The Prison and the Closet: Racism and Heterosexism
The Prison and the Closet: Racism and Heterosexism—an introduction to
the political writings of Patricia Hill Collins
by Julian Real, 2006
After participating in a rather long, unproductive discussion about
racism and heterosexism, I decided to do “the research thing” and
bring to light the subtle and sophisticated social analytic work of
Patricia Hill Collins.
The first text to be introduced is Black Feminist Thought (2000), with
focused attention on chapter 6 (“The Sexual Politics of Black
Womanhood”). This is but one chapter of Collins’ very important
feminist work: this text should be considered a MUST READ by anyone
who calls themselves feminist or pro-feminist, anti-racist, or
progressive to radical. It should be required reading, in other
words, for all who calls themselves “humanitarian”. Collins opens with
a discussion about several factors that contribute to the phenomenon
of heterosexism in some Black communities, examined within the context
and confines of a Western white supremacist State. Dynamics of social
phenomena such as heteronormativity and heterosexism vary from time to
time, culture to culture, and ethnic group to ethnic group (often
varying widely within any one ethnic group, depending on many factors,
including class, religious affiliation, geography, political values,
family values, etc.).
But here we find a deeply thoughtful and intellectually incisive
discussion about a culturally specific phenomenon, that may serve as a
lens into variations on this theme inside and outside other Black
communities, especially where other factors of white male supremacist
imperialist colonization and the oppression of ethnically marginalized
people and Tribes exist.
We must note, regardless of its “usefulness” to other herstorical
situations, this discussion is pertinent for all feminists because,
well, Black women ARE women, and Black women’s lives, worldwide, are
fully illustrative of how gender, race, class, and ethnicity,
religion, and sexuality intersect in real time, in real psyches, in
the real lives of real people, who suffer, survive, and endure. This
is to say (to white feminists and white non-feminists, especially) the
importance of reading this work, and other work by the same author, is
not for its relevance to white women’s lives, however useful this work
may be to untangling and examining those same intersections in ethnic
white women’s experience. A primary and fundamental critique of 1970s
popular feminism was that it assumed a centrality of experience, a
normativity, a basis of theoretical formulation, serving as a
launch-pad for various activist efforts and campaigns, while
significantly and mistakenly viewing white women’s experiences as
“representative” of what happens to women. What happens to white
women is what happens to women, often. But it is also ethnic and
partial, and this was not uncovered or challenged by white women in
those early days of radical thought and action. The job of pointing
this out was left, not surprisingly, to many women of Colour,
including Audre Lorde, who wrote so eloquently about these struggles
in her feminist classic, Sister Outsider. Critiques had been
intensifying, for damn good reasons, before and after Audre Lorde’s
contribution to the discussion. There have been many voices, of many
sexualities and ethnicities, later including white radical women such
as Mab Segrest and Marilyn Frye. Together, these voices of deep
introspection and structural and post-structural analysis have created
a compelling challenge to the racism, classism, and heterosexism of
early white feminism. Those brave white woman warriors dared to
articulate, at great odds, the real harm male supremacist culture
inflicts upon and infuses into the lives of people made into
patriarchally female girls and women. With this in mind, we turn now
to Collins:
p. 123: As Evelynn Hammonds points out, “Black women’s sexuality is
often described in metaphors of speechlessness, space, or vision; as a
‘void’ or empty space that is simultaneously ever-visible (exposed)
and invisible, where black women’s bodies are already colonized”
(1977, 171). In response to this portrayal, Black women have been
silent. One important factor that contributes to these long-standing
silences both among African-American women and within Black feminist
thought lies in Black women’s lack of access to positions of power in
U.S. social institutions. Those who control the schools, news media,
churches, and government suppress Black women’s collective voice.
Dominant groups are the ones who construct Black women as “the
embodiment of sex and the attendant invisibility of black women as the
unvoiced, unseen—everything that is not white” (Hammonds 1997, 171).
In the following paragraphs leading up to the main theme of this
chapter, Collins notes “Within U.S. Black intellectual communities
generally and Black studies scholarship in particular, Black women’s
sexuality is either ignored or included primarily in relation to
African-American men’s issues. In Black critical contexts where Black
women struggle to get gender oppression recognized as important,
theoretical analyses of Black sexuality remain sparse (Collins 1993b;
1998a, 155-83). […] Everyone has spoken for Black women, making it
difficult for us to speak for ourselves (123-24).
Collins, next cites the work of Paula Giddings, noting the following:
[T]o talk of white racist constructions of Black women’s sexuality is
acceptable. But developing analyses of sexuality that implicate Black
men is not—it violates norms of racial solidarity that counsel Black
women always to put our own needs second.
Citing the work of Nellie McKay, Collins quotes this passage:
“In all of their lives in America … black women have felt torn between
the loyalties that bind them to race on the one hand, and sex on the
other. Choosing one or the other, of course, means taking sides
against the self, yet they have almost always chosen race over the
other: a sacrifice of their self-hood as women and of full humanity,
in favor of the race (McKay 1992, 277-78).
Collins continues:
“Taking sides against the self” requires that certain elements of
Black women’s sexuality can be examined, namely, those that do not
challenge a race discourse that historically has privileged the
experiences of African-American men.
Yet another factor influencing Black women’s silences concerns the
potential benefits of remaining silent. (124)
Collins goes on to describe the costs of Black women and men speaking
out about sexuality in a virulently white supremacist context.
The convergence of all these factors—the suppression of Black women’s
voice by dominating groups, Black women’s struggles to work within the
confines of norms of racial solidarity, and the seeming protections
offered by a culture of dissemblance—influences yet another factor
shaping patterns of silence. In general, U.S. Black women have been
reluctant to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Black lesbian
feminist theory in reconceptualizing Black women’s sexuality. Since
the early 1980s, Black lesbian theorists and activists have identified
homophobia and the toll it takes on African-American women as an
important topic for Black feminist thought. “The oppression that
affects Black gay people, female and male, is pervasive, constant, and
not abstract. Some of us die from it,” argues Barbara Smith (1983,
xlvii). Despite the increasing visibility of Black lesbians […],
African-Americans have tried to ignore homosexuality generally and
have avoided serious analysis of homophobia within African-American
communities.
[…] As a group, heterosexual African-American women have been
strangely silent on the issue of Black lesbianism. Barbara Smith
argues one compelling reason: “Heterosexual privilege is usually the
only privilege that Black women have. None of us have racial or sexual
privilege, almost none of us have class privilege, maintaining
‘straightness’ is our last resort” (1982b, 171). In the same way that
White feminists identify with their victimization as women yet ignore
the privilege that racism grants them, and that Black men decry racism
yet see sexism as being less objectionable, heterosexual
African-American women may perceive their own race and gender
oppression yet victimize lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (125-26).
Skipping now to a subsection of the chapter called “Heterosexism as a
System of Power”, Collins continues:
One important outcome of the social movements advanced by lesbians,
gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals has been the
recognition of heterosexism as a system of power. In essence, the
political and intellectual space carved out by these movements
challenged the assumed normality of heterosexuality (Jackson 1996,
Richardson 1996). These challenges fostered a shift from seeing
sexuality as residing in individual biological makeup, to analyzing
heterosexism as a system of power. Similar to oppressions of race and
gender that mark the bodies with social meanings, heterosexism marks
bodies with sexual meanings (128).
… In the United States, assumptions about heterosexuality operate as a
hegemonic or taken-for-granted ideology… The system of sexual
meanings associated with heterosexism becomes normalized to such a
degree that they are often unquestioned. For example, the use of the
term sexuality itself references heterosexuality as normal, natural,
and normative (129).
… Making heterosexism as a system of oppression more central to
thinking through Black women’s sexualities suggests two significant
features. First, different groups remain differentially placed within
heterosexism as an overarching structure of power… Considerable
diversity exists among U.S. Black women as to how the symbolic and
structural dimensions of heterosexism will be experienced and
responded to…
…African-American women express a range of sexualities, including
celibate, heterosexual, lesbian, and bisexual, with varying forms of
sexual expression changing throughout an individual’s life course…
(131).
Next, we turn our attention to Collins’ newer book, Black Sexual
Politics (2004), to see where she goes in her examination of
heterosexism and racism. I will be focusing on chapter 3 (Prisons For
Our Bodies, Closets For Our Minds: Racism, Heterosexism, and Black
Sexuality):
Despite … important contributions of … extensive literature on race
and sexuality, because much of the literature assumes that sexuality
means heterosexuality, it ignores how racism and heterosexism
influence one another (88-89).
In the United States, the assumption that racism and heterosexism
constitute two separate systems of oppression masks how each relies
upon the other for meaning. Because neither system of oppression
makes sense without the other, racism and heterosexism might be better
viewed as sharing one history with similar yet disparate effects on
all Americans differentiated by race, gender, sexuality, class, and
nationality (89).
Noting the importance of critiques of Black sexual politics both from
feminist and gay perspectives, including, in both camps, Black
lesbians, Collins offers this:
Both groups of critics argue that ignoring the heterosexism that
underpins Black patriarchy hinders the development of a progressive
Black sexual politics. As Cathy Cohen and Tamara Jones contend,
“Black people need a liberatory politics that includes a deep
understanding of how heterosexism operates as a system of oppression,
both independently and in conjunction with other such systems. We
need black liberatory politics that affirm black lesbians, gay,
bisexual, and transgender sexualities. We need a black liberatory
politics that understands the roles sexuality and gender play in
reinforcing the oppression rooted in many black communities.”
Developing a progressive Black sexual politics requires examining how
racism and heterosexism mutually construct one another (89).
In the next section of this chapter, called Mapping Racism and
Heterosexism: The Prison and the Closet, Collins begins with an astute
quote by Nelson Mandela:
“We regarded the struggle in prison as a microcosm of the struggle as
a whole. We would fight inside as we had fought outside. The racism
and repression were the same; I would simply have to fight on
different terms.”
… The absence of political rights under chattel slavery and Jim Crow
segregation and the use of police state powers against African
Americans in urban ghettos have meant that Black people could be
subjugated, often with little recourse. (p. 89)
African American reactions to racial resegregation in the post-civil
rights era, especially those living in hyper-segregated, poor,
inner-city neighborhoods, resemble those of people who are in prison.
Prisoners that turn on one another are much easier to manage than the
ones whose hostility is aimed at their jailers (90).
…The experiences of people in prison also shed light on the myriad
forms of African American resistance to the strictures of racial
oppression. No matter how restrictive the prison, some prisoners find
ways to resist. Often within plain sight of their guards, people who
are imprisoned devise ingenious ways to reject prison policies… As
Mandela observes, “Prison is designed to break one’s spirit and
destroy one’s resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit
every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of
individuality—all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes
each of us human and each of us who we are” (91-92).
Collins notes that hip-hop culture has been one form of resistance.
Many creative voices speak, through rap and other cultural forms, to
the outrage of oppressed people living “freely” in places that are
more like prison than paradise.
Collins observes: What is freedom in the context of prison? Typically,
incarcerated people cannot voluntarily “come out” of prison but must
find ways to “break out” (92).
But once “out” what world is one released into?
Racism may be likened to a prison, yet sexual oppression has more
often been portrayed using the metaphor of the “closet.” This metaphor
is routinely invoked to describe the oppression of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgendered people. Historically, because both
religion and science alike defined homosexuality as deviant, LGTB
people were forced to conceal their sexuality. For some homosexuals,
the closet provided some protection… Passing as straight fostered the
perception that few gays and lesbians existed. The invisibility of
gays and lesbians fueled homophobia, and supported heterosexism as a
system of power… During the era of racial segregation, heterosexism
operated as smoothly as it did because hidden or closeted sexualities
remained relegated to the margins of society within racial/ethnic
groups… Rendering LGBT sexualities virtually invisible enabled the
system of heterosexism to draw strength from the seeming naturalness
of heterosexuality (93-94).
Since the 1980s, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people have
challenged heterosexism by coming out of the closet. If the
invisibility of sexual oppression enabled it to operate unopposed,
then making heterosexism visible by being “out” attacked heterosexism
at its core (94).
Collins describes several approaches the LGBT community has taken to
break apart the mythology of heterosexuality as both natural and
normal: transgression, “queering” sexuality, and assimilation have
all been explored extensively in queer lives lived bravely in the
context of larger cultural communities of rejection, hostility, and
punishment.
Racism and heterosexism, the prison and the closet, appear to be
separate systems, but LGBT African Americans point out that both
systems affect their everyday lives. If racism and heterosexism affect
Black LGBT people, then these systems affect all people, including
heterosexual African Americans. Racism and heterosexism certainly
converge on certain key points. For one, both use similar
state-sanctioned institutional mechanisms to maintain racial and
sexual hierarchies… For another, the state has played a very important
role in sanctioning both forms of oppression (95).
Racism and heterosexism also share a common set of practices that are
designed to discipline the population into accepting the status quo.
Collins goes on to describe how marriage laws have attempted to
regulate and control people based on race and sexuality. Interracial
and gay marriage has each had their time in the hot, hot spotlight of
public scrutiny—white heterosexual male supremacist public scrutiny.
Racism and heterosexism also manufacture ideologies that defend the
status quo. When ideologies defend racism and heterosexism become
taken-for-granted and appear to be natural and inevitable, they become
hegemonic. Few question them and the social hierarchies they defend.
Racism and heterosexism both share a common cognitive framework that
uses binary thinking to produce hegemonic ideologies. Such thinking
relies on oppositional categories. It views race through two
oppositional categories of Whites and Blacks, gender through two
categories of men and women, and sexuality through two oppositional
categories of heterosexuals and homosexuals. A master binary of
normal and deviant overlays and bundles together these and lesser
binaries. In this context, ideas about “normal” race (whiteness, which
ironically, masquerades as racelessness), “normal” gender (using male
experiences as the norm), and “normal” sexuality (heterosexuality,
which operates in a similar hegemonic fashion) are tightly bundled
together. In essence, to be completely “normal,” one must be White,
masculine, and heterosexual, the core hegemonic White masculinity.
This mythical norm is hard to see because it is so taken-for-granted.
Its antithesis, its Other, would be Black, female, and lesbian, a fact
that Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde pointed out some time ago.
Within this oppositional logic, the core binary of normal/deviant
becomes ground zero for justifying racism and heterosexism. The
deviancy assigned to race and that assigned to sexuality becomes an
important point of contact between the two systems. Racism and
heterosexism both require a concept of sexual deviancy for meaning,
yet the form that deviance takes within each system differs. For
racism, the point of deviance is created by a normalized White
heterosexuality that depends on a deviant Black heterosexuality to
give it meaning. For heterosexism, the point of deviance is created by
this very same normalized White heterosexuality that now depends on a
deviant White homosexuality. Just as racial normality requires the
stigmatization of the sexual practices of Black people, heterosexual
normality relies upon the stigmatization of the sexual practices of
homosexuals. In both cases, installing White heterosexuality as
normal, natural, and ideal requires stigmatizing alternate sexualities
as abnormal, unnatural, and sinful (96-97).
…These two sites of constructed deviancy work together and both help
create the “sexually repressive culture” in America described by
Cheryl Clarke (97).
Collins concludes this section of her chapter on page 98 with this
question: How have African Americans been affected by and reacted to
this racialized system of heterosexism (or this sexualized system of
racism)?
I believe that whatever ethnic and cultural groups folks in the U.S.
are part of, we must contend with these questions as they apply to
each and every one of us.
elaina:
Thank you for posting this, Julian. I am looking forward to reading the whole thing when I get home from work tonight. I just started “Black Feminist Thought” a day or 2 ago, so your timing is impeccable.
6 February 2006, 3:16 pmJulian Real:
Your welcome, Elaina!
6 February 2006, 5:29 pmCharles Brown:
OK, Julian, here are some comments as you requested. I am going to delete the passages that I don’t have anything to say about.
Charles
p. 123: As Evelynn Hammonds points out, “Black women’s sexuality is
often described in metaphors of speechlessness, space, or vision; as a‘void’ or empty space that is simultaneously ever-visible (exposed)
and invisible, where black women’s bodies are already colonized”
(1977, 171). In response to this portrayal, Black women have been
silent. One important factor that contributes to these long-standing
silences both among African-American women and within Black feminist
thought lies in Black women’s lack of access to positions of power in U.S. social institutions. Those who control the schools, news media,churches, and government suppress Black women’s collective voice.
^^^^^
CB: The thought that occurred to me here is I wonder if the vast majority of Black women ever heard of Evelyn’s Hammond’s claim. So, I don’t know if it is accurate to portray Black women as having a “response” to it. Their “silence” might just be that they never heard it said.
Then , of course, this is intellectual discourse, and so meaning can be challenging, but I’m not entirely clear on what it means to say that Black women’s sexuality is “speechless”. Maybe what is below expands it. I don’t know if the metaphor I’d use for Black women’s sexuality is “silent”. My experience is that Black women “say” a lot in this regard. I gotta say ” I hear ya , sisters.” My experience is that Black women’s sexuality communicates itself as well or better than white women’s. But maybe something else is meant.
I’d also say that , in general, if we are going to generalize like this, Black women are as much subjects/self-determining in their bodily attitudes as white women.
^^^^^^^
Dominant groups are the ones who construct Black women as “the
embodiment of sex and the attendant invisibility of black women as the unvoiced, unseen—everything that is not white” (Hammonds 1997, 171).
^^^^^
CB; I don’t doubt this. Not being part of the dominant group, and living in Detroit, I myself “see” Black women all the time, much more than I “see” white women. So, I am not experiencing this invisibility of Black women. However, I can see that Collins point would be true on a majority white college campus. It was true when I went to the University of Michigan.
^^^^
In the following paragraphs leading up to the main theme of this
chapter, Collins notes “Within U.S. Black intellectual communities
generally and Black studies scholarship in particular, Black women’s
sexuality is either ignored or included primarily in relation to
African-American men’s issues. In Black critical contexts where Black women struggle to get gender oppression recognized as important,theoretical analyses of Black sexuality remain sparse (Collins 1993b;1998a, 155-83). […] Everyone has spoken for Black women, making it difficult for us to speak for ourselves (123-24).
^^^^^
CB: No doubt. I’m an intellecutal, but I don’t survey the literatures like academics. But I would be surprised if what Collins says about the scholarly community is wrong.
^^^^^^
Collins, next cites the work of Paula Giddings, noting the following:[T]o talk of white racist constructions of Black women’s sexuality is acceptable. But developing analyses of sexuality that implicate Black men is not—it violates norms of racial solidarity that counsel Black women always to put our own needs second.
Citing the work of Nellie McKay, Collins quotes this passage:
“In all of their lives in America … black women have felt torn between the loyalties that bind them to race on the one hand, and sex on the other. Choosing one or the other, of course, means taking sides against the self, yet they have almost always chosen race over the other: a sacrifice of their self-hood as women and of full humanity, in favor of the race (McKay 1992, 277-78).
^^^^
CB: Have no reason to doubt this. It is a point made a while ago , and I have heard it before.
^^^^^^^
Collins continues:
“Taking sides against the self” requires that certain elements of
Black women’s sexuality can be examined, namely, those that do not
challenge a race discourse that historically has privileged the
experiences of African-American men.
Yet another factor influencing Black women’s silences concerns the
potential benefits of remaining silent. (124) Collins goes on to describe the costs of Black women and men speaking
out about sexuality in a virulently white supremacist context.
The convergence of all these factors—the suppression of Black women’s voice by dominating groups, Black women’s struggles to work within the confines of norms of racial solidarity, and the seeming protections offered by a culture of dissemblance—influences yet another factor shaping patterns of silence. In general, U.S. Black women have been reluctant to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Black lesbian feminist theory in reconceptualizing Black women’s sexuality.
^^^^^^
CB; Well, it is not really surprising that Black _heterosexual_ women would not entirely validate Black _lesbian_ theory in reconceptualizing their sexuality, is it ? By definition that’s a point of dispute between them , no ? Actually, I do have some direct communication from Black heterosexual women on lesbianism.
^^^^^^
Since the early 1980s, Black lesbian theorists and activists have identified homophobia and the toll it takes on African-American women as an important topic for Black feminist thought. “The oppression that affects Black gay people, female and male, is pervasive, constant, and not abstract. Some of us die from it,” argues Barbara Smith (1983, xlvii).
^^^^^
CB: By the way, I raised my concern about the term “heterosexism” with Barbara Smith at a Black Radical Congress meeting about 7 years ago.
^^^^^
Despite the increasing visibility of Black lesbians […], African-Americans have tried to ignore homosexuality generally and have avoided serious analysis of homophobia within African-American communities.
^^^^
CB: Maybe some African-Americans disagree with the speaker’s analysis of homosexuality. In other words, they may not be ignoring it but disagreeing.
^^^^^^
[…] As a group, heterosexual African-American women have been
strangely silent on the issue of Black lesbianism.
^^^^^
CB; Why is that strange ? Maybe they disagree and are trying to avoid arguing.
^^^^^^
Barbara Smith
argues one compelling reason: “Heterosexual privilege is usually the
only privilege that Black women have. None of us have racial or sexual privilege, almost none of us have class privilege, maintaining ’straightness’ is our last resort” (1982b, 171). In the same way that White feminists identify with their victimization as women yet ignore the privilege that racism grants them, and that Black men decry racism yet see sexism as being less objectionable, heterosexual African-American women may perceive their own race and gender oppression yet victimize lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (125-26).
^^^^^
CB: If heterosex is so oppressive for women and Black women, as you argue on the other area of this blog, why is it a _privilege_ for Black women ? Seems like you would say hetersex is a _burden_ for Black women. What kind of privilege is it to have socalled speechless sexuality ?
More later.
^^^^^^
8 February 2006, 6:22 pmJulian Real:
Re:
CB: Maybe some African-Americans disagree with the speaker’s analysis of homosexuality. In other words, they may not be ignoring it but disagreeing. Funny how you don’t refer to Karl Marx as “a speaker” but you diminish the sociological-political expertise of a Black theorist (Collins) as such. Is not Collins more than just “a speaker”?
Charles, you know many people of all ethnicities disagree with Collins’, Lorde’s, Smith’s, and many other women’s analyses of homophobia, heterosexism, homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality. Many people disagree with Marx and Engels’ analysis of political economies. Many men disagree with most of what feminists have said, and have formed men’s rights groups to oppose feminists. So I’m not surprised that there are heterosexual people, of any community, who disagree. The question here is: what are your disagreement, Charles? Can you articulate them clearly for me here?
Heterosexuality is a not necessarily “a privilege” for heterosexual women. It’s not so simple a matter as “one group is oppressed and another group isn’t, or is more oppressed”. Lesbianism is both exploited as a sexuality and invisibilised as a viable political way of being in the world. Lesbian lives are lived without institutional support (and oppressiveness). Women’s heterosexuality, is used and abused institutionally, especially in the pornography, cosmetics, fashion, and advertising industries.
Both groups suffer similarly and very differently in heteropatriarchy. Being beaten and raped by your male spouse is no privilege. Being otherwise intimately, interpersonally, in-home subjugated to a man is no privilege. And it’s also no privilege to receive bigotry and condemnation, among other oppressive realities, for being “other than heterosexual”. So both groups of women have plenty to overcome in heteropatriarchies across the globe to achieve anything approaching real freedom, real liberation.
I think lesbianism can be freeing from the oppressive constraints placed around “the heterosexual lifestyle” by its institutions, ideologies, and identities. Some Muslim Arab women question secular U.S. women’s “freedom” to be turned into pornography, and be sexually harassed by men publicly, exposed to all the demeaning comments and harmful actions by heterosexual men in the West. I know many lesbian women who have found communities of relative kindness and respect, that simply are not available, in heteropatriarchal culture. Of course some individual heterosexual women find loving, kind, respectful relationship with individual men, but rarely free of some dimensions of sexism, even if “better than most”.
Lesbian women are not, somehow, magically immune from the psychological and physical impact of male supremacy, btw. Lesbian community isn’t somehow magically “free” from CRAP. But communities organised around feminist values, women-as-human honoring values, are more empowering to women who seek freedom than women-as-women-who-are-allegedly-for-men’s-use values prevalent in heteropatriarchal communities. In feminist lesbian communities, there are less interpersonal, intimate harms to women. There are not date-rapists, date-druggers, sexual harassers, and partner-rapers. Many lesbian feminist women find relief from the gross forms of violation and exploitation that their heterosexual sisters struggle with. In lesbian feminist community women are freer to be the individuals they are, rather than living up to some heteronormative straight-jacket.
For years I have heard from heterosexual men about how constricting that heteronormative straight-jacket is, on their emotional and sexual and spiritual lives. Young heterosexual men are now breaking out of that, sharing deep affection and emotional intimacy with other heterosexual, and gay, men. Not everywhere, but in some feminist-impacted heteromale communities. I have witnessed this. I know heterosexual men who are presumed to be gay because they have broken out of the patriarchal straight-jacket of heteronormativity. While get the grief that is usually reserved for assumed-to-be gay men.
I’d say queer folks are challenged to leave the closet of invisibility, endure violence, verbal and physical, from non-queer folks, and heterosexuals are challenged to let go of socially maintained, politically enforced notions of naturalness and normativity. Heterosexuals are also challenged to be honest about the fact that they aren’t only heterosexual–most aren’t completely heterosexual, if really honest.
And, importantly, what did theorist-writer-researcher Barbara Smith have to say to you about your questioning of or about heterosexism?
8 February 2006, 11:39 pmCharles Brown:
Re:
CB: Maybe some African-Americans disagree with the speaker’s analysis of homosexuality. In other words, they may not be ignoring it but disagreeing. Funny how you don’t refer to Karl Marx as “a speaker†but you diminish the sociological-political expertise of a Black theorist (Collins) as such. Is not Collins more than just “a speaker�
^^^^^
CB: When I refer to Karl Marx I don’t give him some special , exalted title. I just call him by name. So, calling Collins a speaker is not to give her any less respect than I do Karl Marx.
When you refer to Collins, what do you call her ? Referring to what you wrote above, I see you just call her by name. Just like I do with Karl Marx. Isn’t Collins more than Collins to you ? (smile)
^^^^^
Charles, you know many people of all ethnicities disagree with Collins’, Lorde’s, Smith’s, and many other women’s analyses of homophobia, heterosexism, homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality. Many people disagree with Marx and Engels’ analysis of political economies. Many men disagree with most of what feminists have said, and have formed men’s rights groups to oppose feminists. So I’m not surprised that there are heterosexual people, of any community, who disagree. The question here is: what are your disagreement, Charles? Can you articulate them clearly for me here?
^^^
CB; Is that the question here ? How so ? I’m pretty much going to say what I want. If you notice, at that point in her discussion, she doesn’t say anything about what her or lesbian’s ideas on sexuality,or what the heterosexual women’s opinions are. So, there is nothing for me to agree or disagree with ,is there ? She just notes that they don’t agree. I just said that’s not surprising.
^^^^^^
Heterosexuality is a not necessarily “a privilege†for heterosexual women. It’s not so simple a matter as “one group is oppressed and another group isn’t, or is more oppressedâ€.
^^^
CB; Yea, ain’t that the truth. You might want to think about that in the context of previous discussions we have had.
More later
9 February 2006, 6:02 pm^^^^^
Julian Real:
To Charles:
I was speaking in the context of women-in-patriarchy, lesbian and heterosexual.
Do you believe that Black people are oppressed by white institutions, ideologies, and identities?
That women are oppressed by male supremacist institutions, ideologies, and identities?
That poor people are oppressed by capitalist institutions, ideologies, and identities?
And that lesbian and gay people are oppressed by hetero-patriarchal institutions, ideologies, and identities?
MAYBE we’ll get clear, between the two of us, on what our differences are, politically, in terms of our analysis of oppression. I’m hoping we get somewhere here, Charles!
Another question I’ve been meaning to ask:
You mentioned the Christian condemnation of all out-of-marriage heterosex, and you do acknowledge that homosexuals are also “put down” shall we say. Can we conclude (that is to say, can we agree) that “sex” is what is being condemned by many branches of the Patriarchal Christian Church, not “just” heterosexuality?
10 February 2006, 12:37 amCharles Brown:
Julian:
And that lesbian and gay people are oppressed by hetero-patriarchal institutions, ideologies, and identities?
^^^^
CB: Well, this is an issue in dispute. Lesbians are oppressed by patriarchy, because they are women.
What is your argument that oppression of gay _men_ is part of patriarchy, male supremacy ? Gay men are men. They have the privileges of men. How is it that you think they are subjects of the oppression of male chauvinism ?
I realize that many people say that oppression of gay men is part of patriarchy. But I am a critical thinker. And I am questioning this, because gay men are men. How is it that oppression of men is male chauvinist ?
I raised this with a woman friend of mine. I said I’m in these debates , and some people are claiming that gay men are oppressed by male chauvinism. She said, “Gay men are men. When I have gone into gay bars the men start hooting and yelling out “fish, fish”. I felt very uncomfortable there. They seem to be jealous of us as women.”
^^^^
MAYBE we’ll get clear, between the two of us, on what our differences are, politically, in terms of our analysis of oppression. I’m hoping we get somewhere here, Charles!
Another question I’ve been meaning to ask:
You mentioned the Christian condemnation of all out-of-marriage heterosex, and you do acknowledge that homosexuals are also “put down†shall we say. Can we conclude (that is to say, can we agree) that “sex†is what is being condemned by many branches of the Patriarchal Christian Church, not “just†heterosexuality?
^^^^
CB: Yes, I’d say historically the church has been anti-all sex. However, the emphasis is anti-heterosex. In part , because, it is only recently with the gay liberation movement that the issue of gay sex has become more public. The church hasn’t had much to say against gay sex, because it wasn’t a public issue. I’d also have some suspicions that a lot of the priests were having gay sex, so they wouldn’t want to emphasize anti-gay sex.
