Lyrics:
As the sun comes up, as the moon goes down
These heavy notions creep around
It makes me think
Long ago I was brought into this life, a little lamb
A little lamb
Courageous, stumbling
Fearless was my middle name
But somewhere there I
Lost my way
Everyone walks the same
Expecting me to step
The narrow path they’ve laid
They claim toWalk unafraid
I’ll be clumsy instead
Hold my love me or leave me
HighSay “keep within the boundaries if you want to play”
Say “contradiction only makes it harder”
How can I be
What I want to be?
When all I want to do is strip away
These stilled constraints
And crush this charade
Shred this sad masquerade
I don’t need no persuading
I’ll trip, fall, pick myself up andWalk unafraid
I’ll be clumsy instead
Hold my love me or leave me
HighIf I have a bag of rocks to carry as I go
I just want to hold my head up high
I don’t care what I have to step over
I’m prepared to look you in the eye
Look me in the eye
And if you see familiarity
Then celebrate the contradiction
Help me when I fall toWalk unafraid
I’ll be clumsy instead
Hold my love me or leave me
High
I’ve been following in fascination the debate Polly managed to kick off with her recent post: The lunatics have taken over the asylum, specifically the discussion that’s now developed around the issue of consent, and whether under the patriarchy women can ever be deemed to have fully and in complete autonomy consented to sexual intercourse with men.
In Heart’s view the answer to that one’s a no, for as she sees it:
I don’t think that sex between a man and a woman can take place under male heterosupremacy (ever) apart from some degree of coercion. I think the coercive factors I listed, and others, will always be operating in every het sexual encounter, even when a woman isn’t thinking about them expressly during sex and even when a man isn’t expressly thinking about them during sex…..Women are *always* vulnerable in sexual encounters with men. Every single time. All het sex is threatening to some degree to women.) The playing field is not yet equal between men and women anywhere in the world; men still enjoy power relative to women, and particularly and centrally in matters around sexuality. Het sex, whenever and however it occurs, cannot be bracketed off from these power relations.
Later on in her comment thread Heart elaborates on this:
when I say all heterosexual encounters are coercive, I mean that our second-class status as women under male heterosupremacy, and the subsequent inequalities of every kind that surround us because of our second-class status, are not suspended when we have sex with men. We can certainly give our spoken consent to sex with men, we can say “yes,” and mean it, we can want sex with men, and enjoy it, but the best we can expect *or* enjoy — in the most enjoyable sex with men that it is possible to have — is sex that is surrounded by and shot through with reminders and artifacts and vulnerabilities, unspoken threats, fears centered in our second-class status……We can’t change our histories of sexual assault, violence, battering, rape, incest, domestic violence, family violence at the hands of men. We can’t have any faith whatsoever in courts, in judges, in police, in hospitals, doctors, to deal honestly and justly with us where we have been harmed by men. This knowledge that we have and that men have as well follows us into all the encounters we have with them.
There’s so much I agree with here, and yet……..no, I really can’t go along with this, not totally.
As Renegade Evolution says in her own inimitable style:
I’d never, as a het gal, want to feel that damn powerless when it comes to sex. Here is one woman who does not feel that fear every time…hell, hardly any time at all…if any. And I thank whatever powers that be for that…especially today after reading that statement. I do not want that kind of fear. I don’t think I could deal with it.
The way I see it, Heart’s is an all men are rapists all women are perpetual victims kind of argument. It’s an argument that tells women that no matter what we do, no matter how far we might think we’ve moved on from whatever abuses we may have suffered, for as long as we live under the patriarchy (and let’s be realistic, for most of us that means for the entire rest of our lives), we’re going to be carrying those abuses around with us each and every day, in each and every waking moment, like rocks on our backs. It’s a message of hopelessness, of putting up with the status quo, accepting our lot as second class citizens and allowing that status and our past abuses to define us.
And I hate to sound harsh but no: just no. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.
Feminism to me does not mean sitting back and accepting my lot in life. It does not mean passively going along with the prevailing male heterosupremacy as Heart so eloquently puts it, shrugging my shoulders to it all and encouraging my daughters to do the same. It does not mean encouraging women to wallow in their victimhood mumbling “it was the patriarchy wot done it,” while at the same time giving them no hope and no ambition for something better, for something different, for something other than the shitty fucked up existences so many have been forced to live up to this point.
If feminism is about anything, surely at its most basic it’s about fighting back against that kind of thinking; it’s about giving women, collectively, the tools to enable us to stand up and say no, this is where that crap ends. Feminist consciousness helps us learn why we’ve lived the lives we have, why we’ve been abused the way we have, and most importantly, it gives us the means by which we can move forwards, positively, shrugging off those damned rocks, one at a time if need be, but certainly refusing to be bowed down under the weight of any more.
Heart’s right, we can’t change our histories of sexual assault, violence, battering, rape, incest, domestic violence, family violence at the hands of men, and absolutely, those histories shape us and contribute to making us who we are today, but those histories don’t have to be our futures too, we do not have to accept that that is all there is for us.
As Andrea Dworkin said: “We have challenged what appears to be the permanence of male dominance by destabilizing it, by refusing to accept it as reality, our reality. We have said, No. No, it is not our reality.”
And:
“I am going to ask you to use every single thing you can remember about what was done to you – how it was done, where, by whom, when, and, if you know, why – to begin to tear male dominance to pieces, to pull it apart, to vandalize it, to destabilize it, to mess it up, to get in its way, to fuck it up. I have to ask you to resist, not to comply, to destroy the power men have over women, to refuse to accept it, to abhor it and to do whatever is necessary despite its cost to you to change it.”
Heart says “The best heterosexual sex we can consent to is sex with a partner in comparison with whom we are second-class citizens.”
