I saw a video of Stan speak recently where he explained that the reason he though it was better to use the word ‘Patriarchal’ compared to ‘sexist’ was that ‘patriarchal’ made reference to a power structure where as sexist had connotations that it was a personal pathology. I agreed with this and began to use patriarchal instead of sexist.

Some socialist friends of mine became alarmed upon discovering this. I explained it to them and they argued that it was bad because it made reference to Radical Feminism (which they characterise as the belief that sexism is biological in origin) and the ‘theory of Patriarchy’. Apparently they’re going to give me a (the good?  ) book, explaining this theory and it’s faults.

It seems to me that the reason the these particular socialists cling so tightly to the notion that the oppression of women as a sex arose with class society is because it debunks the notion put forth by many people (most of whom are not Radical Feminists) that women’s oppression is natural. Because if it is seen as natural or biological in origin than it can’t be fought against.

In that sense I don’t see how addressing the origins of women’s oppression is necessarily a smoke screen, although I can see how it could be used as one.

CB

[Marxism] Victoria Woodhull and dogmatic Marxism
Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Tue Jun 6 18:27:30 MDT 2006

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——————————————————————————–

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/woodhull.htm
Marx, Woodhull and Sorge

Dogmatic Marxism’s hostility toward “non-class” demands has been around for
a very long time, judging from the evidence of Timothy Messer-Kruse’s “The
Yankee International: 1848-1876.” (U. of North Carolina, 1998) Furthermore,
you are left with the disturbing conclusion that this problem existed at
the very highest levels of the first Communist International, and included
Marx himself.

The people who launched a section of the Communist International in the USA
were veteran radicals, who had fought against slavery and for women’s
rights for many years. They saw the emerging anti-capitalist struggles in
Europe, most especially the Paris Commune of 1871, as consistent with their
own. They saw revolutionary socialism as the best way to guarantee the
success of the broader democratic movement. What European Marxism would
think of them is an entirely different matter.

The names of some of the early recruits should give you an indication of
the political character of the new movement. Included were abolitionists
Horace Greely, Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner. Feminist Victoria
Woodhull joined in and put her magazine “Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly” at
its disposal. The weekly not only included communications from Karl Marx,
but spiritualist musings from Woodhull. The native radical movement of the
1870s was a mixed bag. Socialism, anti-racism, feminism, pacifism and
spiritualism co-existed comfortably. The Europeans were anxious to purify
the movement of all these deviations from the very start. Unfortunately
they put anti-racism, feminism and spiritualism on an equal footing.

Victoria Woodhull was unquestionably the biggest irritant, since she
defended all these deviations while at the same time she spoke out
forcefully for free love, the biggest deviation imaginable in the Victorian
age:

“The sexual relation, must be rescued from this insidious form of slavery.
Women must rise from their position as ministers to the passions of men to
be their equals. Their entire system of education must be changed. They
must be trained to be like men, permanent and independent individualities,
and not their mere appendages or adjuncts, with them forming but one member
of society. They must be the companions of men from choice, never from
necessity.”

Marx decided to put an end to all this nonsense and threw his weight behind
the German-American Frederic Sorge, who was assigned to clean house.
Against the Yankee swamp, Sorge would ram through a “scientific socialism”
that was true to the tenets of Marx and Engels. Furthermore, the
orientation of the American section would not be to women and blacks, but
only to the white workers and their embryonic trade unions. It seemed to
matter little that Sorge understood next to nothing about American
politics. His mastery of Marxist doctrine would produce the desired
results: “Fellow-workman,” he proclaimed, “Keep our standard pure & our
ranks clean! Never mind the small number! No great work was ever begun by a
majority.” With sectarian nonsense like this, it should surprise nobody
that Sorge’s group remained small in number. What does surprise us is that
Sorge was Marx’s hand-picked leader.

The Yankees and the German-American “orthodox Marxists” split and began to
carry out their respective orientations, which are instructive to compare.
Although the Sorge group was formally in favor of racial equality, their
actions often fell short of the verbal commitment. The simple explanation
for this is that they adapted to the prejudices of the white workers whom
they curried favor with.

