"--and considers how best to deal with people who attack her for teaching feminism. Auntie Hattie offers a primer for older women on How to Succeed in the Academic World when No One Wants You to.

Sue Richards of My Menopause Blog discusses some of the lessons available to us--and how to approach them--as we enter the Good Ship Menopause. On Exponent II, we find an anonymous account of how being 50 seems "to offer an odd mixture of power and invisibility that suits me just fine."

Violence against Women

Thursday, May 11, was the third anniversary of the murder of Sakia Gunn, "the 15-year-old African American lesbian from Newark whose killing ignited a movement and led to New Jersey's first bias-murder prosecution." Professor Kim compares the (relatively sparse) attention to her death in the national media, especially in contrast to the memorialization of Matthew Shepard, also the victim of a hate crime.

Megha at Days in a Wannabe Punk's Life analzyes so-called honor killings (as in, what's honorable about murdering women?)

How do you have the rape conversation? Antheia of Mad Melancholic Feminista explores "the struggle that many women face when trying to decide who to confide in about their abuse. Who do you tell first? Second? Do you tell anyone? How do you tell them? I remember grappling with these questions, terrified of the reactions that I would receive from friends and family. Terrified because these reactions, at least in part, shape how you will ultimately view the abuse."

"What does living as a woman imply?" Soopermouse asks on I Hate People. "That the whole society is built on the fact that you and each and every other female needs to be kept in her place, in order for the penis wearers to thrive."

Marketing Women to Women (so they can better market themselves to men)

Ever wonder what special accommodations you need to make if you are lucky enough to be the girlfriend of a West Point Cadet? Angry Brown Butch finds a website that tells you just that, and experiences "Temporary insanity induced by overdoses of heteronormativity, patriotism, cutesy flowery background images and bad clip-art."

Halfway between Ca Mau and Sai Gon we find a response to women's magazines. The entry notes that women's magazines are now more "inclusive": "If you're skinny, and accord with their notion of perfect, product-selling beauty, they won't care what your skin colour is. Isn't that admirable?" Rac analyzes the anti-feminist content of a particular women's magazine, noting that its stories try to seem like they're about empowerment, "as if the speaker has not already conformed to every paradigm of female sexuality in contemporary culture." Photographer Christi Nielsen (I am a huge fan of the self-portraits she posts on Just about to Get Skinny) sums up the suggestion from a friend that she "check out the newest craze of exercise videos... pole dancing and lap dancing" by wondering what such videos could be titled: Existing for the Male Gaze: How to Perfect Your Body and Slut Yourself Up All in less than 10 minutes a day!

Feminism and Religion

Are boys and girls taught differently at religious schools? Natalie at Philobiblion writes about misogynist instruction at the all-girls church school she attended, and worries about the consequence of the government's encouraging the development of religious schools.

A documentary entitled The Beauty Academy of Kabul makes "the point that building self-confidence was the first step for many women to begin to regain their rights," writes Misajane, who notes that "Sometimes when we're studying social change, we forget the importance of self-confidence," particularly in relation to feminism. Martin at Salto Sobrius reflects on issues of modesty and psychological comfort with relation to headscarves worn by Muslim women and bikini tops worn by women who don't want to be topless at the beach, arguing that it's a misstep to ban things like headscarves, because a more important issue is that women "have access to education and jobs and the freedom to make their own life decisions. Never mind the shawls and bikini tops – are women allowed to ride bicycles, go to university, participate in sports, work outside the home?"

Women and Art

Jennie Rosenbaum is interviewed about her work, which "frequently center around us as women and the pressure we as women put on ourselves and each other. the body issues, the fear, resentment, and the power and abandon we sometimes let ourselves feel."

Ever notice any difference in how women and men are depicted in art when they're holding a book? Go to Earmark for commentary on the gender of reading.

Women and Comics

We return to the issue of radical fun via comics, a topic that generates a lot of feminist thought. Ragnell originally started her blog, Written World, to write about comics, but found lots of feminist topics creeping in; at this point she has resolved that on her blog, The Feminism Will Continue Until the Stupidity Dissipates. Monkeycrackmary offers readers a chance to say how they'd like to see female characters portrayed in comic books.

Somer credits a Wonder Woman pop-up book with shape her views on gender, and Melchior del Darién from Mortlake on the Schuylkill wonders at the paternalistic treatment of Power Girl. Kalinara of Pretty, Fizzy Paradise analyzes the sexist premise of the character Venom.

Sarah the Alert Nerd takes issue with a post from a man issuing edicts on what kind of comics women read, how women feel entering comic books stores--actually the guy issues edicts on almost everything, so that the Alert Nerd finally advises him to Shut Up, while another guy, Gordon of Blog THIS, Pal! begins to understand: there is an anti-female conspiracy going on, since "it just seems like comics are being written towards a more misogynistic, cynical audience. The message is simply - no girls allowed. And if you are female, you're either a cheating traitor, a useless appendage, or - worst of all - cannon fodder."

In Memoriam

We close with this old post from cancerbaby, who died Friday, May 12, 2006. Her real name was Jessica, and she was 33.

Carnival XVI

The next Carnival will be held June 7 on Welcome to the Nut House. You can submit nominations via this form.

Thanks for stopping by! I had a great time putting together this carnival and hope you enjoy it too. Please leave comments here and on individual blogs about your favorite posts.

Posted by holly at 12:01 AM | Comments (26)

May 16, 2006

From the Perspective of a Man

Last Thursday I met a friend for coffee at Barnes and Noble. (Yes, yes, it's so corporate of us, but I also make a point of frequenting the one independent coffee shop in town too, and my friend prefers B&N.) I was waiting for my grande decaf mocha in a mug (not a paper cup), when I noticed that Student C, a talented but uh, challenging student of mine, was sitting by the window, watching me. It was a shock to see him: this particular student absorbed so much of my energy during the year, but when I encountered him off campus, I realized that I hadn't had a single stray thought about him since I'd turned in my grades--god, it felt good to realize that.

"Hey, Dr. Holly," he said. "How you doing?"

"I'm OK," I said. "You?"

"Good," he said. "I'm writing!" And he gestured at the notebook before him on the table.

Then my beverage was ready so I chatted with my friend for an hour or two, and then I browsed books for a while, and then I went back to the café to get some water, and Student C was still there, writing, and he asked me a question about a course I'm teaching next semester, so I sat down to answer it. And we started talking about writing.

He asked if I'd written any poetry recently. "Nuh-uh," I said. "No inspiration." I paused. "You get any good assignments in your other classes? Any good ideas you want to pass on?"

"You should write from the perspective of a man," he said. He raised his eyebrows. He'd been in a couple of classes where we discussed gender; his ideas on the topic, although not the most misogynist I'd encountered, were still not what I'd call enlightened. And I'd been told that when I wasn't around, he often referred to women as "bitches," even women he liked.

"Nah, that doesn't really interest me," I said.

"I knew it!" he said. He shook his head. "I write from the perspective of women all the time, but you can't even imagine what things are like from the perspective of a man?"

"First of all, I've written from a male perspective before, but I don't think it's my best work. Secondly, I don't have to imagine a male perspective," I said. "I see it all the time. I experience it. The world happens from the perspective of a man. And while I may not want to write from that point of view, I'm certainly willing to read stuff written by men. Women are more willing to read works by and about men, while most guys don't want to read stuff by and about women." And I cited a newspaper article stating just that that I'd emailed everyone during the semester.

"My favorite books are by women," he said.

"In that area, you're an exception," I said. "I've known that since we read At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid a year ago. You were the only guy in the class--almost the only person--who really liked that book. You liked it more than I did."

"I loved it," he said. "It's one of the best things I've read in my life." And the conversation went on from there.

At one point he mentioned someone he didn't like. I asked Student C if he had heard about a recent endeavor this disliked person has undertaken. Student C had not, and he became indignant and offended upon learning of it. "That cocksucker!" he exploded. "That pussy!"

"Hear what you just did?" I asked. "You just asserted your support for patriarchy."

"What're you talking about?" he asked.

"You called this guy a cocksucker, when you know he's not gay. You called him a pussy, when you know he's not female. Why use homosexuality and female genitalia to insult this guy?"

"It's just automatic," he said. "It's just what you say about someone you really don't like."

"This is what I meant," I said, "about how the world happens from the point of view of a man--a straight white man, I would add."

"No, no!" he said. "You're making too much of this. The words themselves don't even matter. It's the idea behind them."

"This from a poet?" I responded. "You're always telling me how much you love language. And now you tell me the words don't even matter?"

"But there's an idea..." he began.

"Exactly," I said. "And the idea is that invoking gayness and femaleness are the most effective ways to insult a man. I mean, why not call him a dick?"

He frowned and looked out the window. "Dick," he said thoughtfully. "Dick." He turned back to me. "It's just not the same."

"Exactly!" I said. "Merely being a penis is a mild insult. But being a cunt, that's really bad." I shook my head. "You're pretty race conscious, and you get annoyed when you encounter racial stereotypes in the texts we read or the discussions we have about them. You would never dream of insulting this guy by hurling a racial epithet that invokes brownness or blackness, but you say it's automatic and insignificant when you invoke these other kinds of difference. Why is that OK?"

"OK, OK," he said. "You're right. It's a bad thing. But it's just how the world works. It's just what people understand."

"It's just what straight men understand," I said. "I understand it because, as I said, the world happens from the point of view of a straight white man, not because it makes any real sense or to me, or because I think it's OK. What I don't understand is why you can defend this."

And it was clear to me that Student C really did get what was wrong with what he'd said. But it was also clear that he didn't want to change the way he talked about women he liked and men he didn't like--not because he felt he was morally justified in what he did, but because he didn't want the bother of monitoring his speech or thoughts, or altering his habits.

And that's pretty discouraging, when even guys who understand the problem are too lazy to do much to correct it.

What do we do about this? I think I did an OK job of explaining the problem to the guy. How do I convince him it's important enough that he should change his behavior?

One of my colleagues taught a couple of sections of introduction to creative writing this past semester; he said he was horrified by the number of stories by young men that expressed overt misogyny: he regularly encountered female characters who were called bitches and hos, or plots that revolved around humiliating female characters--and of course there was plenty of attention to describing women's bodies. "I couldn't believe how much rage against women these stories revealed," he told me. "And there was nothing at all like it in the stories by the women. These young women should be angry, should be enraged, but they're not. And even when they write about sex and relationships, they just don't objectify men in the way they themselves are objectified."

He said that he talk outside of class to the authors of particularly misogynist stories and ask if they realized how insultingly they talked about women, if they intended to portray women as objects of contempt who deserve to be hurt and humiliated. "They all claimed to be shocked and embarrassed," he said. "They all told me they really like women, that they have friends or sisters or lovers who are women and that the stories were just something they wrote without really thinking about it, not anything that reveals what they really think about women."

What do we do about matter-of-fact and ostensibly unconscious misogyny in our students' writing and speech?

Read follow-ups to this post here and here.

Posted by holly at 11:56 AM | Comments (22)

May 11, 2006

It's Always Somehow Her Fault Too

In the "Thank God Someone Else Reads These Crappy Patriarchy-Loving Rags" category is this piece from Rebecca Traister at Salon. Ms. Traister neatly shreds an article from the Washington Post, which blames the impotence problems of young college men on... get this... horny college girls! That's right! In the "Jesus Fucking Christ" department, Laura Sessions Stepp has written an article called "Cupid's Broken Arrow" announcing that

for a sizable number of young men, the fact that they can get sex whenever they want may have created a situation where, in fact, they're unable to have sex. According to surveys, young women are now as likely as young men to have sex and by countless reports are also as likely to initiate sex, taking away from males the age-old, erotic power of the chase.

After explaining that impotence should be refered to as Erectile Dysfunction (ED for short), Ms. Stepp analyzes a few images of limpness and powerlessness, concluding that

Such images disturb because sexual performance is still, in the minds of many males, the sign of authority and dominance, perhaps the last such symbol in a society slogging its way toward gender equality. (Emphasis added--and gee, I wonder where guys get that?)

Those in the first years of testing their manhood may particularly see it that way.

When the tools work, there's nothing like it, says Devin Jones, a sophomore at Maryland, who read several how-to books about sex before going all the way with his first girlfriend. "When she got an orgasm, I felt like the man," he says in an interview, pounding his fists on his chest. Will Skelton, who graduated from George Washington University last year, says good sex "is all about self-worth. If you know you're a helluva lover, you're more confident with women and men."

And it goes on and on about various ways women put too much pressure on guys, and so ruin their erections...though it also takes some time to consider things men can do to themselves, like drink too much alcohol or coffee, smoke too much tobacco or marijuana, or take too many anti-depressants.