Well I refuse to be a second-class citizen. I’ve been there, done that, bought and worn the fucking t-shirt, and I’m not going back there again.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Gosh, that must be better out than in, Cath, feel better now?
When it comes down to it, trouble is, a lot of women enjoy sex with men. I was only reading yesterday an international survey of women who have to be paid to have sex with men, and even half of them enjoyed the sex (along with much higher pecentages for liking the money, liking the flexible working hours etc.).
For details see my latest blog, it’s the Suzanne Jenkins study.
Sadly it wasn’t asked, but IMHO a high percentage of them, too, would regard themselves as feminists.
Feminism is simply too broad a brush to unite behind, don’t you think? Just too many strands all over the place.
Under the patriarchy I could never have been deemed to have fully and in complete autonomy consented to do any work…..although I did do a bit occasionally! 🙂
It’s always better out than in Stephen, or so my nan used to tell me anyway 🙂
The ability to walk unafraid is something that folks either have or they don’t, it would seem.
Shake yourself to a path of freedom:)
Peace,
Dunk
http://www.realityinfo.org
http://www.realityinfo.org/news
http://www.youtube.com/realityinfodotorg
Hang on, this violence by which men makes who what they are today? And does it comprise 100 percent of these women?
I’ve just read a paper by the body that made the recommendations on the length of time human trafficking for sex victims should be allowed respite in countries of discovery, and it reveals that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in most cases is no longer showing after a few months. After which what is left behind? Ugly memories, yes. But does the nurturing of mothers have no role in what makes women what they are? And don’t you think the concept that all men are violent is ever so slightly far fetched?
Cue Monty Python What did Men Ever Do for Us? sketch. Now I really must write that one! Now who could we have, yourself of course, Julie Bindel, Polly….Dworkin’s ghost…?
And then, you know, there are totally different ways of seeing society. If one takes, for example, the battle of the suffragines and the suffragettes for the vote, it is commonly seen as a key battle for womens’ rights. But it can be (and was) seen in other lights, such as the commonality of the household to be represented, as distinct from the individuals within it. Many were ignored by the system, such as women living alone, lesbians etc., and I would certainly not defend it, but there are other ways of seeing it.
Take those sex workers in Suzanne Jenkins’ study, for example. Over 70% felt they and their clients had mutual respect and a similar percentage said they were in control throughout the sexual side of things, very very few felt the client was in control, which surprised me as the male generally has the more active role, so to speak.
More felt they were exploiting the clients, either by extracting money the clients couldn’t afford or by taking advantage of people’s loneliness, than felt they were being exploited by the clients.
They don’t sound like second class citizens to me.
And we need to define “violence.” Physical? Verbal? Threatened? Of what, exactly, are we talking? I myself have been subjected to all three forms of ‘violence’ at various stages mostly by males (at an all boys’ school) but also by females in later life. Females do not have a monopoly in victimhood.
Stephen, can you write a sentence without the words “sex workers” in it. I challenge you to do so, really.
This is not, for once, a discussion about sex workers. Well neither was the one about the brownies, but you still managed to bring sex workers into it. I suggest you invest in a dictionary and look up “monomaniacal” (that’s really hard to spell!).
When it comes down to it, trouble is, a lot of women enjoy sex with men
Sadly, I have to agree with you on this Stephen. Not because women enjoying sex with men makes me sad, women can do what the hell they like, as long as Sam Ronson doesn’t turn straight (because your destiny lies with ME Sam, get used to it). No I’m just sad to have to agree with you on something.
On the other hand can I point out that I’ve said, over, and over, over, and over that women are not victims and ownership of a vagina is not a free pass in life as far as I’m concerned. And the day I believe either of those is the day I turn up my toes.
Cath – great post.
I’m not sure what I think yet. Like you, I agree with some of what Heart etc. say. Women *are* conditioned to be unassertive.
But I also find some of this view disempowering. It doesn’t say what we can *do* and, hell, there is always *something* we can do.
And I *do* have the tendency to go into negative victim mode, all ‘poor me’.
‘no: just no. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.’
Seconded.
Polly – yes, I do go on about sex workers a lot, I guess, you are quite right. Part of it’s genuine interest in the topic, part of it’s just trying to goad Cath. Still, the survey was not entirely irrelevant to the post.
Just to show I’m capable of thinking on other things, it did occur to me when I read it that both you and Cath would be quite interested in freemovement’s latest post on his blog, featuring homophobia in immigration tribunals. It could even wind up with you, Cath, Douglas Fox & I on the same side for once (now there’s strange bedfellows)!.
freemovement’s an immigration barrister, who’s blog I became interested in over human trafficking/migrant (dare I say it?) se…no I don’t!
http://freemovement.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/sexual-identity/
Well to go completely off topic Stephen (which is something of a relief at the mo, because though I expected a MILD shitstorm, I wasn’t banking on Renegade Evolution saying “hell yes” – though I thank her for the support, it must be strange bedfellows Wednesday) this kind of thing is very common in immigration cases. There are quite a few cases where African or Jamaican women, for example have been told they’re not lesbians because they had children. And no lesbian in Africa or Jamaica is ever raped of course….
Thanks for the link Stephen, and yes, I think we probably would all be on the same side on this one. Just goes to show eh? (don’t ask me what it goes to show, just something…)
Butterflywings. I also have my moments of poor me victimhood, and I think that’s perfectly normal. I think what’s important though, if possible, and obviously and understandably in some cases it’s not possible, is to not let those moments take over your life and dominate everything.
And that’s not about telling women to pull themselves together (please someone shoot me if I ever utter those words!), instead it’s about believing that women deserve better, and that together we have the strength and power to get there.
Polly
Amen.
