feminist critique
Jun. 12th, 2006 11:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhaone in a long if casual series illuminating "why i am not a feminist, but an egalitarian humanist".
this was originally written as a comment in somebody else's LJ, but i decided not to post it because the thread was too old, and because i went off on a tangent. the post that started it regarded a feminist protest of violence against women and children as "duh, like who's in favour of violence these days other than psychos". then there was a reply saying that feminists are doing it because people need to have it pointed out, that everyone accepts violence by strangers as the real thing, but domestic abuse is somehow not viewed as just as bad. and that didn't ring true for me -- but i wonder whether i am now too far removed from the mainstream to have a good feel for what they think. i'm judging mostly by what i read on mainstream news and social commentary on blogs.
i've been straining my brain and i cannot think of any people nowadays openly claiming domestic abuse against women isn't a serious problem, anywhere i read. nobody (in any significant numbers that i can see) wants women be injured by their husbands [*]. i think some feminists might be misreading a reaction against broadening the term "violence" as a denial that abuse happens. i myself do make a distinction between "violence" and "force" (and lots of acquaintance rape uses force, IMO, not violence), but i think either is inappropriate in a supposedly loving relationship; i don't make the distinction in order to trivialize acquaintance rape -- i think it is by far a more serious problem than stranger rape. i think that such protests are done simply because domestic abuse keeps happening. (i'll keep my thoughts about their efficacy for myself just now so this doesn't become about that.) i don't know a single person who thinks domestic abuse is ok, not even a little bit (excepting self-defense).
what i can think of however, is plenty of people who're upset at violence against women, who are outraged at pedophilia -- but they think spanking is ok, and is somehow a totally different thing, not violence at all, not even inappropriate force. and frankly, i don't see feminists at large actually having this on their agenda -- when they do seem to care about children as a matter of policy, it's all about pedophilia as well, and the incredibly common woman-on-child violence is a dirty little secret that is swept under the rug. google some time for hits about spanking and feminism, and you'll find vastly more hits about BDSM and its defense, together with conservative rants against all of what allegedly destroys the family (where feminism and anti-spanking movements are named separately), than you find feminist critique of spanking. i consider feminism's silence on the issue of spanking to be particularly suspicious, since it doesn't happen to fit well with the idea that men are the aggressors and women the victims.
maybe feminism shouldn't be about children but just about women; that'd be sort of ok by me -- though i find some issues hard to separate, especially in the areas of sexual abuse, and well, the battle of equality starts long before the age of majority. but then take children off the signs that purport to be against violence. it's long struck me as a token effort, and i dislike tokenism, especially when it uses children.
i agree that it seems harder for people to empathize with domestic than with stranger violence. i see it in myself; i do empathize just as much initially (if not more; i find abuse by loved ones so much more destructive than abuse by strangers), but i have difficulties maintaining that empathy when somebody stays in an abusive situation (assuming no death threats are involved), when somebody falls more than once for the abject apology route after the abuse, when somebody says "but i love him!". if anything, i think feminism needs to support those women more, because they obviously still have very bad tapes running in their heads with "stand by your man" as the soundtrack, and some fundamentally horribly damaging ideas about what love is.
and i wonder how much spanking has to answer for regarding those tapes, how much it is responsible for bad boundaries, and how much it has to do with raising men who become abusers. how can this possibly not be a feminist concern? at least be on the table for discussion?
[*] upon rereading i remembered that i've read sean connery is purported to have said that some women need slapping around. but upon googling this i see that that's not what he said. and while what he did say is questionable, i'd really like to see the full context for it before i count it as evidence.
this was originally written as a comment in somebody else's LJ, but i decided not to post it because the thread was too old, and because i went off on a tangent. the post that started it regarded a feminist protest of violence against women and children as "duh, like who's in favour of violence these days other than psychos". then there was a reply saying that feminists are doing it because people need to have it pointed out, that everyone accepts violence by strangers as the real thing, but domestic abuse is somehow not viewed as just as bad. and that didn't ring true for me -- but i wonder whether i am now too far removed from the mainstream to have a good feel for what they think. i'm judging mostly by what i read on mainstream news and social commentary on blogs.
i've been straining my brain and i cannot think of any people nowadays openly claiming domestic abuse against women isn't a serious problem, anywhere i read. nobody (in any significant numbers that i can see) wants women be injured by their husbands [*]. i think some feminists might be misreading a reaction against broadening the term "violence" as a denial that abuse happens. i myself do make a distinction between "violence" and "force" (and lots of acquaintance rape uses force, IMO, not violence), but i think either is inappropriate in a supposedly loving relationship; i don't make the distinction in order to trivialize acquaintance rape -- i think it is by far a more serious problem than stranger rape. i think that such protests are done simply because domestic abuse keeps happening. (i'll keep my thoughts about their efficacy for myself just now so this doesn't become about that.) i don't know a single person who thinks domestic abuse is ok, not even a little bit (excepting self-defense).
what i can think of however, is plenty of people who're upset at violence against women, who are outraged at pedophilia -- but they think spanking is ok, and is somehow a totally different thing, not violence at all, not even inappropriate force. and frankly, i don't see feminists at large actually having this on their agenda -- when they do seem to care about children as a matter of policy, it's all about pedophilia as well, and the incredibly common woman-on-child violence is a dirty little secret that is swept under the rug. google some time for hits about spanking and feminism, and you'll find vastly more hits about BDSM and its defense, together with conservative rants against all of what allegedly destroys the family (where feminism and anti-spanking movements are named separately), than you find feminist critique of spanking. i consider feminism's silence on the issue of spanking to be particularly suspicious, since it doesn't happen to fit well with the idea that men are the aggressors and women the victims.