Woodhull’s group made no such concessions, as their political traditions
were rooted in the abolitionist movement. Indeed, when they called for a
mass demonstration in New York City to commemorate the martyrs of the Paris
Commune, the first rank in the parade went to a company of black soldiers
known as the Skidmore Guard. The demonstration passed by a quarter million
spectators and the sight of armed black men in the vanguard was
electrifying. Sorge’s group complained that the demonstration was a
distraction from working-class struggles, whose participants would lose a
day’s pay by participating. He called for a boycott.

Black militias were an important fixture of northern urban politics in this
period. When black men donned uniforms and marched in formation, they were
making a statement not only about their full rights as citizens, but their
determination to back these rights by any means necessary. The black
Eighty-Fifth Regiment in NYC was one of the more radical and
internationalist militias in the city. They had marched alongside Irish New
Yorkers in honor of Fenian heroes and gave their units names like the
“[Crispus] Attucks Guards” and “Free Soil Guards.” This regiment decided to
name Tennessee Claflin, Victoria Woodhull’s sister, their commander and
supplied her with a uniform. Woodhull had become the presidential candidate
of the Equal Rights Party in 1872 and her vice-presidential running mate
was none other than Frederick Douglass. This combination symbolized the
commitment of the Yankee Marxists to racial equality and woman’s liberation.

While the Sorge faction held the black struggle at arm’s length, they at
least gave lip service to it. No such concessions were made to Chinese
workers whom they treated as outright enemies of the white worker.
Woodhull’s group took a strong stand against immigration bans, but the
“orthodox” Marxists caved in completely to white prejudice. Unfortunately
Karl Marx was little help in standing up to bigotry, since he regarded
Asians as locked in “hereditary stupidity” and the unproductive Asiatic
Mode of Production, an economic theory that had no basis in fact. Marx also
warned about the importation of Chinese workers as “rabble” who could
“depress wages.”

At the NYC branch of Sorge’s section, a San Francisco worker addressed his
comrades:

“The white working-men see and feel daily the effects of the Chinese labor
in that State. We cannot only perceive how it affects us, but know
assuredly that it will seriously affect the destiny of the working classes
of this country. The Chinese have driven out of employment thousands of
white men, women, girls and boys…. They are in all branches of the
manufacturing business, and it is only a matter of time when they will
monopolize all branches of industry; as it is impossible for white men to
exist on the same amount and sort of food Chinamen seem to thrive upon.”

The Yankees refused to go along with the anti-Chinese xenophobia and viewed
the Chinese as brothers and sisters in struggle. Woodhull wrote:

“The population of the country is forty millions. If the Chinese should at
the rate of five thousand a week, even that figure will nothing near equal
the present ratio of the Irish and German immigration, and it would a
hundred and fifty years to import forty millions. . . The economical idea
of immigration is that every new comer is a producer; he directly
contributes to the wealth of the community; he will not consume all that
produces. . . As for any immediate influence of John Chinaman on the labor
market and rate of wages that is an impossibility. The workingmen of New
York protest against two or three hundred foreigners. What injury can
accrue to them?”

Sorge’s group picked up a new recruit in 1872, an English immigrant and
cigarmaker named Samuel Gompers. Gompers was impressed with the
“working-class” and trade union tilt of the German-American followers of
Marx, while regarding the Woodhull section as “dominated by a brilliant
group of faddists, reformers, and sensation-loving spirits.” He was as
repelled by them as some old leftists were repelled by the 1960s New
Leftists. Gompers was tutored by Ferdinand Laurell, a fellow cigarmaker who
he met at the Manhattan Lower East Side factory where both were employed.
Laurell initiated him into the profound scientific socialism of the
Communist Manifesto and placed special emphasis on the centrality of the
trade unions. “Study your union card, Sam, Laurell said, “and if the idea
doesn’t square with that, it ain’t true.”