Btw Stephen, the Mail’s covered that story now (best not read the comments)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204558/Jamaican-lesbian-appeals-deportation-Home-Office-insists-lying-sexuality.html
It goes to show you can never be too careful, Cath.
A quest, funded by legal aid, is now underway to determine whether she is truly a lesbian – or merely manipulating the system.
Good god, do these people have no GAYDAR?
Can I also, on a serious note, point out that if we’re talking about pressure and coercion, there is some pretty strong coercion to not be a lesbian in Jamaica.
http://www.divamag.co.uk/diva/features.asp?AID=357
What would happen if they got a bisexual? Would the appeal tribunal explode? Or don’t they make bisexuals anymore, can’t get the parts?
I often think to myself how incredibly lucky we are to live on a rock that so many people want to live on and can’t, as distinct from being on a rock that so many would want to escape and can’t. Maybe I take this sceptered shipping hazard too much for granted, but it’s always beaten me why so many other people want to live on it.
The other thing that really gets me is how butterflies and birds and all manner of invertebrates don’t have this problem, they just land and take off, and even the most xenophobic racists remark from time to time how pretty they are in their gardens and parks.
I think Auden wrote a poem about it, must try & find it.
Had to laugh at this in the Daily Mail article:
Perhaps it’s time they pawsed. If the woman is bisexual, that could still constitute sufficient grounds not to deport her.
“instead it’s about believing that women deserve better, and that together we have the strength and power to get there.”
damn straight. says much more eloquently than what i could say
Spent much time in bed last night pondering on Cath’s posting.
I would like to make the following observations. After much thought over nearly six decades on this planet, I have to report that I came to the no doubt extremely unpopular but nevertheless actual conclusion that men and women are not, and can never be, “equal”, however desirable equality may be perceived to be.
In fact, the more I thought of the notion, the more the very idea became meaningless.
The essential problem with the concept, I think, is that there are limits to the degree to which civilisation can take us. Ultimately we are, fundamentally, merely a species of clever animals, and however cultured our reading, our music, our art, animals we remain.
I am not suggesting that either sex is superior to the other, so I reject, Cath, your notion of second class citizenship, though it is one that I, though from an entirely hetero male perspective, once shared: the notion that men were second class citizens.
Furthermore, this manic search for the holy grail myth of sexual equality manufactures inequalities in its wake, as we will see more and more at a time of rising unemployment. How many households have two jobs, how many have none? So viewed from a macro perspective, a drive for equality in one direction results in inequalities in another.
And indeed, as what has been perceived as rising prosperity has apparently caused more and more people to live alone or just with their children, households multiply, so improved energy efficiency is negated by rising numbers of households, but that’s another story, unless you’re a household with no jobs, when of course the ultimately soaring fuel bills will no doubt factor in somewhere.
In my childhood, sugar and spice and all things nice was, of course, what little girls were made of. I wonder, Cath, whether you and Polly have ever pondered on the effects on male toddlers of being informed of that fact, closely followed by the information that their bodies comprised slugs and snails, and to discover in later life that the one arguably remedial component of puppy dogs’ tails (all be they horribly disembodied) had clearly merely been placed there owing to a singularly unimaginative poet’s inability to think of anything that rhymed that was more unpleasant?
As we grew up, we were informed that we were destined to become “the breadwinners.” The girls, however, were destined to stay at home and “look after the children.” That was unless there was a war, in which case we were destined to go wherever it was and kill and get killed.
Now it seems to have been assumed, for a reasons quite beyond me, that men were actually happy with their lot, and that their lot was somehow a desirable lot that any woman with an iota of sense would for some unaccountable reason actually aspire to. Who on earth sold that one to the women of the sixties and future generations, I know not, but they did an excellent job and it sold in vast quantities.
In actual fact, men had very good reason not to be happy with their lot. Even with no wars, they retired (and still do) later than women and died (and still do) far younger, and it was truley remarkable how ardent women’s rights activists back in the old Labour club I once belonged to, who had been in the absolute vanguard of the women’s rights’ and push for equality movement, magically transformed and started petitioning against any proposal to increase the female retirement age towards that of men.
I was brought up by my mother and maternal grandparents. My grandfather was a worrier and a smoker and barely survived his working life, dying within his first year of retirement from lung cancer. My grandmother, who worked only up to the time of her marriage in the 1920s, outlived him by many years.
I remember working as a journalist on a local newpaper in Liverpool when the Sex Discrimination Act came into force in the seventies. I read it, it’s only short, looked at the most obvious examples of disrimination around me, and phoned the regional PR officer of British Rail. Within a few hours I was informed that cheap rail fares “for mums” to London – “shopawayday” or something – was not, as I had hoped, to be extended also to men, but to be withdrawn. “Ladies” rooms at stations were to be reviewed. In part my fault (or at least the timing), girls, sorry….
Clubs did then, as now, let women in for free whilst charging men, ostensibly to balance the sexes but in clear breach of the Act. Some of the discussion about the less controversial – alcohol – elements of the current Policing and Crime Bill feature this fact and plans to create yet further legislation but existing legislation isn’t enforced.
Everything, of course, is a great deal more subtle. Clothing, though, is still a very visible example of the way the male sex remains constrained, de facto if not de jure. For decades women have been able to wear trousers, a man wearing a skirt would remain an aberration, and when some women deride the freedom they uniquely have within convention to wear a pretty dress on a hot summer’s day, I am totally mystified and completely befuddled.
Yet the achievements, or doom – depending on one’s perspective – of the female sex on the jobs front has, of course, been excellent news for employers, massively increasing the available choice of workers and generally increasing the pressures and the rat race. Women’s life expectancy is getting closer to men’s, more women are drinking and adopting other coping strategies.