maybe feminism shouldn't be about children but just about women; that'd be sort of ok by me -- though i find some issues hard to separate, especially in the areas of sexual abuse, and well, the battle of equality starts long before the age of majority. but then take children off the signs that purport to be against violence. it's long struck me as a token effort, and i dislike tokenism, especially when it uses children.
i agree that it seems harder for people to empathize with domestic than with stranger violence. i see it in myself; i do empathize just as much initially (if not more; i find abuse by loved ones so much more destructive than abuse by strangers), but i have difficulties maintaining that empathy when somebody stays in an abusive situation (assuming no death threats are involved), when somebody falls more than once for the abject apology route after the abuse, when somebody says "but i love him!". if anything, i think feminism needs to support those women more, because they obviously still have very bad tapes running in their heads with "stand by your man" as the soundtrack, and some fundamentally horribly damaging ideas about what love is.
and i wonder how much spanking has to answer for regarding those tapes, how much it is responsible for bad boundaries, and how much it has to do with raising men who become abusers. how can this possibly not be a feminist concern? at least be on the table for discussion?
[*] upon rereading i remembered that i've read sean connery is purported to have said that some women need slapping around. but upon googling this i see that that's not what he said. and while what he did say is questionable, i'd really like to see the full context for it before i count it as evidence.
no subject
on 2006-06-13 03:13 (UTC)I think the first and last are much less prevalent than they used to be, or at least there are huge pockets of feminism that don't truck with them and those are the pockets I primarily have contact with. My primary route into feminism these days is via Wiscon. Maybe Wiscon is unusual in that although it calls itself a feminist science fiction convention it's really a feminist class-conscious race-conscious TG-conscious size-conscious science fiction convention. (Even if it does break out into ugly arguments about cultural appropriation and race sometimes.)
I haven't seen a whole lot of the second within feminism, though.
I agree with working for change at home. I also think it's good to stay aware of what's going on elsewhere. The bloggers about domestic violence in other countries that I respect a lot are natives of those countries or are at least living there if they aren't natives.
no subject
on 2006-06-13 05:00 (UTC)One thing working in a straight job for the last ten years has demonstrated to me tho' is that women's attitudes are a big part of what keeps sexism running the way it does. Few of those female co-workers would self-describe as feminist tho', in fact they are more likely to subscribe to notions of equal access without admitting a context of systemic discrimination.
Recently on
I think the issue is less pointy and obvious in vanilla circles, but it is still there in all sorts of ways (taking a man's name at marriage for example, or not making regular contributions to housework a condition of a relationship). And women are a big part of why it's still there - people must find some aspects of sexism rewarding on some level.
re: valorisation w/o original context
on 2006-06-13 17:43 (UTC)Oh, yeah. But this is also par for the course, not just in BDSM but also in fantasy in general, so I'm not surprised that people play with it. BDSM in particular can be about playing with the forbidden and exploring the erotic attraction of taboos. Not just traditional gender roles, but also the valorisation of slavery absent any context of what slavery was really like.
And even in the broader world, consider the rampant valorisation of medievalism, feudalism, and similar social structures in the fat fantasy novel genre. I'm stepping out on a limb a bit here with a generalization, but it's my impression that many of people's fantasies and much of people's fantasy life involves picking up on pieces out of context and enjoying the pieces they like without the surrounding context and drawbacks that in real life would naturally follow. BDSM certainly seems to me to be build strongly around this concept.
(And, as a result, discussion of it can be strange because in order to dive into that aspect of BDSM, one has to step outside the fantasy, since the discussion from within the constructed fantasy sounds completely different than the discussion outside of that fantasy. I've seen conversations about BDSM go horribly haywire just because one person was presuming the discussion was happening outside of the fantasy context and the other person was unwilling to meet them there.)
Re: valorisation w/o original context
on 2006-06-13 20:39 (UTC)That is different to the business of making a little walled garden for oneself and one's partner where one's demons can play without disturbing others.
For me it's a boundary issue as much as anything else. And so my reaction is "I understand that's a nice fantasy for some people, but I'd prefer not to live in that kind of world, thanks, so leave me out of it".
Another angle ganked from a recent discussion: It wasn't this fantasy time when women got consensually taken by fantastically hot, dominant men. It was a time of marital rape and "wifely duty".
I'm interested in unpacking the business of being inside or outside the fantasy when discussing it, but I'm also conscious that the fishie probably doesn't want BDSM geeking in zir journal. In any case, I've just friended your journal's feed, I'm Morag from alt.poly.
Re: valorisation w/o original context
on 2006-06-14 00:31 (UTC)and yeah, i don't have a problem with the playing at all, but the 24/7 stuff that so happens to look just like pre-enlightenment marriage, that makes me wonder. especially since i get the impression that it's overwhelmingly copy-cat gender-stereotyped as well -- i'd probably be less suspicious if a majority of the "masters" were female.
no subject
on 2006-06-21 20:52 (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-21 21:27 (UTC)