Inspired by this and this post over at Renegade Evolution.
I have to wonder at my own feelings about men and feminism sometimes. As I posted earlier, I often feel like I’m not qualified to speak on issues of race or LGBT issues, because I have not lived those experiences. As a sometime fiction writer, I question whether including characters whose backgrounds are vastly different from mine is being inclusive or appropriating. (Suffice it to say that I’ve got a lot of white guilt, and I try to hash it out as best I can.)
And I came to the conclusion, in that last post, that it IS my job to speak out.
But I think that if I were asked to write about issues involving people of color, or of LGBT issues, when there were qualified people who had lived those experiences out there, I hope I’d say…hey, maybe you should get someone who’s been through that.
That first post at Ren’s that I linked was a discussion of a temporary replacement blogger at Feministe, who happens to be male, straight, and white (at least I think so, and I apologize if I’m wrong.) Now, I wish more straight white men would identify as feminists, and I think it’s excellent that this person does that. But I wonder at the choice, especially after the debate that led to Jill’s taking a break from Feministe. (Although the newest Feministe blogger is indeed a woman of color)
The unintentional irony of the fact that the current Feministe Feedback post is one about gender-exclusionary spaces is not lost on me.
I don’t think men should not speak up about feminist issues. I was quite happy when these guys spoke up about this.
I guess I can’t quite put my finger on what I think the appropriate level of involvement is for men, especially straight, white men. Or maybe, despite the distaste for gender-exclusionary spaces, sometimes I do want a space that isn’t dominated by the voices of white guys.
The second post at Ren’s was about the lack of discussion of male sex workers. The normal narrative, of course, is that porn/sex work/etc. is just another example of men abusing women under patriarchy. But that leaves out the men who do sex work (and as Ren said in the comments, not the men who produce AND act in porn, etc., but the men who do the same work as the women the anti-porn crew is so worried about).
To me, at least, everyone’s problem with sex work is about sex, when it should be about the work. Is sex work exploitative? Only as much as any other type of work may or may not be–but it’s not the sex part that makes it that way, it’s the working conditions. (Yeah, that’s as deep as I’m getting right now.)
So men who do sex work can be exploited, or can not be exploited, just as women can.
And really, if you think that sex work is inherently exploitative because of its sexual nature, then it still doesn’t make sense to ignore the men. Because feminism isn’t–or shouldn’t–just be about making the world better/safer for women. It’s about (for me at least) the fact that the world would be a better place without oppression. Which is why Sean Bell is a feminist issue. We don’t have to wait until an actual honest-to-god woman is physically harmed by something to realize that it’s wrong, and that looking at it through a feminist lens might help us make it right
Anyone want to give me some thoughts here? I’m exhausted and this might have made more sense if I wasn’t. But it would be cool to have an actual honest-to-god discussion on this here blawg.