Luckily, before I read that crap myself, I got this excellent analysis from Ms. Traister:

Perhaps (and I realize this is pie-in-the-sky thinking here) the leveling of the sexual marketplace Stepp writes about, in which women and men enjoy and pursue sex with comparable vigor, could be good for both sexes. First, it could deflate some of the frequently unearned but long-held stereotypes about guys who'll have sex with anything that moves, who consider each conquest a notch on their bedpost, who are more turned on by the pursuit than by the physical pleasure of union. Perhaps, if sex with women is something that they didn't have to finagle and tease and chase their way into, if it was just a fun activity that two people who liked each other chose to engage in and that often felt really great, everyone would have a better time.

Bzzzzz! Apparently that answer was incorrect. According to Stepp, we're not looking at the maturation and increasing sophistication of the socio-sexual dynamic here. We're looking at the loss of manhood in its purest form. Guys who can't get woodies for any old girl on the block are a poignant representation of the crumbling power of the erect phallus, which is, after all, as Stepp writes, "in the minds of many males, the sign of authority and dominance, perhaps the last such symbol in a society slogging its way toward gender equality." Wow. Stepp isn't doing the men she's writing about any favors in treating their condition not as a treatable health problem related to stress or their recreational habits, but as an actual loss of their masculinity, the ultimate cost of gender equality.

Posted by holly at 11:39 AM | Comments (4)

May 7, 2006

Only Rapists Can Prevent Rape

Borrowed from The Adventures of Dr. Diana, who invites readers to repost this entry.

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all. Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
If a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.
If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her.
If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
If your step-daughter is watching TV, don't rape her.
If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.
If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.
Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.
Don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
Don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.

If you agree, re-post it. It's that important.

Note: This goes for any gendered rape, male on female or female on male or female on female or FTM on MTF or non gendered to dual gendered and so on and so forth....

Posted by holly at 9:25 AM | Comments (2)

April 30, 2006

The Difference between REAL Feminists and the Devout Mormon Kind

I've generated a fair amount of heat for myself because of my announced intention to stay the fuck away from Mormon feminists whose primary allegiance is to the Mormon part of that phrase rather than the feminist. I came to this decision after an experience I allude here, about finding a Mo-fem blog where a married non-feminist dude (he's a HUMANIST instead, but he tries to muster some interest in feminists, since he's married to one) came along and asked the age-old question, "But what about MEN?"

And wouldn't you know, most of the women started falling over themselves to say, "Oh, don't ever imagine that we'd forget about MEN! We're the NICE variety of feminists! We LOVE men! Oh, yes, men suffer! Men's problems are important! Men's problems are EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT TO DISCUSS HERE!"

And then I came along and left the following comment:

I'd like to ask: is this one of those feminist forums where a man will jump in every so often to remind the women that "men have problems, desires, concerns and issues too"?

I see it happen a lot, particularly in Mormon forums, where women are taught to defer to men, even on topics like feminism. I admit I am surprised to see it happen so quickly here, and surprised as well that no one has commented on the gender dynamics involved when, in a forum designed to promote women's voices on women's issues, a man calls attention to men's concerns, after which women rush to agree with him.

The further problem is that not only does Dude call attention to men's concerns, he also invites a comparison between women's struggles and men's struggles, ostensibly in an effort to show they are the same--and, it would seem, to remind women not to imagine that their problems and difficulties are more severe or more important than that of a man in the same situation.

Perhaps it is just me, but it seems to me it is the job of feminism to call attention to ploys like this, and it is the job of men who truly want to respect women's forums and women's voices to find other arenas in which to invite such comparisons and make such reminders. Women are told in so many ways that their concerns are not as important as men's; it seems remarkably insensitive and unkind to draw attention back to men so that women do not focus on their own difficulties, even in a forum like this.

And guess who became the naughty one in all of this? That's right: the feminist who questions male behavior and motivation. Which is why I said, "I'll have a big order of getting the hell out of here, to go."

WHEREAS if you go read I Blame the Patriarchy, when some dude drops in and does something similar, he's offered thorough (and far less diplomatic) critiques like this, from Ron Sullivan:

One thing an old broad like me has seen many many many times already is some huffulacious oh-so-sincere dude walking in to a group of women almost at random and telling them

a/ what they should be doing in their free time;
b/ how to do it right;
c/ how to be feminists;
d/ why he has their best interests at heart, really;
e/ why he’s qualified to give them orders;
f/ that they’re intolerant, which is self-evidently a Bad Thing;
g/ that they’re preaching to the choir (and the biggest surprise is that they’re preaching);
h/ that some of his best fucks are women;
i/ how to be better feminists;
j/ that they’re not serious enough;
k/ that his wife thinks he’s the greatest;
l/ what God thinks;
m/ why whatever he’s doing this month is more important then feminism;
n/ that feminism is boo-zhwah, and that’s self-evidently a Bad Thing;
o/ that they’re shrill — wow, I almost forgot shrill;
p/ that they can’t pee standing up;
q/ that they should be ashamed of themselves;
r/ that they just don’t welcome open and vigorous debate;
s/ that he needs a beer (this is followed by an expectant silence);
t/ that they’re taking everything he said wrong;
u/ that they’re unreasonable;
v/ that they’re ~touchy~;
w/ that they’ve never said anything about oppression of women in (choose sauce: Iraq, Afghanistan, China, sub-Saharan Africa, the southeastern USA, the ghet-to, Brazil, Antarctica)
x/ that they should apologize to him because his parents had him circumcised;
y/ that he Is Too A Feminist (which evidently means something);
z/ how they should transcend feminism and embrace humanism.

Pick any two menu items and get the third half-price; pick any three and get the fourth free. With five you get a can of wine. And if you’re the guy in question, you get a free hot cup of Shut the Fuck Up.

And Twisty herself examines the question Can a Liberal White Dude Be a Feminist? (she pretty much answers no, using this excellent analysis from Chris Clarke to support her reasoning), and concludes

But do MF dudes [male feminists] grasp this? No. Unaware that they are still flaunting precisely the white male privilege from which feminists aspire to be liberated, they insist on joining the rank and file so that they can explain feminism to the stupid women. They must infiltrate right down to the core (one example of which core would be, say, this blog, which expressly caters to a female audience of radical feminists). Once in, they start leaving the seat up and throwing their weight around, with the result that they either get laid (or its blogular equivalent, successfully hijacking the thread), or start whining and threatening that we’re nothing without them and accusing us accursed ungrateful humorless prudey hairy dykes of not kissing their asses with sexy enough lips.

Personally, I still think men can be feminists, since feminism is an ideology, not a biological state. I even think Mormons can be feminists. I just think, more and more, that since feminism requires a recognition that patriarchy is bad, and that (almost?) all male privilege and (almost?) all of Mormon doctrine and practice are rooted in and dedicated to the continuation of patriarchy, there will be these awful moments when a male feminist's allegiance to feminism will be in conflict with his allegiance to his own male privilege, or a Mormon feminist's allegiance to feminism will be in conflict with her allegiance to Mormonism. I hope that in those instances, the allegiance to feminism will win out, but I don't hold my breath.

In the meantime, it's nice to see feminists who take pride and pleasure in pointing out just how full of shit patriarchy really is.

Posted by holly at 4:45 PM | Comments (5)

April 26, 2006

A Guy from Dorking

Found this story in the Times of London on the results of--I'm not making this up--The National Housework Survey of Great Britain 2006.

This survey was commissioned by a British cable television channel, the Discovery Home and Health channel, I guess so it could create a reality TV show, Cleanaholics, which, according to the Times, will "[follow] 27 women and three men as they plough through their chores. " The website claims the show "delves into the psychology behind [the cleanaholics'] routines, and asks – is cleaning the new therapy?" A provocative question indeed!

The headline of the Times story is, "The women who think housework is better than sex," because a third of the 2000 women surveyed reported that cleaning house was more rewarding than having sex.

But I think the real gem of the Times story is the final paragraph:

Graham Peters, 40, of Dorking, one of the minority of superclean men (about one in ten), says he wishes he could cut down on his cleaning habit. “I’ve always been tidy,” he said, “but if I got a young female to clean for me, I would give up tomorrow.”

"If I got a young female to clean for me"?!

Has he ever looked into a cleaning service?

There are plenty of things I would give up tomorrow if I could get someone else to do them willingly, graciously, free of charge, for me: mowing my lawn, servicing my car, dry cleaning my fine woolens.... Oh wait! I forgot! I CAN get someone else to do those things for me, willingly and graciously! I just have to PAY FOR IT, because people tend to expect to be paid for their work!

Oh, wait: I forgot something else: People expect to be paid for their work.... unless that work is housework, and it's done by a woman.... Then it's supposed to be UNPAID. AND it's supposed to come with the added bonus of FREE SEX once the house is clean.

And yet, I imagine that given Graham's attitude, any "young female" he could find to clean for him would be one of the women who find housework more rewarding than sex. Who wants to get it on with a guy who's primarily interested in free maid service? I wonder if they asked THAT of the women who prefer housework to sex.

Posted by holly at 9:17 AM | Comments (10)

March 14, 2006

Advantages of Being a Woman Artist

Not long ago, a friend sent me a guerrilla girls postcard detailing some of the "advantages of being a woman artist." I thought I'd share, though you can find--and order--a poster of this list here.

Working without the pressure of success

not having to be in shows with men

having an escape from the art world with your four free-lance jobs

knowing your career might pick up after you are eighty

being reassured that whatever art you make it will be labeled "feminine"

not being stuck in a tenured teaching position

seeing your ideas live on in the work of others

having the opportunity of choosing between career and motherhood

being included in revised versions of art history

not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius

Posted by holly at 11:20 AM | Comments (6)

March 9, 2006

This Is Your Life (If You're a Woman)

Borrowed from the Independent UK's Woman's Day Coverage

1% of the titled land in the world is owned by women

A baby girl born in the UK is likely to live to 81 - but if she is born in Swaziland, she is likely to die at 39

70% of the 1.2 bn people living in poverty are women and children

21% of the world's managers are female

62% of unpaid family workers are female

9% of judges, 10% of company directors and 10% of top police officers in the UK are women

Women comprise 55% of the world's population aged over 60 years old and 65% of those aged over 80

£970,000 is the difference between lifetime earnings of men and women in the UK finance sector

85m girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45m boys. In Chad, just 4% of girls go to school.

700,000,000 women are without adequate food, water, sanitation, health care or education (compared with 400,000,000 men)

Women in full-time jobs earn an average 17% less than British men

Women in part-time jobs earn an average 42% less than British men

67% of all illiterate adults are women

1,440 women die each day during childbirth (a rate of one death every minute)

1 in 7 women in Ethiopia die in pregnancy or childbirth (it is one in 19,000 in Britain)

In the US, 35% of lawyers are women but just 5% are partners in law firms

In the EU, women comprise 3% of chief execs of major companies

12 is the number of world leaders who are women (out of 191 members of the United Nations)

Men directed 9 out of every 10 films made in 2004

Also see this report from the UN on the fact that women are denied representation, making war on poverty hard to win, this story on advances made by women around the world, this harrowing report on hardships still imposed on Afghan women bu Muslim zealots, and this item on the fact that men in Britain are being advised that failing to obtain explicit consent for sex could result in rape charges--in other words, men are being told that if a woman is unconscious and a guy has sex with her, that ain't consensual.

Posted by holly at 9:33 AM | Comments (1)

March 3, 2006

Not Feminist Housewives, Just Housewives; Not Feminist Mormons, Just Mormons

So, I just learned that Women and Authority by my friend Maxine Hanks is soon to be available in its entirety on the web. For those of you who've never heard of this book, it's one of the ovunal (as opposed to seminal) texts in Mormon feminism.

I really wonder why Signature is putting the book on the web, where no one will have to pay for it. Yes, the web makes a great archive, provided you've got a working computer and internet access. And documents on the web can be printed out, although it takes incredible amounts of energy. And I also suspect that this means that from here on out, Maxine will receive NO ROYALTIES for her work.

There is plenty more I could say about Signature Books and the way it treats women. But I think this pretty much sums it up: if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll see a link to "Mormon Housewives." The site linked to is actually a blog of Feminist Mormon Housewives, but the good ol' tools of the patriarchy at Signature just erased the word feminist. It makes for a pretty significant difference, especially since the link comes right after one for "Mormon Polygamy."

Way to go, boys.

Posted by holly at 9:23 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

Books, Notebooks and the Latest Carnival Fun

Today I'm offering you a trio of links.

First, a link to a really cool story sent to me by my friend Spike about a program in Argetina designed to promote literacy among young children AND provide a meaningful activity for "educated women over 50,who are excluded from the labour market by fierce competition." Called "Storytelling Grandmothers," the program has been very effective and claims its "secret formula" of "affection, plus high-quality literature, equals children who read."