What gradually happened is that Gompers let the revolutionary socialism
fall by the wayside while allowing trade union fundamentalism to take
charge, including the virulent racism of the time. As Gompers climbed the
ladder into officialdom, he found that anti-Chinese racism gave him a foot
up. He endorsed the labeling of cigar boxes as made by white men, to be
“distinguished from those made by the Chinese.” After Gompers attained the
AFL presidency, women, ethnic minorities, African Americans and those who
did unskilled work found themselves without a friend in organized labor.
The Bolshevik revolution inspired a new Communist movement in the US 50
years later, which began to remedy this injustice. The Cold War reversed
this progress.

The Sorge section of the First International began to fall apart because
its sectarian, workerist and essentially reactionary politics guaranteed
this. The immediate heir of Sorge’s politics was a group called the
Socialist Labor Party, founded by Daniel De Leon in 1877. This group also
saw itself as the guardian of Marxist orthodoxy, but never even made the
attempt to intervene in the trade union movement. It was content to issue
racist broadsides from the sidelines like condemning the “importation of
Coolies under contract.” It survives today as an embalmed purist sect-cult
with zero influence in the labor or social movements, thank goodness.

Marxism as a revolutionary idea transcends the dogmatic mistakes of people
such as Sorge and De Leon. What is even more confounding is that it
transcends Marx’s own mistakes. Marx was wrong to back the workerist
backwardness of Sorge. One of the great things about Marx is that he was
capable of change, even when he was in the late stages of his career. After
denouncing Russian populism for most of his adult life, he became persuaded
that he did not understand the movement adequately and saw great
possibilities for it. To maximize his understanding, he began to study the
Russian language in his 60s.

The greatest obstacle to the development of Marxist thought has been the
tendency of its adherents to not see contradictory aspects of society and
politics dialectically. Clearly Sorge’s failure was to see the dialectical
connection of the black struggle to the trade union movement. If anything,
the naïve Yankee radicals understood the dialectical connection better than
the “orthodox” Marxists.

Even though there is a tendency for small sectarian groups of today to
search for a “revolutionary continuity” going back to Marx, it is better to
understand Marxism as the product of deep internal tensions that can only
be resolved through struggle. If the “workerism” of the First (and Second)
International had not been confronted and defeated, then the Marxist
movement would have not had the impact it has had in the 20th century.
Although these very same sectarian groups see Lenin as the Pope who
succeeded Pope Marx, in reality Lenin was more like a Protestant
Reformation revolutionary who attacked old beliefs at their root. His
articles were nailed to the door of institutionalized Marxism.

Lenin was the very first Marxist to SYNTHESIZE the proletarian and
non-proletarian elements of the revolution. Unlike Sorge, Lenin was eager
to embrace every form of rebellion against the absolutist state and not
question whether it was “orthodox” or not. His most radical departure was
to support the demands of the Russian peasantry who had been regarded by
orthodox Marxism as an alien and hostile class. Closely related was his
support of self-determination for oppressed nationalities, which he
understood as having an anti-capitalist dynamic. Even when the oppressed
nationality was led by reactionary or clerical fakers, he still backed
their demands.

Although all of our latter-day Bolsheviks pay lip-service to Lenin’s
example, there is evidence everywhere that they have more in common with
Frederic Sorge. When the black nationalist, feminist and gay revolts
erupted in the 1960s, the Marxist-Leninists found every excuse they could
to repudiate the new mass movements. These movements were petty-bourgeois
“diversions” from the real class struggle based in the trade unions.

A true synthesis of class, race and gender will be found in struggle. You
get some sense of this in a film like “Salt of the Earth,” about Chicano
miners and the women who found ways to express feminist demands in the
course of a bitter strike, while convincing their husbands that these
demands were just. It will be found in AMNLAE, the Sandinista woman’s
rights government agency. Or the black caucuses of the UAW in the early
1970s, which eventually inspired white workers to follow their militant
lead. Marxists should be looking for every opportunity to promote such
class, race and gender alliances. If the early American Marxist movement
screwed up, let’s at least study what they did wrong and avoid the same
mistakes. A good place to start with is Messer-Kruse’s brilliant scholarly
research.