Another important thing I have been meaning to mention. The Church is a central institution, perhaps _the_ central institution of patriarchy, historically. God is a man ! Think about that. Eve and all women, according to church doctrine over the millenia, are much more prone to “consort with the Devil.” I had cause to focus on this recently when we were looking at historical witch hunts. The Puritan doctrine was that there are witches because women are more easily tempted by the Devil.
Yes, I believe the church has been opposed to homosexuality , with Sodom and Gamora , but historically overall its oppositon to homosex has been very much “backburner” compared to controlling and opposing heterosex. The important thing to the church is that children are the product of heterosex, and it is mainly concerned with controlling reproduction.
10 February 2006, 10:53 amCharles Brown:
Skipping now to a subsection of the chapter called “Heterosexism as a
System of Powerâ€, Collins continues:
One important outcome of the social movements advanced by lesbians,
gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals has been the
recognition of heterosexism as a system of power. In essence, the
political and intellectual space carved out by these movements
challenged the assumed normality of heterosexuality (Jackson 1996,
Richardson 1996). These challenges fostered a shift from seeing
sexuality as residing in individual biological makeup, to analyzing
heterosexism as a system of power. Similar to oppressions of race and gender that mark the bodies with social meanings, heterosexism marks bodies with sexual meanings (128).
^^^^^^
CB: This is a very cogent posing of the issues. I have studied and thought about the issue of biology and sexuality quite a bit. My thought at this point is that sexuality does, in part, reside in biology, but is also “socially constructed, ” as the term goes. So, I would question the above implication that sexuality does not reside in the individual’s biological makeup at all. A given individual’s sexuality is the result of a combination of nature and nurture, not just nurture.
As to the analysis of heterosexuality as a system of power, the above claim I make undercuts that to some extent. Secondly, I would say to the extent that sexuality involves a system of power, it is not on the same level , type or centrality that the systems of male supremacy and white supremacy are.
This is a good point to focus our discussion.
That sexuality has some root in biology means that heterosexuals acquire their sexual preference in part from their genes. This is reinforced by culture or upbringing. But this process does not take place in antagonism to homosexuality, in some power scheme of exploitation and oppresion of homosexuals in the way that race and gender are. It is in fact, natural and rational in the sense that heterosexuality is necessary for reproduction of the species and the people. Reproduction is a fundamentally necessary process for the perpetuation of the human race ( See my discussion of this in “For Women’s Liberation”). In other words, individuals attraction to the opposite sex is probably an expression of inborn inclination to some extent. And since the inclination to have heterosex is likely selected for going way back in time because heterosex is fertile and homosex is not, it would not be surprising if the vast majority of the population had some inborn inclination to have heterosex. That is it would not be surprising if it is the mode, in the statistical sense.
Of course, most sex acts don’t produce children. But the inclination of people to have sex with the opposite sex in non-reproductive acts would be an obvious continuation of the structure of necessary reproductive acts. The normative or statistically higher occurrence of heterosexuality is in that regard is just a result of influence of the reproductive biological “institution”. In this case, culture merely imitates nature. It is a sort of totemism in the Levi-Straussian sense ( See _Totemism_ by Claude Levi-Strauss; many cultural structures are analogies to natural structures in primary societies).
Part of the problem of putting sexuality in the same category as race and gender is that there is no fundamental exploitation of homosexuals by heterosexuals, as there is with the others.
The other complicating factor is that historically, male same sex institutions have been associated , not necessarily with the powerless and oppressed classes, but often with the ruling classes. For example, in ancient Greece the samesex institution of sex bewteen men and young boys was the norm in the _ruling class_. Alexander the Great was not a member of the oppressed and exploited classes , but rather the ruling class of his society. Similarly, in more recent times, gay histories themselves demonstrate kings, sultans, British sailors on colonialist ships, and other ruling class samesex institutions. So, samesex is a sort of mixed bag when it comes to association with oppressed classes or vicitms of power systems.
^^^^^^^
Clip-
In the United States, the assumption that racism and heterosexism
constitute two separate systems of oppression masks how each relies
upon the other for meaning. Because neither system of oppression
makes sense without the other, racism and heterosexism might be better viewed as sharing one history with similar yet disparate effects on all Americans differentiated by race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality (89).
^^^^^^
CB; I’d say this is going to take some proving that racism makes no “sense” without “heterosexism”. Racism is rooted in slavery and capitalism. In that long history, the same sex practices of slaveship crews and pirates _reinforced_ or facilitated conquest, colonialism, slavery. In other words, homosexuality has probably played a role in support of racism in some times.
Currently, some homosexuality is socially constructed in the _racist and capitalist_ prison system. How does that homosexuality contradict racism and capitalism ?
^^^^^
Noting the importance of critiques of Black sexual politics both from
feminist and gay perspectives, including, in both camps, Black
lesbians, Collins offers this:
Both groups of critics argue that ignoring the heterosexism that
underpins Black patriarchy hinders the development of a progressive
Black sexual politics. As Cathy Cohen and Tamara Jones contend,
“Black people need a liberatory politics that includes a deep
understanding of how heterosexism operates as a system of oppression, both independently and in conjunction with other such systems. We need black liberatory politics that affirm black lesbians, gay, bisexual, and transgender sexualities. We need a black liberatory politics that understands the roles sexuality and gender play in reinforcing the oppression rooted in many black communities.†Developing a progressive Black sexual politics requires examining how racism and heterosexism mutually construct one another (89).
^^^^^
CB: I have read this book before, because all these passages are familiar.
Here there are assertions that ” heterosexism …
10 February 2006, 1:06 pmunderpins Black patriarchy” and “heterosexism operates as a system of oppression, both independently and in conjunction with other such systems ” but no arguments are offered in support of these assertions. So far, there are several claims that heterosexism is a system of power intertwined with racism and patriarchy, but there is almost no argumenation to support these claims.
Julian Real:
Hi Charles.
You’ve given me lots to respond to, as, of course, I do you (sorry about posting so much between your responses!).
First, and succinctly: I don’t think heterosexuals are politically-socially placed to be able to view the oppression of gay and lesbian folks, any better than men are placed to understand/experience/know the oppression of women, or whites to know the oppression of people of Colour. Your arguments about whether said oppression exists is precisely the same argumentation I hear from heteromen about feminism and women’s oppression, and from white folks about “whether or not” people of Colour are oppressed.
That you argue in this way demonstrates your privilege to “not know” in this regard. This is not a criticism at all, simply an observation. You, as a heterosexual, CAN ponder “whether or not” lesbian and gay folks are oppressed. I have lived it. You haven’t. Queer folks I know endure abuses that hetero folks don’t endure. Discrimination in housing, work, family life, social life, etc. That’s real. You can call it “not oppression” if you want, but it’s real, and so is the gay-bashing, the hetero privileged to be affectionate in public, the media representing heteros having romantic, sexual relationships as an every day, normal, natural thing, and not portraying gay and lesbian people that way at all.
I remember Oprah saying that she was moved to tears when she say the Huxtables on the Cosby Show embracing on a couch, just being loving and kind and warm with one another in a romantic way, and it was THE FIRST TIME she EVER saw that on TV between a Black woman and a Black man. That really impressed upon me the harm of not having one’s life reflected back to one in the media.
Tell me, Charles, where am I to look on TV for that loveing, kind, warm, romantic moment between two men or two women who are not hetero?
Even Brokeback Mountain is about two guys who have to “sneak around” to be together. Where in popular media, especially TV, non-cable, can I see that, in commercials, in TV shows, etc?
Gay men are oppressed for participating in the degraded status of the female, for being seen as “effeminate” for not being “man enough”, etc. This is the world of heteropatriarchy. You bring up the term “male chauvinism” which went out about twenty-five years ago, to be honest. I don’t know any other human beings who are feminist who use that term, unless responding to you, and keeping your lingo in it.
I’m not kidding.
The terms are patriarchy (and in this discussion heteropatriarchy), male supremacy, sexism, racism, and heterosexism. Please update your lexicon. You language invisibilises my lived reality.
So gay males are oppressed for not being “with women” the way heteropatriarchy demands men be with women. And lesbians are oppressed for not being with men the way heteropatriarchy demands women be (available, acccessible) to men.
“Lesbian porn” is heteromen’s revenge: “See, we can watch what y’all do even though you don’t want to do it with a dick.” We’ll show you.
Gay porn tends to want to prove that gay men are “real men”. Many internalised homophobic personals ads read “no femmes”. This is in keeping with the argument that gay males are hated and discriminated against because what they do with other males is not what patriarchy wants, because patriarchy wants every man to control a woman. That some men don’t might get them an odd look in hetero bars. Like, if you go into a bar and say “I think women should be treated as human beings, not as pieces of meat for men’s consumption” you might be accused of being gay.
Please, Charles, read “Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism” because your knowledge base for this stuff is so “not there” based on you being heterosexual, that it really is incumbant upon you to learn about this, and it’s really not my job to teach it to you.
It’s my responsibility as a person with light-skin privilege, or “white” privilege, to know what that privilege means, how it expresses itself interpersonally, institutionally, and in identity.
You are demonstrating an alarming (to me) level of ignorance about the reality of gay and lesbian oppression.
You say in your experience what makes heterosexism different than racism and sexism is that the latter two are less involved in biology. Tell that to any male supremacist or white supremacist and see what you get for an answer.
Your heterosexual privilege “allows” you to think that it is any different with sexuality. Dark skin pigmentation exists, as do various genital formations. That’s “natural” too, Charles. But we both know that CRAP takes some “biological” features and makes them into socio-political categories. That’s how CRAP works. The same with sexuality. No meaningful difference there.
You say that sex is what’s hated by the Church, agreeing with me. Then do you have the same trouble with the term “sexism” that you do with heterosexism?
And as for those women who find gay men offensive and misogynist: we have already agreed that some gay men are misogynist and sexist. That’s a no brainer, remember? We have also heard from a woman who feels relieved when with gay men, because she feels safer, less harassed, less objectified, less commodified, less “treated like meat”, and seen MORE as a real human being, not just “a gendered thing”. So please factor that story into your analysis too, if you want it to reflect the whole truth.
Gotta go. I’ll catch back up with you when you post here a response to those two books I recommended that you read, as you really are not getting even the most basic points about heterosexism, it seems, and I have other stuff to do than to educate you on that subject, gay male to heteromale, when there are really good books out there that can educate you just fine.
Then, and only then, can we discuss this further.
Happy reading:
Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism, by Suzane Pharr
URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890759015/qid=1138556753/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-7116052-2097435?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
To educate yourself about the REALITY of homophobia and heterosexism, the oppression of gay males and lesbian females, please read:
Overcoming Homophobia and Heterosexism, by James T. Sears and Walter
L. Williams.
URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231104235/qid=1138556933/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-7116052-2097435?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Julian
11 February 2006, 11:46 amCharles Brown:
Feminism is advancing.
CB
^^^^^^^
lbo-talk] women outnumber men in college
joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Sat Feb 11 19:14:06 PST 2006
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——————————————————————————–
Despite extensive outreach programs and dire predictions about their
futures, there is a minority group growing ever smaller on college
campuses.
It seems no matter what anyone says or does, the trend cannot be
reversed. Fewer and fewer of them attend college.
The minority group? Men.
Although that may be a surprise to you — it certainly was to me — it’s
no surprise to college administrators who are scrambling to get more men
on campus.
“The trend is well established,” says Richard Black, associate vice
chancellor of admission and enrollment at UC Berkeley. “There are more
women than men at most American colleges and universities.”
The average student body across the country is 58 percent female,
according to B.J. Johnson, a woman who is dean of academic and
enrollment services at the University of San Francisco.
That sounds high until you consider that 63 percent of USF students are
women. At Sonoma State University, it’s 62.6 percent.
In comparison, the numbers at Cal are not as dramatic — 54 percent
women, 46 percent men. But Black says that’s only because Cal has strong
engineering and computer sciences programs, which remain male bastions.
Still, he isn’t betting on the numbers turning around. He says 54.3
percent of fall admissions in 2003 were women. That number rose to 55.1
percent in 2004 and 55.5 last September.
Johnson admits USF’s numbers are skewed somewhat by its strong nursing
program, which attracts more women than men. But Johnson, who has helped
spearhead outreach programs for male applicants at USF, says the
national collegiate gender imbalance is beyond what schools expect or want.
The trend is even more alarming among ethnic minorities.
African American women outnumber African American men on campus by a
2-to-1 ratio. The numbers for Latinos are almost as lopsided.
“We were surprised when it began in the early ’90s,” says Johnson. “But
not anymore. It is disturbing on two levels, first in the implications
for society and second because of the overall educational experience.”
An exception is San Jose State University, where the division is roughly
50-50. Again, a strong engineering and computer science program helps,
as well as Silicon Valley’s reputation as a hotbed of jobs.
But Marshall Rose, the school’s associate vice president for admission
and enrollment services, says the school is concerned and has begun
marketing itself aggressively to men.
“It is good to have a balance,” Rose says, “but we are not sure how
long it is going to last.”
Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute in Washington,
D.C., has been tracking this trend since 1979, when what he calls the
“male share of higher education enrollments” dropped from 59.3 percent
in 1969 to 49.1 percent.
The number has been sliding ever since, but only recently has anyone
noticed.
“People are starting to catch on,” he says. “Up until now, there has
been nothing but me banging away at this topic.”
It doesn’t take long to understand why Mortenson’s view isn’t popular.
When some women hear that college administrators are trying to get more
men onto campus, the rhetoric begins to fly. Feminists say women need to
be encouraged to attend college, to graduate, to move into white-collar
jobs. After all the work to gain an equal academic playing field for
women, they ask, do you expect women to go backward?
Hold your fire, says Mortenson. The gender war on campus is over. Women
won.
“The women’s agenda has so dominated, people sort of sneer at you,” he
says. “What are women complaining about? They are about to take over the
world. Which is great, by the way.”
Johnson agrees. Women need not feel threatened.
“It’s not that we are going to kick the women out,” he says. “We just
want more men.”
Don’t hold your breath, say some experts. As long as girls are doing
better in elementary, middle and high school than boys, they will
continue to comprise a larger number of students on college campuses.
“Young women dominate honor societies, are more apt to be valedictorians
and head for the elite colleges,” says Judith Kleinfeld, a professor of
psychology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who is making an
extensive study of high school boys. “Many colleges now have
under-the-table ‘affirmative action’ for boys to keep their numbers up.”
The real concern, says Black, is not that young men don’t have the
opportunity to go to college. Or they can’t make the grades. He worries
that they aren’t interested. For whatever reason, they don’t consider
college “manly.”
“You can be a man and still be interested in writing and literature,”
Black says. “I think there’s some embarrassment to saying that, but I
think we need to say it. It is OK to be a good scholar, to study hard.
That’s what men do.”
It’s not hard to see why a growing number of boys and young men might
think that way. After all, who are their role models?
“If it is not a sports figure, it is a movie action figure,” Black
says. “We need to look around for people to inspire our boys.”
As it is, our boys are turning to athletes and actors for inspiration,
getting it from people like NBA superstar Kobe Bryant.
Who, by the way, did not go to college.
12 February 2006, 12:01 pmCharles Brown:
Hi Charles.
First, and succinctly: I don’t think heterosexuals are politically-socially placed to be able to view the oppression of gay and lesbian folks, any better than men are placed to understand/experience/know the oppression of women, or whites to know the oppression of people of Colour. Your arguments about whether said oppression exists is precisely the same argumentation I hear from heteromen about feminism and women’s oppression, and from white folks about “whether or not†people of Colour are oppressed.
^^^^
CB; I didn’t say lesbians and gays are not discriminated against. I said discrimination against gay men is not male chauvinist, because male chauvinism is oppression of women, and gay men are not women. And that gay men are privileged as men and not excepted from the responsibility of ending their male chauvinism
^^^^^
That you argue in this way demonstrates your privilege to “not know†in this regard.
^^^^^
CB: You seem to have missed what I said.
^^^^
This is not a criticism at all, simply an observation. You, as a heterosexual, CAN ponder “whether or not†lesbian and gay folks are oppressed. I have lived it. You haven’t. Queer folks I know endure abuses that hetero folks don’t endure. Discrimination in housing, work, family life, social life, etc. That’s real. You can call it “not oppression†if you want, but it’s real, and so is the gay-bashing, the hetero privileged to be affectionate in public, the media representing heteros having romantic, sexual relationships as an every day, normal, natural thing, and not portraying gay and lesbian people that way at all.
^^^^
CB: However, I didn’t say gay men are not oppressed. I said they are simultaneously oppressors.
Take Black men. Surely you think they are oppressed, no ? Yet , as men , they are oppressors at the same time. Similarly with gay men, they are both oppressed and oppressors.
^^^^^^
I remember Oprah saying that she was moved to tears when she say the Huxtables on the Cosby Show embracing on a couch, just being loving and kind and warm with one another in a romantic way, and it was THE FIRST TIME she EVER saw that on TV between a Black woman and a Black man. That really impressed upon me the harm of not having one’s life reflected back to one in the media.
^^^^
CB: Now there’s “Will and Grace”.
^^^^
Tell me, Charles, where am I to look on TV for that loveing, kind, warm, romantic moment between two men or two women who are not hetero?
^^^^^
CB: Check out “Will and Grace”.
I gotta say though that the Cosby Show was a pretty minor development in the liberation of Black people.
^^^^^
Even Brokeback Mountain is about two guys who have to “sneak around†to be together. Where in popular media, especially TV, non-cable, can I see that, in commercials, in TV shows, etc?
Gay men are oppressed for participating in the degraded status of the female, for being seen as “effeminate†for not being “man enoughâ€, etc. This is the world of heteropatriarchy. You bring up the term “male chauvinism†which went out about twenty-five years ago, to be honest. I don’t know any other human beings who are feminist who use that term, unless responding to you, and keeping your lingo in it.
^^^^
CB: Everything new is not necessarily better. Male supremacy, male chauvinism are better terms I’d say. “Patriarchy” is pretty old too.
“heteropatriarchy” is an incorrect usage , in my opinion. Heterosexuality is not patriarchal. We don’t want to get rid of heterosexuality. We want to speak of heterosex in a positive way.
^^^^
I’m not kidding.
^^^^^
CB: I’m not kidding either.
^^^^^^^
The terms are patriarchy (and in this discussion heteropatriarchy), male supremacy, sexism, racism, and heterosexism. Please update your lexicon. You language invisibilises my lived reality.
^^^^
CB: Male chauvinism is a good usage. Heterosexism is out right wrong usage; see my previous discussions. Some of the more recent developments are backward movements in theory, so the new terminology is less valid than some of the old.
Women’s liberation is a better term than feminism , too.
I’m disagreeing with you, that’s why I’m not going to adopt your terminology.
^^^^^
So gay males are oppressed for not being “with women†the way heteropatriarchy demands men be with women. And lesbians are oppressed for not being with men the way heteropatriarchy demands women be (available, acccessible) to men.
^^^^^
CB: Love of women ( the opposite of misogyny) is what “demands” that men be with women. It “demands” that men be available and accessible to women.
^^^^^
“Lesbian porn†is heteromen’s revenge: “See, we can watch what y’all do even though you don’t want to do it with a dick.†We’ll show you.
^^^^
CB; Some lesbians who like porn think otherwise, probably.
^^^^
Gay porn tends to want to prove that gay men are “real menâ€. Many internalised homophobic personals ads read “no femmesâ€. This is in keeping with the argument that gay males are hated and discriminated against because what they do with other males is not what patriarchy wants, because patriarchy wants every man to control a woman. That some men don’t might get them an odd look in hetero bars. Like, if you go into a bar and say “I think women should be treated as human beings, not as pieces of meat for men’s consumption†you might be accused of being gay.
Please, Charles, read “Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism†because your knowledge base for this stuff is so “not there†based on you being heterosexual, that it really is incumbant upon you to learn about this, and it’s really not my job to teach it to you.
^^^^
CB: Naw, I don’t do reading assignments. Summarize what you want me to have from it. My knowledge base is pretty good.
As I say, I’m not working class, but that doesn’t prevent me from getting a good knowledge base on workers.
I have the knowledge that many gay men are male chauvinist in their thinking.
^^^^^^^^
It’s my responsibility as a person with light-skin privilege, or “white†privilege, to know what that privilege means, how it expresses itself interpersonally, institutionally, and in identity.
You are demonstrating an alarming (to me) level of ignorance about the reality of gay and lesbian oppression.
^^^^
CB: I’m disagreeing with you some, although you seem not to be listening very well, because I didn’t say lesbians and gays are not oppressed…so, your alarm is based on your hearing something I didn’t say.
Focus in : what I am saying is that nobody here or elsewhere has made the argument as to why oppression of gay men is part of patriarchy. They originated a patriarchy in ancient Greece, and that went along fine with samesex institutions. In fact, logically, men loving men is very compatible with patriarchy and male supremacy. For loving men would be loving superior beings in the mentality of male supremacism.
^^^^^^^
You say in your experience what makes heterosexism different than racism and sexism is that the latter two are less involved in biology. Tell that to any male supremacist or white supremacist and see what you get for an answer.
^^^^^
CB: I’m not sure what you mean. The racists are wrong on that.
^^^^^^
Your heterosexual privilege “allows†you to think that it is any different with sexuality. Dark skin pigmentation exists, as do various genital formations. That’s “natural†too, Charles. But we both know that CRAP takes some “biological†features and makes them into socio-political categories. That’s how CRAP works. The same with sexuality. No meaningful difference there.
^^^^
CB; Yes, dark skin pigmentation is genetically based , but it is not correlated with inferiority of morals, intelligence, “worth”, etc. as infamous racist doctrine has it. Light skin people’s aversion to socializing with people of a dark color is not genetic though. It is socially constructed. Racism is not instinctive.
Sexual inclination does have some biological or instinctive cause, so heterosexuals’ preference for sex with the opposite sex and aversion to sex with the same sex has instinctual or biological basis, in my opinion. This doesn’t entail aversion to socializing with homosexuals, but it does justify not wanting to have sex with the same sex. In other words, heterosexuality is wanting to have sex with the opposite sex and _not_ wanting to have sex with the same sex. It is not wanting to have sex with the opposite sex and _indifference_ to having sex with the same sex. The aversion to having sex with the same sex is not comparable to racists’ aversion to socializing with people of color. This is the difference between racism and homophobia. Gay liberation cannot demand that heterosexuals like gay sex, only that heterosexuals treat homosexuals as social and political equals.
^^^^^^^
You say that sex is what’s hated by the Church, agreeing with me. Then do you have the same trouble with the term “sexism†that you do with heterosexism?
^^^^^^^
CB: Why would that follow ? Sexism is appropriate for forms of male chauvinism that specifically involve unwanted sex such as sexual harassment.
^^^^^^^^
And as for those women who find gay men offensive and misogynist: we have already agreed that some gay men are misogynist and sexist. That’s a no brainer, remember? We have also heard from a woman who feels relieved when with gay men, because she feels safer, less harassed, less objectified, less commodified, less “treated like meatâ€, and seen MORE as a real human being, not just “a gendered thingâ€. So please factor that story into your analysis too, if you want it to reflect the whole truth.
^^^^^
CB: No , lets keep bringing in examples of gay men being male chauvinist. We already have plenty of stories about heterosexual men being male chauvinist.
I think as a gay man you are not positioned to understand your male chauvinist privileges as a gay man :>)
^^^^^^^^
Gotta go. I’ll catch back up with you when you post here a response to those two books I recommended that you read, as you really are not getting even the most basic points about heterosexism,
^^^^^
CB: No, I am disagreeing and saying that _you_ are the one who is missing basic points on why we shouldn’t use the term “heterosexism”.
And I don’t do reading assignments. You can post back here when you have a summary of the points in those books that you want to communicate.
^^^^^^
it seems, and I have other stuff to do than to educate you on that subject, gay male to heteromale, when there are really good books out there that can educate you just fine.
^^^
CB: You’re not educating me. I’m educating you in these exchanges.
^^^^^^^^
Then, and only then, can we discuss this further.
Happy reading:
^^^^
CB; Don’t hold your breath.
^^^
Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism, by Suzane Pharr
URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890759015/qid=1138556753/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-7116052-2097435?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
To educate yourself about the REALITY of homophobia and heterosexism, the oppression of gay males and lesbian females, please read:
Overcoming Homophobia and Heterosexism, by James T. Sears and Walter
L. Williams.
URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231104235/qid=1138556933/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-7116052-2097435?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Julian
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12 February 2006, 5:14 pmCB: See above. You will have to do a book report on these if you want to discuss it with me , otherwise , we ain’t discussin’ em.
Got it ?
Stan:
You are reifying heterosexuality, Charles. You are removing it from time and space, universalizing it, abstracting it, away from its actual practice… which is a socially compulsory division of power between men and women with that actual power residing fundamentally (but not exclusively) in the heterosexual relationship.
Compulsory heterosexuality is neither natural nor socially constructed. It is inextricably both. There is not a single instance anywhere in the real world where you or anyone else can separate “nature” from “nurture.” These are analytical categories, not realities. Compulsory heterosexuality is the hegemonic form of sexuality rooted in and reproductive of male power over women.
It is not merely men having sex with women. Watch any cultural producton, like a relationship film, and see all the conventions that surround and background and idealize and sanctify a particular verison of a male-female “sexual” relationship. there is a h ell of a lot more than copulation going on there, I assure you. There is an idealizaton of male power (in which the woman — like the “happy slave” — is fulfilled).
CH is a system, and in that system is a powerfully reinforced and policed set of “norms,” that is, social expectations of behavior — including attitudes and affective behavior — that are associated with biological males and females. These expectations, in the concrete, are the practice of power. Like all social systems of power, with hegemony on one end (consent of the governed) and violent coercion on the other (where hegemony has failed), any violaton is policed.
CH = male social power over women.
Failure to conform to gender norms threatens male power.
Gay men are “like women,” and therefore violate the norm.
Gay men are policed, even to the point of violence at times, to reinforce norms.
The norms are part of a system of male power over women.
Homophobia is a weapon of male power over women.
A – B – C
Actually existing heterosexuality is normative, and therefore oppressive. That is NOT saying that every instance of male-female intimacy is oppressive.
Pointing out that women pariticpate in their own oppression, or that hegemonic sexuality produces (as all systems of social power do) internalizaton of the system’s ideology is NOT a refutation of the system.
It is a liberal evasion. Liberals love to find exceptions to the rule, and call them refutations.
Most American workers believe in capitalism. Think about it.
Ideology does two things: it makes power appear natural; and it thereby conceals power.
You are still operating from within the hegemonic ideological framework of sexuality… which has compulsory heterosexuality (male-female complimentarity instead of mutuality) at its center.
It’s not male chauvinism. It’s male social power.
12 February 2006, 8:30 pmConsumer:
All of this is a bit over my head. But as a tie-in with sexual aggression and domination, the British video of soldiers beating Iraqi boys apparently had this recorded in the background:
“Oh yes! Oh yes! You’re going to get it. Yes, naughty little boys!”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/international/europe/13abuse.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I’m not sure what this really means in the great big scheme of tings but, well, it’s really fncked up.
13 February 2006, 4:18 amCharles Brown:
You are reifying heterosexuality, Charles. You are removing it from time and space, universalizing it, abstracting it, away from its actual practice… which is a socially compulsory division of power between men and women with that actual power residing fundamentally (but not exclusively) in the heterosexual relationship.
^^^^
CB: Actually, it is a necessary universal in the human species in time. It is a transhistorical category. It is not like capitalism, which must be confined to a particular historical period. See my paper first sent to the list. So, it is not reification in the normal sense that that term is used. It is not unique to just one or a few cultures. All cultures have it.
I don’t say it is universal to every individual in the species so , no, I am not “universalizing it. That is obviously not true. But heterosexual sex must go on in every generation for there to be a next generation. It is a necessary activity.
Yes, male supremacy resides in heterosexual relationships. Agree. With the rise of the male supremacist family , as in Engels’ “model” of the origin of “the”( male supremacist) family, the heterosexual relationship becomes none other than male supremacist. Various forms of male supremacist family have developed through history,including in the U.S. today. So, in some that sense I agree that male dominance and power resides in the heterosexual relationship. Male supremacy also resides in the institutions outside of the family, in private property and the state, from Engels thesis.
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Compulsory heterosexuality is neither natural nor socially constructed.
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I’d say it _is_ naturally compulsory. I think this is a fundamental disagreement I have with what you say here. See my paper. The number one principle argued or asserted is that there is no such thing as a one generation species , (the focus of _natural_ studies is the species). Reproduction is as naturally necessary as production.
I have to disagree with the other part too. Compulsory heterosexuality is also culturally or socially constructed. In this regard, culture tracks or imitates nature, the natural compulsion.
Of course, there was the Shakers, who did not compel hetersexuality. But they died out. Demonstrating the point that heterosexuality is naturally compulsory. If a culture or social construction goes the wrong way on this one, the culture will die out.
^^^^^^^^
It is inextricably both. There is not a single instance anywhere in the real world where you or anyone else can separate “nature†from “nurture.â€
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CB: Well, the Shakers. They nurtured non-heterosexuality, non-compulsory heterosexuality. And nature separated them out. Of course, they may have had a natural inclination to have heterosex which their nurture overrode, so to speak. But in the process they essentially set up a sort of test of the type you say is impossible.
There may have been other groups throughout the 10,000′s of years of humans; but they too would have died out, if they some how made heterosexuality taboo or even making it “optional” is probably risky.