Second, an entry I came across at woman in comfy shoes about a notebook kept by her grandmother, and filled with old clippings of "quaint" shoes and hats. T. Comfyshoes explains that

Living where she did in the 1930s, Grandma and her friends and sisters didn't have a lot of access to shopping, so if they wanted anything nice they had to order it from a catalogue. To make sure they got everything they ordered, and nothing that they didn't, Grandma would cut out the pictures from the catalogue and glue them into a notebook. She kept notes of what they paid and what they bought them for.

As T. Comfyshoes examines the notebook, she finds stories emerging. It's a really charming, interesting entry, and it supports my argument that journals should be kept, not burned.

Finally, a link to the Ninth Carnival of Feminists, which is up at Mind the Gap! I always enjoy seeing what is included in the feminist Carnival, and this one is really good. It's particularly easy to follow. As I'm scheduled to host the 15th Carnival in May, I will be remembering how well the feminists at Mind the Gap! presented the posts they chose to highlight.

Enjoy!

Posted by holly at 1:01 AM | Comments (3)

February 15, 2006

The "Sorry I Date-Raped You" Card

I just checked the stats for my blog, and discovered that someone ended up at my site while doing a search for a "'sorry I date-raped you' card."

Huh.

I know how they ended up here: I posted an entry where I mention that a guy I was dating once apologized for date-raping me. (Yes, the apology was warranted. Yes, I was young enough and stupid enough that I didn't break up with him, either after the non-consensual sex or the apology. Yes, the entire experience continues to affect my views on men, courtship, and issues of consent in sex.)

What I don't know is what the card means. It is a joke? Is it serious? Could such a card be used as an admission of guilt--and therefore evidence--against someone who had committed a date-rape?

My guess is, it's a joke--about like those awful t-shirts discussed on Shakespeare's Sister. But that raises the question: WHY is this a topic our culture finds funny?

I just got done teaching Night by Elie Wiesel in one of my courses. Of course everyone found it horrifying and upsetting. Everyone sympathized with the suffering of the narrator, and condemned the holocaust, and thought it completely fitting that Wiesel bear personal witness of what the Nazis did to the Jews.

This week we are reading Two or Three Things I Know for Sure by Dorothy Allison, in which she discusses being raped by her step-father when she was five years old. One guy said, "When I got to the part where she says, 'My step-father raped me when I was five years old,' I thought, 'Shit! Why is the professor making us read this crap?'" Another guy said, "Why do people need to talk about this? Why should we be expected to read about this?"

Um, maybe because in your life as a college-educated white American male, you're more likely to know someone who is the victim of sexual assault than someone who carries out or survives or dies because of genocide, not only because college-educated white Americans tend to be sheltered and protected from genocide, but because there are more victims of sexual violence in the world than there are victims of genocide? (Rape, after all, is a tool of genocide.) Maybe so you'll know how to react when your friend or sister gets a "Sorry I Date-Raped You" card? I assume, of course, that you'll never need to send one yourself.

Posted by holly at 10:51 AM | Comments (5)

February 12, 2006

Women Who Won't Blame the Patriarchy or Anybody Else

Here are a couple of basic spiritual truths I've learned in my life:

1. You gotta leave the garden. You can't truly learn and grow while you stay within the confines of a system designed to protect you and keep you innocent.

2. She who will save her life shall lose it, and she who is willing to lose her life, will save it. If you stay inside the garden because you're afraid you'll perish in the lone and dreary world, well, here's some news! You're going to perish anyway, but you'll never know the potential, growth and possibility you could have experienced in the outside world. But if you venture out, you just might discover the means of not merely surviving, but thriving.

3. The Mormon church is one of the most pernicious "gardens" out there: yeah, there's plenty of produce, but it's thoroughly tainted with pesticides, fungicides and fertilizer. You can eat it, but it will give you cancer of the soul. You're better off applying the lesson of the fall and expelling yourself from the garden.

Because I am still technically a Mormon woman (they haven't excommunicated me yet, and I promised my mother I wouldn't ask the big boys to do it for me), and because I became a feminist partly because I was once a Mormon woman, and because I am occasionally an idiot, I sometimes find myself drawn into conversations with devout Mormon women about feminism.

I should know better. Because no woman will ever truly espouse the cause of feminism while she's still a devout Mormon. No human being will ever truly espouse the cause of justice while she's still a devout Mormon. No human being will ever truly espouse freedom of mind or plain good sense while she's still a devout Mormon. She'll do the best she can, and that's all the rest of us can ask. But devout Mormon women are still, fundamentally, stunted, because they insist on a diet of that horrible tainted fruit--and then spend all this time saying, "Oh there's nothing wrong with this fruit! There's nothing wrong with the garden! There's nothing wrong with anything--except maybe a few of the other gardeners, but that's not really important! Let's all just be nice and good, and then everything will work out--because God says so!"

To which I say, Yada yada fucking la-di-da. Grow the hell up.

And if I ever again start participating in forums for Mormon feminists who still support the patriarchy, will someone who's not in that benighted category remind me of this post?

Posted by holly at 2:50 PM | Comments (12)

February 7, 2006

Is Feminism a Woman-Only Movement?

John at Mind on Fire has posted the following set of questions on his blog:

In practical terms, is feminism a woman-only movement? Are feminist forums essentially female forums? Is it possible to discuss feminism as a female and male issue, as a joint concern of both men and women? Is there a place for men in feminism?

I posted a response to John's questions on his blog, and I'm going to include my response here as well. Here goes:

First, I believe that men should identify themselves as feminists, and work to improve the lives of women, advance the cause of women's rights, and fight sexism; that white people must fight racism and work to improve the lives of people of color; that straight people need to fight homophobia and support gay rights; that rich people need to care about poor people; that human beings need to work for the humane treatment of animals, and so on. Everyone needs to be on the side of justice. No righteous cause (and I use that term advisedly) ever truly succeeds until even those who benefit from an unjust system begin to work to overthrow it. Slavery would still exist were it not for the efforts of those who were NOT slaves.

Re: doing feminist theory in academia--there are plenty of male academics who work on feminism and gender theory. I think you're probably going to face an uphill battle, just as white people who do race theory face some suspicion. I don't, however, think that's a reason not to do it. I realize I am not in your department, and I have only heard a little of the work you've done on feminism, but I take you pretty seriously: I appreciate your academic work on and your personal commitment to feminism, and as you will (I hope) attest, I have encouraged and defended both.

As was recently discussed in the comments on Mellencamp, the Game here on SPA, I feel grief and pain when men I consider enlightened and humane refuse to identify themselves as feminists. And as you and I have discussed, and as I have discussed on my blog, I heartily applaud the decision by any man (but especially Mormon men and men I like) to embrace the cause of feminism. I hope people will go to my blog and check out the archives for the things I've written about Mormon male feminists--there's quite a bit. I was delighted to see the panel on the topic at Sunstone last August, and hope that it will be a recurring panel. And I am grateful for the efforts of men in the past who worked for women's rights--the world is a better place for women not only because of Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, but John Stewart Mill (see in particular his essay The Subjection of Women.)

But since your entry here arises in part from comments I made on another blog, let me create an analogy that I hope illustrates why I objected when a married man asked a question in a feminist forum about whether or not Mormon men who are single suffer as much from their single status as Mormon women who are single--and then answered his own question in the affirmative, though he did acknowledge that although men's pain was as great as women's, there seemed to be more women who had the problem--i.e., there are more old maids in the Mormon church than old bachelors. And let me also explain why I was disappointed when several women rushed to support him.

Let's say there's a forum devoted primarily to discussing the concerns of black people in the US, although people of any race are welcome to participate. And a discussion arises about poverty. And a comfortably situated white person comes along and asks, "Do you think white people suffer as much as black people under the conditions of poverty? I know both black and white people who've really struggled, so I think it's the same emotionally, though I admit there are more poor black people than poor white people."

Well, gee! I have an adequate grasp of the obvious, and I'm pretty sure it sucks to be poor, no matter what color your skin is. But the fact of the matter is, I've never been truly poor; moreover I've never been black and poor, never felt several centuries of cultural oppression that have conspired to make poverty particularly acute in the black community, never faced a particular sort of hopelessness in terms of dealing with the problem of basic subsistence.

And let's imagine that in this forum, once this question has been posed, several of the black people immediately rush to say, "Wow, I bet poverty IS really bad for white people!" instead of, "Yeah, it's bad for white people too, but, uh, why are you bringing it up here, and why are you bringing it up in this particular way?" At that point, I would have to question not only the motives of the person who posed the question, but the motives of the people who responded as well--it would seem to me that ultimately, this group was more about placating white people, reassuring them that their egos need not be threatened by this little racially oriented forum, than about doing what it had actually stated as its mission.

And perhaps if I were truly wise, I'd just leave these people to their foolishness--god knows I've seen this situation before, and god knows I've seen so little change in the past when I've done this--but somehow, I actually still care about both feminism and Mormonism, and I just can't stop myself from saying, "Um, uh, not to be rude or anything, but, you know, this sounds like complete and utter bullshit to me."

Because the fact of the matter is, I have neither patience nor respect for such things. I say to men who claim they want to talk about feminism, TALK ABOUT FEMINISM! The point is this: men as a collective are the recipients and wielders of privilege and power, and if that's going to change and we're going to achieve gender equality, you've got to be willing to give up some of that privilege and power, so START NOW. Set aside some of your concerns in the short term, and be willing to relinquish some of your privilege for eternity. Because that's what has to happen for gender equality to happen: those with power have to give some of it up.

And for god's sake, don't expect a pat on the back just because you hang out with women who call themselves feminists. Put your money where your mouth is--which in some cases, means shutting the hell up about your masculine concerns.

Posted by holly at 10:01 AM

January 30, 2006

Patriarchy Really Is to Blame

It seems there is more than one person in Texas who has figured out that PATRIARCHY IS TO BLAME.

Here's a story from Women's e News about a new program to rehabilitate batterers. Unlike many other programs designed to treat batterers, which "have typically looked at how batterers use violence to control their victims--or counseled them on how to manage 'out of control' anger--staffers at Travis [County Sheriff Department in Austin, Texas] say this program assumes that violence arises from a decision based on deeply-held beliefs of male dominance, not a flash of 'uncontrollable' emotion."

Instead, batterers are shown that they have choices. In group meetings, batterers "are led step by step to recall and re-enact what they felt, thought and did as domestic conflicts escalated and turned violent. Often, [George Jurand, coordinator of the San Francisco sheriff's department's Resolve to Stop the Violence Project] said, the offenders can be expected to voice the idea that, as men, they should be dominant. This 'male-role belief system' is then linked to its destructive consequences: arrest, imprisonment or loss of family."

An important feature of the program is having offenders listen to the stories of survivors of violence, who describe the terror and pain such violence inflicts on women and their children.

Classes are also taught and workshops led by men who once were batterers themselves, and focus making batterers accountable for their decisions to use violence. The program shows significant results: data reported in 2002 showed that "compared with offenders who did not participate, [program] participants showed an 80-percent steeper decline in repeat violence after 16 weeks. Those spending 12 weeks in the program showed a 51-percent steeper decline and those in the program for four weeks had a 42-percent steeper decline in repeat violence."

Well, imagine that: teaching men who commit violence against women that IT'S WRONG, THAT THE MEN ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENCE AND THEY CAN STOP IT, actually works.

Posted by holly at 8:54 AM | Comments (1)

January 10, 2006

Prudent Matches

I've been reading all over the blogosphere about the January 3, 2006 NY Times editorial by John Tierney, discussing how smart, educated straight women are likely to end up alone because they won't date dumb men with bad jobs: these women actually do something so calculated and unromantic as consider a man's earning potential in deciding whether or not to marry him.

I admit I haven't read the editorial--I don't subscribe to the paper version of the Times, so if I want to read its columnists on line, I have to pay for the privilege, and I wouldn't fork over my last dingy centime or any other piece of no-longer-current European currency to read a single word by that shithead Tierney. Thus, my response is based only on a few excerpts and synopses provided by others. And my reaction to the synopses and excerpts I have read is pretty much this:

Duh. So what.

I mean, OF COURSE INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED STRAIGHT WOMEN TEND TO THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY A GUY IS LIKELY TO EARN IN DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO MARRY HIM. AN ABILITY TO GRASP THE IMPORTANCE OF THINGS LIKE FINANCES IS PART OF WHAT MAKES THEM SMART AND PART OF WHAT HELPED THEM BECOME EDUCATED.

Before I pursue that premise any further, let me make one thing clear: I'm a big believer in love. I love a lot of people. I've been in love and it has changed my life in ways I'm still grateful for. I think falling in love is one of the best things that can happen to someone. I believe in the redemptive power and possibilities of love.