No, I tell men to make love to women, and help heal the wounds between women and men from the Battle of the Sexes. Lets get back to the Garden.

Men making love to themselves is somewhat male supremacist. I’d never tell them to do that for that reason.

On the other hand, what gay guys might do is notice that there are no gender references in the words. Only, Baby, Honey , Darling. Not only that his name is “gaye”. :>)

But you can do what you want and sing your own song.

I’m going to write something on “Down with sexual repression “

I have great respect for Marvin Gaye, as an artist and a fellow child sex abuse survivor, but this song (which is a great song, structurally and vocally, I think) is basically about “What the heterosexual man needs from women for HIS healing.” What she needs to be healed is for CRAP to end, including a long break from heterosexual men calling her up at night expecting her to come “heal him” as if all women are obligated to play sex-nurse. Women work hard all day and need their sleep. Tell men to make love to themselves.

Sexual Healing
Marvin Gaye

Ooh, now let’s get down tonight
Baby I’m hot just like an oven
I need some lovin’
And baby, I can’t hold it much longer
It’s getting stronger and stronger
And when I get that feeling
I want sexual healing
Sexual healing, oh baby
Makes me feel so fine
Helps to relieve my mind
Sexual healing baby, is good for me
Sexual healing is something that’s good for me
Whenever blue teardrops are falling
And my emotional stability is leaving me
There is something I can do
I can get on the telephone and call you up baby, and
Honey I know you’ll be there to relieve me
The love you give to me will free me
If you don’t know the things you’re dealing
I can tell you, darling, that it’s sexual healing
Get up, get up, get up, get up, let’s make love tonight
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, ‘cos you do it right
Baby I got sick this morning
A sea was storming inside of me
Baby I think I’m capsizing
The waves are rising and rising
And when I get that feeling
I want sexual healing
Sexual healing is good for me
Makes me feel so fine, it’s such a rush
Helps to relieve the mind, and it’s good for us
Sexual healing, baby, is good for me
Sexual healing is something that’s good for me
And it’s good for me and it’s good to me
My baby ohhh
Come take control, just grab a hold
Of my body and mind soon we’ll be making it
Honey, oh we’re feeling fine
You’re my medicine open up and let me in
Darling, you’re so great
I can’t wait for you to operate
I can’t wait for you to operate
When I get this feeling, I need sexual healing

CB

[Marxism] The war on science
Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Thu Feb 9 08:56:17 MST 2006

——————————————————————————–

http://wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/scie-f09.shtml

–

(Chords are speculations made by random musicians)

Capo 2

C E7 F C
Well my friends, I see your face so clearly
Am G
Little bit tired, little worn through the years
C E7 F C
You sound nervous, you seem alone
Am G F
I hardly recognize your voice on the telephone

In between I remember
Just before bound-up, broken-down
We drive out to the edge of the highway
Follow that lonesome dead-end roadside south

Chorus:
C E7 F C
We’re all in this thing together
Am G
Walkin’ the line between faith and fear
C E7 F
This life don’t last forever
Am G
When you cry I taste the salt in your tears

Well my friend, let’s put this thing together
And walk the path with worn out feet of trial
‘Cause if you wanted we can go home forever
Give up your jaded ways, spell your name to God

Chorus

All the hour there’s a picture in a mirror
Fancy shoes to grace our feet
All there is is a slow road to freedom
Heaven above and the devil beneath

Chorus

JR: They haven’t said that much that’s positive. When that time comes, I’ll let you know.

CB: I think I have been ignoring your crudeness, in discussing body parts as you do. I’m thinking, “why is she talking about her body ? Oh well, I’ll ignore that and take the highroad.”

^^^^
Um, I’m not quite sure how to take this one, to say the least.