^^^^^^
These are analytical categories, not realities. Compulsory heterosexuality is the hegemonic form of sexuality rooted in and reproductive of male power over women.
^^^^^
CB: No it exists before male supremacy. That’s a key thing in the argument over _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_. Before these origins there was compulsory heterosexuality, but it was not male supremacist. That’s why that point is important in the argument with MacKinnon. Anthropological evidence supports Engels , generally speaking on this, not MacKinnon , as I understand your elucidation of her thesis.
Heterosexuality is not the source or root of male dominance and power. In fact, as I argue, it is the area of potential women’s power, and actually realized women’s power. And the greatest progress in defeating male supremacy is precisely in areas like family law, i.e. heterosexual family law. There has literall been a revolution in family law, whereby essentially there is equality and even affirmative action in favor of women. It is one of the quiet victories in feminism.
To be vulgar about it, women have men by the ______ in heterosex.
There is even a long term reversal of Engels famous statement about the male supremacist form of marriage, monogamous marriage, as the “world historic defeat of the female sex.” Today, it is generally _women_ who are enforcing heterosexual marriage. This is remarkable. This is a point at which we can point to a _change_ from what Engels essays. Engels is not wrong about the period he discusses. It is that things have changed, fundamentally, turned into their opposite.
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It is not merely men having sex with women. Watch any cultural producton, like a relationship film, and see all the conventions that surround and background and idealize and sanctify a particular verison of a male-female “sexual†relationship. there is a h ell of a lot more than copulation going on there, I assure you. There is an idealizaton of male power (in which the woman — like the “happy slave†— is fulfilled).
^^^^^
CB: This is not surprising because heterosexual sex is naturally necessary. It’s almost like showing a lot of people eating or something. Big surprise that eating is shown. No. It’s superstructure reflecting the real deep infrastructure. The necessity of eating is basic infrastructure. Similarly with heterosex.
Don’t let the fact that most actually existing heterosex is not for reproduction. That’s misleading.The necessary heterosex is at the core of the centrality of heterosex in the cultural representations you refer to, movies and the like.
Eat, drink and be merry ! as Imhotep said. This is still a valid cultural suggestion.
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CH is a system, and in that system is a powerfully reinforced and policed set of “norms,†that is, social expectations of behavior — including attitudes and affective behavior — that are associated with biological males and females. These expectations, in the concrete, are the practice of power. Like all social systems of power, with hegemony on one end (consent of the governed) and violent coercion on the other (where hegemony has failed), any violaton is policed.
^^^^
CB: Women are not compelled to have heterosex _only_ by the rules of society. They are compelled to have heterosex by nature, otherwise they will die out too. They are compelled to monogamy by male supremacy, i.e. having sex only with one man, so he can know who his children are. What the system of male dominance and power originally compelled was monogamy.
It was just as much men who originated homosex. Take in Greece. It was precisely at the time of the original institution of male supremacy and dominance, that an institution of male samesex arose famously among the first Greek slavemasters/ruling class, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander and the arch-male supremacist, world conquering, warring super machoites.They invented, not surprisingly,a narcisstic male self-loving institution. Why because they were male supremacists. So, homosex, that it NON-COMPULSORY HETEROSEX is not in contradiction with male supremacy ? This severely contradicts your argument here.
Down through the centuries, there have been many male samesex institutions or subcultures in male supremacist or male dominant or male chauvinist or patriarchial, as you all have it, socities. Helenic Greece is just one of them. There was no contradiction between homonormativity or even homo-elitism in the elite minority ruling classes of many class divided and male supremacist societies, including European societies that are the historical roots of the U.S. today. This factual generalization is devastating to your thesis here.
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CH = male social power over women.
^^^^
No, Heterosex + male homosex = male social power over women.
Male social power over women ==> male homosex.
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Failure to conform to gender norms threatens male power.
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CB: I’d say lesbianism yes. It threatens male power. Gay maleism is compatible and is even an expression of male power in “half” of its expressions.
The only problem with lesbianism is the same problem the Shakers had. It’s a one generation setup, historically. Of course, now with new science there is the plausibility of a “Brave New World”. ( Play Michael Jackson’s _Thriller_ music here. Organ music from Saturday morning scary movies. Frankenstein. He’s alive ! Mary Wollsencroft, etc.)
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Gay men are “like women,†and therefore violate the norm.
^^^^
CB: Yes, I think that’s the superficial way in which gay men and gay male violations of the norm have been thought to be feminist. But that goes on the reificational logic that “woman” is defined as “having sex with a man”. So a man masturbating is a woman at that moment too.
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Gay men are policed, even to the point of violence at times, to reinforce norms.
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CB: Some of them are yes. But some of them are THE police. Like J. Edgar Hoover ( or Alexander the Great Cop).
Here’s another contradiction in your formulation. If heterosexual men were being calculating about “gainging access to women’s bodies” as you all put it, then they would be _promoting_ other men to be homosexuals. Why ? Because it cuts down on the competition “for access to women’s bodies”. Instead of beating gays up to stop being gays, they’d be trying to turn other men into gays, so the women would be left for them.
^^^^
The norms are part of a system of male power over women.
^^^
CB: Well, what is my explanation for why _some_ ( a very tiny, tiny minority) of men act violently toward gay men ? Simple .It’s the Freudianoid idea that they have some questions in their minds about whether they have gay inclinations. The biggest gay bashers are probably experiencing homoerotisis, as many analysts have noted.
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Homophobia is a weapon of male power over women.
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CB: No appropriately enough it is a phobia, a fear that” I might be gay.” The word is well formed in this regard. It is a psychological ,not power issue. In this regard it ( fear of gay men; not lesbians here) is a sort of fear of “not liking women”. Note when we speak of homophobia in men, we usually mean anti-gay men. There is a sort of indifference to lesbians.
Lesbianism _is_ a direct “threat” to male power and to male heterosexual desire. If men were going to be homofearful, that’s the homosexuality that they would be …I don’t want to suggest peopel _should_ fear.I’m just saying by the structural and power logics here…
^^^^
A – B – C
Actually existing heterosexuality is normative, and therefore oppressive. That is NOT saying that every instance of male-female intimacy is oppressive.
^^^^
CB: There is some oppression of women by men in heterosexual relationships, but the institution of heterosexuality is _not_ inherently oppressive. Heterosexuality is not the source of oppresxion in heterosexual relationships. Male supremacy is the source of oppression in heterosexual relationships.
However, I must note that women have fought way back from the original male oppression in heterosexual relationships. There have been giant strides forward in women’s liberation, though they have not been announced with the fanfare of revolutions in productive relations.
Women , through the Battle of the Sexes, are close to saving men from their dumbshit.
Here’s an important empirical question on this: How long have women had longer average lifespans than men ?If this has reversed in recent times ( i.e. womem used to die earlier than men) ,it would be an objective indicator of progress.
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Pointing out that women pariticpate in their own oppression, or that hegemonic sexuality produces (as all systems of social power do) internalizaton of the system’s ideology is NOT a refutation of the system.
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Agree
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It is a liberal evasion. Liberals love to find exceptions to the rule, and call them refutations.
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CB: Yea, I agree liberals are a mess.
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Most American workers believe in capitalism. Think about it.
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CB: I’d say fewer women believe in male supremacism today than workers believe in capitalism. Women’s liberation is making and has made greater advances than working class struggle.
Frankly, my “For Women’s Liberation” has an opportunist aspect to it. I think communists should unite with feminist struggle because women have been succeeding in their struggle. Quietly, patiently, steadily they are winning their liberation. The working class needs to follow the womens’ struggle’s lead. On the other hand, women will be the best communists.
Communists will gain by more fundamentally uniting their struggle with women’s liberation. My paper gives a “theoretical” basis for this. But the idea for me also comes from practice and experience in the women’s liberation and workers’ liberation struggle.
^^^^^
Ideology does two things: it makes power appear natural; and it thereby conceals power.
You are still operating from within the hegemonic ideological framework of sexuality… which has compulsory heterosexuality (male-female complimentarity instead of mutuality) at its center.
It’s not male chauvinism. It’s male social power.
Comment by Stan — 2/12/2006 @ 8:30 pm
^^^^
14 February 2006, 12:06 pmCB: Thanks . Good focus of the issues. I’d say I’m operating from a position of women’s and workers’ liberation, and I have located critical theory for potential heterosexual liberation, liberation from male supremacy and capitalism. And liberation from racism. Liberation from homophobia , even. There is nothing in this theory that justifies fear of homosexuals. For one thing, it affirms the natural necessity of heterosex to perpetuate us in the future generations. Society needs heterosex. Heterosexual have no rational basis to fear that they have to giveup or will “lose” ( ??) their heterosexuality. Homophobia is a psychological disorder, appropriately named a phobia. It is not part of a critical power structure.
Julian Real:
Hi Charles.
We’re making some headway here, and I am grateful.
You did clarify some significant things, and we still have some more to work on, but I see others are entering the conversation too, which is wonderful.
___________
CB: However, I didn’t say gay men are not oppressed. I said they are simultaneously oppressors.
Take Black men. Surely you think they are oppressed, no ? Yet , as men , they are oppressors at the same time. Similarly with gay men, they are both oppressed and oppressors.
___________
JR: Thanks, Charles. That was really useful. U.S. Black men ARE oppressed, not only for being Black, but also possibly due to class oppression in the case of working class and poor people. How Black heterosexual men, specifically, are exploited, objectified, fetishised, reviled, demeaned, and discriminated against, is different than how Black women (lesbian and heterosexual) are oppressed, how Black gay men, white gay men, and gay men of other ethnicities are oppressed. What I am trying to say is, through my understandings and experiences of the real world, and the work of bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins, among other social-political theorists, I see Black heterosexual men being oppressed in very specific ways, particular ways, that are intricately linked to with very egregious and dangerous white heteromale projections onto Black heterosexual men, which, as you well know, has led to many gruesome fatalities of Black hetero men at the hands of white hetero men.
Gay men are oppressed for not being heterosexual and “seen as manly” in heteropatriarchy, and are, in varying ways, to varying degrees, individually and collectively oppressive to women, and differently to heterosexual woman than to lesbian women.
A book you might like (I’m not recommending it, as I hear you well on the “reading list” matter–I feel the same way you do–”just summarise for me!”) is called Unpacking Queer Politics, by Sheila Jeffreys, a white lesbian British feminist, who untangles just how male supremacist queer politics currently are, to the detriment of all women. (She also notes this was NOT the case in the 1970s when movements for Gay Liberation and Women’s Liberation had a shared (critical) analysis of hetero/sexist patriarchy. I agree with her thesis, her analysis, her observations, almost entirely. I’m not thrilled with the degree to which race and class don’t factor into her thinking, but that’s the way it goes, too often, with white people’s theorising.
So I think WE AGREE about that! Hurray. Not that we must agree, but given the seeming past disagreements, I’m happy to find some points of agreement. as strong coalitions are built on those points of agreement, while allowing for significant points of disagreement.
___________
CB: Now there’s “Will and Graceâ€.
JR: Will and Grace is a problem in so many regards: it is largely anti-lesbian, racist, and classist, as well as NOT showing gay men in affectionate relationships. It reinforces most white sexist, white classist, white racist attitudes and behaviours. Will and Grace, in practically no ways, does what I am suggested the media COULD do to promote gayness as real, natural, and normal, and by normal I don’t simply mean “assimilated”. Cosby’s Huxtable family could break some ground, precisely because of the degree to which they were assimilated: “professional” and upper middle class–part of privileged white society.
I find Will and Grace a terrible example. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is even more problematic, as it portrays (mostly white) gay men as being “for” or in service to (primarily white) hetero men. (Right.)
The more I think about it, the more I find parallels between white gay men and Black heterosexual men, in terms of how white heteromale supremacist society has historically treated each group: as objects of fear, as being sexually “out of control” and/or dangerous, as being objectified and seen as being “sex-crazed” almost entirely, as being projected onto–receiving those unowned pieces of white heteromen’s sexuality. But Collins does make most, if not all, of these points.
____________
JR: Tell me, Charles, where am I to look on TV for that loving, kind, warm, romantic moment between two men or two women who are not hetero?
CB: Check out “Will and Graceâ€.
JR: What episodes of that show display that? I haven’t seen any. Mostly it plays up gay men as a variation on the standard media stereotypes of heterosexual women, as catty, self-absorbed, dispossessed, deeply lonely, and fighting over men.
____________
CB: I gotta say though that the Cosby Show was a pretty minor development in the liberation of Black people.
JR: I agree, Charles. I agree. I think it is politically interesting, and disturbing, how Bill Cosby, corporate connected as he is, and Oprah too, can only manage to put forth “interpersonal” or “community” based analyses of racism, rather than structural and institutional ones that link so much to capitalist pariarchy.
____________
CB: Everything new is not necessarily better. Male supremacy, male chauvinism are better terms I’d say. “Patriarchy†is pretty old too.
Good point. I am intrigued with Stan’s term (if it is “his”): andrarchy. That makes more sense to me, I’m just not sure it will catch on. But I don’t find “male chauvinism” to be useful or applicable to today’s discussions and activism addressing sexism and male supremacy. If a man is sexist, why not call him sexist? “Chauvinistic” is like some old sub-category of that, and it leaves out the institutional and identity elements, which sexism keeps in place. Chauvinism, as I understand the old use of the term–which I was around for, btw ; ) –deals mostly with interpersonal behaviour and attitudes, which is only one dimension, a liberally popular one, of sexism’s harm.
____________
CB: “heteropatriarchy†is an incorrect usage , in my opinion. Heterosexuality is not patriarchal. We don’t want to get rid of heterosexuality. We want to speak of heterosex in a positive way.
I find it a very useful term, and in my experience, and those of so many women I know–dare I say all women I know: heterosexuality and patriarchy are about as intricately linked as any two social phenomena. Intricately, intimately, ideologically, and institutionally linked. Stan’s book, Sex and War, gets at this very well.
_____________
JR: I’m not kidding.
^^^^^
CB: I’m not kidding either.
_____________
I was thinking the other day that I admire your tenacity, your self-assuredness, and your maverick style: your unwillingness to go along with theory because it is popular, at least in some small radical circles.
_____________
CB: Male chauvinism is a good usage.
See above for why I have problems with it.
_____________
CB: Heterosexism is out right wrong usage; see my previous discussions. Some of the more recent developments are backward movements in theory, so the new terminology is less valid than some of the old.
I don’t agree, at all. I think it is useful in exactly the ways Collins uses it, for articulating a system of power that is largely ignored as such, or is reduced to “homophobia”, and therefore is seen only as a form of bigotry, not a system of powerful oppression and social control. Getting back to something earlier: I can’t believe you find “racism” the same thing as “race hate”. What about the institutional power dimension, and the identity dimension of racism?
_____________
CB: Women’s liberation is a better term than feminism , too.
You, me, and most feminists I know agree with that!! : )
_____________
CB: I’m disagreeing with you, that’s why I’m not going to adopt your terminology.
As noted earlier in this post, I am glad that you maintain your stance, your views, as long as you are also open to others, which is to say, to honest discussion about these matters. (I would say to some degrees, to many degrees, you have been open, btw. And I appreciate that.) Your views should make sense to you, intellectually, intuitively, and experientially. I would wager to say most people’s most deeply held theories do just that.
I’ll respond to more at another time.
Peace.
14 February 2006, 5:05 pmDoyle Saylor:
Hi Charles,
I know CB from way back. Enjoying the conversation and finding CB as usual bringing up lots to think about and a lot I agree with.
CB uses the term homophobia meaning fear of gay or he doesn’t think but I think also fear of lesbian persons. I think CB knows I don’t like the ‘phobia’ part of this term. It’s not a phobia, and that emotion structure (a cognitive disability) is not pointed at gay people. A phobia is a disability. The word phobia implies that being anti-gay is ‘just’ phobia, or extreme fixed fear like a compulsion.
The alternate view of the emotion structure of bigotry against homosexual practice and same sex practioners is articulated by Martha Nussbaum at the U. of Chicago as buttressed by these feelings, shame and disgust, which Nussbaum calls ‘asocial’ emotions. Fear is a social emotion, and we don’t understand by using phobia what is ‘rigid’ about hatred of homosexual behavior.
On the other hand I have more disagreements with Julian. For example,
Julian writes,
These are analytical categories, not realities. Compulsory heterosexuality is the hegemonic form of sexuality rooted in and reproductive of male power over women.
Doyle,
I agree with CB, heterosexuality is not compulsory, nor is it hegemonic the right way to describe patriarchy. patriarchy goes back through a lot of different sorts of economically defined era’s. I reserve hegeomony or profound influence for describing the functions of nation states. What I think you are reaching for conceptually is roughly similar to how language divides people which is not hegemony like a nation does, but work divisions of community ties that goes back a long ways before hegemony meant anything.
A lot of animals practice homosexual relationships. Can we call their species patriarchal? Or heterosexists? We see in animals a fixed pattern they themselves can little alter, but in humans we can see great variability in cultures and homosexual as well as heterosexual practices. We can to some degree bring to sexuality a culture structure or as CB would say ‘infrastructure’, which a given economic system produces that allows us to address a ‘patriarchy’ of inequality between sexes. Gender some think are performances that are cultural, so that too needs to be thrown into the hopper. But I think gender and language issues overlap, and point at ‘recognition’ as the source cognitive work that founds sexism.
This is enough. I am to some degree a thinker about homosexual rights being bi-sexual myself. But I think I am closer to CB in most ways.
15 February 2006, 6:13 pmthanks,
Doyle Saylor
Charles Brown:
* Hi Charles.
We’re making some headway here, and I am grateful.
You did clarify some significant things, and we still have some more to work on, but I see others are entering the conversation too, which is wonderful.
^^^^
CB: No progress without struggle
___________
CB: However, I didn’t say gay men are not oppressed. I said they are simultaneously oppressors.
Take Black men. Surely you think they are oppressed, no ? Yet , as men , they are oppressors at the same time. Similarly with gay men, they are both oppressed and oppressors.
___________
JR: Thanks, Charles. That was really useful. U.S. Black men ARE oppressed, not only for being Black, but also possibly due to class oppression in the case of working class and poor people. How Black heterosexual men, specifically, are exploited, objectified, fetishised, reviled, demeaned, and discriminated against, is different than how Black women (lesbian and heterosexual) are oppressed, how Black gay men, white gay men, and gay men of other ethnicities are oppressed.
^^^^^^^^
CB: Some difference , some similarity.
Also, white working class men are exploited.
^^^^
What I am trying to say is, through my understandings and experiences of the real world, and the work of bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins, among other social-political theorists, I see Black heterosexual men being oppressed in very specific ways, particular ways, that are intricately linked to with very egregious and dangerous white heteromale projections onto Black heterosexual men, which, as you well know, has led to many gruesome fatalities of Black hetero men at the hands of white hetero men.
^^^^^
CB: Yes, although , the main forms of oppression are not those “lynchings for looking at a white woman” anymore. The myth of the Black man as rapist and murder issue is lessened. The O.J. Simpson maxiseries was an extraordinary phenomenon in the ruling class through its Hollywood branch blatantly trying to inscribe the myth Black man as rapist and murderer of white women in the minds of new generations of white people, and America. I am not speaking on whether OJ did it or not. Just the fact that it got more coverage than some wars – it became a national tv maxiseries – was extraordinarily telling. It only warranted a minor news story, like Robert Blake killing his wife. Why would it be made the national soap opera of the century , except to blast the myth back into people’s minds.
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Gay men are oppressed for not being heterosexual and “seen as manly†in heteropatriarchy, and are, in varying ways, to varying degrees, individually and collectively oppressive to women, and differently to heterosexual woman than to lesbian women.
^^^^^
CB: No doubt gay men are oppressed for this reason, but I think this is a sort of surface reason covering up for other factors. Why would the ruling class care whether some men are gay ? There have been other times in history when there wasn’t any special homophobia. I’m thinking what we experience in the U.S. today has more with the white power structure not wanting _white_ men to be gay, because the white birth rates are problematic. This is the same real reason underlying anti-abortion. The white power structure wants white people to reproduce, to keep the white population up. You know Europe’s population is not growing. So, it is not directly the issue of “manliness”, but the specific issue of fathering white children. The power structure might even promote gayness in the Black community. This came up a sort of reverse in abortion back 30 years ago. While the women’s movement fought for abortion rights, in the Black community there was an opposite concern that promoting abortions among Black women was a genocidal thrust from the white power structure.
^^^^^^^^
A book you might like (I’m not recommending it, as I hear you well on the “reading list†matter–I feel the same way you do–â€just summarise for me!â€) is called Unpacking Queer Politics, by Sheila Jeffreys, a white lesbian British feminist, who untangles just how male supremacist queer politics currently are, to the detriment of all women. (She also notes this was NOT the case in the 1970s when movements for Gay Liberation and Women’s Liberation had a shared (critical) analysis of hetero/sexist patriarchy. I agree with her thesis, her analysis, her observations, almost entirely. I’m not thrilled with the degree to which race and class don’t factor into her thinking, but that’s the way it goes, too often, with white people’s theorising.
^^^^^
CB: Yes, sounds like some honest probing.
^^^^^
So I think WE AGREE about that! Hurray. Not that we must agree, but given the seeming past disagreements, I’m happy to find some points of agreement. as strong coalitions are built on those points of agreement, while allowing for significant points of disagreement.
^^^^^^
CB: yes, it’s always good to reach agreements after big disagreements. Reconciliation is grand.
___________
CB: Now there’s “Will and Graceâ€.
JR: Will and Grace is a problem in so many regards: it is largely anti-lesbian, racist, and classist, as well as NOT showing gay men in affectionate relationships.
^^^^
CB: I’m may not have analyzed it as closely as you, but I have seen some affection between and among the gay men. Just the other day, Will met a Black gay guy with a sort of love at first sight theme.
^^^^^^
It reinforces most white sexist, white classist, white racist attitudes and behaviours. Will and Grace, in practically no ways, does what I am suggested the media COULD do to promote gayness as real, natural, and normal, and by normal I don’t simply mean “assimilatedâ€. Cosby’s Huxtable family could break some ground, precisely because of the degree to which they were assimilated: “professional†and upper middle class–part of privileged white society.
I find Will and Grace a terrible example. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is even more problematic, as it portrays (mostly white) gay men as being “for†or in service to (primarily white) hetero men. (Right.)
^^^
CB: Aren’t they helping the het men to “learn” women more so they can get dates with the women ? That’s what the title sounds like.
^^^^^^
The more I think about it, the more I find parallels between white gay men and Black heterosexual men, in terms of how white heteromale supremacist society has historically treated each group: as objects of fear, as being sexually “out of control†and/or dangerous, as being objectified and seen as being “sex-crazed†almost entirely, as being projected onto–receiving those unowned pieces of white heteromen’s sexuality. But Collins does make most, if not all, of these points.
^^^^^^^
CB: I’m not sure of your “historically” part. I believe homophobia has a somewhat more recent origin than racism and slavery. I don’t think there was gaybashing or anti-gay men violence in the 1800′s.
Foucault has a famous principle that the category homosexual didn’t exist until the late 1800′s
____________
JR: Tell me, Charles, where am I to look on TV for that loving, kind, warm, romantic moment between two men or two women who are not hetero?
CB: Check out “Will and Graceâ€.
JR: What episodes of that show display that? I haven’t seen any. Mostly it plays up gay men as a variation on the standard media stereotypes of heterosexual women, as catty, self-absorbed, dispossessed, deeply lonely, and fighting over men.
CB: As I say, I just saw an episode where Will meets a Black gay guy, and I believe they fell “in love”, or were “struck” with each other, at first meeting. Now I may have misunderstood the story line, because I’m not a situation comedy type a guy. I didn’t watch that many episodes of the Cosby show. But I _believe_ that is what was portrayed in an episode that I watched.
However, I am not really arguing with you. I would not be surprised if the pattern you mention is not in fact there.
However II, I really don’t think Hollywood is behind the curve on gayness. Just the fact that say Rock Hudson, _the_ leading heterosexual star was in fact gay sends out a pretty big message to lots of people as far as models for gay men to follow from in the limelight. Then in general, the very significant participation in theatre and the arts, including dominance in areas like dance, of gay men provides enormous role model opportunities for gay men.
____________
CB: I gotta say though that the Cosby Show was a pretty minor development in the liberation of Black people.
JR: I agree, Charles. I agree. I think it is politically interesting, and disturbing, how Bill Cosby, corporate connected as he is, and Oprah too, can only manage to put forth “interpersonal†or “community†based analyses of racism, rather than structural and institutional ones that link so much to capitalist pariarchy.
____________
CB: Everything new is not necessarily better. Male supremacy, male chauvinism are better terms I’d say. “Patriarchy†is pretty old too.
Good point. I am intrigued with Stan’s term (if it is “hisâ€): andrarchy. That makes more sense to me, I’m just not sure it will catch on. But I don’t find “male chauvinism†to be useful or applicable to today’s discussions and activism addressing sexism and male supremacy. If a man is sexist, why not call him sexist?
“Chauvinistic†is like some old sub-category of that, and it leaves out the institutional and identity elements, which sexism keeps in place. Chauvinism, as I understand the old use of the term–which I was around for, btw ; ) –deals mostly with interpersonal behaviour and attitudes, which is only one dimension, a liberally popular one, of sexism’s harm.
^^^^
CB; Because a lot of male chauvinism doesn’t have anything to do with sex. It’s genderism , not sexism. So, in my opinion chauvinism is the more general category, and sexism is a subcategory of chauvinism.
^^^^^^
____________
CB: “heteropatriarchy†is an incorrect usage , in my opinion. Heterosexuality is not patriarchal. We don’t want to get rid of heterosexuality. We want to speak of heterosex in a positive way.
I find it a very useful term, and in my experience, and those of so many women I know–dare I say all women I know: heterosexuality and patriarchy are about as intricately linked as any two social phenomena. Intricately, intimately, ideologically, and institutionally linked. Stan’s book, Sex and War, gets at this very well.
^^^^^^
CB: My experience causes me to conclude the opposite way that you do. It is not in their hetero_sexual_ relationships in which they are most oppressed by men. It is in their heterosexual relationships that women have the most equality of power exactly because sex is important to the men, and you can’t really have sex, or good sex, with someone who is not happy with you. So, women have sex as a basis for extracting concessions from the man who is having sex with them.
So, my opinion is sharply the opposite with yours and Stan’s on this issue. I say the main areas of male chauvinism are in other areas of women’s lives than sex. I am very much in opposition to the whole placement of the sexual relationship at the center of male dominance. I think it is the weakest area of male dominance. It’s where women have men by the you know whats. Thus, it is the area where women’s lib should focus , as I suggest, sexual healing, Marvin Gaye, hey, hey.
Women have much struggle in their heterosexual relations; power struggles play a major role in heterosexual relations. However, women have much more _equal_ “weapons” in personal relationships with men than in other relationships with men, because withdrawal of affection and liking and loving is a powerful weapon in personal relationships, and women have thet ability to withold these fairly readily.
So, women complain a lot about their struggles in the Battle of the Sexes, but women have more victories in the direct Battle of the Sexes than in other areas of life.
_____________
JR: I’m not kidding.
^^^^^
CB: I’m not kidding either.
_____________
I was thinking the other day that I admire your tenacity, your self-assuredness, and your maverick style: your unwillingness to go along with theory because it is popular, at least in some small radical circles.
^^^^
CB: Why thank you, comrade.
_____________
CB: Male chauvinism is a good usage.
See above for why I have problems with it.
CB: My discussion in reply is above
_____________
CB: Heterosexism is out right wrong usage; see my previous discussions. Some of the more recent developments are backward movements in theory, so the new terminology is less valid than some of the old.
I don’t agree, at all. I think it is useful in exactly the ways Collins uses it, for articulating a system of power that is largely ignored as such, or is reduced to “homophobiaâ€, and therefore is seen only as a form of bigotry, not a system of powerful oppression and social control. Getting back to something earlier: I can’t believe you find “racism†the same thing as “race hateâ€. What about the institutional power dimension, and the identity dimension of racism?
^^^^^^
CB: Well, I’m not agreeing that homophobia is a system of oppression on the scale and quality that racism is. Racism is a central organizing principle of capitalism in the U.S. and really worldwide. Homophobia is not. The ruling class can go both ways on homosexuality. For example, the prison system creates homosexual relationships. The ruling class doesn’t care about this, especially because of the over percentage of Black prisoners. As I say, I think the ruling class’ main issue on homosexuality has to do with population control. Where it wants the population to grow , it will foment homophobia. Where it wants the population to drop , it will foment homosexuality. It has a stricter rule on promoting racism, although there have been some big corps supporting affirmative action, and something is going on with Clarence Thomas , Colin Powell and Condelezza Rice being promoted so high. The Civil Rights Movement was aided by the U.S. need to have democracy in its ideological battles with the Soviet Union.
_____________
CB: Women’s liberation is a better term than feminism , too.
You, me, and most feminists I know agree with that!! : )
_____________
CB: I’m disagreeing with you, that’s why I’m not going to adopt your terminology.
As noted earlier in this post, I am glad that you maintain your stance, your views, as long as you are also open to others, which is to say, to honest discussion about these matters. (I would say to some degrees, to many degrees, you have been open, btw. And I appreciate that.) Your views should make sense to you, intellectually, intuitively, and experientially. I would wager to say most people’s most deeply held theories do just that.
I’ll respond to more at another time.
Peace.
All power to the People
15 February 2006, 6:37 pmJulian Real:
Hi Charles.
I can hardly believe you brought up the matter or men in college, or men in jail.