And I used to think that the fact that you really, truly loved somebody sort of meant you HAD to get married, because if you love someone as much as I loved a couple of people, your feelings for them OBLIGATED you to vow to spend the rest of your life with them.

Funny how things work out.

I'm sure someone will accuse me of being as cynical and cold-blooded as John Tierney seems to have labeled my entire demographic group for what I'm about to say next. But despite my belief in love I question whether or not it is really the main reason we marry, and perhaps I feel that way not only because I am a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD, but because I'm a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD who twice in her life rather expected to get married to men I loved whole-heartedly--once I was even engaged. But I didn't end up marrying either of those two men I loved so deeply. The fiancé I didn't marry because he was gay, though we're still friends, partly because he had the decency NOT to marry me--it would have been pretty easy for him to go through with the wedding so that he could live a conventional "straight" life, much like the guys in Brokeback Mountain (which I saw with Wayne over Christmas and which I plan to write about in the near future). The other I didn't marry for a whole range of reasons including the fact that he never asked me and that, as he informed me eventually, he was "ashamed" (his word--I'm not making this up) to love me because he knew his father wouldn't approve of me: I hadn't gone to an ivy league university, like his family did; I was from rural Arizona instead of the suburban Connecticut; I had had braces but not a nosejob as a teenager. (The guy's father was a plastic surgeon, and this rotten ex of mine had miserable teeth but a finely sculpted nose.) The fact that I was more likely to finish my dissertation and get a job than he was, was actually another strike against me--he felt threatened.

So yeah, I learned a few lessons there about prudence.

I also know too many Mormons who got married far too young to the wrong person--a person whom, in their limited experience, they honestly believed they loved. But they were 21, fairly naive, incredibly horny and anxious to remain a technical virgin long enough that they could get married in the temple, which means "obeying the law of chastity," or not committing fornication. What they actually married for, some of them discovered eventually, was lust, curiosity and boredom.

I also know people who got married because (as they admitted either at the time or when they tried to figure out how they ended up in such a screwed-up marriage) they felt it was the next step in adulthood, and although they claimed to love the person they married, the marriages didn't last long--though they often lasted longer than they should have.

I also know people who got married primarily to obtain health benefits for themselves or their partner. Some of those marriages have survived; some haven't. But as advocates for gay marriage point out, a legally recognized marriage is important not because it creates or recognizes any kind of LOVE, but because it creates and recognizes economic and social privileges and rights.

This whole discussion reminds me of what happened when I taught a course on the novels of Jane Austen at the University of Iowa in 2001. (Which isn't surprising given that the title of Tierney's article is "Male Pride and Female Prejudice," although the way the article is summarized--"Traditionalists seem to be a dwindling minority as men have come to appreciate the value of a wife's paycheck"–suggests that Tierney's never read Austen carefully enough to notice the plethora of fortune-hunting men chasing little girls with big dowries.) The course was an evening course that met once a week for two and a half hours. I had 20 students, 19 young women and one young man, which made for an interesting dynamic: there was one night when the guy had to leave early, and after he walked out of the room the rest of us looked at each other and burst out laughing--there was this cool slumber-party feel to the rest of the evening. (He also mentioned at the end of the semester that he had learned more from that class than from any other class he had ever taken--he had never realized how much he didn't know about women. Imagine!)

Anyway, although I loved the class, I was extremely disappointed when I collected the first batch of papers: all but two or three of them advanced the simplistic, facile assertion that "In Austen's day people married for money, but today, we marry for love." It pissed me off because it was wrong on both counts, and it meant the students weren't paying close attention either to the books we were reading or the lives of people around them. In Austen's day, money was certainly a consideration but it wasn't the only one, and there was and remains a difference between a cold-blooded hunt for the richest spouse you can possibly catch, and a realistic recognition of what kind of income you have to have if you want to raise two kids and send them to college.

So to prove my point I wrote up a list of various scenarios involving love, status, social background and wealth, which I'll post next time.

Posted by holly at 9:19 AM | Comments (3)

January 7, 2006

In Praise of the C Word

In the January 1, 2006 Sunday NY Times Magazine, there is a piece by Daphne Merkin as part of "The Way We Live Now" column that begins, "These are cruel times for vaginas." The piece goes on to describe various procedures that can be done to "improve" the appearance of external female genitalia, ranging from the "so-called Brazilian waxes" to labiaplasty, which "fixes" labia that are too big or too small or otherwise "defective."

I rather like the tone of the article: Merkin makes it clear that she finds the whole business hogwash, though I think the best section is devoted to the silliness of "hymen-reattachment surgery,"

once a desperate stratagem undertaken by young women from Muslim, Asian and Latin American cultures that demonized the loss of virginity before marriage, [which] is now being hawked as a way to enjoy a second honeymoon. If it's unclear whom this procedure is meant for--aging women hoping to catch a flagging penis with the semblance of undeflowered innocence?--it's even more ontologically ungraspable how stitching a hymen back together vitiates the psychological experience of having already lost your virginity.

Nonetheless, I was bothered by the fact that in her opening sentence, Merkin uses the term "vagina" when she should have used the term "vulva" or "pudendum."

Don't believe me? Consider these definitions:

vulva: The external genital organs of the female, including the labia majora, labia minora, and vestibule of the vagina. [Latin, womb, covering.]

pudendum: the human external genital organs, especially of a woman. Often used in the plural. [Latin, neuter gerundive of pudere, to make or be ashamed.] (The fact that the term is literally rooted in shame is the main reason I will avoid using it.)

vagina: The passage leading from the opening of the vulva to the cervix of the uterus in female mammals. [Latin, vagina, sheath.]

I know, I know: some of you are pointing out that we've covered this territory before: there's a section on it in Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues: Ensler includes a letter from Jane Hirschman, honorary chair of the Vulva Club, membership in which cannot be extended to Ensler (much to the dismay of those already in the club), because membership is "predicated on the understanding and correct usage of the word vulva and being able to communicate that to as many people as possible, especially women." Ensler includes the letter without responding directly to it, and although she names the next monologue "The Vulva Club," once that piece is done, she goes right back to using the word vagina to mean both vagina and vulva.

I think it's good that we can talk openly about the vagina, but I wish we could talk openly about the vulva too. I think how awkward it would be if, when we wanted to talk about an arm, we never used that word--even though it was available to us--opting instead to use the word hand, which was supposed to mean both that thing at the end of your arm with fingers on it, and the arm itself, in contexts that didn't always make it clear which body part you were actually referring to.

Sadly, in pop culture, the generally accepted and acceptable term meant to invoke all of female genitalia is vagina. Vulva, apparently, is too fastidious and precise; cunt and pussy are too crude. (More about those terms later.) But that raises the question: WHY is vagina the more familiar, accepted term?

In 2001, at Sunstone, I participated in a Mormon version of The Vagina Monologues, though it had to be retitled: it went by the name "Sacred Spaces: Mormon Women's Faith and Sexuality," though I thought it should have been called "The Vagina Testimony Meeting." I began my piece by stating that

I am happy to participate in the project of claiming the sexuality of Mormon women as sacred spaces. But I'd like to ask: what does space mean? Are we talking geometry, as in "the infinite extension of the three-dimensional field of every day life"? Are we referring to "sufficient freedom from external pressure to develop or explore one's needs, interests, and individuality," as in, "I need my space"? Or are we talking about "a blank or empty area"? I'd like to cast my vote for the freedom to explore our needs, interests and individuality, but I have a feeling that first we'll have to carve out a blank or empty area in which to claim "sufficient freedom from external pressure"--in particular, pressure from the dogma that sex outside of heterosexual marriage is evil--in order to make that exploration.

I go on to ask

Should I think of my vagina as a space? I know that in the male world, a vagina, mine included, is defined primarily as a space, an empty area. But unless you're giving birth, spaciousness is not a vaginal virtue--tightness is what makes for a good vagina, and exercises are prescribed to tighten a loose vagina up.

The vagina, spacious, tight or otherwise, is not the only organ of female sexuality. Why, aside from the fact that it is a receptacle for a penis, is the vagina so often the focus of discussions of female sexuality? The vagina is a deep subject but I would like to broaden this discussion, add a few contours. I would like to say the word pussy. I would like to say the word cunt. These words, unmentionable in many circumstances, refer not to the vagina but to the vulva, which includes the major and minor labia, the clitoris, and the "vestibule" of the vagina. I need these words to help me answer another question: What is the female equivalent of phallic? It can't be vaginal, which sounds as clinically medical as penile or testicular. It better not be hysteric, which, derived from the Greek word for womb, has too many negative connotations. Phallic refers not just to genitalia but the symbolic power of masculinity. What is the female equivalent, what word refers not only to genitalia but the symbolic power of femaleness? And what is that power? If such a word already exists, I don't think I've heard it, and so I propose a word: vulvic. I want to invoke the power to unsettle present in the word cunt. I want a word involving not just a sacred space but a sacred presence.

So that's right: I'm one of the few people--if not the only person--to say cunt at Sunstone, in front of an audience that included 75-year-old Mormon men. An audible gasp of astonishment rose when I said the word, and a few people strode from the room in outrage, but I kept right on going. I'm used to pissing off Mormons.

I admit that like Kate at Cruella-Blog, I am and have long been a fan of the C word. (Scroll down for Kate's defense of the word. As for why I include a euphemizing asterisk in the spelling of it, it's just so my blog doesn't come up when people are googling the term for porn sites. Note: I finally decided that writing "c*nt" was silly, and I came back and just wrote the word properly, as it deserves to be written: CUNT.) I like how strong it is: one clipped syllable, with plenty of firm consonants. I much prefer it to the term pussy, even though I quite like cats. I don't like that pussy is diminutive or animalistic, and I HATE that it's used by men as a term of derision for a weak, cowardly man: it really bothers me when straight men, who claim to take pleasure in women's bodies, invoke women's bodies as a way to insult other men. Admittedly, calling someone a cunt is about the worst insult you can hurl at him/her (compare it to calling someone a dick) in part because of the term's generalized ability to unsettle people, but to me, that's one indication of the word's inherent strength, one more reason it deserves my usage and respect.

I praise not only the word itself, but what it represents, and I also praise women who love their cunts as they are.

A follow-up to this is posted here.

Posted by holly at 5:24 PM | Comments (10)

December 13, 2005

Rape in Bosnia, a Decade Later

This article from the Independent UK about broke my heart. It details the suffering still occurring as a result of the systemtic rapes of Bosnian women during the war in the 1990s. A few points worth underscoring:

In 1998 the International War Crimes Tribunal condemned rape as a crime against humanity, yet there is still no formal international or state response to sexual violence, the related trauma caused by rape or to what happens to the children born of it. In July this year, Unicef in Bosnia commissioned a report on the children born as a result of war rape. It is the first time any organisation has focused on these children. The report, however, remains unpublished.

and

the situation is made worse by the Bosnian government's reluctance to recognise women as civilian victims of war. In October it agreed to pay compensation, but this has led to further problems as many within the government claim that women are falsifying claims of rape to receive money.

Posted by holly at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2005

Women Lousy at Designing Clothes for Women?

Ugh.

I've been taking a break from dealing with certain issues because well, because I need a break. I've been trying to work on a couple of posts, one on the whole nasty debate about a "man's right to choose" sparked by Dalton Conley's December 1st NY Times editorial on the topic, and another on the sexsomnia defense a guy in Canada used to beat a rape charge, but I don't get very far before I get too upset to continue.

Here's something I would dismiss as silly if it weren't for the fact that I really dig textiles and clothing. But the clothes I own are typically things I made myself or bought on sale, and I am of the opinion that haute couture is overpriced, wasteful and misogynist. This article made me think about WHY high fashion might be something the average woman doesn't want, need or have the money for. It's from the NY Times, about why women don't succeed as fashion designers. Among the arguments for why men, either straight or gay, are better than women at designing clothes for women, are these:

In some quarters, the perception exists that fashion's main consumers, women, are more comfortable taking advice about how they should look from a man. "Men are often better designers for women than other women," said Tom Ford, the former creative director of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, who more than anyone in the past decade built a brand on his own persona, that of a man whose sensual appeal is to both men and women. Whereas Bill Blass, Valentino and Oscar de la Renta founded their empires on the strength of a nonthreatening, nonsexual charisma, Mr. Ford aggressively promoted his sexually charged designs. "Of course there are many more gay male designers," Mr. Ford said. "I think we are more objective. We don't come with the baggage of hating certain parts of our bodies."

Some designers embrace an extreme version of this position. Michael Vollbracht, the current designer of Bill Blass, said he believes that gay men are demonstrably superior at design, their aesthetic formed by a perception of a woman as an idealized fantasy. "I come from a time when gay men dressed women," Mr. Vollbracht said. "We didn't bed them. Or at least I didn't. I am someone who is really pro-homosexual. I am an elitist. I am better than straight people. Women are confused about who they want to be. I believe that male designers have the fantasy level that women do not."