I’m reading a discussion where “vaginas” and “clitori” are flung all over the place like fuckin’ bad wallpaper, and people are talking about them whether or not they even have them, and it’s bad form or whatever to talk about my own fucking body.

^^^^
CB: Well, yea “crude” is a crude term. ( although if I am to err better to err in the direction of being a member of the sex police) I have a good vocabulary but I do once in a while use the wrong word. I meant more like _slang_ reference to body parts. I believe you used slang. What I mean is it is best to use medical terminology in a context like this where slang sex references can be tricky and a mixed message.

^^^^^

Y’all can talk about the bits and pieces of the generalized female body all you want and call it discourse. When I talk about my own it’s “crude.” Fuck.

^^^^
CB: As I say, the issue is more slang. Crude was a misuage on my part . Sorry to throw you off.

&&&&&&&

You want CRUDE? Fine. You got it.

^^^^
CB: Well, that’s up to you. But it starts to become a mixed message in the context of all this discussion of what’s wrong with sex.

^^^^

My body is 5′4″ tall and weighs around 260 lbs. I’ve been told it has a “pretty face” and “good hair.” It’s particularly large in the ass and in the chest. Been that way since I was thirteen years old, and it’s been fat for my whole life. It’s been a subject of pretty much public scrutiny by anyone who feels like talking about it, because it is a body that belongs to a woman. (I’ll add that it’s especially OK in our society for people to publicly scrutinize a fat body, male or female.)

^^^^
CB: I’m not “listening”. I’m putting my hands over my ears. Tell Julian. This is one part of a post I’m not “listening” to ( smile)

^^^^

I have spent my life listening to men, on and off the street, in and out of the house and the bedroom, telling me either how they think my body should look or what they would like to do to the body that I have. Since I was 13, ok? I’ve had to walk through a world and a life where it’s been ok to catcall me, ok to reach out and try and take a grab, ok to make fun of me in public and then try to get into my pants in private, whether or not I speak out, argue, punch, smack, or kick to protest. My body, as a female body, is a very important part of my lived experience, and I’ll talk about it all I want and I ain’t gonna be convinced that that’s crude. Not when y’all can put the female anatomy under a fucking microscope and pick it apart and decide what’s the “right” way to work it. No.

^^^^
CB: I’m sure your body is not crude. But talking about it in slang on this thread sends a mixed message.

^^^^^

And please, Julian, don’t be upset by my saying that because I feel that your contribution to the conversation has been to inform folks of some useful stuff. I appreciate your intentions there.

And I do understand that men, good-meaning men, do this microscopic picking for good reasons sometimes.

But I want to say to Charles, mainly, one more time, that I’m trying to lay bare for you a branch of female existence that you might not have much experience with. I’m not trying to attack you. I’m sorry that sometimes I’m sarcastic (like I’m the only one here with that characterisic of conversation) and I admit that yes, I DO get angry. I take leftist men to task very, very sharply. While I will apologize for the tone that I might take in doing it sometimes, I won’t apologize for doing it in general.

^^^
CB; Yes, I am aware of the sexist catcall, public sexual affrontery type of situation you describe. You have the scenario of the woman walking past building workers catcalling as an almost stereotype. There is the infamous wolf whistle. It’s a sexist phenomenon.

Like rape or domestic violence, I am not sure what I can do that would effectively change men who perpetrate such.

I would say that in a some situations, if not done “crudely” , I’m not sure some women would consider a plesant whistle as a compliment. Certainly, many women want to be admired for their looks. As to when the way the compliment is given crosses the line into sexist taunting or whatever, that’s a “scientific” question.

^^^^^

Something that I’d like you to realize is that when you talk to women, very many times you are talking to people who are profoundly wounded, whether or not you know it, or they decide to tell you about it. Women are wounded by this fucked-up, patriarchal system in ways that they either won’t talk about with men or that make them very uncomfortable to try and do so.