First, the “men in college” crisis is in part a media produced straw man to allow male supremacists and pro-patriarchs to get all upset about how unfair things are for men, not women, in a society where women are not likely to get though life without being sexually assaulted or harassed, for being women. What men and women learn in those academies is largely about men and what men have done in the world, usually white economically privileged men, as you know. Those women filling the classrooms are not learning how to dismantle patriarchy, they are learning how to find their way more deeply into it, sometimes with a paycheck.
On another note, I have seen such racist stuff on TV recently, specifically in reference to Detroit: like how Torino is being called “The Italian Detroit” due to the car manufacturing history there, which is suffering there too, but not in ways that I hear about in Detroit. It’s the associations I see being made, and the distinctions, that come across as racist to me. I will never disagree with you about racism being a fundamental and transnational, transhistorical form of oppression and brutal atrocity. No doubt. Political systems of race must go, along with everything that maintains them. I wish more activists focused on ending race/racism.
While still discussing TV, I just made it through another “heterosexual romance celebration day” aka, Valentine’s Day. Tons of coverage of (allegedly) heterosexual celebs in love, commercials with heteros in love, or acting as though they are, etc. Not one mention the whole day, in any popular media, of any possibility of the existence of non-heterosexual love and relationships–lesbian and gay people were completely invisibilised. Not that that day is all that different from any other, which brings me to a point you made, suggesting Will & Grace as an example of how unheterosexist Amerikkka is. (We must note as well, how the media invisibilised interpersonal violence against women, and how capitalist patriarchy manipulates people by creating holidays to celebrate an historically fairly recent and culturally specific notion called “heterosexual love”. “Heterosexuality” like “whiteness” llke “manhood” are ideas, not natural phenomena. They are constructed with force, and are maintained through brutality, among other methods.
But back to W & G: I would argue that show plays into heteronormative and other stereotypes to such a degree that the characters, perhaps all of them on that show, including of the three women characters, are sexist, classist, racist pseudo-people, to a degree that was not true of the characters on the Cosby Show to be stereotypes or “clowns” for a mass white heterosexual audience. The Cosby Show succeeded in presenting portraits of people the audience saw as real, as particular, as individuals who each had a humanity that did not slide dangerously into buffoonery and stereotypes. We cannot say the same about Will & Grace, re: paralleling its portrait of gay men.
And, btw, how many Black lesbians are there on “non-reality” TV? Can you name one character on any show?
I’ve been seeing the very white “Ross the Intern” on Jay Leno of late, and am noticing how the program “uses” him as their clown, their effeminate boy-clown–nervously tolerated to a mild degree because “we” can all laugh at him, more than with him.
My question is: do you really think homosexuality has any significant, reality-based portraiture on television? If so, where? Would you not agree that gay and lesbian people are, compared to heterosexuals, generally invisibilised on TV? (Ellen Degeneres can have a successful talk show now, but only if her sexual orientation is “invisible”. Rosie O’Donnell could have a successful talk show before Ellen’s, as long as she pretended to be in love with Tom Cruise. Rosie, as you may know, is and was also a lesbian.) Does all of this seem like anything resembling “progress” to you?
I am not going to discuss the “which is the more significant form of oppression” matter. Needless to say, for Black lesbian women and other gay people of Colour, this is a foolish discussion, as it is for gay poor white men. Heterosexuals have the privilege to ignore or minimize–or deny the existence of–heterosexism because its harmful consequences aren’t suffered by heterosexuals, generally and because privilege generally means one doesn’t notice the harm, as harm, which is systematically experienced by the oppressed group. Everything you say about gay folks, can be said about Black folks, by ignorant white Amerikkkans. “Those Blacks have more advantages than white people these days!” “Women have it better than men, now that we are in a post-feminist era.” Bullshit.
As Andrea Dworkin noted, it is because she was Jewish, not a woman, that she would have been slaughtered in Nazi Germany. Different factors play out in different ways in different moments in history. A working class white relative of mine, in broad daylight, while walking down the main street of town, at around 4pm, was jumped by a truckload of heterosexual thugs and was beaten severely, for being gay (the abusers used plenty of anti-gay terminology during the beating, so their motivation wasn’t murky). In that period of his life, what made him more vulnerable to lethal harm: his class or his sexuality?
CB: It is not in their hetero_sexual_ relationships in which they are most oppressed by men.
JR: How can we say where the locus of oppression is for “women generally”. For some women, they have relatively safe husbands or boyfriends, and are being harassed and demeaned at work and on the street, as women. For others, their workplace is their escape from misogynist violence at home. For all, the idea of needing a man is promoted by patriarchy as the answer to every woman’s prayers. That is pure heterosexism. I used to wear a t-shirt which read: “A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle”. I stand by that.
CB: It is in their heterosexual relationships that women have the most equality of power exactly because sex is important to the men, and you can’t really have sex, or good sex, with someone who is not happy with you.
JR: Charles, that’s preposterous. Most women I know who sleep with men have miserable stories to tell about doing so. Some also have some good stories to tell. But this “power” you say women have is, based on all the information I have available to sociologists and real non-academic folks, reveals this as a misogynistic illusion created by male supremacists to justify their interpersonal harm and mistreatment of women, and their legitimisation of their use of women as prostitutes.
Women and men can and do manipulate each other, and men usually blame women for men’s sexually abusive behaviour towards women. “She provoked me” is a common excuse for why he crushed her cheekbone into her eye socket, sometimes leaving her for dead and being utterly perplexed when the corpse doesn’t die, and instead seeks justice, which is not easy to come by, in courts of law. Male harmers of women get outrageously low sentences, or are mandated to therapy groups, while those who do as much damage to other men’s non-human property get much stiffer sentences.
CB: So, women have sex as a basis for extracting concessions from the man who is having sex with them.
So, my opinion is sharply the opposite with yours and Stan’s on this issue. I say the main areas of male chauvinism are in other areas of women’s lives than sex.
JR: Evidence and women’s stories do not bear this out: their stories tell of every area of society being permeated by male supremacy, with no institutionalised oases.
CB: I am very much in opposition to the whole placement of the sexual relationship at the center of male dominance. I think it is the weakest area of male dominance. It’s where women have men by the you know whats.
JR: That’s a pretty misogynist statement, Charles. And, just to be clear, “having someone by the gonads” is not part of any feminist agenda or campaign I’ve ever heard of. As Dworkin notes, it is not a feminist goal to have women forcibly shove something up the ass of a man every three minutes in this country.
CB: Thus, it is the area where women’s lib should focus , as I suggest, sexual healing, Marvin Gaye, hey, hey.
JR: I’m glad you don’t head up any feminist organisations! And, with that “strategy” which Elaina has elsewhere discussed as more than problematic, I doubt any feminist organisation would have you as a member.
CB: Women have much struggle in their heterosexual relations; power struggles play a major role in heterosexual relations. However, women have much more _equal_ “weapons†in personal relationships with men than in other relationships with men, because withdrawal of affection and liking and loving is a powerful weapon in personal relationships, and women have thet ability to withold these fairly readily.
JR: All the feminists I know seek a world where weapons aren’t needed, interpersonally.
CB: So, women complain a lot about their struggles in the Battle of the Sexes, but women have more victories in the direct Battle of the Sexes than in other areas of life.
JR: You’re beginning to sound a lot like the men’s rights misogynists at Angry Harry. See: http://www.angryharry.com/
Your latest arguments and points are in not feminist. I think Yolanda and Elaina’s responses to you in other threads here are proving to be more and more correct. Calling yourself a feminist doesn’t make you one. The level of commitment to radical feminist goals and campaigns does, in part. So does how respectfully you engage with women in any venue.
Your arguments presented here, and your responses to feminist women here portray you as an anti-feminist.
Later.
17 February 2006, 5:40 pmJulian Real:
Oh, yeah–what happens to men in jail is called “rape” not “homosexuality”. Just an FYI.
17 February 2006, 5:41 pmRobert D. Reed:
Ah, the jot-and-tittle narcissism of “post-modern” textual “analysis.”
A place for everyone, and everyone in their place…including the Critic, self-cast in the role of God, aka the Ultimate Arbiter of Social Theory.
Deal me out.
19 February 2006, 2:46 amDoyle Saylor:
JR writes to CB,
Your arguments presented here, and your responses to feminist women here portray you as an anti-feminist.
Doyle,
I don’t think CB is anti-feminist, he’s trying to see things through class. Trying to understand how these things work in a class based system.
JR writes to CB,
Calling yourself a feminist doesn’t make you one. The level of commitment to radical feminist goals and campaigns does, in part. So does how respectfully you engage with women in any venue.
Doyle,
I think it right to point out here, that blogs are not a cooperative medium. They are set up to reflect a conversation between people not to come to agreement. CB asks tough questions and is not afraid of being controversial in order to understand whom he is talking to.
JR writes to CB,
I will never disagree with you about racism being a fundamental and transnational, transhistorical form of oppression and brutal atrocity.
Doyle,
I can’t speak for CB, but racism is not transhistorical in my view. It’s a product of capitalism and based in the nation state that subjugates the rest of the globe. Feudal societies don’t have the means to propagate racism in the sense say Nazi Germany did toward Judaism. Anti-semitism existed since the 4th century as a part of Christianity, but the racist part waited for Spain’s inquisition and the subsequent reifications of Jews.
I want to expand here, patriarchy, is not transhistorical. For example, if patriarchy is beyond ‘history’ at what point does human social life begin patriarchy? Before language or culture, or after? If before do you include Bonobos?
20 February 2006, 7:44 pmthanks,
Doyle
Charles Brown:
1. Hi Charles.
I can hardly believe you brought up the matter or men in college, or men in jail.
First, the “men in college†crisis is in part a media produced straw man to allow male supremacists and pro-patriarchs to get all upset about how unfair things are for men, not women, in a society where women are not likely to get though life without being sexually assaulted or harassed, for being women.
^^^^^^
CB: I didn’t say anything about men in crisis. So, the above is not what I am talking about. I’m talking about a big advance in the women’s movement , wherein we have won big gains for women in getting into college and grad schools. That’s good. Of course, the male supremacists will try to use it just like the white supremacists try to use gains in the struggle against racism to say that there is reverse discrimination. That doesn’t mean that we don’t take account of and announce our victories in either case.
^^^^^^
What men and women learn in those academies is largely about men and what men have done in the world, usually white economically privileged men, as you know. Those women filling the classrooms are not learning how to dismantle patriarchy, they are learning how to find their way more deeply into it, sometimes with a paycheck.
^^^^
CB: Not only are they learning to dismantle patriarchy , but by the very fact of their being there they are in the act of dismantling patriarchy. What exactly do you think the dismantling of patriarchy will look like except things like equal and proportional numbers of women in higher education and the like. Do you even know what the goals of the women’s movement are ? How can you help in the women’s movement if you don’t know its goals ?
^^^^^^
On another note, I have seen such racist stuff on TV recently, specifically in reference to Detroit: like how Torino is being called “The Italian Detroit†due to the car manufacturing history there, which is suffering there too, but not in ways that I hear about in Detroit. It’s the associations I see being made, and the distinctions, that come across as racist to me. I will never disagree with you about racism being a fundamental and transnational, transhistorical form of oppression and brutal atrocity. No doubt. Political systems of race must go, along with everything that maintains them. I wish more activists focused on ending race/racism.
^^^^^
CB: Yep
^^^^^
While still discussing TV, I just made it through another “heterosexual romance celebration day†aka, Valentine’s Day. Tons of coverage of (allegedly) heterosexual celebs in love, commercials with heteros in love, or acting as though they are, etc. Not one mention the whole day, in any popular media, of any possibility of the existence of non-heterosexual love and relationships–lesbian and gay people were completely invisibilised.
^^^^^
CB: Yea,the more I think of it clearly this modern homophobia thing is a message from the white supremacist sections of the ruling class to white people, because the white power structure is concerned about the falling birth rate of whites relative to darker peoples in and outside of the U.S.
Note the association of Valentine’s day with fertility rites in the wikipedia discussion.
From wikidpedia:
St. Valentine’s Day falls on February 14, and is the traditional day on which lovers let each other know about their love, by sending Valentine’s cards, which are often anonymous. The history of Valentine’s day can be traced back to a Catholic Church feast day, in honor of Saint Valentine. The day’s associations with romantic love arrived after the High Middle Ages, during which the concept of courtly love, which had a large impact on the modern Western conception of love, was formulated.
The day is now most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of “valentines”. Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, the practice of hand writing notes has largely given way to the exchange of mass-produced greeting cards. The Greeting Card Association estimates that, world-wide, approximately one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association also estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.
Contents
* 1 History
* 1.1 February fertility festivals
* 1.2 Valentine
* 1.3 Medieval era
* 1.4 Valentine’s Day in North America
* 2 Valentine’s Day in other cultures
* 3 External links
[edit]
History
[edit]
February fertility festivals
The association of the middle of February with love and fertility dates to ancient times. In the calendar of Ancient Athens, the period between mid January and mid February was the month of Gamelion, which was dedicated to the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera.
In Ancient Rome, the day of February 15 was Lupercalia, the festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility, who was represented by two half-naked young men, dressed in goat skins. As part of the purification ritual, the priests of Lupercus would sacrifice goats to the god, and after drinking wine, they chose two young men to run through the streets of Rome holding pieces of the goat skin above their heads, striking anyone they met with the goat hide. Young women especially would come forth voluntarily for the occasion, in the belief that being so touched would render them fruitful and bring easy childbirth.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), at least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs and all quite obscure, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of February 14:
* a priest in Rome who suffered martyrdom in the second half of the 3rd century and was buried on the Via Flaminia.
* a bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) also suffered martyrdom in the second half of the 3rd century and was also buried on the Via Flaminia, but in a different location than the priest.
* a martyr in North Africa, about whom little else is known.
The connection between St. Valentine and romantic love is not mentioned in any early histories and is regarded by secular historians as purely a matter of legend (see below). The feast of St. Valentine was first declared to be on February 14 by Pope Gelasius I in 496. There is a widespread legend that he created the day to counter the practice held on Lupercalia of young men and women pairing off as lovers by drawing their names out of an urn, but this practice is not attested in any sources from that era.
In the 19th century, relics of St. Valentine were donated by Pope Gregory XVI to the Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland, which has become a popular place of pilgrimage on February 14.
In 1969, as part of a larger effort to pare down the number of saint days of purely legendary origin, the Church removed St. Valentine’s Day as an official holiday from its calendar.
[edit]
Valentine
The influential Gnostic teacher Valentinius was a candidate for Bishop of Rome in 143. In his teachings, the marriage bed assumed a central place in his version of Christian love, an emphasis sharply in contrast with the asceticism of mainstream Christianity. Stephan A. Hoeller assesses Valentinius on the subject: “In addition to baptism, anointing, eucharist, the initiation of priests and the rites of the dying, the Valentinian Gnosis mentions prominently two great and mysterious sacraments called ‘redemption’ (apolytrosis) and ‘bridal chamber’ respectively.” [1] .
[edit]
Medieval era
Swedish calendar showing St Valentine’s Day 14 February 1712
Enlarge
Swedish calendar showing St Valentine’s Day 14 February 1712
The first recorded association of St. Valentine’s Day with romantic love was in the 14th century in England and France, where February 14 was traditionally the day on which birds paired off to mate. This belief is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules (1381). It was common during that era for lovers to exchange notes on this day and to call each other their “Valentines”. A 14th century valentine is said to be in the collection of the British Library. It is probable that many of the legends about St. Valentine were invented during this period. Among the legends are ones that assert that:
* On the evening before St. Valentine was to be martyred for being a Christian, he passed a love note to his jailer’s daughter that read, “From Your Valentine.”
* During a ban on marriages of Roman soldiers by the Emperor Claudius II, St. Valentine secretly helped arrange marriages.
In most versions of these legends, February 14 is the date associated with his martyrdom.
One of the most famous, though often overlooked, mentions of Valentine’s Day in literature is made by Ophelia during her insane speech in Act IV of Hamlet by William Shakespeare when she says the line “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day.”
[edit]
Valentine’s Day in North America
Valentine’s Day postcard, circa 1910
Enlarge
Valentine’s Day postcard, circa 1910
Valentine’s Day was probably imported into North America in the 19th century with settlers from Britain. In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828 – 1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationery store, and she took her inspiration from an English valentine she had received. (Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual “Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary”.)
In the United States in the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to include the giving of all manner of gifts, usually from a man to a woman. Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates. In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine’s Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.
The day has come to be associated with a generic platonic greeting of “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Those without a significant other often speak with sarcasm by referring to Valentine’s Day as Singles’ Awareness Day.
Controversy was brought forth on 16 February 2004 when Nickelodeon aired an episode of Blue’s Clues that was an obvious St. Valentine’s Day special, yet was referring to the holiday as “Love Day”. Nickelodeon was widely criticized for attempting to evade the Christian connotations concerning the Catholic St. Valentine.
In many North American elementary schools, students are required to give a Valentine card or small gift to everyone in the class. The greeting cards of these students often mention what they appreciate about each other. Though this practice has been criticized for possibly being irrelevant or inappropriate, it has continued for decades.
See also: Conversation hearts and Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre
[edit]
Valentine’s Day in other cultures
In Japan and Korea Valentine’s Day has emerged, thanks to a concentrated marketing effort, as a day on which women, and less commonly men, give candy, chocolate or flowers to people they like. Rather than being voluntary however, this has become for many women – especially those who work in offices – an obligation, and they give chocolates to all their male co-workers, sometimes at significant personal expense. This chocolate is known as giri-choko (?????), in Japan, from the words giri (obligation) and choko, a common short version of chokoreto (??????), meaning chocolate. This is opposed to honmei-choko, which is given to a person that someone loves or has a strong relationship with. Friends (usually girls) exchange chocolate that is referred to as tomo-choko.
By a further marketing effort, a reciprocal day, called White Day has emerged. On this day (March 14), men are supposed to return the favour by giving something to those who gave them chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Many men, however, give only to their girlfriends. Originally the return gift was supposed to be white chocolate or marshmallows (hence the name “White Day”). However, more recently men have taken the name to a different meaning, thus lingerie is quite a common gift.
In Korea, there is also an additional Black Day, held on April 14, when males who did not receive anything for Valentine’s Day gather together to eat Jajangmyun (Chinese-style noodles in black sauce). In South Korea, there is also Pepero Day, celebrated on November 11, during which young couples give each other romantic gifts.
In Chinese Culture, there is a similar counterpart of the Valentine’s Day. It is called “The Night of Sevens”, on the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar; the last one being August 11, 2005 [2] . (A slightly different version of this day is celebrated in Japan as Tanabata, on July 7th (the same day, but transcribed to the solar calendar)). There is also another chinese version of Valentine’s Day on the 15th day of the 1st month of the lunar calendar. That day also the ‘Last Day of Chinese New Year’ where chinese celebrate Chinese New Year as long as 15 days. During that day, girls write their name and address on a mandarin orange, modern people will write their name,address,cellphone number and also e-mail and finally throw it onto river to seek for future lover and boys will seek for these oranges to find their future lover. This tradition kept until today.
In Persian Culture (Iran) this popular date is discreetly celebrated by most lovers despite the disapproval of such occasion by the hardline Islamic government as a copycat of the west, but Persian youths and adults manage to celebrate following the traditions of the west disregarding the limitations and restrictions imposed by the government.
In Brazil, there is no such day as Valentine’s Day. Instead, on June 12, “Dia dos Namorados” (lit. “Day of the enamored”, or “Boyfriend’s/Girlfriend’s Day”) is celebrated. On this day, boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, exchange gifts (lingerie, chocolates, and more), cards and usually a flower bouquet. This day is chosen probably because it is one day before the Saint Anthony’s day, there known as the marriage saint, when many single women perform popular rituals in order to find a good husband (or, more modernly, a boyfriend).
In Colombia, the “DÃa del amor y la amistad” (lit. “Love and Friendship Day”) is celebrated on the third Friday and Saturday in September, because of commercial issues. In this country the Amigo secreto (“Secret friend”) tradition is quite popular, which consists of randomly assigning to each participant a recipient who is to be given an anonymous gift (similar to the Christmas tradition of Secret Santa).
In Mexico, the “DÃa del amor y la amistad” is celebrated similar to Colombia but this one falls on February 14.
In Finland, Valentine’s Day is called “Ystävänpäivä” which translates into Friend’s day. As the name says the day is more about remembering your friends than your loved ones.
In Slovenia, a proverb says that St Valentine brings the keys of roots so on 14th February plants and flowers start to grow. Valentine’s Day has been celebrated as the day when the first works in the vineyards and on the fields commence. It is also said that birds propose to each other or marry on that day. Nevertheless, it has only recently been celebrated as the day of love. The day of love is traditionally 12th March, the Saint Gregory’s day. Another proverb says “Valentin – prvi spomladin” (Valentine — first saint of spring), as in some places (especially White Carniola) Saint Valentine marks the beginning of spring.
In Romania, the traditional holiday for lovers is Dragobete, which is celebrated on February 24. It is named after a character from Romanian folklore who was supposed to be the son of Baba Dochia. Part of his name is the word “drag” (dear), which can also be found in the word “dragoste” (love). In recent years, Romania has also started celebrating Valentine’s Day, despite already having Dragobete as a traditional holiday. This has drawn backlash from many groups, particularly nationalist organizations like Noua Dreapta, who condemn Valentine’s Day for being superficial, commercialist and imported Western kitsch.
See also: Chinese Valentine’s Day and Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre
[edit]
^^^^^
Julian:
Not that that day is all that different from any other, which brings me to a point you made, suggesting Will & Grace as an example of how unheterosexist Amerikkka is.
^^^^^
CB; Well, I would not suggest that Amerrikka is unheterosexist because I don’t use the concept hetersexist. All I was saying was that on that show they have television situation comedy romance between gay men in response to something you had written.
^^^^^
(We must note as well, how the media invisibilised interpersonal violence against women, and how capitalist patriarchy manipulates people by creating holidays to celebrate an historically fairly recent and culturally specific notion called “heterosexual loveâ€. “Heterosexuality†like “whiteness†llke “manhood†are ideas, not natural phenomena. They are constructed with force, and are maintained through brutality, among other methods.
^^^
CB: Actually, heterosexuality is a natural phenomenon to a significant degree, post-modern, anti-essentialist theories to the contrary notwithstanding. However, heterosexuality is also socially and culturally reinforced indeed. Recall my discussion of the Shakers. Any society that would be anti-heterosexuality would not be long for this world.
Heterosexuality is a lot older than whiteness and “manhood” in the male supremacist sense.
^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^
But back to W & G: I would argue that show plays into heteronormative and other stereotypes to such a degree that the characters, perhaps all of them on that show, including of the three women characters, are sexist, classist, racist pseudo-people, to a degree that was not true of the characters on the Cosby Show to be stereotypes or “clowns†for a mass white heterosexual audience. The Cosby Show succeeded in presenting portraits of people the audience saw as real, as particular, as individuals who each had a humanity that did not slide dangerously into buffoonery and stereotypes. We cannot say the same about Will & Grace, re: paralleling its portrait of gay men.
And, btw, how many Black lesbians are there on “non-reality†TV? Can you name one character on any show?
I’ve been seeing the very white “Ross the Intern†on Jay Leno of late, and am noticing how the program “uses†him as their clown, their effeminate boy-clown–nervously tolerated to a mild degree because “we†can all laugh at him, more than with him.
My question is: do you really think homosexuality has any significant, reality-based portraiture on television?
^^^^^
CB: I’m not knowledgeable enough about the subject to say. I’ll take your word for it.
^^^^
If so, where? Would you not agree that gay and lesbian people are, compared to heterosexuals, generally invisibilised on TV? (Ellen Degeneres can have a successful talk show now, but only if her sexual orientation is “invisibleâ€. Rosie O’Donnell could have a successful talk show before Ellen’s, as long as she pretended to be in love with Tom Cruise. Rosie, as you may know, is and was also a lesbian.) Does all of this seem like anything resembling “progress†to you?
^^^^^
CB; I believe 35 years ago there was none of the even bad examples. I see quite a few gay themes and characters on tv compared to long ago.
^^^^^
I am not going to discuss the “which is the more significant form of oppression†matter. Needless to say, for Black lesbian women and other gay people of Colour, this is a foolish discussion, as it is for gay poor white men.
^^^^
CB: As that needless to say ? I think I’d have to hear from people in those categories as to whether they consider that a foolish discussion.
^^^^^^^
Heterosexuals have the privilege to ignore or minimize–or deny the existence of–heterosexism because its harmful consequences aren’t suffered by heterosexuals, generally and because privilege generally means one doesn’t notice the harm, as harm, which is systematically experienced by the oppressed group. Everything you say about gay folks, can be said about Black folks, by ignorant white Amerikkkans. “Those Blacks have more advantages than white people these days!†“Women have it better than men, now that we are in a post-feminist era.†Bullshit.
^^^^
CB; However, I didn’t say that gay folks have it better than differentsexers.
^^^^^^^
As Andrea Dworkin noted, it is because she was Jewish, not a woman, that she would have been slaughtered in Nazi Germany.
^^^^^^
CB; Hmmmm. Think about that and the comparison of oppressions you mentioned above. Sounds like Dworkin didn’t think foolish what you called foolish above.
^^^^^^
Different factors play out in different ways in different moments in history. A working class white relative of mine, in broad daylight, while walking down the main street of town, at around 4pm, was jumped by a truckload of heterosexual thugs and was beaten severely, for being gay (the abusers used plenty of anti-gay terminology during the beating, so their motivation wasn’t murky). In that period of his life, what made him more vulnerable to lethal harm: his class or his sexuality?
^^^^^^
CB: At that moment, it was obvious. If he had been injured on a factory job, it would have been the opposite at that different moment.
^^^^^^
CB: It is not in their hetero_sexual_ relationships in which they are most oppressed by men.
JR: How can we say where the locus of oppression is for “women generallyâ€. For some women, they have relatively safe husbands or boyfriends, and are being harassed and demeaned at work and on the street, as women. For others, their workplace is their escape from misogynist violence at home. For all, the idea of needing a man is promoted by patriarchy as the answer to every woman’s prayers. That is pure heterosexism. I used to wear a t-shirt which read: “A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycleâ€. I stand by that.
^^^^^
CB; Yea, that saying is about syncronic with usage of “male chauvinism” , so I’m sure you won’t being saying “male chauvinism” is out of date anymore.
^^^^^^^
CB: It is in their heterosexual relationships that women have the most equality of power exactly because sex is important to the men, and you can’t really have sex, or good sex, with someone who is not happy with you.
JR: Charles, that’s preposterous.
CB: No it’s an important incite.
More later
21 February 2006, 6:45 pmCharles Brown:
Carlin Romano: racist
——————————————————————————–
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Carlin Romano: racist
From: Louis Proyect
——————————————————————————–
Each day I take a look at Denis Dutton’s “Arts and Letters Daily” to keep
up to date with what’s on the front burner of an important segment of the
conservative movement, although one that does not enjoy as high a profile
as Fox News, David Horowitz’s Frontpage, etc.
Dutton is a fellow traveler of Frank Furedi’s libertarian sect in Great
Britain that is grouped around spiked-online.com. Like Furedi, Dutton is a
big fan of DDT, “development” in the Amazon rainforest, the importance of
High Culture, etc. Basically we are talking about a rather toxic mixture of
ABC television’s John Stossel, infamous for his “news” reports on the
dangers of organic food, etc. and Hilton Kramer’s New Criterion.
Dutton, a smooth operator, sold his website to the Chronicle of Higher
Education a few years ago for more than a million dollars reportedly. This
was a time of superinflated dot.com stocks. I doubt that anybody would now
pay 10 cents for this idiotic website.
Today, Dutton has a link to an article that appears in the Philadelphia
Inquirer by Carlin Romano, their staff book reviewer who is also a regular
contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Since Romano has never
struck me as a screaming lunatic in the Dutton/Furedi mold, I was curious
what earned him a link in aldaily.com.
Apparently, Romano has joined the Islamophobic current now coalescing
around the Danish cartoons controversy. In an article titled “Author sees
growing Muslim enclaves hoping to rule Europe,” Romano finds much to agree
with in Bruce Bawer’s “While Europe Slept How Radical Islam Is Destroying
the West From Within.”
(http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/entertainment/books/13896555.htm),
the subject of his review. Romano also reports on Alan Jamieson’s “Faith
and Sword: A Short History of Christian-Muslim Conflict” and Efraim Karsh’s
“Islamic Imperialism: A History” (Karsh is a long-time Zionist apologist).
Bawer, according to Romano, is a gay, neoconservative American literary
critic from New York who has lived in Amsterdam. This might ring a bell.
Pim Fortuyn was another Dutch gay who considered Moslems a threat, stating
“if it were legally possible, I’d say no more Muslims should ever enter
this country” Gay Islamophobia is a growing phenomenon internationally
apparently. In Great Britain, Peter Tatchell has charged George Galloway
with homophobia despite a voting record on gay rights that is quite
progressive. Tatchell’s slanders have been picked up in the USA by Doug
Ireland who repeats them on his blog.
This trope about Islam boring away from within is of course a throwback to
the 1950s when there was a red under every bed and when films like “I was a
Communist for the FBI” played the same sort of role as the Arab-bashing
“True Lies” and “Rules of Engagement” play today.
Romano writes that “Karsh and Jamieson serve up further uncomfortable
tidbits.” What might be uncomfortable to Romano? Forcing polygamy on
Christians? Burning Jews at the stake? Here’s what he is worried about:
“The great English historian Edward Gibbon thought Arabic might have become
the language of Oxford and Cambridge if Charles Martel’s Frankish army
hadn’t stopped an expansionist Arab force at Poitiers in 732.”