Then there’s sexual transactions. We, my mother informed me, were supposed to be “the hunters” or something, which when translated meant to try to start the relationship. Why me, I really didn’t know. Why can’t they do it, I mean it’s only picking up a bleedin’ phone, for Godsakes. Yet when I tried to do it aged 17, I really don’t know how many times I dialled those first few digits of this lass’s number before finally managing the last one. For some reason, it seemed the whole planet depended on it. Looking back, how incredibly self-centred I must have been.
“They might have the bats and balls but we’ve got the playing field,” was how some American hooker (sorry Polly) described the relationship between the sexes recently.
A single child of a broken marriage – ten a penny nowadays but rare in the 1950s – I had no notion of what girls had “down there,” and this of course was when women were not allowed to have orifices below the wasteline in porn. Two or three years ago Joan Bakewell described the experience on TV from a female perspective and told how she and her sister learned from statuary. Which works perfectly for girls, indeed there is a large naked man with everything you could wish to see on a huge statue on Lewis’s store in the centre of Liverpool. But there was no statuary which showed the merest hint of what females had down there. Yet they must have something as they were all so desperate to ensure it was never revealed. It was as if I was subjected to a massive conspiracy of silence.
What was it? It was obviously not very big, or it wouldn’t fit in the bikinis. A mystery. One to one communication with the Almighty, perhaps?
A hetero male is sadly destined to emerge from the womb and spend much of his life and his money trying to get back inside one again, only to discover, alas, that he has grown far too big. It is not an aspiration of which to be jealous.
OMG, this is a long comment! And, now, at last, I shall shut up (if there’s anyone still there), at least for the time being.
But just two thoughts. Cath, consider during these long, hot, summer days, buying youself a nice, pretty, cool summer dress, and wearing it. And. as you do, consider not the ‘patriarchal’ society that may or may not have evolved these things, but celebrating the fact that you can.
And the last thought is that there was a point after pondering these issues for many years that I became much happier. I became happier when I learned to write off certain inherent inequalities and other imperfections as features of the human condition, and to get on despite them as best I could.
I think I might have lost the will to live about half way down that last comment.
Stephen,
its all very well writing off certain inherent inequalities and other imperfections when you live the privileged life of a male. Ever consider how your mothers life, opportunities and aspirations were adversely affected the absence of equality for women – thought not.
I look forward to someone with more time and energy than me to respond in more depth to your post.
I think you should go back to bed and think again.
stephenpaterson,
I also suggest you go back to bed and think again. You don’t seem to get it yet and I think most women may find your last post just annoying.
Stephen – I managed to read all of your meandering comment. All of that just to say we should just give up, say “I guess this is just how the world is!” and then we’ll be happy and stop getting our knickers in a twist?
Well Stephen – I’m already very happy thank you very much. But there are many things in this word that make me angry – sexism being one of them. How fantastic for you that you can just write it off as “inherent inequality” – unfortunately for women these inequalities have a very real and tangible effect on our lives. And no, we’re not going to lie back and take it quietly.
I do not have the time to go through every one of your points, but let me address a few.
female sex on the jobs front has, of course, been excellent news for employers, massively increasing the available choice of workers and generally increasing the pressures and the rat race.
Yes, it has been excellent news for employers. Because they can get the same work done, but pay us less than a man. Also, women have worked throughout the entire history of humanity and they have always been paid less and exploited more than men.
For decades women have been able to wear trousers, a man wearing a skirt would remain an aberration
Has it not occurred to you that this is because of misogyny? It is not degrading to be man – a man is regarded as default, as fully human. Therefore it is fine for a woman to imitate a man by wearing trousers. A women is seen as less than a man, as less than human – therefore a man to dress like a woman is to be mocked. This happens because people think that just BEING a woman is degrading.
It is, of course, fucking ridiculous.
If you want to wear a skirt, then fight sexism.
Which works perfectly for girls, indeed there is a large naked man with everything you could wish to see on a huge statue on Lewis’s store in the centre of Liverpool. But there was no statuary which showed the merest hint of what females had down there.
Bullshit! I come from Liverpool and there is one naked man high above on Lewis’s – you only have to walk 2 minutes down Lime Street to get to St.Georges hall and the fountain which has 4 naked statues of women on it.
More to the point – why are you even bringing this up?! How are classical statues even relevant to this discussion?
Then there’s sexual transactions.
Maybe you would fare better if you didn’t think of them as “sexual transactions” but rather thought of women as people with their own thoughts and feelings and not commodities.
I have to get back to work…do what Linda said and go back to bed and have another think.
You may, Linda, have “thought not” but you would be wrong to have thought not. My mother was a very active member of what was known as the “Ladies’ Guild” of the bank at which she worked (she was anti-union so did not join NUBE, as it was in those days, and took every opportunity to make known her very understandable feelings of unfairness in the way women were treated in the jobs market of those days. Believe you me, I was left under no delusions. However, the jobs market is not the be all and end all, and the hypothetical treatment of everybody in the same manner within it is a long way from “equality,” and may in other ways further inequality if one considers beyond the sexual criteria and the concept of self.
She, too, lived much longer than my father, incidentally.
stephenpaterson – i don’t know if i have the words.
but i find your comment pretty offensive.
i did like the bit about free entry into clubs tho, reminded me of a le tigre lyric i heard this mornign
“we get all the power being stabbed in the shower and we get equal rights on ladies night!”
did it occur to you that feminsim isn;t about making women like men, as that would suggest that male is a preferable default and the “norm”, with the female as aberrant and the “abnormal”. to me feminism is about equality of outcome, about removing male privilege to the beneift of men and women. patrirachal visions of men are bad for men and insulting, as they are of women.
and what – you never seen a naked lady statue? have you EVER heard of the guerilla grrls and their poster about women having to be naked to get into the met?
and yes to everything jenifer ruth says.
i find it extraordinary that you have the gall to come on a blog and say everything we have been fighting for is a a waste of time because you can’t see the point.