When women design for other women, Mr. Ford said, they proceed from a standpoint of practicality - not fantasy. "Sometimes women are trapped by their own views of themselves, but some have built careers around that," he said. "Donna Karan was obsessed with her hips and used her own idiosyncrasies to define her brand."

The Times' article purports to be an expose on the topic, but it doesn't include many women's voices on the matter. It does, however, let a designer named Dana Buchman respond to these arguments. Ms. Buchman "sees little value in such arguments. If men are more objective, she countered, then women are empathetic, which can be useful in understanding the consumer. 'I wear my own clothes,' she said. 'I have lived the life of my customer.'" Yeah, but that's precisely the problem, as Tom Ford kindly points out: she's too caught up in the practical issues of how clothes fit the real bodies and real lives of real women! And since she never wants to f*ck herself the way a straight man would and never sees clearly the aesthetic ideal women should strive to embody the way a certain type of elitist gay man would, she will never know as well as either class of man how to dress herself, or other women.

Posted by holly at 11:32 AM | Comments (4)

November 1, 2005

Phone Chips and Salsa

Several weeks ago, Wayne and I had phone chips and salsa, which is a lot like phone sex except with chips and salsa in place of the sex. (That's probably pretty self-evident, but I wanted to make sure everyone understood.)

That is only one of the many activities we have shared over the phone. We have also scrubbed our bathtubs together. We have gone for walks. We have plotted and taken fiendish but heartily deserved revenge against Adam, my evilest of exes. We have washed dishes. We have done laundry. We have googled our celebrity crushes and directed each other to websites featuring photos of obscure foreign actors without their shirts.

In fact, I got a cell phone a mere 14 months ago largely to facilitate talking to Wayne. He was very upset about a $400.00 phone bill he got, especially since most of the charges involved phone calls to or from me. So I got the same carrier he had and we both signed up for free mobile-to-mobile minutes, with the upshot that I began spending 25 to 30 hours a month talking to Wayne on the phone, and about two and a half hours put together talking to everyone else I knew.

That kept up for a good long while until we had a falling out over religion. I may discuss our six-month estrangement and reconciliation at some point in a future post, but let me say now that within days of reestablishing contact all the animosity disappeared and it was like we'd never quarreled, except that it took us a while to work back up to talking on the phone for so long that we'd grow peckish and have to rummage through our various cupboards for snacks.

After we both closed up the bag of chips and put the salsa back in the fridge on that Saturday several weeks back, we decided we needed some internet action, so we blog surfed by hitting the "next blog" button on blogger. We came across a site run by some guy in Vienna dedicated to enormous breasts. He provided plenty of photos of breasts, including a substantial pair on a naked blonde woman who sits on a fireplace mantle, drinking a beer and looking bored while some guy eats her out. I found that in rather bad taste, but what upset Wayne was a photo further down the page of Christian Bale from American Psycho, accompanied by a lavish and loving paean to the character CB portrays: the guy went on and on about how that was his favorite movie and how he really identified with that character--the one who tortures, rapes and murders women.

The thing is, earlier in the conversation, while he was cleaning his kitchen I was tromping through this small wooded area near my house, Wayne had said to me, "So, I read that article you linked on your blog, the one about ‘Die, Women, Die!' and it really kind of bugged me. I couldn't trust it."

"Why?" I asked.

"The tone bugged me. There was this cheap shot about Desperate Housewives, and it makes it sound like the show is just about 40-something T&A. But it's not--it's so much more than that. So the whole article just seemed to have--"

"A feminist agenda?" I interrupted.

"Exactly," he said, "and I don't trust agendas."

"Everyone has an agenda," I said. "It's just that they can be more or less explicit, more or less offensive, more or less progressive."

"Well, I just don't see why someone needs to prove their agenda by knocking Desperate Housewives. It's a great show."

(Unfortunately I couldn't comment on that particular issue at that point, as I had never seen an episode of DH. I have now seen eight episodes, and have been surprised at how much I like it--but more on that later.)

"I think it's a good point and a good article," I said. "There are so many shows that feature violence against women. The article makes the point that not only are these shows most popular among males age 18-34, but these shows are about the only television programming that demographic group really likes to watch."

"But I'm a male between the ages of 18-34," he began.

"Yes, but you're not a straight one," I said.

"But I watch Desperate Housewives," he said.

"Do you watch CSI?" I asked.

"Of course not. I don't watch most of the crap on television. And if you started examining the crap on television, you'd see that almost all of it insults someone."

"But that's not necessarily the same thing as trying to titillate someone by depicting the violent rape, torture and murder of women," I said. "Why should that kind of suffering be entertainment? Why would anyone enjoy watching that?"

(I admit I honestly don't understand that, but then, I have never been able to see anything funny about someone slipping on a banana peel. Even as a small child, I never felt able to laugh because I was too busy thinking about how painful it would be to fall down like that.)

And then the conversation took a turn and we talked about other things for over an hour until we both read the entry about how great that American Psycho character is. "This is obscenely offensive," Wayne said, "because that character is sick!"

So I said, "Do you get it now? Do you see why it's repugnant and abhorrent to have someone identify positively with a character who gets off on brutalizing, degrading and killing women? Do you see why it's not cool to make women convenient objects to be destroyed and discarded as part of a man's exploration of good and evil? Do you see why this sickens and distresses women who come across it?"

And he did--thank goddess.

I haven't unleashed many feminist rants on my blog lately (OK, I haven't unleashed them on the blog, but there have been several in real life), but it seems about time for one. I was going to write something about this Amnesty International Report on Japan's refusal to apologize for enslaving thousand of women as sex slaves, claiming that rape wasn't a war crime until 1949; and about a museum in Japan documenting the lives and suffering of comfort women, but I found an entry on the topic already posted on a blog I really like, I Blame the Patriarchy. So I'll work on drafting some of the ideas I've been mulling over lately, and in the meantime, you can enjoy the insights of another spinster aunt.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (2)

September 28, 2005

Feminism vs. Mormonism: the Argument after the Panel Part I I

See Part I

As for what I think of the rest of the discussion, well, it's complicated. As I've made clear, I think the church sucks. And I figured out before I was 20 that it sucked, for reasons having to do with gender and bigotry in general (I was 14 when the church finally let black men hold the priesthood, and the generosity in extending it wasn't as striking as the perverseness of withholding it) as well as the wacky doctrine.

But I didn't work up the courage to leave until I was almost 26, and leaving was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. I did it entirely on my own, without the benefit of a spouse or a friend to go with and support me; I did it in the face of great resistance and sorrow from my family; I did it because I had a been a feminist since I was 17 or 18 (I say in response to Luke's argument that you can't be both a feminist and an active member of the Mormon church). While I respect those who left in solidarity with and mourning for the intellectuals persecuted by the Church in 1993, I left in 1989 because the hierarchy made it clear to me, a desperately unhappy 25-year-old woman with no virtually authority, that it would not allow me to dissent even on the local level--I couldn't even talk about polygamy in my Relief Society lesson!

People leave the church if and when they're ready, and someone like Luke, who was its staunch, unquestioning defender for many years, should know that. I don't see much point in "destroying" the church because until people are ready to live without it, something else will just appear to take its place. This doesn't mean that I don't work to advance the institutions and ideologies I support and believe in. I'd just rather focus my energy on building something rather than tearing something else down. After all, Martin Luther and Galileo Galilei, two men who arguably did more damage to Catholic hegemony than just about anyone else, did not have its destruction as their goal; Luther wanted to heal and save the church from its sins and errors, and Galileo just wanted to figure out how the universe worked.

But even all that doesn't mean that I don't feel the right to express my negative views about the church to anyone who expresses their positive views about it to me, especially given how emotionally and intellectually manipulative Mormons often are when "bearing their testimonies," or asserting their knowledge that "the Mormon church is the only true and living church on the face of the earth." A few weeks ago I went to Kirtland, Ohio, a very important site in church history, with a friend of mine. We toured the Kirtland temple (which, with its removable pews and prominent pulpits, has more in common with a modern-day Mormon cultural hall [read: carpeted dance hall/gym with a stage at one end] than a contemporary temple), which is owned by the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), who don't do much proselytizing; they're mainly interested in promoting intelligent and open discussion.

Which stands in stark opposition to the plain old LDS church, which values proselytizing above all else. My friend wanted to see the sites owned by the Utah branch of Mormonism (as the CoC quite accurately refers to it), including a reconstruction of the saw mill used in construction of the temple and a recreation of a store whose owner, a member of the church, provided lodging and meals for Joseph Smith and his family. When we arrived at the LDS visitor's center, they told us we couldn't go visit those things until we watched their movie; I said, "There's no way I'll watch the freakin' movie," because I've just seen too much church propaganda already in my life. Then I headed off to pee in the pristine bathroom provided by mandate in all Mormon buildings.

While I was in the bathroom, my friend somehow wrangled a private tour led by some affable, wide-eyed young woman named Sister Nelsen, with calves as broad and intonation as flat as a church parking lot. She asked where we were from; we told her; I asked her she was from; she told me; then I asked if much of her mission was devoted to finding investigators and teaching discussions, or if she spent most of her time giving tours. She started to give me a vague answer about missionary work in general, so I said, "You don't have to explain that stuff; we're both returned missionaries, though neither of us is active any more. But we know how missions work." She was as startled as a 14-year-old boy might be upon awaking to find a glowing resurrected prophet standing at the foot of his bed, but she soon recovered her plucky aplomb.

Later, in the store where Joseph Smith received many of the "revelations" in the Doctrine and Covenants, she bore fervent testimony of the truth of Section 88, with its vision of the resurrection of the dead. I sat with my face averted and impassive, as if I were just lying back and thinking of England. She talked about how membership in the church brings us so much joy, as does sharing it with others, then said, "But you guys already know that, because you both served missions."

And that point I felt entitled share some of what made my own bosom burn. "I wouldn't call what the church brings ‘joy,'" I said.

"Holly's mission was very... difficult," my friend said.

"It wasn't just my mission," I said. "It's the whole structure of the church. It is not a benign institution. You think it's this great thing, but I think much of what it does is evil, downright evil. It retards spiritual and human development. It makes people small and afraid."

My friend later told me he thought those were very insulting things to say to a missionary, and I thought, Well, duh. But the enterprise of missionary work is insulting: trying to get people to believe just like you do. And I point out that I didn't try to get all emotional and intense--sometimes called "invoking the spirit"--and "bear testimony" of the "truthfulness" of my beliefs to Sister Nelsen before asking her to accept them as her own, which is what she did to me; I just told her what I believed in no uncertain terms.

So back at Sunstone, when the discussion continued to center so much on why people should or shouldn't leave the church, I started tuning out and started heeding my grumbling stomach. I also kept looking at my watch; it was past 7 p.m., and at 8 p.m. a dear friend of mine was speaking in the "Pillars of our Faith" session. I often skip that particular session in favor of steeping like a weak tea bag in the hotel jacuzzi, but I wanted to hear my friend, and that meant I needed to eat before 8 p.m. "Anybody hungry?" I asked.

No one responded to me. Someone mentioned general politics; most of us have families absolutely lousy with Republicans. Talking about that took a long time.

"Could we continue this over dinner?" I asked, more than once.

More than once, no one responded.

I'd been standing up so that I could see and speak to all the participants clearly, but when it became obvious that no one cared about dinner as much as I did, I sat down. I can leave, I thought, I can leave all by myself and go get dinner by myself, just like I left the church by myself. But once again I am caught up in this group dynamic where we have to act as a group, and in order to do that, everyone must persuade others to do what we want them to do: Luke has to convince everyone else to leave the church; Bob and Aimee and Alan have to convince people to stay in the church and change it from inside; and I have to convince everyone to go get dinner with me.

OK, I admit it: first of all, I'm oversimplifying the situation a bit, and secondly, I didn't really think that. But perhaps I should have thought it, because there's a patient, persistent whisper of truth in the idea. I should have said, "Well, I'm going to dinner now, and anyone who wants to may join me," and left off worrying about what everyone else would do. Above all, I should have forgotten about this man who said he wanted to have dinner with me but wouldn't direct a tenth of his sentences to me when dinnertime arrived! But I didn't. Instead, I thought, M&M's. I bought a package of M&M's earlier today and never got around to eating them. So I rummaged through my backpack, found them, opened them. From across the room Bob pointed intently at the package in my hand, as if it were a philosopher's stone that would turn the base metal of Mormon sexism into golden equality and justice. "Sorry to interrupt," he began, "but I just have to say, you could be having something WAY better than that if we'd all just go eat."