Oooh, what a scary idea. Speaking Arabic! One wonders if Romano has any
idea of the manner in which the filthy Islamic hordes ruled in Spain.
British historian Stanley Lane-Pool has written:
“For nearly eight centuries, under the Mohamedan rule, Spain set all Europe
a shining example of a civilized and enlightened state. Her fertile
provinces rendered doubly prolific, by the industrious engineering skill of
the conquerors bore fruit a hundredfold, cities innumerable sprang up in
the rich valleys in the Guadalquivir and the Guadiana whose names, and
names only commemorate the vanished glories of their past.
“…To Cordoba belong all the beauty and ornaments that delight the eye or
dazzle the sight. Her long line of Sultans form her crown of glory; her
necklace is strung with the pearls which her poets have gathered from the
ocean of language; her dress is of the banners of learning, well-knit
together by her men of science; and the masters of every art and industry
are the hem of her garments.
“Art, literature and science prospered as they then prospered nowhere else
in Europe…
“Mathematics, astronomy, botany, history, philosophy and jurisprudence were
to be mastered in Spain, and Spain alone. Whatever makes a kingdom great
and prosperous, whatever tends to refinement and civilization, was found in
Muslim Spain…”
(Introduction to “The Moors in Spain”)
Romano continues:
According to Bawer, liberals in Europe, even more than their American
counterparts, want to believe that most Muslim immigrants share Western
middle-class goals: a safe place to live, opportunities for their children,
and the like. That accounts, Bawer argues, for the odd mix in their
attitudes to Muslims: joy in the “multiculturalism” that makes their
previously homogeneous societies more “colorful,” and a nativist desire to
keep Muslims in their place as exotica.
Bawer asserts that the reality – confirmed for him by the resistance of
European Muslims to assimilation, and the marked presence in their
communities of honor killings, homophobia, polygamy, marital rape, forced
marriage, and intolerance of democracy and pluralism – is that European
Muslim leaders, with demographics on their side, still harbor the
millennial hope of taking power in Europe, and see the European attitude as
both weak and hostile. It is “political correctness,” Bawer writes, that
has “gotten Europe into its current mess.”
There you have it in all its glory. Naked racism vomited on the pages of
the Philadelphia Inquirer from the literary critic of the Chronicle of
Higher Education, the preeminent trade publication of American colleges.
Images of dark-skinned men on the prowl with “demographics on their side”,
who are “rapists” and who want to take power… Where does this come from? It
is basically the same sort of filth that was found in the segregationist
press during Jim Crow. Romano even repeats the kind of rhetoric that
prevented Blacks from having the vote in the Deep South: “To whom does any
country’s physical territory belong? Those who have been there longest? A
simple majority? The best-educated?” Maybe the Danes should use property
rights to makes sure that only good white people can vote.
–
http://www.marxmail.org
24 February 2006, 12:11 pmJulian Real:
To Doyle.
First, thanks, Doyle, for adding your voice to the discussion. The more the merrier, or, well, at least the more the more! : )
Dolye: I can’t speak for CB, but racism is not transhistorical in my view. It’s a product of capitalism and based in the nation state that subjugates the rest of the globe. Feudal societies don’t have the means to propagate racism in the sense say Nazi Germany did toward Judaism. Anti-semitism existed since the 4th century as a part of Christianity, but the racist part waited for Spain’s inquisition and the subsequent reifications of Jews.
I want to expand here, patriarchy, is not transhistorical. For example, if patriarchy is beyond ‘history’ at what point does human social life begin patriarchy? Before language or culture, or after? If before do you include Bonobos?
JR: I was REALLY sloppy there. That’s not what I meant by transhistorical, but I think you were absolutely right to point out what you did. I agree: racism and patriarchy are not “transhistorical–or, to be more specific, unaffected by the passing of time, and the shifting of power bases in cultures over time– (apologies for my sloppiness). What I meant to say is both phenomena cross class, region, and era. They shift and change as they do, of course, and have different permutations where ever they exist. A feminist point is that patriarchy appears to have taken root in most if not all societies, and hasn’t been letting go anywhere for thousands of years–in socialist, communist, and capitalist, as well as other economies. This doesn’t disentangle patriarchy completely from those systems of economic power, but it does speak to something other than economics as a base for patriarchy.
As for Bonobos, you know we ain’t going nowhere good if we start talking about non-human animals, as the males of many species are way more flamboyant than the females, and are edibly consumed by females in some instances. As for the Bonobos, well, an analysis of what “sexuality” does to a not-human-but-close being when introduced into its life early on might make for an interesting study there. Are Bonobos offspring, for example, sexually “acting out”? But, again, I don’t want to pursue the matter of non-human animals, in this thread at least, as I don’t believe “racism” and “heterosexism” exist in non-human communities. I believe they are both human social constructs, lived out in identity, interpersonal behaviour, and with institutional support and enforcement. (All three.)
Again, thanks for calling me on something that definitely needed clarification and correction!
Peace,
Julian
24 February 2006, 2:41 pmJulian Real:
Hi Charles.
[Re: Reports of way more women in college than men:]
CB: I didn’t say anything about men in crisis. So, the above is not what I am talking about. I’m talking about a big advance in the women’s movement , wherein we have won big gains for women in getting into college and grad schools. That’s good. Of course, the male supremacists will try to use it just like the white supremacists try to use gains in the struggle against racism to say that there is reverse discrimination. That doesn’t mean that we don’t take account of and announce our victories in either case.
JR: As a radical, I am reluctant to call “allow gay folks into the racist patriarchal misogynist military” or “women into the white Western male academy” victories, in the radical sense. I call it reformist progress, and as you have properly noted, we must take account of reforms that do SOMETHING to shift the power balances.
[Re: Women in the academy.]
CB: Not only are they learning to dismantle patriarchy , but by the very fact of their being there they are in the act of dismantling patriarchy.
JR: I do not think this is necessarily the case. A parallel, perhaps, is that if Blacks in the U.S. are successful at continuing to move into the middle class, with its white Amerikkkan standards and ways of being, then is that radical “progress”? I would say assimilationism has been a serious problem for radical change campaigns. That white gay men want the same life as white heterosexual men, except with two men getting married instead of a woman and man, or two women, in the case of lesbian partnerships–that this issue and “gays in the military” are key “movement issues” for liberal, reformist activists, speak to a huge failure or defeat of the radical agenda, as noted well in the first chapter of Unpacking Queer Politics, by Sheila Jeffreys. You can hear Sheila speak about some of this here:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=16575
CB: What exactly do you think the dismantling of patriarchy will look like except things like equal and proportional numbers of women in higher education and the like. Do you even know what the goals of the women’s movement are ? How can you help in the women’s movement if you don’t know its goals ?
I’ll take the last two questions first: as much as any male, and I don’t hear feminist (radical and liberal) women complaining about my stance on any of these issues, Charles. I’ll take that as a good sign that I’ve got some grasp of this matter called sexist oppression. But, you know, we’re always learning, and I certainly am continuing to learn from, and hold myself fully accountable to, radical feminist women.
As for the first question: I think “dismantling” patriarchy cannot look like assimilation only. That seems key. Liberal agendas are, in my view, assimilationist only. They do not seek to end patriarchy, they seek to make it a little more user-friendly for women, who are being systematically used up in it. Women fighting for the “right” to be CEOs and pornographers is about as dismal a future for the radical feminist effort to get patriarchy off women’s backs as I can imagine. The agenda, as I understand it, is this: to end racism by ending race, to end sexist by ending gender, and to end classism by ending class. The radical goal is NOT to create a “new patriarchy” where women are “free” to be men, and where men must be men. The radical project that I am working for is to liberate humans from race, gender, and class oppression, not have Blacks “equally” part of a racist society, gay people be “equally” part of a heterosexist society, etc.
[Re: Heterosexism and TV]
CB: Yea,the more I think of it clearly this modern homophobia thing is a message from the white supremacist sections of the ruling class to white people, because the white power structure is concerned about the falling birth rate of whites relative to darker peoples in and outside of the U.S.
JR: I think that’s useful but too narrow a view. What explains homophobia and heterosexism in communities of Colour: you’d think white-owned media would CELEBRATE and promote lesbianism and gayness in those communities, if your theory were reality. Not that any theory is, of course! ; ) I actually think white middle class communities can panic less about “the problem of homosexuality” in some regards, and working class and poorer communities can embrace homosexuality more readily for other reasons. Reality bears this out. Being marginalised by race or class can make a community more tolerant of other forms of difference. The era of the Harlem Renaissance might bear this out. So, it’s not that I disagree that what you describe may be happening on one dimension, or in some families or communities, but I also see the opposite happening, and I also see underprivileged communities being less homophobic in some regards. For example, I know some rich white young adults who are TERRIFIED to come out to their parents because to do so might cut them out of their share of their parents’ estate. When you got no estate such things don’t matter so much. I find the working class parts of my family bigoted about gay people and also more loving of gay people, simultaneously. And I find the upper middle class part of my family does a very good job of appearing very tolerant, and being quite accepting, of homosexuality “out there”, but I am sure my wealthier aunt and uncle wouldn’t have wanted one of their kids to be queer, and in no ways raised them with any choices in the matter.
24 February 2006, 4:22 pmJulian Real:
Part 1 of 2 on V.D.:
CB: Note the association of Valentine’s day with fertility rites in the wikipedia discussion.
JR: I have altered it below to make it more rooted in reality, and I may do this on Wiki too:
From wikidpedia:
St. Valentine’s Day [now called Valentine's Day] falls on February 14, and is the traditional day on which [heterosexual] lovers [are encouraged by card companies, flower shops, and candy stores to] let each other know about their [alleged] love, [whatever the level of sexism in the individual relationship]. The history of Valentine’s day can be traced back to a [patriarchal, male supremacist] Catholic Church feast day, in honor of Saint Valentine. The day’s associations with romantic love arrived after the High Middle Ages, during which the concept of courtly love, which had a large impact on the modern Western conception of love, was formulated. [Note: before this time, "heterosexuality" was not a social concept or identity. Valentine's Day helps normalise heterosexuality as a relatively recent social occurrence, now understood as both natural and normal.]
The day is now most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of “valentines” [socially among children, as a friendship gesture, or a compulsory "heteroromantic" activity] and among adults only heterosexually, if public]. Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, the practice of hand writing notes has largely given way to the exchange of mass-produced greeting cards. The Greeting Card Association estimates that, world-wide, approximately one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. {In these ways, capitalism, heterosexism, and Christianity are maintained through holiday, custom, and ritual.] The association also estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines. [This is but one way in which the idea of heterosexual romance is tied to capitalist patriarchy to the financial detriment of women.]
February fertility festivals
The association of the middle of February with love and fertility dates to ancient times. In the calendar of Ancient Athens, the period between mid January and mid February was the month of Gamelion, which was dedicated to the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera. [The celebration of not-yet-called-heterosexual unions were often symbolic rituals organised around "union" activities, not identities designed to institutionalise them.]
In Ancient Rome, the day of February 15 was Lupercalia, the festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility, who was represented by two half-naked young men, dressed in goat skins.
[That Ancient Greek culture promoted relationships between adult males and younger males, and that there was an appreciation of these bonds, and an adoration of the naked male form, makes itself known in this feature of the ritual.]
[...] Young women especially would come forth voluntarily for the occasion, in the belief that being so touched would render them fruitful and bring easy childbirth.
[What was believed to be the case in that era of human history, was that "man" planted his seed in "woman" as men and women planted seeds into the Earth. That women contributed DNA was not known at that time, and this ignorance would later serve as an explanation for how Jesus could be considered "purely divine" (read: untouched by the alleged dirtiness of the female)" even though born from a female. Seen as not having a human father either, patriarchy still maneuvered around this myth, as God's seed was seen as a a male sky-god's seed because God was often, then, and increasingly, portrayed as male: Lord, Father, King. Origins for this "potent male sky-god" might be that sky's rain penetrated the Earth, and from that, things grew.]
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), at least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs and all quite obscure, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of February 14:
* a priest in Rome [...]
* a bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) [ ...]
* a martyr in North Africa, about whom little else is known. [History is told or otherwise recorded by the winners, and Africans, as we know, did not generally win out against European material-spiritual imperialists. White Christians, to this day, arrive in Africa to "save" Black folks from a non-Christian life, and a non-Christian death, especially the latter.]
The connection between St. Valentine and romantic love is not mentioned in any early histories and is regarded by secular historians as purely a matter of legend (see below).
[This is likely, as romance and sexual orientation and sexual identity were not yet constructed in patriarchies of the day.]
[edit]
In 1969, as part of a larger effort to pare down the number of saint days of purely legendary origin, the Church removed St. Valentine’s Day as an official holiday from its calendar.
[edit]
Valentine
The influential Gnostic teacher Valentinius was a candidate for Bishop of Rome in 143. In his teachings, the marriage bed assumed a central place in his version of Christian love, an emphasis sharply in contrast with the asceticism of mainstream Christianity. Stephan A. Hoeller assesses Valentinius on the subject: “In addition to baptism, anointing, eucharist, the initiation of priests and the rites of the dying, the Valentinian Gnosis mentions prominently two great and mysterious sacraments called ‘redemption’ (apolytrosis) and ‘bridal chamber’ respectively.” [1] .
Medieval era
The first recorded association of St. Valentine’s Day with romantic love was in the 14th century in England and France, where February 14 was traditionally the day on which birds paired off to mate. This belief is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules (1381). It was common during that era for lovers to exchange notes on this day and to call each other their “Valentines”. A 14th century valentine is said to be in the collection of the British Library. It is probable that many of the legends about St. Valentine were invented during this period. Among the legends are ones that assert that:
* On the evening before St. Valentine was to be martyred for being a Christian, he passed a love note to his jailer’s daughter that read, “From Your Valentine.”
* During a ban on marriages of Roman soldiers by the Emperor Claudius II, St. Valentine secretly helped arrange marriages.
In most versions of these legends, February 14 is the date associated with his martyrdom.
[It is important to note that as heterosexuality as an identity did not yet exist, women were overtly controlled my men, including in how they were paired to produce off-spring and care for men. Women "choosing" a partner was not part of the social male supremacist plan, and any efforts to promote such "freedom" in women would have been received by the male supremacist state hostility, that is, without card, flowers, and candy]
One of the most famous, though often overlooked, mentions of Valentine’s Day in literature is made by Ophelia during her insane speech in Act IV of Hamlet by William Shakespeare when she says the line “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day.”
[One wonders, was it the upcoming holiday that pushed her over the edge of sanity?]
Valentine’s Day was probably imported into North America in the 19th century with [Christian, racist, colonialist male supremacist] settlers from Britain. In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828 – 1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationery store, and she took her inspiration from an English valentine she had received. (Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual “Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary”.)
[It is important to note that what is now called "feminism" had made several appearances into European/colonialist American societies. Women had begun to articulate the human wish for freedom from men's rule over them.]
In the United States in the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to include the giving of all manner of gifts, usually from a man to a woman.
[This can be likened to the "contrition phase" of a battering heterosexual relationship, in which courtship and gifts are needed to make up for a lack of social equality, including in the heterosexual relationship.]
Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates. ["Affection" with the man was expected as repayment.]
In the 1980s, the [capitalist, racist, colonialist] diamond industry began to promote Valentine’s Day as an occasion for giving jewelry. This brought heterosexism, patriarchy, commerce, and racism into yet another crowded “marriage”.
The day has come to be associated with a generic [heteronormative] platonic greeting of “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Those without a significant other [of an allegedly "opposite" sex] often speak with sarcasm by referring to Valentine’s Day as Singles’ Awareness Day.
[Even in Wikipedia, the heterosexism of the holiday has not been noted, further invisibilising non-heterosexual realities.]
Controversy was brought forth on 16 February 2004 when Nickelodeon aired an episode of Blue’s Clues that was an obvious St. Valentine’s Day special, yet was referring to the holiday as “Love Day”. Nickelodeon was widely criticized for attempting to evade the Christian connotations concerning the Catholic St. Valentine. [The Church still needs and wants control over women's bodies and over how, and in what circumstances, women are to be sexually used by men. It publicly promotes sacred unions ONLY between women and men, but less publicly, yet systematically, exploits and rapes female and male prostitutes, and rapes nuns and children of "both" sexes. So much for "morality".]
24 February 2006, 4:31 pmJulian Real:
Part 2 of 2 on V.D.:
Valentine’s Day in other cultures
In Japan and Korea Valentine’s Day has emerged, thanks to a concentrated marketing effort, as a day on which women, and less commonly men, give candy, chocolate or flowers to people they like. [Creating a new way to economically coerce women through social custom. Japan is currently experiencing a bit of a "heterosexual marriage" crisis, as women, there, as in many nations, are tired of being treated CRAPpily by men, and are opting out of the whole "marriage and motherhood" track. This is likely to intensify State and economically sponsored social pressures on women to be financially and socially tied to men, or to regard heterosexual men in some positive way.]
[So, rather than a personal gesture "from the heart"], this has become for many women – especially those who work in offices – an obligation, and they give chocolates to all their male co-workers, sometimes at significant personal expense. This chocolate is known as giri-choko (?????), in Japan, from the words giri (obligation) and choko, a common short version of chokoreto (??????), meaning chocolate. This is opposed to honmei-choko, which is given to a person that someone loves or has a strong relationship with. Friends (usually girls) exchange chocolate that is referred to as tomo-choko. [In non-feminist transformed nations, women are still finding ways out of heteronormative oppressive pro-male supremacist lifestyles.]
By a further marketing effort, a reciprocal day, called White Day has emerged. On this day (March 14), men are supposed to return the favour by giving something to those who gave them chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Many men, however, [begrudgingly] give only to their girlfriends [, thereby saving some money not reciprocally "savable" by women]. Originally the return gift was supposed to be white chocolate or marshmallows (hence the name “White Day”). However, more recently men have taken the name to a different meaning, thus lingerie is quite a common gift. [As pornography and other sexist Western media infiltrate the country, heterosexual men are increasingly eroticising both racism and sexism. This plays out horribly for Japanese women, who are often coerced into getting their eyes surgically "Westernised". What men want, increasingly, is what pornography produces: dispossessed, subjugated women. In the West, where feminism has had an impact on culture, men there now choose internet porn over relationships with real, willful, female human beings. Heterosexual men's pornography addiction is now the highest cause of divorce in North America.]
In Korea, there is also an additional Black Day, held on April 14, when [heterosexual] males who did not receive anything [from women] for Valentine’s Day gather together to eat Jajangmyun (Chinese-style noodles in black sauce). In South Korea, there is also Pepero Day, celebrated on November 11, during which young [heterosexual] couples give each other romantic gifts.
[...] [There is a] Chinese version of Valentine’s Day on the 15th day of the 1st month of the lunar calendar. That day also the ‘Last Day of Chinese New Year’ where Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year as long as 15 days. During that day, girls write their name and address on a mandarin orange, modern people will write their name,address,cellphone number and also e-mail and finally throw it onto river to seek for future lover and boys will seek for these oranges to find their future lover. This tradition kept until today. [This promotes the male supremacist and heterosexist notion that women need men to be fulfilled in life, a notion being rapidly eroded in Japan.]
In Persian Culture (Iran) this popular date is discreetly celebrated by most [heterosexual] lovers despite the disapproval of such occasion by the hardline Islamic government as a copycat of the west, but Persian youths and adults manage to celebrate following the traditions of the west disregarding the limitations and restrictions imposed by the government. [There is no public account of homosexual lovers by this culture's controlling forces, which is also the case often in the West.]
In Brazil, there is no such day as Valentine’s Day. Instead, on June 12, “Dia dos Namorados” (lit. “Day of the enamored”, or “Boyfriend’s/Girlfriend’s Day”) is celebrated. On this day, boyfriends and girlfriends [ONLY], husbands and wives [ONLY], exchange gifts ([sexist] lingerie, [unhealthy] chocolates, [and more that does nothing to liberate women from heteronormative/sexist patriarchies]), [heterosexist] cards and usually a flower bouquet. This day is chosen probably because it is one day before the Saint Anthony’s day, there known as the [patriarchal heterosexual] marriage saint, when many single [heterosexual] women perform popular rituals in order to find a good husband (or, more modernly, a boyfriend[, or, more modernly, a girlfriend]).
[...]
In Finland [where feminism has had even more liberating impact on women from heterosexist society], Valentine’s Day is called “Ystävänpäivä” which translates into Friend’s day. As the name says the day is more about remembering your friends than your loved ones.
[...]
In Romania, the traditional holiday for lovers is Dragobete, which is celebrated on February 24. It is named after a character from Romanian folklore who was supposed to be the son of Baba Dochia. Part of his name is the word “drag” (dear), which can also be found in the word “dragoste” (love). In recent years, Romania has also started celebrating Valentine’s Day, despite already having Dragobete as a traditional holiday. This has drawn backlash from many groups, particularly nationalist organizations like Noua Dreapta, who [appropriately] condemn Valentine’s Day for being superficial, commercialist and imported Western kitsch.
24 February 2006, 4:31 pmJulian Real:
CB; Well, I would not suggest that Amerrikka is unheterosexist because I don’t use the concept hetersexist. All I was saying was that on that show they have television situation comedy romance between gay men in response to something you had written.
JR: And you find this “one” show adequate to balance out all the normalised, naturalised, while simultaneously pornographised heterosexuality bombarding us every day in the media?
CB: Actually, heterosexuality is a natural phenomenon to a significant degree,
JR: A closer look at history would strongly disprove this.
CB: Any society that would be anti-heterosexuality would not be long for this world.
JR: A feminist project is to create a sustainable society that is liberatory to and supportive and nurturing of humans who choose identities not based on physical features.
CB: Heterosexuality is a lot older than whiteness and “manhood” in the male supremacist sense.
JR: Prove that statement. Find me texts that go back centuries that make any mention of this current social idea called “heterosexuality”.
CB: I’m not knowledgeable enough about the subject to say. I’ll take your word for it.
JR: Thank you. Moving right along then…
CB; I believe 35 years ago there was none of the even bad examples. I see quite a few gay themes and characters on tv compared to long ago.
JR: Most in service to heteronormative patriarchy, and many “gay” characters are literally in service to heterosexual men, such as in “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. The title says it all. Gay men are, increasingly, it would seem, the non-female “helpers of heterosexual men” in feminist Amerikkka. And the clowns for dominant (heterosexual male) U.S. entertainment.
CB: [...] I think I’d have to hear from people in those categories [JR: eg., Black lesbian women] as to whether they consider that a foolish discussion.
JR: Speaking of… You never answered my question from a while ago: What did Barbara Smith have to say to your “critique” of heterosexism as a term to describe real oppression in real life?
CB; However, I didn’t say that gay folks have it better than differentsexers.
JR: I’m assuming you mean different sexual orientations? And, if so, are you saying, here, that gay males are oppressed for being gay in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, that is, in ways that heterosexual males are not harmed and invisibilised systematically?
JR: As Andrea Dworkin noted, it is because she was Jewish, not a woman, that she would have been slaughtered in Nazi Germany.
CB; Hmmmm. Think about that and the comparison of oppressions you mentioned above. Sounds like Dworkin didn’t think foolish what you called foolish above.
JR: Dworkin also has written about the sexism of Nazi Germany, and the sexism in the Holocaust Museum. So she wasn’t saying sexism is irrelevant in any patriarchal context, only that sometimes female people get killed for reasons other than being female, which seems quite accurate. It’s accuracy doesn’t disentangle various forms of oppression from one another on the larger scale, or outside those instances, however.
CB: At that moment, it was obvious. If he had been injured on a factory job, it would have been the opposite at that different moment.
JR: Agreed.
CB: It is not in their hetero_sexual_ relationships in which they are most oppressed by men.
Re: JR: [...] I used to wear a t-shirt which read: “A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle”. I stand by that.
CB; Yea, that saying is about syncronic with usage of “male chauvinism” , so I’m sure you won’t being saying “male chauvinism” is out of date anymore.
JR: No, I will be. Because it is. You are the only human on Earth I know who uses that term. But go ahead and use it… I’m just saying… ; )
CB: It is in their heterosexual relationships that women have the most equality of power exactly because sex is important to the men, and you can’t really have sex, or good sex, with someone who is not happy with you.
JR: Charles, that’s preposterous.
CB: No it’s an important incite.
JR: For you, perhaps. But it tears like a wet cheap paper towel when anything of reality is placed on it. No woman I know would make that statement, feminist of non-feminist. Not one.
Let’s keep going, Charles, if you’re up for it. I find you to be a good debater, and I appreciate that.
I’ll respond to the rest at another timme.
Peace to you, and power too!
Julian
24 February 2006, 4:57 pmJulian Real:
To Robert D. Deed, if you’re still around:
What are you taking issue with, exactly?
25 February 2006, 5:27 pmJulian Real:
Hi Doyle.
I apologise for missing this critique of yours. Â (It’s hard to track all the additions when one is away from the discussion for several days…)
I’ll respond bit by bit, so as to not miss anything:
DS: Â I agree with CB, heterosexuality is not compulsory
JR: Â I see it this way:
It is not only compulsory, it is enforced, through anti-lesbian and anti-gay abuse/violence, which is common, through the invisibilisation of non-heterosexuality, through customs and institutions which celebrate or normalise heterosexuality. Â The fact that the term “gay” means “stupid” in many non-gay communities is but one wee linguistic example of what I am talking about. Â I have already noted the general invisibility or stereotyped portrayals of non-heterosexual people in the popular media. Â Let’s add the lack of children’s stories and books which make nongendered, non-heterosexual ways of being normal and
natural, and, instead, the portrayal of homosexual relations as innately sinful, evil, wrong, or illegal. Â This, surely moves us beyond the linguistic realm. Â Currently called homosexual or bisexual
relations and people are cloaked in history and in cultural reproductions of history, so we are left to wonder about the likes of President Lincoln’s close male friendship, for example, or Rosie
O’Donnell has to portray herself, for years, as heterosexual, on her own TV show. Â (To span quite a cultural expanse.) Â Let’s add to this the very simple and obvious reality that heterosexuals don’t need to
“come out” as such. Â Their sexual expression may need to come out, but there is no terror or deep anxiety about “being” heterosexual, as it is so normalised as to be naturalised. Â Heterosexuals do not commit
suicide “because” they are heterosexual, in contemporary societies which are so deeply heterosexist, as to drive queer youth to kill
themselves in despair of being unacceptable or unlovable. Â This too, is beyond linguistics.
DS: Â …nor is it hegemonic the right way to describe patriarchy. patriarchy goes back through a lot of different sorts of economically defined era’s.
JR: Â In many instances, patriarchy precedes, exceeds, and supercedes any single economic model.
DS: Â I reserve hegeomony or profound influence for describing the functions of nation states.
JR: Â Which could simply reflect the level of entrenchment of heterosexuality and male supremacist sexuality as so natural as to not even be registerable, knowable, experiencable as hegemonic.
Patriarchy is about as hegemonic as it gets. Â It is deeply entrenched, though custom and force, in many if not all cultures currently. Â What isn’t hegemonic abouot patriarchy?, is the question that occurs to me.
DS: What I think you are reaching for conceptually is roughly similar to how language divides people which is not hegemony like a nation does, but work divisions of community ties that goes back a long ways
before hegemony meant anything.
JR: Â I am not speaking about language alone, or even primarily, when discussing matters of sexuality. Â I am discussing systems of power, entrenched, normalised, and naturalised to the point that to critique
them at all, or to comment upon them, let alone challenge them, as anything other than natural or inevitable is to appear insane or ridiculous. Â The insanity is in not being willing to look at the ways
that patriarchal sexuality, and patriarchy generally, is hegemonically enforcing: Â controlling and deeply (if not entirely) determining of human lives: Â identities, relations, expressions of love and
affection, etc.
From dictionary.com:
2 entries found for hegemony.
1.  he?emùëùäy   ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (h-jm-n, hj-mn)
n. pl. he?emùëùäies
The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others.
2. Â hegemony
n : the domination of one state over its allies
You prefer the latter definition, as someone concerned primarily with matters of economy and state power, perhaps. Â Feminists prefer the
former definition, noting how gender and sexuality are created and maintained by being institutionalised, infused with male supremacist ideology and male violence, and reproduced in industries and customs,
identities and what culturally appears to be “natural occurrences”. (One need only compare how gender is naturalised with how race has been naturalised: Â Jews as a race in Nazi Germany, “Colored” as a race in South Africa, “white” as a race in the U.S.) Â These phenomena comprise and constitute systems of power deemed either ahistorical by some marxists, or inevitable or natural by everyone else, except
feminists and those who “get it” about gender as a system of political hierarchy and social/intimate oppression. Â Please read Sheila Jeffreys’ work for more details, historically detailed ones, of how,
exactly, this “naturalisation” and “normalisation” happens.
See, for a list of her books:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dbooks-uk%26field-author%3DSheila%20Jeffreys/026-6301299-4349231
DS: Â A lot of animals practice homosexual relationships. Can we call their species patriarchal? Or heterosexists?
JR: Â I’m not sure you’re following Collins’ use of the term. “Heterosexism” is the systemic invisibilisation of homosexuality or other non-heterosexual identities and sexual/erotic realities, and the simultaneous naturalisation, normalisation, and, in some cultures,
romanticisation of heterosexuality, as in moments such as “You know how that certain energy exists between a man and a woman?” Â (which is what a friend of mine said to me recently, when commenting on dance).
 I asked her to own her erotic and sexual experience as particular, not universal.  What she was describing or alluding to is specific, historically and culturally.  As you know, in the past, and sometimes
still, “romance” was not part of the social equation. Â What we now know as “normal, natural romantic feelings between some heterosexual men and some heterosexual women” used to not be socially real.
