season of the bitch

I read this article this morning in the Mail & Guardian about Vladimir Putin and it made me giggle. At first, I thought that it was just worth a drive-by snarking on Twitter, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I should go back and write about it.

At first, of course, you get the usual masculinity-fetish. The title of the article is “That Shrinking Feeling,” which is just too obvious. Further down, a sentence reads, “Not that Putin is a spent force.”

Sexual metaphors and obsession with Putin’s bare chest are hardly rare–comic artist Becky Cloonan has a whole range of Putin-fantasy webcomics that are totally hilarious. I admit to a bit of a Putin obsession myself–he’s such a caricature.

As was Bush, of course. A caricature of a certain type of American masculinity (just like Reagan before him) the same way Putin is a caricature of a certain type of Russian masculinity. He has judo videos! He shoots tigers! He’s so BUFF!

Only a few months ago, we were scared of Putin “rearing his head,” (oh, Palin, will you ever get old?) but now we hear little to nothing about him. And this article, masculinity fetish aside, makes a decent point about why, even if it buries it beneath layers of alternately fawning and poking at him.

Analysts add that United States President Barack Obama’s emollient approach on Nato enlargement and missile defence is not helping.

As Russian president, Putin was a natural when it came to attacking former president George Bush, for example over Iraq.

But fast-forward one year and he looked far less comfortable, barely speaking above a whisper, as he made a conciliatory speech praising the new Iraqi order in front of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at a recent Moscow meeting.

As the public questions whether everything is really the United States’ fault, a change of tone is needed that Putin may struggle with, says political commentator Arkady Dubnov of the newspaper Vremya Novostei.

(OK, they did say “enlargement.”)

Does Obama’s conciliatory approach to foreign policy make the former bluff and bluster between Bush and Putin look…well…juvenile? Does Obama’s refusal to give leaders like Putin (and Chavez, and and and) a target effectively work where threats and yes, swagger didn’t?

Of course it’s far too early to tell. But during the campaign, especially the primaries, I wrote about Obama’s demeanor and tone about foreign policy contrasted with his rivals, and how Hillary Clinton and Obama seemed to have switched gender stereotypes.

I’m disappointed with many of Obama’s moves so far, but I wonder if just the tonal shift in public diplomacy is having an effect worldwide. It’s definitely not calming the Right inside the U.S., but they sure do look silly. So there’s that.

Going to just throw something out there right now.

Men are not the enemy.

There is no monolithic entity out to ‘get us;’ Team Woman, I mean. There’s no conspiracy sitting up on top of a hill somewhere figuring out ways to get women like me to wear short shorts like I am today in order to make the rest of womanity feel bad. (Or give men an excuse to rape or even catcall.)

There’s a fucked-up system that was created and sustained for thousands of years by subconscious drives and fears (yeah, I’m getting Freudian, deal) and yes, it was and has been sustained by keeping women doing domestic work, having sex when and how men said, and generally having no rights. It has also been sustained on the backs of a worker class, and on the backs of people of color or other groups designated as not-worthy.

But it’s stratified society in ways that hurt men too. Even white men.

Part of the goal of feminism, other than the goal I quoted the other day to “open up definitions and identities,” is to liberate all of us from constrictions placed on us by gender. It is also to revalue those things generally gendered feminine, and to allow men to have those characteristics and take part in those activities too. Not because we need male approval to make our activities worthwhile, but because it will make the world better for ALL people.

I get caught up in the idea that men are the enemy too. I doubt the motives and sincerity of male friends all the time, simply because they’re male. And you know, that idea isn’t new. It’s one that was drilled into my head way before I knew the word “feminism.” It’s created by the same things that created patriarchy and kept women treated as subhumans. Divide and conquer. Divide us from each other, make women into lesser beings or monsters, and by doing so also make men into monsters.

The creation of monsters in our own minds is (you will well know if you’re a regular reader here) a fascination of mine. And it’s so easy to see it happen within feminism as well. Not only the pro-porn sellout to the patriarchy strawmonster that we see discussed below, but the Male Monster.