^^^^^^
CB: You should know that often when a man talks to you, it is a wounded person talking to you. Capitalism makes victims of the vast majority of people. The majority of men are not the direct perpetrators of the patriarchy of large institutions such as lower pay for women, defiing the subordinate roles of women , etc. They are born into a society that requires that they act in certain ways, places women and men in certain roles etc. They haven’t done anything especially bad to any woman themselves ,except in the sense that they just act as men, and have certain privileges etc. They really have very little power as individuals to change the male chauvinist structures of society. It’s also true that some of the male roles, though higher in stature , contributing to male supremacy of stature, are harder on the individual – such as working in a factory or being in war. So, this confuses or blinds many men to the fact of their overall supreamcy as men. In other words, they say “what do you mean men have it better ?I gotta go out and win the bread, work a dirty job , etc.” There are ways that this objective male supreamcy is hidden from men. It takes scientific study of society to realize that there is male supremacy. Most men don’t have the privilege of scientific study of society.

Main thing to understand is that most men are victims too, in the sense that you mean, victims of social structure.

The other thing is don’t think that I have lived somewhere isolated from women and have no idea of the trials and tribulations that a typical woman suffers _as a woman_ and as a person in capitalism and racism. I have a mother, sister, cousins, girlfriends, friends who are women, co-workers who are women. I know women who have shared with me their being raped, incestually raped, ostracized on a job because it was a male domain, sexually harassed and a whole lot more. So, I am substantially and intimately informed of much of the victimization of women. I know a woman is victimized in domestic violence about once every ten minutes or so. That’s a lot of women.

^^^^^

When you talk to women about sex you have to look at the statistics in this country for rape and abuse, and you have got to realize that who you are talking to might very well be one of the Gender War’s walking wounded. I say this without exaggeration; every woman that I know is either directly or indirectly affected by rape or childhood or adult sexual-abuse, or a combination of these things. The rate at which these atrocities happen does NOT allow for their omission from any discussion of male-female sexual relations.

^^^^
CB; See above.

^^^^^

Not being a man who’s committed these crimes does not dismiss any man from taking their existence into account, and it doesn’t protect men from having to deal with the “fallout.” The fallout is everywhere. It touches women’s lives in every aspect when they live through it.

^^^^
CB: I take it into account. That’s why I see ending male supremacy as critical in improving intimate relations between women and men. I say that all the time. I say it on the radio,when I am interviewed as a male feminist. I write about it. I have been a feminist for more than thirty years. What you say above is part of the a,b,c’s of feminism. I became aware of it long ago. You are preaching to the converted. How many men do you know who write papers like “For Women’s Liberation” , my first post to this blog ?

^^^^^

This is why it’s my suggestion that the men on the left might just hold back a minute before they start to posit what kinds of heterosex are the most “liberatory,” and to maybe even refrain a minute before you say that heterosex ITSELF is liberatory.
Many of our formative experiences with heterosex, and even continuting experiences with it, are directly opposite from “liberatory,” because our views on sex are cultivated, pollinated, fertilized, and nurtured in a society that uses rape and sexual abuse to keep women “under the jackboot,” to use Dworkin’s words.
Rape and sexual abuse are about SEX AND POWER. NOT either/or. Both. It’s about using masculinized power to get the kind of sex a perpetrator wants.

^^^^
CB: Yes, that is a big contradiction. However, I don’t see a proposal to suspend hetersex as viable. Better to go for eradicating male supremacy in sex and out of sex, with the positive proposal that this is the key to releasing the liberatory potential of heterosex.

On the other hand, if women got it together , you could have one big heterosex boycott to send a message. Whether or not you could get enough women to do it, would be a measure of whether most women see it as you do.

^^^^

While y’all here haven’t actively performed in abuse or any sort of sexual mistreatment of women, you are still operating and interacting and reaping “rewards” from the abusive power of a patriarchal system.

^^^^^
CB; I’d say it’s important to say the reverse. Men are reaping the appropriately hating responses of women to male supremacy. The system as it is now is bad for men too. That’s the only way to win. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. What’s bad for the goose ( male chauvinism) is bad for the gander ( even though it superficially seems like it’s good).
If everything is so good for men now, why would they change ? That’s the problem with claiming that men are reaping “rewards” from male chauvinism.