JenniferRuth: You do me, I think, something of an injustice to suggest that I have ever dismissed it lightly. I simply came to the conclusion after many years of thought that the problem was incapable of solution due to the inherent nature of humanity, since which I have personally been happier. Your comment suggests I should, by virtue of being male, never perceived there to be a problem.
Sexism, as I understand it, makes me angry too. Certainly a system in which two people performing work of equal value were paid differing incomes was inequitable. That has at least gone in theory, so in theory an employer cannot get the same work done and pay women less than a man. I certainly agree that that in itself does not achieve anything like enough to enable women to achieve a notion of equality in the world of work. However, I was intending my comment to be much broader than the world of work.
Many women have indeed worked throughout history, often for very poor wages, many women have also not needed to. In many patriarchal subcultures, the fact a married woman was working resulted in the male being looked down upon. The outcome was good for neither men nor women. Within my mother’s occupation of banking, there was a clear demarcation between the roles of men and women, with women in the supporting secretarial and clerical roles. It was enormously gender stereotyped and would of course be totally rejected today.
I pretend neither to justify the unjustifiable, nor to defend the indefensible. It was the world of work that we inherited, since which much has been achieved. The question, however, is not that but to what extent it has improved a goal of equality in a broad sense, whether ‘equality’ can be achieved, and to identify the concomitant effect on the power of the employer vis a vis that of the workforce. But what does ‘equality’ mean? Does equal treatment in the workplace, if achieved, result in ‘equality’ in society if it results in some households having two or more jobs and others none, for example?
JenniferRuth, you put the fact a man wearing a skirt being an aberration down to misogyny. To answer your question, no, it had not occurred to me. I agree the historical use of terms such as “mankind“ etc has conventionally used the male as the default, your suggestion that this infers women to be regarded as less than human, however, is surely well over the top. I must admit, though, the only time I have wanted to wear a skirt was as a child with childhood curiosity for experience. But I would like the freedom of the option. Yes, there are statues of naked women at the St George’s Hall fountains. None have pudendas.
Finally, I have always thought of women as “people with [their] own thoughts and feelings and not commodities.” Which doesn’t eradicate sexual transactions, I can‘t quite see your point?
Cath, the thing is, no matter how much we don’t want to be second-class citizens, *we still are*. It’s a factish thing.
Because I Am a Girl
May I ask what the word ‘factish” means. Something like a fact?
sianushka – it was not my intention to cause anyone offence, and I am sorry if you are offended. I never consider fighting for rights to be a waste of time, though sometimes I think myself foolish for not thinking this as I have fought for rights one way or another all my life and, whilst my head has indentations from many brick walls, our human rights seem to lie in shreds about us.
In the references to statues I was relating to the period pre-1970s, which was somewhat before the time of the Gorilla Girls.
Our second-class status is factual. It isn’t something we imagine, it isn’t a theory, it isn’t something we can put on and take off. It is a matter of facts and figures. Factish.
Cath – I agree with everything you said. I think the ‘poor me’ thing is down to patriarchy, as in, women are all told we are victims. We should definitely fight. No I know you didn’t tell anyone to pull themselevs together.
And another yay to Jennifer Ruth’s comment.
If men want to wear skirts, or make-up, or be able to show their softer emotions, or be able to stay home or go part-time at work when their kids are young, or… THAT IS WHAT FEMINISM IS! You’d think those men would be with us.
I suspect they do not actually want equality, though. They actually like things the way they are.
Butterflywings – Amen to that. But feminism, then, is surely badly labelled? And who is telling women they are victims? The ‘patriarchy’? I think not.
Hi Heart, thanks for dropping by.
As I said in the piece, I agree with a ton of what you said in your post, and absolutely, I completely agree with the post you’ve linked to there.
But I still don’t agree with your final analysis, that the best any of us can expect even in our personal relationships is to be nothing more than second-class citizens.
I just think it’s too much of a generalisation, and I think it does women who have managed to assert themselves and who have refused to compromise in their intimate relationships a disservice.
Politically, yes, women as a class are very much second class citizens under the patriarchy. However, individually, in one to one relationships with others, I think it is possible for us to move beyond that. For us to be able to make choices and have full agency over our sexual encounters.
That’s not to say that women who have managed to achieve that aren’t still at risk of rape and sexual violence from others of course, that goes without saying, or that in other aspects of their lives such as work, or even just stepping outside their front doors, they’re not reminded on an almost daily basis of their place in the world/gender hierarchy.
I just think that your analysis fails to acknowledge the women who have managed to either dictate/dominate in their sexual relationships, or who have achieved equality in their relationships. Your argument leaves no room those women, and small minority though they may be, they do in fact exist.
But anyway, I do just want to thank both you and Polly for kick starting this debate. I realise that for some this is probably one of those “OMG the feminists are arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” type discussions, but I for one have found it fascinating and incredibly thought provoking. In fact I’m fairly sure I’m not done thinking about it, so I can’t guarantee that I won’t come back and post more on this at some point in the future. 🙂
Stephen
Seriously Stephen? You want me to respond to that?
Cath- “Seriously Stephen? You want me to respond to that?”
No, I think JenniferRuth has put me right on that one. It was, actually, an attempt at liberation, not imprisonment, seen from my perspective. Different ways of seeing.
Enough of my twittlings (a cheer at last!). Interesting link in today’s Times you may enjoy:
http://bx.businessweek.com/crowdsourcing/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fc.moreover.com%2Fclick%2Fhere.pl%3Fr2124976712%26f%3D9791
Stephen, I wholeheartedly support your right to wear a pretty dress on a hot summers day. Just don’t make me wear one.