"I've been trying for half an hour to move this conversation to the restaurant," I said, "but so far I haven't managed to get any takers."

And then everyone else agreed they were hungry and several people acknowledged that, "I've got to get some dinner before ‘Pillars of My Faith' starts at 8" and we moved to the restaurant for a hurried meal of pasta--that's about all a decent kitchen (read: one that doesn't rely on microwaves) can knock out in under ten minutes, we were told. I heard my friend speak (I'm tempted to reveal his name, because he really is a lovely, lovely, wonderful, kind, humane, generous, thoughtful, intelligent man, but I guess I'll make you look it up instead), then ditched out on the rest of the session and was immediately waylaid in the hall by someone else who didn't understand my original question about sex.

Which constitutes the end of that particular round of that discussion, but not of that discussion itself. It has continued on blogs and on-line forums, and I'm extending it here, since I'm interested in the even larger discussion of which it is only a part. I invite comments about how feminism and Mormonism oppose each other, and whether or not--and if so, how--they can possibly be made more congenial.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (4)

September 27, 2005

Feminism vs. Mormonism: the Argument after the Panel Part I

The Sunstone panel on "Advancing Feminist Sensibilities among Mormon Men" occupied the final time slot of the afternoon, which meant it ran until 6:15 p.m. I was starving by the time it ended, and would have headed out the door to get dinner, except for two things: One, I'd posed this ambiguous question about sex no one could understand, and people kept asking me for clarification; and two, in attendance at the panel was a man I barely knew who had caught me off guard earlier by telling I was one of his very favorite writers and asking me to have dinner with him, and I kind of wanted to see where things could go. It was only later that I realized I should have learned something from the fact that however great the interest he professed in me, when push came to shove, he would rather stand around arguing about the church than talk specifically with me or fulfill the offers he made me.... But that's another story.

So I ended up as part of this prolonged discussion about the panel and its implications, whether change in the church was possible, and what we should or shouldn't do to encourage change.

There were dozen or so of us: a young couple active in the church, whom I'll call Bob and Aimee; a woman I'll call Debbie who had never been Mormon (she was Episcopalian, as I remember), but was married to a post-Mormon; two members of the panel, one of whom I'll call Alan; a long-time LDS feminist who has done graduate work on the topic of women and religion, and who remains active in her ward (which she loves, as opposed to being active in the church at large, which she does not love), whom I'll call Judith; a guy I'll call Luke, who has avowed a desire to "completely destroy the church;" two or three other people whose names I didn't know or won't reveal; and me.

I do not claim to be absolutely accurate in my summation of various positions; this happened two months ago, and while my memory is usually pretty precise and thorough, I was distracted by constant hunger and occasional frustration, so I wasn't always paying close attention. I invite anyone who was part of the discussion to correct any mischaracterization I might make of their beliefs and opinions.

At one extreme was Luke, who refused to believe that any of the members of the panel were truly feminists, since they still remained active in the church. He argued that because the church systematically discriminates against women, one cannot be both a feminist and an active member of the church. "What's more important than justice?" he kept demanding.

The other extreme, that women in the church are treated just fine, mercifully was not taken up by anyone. Everyone in the discussion recognized that when it comes to dealing with gender, the church sucks.

Bob and Aimee, young and hopeful, seemed to feel that with regards to women in the church, change was not only possible but inevitable, as people became more aware of the cost of the sexism and called for change, and as younger, more enlightened men were called to lead the church.

That was also basically the position of Judith and Alan as well. Judith stressed to me later, however, that change can't happen in the church quickly enough to suit her, so her loyalties to it are limited. Alan is an academic, and retained, in many regards, an academic's detachment on the matter. A very nice guy, he is nonetheless remarkably difficult to pin down, even on questions like, "What is your favorite dessert?" For various reasons he has decided to remain within the church, even though he knows it's a flawed institution, and will work to effect change from the inside.

That last bit, which drove Luke crazy, was also echoed by several other participants in the discussion. But as I'll discuss tomorrow, I'm not convinced it's such a bad approach for those who can manage it, even though I was not one such person.

Debbie had asked a question during the Q&A about economics and feminism--as I understand it, she thinks we need to rethink labor and work in order to achieve equality between genders. In the discussion afterwards, she drew a distinction between paternalism and patriarchy. Patriarchy is "a social system in which the father is the head of the family and men have authority over women and children" while paternalism is "treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities." This distinction supports the argument that the church is not merely a patriarchy but paternalistic, and so infantalizes EVERYONE but those who wield power. (Debbie told me later that her views on such matters are heavily influenced by Richard Sennett, whose book The Hidden Injuries Of Class [co-written with Jonathan Cobb and published in 1972] offers, according to the Guardian UK, a "sensitive and subtle exploration of working-class lives. It dissects the ways in which doctrines of equality may work against most people in the modern world; with inherited social distinctions now apparently erased, ‘social difference can now appear as a question of character, of moral resolve, will and competence.' It is an argument which has as much resonance in the age of so-called depressed affluence as it had 30 years ago.")

For a while those of us in this discussion after the panel talked about the possibility that the church might accept gay marriage before it truly empowered women, because gay marriage was this new thing the church didn't know how to deal with, whereas the subjugation of women was this thoroughly entrenched thing with all this cultural baggage that people felt invested in, in ways both large and small--actually, I might have been the one to bring that up; I don't remember. If I wasn't, I agree with it, for the reason mentioned above as well as the fact that gay men, until they leave the church, are able to enjoy the "blessings" of holding the priesthood and wielding (albeit limited) power in the hierarchy, so they are more likely to affect change. Even at Sunstone, there are more straight men participating in panels on how to make life better and more just for gay members of the church than there are men on panels about how to improve the lives of women. Consider as well the situation in the Catholic church, which has recently decided to bar gay men from becoming priests. Many gay priests and seminarians are expressing pain and outrage at the move to exclude them from the priesthood, but how many of them have worked actively to extend the right to hold the priesthood to women?

(You read more of my opinions on the topic in The Exclusive Territory of Straight Men, A Happy Marriage with a Good Man and Mormon Social Taboos.)

This has gotten quite long, so check back tomorrow for the end of the story, which involves M&M's.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2005

Women's Bodies Used to Sell...Everything in Czech Republic

An article entitled Czech Exhibit Shows Ads That Degrade Women discusses an exhibit "intended to draw attention to the degradation suffered by everyone--men, women and children--when they must constantly confront advertising that views the human body as a sexual tool for advertisers," said Suzanne Formanek, one of the exhibition's organizers. "These ads are all over Prague, but they are not tolerated in many other developed cities in the world."

Ads displayed include one "for a racy tabloid that showed a woman's bare behind with several cuts in it. 'Everyone likes a good spanking,' read the tagline."

Another depicts a 2001 Nokia ad "promoting a hands-free device to Czechs that featured a cartoon illustration of a man in a car attacking the breasts of a woman with both hands as she screamed. The phone was cradled on the dashboard. 'Free Hands!' read the caption."

You can view some of the photographs here: http://www.inourfaces.cz/photos_en.htm

Posted by holly at 8:02 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2005

Die, Women, Die!

For a clear statement on why feminism is SO MUCH MORE than merely a political movement, check out this article in the Washington Post entitled "Female Characters, Made to Suffer for our 'Art.'"

The article makes the point that gruesome shows such CSI--or rather, imitating CSI--almost always feature crimes in which the victims are young white women, who are often not only murdered but tortured and raped. These shows are made to appeal to an audience of 18 to 34-year-old men, who don't watch much television, but the shows they do like are Desperate Housewives and CSI--as the article puts it, "we conclude, young men like their older women in teddies having sex with teenagers who cut their grass (or, in the case of Teri Hatcher, naked and in the bushes), but they like their younger women -- well, dead."

In case you're skeptical about real-life crimes against women, check out this story about hundreds of murders of Mexican women in Juarez and along the border, or this story about the systematic rape of women by the Burmese army as part of a military strategy.

Posted by holly at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2005

Mormons, Male Feminists, and Sex

This post continues ideas discussed in three earlier posts: Ripe Peaches and Peach Schnapps, Venus Pandemos, and Male Mormon Feminists-–it's Part II of MMF, actually. For background information on all these topics, see Mormon Links.

When the panelists had finished and the session was opened to questions, I was (I think) the first one out of my seat. I thanked the guys for their comments, complimented them on having the courage and the conviction to declare themselves feminists, and said something like this--or rather, this is a more coherent version of what I wish I'd said:

"I've spent most of my adult life in academia in the humanities, which is someplace where almost everyone, male and female, is a feminist. In a graduate program in English or film studies or philosophy or the likes, it's hard to find a man who doesn't call himself a feminist--probably partly because he knows if he doesn't espouse it, chances are good he won't get laid very often. But despite these guys' declarations that they're feminists, they often treat the women they're involved with very badly."

I have dated enough myself and watched enough episodes of Sex and the City that I feel safe asserting that in conventions of heterosexual courtship, seduction and dating, men still retain most of the power of acting and choosing, while women have the role of waiting, and accepting or refusing. It is generally the man who is supposed to say, after a date or after sex, "I'll call you," and it is the man who is generally supposed to call. Certainly, there are women who are take the initiative in sexual matters. But there was only one Samantha to the other three more traditional, passive women in the cast of S&tC--it is not only Mormon women who are trained to be objects rather than subjects.

Of course there are women who treat the men they date very, very badly. But that does not change the basic facts of how power is generally understood and distributed in our society when it comes to courtship and sex.

There are plenty of men in the world who know it is wrong to disempower women politically and economically, but have little compunction about deceiving and demeaning women when it comes to dating and sex. Their reason for doing so is, according to Greg Behrendt, author of He's Just Not That Into You, that most men are willing to sleep with women they don't really like, but not so willing to call them afterwards.

OK, OK, that's a fairly harsh summary. But I did read the book, and Behrendt does provide a fairly long list of really bad behavior that men engage in and women put up with, because... because they hope the guy will change? Because they hope the mixed messages aren't really so mixed? Behrendt's mantra is, "Don't waste the pretty," or don't expect a guy who treats you badly to stop treating you badly, because even if he's the nicest guy in the world, he won't stop--until he meets the right woman. (And supposedly that causes a huge improvement in his character and behavior.)

Well, maybe. Maybe that's true. But if it's true, it's one of the issues feminism needs to confront. Because if a guy finds it OK to treat women with contempt, discourtesy and unkindness in the most personal of relationships, does he really respect women and have an understanding of their lives?

And as I considered issues like these in that session on male Mormon feminists, it occurred to me that perhaps the average Mormon guy, who was probably much less promiscuous than most of his non-LDS counterparts, who might have been (technically, at least) a virgin when he married a woman who was also a virgin, and who might even be extremely faithful to his wife, might also treat her better than the average 20- or 30-something single guy who served as Greg Behrendt's examples of the guys whom smart, pretty women should kick to the curb.

So I tried to say that, or something to the effect that, "It occurs to me that one way in which Mormon women--at least, the ones lucky enough to be married to decent guys with feminist sensibilities--might be treated better than their secular counterparts is when it comes to courtship and sex. I just started thinking about this, and I don't know if it's true. But I want to think about it some more. And I want to ask all of you about it. John is the only one who mentioned sex, but sex and reproduction are pretty fundamental to feminism. So what about sex? How do you reconcile your ideas of being a male Mormon feminist with how you think women should be treated when it comes to sex?"

And then I sat down, and everyone stared at me, and the room was very silent.

The guys on the panel looked at each other. It was becoming obvious to me that I had not phrased my question very well, since no one knew what to do with it. Finally one man took the microphone, and from his answer it was clear that he had interpreted my question to mean, "Do you as a feminist like sex with women?" And while I was glad to know that he did, it wasn't really what I had asked.

It also became clear to me after the panel that I'd phrased the question badly, since throughout the next few days, people approached me and asked me for clarification. But it also became clear to me that a lot of people just didn't get the issue to begin with. One guy asked me what I could have possibly meant, and I said, "Well, it kind of changes how seriously you take a guy as a feminist if he date-rapes you, or bites your nipples until they bleed and won't stop even when you're screaming in pain and begging him to quit, or stops you in the middle of sex and says, ‘I don't really like it when a woman gets that worked up.'" (And yes, all those things happened to me--the last one more than once, in slight variations. I know other women who have heard something similar as well. By no means did the majority of men I slept with express such a sentiment, but still, it's remarkable how many men prefer passive sex partners.)

And the guy said, "Huh. I can see how that would be true, but I never thought of feminism as anything other than a political movement."

And then a bunch of us stood around after the session and had a long argument about feminism, loyalty to the church, and whose family was most terrifyingly conservative, which I have written about in two posts--click here for Part I and here for Part II.