There is an analogous problem with telling white people that they are benefitting so much from racism. Why would they change if it so much to their advantage ?

^^^^

How do I know that these terrible things happen to so many women? Because they tell me. Women tell me, they talk to me woman-to-woman. If that has no value here then why the fuck are we having this conversation in the first place?

^^^
CB: I believe you. They tell me too.

^^^^

I have to go now. I mean I have to GO. It’s pretty clear that what I have to say is being cast off as useless, and for the sake of not going completely nuts struggling to find points of unity I think I might need to lay off this conversation for a day or two. Maybe totally. Who the hell knows. The brick wall is bruising my head.

^^^^^
CB: Have a good life.

Thank you for posting that.

I fully accept and believe what you are saying because we both know so many women who are survivors of patriarchal heterosexist abuse. That Charles wants to keep focus on the “good heterosex” that’s being had out there, is, as I’ve tried to explain, like arguing that because there are some happy rich folks (and I don’t know if there are), that makes capitalism something that needs to be seen in a balanced light. First, as you have well noted, what constitutes “good sex” for women and men is so deeply shaped by CRAP, that we cannot know what is really going on when someone says “I’m having good sex”, except to know that CRAP has infiltrated every dimension of our beings, which makes yours, Yolanda’s, and my radical feminist existence something to marvel at. I got my radicalism from Dworkin, primarily, but also from so many other feminist writers and activists, like Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, and Marilyn Frye. I’d love to talk with you about Dworkin and radical feminist stuff, including how to get men to see what the fuck is going on (it is an ENDLESS source of frustration, to see how men’s eyes glaze over when the term “male privilege” is brought up, or when I point out to male friends that their point of view is so heavily shaped by their being, in these specific cases, white, heterosexual, middle class, and male, inside CRAP.

I don’t want this blog to lose your voice, but it may be possible that, for both of us, and possibly Yolanda too, it would be better not to engage with Charles any more. I have tried a variety of approaches, and I’m weary too. Not for the same reasons you are. Sounds like you are working really hard all day. Me, I have Epstein-Barr, so I have a problem with fatigue generally, and am disabled by that and other conditions. So I couldn’t work as hard as you do, any more, anyway. I’ve said it many times: women of the world do most of the world’s work and are not paid for most of it.

I do not, for the life of me, understand what problem Charles has with you talking about your body. For God’s/Goddess’s sake, like you say, he and I have been talking more about women’s bodies than anyone else here. I agree with you, and am not upset at all, btw, that he and I got into this “anatomy talk” in a way that is kind of ridiculous. I guess I was really disturbed and annoyed that Charles assumes that because I am a gay male that I don’t know about women’s bodies. Women’s spirited bodies are the embodied spirits I have loved most in my life. I took close care of my grandmother in her last years, and we took care of one another before that. Her body was very familiar to me: the way her skin felt on the tops of her hands, the way her soft, wrinkled skin smoothed out as she lay down to go to bed, the way her spine curved over time. We always say hand in hand as we watched TV together. I miss knowing that warmth and comfort of her fingers running across my knuckles affectionately. I miss her so much: her mind-heart-spirit-body. I miss her more than I can possibly express. She earned more money than my grandfather when they met and wed, so they eloped. She always had an independent life, while also being a dutiful wife and mother. But she took pride in not being only known as “her husband’s wife”, and enjoyed her own activities, not infrequently traveling all over the world on her own, without her husband. From a poor white farm girl in the Midwest, to a world traveler. That’s what class and race privilege does for a person. But she knew women were disrespected far too often than men, whether or not she embraced feminism. She knew incest and rape and battery were horrible. She knew the toll primary parenthood takes on women. She found some joys in caring for others, for sure, but you and I both know she never had the option to do what so many men do, and just have themselves cared for by others. Until it was just she and I, and I cared for her more attentively than I thought I was capable of. And there was great joy in that, and great intimacy. But it is also the case that I was caring for someone who truly appreciated it, and her sister’s husband was too often grumpy and bitter while being cared for by his wife. I’m sure that was no fun at all for my grandmother’s sister. I think many women feel not only sorrow and grief, but also tremendous relief when their husbands pass on before them, if and when that happens. I know women who have been widowed who finally have some time for themselves, and are finally not being nagged at every day, and put down, by the man who is supposed to love them.