PS, I seem to have missed the long hot summer days? Is it cos I is Mancunian?
Women being second class citizens may well be *factish*. Women just accepting it is *defeatist*.
And saying that because women are second class citizens they have no responsibility for their actions is an outright lie
Don’t apologise to me for using the word *hooker* Stephen. I’m not a sex worker, so I’m not the one being insulted.
Polly: “Stephen, I wholeheartedly support your right to wear a pretty dress on a hot summers day. Just don’t make me wear one….Don’t apologise to me for using the word *hooker* Stephen. I’m not a sex worker, so I’m not the one being insulted.”
Firstly, thanks for your support. My reference to apologies for ‘hooker’ related to me bringing sex workers into it yet again. A major beef of sex workers at present, incidentally, is that dominant voices in feminism brand them as ‘victims’, thus rendering them (as they see it) voiceless.
“A major beef of sex workers at present, incidentally, is that dominant voices in feminism brand them as ‘victims’, thus rendering them (as they see it) voiceless.”
Brothels today in Germany are as bad as the Nazi era.
“Feminism is simply too broad a brush to unite behind, don’t you think? Just too many strands all over the place.”
It is like Irish republicanism, it is important to organize the split properly, so you know why you are murdering a person you went to school with.
Gay activism has it totally nailed down with the original version of New Labor gobblygook. In San Diego, folks implacably opposed to gay marriage (going straight) were out demonstrating for gay marriage.
The gays in Toronto, I could fit all the local married gays in my shower (if I still had one) and they had a million person gay pride same year.
The gays in Toronto, I could fit all the local married gays in my shower (if I still had one) and they had a million person gay pride same year.
Well let’s face it Gregory, such events should be renamed “straight people take mind bending amounts of drink/drugs” in most cases. Particularly in mancunium. Four poofs and a piano indeed.
Bloody hell, Polly. I know we hate each other, in general, but I found your blog really interesting and well-written. And your comments too. I’ll never attempt to comment there – I’m genuinely not a troll – but it gave me a different impression of you than I’d received here. Hope you don’t mind me reading, at least.
Well I have someone who searched for Ian Brady Liebraumilch today Damagedoor so you’re the least of my worries. And it’s a public blog, anyone can read it.
I don’t know why you’re suprised my blog is interesting and well written, but there you go. However I don’t hate you, you’re someone on the internet. I have plenty of RL people to hate.
That should read liebfraumilch BTW. Why on earth would someone be searching for information about nasty German wine and a mass murderer and rapist?
The mind boggles.
Simply the impression you’ve given. I know you don’t care. I’d never have doubted that Jennifer(s) and MariaS were worth reading – or, obviously, Cath, as I’m here – but, right or wrong, you’d given me a certain impression. Never mind, though, as this is trolling by definition. As you were…
“That should read liebfraumilch BTW. Why on earth would someone be searching for information about nasty German wine and a mass murderer and rapist?”
The Germans can make anything out of anything, when they lost their last oilfields at Ploesti
To the red army, slightly battered by the Americans before that, Hitler decided they would have to make gasoline out of something else other than oil,
the idea of stopping due to zero rserves of real petrol wasn’t really an idea that crossed his mind.
Mass murderers in general, well the answer is ditto, they don’t stop, they have to be stopped
“Well let’s face it Gregory, such events should be renamed “straight people take mind bending amounts of drink/drugs” in most cases. Particularly in mancunium. Four poofs and a piano indeed.”
Some gays came to one of my family’s bars and asked if they could have a disco, and a relative said “are you fruits Prods?”
A quare fella runs a series of events loosely associated with well, homosexuality, he prints tickets and a spoiling Prod pulls the premises on him,
and you ask why we don’t like pratistants?
I read both Polly’s post and Heart’s response to it, and found it a pity that it has caused such disagreement, because it seemed to me that both were right. The scenario Polly described if I remember rightly, was that a woman was about to have sex with an apparently perfectly nice, non-violent bloke, when he refused to use a condom. The disagreement then arose over whether the woman had a completely free choice to go ahead and have sex or not, or whether this was a coercive situation.
My view is that if the woman in the scenario had complete self-confidence in her judgement of the man (as Polly perhaps would), then she does have a free choice: whether to refuse to have unsafe sex, or go ahead to obtain the “closeness and validation” she wants. However, as Heart and a few women on her blog pointed out, some men can seem absolutely nice as pie, until they dont get what they want, when they suddenly turn nasty. A woman who has had such an experience would not have confidence in her judgement, even though the man seems non-violent, because that confidence has been eroded by past experience. The choice this woman faces is different: whether to refuse sex and risk the man turning violent, or to acquiesce ( any chance of closeness and validation for this woman probably having evaporated as soon as the man showed his uncaring side by refusing to use a condom). This woman therefore, does not have a free choice.
Both Heart and Polly are therefore right within their own particular frames of reference, and the way I see it, the disagreement arises due to different personalities and past experience. Polly’s woman has a free choice, but in real life could end up hurt, whereas Heart’s woman does not have a free choice, even though there may not actually be any danger.
I dont think Heart was embracing victimhood the way Cath describes, at least, I didnt read her post that way. The trouble with these kinds of discussions is that they can be triggering for people who have experience domestic violence, as many readers of Heart’s blog have, and Polly on her side is a woman of strong views! I hope this all blows over soon, its a shame to see radfems at loggerheads!
My view is that if the woman in the scenario had complete self-confidence in her judgement of the man (as Polly perhaps would), then she does have a free choice: whether to refuse to have unsafe sex, or go ahead to obtain the “closeness and validation” she wants.