Again, as noted earlier, getting into non-human animal behaviour is going to get us nowhere fast. Â Can we stick to discussing the human animal (as it alone creates oppressive cultural norms that are
historicised and psychologised)? Â And non-human animal communities where what is called “the males” practice what we currently call “homosexuality” is not translatable to our condition, as we speak about and reference our experience, reflect upon it, call it harm when it is harm, even if we are not believed. Â To the best of our knowledge, non-human animals may be deeply empathic and knowledgeable, but do not manifest such “feelings” and “thoughts” in those ways.
Agreed? Â I am not making a case for human animals being superior to non-human animals. Â Given what we do systematically to one another, I think a case can be made that we are the most destructive and brutal
and callous of all species.
DS: Â We see in animals a fixed pattern they themselves can little alter, but in humans we can see great variability in cultures and homosexual as well as heterosexual practices. We can to some degree
bring to sexuality a culture structure or as CB would say ‘infrastructure’, which a given economic system produces that allows us to address a ‘patriarchy’ of inequality between sexes. Gender some think are performances that are cultural, so that too needs to be thrown into the hopper.
JR: Â You note great variability, which relative to some non-human animal behaviours is likely true. Â But you ignore in that statement the things that are politically fixed by male supremacist societies,
that are not at all “natural”, such as date rape, pornography, and prostitution.
Butler is a key spokesperson of “gender as performance” but the question is: Â what kind of performance is it?
a) the way slaves perform for masters?
b) the way children behave for adults, out of fear of physical violence?
c) the way people “perform” a certain language and not others, depending on where one grows up, or in what family?
d) Â the way an actor performs on a stage, for the applause of the audience?
e) Â the way workers perform their job-work, not out of real choice, but because it’s the only job they could get?
f) Â the way people who have had their legs broken “perform” limping?
g) the way incest survivors “perform” the harm done to them, to other kids, when six years old?
g) Â all of the above, and more?
DS: Â But I think gender and language issues overlap, and point at ‘recognition’ as the source cognitive work that founds sexism.
JR: Â Economics and language, and state power and language, too, overlap. Â What’s the key difference in your view? Â Cognition, if I am understanding the way you are using the term (correct me if I am not) is not the only tool for registering sexism. Â Feeling the man’s fist on the woman’s pregnant belly, feeling the burning and humiliation of rape, the acid splashed on the face of a woman by a man she refuses to marry,
and the degrading obligation to “perform” sexually for men, the smell and feel of the father’s penis when in the mouth of the child’s mouth, the expression of sex that intends to approximate what the pornography
industry produces as natural feminine sexuality, are but a few ways this happens. Â Systemic discrimination and violation, exploitation and objectification, experienced viscerally and physically, emotionally
and spiritually, is as real as economic and state exploitation, no? Make the case for it not being as real, politically.
I look forward to your response, Doyle, and am appreciative of your contributions to this discussion.
Peace.
Julian
25 February 2006, 7:43 pmCharles Brown:
JR: As a radical, I am reluctant to call “allow gay folks into the racist patriarchal misogynist military†or “women into the white Western male academy†victories, in the radical sense. I call it reformist progress, and as you have properly noted, we must take account of reforms that do SOMETHING to shift the power balances.
^^^^^
CB: What are you defining as radical changes ?
Women moving into the leading offices in society, that is into positions of power, which includes becoming credentialed in higher education, is a radical project of women’s liberation.
^^^^^^
As for the first question: I think “dismantling†patriarchy cannot look like assimilation only. That seems key. Liberal agendas are, in my view, assimilationist only. They do not seek to end patriarchy, they seek to make it a little more user-friendly for women, who are being systematically used up in it. Women fighting for the “right†to be CEOs and pornographers is about as dismal a future for the radical feminist effort to get patriarchy off women’s backs as I can imagine. The agenda, as I understand it, is this: to end racism by ending race, to end sexist by ending gender, and to end classism by ending class. The radical goal is NOT to create a “new patriarchy†where women are “free†to be men, and where men must be men. The radical project that I am working for is to liberate humans from race, gender, and class oppression, not have Blacks “equally†part of a racist society, gay people be “equally†part of a heterosexist society, etc.
^^^^
CB: Yes, women’s liberation cannot be won without intimately intertwining that struggle with the struggle for socialism. This is why somebody like MacKinnon’s “attack” on Engels sets the women’s liberation movement back. Engels and the Marxist women’s liberation tradition integrate womens’ liberation and workers’ liberation.
You are right that women becoming CEO’s and Secretary of State or President is a problematic contradiction, in that women becoming oppressors is not progress. The only way to address it is to integrate Marxism and feminism ( see my paper).
^^^^^^^
[Re: Heterosexism and TV]
CB: Yea,the more I think of it clearly this modern homophobia thing is a message from the white supremacist sections of the ruling class to white people, because the white power structure is concerned about the falling birth rate of whites relative to darker peoples in and outside of the U.S.
JR: I think that’s useful but too narrow a view. What explains homophobia and heterosexism in communities of Colour: you’d think white-owned media would CELEBRATE and promote lesbianism and gayness in those communities, if your theory were reality.
^^^^^
CB: Yes, well of course, it would be difficult for them to come right out and do that. I’d say this is not a frontburner issue for the ruling class, so they wouldn’t go so far as to do the above. The racist elements of the power structure are concerned about birthrate among whites. However, homosexuality does not have such a strong impact on the birthrate that the ruling class would do what you say above. They have other ways of impacting birthrates . The rest of the ruling class is relatively indifferent about the issue, except that it can be used to divide the masses.
^^^^^^
Not that any theory is, of course! ; ) I actually think white middle class communities can panic less about “the problem of homosexuality†in some regards, and working class and poorer communities can embrace homosexuality more readily for other reasons. Reality bears this out. Being marginalised by race or class can make a community more tolerant of other forms of difference. The era of the Harlem Renaissance might bear this out. So, it’s not that I disagree that what you describe may be happening on one dimension, or in some families or communities, but I also see the opposite happening, and I also see underprivileged communities being less homophobic in some regards.
^^^^^
CB: Yes, I’m not sure there is a generalization on classes’ attitudes. Within the ruling class there are certain samesex traditions.
^^^^
For example, I know some rich white young adults who are TERRIFIED to come out to their parents because to do so might cut them out of their share of their parents’ estate. When you got no estate such things don’t matter so much. I find the working class parts of my family bigoted about gay people and also more loving of gay people, simultaneously. And I find the upper middle class part of my family does a very good job of appearing very tolerant, and being quite accepting, of homosexuality “out thereâ€, but I am sure my wealthier aunt and uncle wouldn’t have wanted one of their kids to be queer, and in no ways raised them with any choices in the matter.
^^^^^
CB: It significantly comes down to the lesser potential fertility of gay people, though of course this is not absolute, as gay people can have heterosex and produce children. But in general, for individuals the issue of perpetuating yourself and family impinges ultimately.
* Part 1 of 2 on Valentines’
CB: Note the association of Valentine’s day with fertility rites in the wikipedia discussion.
JR: I have altered it below to make it more rooted in reality, and I may do this on Wiki too:
From wikidpedia:
St. Valentine’s Day [now called Valentine’s Day] falls on February 14, and is the traditional day on which [heterosexual] lovers [are encouraged by card companies, flower shops, and candy stores to] let each other know about their [alleged] love, [whatever the level of sexism in the individual relationship]. The history of Valentine’s day can be traced back to a [patriarchal, male supremacist] Catholic Church feast day, in honor of Saint Valentine.
^^^^^
CB: What is your evidence that the original honoring of St. Valentine was particularly an expression of male supremacy ? It seems to me that it may have been an effort to perpetuate Christianity by divesting of the strong influence of ascetic asexual theory as expressed by St. Paul et al.at its origins.
^^^^^^^
The day’s associations with romantic love arrived after the High Middle Ages, during which the concept of courtly love, which had a large impact on the modern Western conception of love, was formulated. [Note: before this time, “heterosexuality†was not a social concept or identity. Valentine’s Day helps normalise heterosexuality as a relatively recent social occurrence, now understood as both natural and normal.]
^^^^^
CB: Heterosexuality was probably normalized long, long before the origin of St. Valentine’s Day or its expression later on in the “High Middle Ages”, don’t you think ?
^^^^^^^
The day is now most closely associated with the mutual exchange of love notes in the form of “valentines†[socially among children, as a friendship gesture, or a compulsory “heteroromantic†activity] and among adults only heterosexually, if public].
^^^^
CB: Or we might say heterosexual training. How boys and girls relate to each other has to be taught to them.
^^^^^^^
Modern Valentine symbols include the heart-shaped outline
^^^^
CB: The stylized heart shape is a visual pun for something :>)
^^^^^^^^
and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, the practice of hand writing notes has largely given way to the exchange of mass-produced greeting cards. The Greeting Card Association estimates that, world-wide, approximately one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas.
^^^^^
CB;Yes, modern Valentine’s Day is of course infused with the market, and money making.
^^^^^^
{In these ways, capitalism, heterosexism, and Christianity are maintained through holiday, custom, and ritual.] The association also estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines. [This is but one way in which the idea of heterosexual romance is tied to capitalist patriarchy to the financial detriment of women.]
^^^^^
CB: This fact of most cards bought by women also undercuts sharply the notion that Valentine’s Day is particularly an expression of male supremacy. Sounds more an expression of modern women’s ideals.
^^^^^^
February fertility festivals
The association of the middle of February with love and fertility dates to ancient times. In the calendar of Ancient Athens, the period between mid January and mid February was the month of Gamelion, which was dedicated to the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera. [The celebration of not-yet-called-heterosexual unions were often symbolic rituals organised around “union†activities, not identities designed to institutionalise them.]
^^^^^^
CB: The label “heterosexual” does not carry the inherently oppressive substance that the labeller thinks it does.
^^^^^^
In Ancient Rome, the day of February 15 was Lupercalia, the festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility, who was represented by two half-naked young men, dressed in goat skins.
[That Ancient Greek culture promoted relationships between adult males and younger males, and that there was an appreciation of these bonds, and an adoration of the naked male form, makes itself known in this feature of the ritual.]
^^^^^^
CB: Yes, and it was an expression of male supremacy.
^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^
[edit]
In 1969, as part of a larger effort to pare down the number of saint days of purely legendary origin, the Church removed St. Valentine’s Day as an official holiday from its calendar.
[edit]
Valentine
The influential Gnostic teacher Valentinius was a candidate for Bishop of Rome in 143. In his teachings, the marriage bed assumed a central place in his version of Christian love, an emphasis sharply in contrast with the asceticism of mainstream Christianity. Stephan A. Hoeller assesses Valentinius on the subject: “In addition to baptism, anointing, eucharist, the initiation of priests and the rites of the dying, the Valentinian Gnosis mentions prominently two great and mysterious sacraments called ‘redemption’ (apolytrosis) and ‘bridal chamber’ respectively.†[1] .
Medieval era
The first recorded association of St. Valentine’s Day with romantic love was in the 14th century in England and France, where February 14 was traditionally the day on which birds paired off to mate. This belief is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules (1381). It was common during that era for lovers to exchange notes on this day and to call each other their “Valentinesâ€. A 14th century valentine is said to be in the collection of the British Library. It is probable that many of the legends about St. Valentine were invented during this period. Among the legends are ones that assert that:
* On the evening before St. Valentine was to be martyred for being a Christian, he passed a love note to his jailer’s daughter that read, “From Your Valentine.â€
* During a ban on marriages of Roman soldiers by the Emperor Claudius II, St. Valentine secretly helped arrange marriages.
In most versions of these legends, February 14 is the date associated with his martyrdom.
[It is important to note that as heterosexuality as an identity did not yet exist, women were overtly controlled my men, including in how they were paired to produce off-spring and care for men. Women “choosing†a partner was not part of the social male supremacist plan, and any efforts to promote such “freedom†in women would have been received by the male supremacist state hostility, that is, without card, flowers, and candy]
^^^^^^
CB: Actually, this sounds like the complete opposite of your interpretation. This sounds like a step toward greater equality between women and men in the choosing of mates.
Writing a love letter is appealing to the woman for her reciprocal love, rather than choicing her without her choicing back.
It sounds like the St. Valentine legend stands for the exact opposite of what you say it does: A representation of a historical development toward _romantic_ love as a premise for marriage rather than the old style arranged marriages by families. Romantic love indicates individual choice by both the woman and the man. The sweet persuasion of St. Valentine’s message indicates that the woman has a choice.
That’s probably why St. Valentine was executed. He was in conflict with male supremacist principles.
^^^^^^^^^
Valentine’s Day was probably imported into North America in the 19th century with [Christian, racist, colonialist male supremacist] settlers from Britain.
^^^^
CB: Yea, but it don’t sound like it is an expression of their male supremacy , rather the opposite.
^^^^^^
In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828 – 1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationery store, and she took her inspiration from an English valentine she had received. (Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual “Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionaryâ€.)
[It is important to note that what is now called “feminism†had made several appearances into European/colonialist American societies. Women had begun to articulate the human wish for freedom from men’s rule over them.]
In the United States in the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to include the giving of all manner of gifts, usually from a man to a woman.
^^^^^
CB: Which would be the opposite of a male supremacy. An expression of male supremacy would be men taking something from women.
^^^^^^
[This can be likened to the “contrition phase†of a battering heterosexual relationship, in which courtship and gifts are needed to make up for a lack of social equality, including in the heterosexual relationship.]
^^^^^
CB: Or a signpost of the long, long historical march of women’s liberation over these millenia.
^^^^^^^^
Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates. [â€Affection†with the man was expected as repayment.]
^^^^^^
CB: The woman gets as much out of “affection” as the man does.
^^^^
In the 1980s, the [capitalist, racist, colonialist] diamond industry began to promote Valentine’s Day as an occasion for giving jewelry. This brought heterosexism, patriarchy, commerce, and racism into yet another crowded “marriageâ€.
The day has come to be associated with a generic [heteronormative] platonic greeting of “Happy Valentine’s Day.â€
^^^^^
CB: NO, platonic is not hetero.
^^^^^^^
Those without a significant other [of an allegedly “opposite†sex] often speak with sarcasm by referring to Valentine’s Day as Singles’ Awareness Day.
^^^^
CB: No quotes necessary for opposite. There _are_ opposite sexes. Sex is defined by having two opposite sexes. See biology text.
^^^^^^
[Even in Wikipedia, the heterosexism of the holiday has not been noted, further invisibilising non-heterosexual realities.]
^^^
CB: As I speculated, and as the wikipedia note affirmed, the original holiday was probably associated with fertility ,and therefore with heterosex. The Christians would have died out if they had become predominantly ascetic and anti-sex or anti-heterosex. Sounds like St.Valentine helped saved Christianity from the fate of the Shakers -dying out because of detestation of “the flesh”. St. Valentine’s is a Christian fertility rite. To note that fertility rites promote heterosexual sex is redundant or something.
Maintaining the population in these olden days was not such a given as it is in modern times. Sometimes it was necessary to promote heterosexual relationships in order to reproduce the population.
This is the materialist approach to these issues.
^^^^^^
Controversy was brought forth on 16 February 2004 when Nickelodeon aired an episode of Blue’s Clues that was an obvious St. Valentine’s Day special, yet was referring to the holiday as “Love Dayâ€. Nickelodeon was widely criticized for attempting to evade the Christian connotations concerning the Catholic St. Valentine. [The Church still needs and wants control over women’s bodies and over how, and in what circumstances, women are to be sexually used by men. It publicly promotes sacred unions ONLY between women and men, but less publicly, yet systematically, exploits and rapes female and male prostitutes, and rapes nuns and children of “both†sexes. So much for “moralityâ€.]
Comment by Julian Real — 2/24/2006 @ 4:31 pm
27 February 2006, 2:53 pmJulian Real:
Hi Charles.
Thanks for your reply. The more I hear what you are saying the more I realise where we diverge in experience and theory.
First, you will have to explain to me what is “opposite” about women and men. This is like saying white people are the opposite of Black people, or rich people are the opposite of poor, or gay the opposite of heterosexual. What do you mean, exactly, by that word? That there are two does not connote “opposites” necessarily or even, usually.
Male supremacy takes two human biological forms and sets them up into hierarchical, oppositional, binary relationship, as if they were, naturally, opposite. But these sexes have all the same hormones (in varying proportions), both have nipples, both have labia (male labia are fused), both have a highly sensitive nerve-packed organ with a shaft and head (clitoris, penis), both have pleasure zones beyond those fixated on in patriarchy, both “biological sexes” cry, both bleed, both hurt. Bot can excel in sport, in academic pursuits, in caring for young. What’s opposite, then, about women and men?
I have more questions, but that would be a good place for me to gain some understanding in where you are coming from.
After that, I’ll get into what I mean when I say “heteronormative” and will also more fully explain why I don’t think human females are necessarily anti-patriarchal, any more than human males are necessarily pro-patriarchal (or male supremacist).
But help me with this matter of opposites. I don’t follow you there. If there are two kinds of rain, does that make them opposite to one another? Are female puppies “the opposite” of male puppies? (Aren’t they both basically the same, let alone opposite?) Earth is opposite to water, perhaps, if one looks at such things in certain ways. The night can be seen to be “the opposite” of day. But these human named oppositions are distortions of the truth. For water and earth have gradations (mud, for one), as does night and day (dusk and dawn, to name but two of them), and “opposition” is, in my understanding and experience, a philosophical, political perspective on a non-oppositional nature. This unnatural, fully social-political distinction, a grossly distortive one, is made real by calling things “the opposite” of other things, that are, in fact, more similar in every way than opposite in any way.
Male supremacy works to ensure that biological features are turned into “opposites” just as white supremacy does this with race. Help me understand why you think it’s that different with male supremacy than white supremacy, re: black/white, woman/man. Black and white people aren’t opposite after all, even if some race supremacists want to believe that!
And, in support of something you wrote: one way CRAP has historically controlled birthrates has been by forcibly sterilising poor women of Colour in the U.S. (You would think that Amerikkka would approve abortion ONLY for women of Colour!)
I see both Christian patriarchal institutions and secular patriarchal institutions as working “under the same political roof”, so to speak. Rather precisely the way I see Democrats and Republicans basically being the same party, but claiming to have much that they disagree over. As Susan Griffin noted, pornography rests in the shadow of the Christian Church. Mary Daly has written extensively about Christianity and S/M are one and the same thing, basically. A female friend of mine had S/M fantasies when she was four. She hadn’t been exposed to any pornography or rape at that point, but she had been exposed to teachings from the Christian Church, about the suffering of Jesus who was nailed to a cross. Ecstatic suffering, is that what they call it?
I think Christian sexual repression, and secular male supremacist oppression are non-oppositional phenomena, which like to pretend they are, much like Republicans and Democrats.
Christian patriarchs and secular patriarchs seek different methods of controlling women, but neither wants women to be free: as Dworkin notes in Right-Wing Women, the Right offers women the illusion of security in the home of one man, the Left offers women the illusion of freedom in the arms of many men. Neither Right nor Left has any interest in exposing how gender is made, politically.
Have you read the first three chapters (re: feminism and marxism), and chapter 6 (on sexuality) of “Toward A Feminist Theory Of The State” by MacKinnon? She does not “attack” Marx and Engels at all. She responsibly critiques them, quite respectfully, and uses their own analysis to critique liberal feminism. Let me know if you have read those chapters, as this discussion would benefit by both of us referencing the same mutually read material.
And, pest that I am, what did Barbara Smith say to you about your critique of heterosexism? I’m really curious. I’m glad you had the opportunity to speak with her, and since you let me know that you had that fortuitous discussion, doesn’t it make sense to write more about that conversation here? This seems the perfect conversation thread for the details of that exchange.
Peace and power to you, Charles, as we move towards greater mutual understanding.
27 February 2006, 10:15 pmJulian Real:
Hi Charles.
Thanks for your reply. The more I hear what you are saying the more I realise where we diverge in experience, perception, analysis, and theory.
First, you will have to explain to me what is “opposite” about women and men. This is like saying white people are the opposite of Black people, or rich people are the opposite of poor, or gay the opposite of heterosexual. What do you mean, exactly, by that word? That there are two does not connote “opposites” necessarily or even, usually.
Male supremacy takes two human biological forms and sets them up into hierarchical, oppositional, binary relationship, as if they were, naturally, opposite. But these sexes have all the same hormones (in varying proportions), both have nipples, both have labia (male labia are fused), both have a highly sensitive nerve-packed organ with a shaft and head (clitoris, penis), both have pleasure zones beyond those fixated on and fetishised in patriarchy, both “biological sexes” cry, both bleed, both hurt. Both can excel in sport, in academic pursuits, in caring for young. What’s opposite, then, about women and men?
As was humourously pointed out to me, Clay Aiken and “The Rock†may be more “opposite†to each other than most men and women are to one another. So, there are differences between women and men, and among men, and among women. Significant physical differences, in some cases, mild to moderate differences in other cases, in each of these compared groups (women to men, women to women, men to men). The feminist argument, a well-documented and obvious one, is that only the first pair is put in political and aesthetic “oppositionâ€, are called “opposites†even while there are some cultures in which the males and females are approximately the same body size and weight, such as the Mbuti Pygmies, and in that culture, there are no “gender†words at all. How do you explain that?
I have more questions, but that would be a good place for me to gain some understanding in where you are coming from.
After that, I’ll get into what I mean when I say “heteronormative” and will also more fully explain why I don’t think human females are necessarily anti-patriarchal, any more than human males are necessarily pro-patriarchal (or male supremacist).
But help me with this matter of opposites. I don’t follow you there. If there are two kinds of rain, does that make them opposite to one another? Are female puppies “the opposite” of male puppies? (Aren’t they both basically the same, let alone opposite?) Earth is opposite to water, perhaps, if one looks at such things in certain ways. The night can be seen to be “the opposite” of day. But these human named oppositions are distortions of the truth. For water and earth have gradations (mud, for one), as does night and day (dusk and dawn, to name but two of them), and “opposition” is, in my understanding and experience, a philosophical, political perspective on a non-oppositional nature. This unnatural, fully social-political distinction, a grossly distortive one, is made real by calling things “the opposite” of other things, that are, in fact, more similar in every way than opposite in any way.
Male supremacy works to ensure that biological features are turned into “opposites” just as white supremacy does this with race. Help me understand why you think it’s that different with male supremacy than white supremacy, re: black/white, woman/man. Black and white people aren’t opposite after all, even if some race supremacists want to believe that!
And, in support of something you wrote: one way CRAP has historically controlled birthrates has been by forcibly sterilising poor women of Colour in the U.S. (You would think that Amerikkka would approve abortion ONLY for women of Colour!)
I see both Christian patriarchal institutions and secular patriarchal institutions as working “under the same political roof”, so to speak. Rather precisely the way I see Democrats and Republicans basically being the same party, but claiming to have much that they disagree over. As Susan Griffin noted, pornography rests in the shadow of the Christian Church. Mary Daly has written extensively about Christianity and S/M are one and the same thing, basically. A female friend of mine had S/M fantasies when she was four. She hadn’t been exposed to any pornography or rape at that point, but she had been exposed to teachings from the Christian Church, about the suffering of Jesus who was nailed to a cross. Ecstatic suffering, is that what they call it?
I think Christian sexual repression, and secular male supremacist oppression are non-oppositional phenomena, which like to pretend they are, much like Republicans and Democrats.
Christian patriarchs and secular patriarchs seek different methods of controlling women, but neither wants women to be free: as Dworkin notes in Right-Wing Women, the Right offers women the illusion of security in the home of one man, the Left offers women the illusion of freedom in the arms of many men. Neither Right nor Left has any interest in exposing how gender is made, politically, and how both Left and Right are male supremacist.
Have you read the first three chapters (re: feminism and marxism), and chapter 6 (on sexuality) of “Toward A Feminist Theory Of The State” by MacKinnon? She does not “attack” Marx and Engels at all. She responsibly critiques them, quite respectfully, and uses their own analysis to critique liberal feminism. Let me know if you have read those chapters, as this discussion would benefit by both of us referencing the same mutually read material.
And, pest that I am, what did Barbara Smith say to you about your critique of heterosexism? I’m really curious. I’m glad you had the opportunity to speak with her, and since you let me know that you had that fortuitous discussion, doesn’t it make sense to write more about that conversation here? This seems the perfect conversation thread for the details of that exchange.
Peace and power to you, Charles, as we move towards greater mutual understanding.
28 February 2006, 1:23 pmJulian Real:
P.S. The social-political consequence of misperceiving women and men as opposites, is that it fuels the misogyny industries (advertising, fashion, cosmetics, and pornography, to name four)to portray the two social sexes as “opposites” aesthetically and socially, such that books like “Women are From Mars, Men are From Venus” can be promoted as plausible, and so that women are compelled to shave parts of their bodies they wouldn’t have to shave if eroticism in CRAP wasn’t tied to this false notion of opposites. Why can’t women have hairy legs? It’s “natural” after all? Why can’t women feel just fine, thank you, about having small breasts? Why can’t women feel acceptable if they have a moustache or light beard? Only because those industries, and other cultural factors, pretend women are supposed to look, somehow, like “the opposite” of men, and men get far more room to look however they want: heavy or thin, bearded or not, shaved legged or not, using cosmetics or not, using “product” in their hair or not, dressily sloppily or not.
This but one dimension, one layer, of the practical, real, danger of promoting the false idea that women and men are “opposites” of one another. We’re all human mammals. If the apes are not the “opposite” of humans, then how can human women be the opposite of human men? There are many other, even more dangerous levels to this, which has to do with gender trauma, and sexual violence against women, and men of many ethnicities fighting a losing battle to be “man enough”, as defined against what women in those ethnic groups are supposed to be. (Woman = peacekeeper in the home, man = warrior on the street, for example.)
I look forward to your reply.
28 February 2006, 1:33 pmR.S. Morris:
Thought y’all might find this interesting. I own the theater in a town of approx. 3000 here in central Wyoming. So, I come in last night and my manager takes me aside to tell me that our best employee has refused to touch the film “Brokeback Mountain” because he can’t support this abominable movie.
“I’ll still work the concession counter if you want, but I won’t string-up the film.”
We’re expecting a possible picket mobilization by the local Baptist church community. I have already let them know that I wholeheartedly support their right to boycott the movie and will give them permission to pace back-and-forth on the property. Heck, I’ll even bring ‘em out lemonade. Gotta stand by my values, right?
28 February 2006, 4:22 pmDoyle Saylor:
Julian writes,
Cognition, if I am understanding the way you are using the term (correct me if I am not) is not the only tool for registering sexism. Feeling the man’s fist on the woman’s pregnant belly, feeling the burning and humiliation of rape, the acid splashed on the face of a woman by a man she refuses to marry,…
Doyle,
Let’s start here with your above point. To me if I have sex with someone male or female I’m doing some work. It can be fun or drudgery. The focus would seem to be on the sex organs, but I’m influenced by disability rights and I see something else there. If I can’t tell a woman apart from a man, can’t recognize the gender structure (have the disability called face blindness), the critical way to determine the social structure being built by having sex is exposed. This is why sexual practices can vary from culture to culture but Patriarchy dominates the process. The main tool that holds all this together is not being addressed which is the work of social connection via the face. Which animals can’t do in their social structure.
In a broader sense if I can’t know the difference between men and women I can’t make a sexist system work. The ability to know ‘gender’ in human culture is brainwork that has an origin in the family where children learn to talk by a process of seeing the mom’s face as a child learns a language.
Your remark above takes extreme examples of sexism to talk about recognition. But how is it linked to say the U.S. economic system? The legal system formally criminalizes such behavior. We know that is hypocrisy but my point is sexism really not particularly dependent upon crude tools of oppression. Powerful women uphold patriarchy as well as men.
To break Patriarchy one must find the foundation and understand why it divides human beings from each other and subjugates women.
Julian writes,
But you ignore in that statement the things that are politically fixed by male supremacist societies, that are not at all “naturalâ€, such as date rape, pornography, and prostitution.
Doyle,
Similarly, you focus upon extreme oppression to make a point, but this doesn’t touch upon a foundation that would allow us to decisively liberate sexuality, and more importantly women from Patriarchy. If bigotry is a ‘face’ based cognition that does not depend upon the particulars of oppression techniques then we don’t have to rely upon inconclusive pieces of repression to make change or understand sexism. Recognition gives us a way to tear apart sexism in a way that human beings can by cultural means practically construct.
In practical terms for a long long time people have culturally understood the face is the ‘mask’ upon which everyone builds their social identity. The main difference between us right now, and say the Romans is the production processes capitalism have given us to alter reality or produce and reproduce the communications products of the face. The communications structure is fundamentally face based. Computing communications is face based technology.
The face is a work process that establishes how ‘we (both sexes)’ ‘know’ society and it’s structure. The products of the face (which are quite complex since we are talking about language and parallel emotions shown upon the face) are over produced by current technology. Here the distribution of social identity can be then understood as the means to ‘liberate’ sex, liberate women once and for all from Patriarchy.
Why do women succumb to social standards of ‘beauty’? They believe that society tells them the work they do with that beauty/face is what they need to succeed as ‘women’.
Just one aspect of women’s work tells us something. The home and children are the ‘private’ sphere. The production of social connection is made there. Men step into the private sphere from outside in the public sphere to exert physical control. The production of social connection in this private sphere is not even on the horizon of the left. All left activity is ‘public’ social connection. So the foundation of social connection is privileged restricted face based resources in the private sphere. In which all the fundamental tools of capitalism then shape the work of social connection. In other words this awaits some solid practical thought on what is to be done.