Posted by holly at 5:59 AM | Comments (4)

September 15, 2005

Venus Pandemos

In 1987, when I was finishing up my bachelor's degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona (at that point I was still primarily a poet), a beloved teacher and friend loaned me a copy of Little Star, Mark Halliday's first book. I loved it. It was one of my major influences. The title poem is about wondering who sang lead on some 1950s pop song. Halliday acknowledges that the poem

is not the first time I've tried to
get a rock-&-roll song into a poem and it won't be
the last; it is my need to call out
This counts too!

After reading Halliday, I began writing all kinds of poems with rock & roll songs in them, or inspired by rock & roll songs; I wrote a poem about the video to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" and I wrote a bunch of poems about death by hanging inspired largely by "Gallows Pole" by Zeppelin and I wrote a poem called "1812 Overture" but despite the reference to Tchaikovsky the poem is really about how much I love the song "Close to Me" by the Cure, how sad I always was when the song ended, how it was over far too quickly.

Because I was poor, I never bought Little Star; I just returned my teacher's copy after reading it once, then got a copy from the library and kept it until I finished my master's degree four years later. And then it went out of print and I didn't think much about it, aside from the poem "Why the HG is Holy," which is one of my all-time favorite poems.

But a few months ago, I mentioned to Tom how much I loved that book, and as he had a copy, he loaned it to me. And I got to reread a few of the poems I had rather forgotten about, including the longest poem (seven pages) in the collection, which is called "Venus Pandemos."

When I first read that poem, I thought it was funny, mostly because I didn't have much personal reference for what it was talking about. I was an incredibly naive Mormon virgin who had little experience with dating and had never been in love, and though at that point I quit riding the bus to campus because I found enduring the catcalls and whistles I got while I waited at the bus stop on a busy street too upsetting, I still laughed at this poem, thought he was saying something clever. In fact, I once read much of it aloud to one of my friends who ran the women's center before she stopped me, almost heaving with distress. The poem begins

What am I going to do with my desire
for women?

To be more specific, what am I going to do
with my interest in women's bodies?

and continues its exploration of this

energy--
I am a little excited just to describe it--
the quick expert evaluation of
face
breasts
ass
and then the instant summary judgment:
"I crave her"
"I'd take her"
"Maybe if I was a little drunk and she threw herself on me"
or, more often:
"Forget it, honey."

Then he spends a stanza discussing breasts, and another discussing ass, and then wonders "if any intelligent feminists will ever read this poem." Then we get a section with a fairly explicit discussion of sex. He says it's not about conquest; rather,

it's
to do something about
her beauty.

To do something about her beauty!

Is it a defining quality of beauty
that it won't leave us alone?

He also states that

of course what I'm talking about
has nothing to do with rape. (Nothing?)
So I'm left to rely on my technique of
covert ogling-in-passing--
I eat them with my eyes.
--Is it like eating? It's a job of
disposing of them, one by one:

All right, I see that body,
I have seen it.

--Which means, that body is taken care of now,
that body is disarmed, normalized,
brought under control, it is forgivable now:
I have disposed of it through ritual,
the ritual of snapshot glancing, and now
its power is dead.
ah. So is it, then, a kind of murder fantasy?

And ultimately, he acknowledges,

Yes. I guess that's what I'm saying.
--But it's your fault, baby,
for being so GOD DAMN BEAUTIFUL.

As for why he is writing this, it's because

every day
I think about strange women, for quick seconds,
in ways I consider dehumanizing.
Should I be ashamed?
I suspect my sexual fantasies are
among the tamest (most repressed?) anywhere;
and I can claim that my relations with the women I know
are relatively
nonsexist . . .

and he goes on for another page and a half before writing

In 1973 and '74 I worked in a feminist theatre group;
my awareness of the women's anger reached the point where
it seemed a crime for men to whistle at women on the street.
Now I'm not going to say it isn't.
But I'm admitting to an enduring energy in me that says
an attractive woman is not simply one more comrade on earth,
nor is she just another nice thing about life;

an ATTRACTIVE WOMAN is a PROBLEM.

And that's the real end of the poem, despite one final throwaway stanza.

Now, I'm not trying to dismiss Halliday or his work. I still admire a lot of the poems in Little Star and I was very inspired by his most recent book, Jab. I like how straight-forward and energetic his voice is. But when I reread "Venus Pandemon" for the first time in a long time a few months ago, I didn't react to it the way I did at 23. Eighteen years after first reading it, after enduring several incidences of sexual violence, after hearing a boyfriend say to me, "Look, I'm sorry I date-raped you" (which isn't really all that comforting), after being sexually demeaned by men who claimed simultaneously to care about my welfare and to be feminists, I don't find that poem funny any more. And I feel entitled to assert that a man who finds an attractive woman a PROBLEM, is something of a PROBLEM himself.

And as I listened to that panel on male Mormon feminists, I thought about the fact that any discussion of feminism needed to include a discussion of this issue.

Posted by holly at 7:14 AM | Comments (3)

September 14, 2005

Male Mormon Feminists

At Sunstone this year, I attended a panel entitled "Advancing Feminist Sensibilities among Mormon Men." The abstract read

Why aren't there more visible and vocal male feminist voices within the Mormon community? The all-male panel will talk about their journeys toward becoming feminists, the challenges they face in maintaining feminist sensibilities in Mormon culture, and ideas they see for encouraging other Mormon men to take more active feminist stances. Audience discussion will follow.

The panel had four members, and I suspect it was rather hard to fill. One of the panelists was 30-something; one was 40-something; I'm guessing one was 50-something and I'm pretty sure the last was 60-something, so there was a decent range. All four panelists were still active participants in the church, though they might describe themselves as more or less devout.

I couldn't help but be thrilled that someone had wanted to put this panel together. I couldn't help but be thrilled that the topic was being discussed. I couldn't help but be thrilled that there are Mormon men who are willing to call themselves feminists.

All four men said interesting, valuable things. There was a lot of talk about how having a daughter broadened and deepened these men's appreciation of the challenges women face. They talked about a commitment to justice and a willingness to be proactive in their efforts to improve the lives of all women on the planet.

What they didn't talk about was sex.

The closest was a comment by John, the 30-something guy on the panel. He acknowledged that he still had work to do in perfecting his own feminist sensibilities, admitting, "I'm still guilty of lookism. I still objectify women."

John, I should mention, is a good friend of mine, someone I like and respect very much. We first met in 2003 when I chaired a panel called "World Religions 101: What Studying Other Faiths Has Taught Me about My Own." John's mother was a Japanese Buddhist, and John joined the Mormon church in high school. His comments were moving and profound–-among other things, he compared attending his grandfather's Buddhist funeral in Japan to helping with his father-in-law's Mormon funeral in the US.

I talked a little about Buddhism in my comments, mentioned how I was intrigued by the Buddhist concept of detachment. I stated,

The idea is that when we become too attached to people, objects, institutions or ways of doing things–-even the best people, the best objects, the best institutions and the best ways of doing things–-we sacrifice something of ourselves, some of our spiritual freedom, our intellectual clarity and our ability to live appropriately in the world. "What can I let go of?" I now ask myself. "How can I be less invested in things that don't really matter?" I myself am someone who can form emotional attachments to something as grand as the entire planet--and it seems obvious that one would, but I am amazed and outraged when I encounter people who say it doesn't matter that our current environmental practices are rendering the planet uninhabitable, because the world will be destroyed in the Second Coming anyway--and I can likewise become emotionally attached to things most people discard easily, like plastic bags (my current favorite being one from the gift shop of the British Library), so these are important questions for me.

This was one of the things John and I bonded over, because he also has a plastic bag fetish. In an email message he told me that his current favorite plastic bag was one from the Getty museum that he used "to carry books, lunch, exercise gear, and other spillover items that don't fit into his bursting-at-the-seams backpack."

The following summer, he and his family went to Paris. When he got back, he sent me a package, which included some very swanky tea samples from a Parisian tea shop, a poster of Shiva (my favorite deity), an antique postcard of Sacre Couer (which I display on the door of my office on campus) and a whole array of very cool plastic bags! There was one from a French grocery store and one from the UC Irvine bookstore and one really elaborate, fancy bag that once contained some Mac computer product. (I admit I am saving that last bag not out of product loyalty but just because it is so very fancy and cool.)

Anyway, all of this is to say that I really dig John. I've asked him to be on a panel every year since then and he always says such intelligent, insightful things. And when I heard him make that single, solitary, understated comment about the role sex played in Mormon men's relation to feminism, I thought, This is what is missing from this discussion.

Continued in Mormons, Male Feminists, and Sex.

Posted by holly at 5:43 AM | Comments (0)

September 9, 2005

A Happy Marriage with a Good Man

Here's something from "Confessions of a Mormon Boy: An Autobiographical One-Man Play Written, Created and Performed by Steven Fales" (SUNSTONE December 2003). After serving a mission for the Mormon Church, Mr. Fales told his female best friend he was gay, then proposed. She accepted; they married, and stayed married for six years, until his "same sex attraction," to use the Mormon term, put too great a strain on the marriage.

As the divorce got closer, I got confused and scared. I didn't know how to be alone, and I didn't want to give up "hugging time." Emily and I shared a tradition her parents had started. You know how early kids wake up? Well, we would try to sleep in--trying to put off their needs as long as we could. Then, when we couldn't put it off any longer, we'd yet out, "HUGGING TIME!" In our two children would run and jump on the bed. We would then hug and kiss and snuggle--all warm and safe and happy. How many gay men get to experience that? Let alone watch their children being born. Couldn't I give it all up for the sake of hugging time? I was going to fight for hugging time!

I turned it all on Emily. It was her fault! She never wore lingerie! [Never mind that Mormonism has its own ugly underwear faithful members are required to wear.] She wouldn't watch the better-sex videos I ordered from the back of GQ. Emily knew going into this marriage it might come to this. And now that I've finally cracked, she's going to just throw me out?! How dare she watch Will & Grace and laugh when I was trying to change! She had failed me!

He goes on to acknowledge that of course his wife was not responsible for his homosexuality. But that didn't stop him from blaming her for it in the first place.

In Ron Schow's response to Ben Christensen in the recent Dialogue issue, Schow quotes a Mormon man who spent eight years in a temple marriage:

It was only after I came out to my wife that I realized how much she had suffered and endured over the years in asking questions like why didn't I find her desirable or why our sexual relationship never seemed satisfying. Was it a failure on her part? she wondered. She had sadness about feeling alone, confused and hurt in ways that were nearly impossible to articulate.

Having left the church myself (which is very often a part of coming out of the closet) and having watched a score of Mormon men come out of the closet, I am certain it is excruciatingly traumatic and painful. But COME ON! Let's consider the other side of the equation as well: how self-obsessed and blind do you have to be to live with someone for EIGHT YEARS and not notice that you're making her miserable and isolated?

The essay continues:

This young man emphasized the falsity of a prevalent myth: "I saw my struggle with (and against) homosexuality as my own cross to bear. I felt I was the one who was suffering, struggling, trying to make things right. What I failed to recognize was that my wife was also part of the struggle even though she lacked basic information."

My wife was also part of the struggle even though she lacked basic information.

I HATE IT when people withhold "basic information" from someone else. Someone recently did that to me. It had nothing to do with his being gay, but it did have to do with the situation he was in--and his sense that he could invite me to be intimately involved in his life without making sure I was clear about all the details of his "struggle." I kept issuing general requests for more information, growing more and more ridiculous and more and more desperate the more it was withheld. Finally I hit upon precisely the right question to ask, and he was honest enough to give me a direct answer. It made all the difference in the world to know exactly what I was dealing with.

Mormon women are stupidly hopeful and will do all kinds of things to achieve a "happy marriage" with a "good man," whatever those things mean. I did not marry a gay Mormon man, but I did become engaged to one, Matthew, in 1988, after we both fell in love at first sight. The story has a reasonably happy ending: he had enough integrity and wisdom that he simply could not permit himself to marry me, knowing that however much he loved me, he would never lose his attraction to men. But it took four years of my wheedling and prodding and begging to extract that confession from him; before that, he kept insisting that his refusal to marry me had nothing to do with sexual orientation, that it was because I wasn't the right woman for him. Given how much I loved him, the whole thing was absolutely torture for me.

But somehow we worked through it. And still Matthew and I love each other deeply and will until we die, if not beyond that, and we remain committed, devoted friends. And I believe that one reason we are still friends is because he would not marry me; he would not permit himself to disrupt my life with what he knew in his heart was essentially a selfish act.

I don't want to minimize or ignore the cruel and vicious ways in which the church victimizes gay men, on whom there is intense pressure to marry and father children. But I also don't want to minimize or ignore the cruel and vicious ways in which the men who uphold and benefit from patriarchy--and as long as men wield the priesthood in the Mormon church they do benefit from patriarchy, even when they're gay--victimize women, not only politically but personally, inside the arena of relationships and sex.