Well first of all h2281n – to explain – my post (and indeed my blog is no longer there) sorry Cath. The problem I saw was a problem I have with the thinking that all heterosex is rape. And there was no suggestion of coercion of any kind in the original post either. It was made quite clear on my reading of it that the woman went ahead because she wanted “validation and closeness” not because she was scared. Now in that situation as I said, the man is an irresponsible arsehole for not practising safe sex, but he’s not a rapist, or anything near.
This is very problematic thinking to me. Firstly, you can’t just say that a woman should never say no to sex because otherwise the man might become violent and rape her. It’s completely illogical.
Secondly as I said there was no suggestion of violence. And I know plenty of women who say no to sex. I know women who have stopped sex in the middle, put on their clothes and gone home. These women have usually been in situations where they’ve been coerced as well, but they know the difference.
I will walk unafraid. Oh yes. I’m not prepared to live my life in fear. I have been sexually assaulted. I have been the target of homophobic violence. NEITHER of these will every make me live my life in fear.
It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep.
Yeah, I saw your blog had gone Polly. I hope this is just a temporary break, not a permanent retirement…..
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees
There are many things I do not understand, and the idea that all heterosexual sex is rape strikes me as dangerous, undermining as it does the conventional meaning of the term.
If the world spent less time worrying about people putting penises into other people with their consent and more worring about them putting bayonets into other people without their consent, it would perhaps be a better place.
How many women and children were killed when the Harmans and the Mactaggarts and the Bairds and the Jaqui Smiths walked through the lobbies on the Iraq war?
TBH Cath the latest round of “You must not publish this person’s comments because they have done something unspecifiedly evil and they may well be a man and internet feminism will be destroyed for sure if you do so, but we have not actual proof of any of this you understand” put the tin lid on it as far as I was concerned.
I have always made it clear that if I put stuff up on the internet, anyone can read it, and if I have comments on said piece, to just publish the comments that agree with me, is not only shabby behaviour, but it means that I have no confidence in the validity of what I’m saying. And I do, and I’m prepared to argue it with anyone. Hence I deleted about 3 comments out of over 7000 at my blog.
I’m really not prepared to spend any more time of my one and only precious life, engaging with fools who seem to have confused ‘feminism’ with ‘petty authoritarianism’. People who are so sad they think I actually give a flying fuck what people I don’t know on the internet think of me to the extent that I deleted my previous blog so that they couldn’t see evidence of me *attacking* people (as if they couldn’t look here for that eh damagedoor?). People who seem to think that I’m so desperate for *friends* that I must be best buddies of anyone whose comment I publish on a blog. Dunno about you folks, but I have real life friends, sorry.
I am not interested in being part of a cult otherwise I’d go and join one. So the don’t read this, don’t let that person comment petty authoritarian fuckwits have won their battle as far as I’m concerned. I’ve had enough of them, and unlike previously there are no XML files of my blogs, so they’re gone forever.
I hope they’re happy now and they can celebrate having protected radical feminism yet again and kept the faith pure. All 5 of them. Can I suggest they obtain a DVD of the Life of Brian and watch it?
As your teachers used to say, there’s always a few who spoil it for everyone else.
Polly – whatever disagreements we may have had, I do, genuinely, think that’s a shame. If you don’t care about these people, why give in to them? Even if I don’t agree with you, I think you should present your views, and if people don’t like it then, surely, fuck them?
Seems very weird, as a situation, in terms of politics…
Yeah Polly, identity politics in the US is very very strange. I find it so fascinating though. It is a total belief system. If one puts a chink in their wall, there is this mad scramble to keep the light out. There is this scene, I think it is in Blazing Saddles where there is one wagon circling. Need I say more.
Well I just recommend the whole of the Life of Brian Rhondda, but especially this bit….
But it’s not just the USers, some of the chief culprits (who have been e-mailing at least one other blogger I know of reprimanding her for letting *forbidden* people comment) are from over here.
It’s madness, if your beliefs are that fragile, you need to re-examine them, because they’re obviously not based on much.
And no damagedoor, they’re not stopping me saying what I want, (no power on earth can do that) I just can’t be arsed engaging with fuckwits any more, it just drags you down. Why waste your life as I said.
Sorry for the hijack Cath, I’ll shut up now. Hopefully most of my regulars read here, so they’ll have an explanation. And stop moderating yer blog on yer hols woman! Sit around and get drunk…..
Oh I see you’re back, scrub the last bit…..
Shame about your blog Polly, but I understand what you are saying.
@StephenPatterson
If you mean people putting bayonets into women’s vaginas then nobody cares. Nobody that can make a difference anyways.
I don’t think that sex between a man and a woman can take place under male heterosupremacy (ever) apart from some degree of coercion. I think the coercive factors I listed, and others, will always be operating in every het sexual encounter, even when a woman isn’t thinking about them expressly during sex and even when a man isn’t expressly thinking about them during sex…..Women are *always* vulnerable in sexual encounters with men. Every single time.
It’s nice to know that Heart knows people’s heads better than they do. I hope that she uses her formidable telepathic powers for good rather than evil.
‘It’s nice to know that Heart knows people’s heads better than they do. I hope that she uses her formidable telepathic powers for good rather than evil.’
You know, I’m really starting to wonder if men can actually read. I certainly never see much demonstrable evidence of it on feminist blogs.
i agree valerie m!
Polly,
Eh? The reality of rape rather puts the lie to the fear being illogical, no? It’s not illogical to be afraid of lying in the middle fo the M4, no matter now well assured you are that it is completely closed for resurfacing – because under most normal circumstances, motorways are places where people might get run over.
Now I’m not saying that a woman is as sure to be raped by any given man as she is to get run over if she decides to take a snooze in the outside lane, but really – dismissing women’s fear of rape as illogical doesn’t make sense to me.