A Marxist in my view will look at the labor process with the eye upon liberation in the foundation of society that reflects the break up of Patriarchy. The labor product is face based social connection.
28 February 2006, 8:02 pmThanks,
Doyle Saylor
Julian Real:
Speech rights tend to favour the power of the oppressor, so what are your values? Will you speak out in support of the film and protest the bigots. That’s free speech too–yours. Good luck to you.
1 March 2006, 3:38 pmR.S. Morris:
Yeah, I’ve made my stand. I haven’t seen the film, but I am bringing it in against the general sentiments of my provencial community. Every time someone comes in to tell me I “shouldn’t” or “better not” get this terrible movie, I tell them what I’ve been telling people for the entire nine years I’ve run this theater: if you don’t want to see a movie, don’t come see it–however I will continue to show films that push the status quo, at least a little bit.
My stand for now will focus on free expression of ideas rather than specifically touting a particular film’s “agenda” (though I don’t necessarily think that “Brokeback Mountain” was meant to be an agenda movie). People need to know that their local theater does not bend to the whims of any bigotted political ideology–”Right” or “Left.” Economics continues to be my particular ball and chain, but if it’s an important film, and it will bring in enough money to help keep our doors open, then we will show it.
I’d be happier running an independent theater in a college town, but I’ll do what I can from rural America.
As always, if anyone has advice on how to subvert the provinciality of my community, please feel free to throw it to me.
1 March 2006, 4:42 pmJulian Real:
Hi R.S.
(First, to Doyle: thanks for your reply and I’ll respond hopefully later today.)
I really applaud you, and hope you do not face any harm in your efforts to, as you well note, simply show a movie in a movie theatre!
Given your placement in that community, it sounds like you have a good sense of what will work well, in your situtation. Grace can go wonders, in situations where it is called for, and so perhaps serving lemonade would humanise you sufficiently to make the protestors realize there’s no “devil inside” your theatre.
I agree, that the movie is a very well directed love story, and it is and isn’t crucial to see it as a “gay love story”. It is and isn’t because of the timmes in which we live. All people have should be seen with the dignity and respect we afford the most privileged among us, and we all can need, at times, to be seen in the particular locations we occupy, as Jew, as woman, as a man of Colour, as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. There is a gay theme to this movie, but that doesn’t make it “not” a human story. Any gay story is a human story, just as every heterosexual or bisexual story is as well. This is what is missed: that when stories focus on those who are socially marginalised, economically disenfranchised, or politically oppressed, the story can then only be seen as a story about “that kind of person”, as if they aren’t as representative of humanity as anyone else. This is a tragedy of the bigoted human psyche to see beyond itself and its distortions.
Go with your instincts, R.S. They seem to have served you well to date. I hope the theatre is full, and you are safe.
Peace to you.
2 March 2006, 1:06 pmR.S. Morris:
Thanks for your kind words, Julian. I also think it is important to view this movie as a “gay love story” (as long as it truly is done with respect and quality) and my way of helping to move that agenda forward is to make this film viewable to begin with.
My instincts tell me that making no loud noises around the event will help to keep people from being artificially polarized one way or the other. We have already seen a much larger body of customers who we would not have originally pegged as “open-minded” who have expressed their support for us showing the film.
I have personally experienced one person’s attitude switching from anger, more toward grudging irritation after I explained my ethical consistency (example: we showed “Passion of the Christ” even after numerous people expressed their desire that we not show this “heretical and offensive” film–then we made tons of money off the movie that week…go figure). Not very many people here are in a position to even comprehend my particular viewpoint on non-heterosexual relationship issues, but they do get it when I tell them “I showed your movie when other people told me not to, now you need to be a little tolerant–or not, because I’m going to keep doing things the same way.”
They get it more often than not.
Keep up the fight!
2 March 2006, 4:31 pmJulian Real:
Hi R.S.
I think that’s a wise approach, and consistency and integrity are so important in this time of corruption. You have been running the theatre for a while, and so you must be doing a lot right. Sounds like this approach, too, is the right medicine, so to speak.
I have two very close friends who are devoutly Christian, a heterosexual married couple, and I find that as long as I am respectful of them, they tend to be respectful of me. They both know and honor that I am a Jew and am gay. My gayness is a non-issue for them, genuinely. There’s no “condescending tolerance” or “pseudo-acceptance” from them. Just openness and love and warmth.
I can tell them I respect the Jewish prophet named Jesus and that I support his stand against State oppression and corruption, his call to a Divine love that transcends social categories, and the reality (if one accepts the story) that he did not worship or follow human leaders, and they can respect me being radical feminist, because they know my heart is sincere, as I know their hearts are sincere. They are not pro-rape, or pro-exploitation. We share common ground. What the Left sometimes forgets is that this capacity of people on the Right to “get it” about some forms of oppression, doesn’t place feminism “in bed” with the Right. It means human beings of any political persuasion are not “just” their political persuasion, they are also, in many instances, caring, suffering people, who can relate to and be compassionately responsive to the suffering of others.
They are two of the dearest people I know, and are very funny too, and we thoroughly enjoy one other’s company at most holidays. Mutual respect goes a long way to building bridges, and caring community. This past Christmas we watched a W.C. Fields short film from the 1930s that was so hilarious we were all about crying from laughing so hard. Reactive polarization “rigideology” are dangerous things, in my experience, and I struggle daily not to succumb to either.
Keep me informed as to how this plays out for you, and thank you for showing the film, too. I hope it wins Best Picture on Sunday at the Oscars, but won’t be disappointed if Crash wins, even if it is primarily (only) an interpersonal understanding of various forms of ethnic and cultural bigotry, which doesn’t adequately explore the institutional dimensions of racism.
I am so saddened and angered that the struggle of Native Americans for self-determination, cultural preservation, and re-acquisition of the land of their recent ancestors, is so invisible in popular media as a serious justice and compassion issue. (This on-going genocide at home is a tricky thing for our corporate-owned government to find a way to discuss honestly.)
I hope gay, lesbian, and bi folks feel safe to venture out to see Brokeback Mountain, if it is their kind of film, and that many heterosexuals do as well, and see that profound love doesn’t necessarily have a gender or a specific sexuality.
Peace.
2 March 2006, 10:33 pmJulian Real:
Hi Doyle.
DS: In a broader sense if I can’t know the difference between men and women I can’t make a sexist system work. The ability to know ‘gender’ in human culture is brainwork that has an origin in the family where children learn to talk by a process of seeing the mom’s face as a child learns a language.
Your remark above takes extreme examples of sexism to talk about recognition. But how is it linked to say the U.S. economic system? The legal system formally criminalizes such behavior. We know that is hypocrisy but my point is sexism really not particularly dependent upon crude tools of oppression. Powerful women uphold patriarchy as well as men.
To break Patriarchy one must find the foundation and understand why it divides human beings from each other and subjugates women.
JR: On a basic level, on an interpersonal level, I think what those focused on “gender difference” which, in patriarchy means male supremacy, is the differences among men, and the differences among women. This assumption that the shape of flesh between the thighs, and the proportions of various hormones means “gender”, and “opposite” ones at that (!) means we have sufficiently fetishized gender to the point that we see it like a specific tree, missing the forest of our deeper humanity, which transcends gender, race, class, etc. But this interpersonal error, as it were, is not only brainwork, or produced in the family through child rearing, as it is massively important, in my view, what those caregivers bring to the child by way of their own genderedness. My father was a musician, my grandfather loved opera. No males in my family cared much about being butch. This is significant in terms of how one learns what being a human is. Both my grandmothers worked outside of the home at different points in their lives, gaining esteem and an independence of identity through that part of their lives. They were both blessed, that is, privileged, to not have racism and classism as obstacles to what jobs they got. This means they could find work that was not, in and of itself, degrading and demoralising.
Patriarchy and capitalism are very entwined, of course, as patriarchy is with every other economic form currently on Earth, with global corporate capitalism currently prevailing, if perhaps also dying. It is not the capitalism in capitalist patriarchy which is the core “mechanism” maintaining male supremacist harm, though it exploits and profits from it, and certainly reinforces it in many ways. But the creation of political entities, man and woman, and the “idea” that women are for men, sexually and otherwise, is an idea beyond economics. Rape and battery do not have an economic system behind them: they have male supremacist ideology behind them. This is the feminist point, I think. We can end capitalism and still have rape and battery, and that is not a sufficiently humane world for women and others who care about people living with dignity and safety from systemic harm. Stan’s book Sex and War gets into all of this very well.
I believe it is this male supremacist (patriarchal) ideology, and the many unquestioned assumptions that accompany it, about what it is to be human, about human nature, about the “nature” of gender and sexuality, that result in phenomena like rape and coercive sex, and disrespect of women generally. But these distortive “ideas” or “ideology” is also socially real, lived, experienced, in harm, in degradation, in humiliation, and in gender trauma, which no one escapes, as far as I can tell, and so it is not only the “idea” which must be challenged, but all systems which reinforce and regulate gender and sexuality to be founded on some notion of “opposite sexes”.
DS: Similarly, you focus upon extreme oppression to make a point, but this doesn’t touch upon a foundation that would allow us to decisively liberate sexuality, and more importantly women from Patriarchy. If bigotry is a ‘face’ based cognition that does not depend upon the particulars of oppression techniques then we don’t have to rely upon inconclusive pieces of repression to make change or understand sexism. Recognition gives us a way to tear apart sexism in a way that human beings can by cultural means practically construct.
In practical terms for a long long time people have culturally understood the face is the ‘mask’ upon which everyone builds their social identity. The main difference between us right now, and say the Romans is the production processes capitalism have given us to alter reality or produce and reproduce the communications products of the face. The communications structure is fundamentally face based. Computing communications is face based technology.
JR: I’m not sure I fully follow you, and please explain further your thesis here, but I will proceed with a response and you can let me know if it is, indeed, a response!
Social identity is both built through psychological, intra-psychic means, and interpersonal, social means, and political institutional means. Practically speaking, I may see humans as human, not genders, primarily, but if I walk up behind a formerly street raped woman, on a dark night, she would likely experience some degree of terror. She has not even seen my face. My closest friends have tended to be feminist women, not because of their gender, but because of their politics, their ethics, their values, and the way they conduct their interpersonal relationships, and because they see the importance of linking personal behaviour to larger social justice struggles that must take on institutional harm, industrial harm, systemic trans-personal harm, such as discrimination and bigotry.
I am perhaps calling up too many instances of “extreme oppression” but if you read my piece earlier in Stan’s blog, the Trauma of the Gendered Child, you will note that I think that harm is very normalised in patriarchy, not called harm at all, and sometimes to get people’s attention, we have to speak of the more overt expressions of something that is also so normalised as to be invisible. So, environmentalists may show shots of clear-cut hillsides, and show images of frogs with gross deformities, to make the larger point that “something’s going on folks”. Do you see what I mean? Corporate global capitalism does many forms of harm. If a film is exposing that harm, it is more likely to show extreme poverty, or horrendous sweatshop conditions in the Third World, than it is to show how normal middle class work dehumanises and degrades humanity. Partly this is out of respect for those most egregiously harmed. Men talking about how their sexuality has been damaged by patriarchy, such that their emotions have trouble being integrated, vulnerably, with sexual behaviour, is something to note. But when all of my female friends are survivors of rape, and incest or molestation, or prostitution, I think it a bit indulgent and self-serving to focus only on how my sexuality has been harmed in that particular way, though I don’t wish to minimise any form of harm or injury to the human spirit or psyche. (I am also a survivor of sexual assault, incest, and molestation, btw.) I would hope that any humanitarian or social justice seeker is seeking and working towards a world without rape, and other global atrocities.
DS: The face is a work process that establishes how ‘we (both sexes)’ ‘know’ society and it’s structure. The products of the face (which are quite complex since we are talking about language and parallel emotions shown upon the face) are over produced by current technology. Here the distribution of social identity can be then understood as the means to ‘liberate’ sex, liberate women once and for all from Patriarchy.
JR: Help me out here, Doyle. What is it that you are saying needs to happen to free women from patriarchy? Could you use another discursive style, if possible, as I’m not able to follow what you wrote above. (I apologise.)
DS: Why do women succumb to social standards of ‘beauty’? They believe that society tells them the work they do with that beauty/face is what they need to succeed as ‘women’.
JR: The women I know often absorb those standards of beauty because they are the only standards, and women are taught they must strive to be beautiful, and alluring, and sexually desirable–often meaning round-eyed, tight-skinned, fair-skinned, large-breasted, hairless in most areas people naturally have hair, to heterosexual men in heterosexist, racist, ageist patriarchy. Or they encounter disapproval, disregard, or abuse if they don’t strive towards those standards. A simple media example is Simon Cowell of American Idol, routinely criticizing larger women, telling them “You’ll never make it if you remain fat.” Also, at least one quarter of all women are sexually assaulted by men who often use pornography or pornographic standards in the abuse, which can be terribly confusing and traumatising, and can teach women that’s what they are worth and for. Disproportionately women in prostitution are incest survivors, and left home to escape, only to be taken in by a caring pimp who planned all along to make money off her incest-damage, by reinforcing and coercing her to believe life on the street turning tricks is what is is meant to do. Women succumb to standards when they have no choice but to do so, if they want social acceptance, as most of us do. Men do not look like “feminized women” because men are not rewarded for looking this way, or valued, or respected, or treated with adoration or less pleasing attention for looking that way. If men did gain positive attention and status, the possibility of finding a love-partner, of finding comfort, by dressing as CRAP’s version of feminized women, they would do so. Men appear as they do because they are rewarded for doing so, and in part to avoid the brutality that besets men in CRAP’s feminised women’s drag, by sticking to patriarchal man-standards of appearance and behaviour.
DS: Just one aspect of women’s work tells us something. The home and children are the ‘private’ sphere.
The home and children are the political sphere, as political as any other sphere, in patriarchy. Only in the West, primarily, are children privatised. In many parts of the world they are exploited labour, often sexual slaves or prostitutes.
JR: Men step into the private sphere from outside in the public sphere to exert physical control.
JR: Men learn to exert physical control of women in the public sphere as well. That’s why feminists like MacKinnon constructed workplace sexual harassment law.
DS: The production of social connection in this private sphere is not even on the horizon of the left.
JR: If you mean the Left ignores how heterosexual men’s behaviour intimately assaults women’s dignity and esteem at home, I agree. But, excepting feminists on the the Left, it also ignores how men socially.publicly assault women’s dignity and esteem, because they are women, that is.
DS: All left activity is ‘public’ social connection. So the foundation of social connection is privileged restricted face based resources in the private sphere. In which all the fundamental tools of capitalism then shape the work of social connection. In other words this awaits some solid practical thought on what is to be done.
JR: Are you also saying that patriarchy, or male supremacist forces, do not also shape the public and private spheres, rendering each dangerous for women who encounter men, intimately or anonymously?
DS: A Marxist in my view will look at the labor process with the eye upon liberation in the foundation of society that reflects the break up of Patriarchy. The labor product is face based social connection.
I don’t follow this, Doyle. I’m sorry. What Marxists call “labour” is partial, in my view. It misses the labour of becoming gendered, of maintaining gender dualism, of the work women and children do that is not men’s work and is not readily seen as labour. The creation and maintenance of public and private spheres, with an eye to exploitive work systems and identities, still ignores what it is that constructs binary gender in every other economic system, which allows male human beings to think they are men, behave oppressively towards women, and treat women differently than men sometimes treat each other. Don’t get me wrong: I think men learn to treat one another horribly, and would hate for THAT to be the standard of how women are treated. I think a new humanity must be born, realised, supported in caring community, institutionalised if institutions exist, and habituated and normalised. We will see what routes get us there, if humanity decides it wishes to get there at all.
2 March 2006, 11:57 pmDoyle Saylor:
Hello Julian,
Thanks for engaging me in this discussion. I’m also glad to see Stan offering this sort of space to work on the issues that ought to be high on the left agenda, sexual liberation (primarily I guess at this point non-hetero monogamous sexuality), women’s liberation, ending patriarchy.
JR: I’m not sure I fully follow you, and please explain further your thesis here,
DS: I’m trying to identify the work process where gender is defined in human society. The key issue, emotion structure, and how it is done via the face, is in general ignored by Enlightenment Rationalism, and has not come to terms with the implications of sexuality.
There are thinkers now who do address emotion structure, for example, William Reddy at Duke University, and Martha Nussbaum at the University of Chicago. Nussbaum’s emotion structure theory applied to three critical areas of ‘rights’; Women’s, Same Sex social connections, and People with Disabilities. She is a liberal but her thoughts adapt to a Socialist view as well.
So for example where you write,
JR: Practically speaking, I may see humans as human, not genders, primarily, but if I walk up behind a formerly street raped woman, on a dark night, she would likely experience some degree of terror. She has not even seen my face.
DS: I would say you are not referencing a theory of Emotion Structure; you are pointing at the ‘vehemence’ or intensity of emotion rather than understanding the emotion structure. Nussbaum writes that some emotion is ‘social’ and some is ‘asocial’. So can you distinguish in your example how a woman’s emotional reaction is shaped by social and asocial structures?
Nussbaum proposes that disgust and shame are the asocial emotions, from which bigotry is founded. Meaning those feelings are walls between one self and some ‘other’. That means a society that makes laws based upon those feelings, enshrines bigotry. One example she gave which is highly telling. This is a true example. A guy in the Eastern U.S. walking along in the woodsy outdoors sees two lesbian campers making love and murders them. His defense was he was disgusted by what he saw and in a passionate rage killed them. Nussbaum points out that this is the most frequent defense against gay bashing hate crimes. That various murders across the U.S. are legally defended by reference to ‘disgust or shame’ the defendants felt.
You are trying to reference emotion structure by tying patriarchy to rape and physical violence, but that points at ‘vehement’ emotions not emotion structure. If one tries to use vehemence, then one falls for the ‘rationalist’ rag bag of tricks that emotion is ‘irrational’. One must give credit to vehement emotions that people really feel and find an emotion structure that stops the patriarchy without demonizing vehemence.
JR: (I am also a survivor of sexual assault, incest, and molestation, btw.)
DS: So you have very good reason to want to tear down patriarchy. But what’s the emotion structure involved in the above? I’ll roughly define three social aspects of emotion structure; gender/language, private/public split, emotion/face.
1. gender/language. Language is the main way we construct ‘gender’. Meaning the ‘culture’ of gender, not the reality of bodies. Understanding how language is produced is important to attacking patriarchal structures.
2. private/public. Some sex is supposed to be ‘private’ to the bedroom. So having homosexual sex in a public place is against the law. Having heterosexual sex in public places is against the law. Hence, there is no way for the ‘public’ to directly ‘know’ the private. Hence the state decides to keep out of the bedroom but simply lets men do what they want in the bedroom. Keeping out of the bedroom usually reflects communist as well as capitalist states.
3. emotion/face. Sexual politics means emotional connection processes by partnering with others via having sex and intimacy. Emotions arise cognitively (a form of brainwork) and are mainly expressed by the face in parallel with the spoken word (separate streams of information being produced). Hence, to accurately represent sexual politics, emotion structure has to be accounted for in partnering. For the left, that means understanding the work process emotions represent and how to redistribute the products of emotional connection. We tend to see this activity as ‘private’ meaning how one could ‘manufacture’ intimacy? However, like other forms of brainwork, intimacy is information and subject to the same laws of production as making cars, or desktop computing, and so on.
Whatever happened to you in your self account, your youth’s ability to speak to others didn’t expose to public protection your plight and your feelings were discarded in satisfying others appetites.
JR: Help me out here, Doyle. What is it that you are saying needs to happen to free women from patriarchy?
DS: I’m using the concept of ‘Emotion Structure’. Women are bound by using the face to socially connect the family. To end patriarchy, one then uses the emotion structure to equalize society, or end unequal social relations based upon gender.
Where emotion structure now controls patriarchal relationships then we ‘plan’ an alternate not patriarchal emotions structure. We know the foundation of patriarchy is the family emotion structure of connection, so we regulate social connection so that men and women connect by equality.
JR: Men learn to exert physical control of women in the public sphere as well. That’s why feminists like MacKinnon constructed workplace sexual harassment law.
DS: MacKinnon and Dworkin pioneered some aspects of what I am advocating.
I am of the opinion, that Dworkin and MacKinnon lacked insight to emotion structure, and to what it takes to really address sexual partnerships. Dworkin seems to me caught up in a confusion about vehemence rendering sex. Dworkin didn’t realize what Nussbaum points at; asocial and social emotions and their role in shaping bigotry/patriarchy.
I believe beyond Nussbaum, Reddy asserts an emotion framework to the whole of society and gives us a roadmap through examining the French Revolution down to the Terror and beyond. Based upon Reddy we can construct a social movement arising out of emotion structure that breaches the private sphere barrier protecting patriarchy.
JR: excepting feminists on the Left, it also ignores how men socially publicly assault women’s dignity and esteem, because they are women, that is.
DS: Stan is a remarkable leftwing man. There is blight in the left in general in which no one addresses the male orientation of the left. There are of course left wing females like Angela Davis, but in general the left is still male dominated. There is no way in a technical sense to address the foundation of this unless one refers to the emotion structure in patriarchy. This has to go right into the bedroom.
JR: What Marxists call “labour†is partial, in my view. It misses the labour of becoming gendered, of maintaining gender dualism, of the work women and children do that is not men’s work and is not readily seen as labour.
DS: We agree here. Marxism has been unable to address gender issues because Marxism was infected with the Enlightenment ‘rationalism’, ‘scientific socialism’ as is the common expression. Emotion structure is verboten in rationalism.
JR: It is not the capitalism in capitalist patriarchy which is the core “mechanism†maintaining male supremacist harm, though it exploits and profits from it, and certainly reinforces it in many ways. But the creation of political entities, man and woman, and the “idea†that women are for men, sexually and otherwise, is an idea beyond economics.
DS: Economic order does shape patriarchy. Some Indian (Native Americans) ethnic groups are female family headed. These are small societies existing apart from the U.S. culture and where women have a much different say so in their society. These are crude models though. They don’t really address how gigantic world wide social change could come out of a computing culture. Women do a lot of cheap, and free labor to hold things together. That has to end.
This is a very good conversation JR.
3 March 2006, 1:09 pmThanks,
Doyle Saylor
Charles Brown:
* Hi Charles.
Thanks for your reply. The more I hear what you are saying the more I realise where we diverge in experience and theory.
First, you will have to explain to me what is “opposite†about women and men. This is like saying white people are the opposite of Black people, or rich people are the opposite of poor, or gay the opposite of heterosexual. What do you mean, exactly, by that word? That there are two does not connote “opposites†necessarily or even, usually.
^^^^
CB: Sex is a biological concept. It is a form of reproduction of lifeforms, species. It originated about a billion years ago. Before that all lifeforms on earth reproduced by cloning. In cloning an individual member of the species reproduces itself without any interaction with another individual member of the species. In _sexual_ reproduction, there are two types of individuals. It takes one from each type copulating in order to reproduce a new member of the species. If you have two individuals of the same sexual type , they cannot reproduce. The two types are _opposite_ sexes. It takes one from each of the opposite sexes to have fertile intercourse.
Got it ?
3 March 2006, 6:43 pmCharles Brown:
Hi Charles.
Thanks for your reply. The more I hear what you are saying the more I realise where we diverge in experience and theory.
First, you will have to explain to me what is “opposite†about women and men. This is like saying white people are the opposite of Black people, or rich people are the opposite of poor, or gay the opposite of heterosexual. What do you mean, exactly, by that word? That there are two does not connote “opposites†necessarily or even, usually.
^^^^
CB: Sex is a biological concept. It is a form of reproduction of lifeforms. It originated about a billion years ago. Before that all lifeforms on earth reproduced by cloning. In cloning an individual member of the species. reproduces itself without any interaction with another individual member of the species. In sexual reproduction, there are two types of individuals. It takes one from each type copulating in order to reproduce a new member of the species. If you have two individuals of the same sexual type , they cannot reproduce. The two types are opposite sexes.
Got it ?
^^^^^^
Male supremacy takes two human biological forms and sets them up into hierarchical, oppositional, binary relationship, as if they were, naturally, opposite.
^^^
CB: They are _naturally_ opposite. It is precisely the natural sense in which they are opposite. Humans reproduce sexually ( not by cloning) and therefore the human species has sexes. To have sexes means to have opposite sexes, by definition. Two opposite sexes is part of the definition of sex. You can’t have one sex. The notion of one sex is nonsensical, because two opposite or complementary sexes is inherent to the definition of sex.
^^^^^^
But these sexes have all the same hormones (in varying proportions), both have nipples, both have labia (male labia are fused), both have a highly sensitive nerve-packed organ with a shaft and head (clitoris, penis), both have pleasure zones beyond those fixated on in patriarchy, both “biological sexes†cry, both bleed, both hurt. Bot can excel in sport, in academic pursuits, in caring for young. What’s opposite, then, about women and men?
^^^^
CB: Only one two members of the opposite sexes can have _fertile_ sex together. A man and man can’t impregnate each other. A woman and woman can’t impregnate each other. Only a woman can be pregnant by a man. Only a woman can be pregnant. Only a man can impregnate. This is a rigorous definition of the oppositeness of the sexes, their complementarity.
Also, in humans there is sexual dimorphism. Contra your discussion above, biologists have discerned general physical differences between the sexes, beyond their basic oppositeness as described above in terms of fertile sex. For example, in general, using normal curves and all that, men are physically stronger than women. This basic difference is why domestic violence is not an even-steven thing between the sexes. The problem and feminist issue of men beating women is a big problem. The problem of women beating men is not. This is because of sexual dimorphism, generally men are stronger than women. If not for this general difference between the sexes, domestic violence wouldn’t be a feminist issue.
Similarly with rape. The sexual dimorphism of men and women makes it that men can rape women, but not vica versa. Rape is not a symetrical problem between the sexes. It is uniquely a male crime exactly because of sexual dimorphism, the general physical differences between women and men. This has to do with strength, but also the qualitative difference between the sexual organs of males and females. A woman can’t very well force a man get turgid, the necessary condition for the man to have sex with the woman.
Also, women have a broader pelvis. In paleontological fossil finds, females can be distinguished from males based on sexual dimorphism , including pelvis width, and a few other characteristics. They never have a problem categorizing a fossil as male or femele. This is a good way to demonstrate the acutality of sexual dimorphism, and the difference between the sexes.
^^^^^^
I have more questions, but that would be a good place for me to gain some understanding in where you are coming from.
^^^^^
CB: Should be crystal clear if you read the above. If not, I can’t help you.
^^^^^^
After that, I’ll get into what I mean when I say “heteronormative†and will also more fully explain why I don’t think human females are necessarily anti-patriarchal, any more than human males are necessarily pro-patriarchal (or male supremacist).
But help me with this matter of opposites. I don’t follow you there. If there are two kinds of rain, does that make them opposite to one another?
^^^^
CB: If one form of rain couldn’t fall without out the other falling first, or something like that, then there might be some oppositionality between them.
^^^^^^
Are female puppies “the opposite†of male puppies? (Aren’t they both basically the same, let alone opposite?)
^^^^^
CB: Yes, they are opposite sexes, in the same sense as human males and females are opposites. It’s like yin and yang. Interconnected opposites. Unity and struggle of opposites. They are different but necessary to each other.
^^^^
Earth is opposite to water, perhaps, if one looks at such things in certain ways. The night can be seen to be “the opposite†of day.
^^^^
CB: I don’t know about the earth and water. I guess there could be some context in which they are. Night and day sort of works as opposites yes.
Do you think there is such a thing as opposites of any kind ? Or is “opposite”just a word that has no actuality in the real world ?
^^^^
But these human named oppositions are distortions of the truth. For water and earth have gradations (mud, for one), as does night and day (dusk and dawn, to name but two of them), and “opposition†is, in my understanding and experience, a philosophical, political perspective on a non-oppositional nature. This unnatural, fully social-political distinction, a grossly distortive one, is made real by calling things “the opposite†of other things, that are, in fact, more similar in every way than opposite in any way.
^^^^^
CB: Well, yes in Hegelian dialectics things turn into their opposites. We do not hold opposites hard and fast in opposition to each other at every moment of our thinking about them.
^^^^^^^
Male supremacy works to ensure that biological features are turned into “opposites†just as white supremacy does this with race. Help me understand why you think it’s that different with male supremacy than white supremacy, re: black/white, woman/man. Black and white people aren’t opposite after all, even if some race supremacists want to believe that!
^^^^
CB: Male and female is biological, goes back to the origin of sex a billion years ago, goes back to the origin of the human species.
Race is an invalid biological category, a political and social category beginning with capitalism, established as a basis for slavery and colonialism by the Europeans as they conquered the world.
We aim to abolish the concept of race. We don’t aim to abolish sex.
^^^^^^^^
And, in support of something you wrote: one way CRAP has historically controlled birthrates has been by forcibly sterilising poor women of Colour in the U.S. (You would think that Amerikkka would approve abortion ONLY for women of Colour!)
I see both Christian patriarchal institutions and secular patriarchal institutions as working “under the same political roofâ€, so to speak. Rather precisely the way I see Democrats and Republicans basically being the same party, but claiming to have much that they disagree over. As Susan Griffin noted, pornography rests in the shadow of the Christian Church. Mary Daly has written extensively about Christianity and S/M are one and the same thing, basically. A female friend of mine had S/M fantasies when she was four. She hadn’t been exposed to any pornography or rape at that point, but she had been exposed to teachings from the Christian Church, about the suffering of Jesus who was nailed to a cross. Ecstatic suffering, is that what they call it?
^^^^^^
CB; Yes, that common trope between them has occurred to me. Interesting that your female friend had that fantasy.