Yes, all men are potentially capable of rape. Yes, this leads to women being scared and thus men having more control and power. Does this mean that all men actually are rapists, and actually enjoy benefiting from a system where women are kept scared of rape?

No.

So, I still hold to what I said earlier about men and feminism: Listen more than you speak. But I have to remind myself and everyone around me sometimes: men are not the enemy. Feminism should liberate us all.

Yikes, this post has been in draft for a week. Guess that either means it’s a tough topic, or I’m having a tough week. Bit of both, I’m afraid.

So many people have blogged on this Kyle Payne thing–Ren’s got them all listed in her sidebar, so you can go there if you don’t know what I’m talking about. So I just didn’t really think I had anything else to say that hadn’t already been said.

But, well, here it goes again…ye olde “Can men be feminists?” question.

Sometimes I am really sorely tempted to say “no.”

I mean, look yet again at a man who claimed to be such a feminist, a radical feminist, and who dedicated his life to feminism–yet molested a passed-out girl.

And of course on the one hand no one is responsible for his actions but him, and it’s ridiculous to assume so, and on the other hand, well, enough of the women I know have copped to feeling squicked out by the same overzealous ‘male feminist’ types that I have to wonder if there isn’t something to be learned from it after all.

I will never again be with a man who is at all disdainful of feminism–did that for two years and it was one of the dumbest choices I ever made. But at the same time, I doubt I’d be happy with a man who was constantly trying to be a better feminist than me. Because I’m a woman–it’s my lived experience. So, um, you don’t get to tell me that I’m wrong about it, okay?

And I don’t trust–flat out don’t trust–people who deny their sex drives over and over again but like to obsess about them at the same time. Let’s face it, if you’re that unconcerned about sex you wouldn’t be talking about it so much. I don’t like baseball–I don’t spend hours going into detail about how much I hate baseball, how disgusting baseball is, etc. I just don’t bother with it.

So, I mean…can men be allies? Absolutely, and I don’t want to bother knowing any who aren’t. But when it comes to feminism, sometimes I really want to tell men to do more listening and less talking. Let us decide what we feel oppressed by, what we feel injured by, what we feel hurt by. Let women tell you what men can do to help them.

I mean…how many people have been in fucked-up manipulative relationships? Yeah, thought so. And what was the first thing those people did to keep you controlled? Tell you they knew better than you did, right? Tell you they had it all figured out and you just had to listen to them and you’d be happy, right?

Purtek has a post up about whether men have a place in sexual assault centers. And she’s right, of course, that negative attitudes and other such problems can come from any angle, male or female. (And as she said, I won’t get into here the giant topic of transgendered women in these centers, either, or the fact that men do face sexual assault and rape.)

I think what I find more red-flagging in this situation isn’t that this guy was working in a sexual assault center (though that’s certainly disgusting, and I feel for anyone who was ever counseled by this guy). It’s that he seemed to have the need to endlessly self-aggrandize his own involvement–while simultaneously pretending that he was being oh so humble.

Here’s the thing. If your time is mostly spent talking about yourself, you probably aren’t helping anyone. I know this can sound like rank fucking hypocrisy on a blog, especially one where I usually use personal experience as a jumping-off point but: My blog is not my activism. My writing is not my activism. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes not.

I value men’s voices and have not the slightest separatist tendency in my body. As I commented on Purtek’s post, some of the first people I would (and do) turn to in a crisis are men, men who’ve been there for me when everything else was falling apart.

I also hate when feminism is used to start telling people ‘Ur Doin It Rong’ and to limit women’s choices or make them feel bad about their experiences and what makes them happy. That is Not Liberating in the slightest. (Liberating–a word both under- and over-used…the subject of another post, perhaps.)

When it’s a self-proclaimed feminist man who is telling women how to do feminism, well, that gets my hackles up faster than a Joe Lieberman interview. I don’t care how many books you’ve read, you’re not going to know what oppresses me, so please stop now, kthanx?

If you want to be a feminist, you have to listen to women. If you want to help women, volunteer. Donate some money. But most of all, listen. Be an ally. Be a friend.

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.