I talk with women all the time about menstruation, irregular cycles, menopause (I helped a woman friend find a remedy for hot flashes, which she suffered from terribly–it affected her sleeping and waking hours, and now, because of Black Cohosh, she has some relief, but I’ve heard one has to be careful about the side effect of depression. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. But when her husband and she and I would talk about it, he could only focus on the effects of her hot flashes on him. No shit. Only on himself. She’d explain about waking up in a puddle of her own sweat, and he’d have the nerve to say how uncomfortable that was FOR HIM. I just kept my eye contact connected to her and smiled a “you know what he’s doing” smile. She’s too caught up in a patriarchal religion to challenge him too much on his sexist behaviour, but I make feminist comments all the time around her (and him) and she smiles, and he does too. But her smile has some sense of gratitude in it, I think, while his is more dismissively polite. He is a kind man, but can be so annoyingly sexist, and he’s what most women would call “a good man”. He does the dishes sometimes, and the laundry.

I so appreciated hearing what you said about men not getting awards and ribbons for good behaviour. You and I know women never do, so why should men, for doing one tenth the work women do, if that!

I have been put off, to say the least, by Charles’ blatant homophobia and heterosexism. And the fact that he doesn’t think heterosexism is worth giving a name, or that homophobia suffices, is, well, invisibilising of the trauma and terror that too many of my queer sibs have known in their lives. Charles doesn’t seem willing to grasp the idea that heterosexuality is as socially-politically constructed as race and gender. I don’t know why that is, but suspect it is because, as you or Yolanda or Stan already noted here, for him to accept that would mean a total re-examination of his identity and life, and that might be too difficult, which is why most people, of whatever race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, prefer to naturalise it all. Less struggle that way, even if there’s more pain, in many lives, as a result of that lack of examination.

I mentioned that my lesbian-feminist friend has argued, lovingly, respectfully, to me, with me, that heterosexual women are NOT more privileged than lesbian women, as heterosexual women have to put up with much more intimate abuse than lesbian women, assuming the lesbian relationship isn’t abusive, of course. She has an interesting point, and I haven’t read much about that perspective on women and privilege. Have you?

Elaina, can we write to one another, at the Collins post. I want to know what you’re getting out of Collins work, what you’ve gotten out of Dworkin’s, what your favorite Dworkin books are and why. And if you write to Stan, he can give you my email address.

I want to support you, and radical feminism, until it succeeds, or patriarchy dies of its own death-wish, whichever comes first. I know Charles thinks our approach won’t work, won’t reach men, but the truth is not much is going to reach men, I have found. They come into their humanity the way Mister did in The Color Purple, or they don’t. And I’m tired of beating my head against the wall too–maybe our heads have been on either side of that same wall! And if so, we might as well sit and talk, and stop the head-banging, eh?

I can’t even begin to express the rage I feel about how many “types” and sizes of men’s bodies get adored, or accepted, in CRAP, and HOW FEW women’s bodies do, if any! And even the supermodels are either anorexic, bulimic, or are still self-hating, so there’s no winning there. Self-acceptance is a luxury for women in patriarchy, in my experience.

You’ll like this: a friend of my friend “crashed” a beauty pageant decades ago, and when she got to her state’s pageant, she unfurled a banner which read: “Beauty Pageants Hurt All Women.” Cool, huh? (They didn’t have her move on to the national pageant, needless to say.)

Hang in there, Elaina. I’m right on the other side of that wall.

Julian