I completely agree with your and Cath’s philosophy of not letting fear rule my life, but not even feeling it is a tall order, and not a healthy one I don’t think. The fear is there, it’s not baseless, we can transcend it but we also need to acknowledge it.
Maybe so, but unless you are postulating a hypothetical and strictly forbidding people from challenging it in any way (in which case you may as well say “the woman went ahead because unicorns”, and nobody could argue), I don’t quite see why you would dismiss the idea that the possibility of her having been at least a little bit apprehensive is both realistic and un-crazy.
Important disclaimer: I’m sorry if I’m pouring salt on recent wounds by retreading old ground that all of the metaphors in your blog have mixed up already, but it’s not there so I can’t check it out… Please don’t feel that my disagreeing with you is some kind of “you owe it to me to respond to my superliciously important critique” thing. Just, you know, thinking my thoughts with my fingers here.
Firstly, you can’t just say that a woman should never say no to sex because otherwise the man might become violent and rape her. It’s completely illogical
The above paragraph DOES NOT say that fear of rape is completely illogical. It DOES SAY that it’s illogical to say yes to sex with a man you don’t want to have sex with because otherwise he might rape you.
Think about it.
Really. Think about it.
“I don’t want to have sex with this man”
“But he might rape me if I say no”
“So I’d better have sex with the man I don’t want to have sex with to stop him forcing me to have sex with him”
Does.not.compute.
And the reason I said the woman in question was not scared is this:
There was no mention of her being scared. None at all. The blogger who writes the blog said she has never been raped. She SAID she went ahead in pursuit of “validation and closeness” She said this in fact:
And where did that leave me? Where did it leave me when I asked the man to use a condom and he scoffed and sneered, saying it wasn’t “natural”? Decision point — do I get up and put my clothes on and watch a movie instead, or make him leave my home? Or, continuing in pursuit of closeness and validation, already feeling “contaminated” by unprotected sex with other men (what’s one more?), do I say, “Well, okay, just don’t come inside me?” And where did it leave me when he ejaculated in my vagina anyway, and responded to my outrage and horror with “This is the US, you can get an abortion”? (This particular one was not a US citizen.)
You can still read the whole thing here by the way.
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:_1GxhFY-E7QJ:www.feminist-reprise.org/wpblog/+www.feminist-reprise.org/wpblog&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
Maybe so, but unless you are postulating a hypothetical and strictly forbidding people from challenging it in any way (in which case you may as well say “the woman went ahead because unicorns”, and nobody could argue), I don’t quite see why you would dismiss the idea that the possibility of her having been at least a little bit apprehensive is both realistic and un-crazy.
Important disclaimer: I’m sorry if I’m pouring salt on recent wounds by retreading old ground that all of the metaphors in your blog have mixed up already, but it’s not there so I can’t check it out… Please don’t feel that my disagreeing with you is some kind of “you owe it to me to respond to my superliciously important critique” thing. Just, you know, thinking my thoughts with my fingers here.
Well as I said. Read the piece. There is no mention of fear.
Oh and one more thing about the fear of rape.
The fear of rape is used as a weapon to control women.
Don’t go there. Don’t get drunk. Don’t wear those clothes. Don’t walk home alone at night.
….or you might get raped.
So are you now going to add to that list.
Always do what men tell you, or you might get raped?
Now hang on Polly, “controlling” as you put it through the fear of rape is not the monopoly of men, huh?
So the guy in this instance felt using a condom was unnatural. Well, it is unnatural, but that’s surely not the point, the point is that the guy’s so insensitive that he doesn’t see that using a condom should be the default.
Anyway, I don’t know about Cath but I reckon she might join me in wishing we could chuck the pair of them into an ice cold bath.
Now hang on Polly, “controlling” as you put it through the fear of rape is not the monopoly of men, huh?
What are you on about Stephen? I don’t know THAT many men who don’t walk around on their own at night because they’re frightened they’ll be raped. And if there are such men, they’re not frightened of being raped by women.
The point is that *stranger* rape (as in being jumped on by a stranger in the street) is a very rare phenomenon, but a very large women will say they’re frightened to walk home alone at night in case they get raped.
Whereas I can testify I walk home at 3 in the morning drunk frequently. And I’ve never been raped in the street. So the fear is disproportionate to the risk, but women are still meant to limit their activities to avoid rape.
None of which is anything to do with choosing to have unsafe sex, which is your own responsibility. Sorry.
Valerie M – The author I quoted presumes to know people’s heads better than they know them themselves. I don’t really think that aiming a cheap insult at my reading skills detracts from how great a folly that sort of sociological arrogance is.
Shorter James: I think feminists are so dumb that I will pursue my argument simply by retyping it word for word!
No really. Try reading Heart’s post again. Or perhaps any of the feminist social theory she may be drawing from. Heart is pretty readable though, so if you’re struggling there I’m not sure where you should start.
It wasn’t just your reading skills to which I was referring. Every feminist site open to the public has some ignorant/ willfully ignorant dude swan in to offer such banalities.
Valerie, Heart’s structuralist approach to sociology (” but she is entering into an entire system governed by male heterosupremacists and their rules and ideas and enforcement mechanisms”) leads her to be of the belief that she understands everyone with a gender better than they do themselves. I know of the theory she is drawing upon, but this remains arrogant horseshit, as well as quite simply presumptuous as fuck. She is not correct.
When men think they know better than women what it is like to be socialised as a woman, and use words like arrogant and presumptuous to describe women discussing these experiences, I just have to laugh at the unexamined irony.
When women imagine that they can extend their own experiences onto all who share their gender without asking the others thus conditioned, I start to consider them presumptuous.