Sex sex sex! That's going to be one of the dominant topics for the next few weeks. The discussions of sex will probably be frequent and full. I just can't promise they'll be the least bit titillating, given that they'll always involve Mormons.

Posted by holly at 6:33 AM | Comments (0)

September 8, 2005

Mormon Social Taboos

Tuesday evening I got home from work and found a load of mail, including two cd's of original (and spectacularly good) music from Wayne, and the Fall 2005 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. This is one of the primary publications of liberal Mormonism, and I've subscribed (and published in it) for years. I sat down to my dinner and watched part of a movie, took care of some teaching stuff, had a bath. Then I picked up the issue of Dialogue and checked the table of contents, and found this:

GETTING OUT/STAYING IN: ONE MORMON STRAIGHT/GAY MARRIAGE

Getting Out by Ben Christensen 121

Homosexual Attraction and LDS Marriage Decisions by Ron Schow 133

Thoughts of a Therapist by Marybeth Raynes 143

Staying In by Ben Christensen 148

I gave the section a cursory scan--that was about all I could bear--then went to bed. I fell asleep quickly, stayed asleep for an hour, got up and read Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun for a class I'm teaching on war literature (because after the Dialogue thing, I needed something cheerful and lighthearted), tried to medicate myself into oblivion, eventually succeeded.

Wednesday morning I got up and reread the whole section carefully.

Here is what Ben Christensen, a 24-year-old gay Mormon married to a woman by whom he has fathered a nine-month-old daughter, has to say about the fact that he can't mention to his friends that he "can't stop thinking about this guy in religion class":" "It ticks me off that Mormon social taboos force me to lie about who I am."

Mormon social taboos.

That's what's to blame for the fact that he can't discuss his same sex attraction: Mormon social taboos.

Not Mormon doctrine. Mormon social taboos.

Nothing wrong with the doctrine--which says that homosexual behavior is a sin; no, it's just Mormon social taboos.

If you're not Mormon, you have no idea how big this issue is. Many religions venerate celibacy; many other religions tolerate it. Not Mormonism. Celibacy is unnatural; sex before marriage is, according to some leaders in the church (and one of my friends from college, one of the very few people whom I will never again speak to), a sin akin to MURDER (that's right: sex before marriage is the moral equivalent of killing someone in cold blood); and the entire reason we are sent to earth is to get bodies, have sex, and create children. So there's some room in many other religions for reconciling religious faith and homosexuality by choosing celibacy, but almost none in Mormonism--at least, not if you want to be respectable and happy.

Christensen writes of his engagement to Jessie, who knows about his attraction to men, that

Difficulties arose fairly quickly.... It bothered Jessie that she was usually more interested in kissing than I was. This bothered me too, but I didn't know what to do about it. I definitely loved her, and out of that love an attraction was growing, but to be honest it was nothing compared to the strong desire I had for men. But then it's not accurate to even compare the two feelings. My attraction to Jessie, the drive that made me want to hold her in my arms and feel her body next to mine, came entirely from my heart. On the other hand, the drive that made me want to feel a man's body next to mine was purely a libido thing. I've never allowed a physical attraction to a man to become any more than just that. Apples and oranges.

He marries Jessie for a variety of reasons, one of which is that "God told [him] to." Another is that he feels his only two alternatives are a conventional, monogamous straight Mormon marriage on the one hand and "[running] off to San Francisco and [embracing] a rampant life of unrestrained queerness" on the other.

A year later, at the ripe old age of 25, he is able to critique his earlier essay and the responses to it, by writing

Critiquing my essay, a friend asked, "Can you really separate love and sex so easily? I can't." I discarded his concern, believing I had a deeper understanding of love and sex. After all, he writes novels about missionaries who fornicate and teenaged boys who make out with cow udders. For me, the distinction between love and sex was clear. As I've become more honest with myself, though, I see that Marybeth states my dilemma more accurately when she says that people in my situation choose "between a deep love and erotic attachment plus love." This choice is a good deal more difficult than the over-simplified choice I thought I was making. By choosing heterosexual marriage, I've denied myself the experience of loving someone I am naturally attracted to and my wife the experience of loving someone who is naturally attracted to her.

Glad he figured that out eventually.

Aside from a few lines of dialogue in which Jessie reassures the author that she still wants to marry him despite the fact that he is gay, we never get to hear from her.

Ron Schow and Marybeth Raynes, the two respondents, are very respectful of the deliberate choices Ben Christensen is making at the same time they underscore the challenges and difficulties he is setting himself up for. Perhaps I might respect those choices more myself if I hadn't heard it all before, some of it almost verbatim. I'll never forget being told by the love of my life, "Look, I'm not really gay, and I still want to marry a woman. It's just that I prefer sex with men to sex with women." I could think of no response to that statement.

I'm grateful for my two closest friends on earth, both of whom are gay (formerly Mormon) men, and I'm also grateful that neither of them married me.

I'm not done.

Posted by holly at 8:08 AM | Comments (2)

August 18, 2005

One of the Boys

Right now, I'm kind of one of the boys. My two best friends here are Tom, who is married, and SBJ, who is not, but as I said, my affectionate mocking of him is tinged with the fond feelings of a slightly snotty big sister.

By a significant margin, most of my colleagues are male. I do have some fabulous female colleagues, but most of them are married with small children. These are women with PhDs, diverse research interests, cool husbands, and very busy schedules. For various reasons, it is harder for these women to socialize than it is for the guys I work with. Although I manage to meet these women occasionally for lunch or coffee, a more common event in my social life is to find myself the solitary woman at a table with three or four or five guys, drinking a round of Arrogant Bastards (a local brew), talking about poetry and tattoos and bowel disorders and gross medical procedures and how the fact that SBJ likes neither Pink Floyd nor Led Zeppelin is one more thing that makes him odd.

I'm sort of not complaining, and I sort of am. I'm not really used to this "hanging out with the guys" business. I'm the second of five children: four daughters followed by a son everyone expected to be another girl. My mother has a very strong personality; my father clearly loved us very much but was never good at showing affection; my grandfathers were downright distant; plus I had all those sisters and no brother until I was almost nine; so I was very female-identified as a child. Then there was the fact that I grew up Mormon, and saw very early that a lot of men were power-hungry bastards. It's not that I never found good men--I found plenty--but I was always very wary of them, until they demonstrated that they deserved my trust.

I was and am straight, which was complicated by the messages I got from the church, particularly when I went on a mission. Men in the Church, I was told often enough, were in authority over me; I should not try to be on an equal level with them. But exerting the authority of the priesthood seemed to render men not larger and stronger, but stunted and misshapen. Consequently that's how I saw them: distorted, disjointed creatures, some of whom one could be romantically attracted to, some of whom one must try to obey despite their failings; none of whom could demand from me the mutual respect and understanding I felt ought to exist between me and other women, who were my equals. The good relationships I achieved with men occurred when they sought to minimize their authority, not when they sought to enlarge it, as so many of them often did.

It got easier to see men as complex, complete human beings when I left the church, but anyone who thinks the sexes are equal, that men don't have opportunities and freedoms that women lack, just isn't paying attention. Patriarchy is strange. The guys I hang out with are good guys, and I value and enjoy their friendship. But it's still weird to spend so much of my time with a large group of men, none of whom are or ever will be a romantic partner.

I'm going to have more to say about this, about gender roles in general and my own gender performance--actually, I've already started saying things here about my own gender performance--but I'm planning on saying even more. It's something I've been thinking about for a very long time, given the fact that I was a feminist by the time I was twelve and that my boyfriend from kindergarten, my date to the prom, and my ex-fiancé all grew up to be gay Mormon returned missionaries. Then there is my dear friend Wayne, who, according to his myspace.com profile, was "Formerly a bed-wetting, drug-addicted, Mormon Drag Queen."

Yeah. This is a topic where I have something to say.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2005

Answering My Own Question

The church's approach to homosexuality is to "hate sin but love the sinner." For a long time that was my approach to the church: I hated the sexism, the racism, the homophobia of the church; I hated its smug certainty, its foolish and self-defeating attempts to stifle creativity and questioning; I hated its more illogical and vicious doctrines; I hated and I still hate the Book of Mormon, which lacks the linguistic beauty, the human diversity and the spiritual complexity of the Bible. But I told myself that I loved the church: Loved the community, loved the heritage of sacrifice and striving, loved the hymns, loved the habits of discipline and self-control I was taught to cultivate. The problem, I eventually had to acknowledge, was that the church simply would not let me love the sinner while hating the sin: I had to love the sin as well; in fact, I had to convince myself that the sins were not sins at all, but were instead God's righteous decrees, and that by not loving them, I was the sinner.

And trips to Utah are traumatic because there, I encounter people who want--oh so generously, oh so magnanimously!--to help me see how I've sinned against God's righteous decrees, and bring me back to a fold I cannot survive in.

I am never able to attend all the sessions I want to attend at Sunstone, but there are so many I just want to run from. No--I don't want to run from them, because that implies genuine horror and fear, whereas what I feel is mostly heartsick fatigue. It's fine that other people want to continue to debate the historicity of the Book of Mormon; I just don't want anywhere near such a discussion. It's fine that others want to plumb the depths of Joseph Smith's psyche, but I don't give a shit about the guy! I feel about such discussions the way Catherine Morland, heroine of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, feels about history:

I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilence on every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all; it is very tiresome; and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs; the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.

For one of the panels I was on this year, I needed the text of Boyd K. Packer's "Talk to the All-Church Coordinating Council" in May, 1993, in which he discusses the dangers posed by "the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement (both of which are relatively new), and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals." I admit this was the first time I bothered to track down the actual text of the infamous talk, and I was vexed and wearied by his glib trivialization of the feminist movement as "relatively new," given that one of the most important feminist texts ever written, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft, was published in 1792, almost 40 years before the Book of Mormon; that the Seneca Falls convention on women's rights was held in 1848, two years before Utah was organized as a territory; that the women's rights movement was referred to as the "feminist movement" in newspapers worldwide in the 1890s; and that women were finally given the right to vote in this country in 1920, not because it simply occurred to Congress that it was a good thing to do, but because many women agitated and demonstrated tirelessly, demanding this fundamental right.

Instead of talking about what should actually be done to improve the lives of women in the church and in the world, Mormons have to pretend that feminism is a new and therefore illegitimate phenomenon, simply because Mr. Packer assumed its existence could not predate by much his notice of it. How very vexing. How very wearying.

And I don't want to deal with that, but I still have to, simply as part of doing my research for presentations on what I do want to deal with: discussions of the NOW, of how Mormonism made me into the person I am today. I don't love the sinner any more: I don't love the church. But I also don't hate it. I simply accept that it has affected my life in on-going ways, not all of them negative, despite my conviction that so many of the church's doctrines and practices are profoundly immoral.

The contribution to Sunstone I'm proudest of was a panel I organized for the 2004 symposium, entitled "Mormonism as Praxis" (reprinted in SUNSTONE December 2004), inspired by Karen Armstrong's discussion in The Spiral Staircase of the difference between orthopraxy (right behavior) and orthodoxy (right thought). Armstrong convincingly cites the argument that in many religions, orthodoxy and doctrine are of little significance--what matters is behaving rightly, cultivating behaviors that change us for the better, regardless of what we believe. This argument was so revolutionary and astonishing to me when I encountered it in March 2004 that I needed to explore it further.

Remarkably, once I abandoned the idea that orthodoxy--that troublesome, unswallowable bone in my throat--mattered at all, I felt more at liberty to celebrate and embrace those practices inherited from Mormonism that truly have enriched my spiritual life. The five panelists, including me, considered the special benefits offered by cultivating religious habits and behaviors either unique to Mormonism or approached in a uniquely Mormon manner. (I talked about keeping a journal.) The panel was what I hoped it would be: a positive and validating experience for any audience. Active Mormons were able to affirm those practices that reinforce their faith, while people who were no longer active or believing Mormons could acknowledge and remember what was valuable about their training as Mormons. The idea was to celebrate the ways in which Mormonism inculcates and encourages behaviors that truly do make us better people, regardless of belief.

That's what I want to do at Sunstone--and I keep going because I'm able to. But I still have to confront all the people who are horrified by and angry at me because I reject orthodoxy, and who resist my self-definition: people in Utah always want to call me an ex-Mormon. But I refuse that label. I'm not an ex. I'm a post-Mormon or a cultural Mormon.

And all of that really is a kind of psychic assault, and dealing with it wearies and vexes me, and makes me heartsick, and tired.

Perhaps I should be pleased that it takes me only a month to recover from that, instead of three or four.

Posted by holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (2)