^^^^^^
I think Christian sexual repression, and secular male supremacist oppression are non-oppositional phenomena, which like to pretend they are, much like Republicans and Democrats.
Christian patriarchs and secular patriarchs seek different methods of controlling women, but neither wants women to be free: as Dworkin notes in Right-Wing Women, the Right offers women the illusion of security in the home of one man, the Left offers women the illusion of freedom in the arms of many men. Neither Right nor Left has any interest in exposing how gender is made, politically.
^^^^^^
CB: The Left does. The Left has been the source of discovering gender. Engels’ , a bigtime lefty, gives a big thesis on the origin of gender in his book. It’s not a good idea to get away from the Communist analysis of gender. We need to expand it ( see my paper) , but not get away from the first advances in that area made by the Left.
^^^^^^^
Have you read the first three chapters (re: feminism and marxism), and chapter 6 (on sexuality) of “Toward A Feminist Theory Of The State†by MacKinnon? She does not “attack†Marx and Engels at all. She responsibly critiques them, quite respectfully, and uses their own analysis to critique liberal feminism. Let me know if you have read those chapters, as this discussion would benefit by both of us referencing the same mutually read material.
^^^^^
CB: No. I’m glad to hear this. I was going on Stan’s essays on the Left dropping Engels on gender. I’m against the Left dropping Engels on gender.
^^^^^^
And, pest that I am, what did Barbara Smith say to you about your critique of heterosexism? I’m really curious. I’m glad you had the opportunity to speak with her, and since you let me know that you had that fortuitous discussion, doesn’t it make sense to write more about that conversation here? This seems the perfect conversation thread for the details of that exchange.
^^^^
CB: She didn’t say anything much. I just handed her a short written note on my difference with the use of “heterosexism”.
Peace and power to you, Charles, as we move towards greater mutual understanding.
^^^^
Ditto
3 March 2006, 7:31 pmJulian Real:
Hi Charles.
Thanks for that reply.
I think you are carrying lots of human made perceptions and assumptions, rooted in male supremacist reality, into what you say below, that I will do my best to expose and discuss further. Thanks for taking the time to write what you did. It sounds like you’re pretty frustrated, as perhaps we both have been with one another here on the land of the blog, but I am still holding out hope that we can write to and with one another, towards greater mutual understanding and empowerment.
CB: Sex is a biological concept. It is a form of reproduction of lifeforms. It originated about a billion years ago. Before that all lifeforms on earth reproduced by cloning. In cloning an individual member of the species. reproduces itself without any interaction with another individual member of the species. In sexual reproduction, there are two types of individuals. It takes one from each type copulating in order to reproduce a new member of the species. If you have two individuals of the same sexual type , they cannot reproduce. The two types are opposite sexes.
JR: Biology is a human enterprise, a field of study by subjective, worldview-shaped humans trying to pretend they can fully understand the world as if it is entirely outside of them, that is, objective. And sex is a human concept, greatly impacted by many political assumptions and values. Yes, the human animal tends to be, and generally is, sexually dimorphic.
I can imagine how frustrating it might be if you are sensing I am trying, through post-structuralist tricks of the trade, to avoid or deny that simple reality. The human species, like and unlike other mammals, requires a sperm from the male and an egg from the female to reproduce.
I say like and unlike, because, for example, the skeletal differences in humans, especially in certain regions of humans, is not that different, compared, say, to gorillas, where the male can be twice as large as the female. In the human animals species, the females can be larger than the males, the males and females can be approximately the same size, and these stature differences vary across regions of the world.
CB: They are _naturally_ opposite.
JR: Only if you choose a definition of opposite that means, simply, dimorphic. Dimorphic doesn’t mean “opposite”. But if that’s your definition, that’s your definition. I am not going to try to convince you of anything here about this, except to ask you to note that words are human constructions, designed to try and describe various realities: “external” ones, “internal” ones, magical ones, mythic ones, etc. You are using a language, English, as if it is somehow more than that, as if spoken or written words are somehow “true” and “actual” beyond the human community that speaks that language. You are aware, I’m sure, that different languages means the world is seen in different ways. Swedish doesn’t make use the term “gender” the way English does, for example. “Sex” is understood in English differently than the terms that approximate it in other languages and cultures understand it. I’m not just playing a post-modern shell game, here, Charles. I’m going somewhere meaningful with this, so just hang on for the ride, if you will.
CB: It is precisely the natural sense in which they are opposite.
“Natural sense”? What’s that? Your language, laden with an unowned perspective on the world, is tautological. For you “opposite” and “dimorphic” are synonymous. For me, and many feminists, they are not, either intellectually, linguistically, or experientially. When I speak with women, I do not, in any way, feel I am talking to “opposites” of myself. Nor when I speak with men. “Opposites” is something some minds experience when they comprehend the world, and there are some brain researchers which argue that partly this is a survival mechanism, one which can be overstimulated and overcharged in times of crisis, such that, for example, someone will say something to someone else, or cast a glance, or make a gesture, and that “survivally” part of the brain “sees” danger, sees “enemy”, sees “other than me”. There are whole cultures in the world, as you know, that hold there are not such oppositional divisions, except in our perception, and in the degree to which we construct and maintain them, socially/politically.
CB: Humans reproduce sexually
JR: And sometimes through medical means, such as with test tubes and the like. That is, many a baby are both with no dimorphic genital intercourse taking place.
CB: ( not by cloning)
JR: Yet! ; )
CB: and therefore the human species has sexes.
JR: To keep with your discourse, there are, in fact, more than two sexes. One in one hundred human births, according to some studies, produce what is called “intersex” babies, which are too often surgically altered not for medical reasons, but for social-aesthetic-political reasons. I knew a person with no sex. They had no genitals from birth, just a pee hole, but not vulva either. What sex was that person, Charles? I assume this person is still alive. What would you call that person, using pronouns? There are xxy and other genetic formations in the human species. What sex are they, and what sex are they the opposite of? If we’re going to make science a religion, which the Left does a lot, then what do we do with the evidence of “more” or “other” than two sexes? Answer: in patriarchal science-dominated cultures, we write that off as “aberrant” or “unnatural” or “a fluke”, because to validate this reality would be to mess with the whole “opposite sex” hypothesis, and would make many people have to rethink some basic assumptions about their worldviews and values.
CB: To have sexes means to have opposite sexes, by definition. Two opposite sexes is part of the definition of sex. You can’t have one sex.
JR: Then you are not aware that from the time of Aristotle, to the 18th century, I believe, the common-sense thinking was that there was “one sex”. I will quote from a book that describes this in detail. The sex was “man/male” and what we now call woman/female was believed, for a very, very long time, to be a lesser or aberrant man/male, but a man/male nonetheless. The science of the time had “reasonable” explanations for how this was the case, and why. So, my point, again, is that the discourse you are using, and what you are referring to is “a point of view” that is not transcultural or transhistorical.
If the Mbuti Pygmies have no terms for “boy” and “girl”, “woman” or “man”, and they share childcare and other social work, if physically they are the same size, in what sense is there an “opposite” sex in that society? There are some anatomical differences among the people, yes. There are many physical differences in Western European societies/cultures too. Blue eyes and brown eyes are real, right? But Hitler and his gang made “blondness, blue-eyedness, paleness, and certain other physical features, that really do “exist” to use your discourse, as a way to create races, and call them “natural”. It is no different with “sex”. Some physical differences are noted, some are given significant meaning, some are given mythic meaning, some political meaning, and once those meanings are “set” into the society, they are taken as “natural” and “universal”, when, really, really even in “biology” they are not “natural”. Race is not “natural”. It is a human construct, made real through force and other social means. Dark skin pigmentation, and pale skin, and different shaped eyelids, and various shaped noses and lips are all “real”, right? But to say they make up “races” is a huge leap away from “biology” into politics. The same with gender/sex. No difference, except in patriarchies, this observation is like saying “Jesus was a human being who was born to Mary, from her DNA, and a male’s DNA–Joseph’s or the man who possible raped her” to Christians. It’s called heresy, blasphemy, sacrilege. The Left has its own religions, usually unowned as such, with their attendant stories and myths, and the myth of “opposite sexes” is among them, in both Right and Left worldviews.
CB: The notion of one sex is nonsensical, because two opposite or complementary sexes is inherent to the definition of sex.
JR: Oh, just you wait till I quote the passages from a “history of sex” book I have read. You’ll be amazed, and will realize how the way you think of things is entirely particular to this time and location in which you live. (I’ll post that later today or Monday, hopefully.)
[JR wrote:] But these sexes have all the same hormones (in varying proportions), both have nipples, both have labia (male labia are fused), both have a highly sensitive nerve-packed organ with a shaft and head (clitoris, penis), both have pleasure zones beyond those fixated on in patriarchy, both “biological sexes” cry, both bleed, both hurt. Bot can excel in sport, in academic pursuits, in caring for young. What’s opposite, then, about women and men?
[CB responded:]
CB: Only one two members of the opposite sexes can have _fertile_ sex together.
JR: In philosophy, this is called tautology, isn’t it? You have set up the terms, their meanings, such that there is no way for you to comprehend anything outside what you have set up as “true” or “real”. This is why it’s so damned annoying, among other reactions, to speak to some white supremacists, or some fundamentalist Christians, who hold so tightly to “The way the world is” that to suggest any other possibilities is to be “ridiculous” “absurd” or “insane” (or evil). Leftist scientists would just as soon avoid dealing with the assumptions they carry into their perceptions and “objective findings”. I think you are doing this too–being rigid in this way, fundamentalist, as it were, with a Leftist accent.
CB: A man and man can’t impregnate each other. A woman and woman can’t impregnate each other. Only a woman can be pregnant by a man. Only a woman can be pregnant. Only a man can impregnate. This is a rigorous definition of the oppositeness of the sexes, their complementarity.
JR: Many women and men, too, cannot cause impregnation, when “together”. Does this make them something else? Only some females can be pregnant, and others of many ages cannot. Again, you take “blue eyes, pale skin, and blond hair” and turn it into a race. I do not. I don’t attribute the same significance to these “biological differences” that you do, nor do I think “difference” equals “opposite”. And now you are making synonyms out of “opposite” and “complimentary”. Check the dictionary: those aren’t synonyms.
I will respond to the rest at another time. (I’m outa time for now.)
Peace and power to you, Charles.
4 March 2006, 11:08 amR.S. Morris:
Just a quick smalltown update.
“Brokeback Mountain” played in our theater through the weekend with ABSOLUTELY NO disturbances, not even nasty comments. Reviews were favorable in the vast majority, the only negative I’ve heard so far being “What the hell were two Wyoming cowboys doing herding sheep?!!”
We lost one employee over the show, but several of the others have since let their girlfriends talk them into going.
Overall, a successful Oscar-weekend film. Thanks for your input.
6 March 2006, 2:50 amElaina:
Hey, y’all might wanna skip on over to the “Shootist” room and check out the discussion there. Ties into some of the stuff here. And Julian, I’d absolutely LOVE to hear your voice over there!
R.S.: I’m glad that everything went smoothly for the movie showings. And I also appreciate your commentary, over here and on the “Shootist” post.
C.B.: Hey. Hope all’s well with ‘ya.
You know, I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a bit of an “anthro-nerd” myself, and that I do posess a B.A. in said field of study. Probably my favorite class, though it was by no means the class I scored the highest in, was human osteology.
At the University of TN we have a really big, well-respected dead-body lab called the Body Farm. We’re technically not supposed to call it that, out of respect for the families of people who donate their bodies, we’re SUPPOSED to call it “The Facility.” For some reason that seems creepier to me than the Body Farm. But at any rate, if you’ve heard of the lab, that’s it’s popular name. But I’ll come back to this lab and all that in a minute, ’cause I need to address something you said while talking about sexual dimorphism.
CB: In paleontological fossil finds, females can be distinguished from males based on sexual dimorphism , including pelvis width, and a few other characteristics. They never have a problem categorizing a fossil as male or femele. This is a good way to demonstrate the acutality of sexual dimorphism, and the difference between the sexes.
Alright, y’all, I’m getting ready to wax osteological so, I’m just giving fair warning, this might be boring as all get-out.
Elaina: ‘K. Charles, there’s a good reason that folks use the phrase “never say never.” What you’re saying here about paleontological osteology just isn’t true. I know because I’ve had conversations, both with paleontologists and students who are studying to BE paleontologists about sexual dimorphism and indeed, at times it can be quite difficult to distinguish male and female human samples from one another.
There aren’t any concrete areas of skeletal biology that can guarantee that the skeleton in question is male or female. And the bones, themselves just as bones, are not the only guide; a person looks at markings on bones, i.e. at the grooves and dents in bones where the muscles attach, such as the nuchal lines in the skull and the deltoid tuberosity on the humerus. But what I’m saying here is that, when you are learning how to sex a skeleton something that you have to learn first is that the answer is usually not obvious, and these manifestations of dimorphism are only there most or some of the time, and you really shouldn’t rely on them individually to determine sex. They are cumulative. You take the measurements, from the pelvis and the skull and even from the long bones, and you punch them into a computer program (FORDdisc) and then budda-boom, budda-bing, the computer says it’s a boy! (I’m simplifying here. Sometimes when it’s difficult to sex the skeleton, frequently the case, and very frequently when the skeleton’s sutures are not fully fused and show evidence of being that of a subadult, osteologists and forensic anthropologists and all those “pro” folks have to rely not just on what the ‘puter tells them, but their own eyeballing, and a multitude of other factors to figure out what’s going on.)
See, this is why I think that attempting to base the struggle between the genders in biological science is shaky at best. Because SCIENCE is shaky at best. Scientists admit to this. The scientific method is designed to generate theory from hypothesis, not provide “exact” answers, especially not as it pertains to social problems. Gah.
And Charles. “Pelvis width” is a PART of “sexual dimorphism,” and the “few other factors” are actually several. When a forensic anthropologist is working on sexing a skeleton, they don’t just measure cross-ways the pelvis in millimeters and say, “this is wider than those of males, so it’s gotta be female.”
Small measurements have to be considered, such as the width of the pubic bone, the sub-pubic angle, the width of the greater sciatic notch (less reliable than pubic bone, but used in many cases due to the whole pelvis not being intact,) the auricular surface and the preauricular sulcus are all factored in. These measurements are always taken, it’s part of the “rules.” Even if a forensic anth. eyeballs the skeleton in question and it’s one of those really rare ones where all the primary and secondary sex characteristics are right there where they “ought” to be, they have to take all these things into consideration.
AND they have to jive completely with the findings in the long bones and the skull. Ain’t always the case.
And, in regards to what you’re saying about “sexual dimorphism” being the “exact” reason for male-dominance, and for horrible events such as rape and abuse, I’d like to ask, what part do you think culture plays in these events? On the other post, I mention that varying degrees of human sexual dimorphism in different cultures has not been studied (at least, not to MY limited knowledge) with an “eye out” for possible cultural factors being influential in shaping biology.
It’s also important to note, going back to the discussion of the human skeleton, that male and female skeletons are more difficult to sex, the younger they are. On a skeleton, “secondary sex” features do not show up until they would have in the soft tissue. Subadult skeletons are incredibly difficult to sex, to the point that it’s a fifty-fifty shot. Teenagers are easier. The pelvis is indeed the place where sexual dimorphism is most evident. But when you start throwing that tired “upper body strenght is the source of male power and the prime illustration of sexual dimorphism” around, well, it’s just not a correct statement, to be blunt, and it’s really taking science only to the place you want it to be and avoiding a lot of factors that are just as “there” as the width of our pelvi.
The thing that scientists have done that I disagree with is that they’ve said that this point of physical divergence is the REASON for cultural divergence– and I’m saying that the cultural divergence could very well be just as influential to the human (skeletal and otherwise) biological divergences of which you speak, when applied over long periods of time, as they have. I realize that when I say “long periods of time” that in relation to the entire fossil record maybe the period of time isn’t long, but humans get taller, bigger, and their biologies change, relatively quickly, with the changing winds of culture, or ways of knowing and doing and spreading knowing that are distinctly human.
And I’d like to raise the question, is it purely a biological coincidence that human sexual dimorphism in skeletons becomes more evident in those stages of life in which they are supposed to become, in adhesion to societal norms, “fully” male or “fully” female?
Back to the Body Farm, briefly: During bone lab, one day, my instructor came in to inform us that a new body had been brought in and that the scientists downstairs had been having a helluva time figuring out whether it was a male or female. The long bones appeared to be the normal lenght attributed to a petite female, but the markings on the bones indicated very heavy musculature. The skull’s overall size of the skull was consistent with that of a female but the features appeared very robust and again, the sites of muscle attachment were heavy. There was only a partial pelvis, if I’m remembering correctly, and the measurements therein just weren’t giving up enough information to tell-it could have gone either way. Looking at sutures indicated that the skeleton was an adult. I think the closest they came to an ID was that it was, possibly, a very physically strong female.
Now, I’ve talked to forensic experts, I’ve been in their classes and heard them lecture, and it seems that the general consensus is that there’s a degree of difficulty in establishing the “sex” of a skeleton, even among contemporary humans. Many factors have to be considered and averaged with one another.
When talking of paleontological samples of skeletal remains, the degree of difficulty increases, due to the fragmentary nature of the remains that we have, a lack of complete skeletons to compare to one another, and also a lack of completeness or an intersectional focus of study; that’s to say an insufficient degree of study, together, of biology and culture working together. I mean, there aren’t just piles and piles of complete skeletons of early hominids lying around to study the “bare bones” in such a way that would determine concretely what you’re saying they determine, Charles.
So, here’s my “pick apart your comment” answer to some of the other stuff you’ve said here re: sexual dimorphism and rape:
CB: It is uniquely a male crime exactly because of sexual dimorphism, the general physical differences between women and men. This has to do with strength,
Elaina: You are completely ignoring culture, and that culture teaches men to be domineering towards women at the same time it teaches women to fear men. This is key in Gringo Capitalism. It wouldn’t work without this cultural indoctrination. And the degree of dimorphism of which you speak doesn’t occur in extreme degrees the majority of the time. Men would have a hell of a harder time raping women if women weren’t taught to fear them, and if men weren’t taught that women existed only for them and as receptacles of their wants and needs and abuse. “Sexual dimorphism” is not the key determinant in the oppression of females by males. It might be part of it, but it ain’t a final answer.
C.B.:…but also the qualitative difference between the sexual organs of males and females. A woman can’t very well force a man get turgid, the necessary condition for the man to have sex with the woman.
Elaina: Well, I have to add here that a woman might not be able to “force a man to be turgid” but it’s very feasible that a woman could shove something hard and pointy into a man’s asshole. The forceful shoving of anything into an asshole is a form of rape. I’m just putting that out there. My time is limited, I’m looking at the clock and getting antsy, so I can’t afford right now to go into the exceptions to this “rule” you’re talking about.
I agree that rape is a masculine weapon against women. But taking it completely out of a cultural context and attempting to explain it using biology is shaky ground, at best. There is no “hard science” that explains in a way that isn’t questionable the “biological” differences in physical strength between men and women in a way sufficient to account for patriarchy.
As I said, this conversation here is crossing over into the discussion happening on the “Shootist” post, and I’d like to see y’alls views on what’s going on there.
In the meantime, I’ve gotta go to work!!
Peace.
6 March 2006, 3:25 pmJulian Real:
Hurray!! (Now let’s see how they do with Transamerica!) (Kidding.)
Good work, R.S.!
6 March 2006, 5:04 pmJulian Real:
Hi Elaina and Charles.
I will travel on over to the “Shootist” discussion, per your suggestion, Elaina.
To Charles. I could address in volumes what’s wrong with thinking that rape somehow “follows” inevitably from human biology. Suffice it to say, it’s like arguing lynching of Blacks and the gassing of Jews follows from “biological” “realities”, which any white supremacist and/or Nazi will say is true.
According to Elaina’s response, you note genital “biology” as a determining factor of the naturalness/biological imperative of rape.
I agree with Elaina entirely.
There’s nothing but political-social culture to explain why women don’t systematically ass-rape small boys with fingers or other long blunt or sharp objects, who are smaller than them. Women have the physical and political means to do so. Some women do sexually and physically assault boy children, as well as girl children, btw. Is that, too, due to “biology”? I know of boys who were unrelentingly verbally and physically, and sometimes also sexually, assaulted by their moms. Is that biology, Charles?
You can’t have it both ways. Having a penis and larger muscle mass doesn’t explain anything substantial about the political phenomenon called rape. Please keep in mind, men rape one another too, however rampant homophobia and “naturalised” and normalised heterosexism keeps men’s political-psychological desire to rape or ignore non-consent cues aimed more often at women). And sexxxism industries–pornography and prostitution especially, teach men to sexually use, have controlled access to, and to rape women, primarily. (Other genres of rape/sexual violence porn exist, and other forms of rape and sexual violence exist because of it.)
Rgarding the physical stature of the attacker/assaulter: the physical stature of the raper guy and the raped guy isn’t the only factor in who gets raped.
Some small boys and men beat the shit out of larger boys and men and women, you know. Some teen boys who are smaller than their moms or dads, hurt them physically and brutally.
I know of a specific case in which a “pro-feminist” petite guy was battering his female feminist partner who was physically larger than him. And some large women beat small men. I know of women who have sexually assaulted men, too. Is that, too, “biology” based primarily on genital formation?
Please account for the whole reality of sexual violence in your theories, or they fall apart too easily.
I’ll go on over to “The Shootist” now.
Peace to all beings.
8 March 2006, 2:54 pmCharles Brown:
Charles.
Thanks for that reply.
I think you are carrying lots of human made perceptions and assumptions, rooted in male supremacist reality, into what you say below, that I will do my best to expose and discuss further. Thanks for taking the time to write what you did. It sounds like you’re pretty frustrated, as perhaps we both have been with one another here on the land of the blog, but I am still holding out hope that we can write to and with one another, towards greater mutual understanding and empowerment.
CB: Sex is a biological concept. It is a form of reproduction of lifeforms. It originated about a billion years ago. Before that all lifeforms on earth reproduced by cloning. In cloning an individual member of the species. reproduces itself without any interaction with another individual member of the species. In sexual reproduction, there are two types of individuals. It takes one from each type copulating in order to reproduce a new member of the species. If you have two individuals of the same sexual type , they cannot reproduce. The two types are opposite sexes.
JR: Biology is a human enterprise, a field of study by subjective, worldview-shaped humans trying to pretend they can fully understand the world as if it is entirely outside of them, that is, objective. And sex is a human concept, greatly impacted by many political assumptions and values. Yes, the human animal tends to be, and generally is, sexually dimorphic.
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CB: No, biology is an objective science. Objective reality , reality outside of the human mind, does exist. Holding to this principle is the definition of a materialist.
Sex is an objective reality. It existed before humans did ( by a billion years), so it does not originate as a human concept. It originates as an objective reality.
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I can imagine how frustrating it might be if you are sensing I am trying, through post-structuralist tricks of the trade, to avoid or deny that simple reality. The human species, like and unlike other mammals, requires a sperm from the male and an egg from the female to reproduce.
I say like and unlike, because, for example, the skeletal differences in humans, especially in certain regions of humans, is not that different, compared, say, to gorillas, where the male can be twice as large as the female. In the human animals species, the females can be larger than the males, the males and females can be approximately the same size, and these stature differences vary across regions of the world.
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CB: Use of normal curves works here. The male normal curve will be to the “right” of the female. They overlap so that, of course, some individual women are larger and stronger than some individual men. However, even if a woman is heavier than a man, her muscles may not be as strong. Also, if we take brothers and sisters of the same parents the man will likely be bigger and stronger.
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CB: They are _naturally_ opposite.
JR: Only if you choose a definition of opposite that means, simply, dimorphic.
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CB: No, I gave you the reason they are opposites earlier. It is not just the “definition”. There is an objective sense in which they are biological complements – differences that are necessary to each other.
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Dimorphic doesn’t mean “oppositeâ€. But if that’s your definition, that’s your definition.
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CB: It’s not just my definition. It is the logic of what I explained to you regarding the necessity of having one from each “opposite” or “complementary” group to have a fertile union.
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I am not going to try to convince you of anything here about this, except to ask you to note that words are human constructions, designed to try and describe various realities: “external†ones, “internal†ones, magical ones, mythic ones, etc.
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CB: I was a structuralist (Levi-Straussian) before I was a Marxist. I have two degrees in cultural anthropology. I don’t say that to brag. I say it to let you know that I know what you are getting at, but I have a critique of it that has considered everything you are saying. I already know and have known for decades all about culture, symboling, language, “human constructions” as you apply them here. I have taken all that into account in this analysis; my analysis includes what you are saying but is also a critique of the concept you are putting forth that is more sophisticated than you think.
Sex, in the biological sense, is a unity of opposites not constructed by human culture and language, but a reflection of objective reality in human language.
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You are using a language, English, as if it is somehow more than that, as if spoken or written words are somehow “true†and “actual†beyond the human community that speaks that language.
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CB: There is an objective reality beyond the human community that speaks that language. Humans are not capable knowing absolute truth. However, we are capable of knowing relative truths about objective reality. ( See Lenin _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_)
My use of “sex” here is a relative truth regarding objective reality
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You are aware, I’m sure, that different languages means the world is seen in different ways. Swedish doesn’t make use the term “gender†the way English does, for example. “Sex†is understood in English differently than the terms that approximate it in other languages and cultures understand it. I’m not just playing a post-modern shell game, here, Charles. I’m going somewhere meaningful with this, so just hang on for the ride, if you will.
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CB: I’ve already heard your whole position about 30 years ago. My critique of what you are saying “knows” all that you are trying to say here, and goes beyond it.
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CB: It is precisely the natural sense in which they are opposite.
“Natural sense� What’s that?
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CB: There is objective reality, nature. There is a world beyond our minds and words. Nature is not entirely a socio-historical construct.
Irrespective of the human mind, sex exists in objective reality as complementary and opposite members of a species , as I described to you earlier.
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Your language, laden with an unowned perspective on the world, is tautological.
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CB; Wrong. I am conscious of what perspective of the world it implies exactly because I have been through all the analysis of language and culture that you are about to give. I already know and have debated at length ( I still debate them some on some other lists) all the issues you are about to raise, thinking that I don’t know them.
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For you “opposite†and “dimorphic†are synonymous.For me, and many feminists, they are not, either intellectually, linguistically, or experientially. When I speak with women, I do not, in any way, feel I am talking to “opposites†of myself.
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CB: Your feelings are not a reflection of the objective difference between males and females that I analyzed earlier.
What you feel can’t get around the fact that you can make a baby with a woman and you can’t make a baby with a man. That is an objective definition of opposites, as used here.
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Nor when I speak with men. “Opposites†is something some minds experience when they comprehend the world, and there are some brain researchers which argue that partly this is a survival mechanism, one which can be overstimulated and overcharged in times of crisis, such that, for example, someone will say something to someone else, or cast a glance, or make a gesture, and that “survivally†part of the brain “sees†danger, sees “enemyâ€, sees “other than meâ€. There are whole cultures in the world, as you know, that hold there are not such oppositional divisions, except in our perception, and in the degree to which we construct and maintain them, socially/politically.
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CB: Uhhh, no I don’t know of any such whole cultures. Want to name one ? All cultures I know of reflect this objective fact in their socio-historical categories. Male/female is universal , as far as I know.
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CB: Humans reproduce sexually
JR: And sometimes through medical means, such as with test tubes and the like. That is, many a baby are both with no dimorphic genital intercourse taking place.
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CB: But even with test tubes, you have to get a sperm from a male, and an egg from a female. You can’t get a fertile result if you take both cells from members of the _same_ ( not opposite) sex.
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CB: ( not by cloning)
JR: Yet! ; )
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CB: Yes, I’ll be in the movement to stop that.
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CB: and therefore the human species has sexes.
JR: To keep with your discourse, there are, in fact, more than two sexes. One in one hundred human births, according to some studies, produce what is called “intersex†babies, which are too often surgically altered not for medical reasons, but for social-aesthetic-political reasons. I knew a person with no sex. They had no genitals from birth, just a pee hole, but not vulva either. What sex was that person, Charles?
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CB: Depends on what their reproductive cells could fertilly unite with. If their reproductive cells are fertile when united with females’ cells , then they are male. Otherwise, if fertally mate with males, then female.
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I assume this person is still alive. What would you call that person, using pronouns?
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CB: I’d say pronoun has to do with gender, although gender is determined by sex in the vast majority of cases. So, answer question above first… Then..
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There are xxy and other genetic formations in the human species. What sex are they, and what sex are they the opposite of?
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CB: See above. Sex is determined by who the individual can mate fertally with.
I’m not sure if there are types that cannot mate fertilly with either sex. If so, they are sexless. Sex is defined as I did above. There are only two sexes.
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If we’re going to make science a religion, which the Left does a lot, then what do we do with the evidence of “more†or “other†than two sexes?
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CB: Science is not religion. They are “opposites” with respect to fundamental concepts. Religion demands belief without evidence ( See the story of Job in the Bible) Science demands belief only based on evidence.
There are only two sexes. There may be individuals who are not in either sex, but they are sexless, not a third “sex”.
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Answer: in patriarchal science-dominated cultures, we write that off as “aberrant†or “unnatural†or “a flukeâ€, because to validate this reality would be to mess with the whole “opposite sex†hypothesis, and would make many people have to rethink some basic assumptions about their worldviews and values.
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CB: Wrong. Science has the good reasons I gave you in the prior post to speak only of two sexes. Sexes are defined based on reproduction, and the role of the opposite sexes in reproduction, i.e. individuals must be from the opposite sexes to have fertile sex.
You are talking about gender.
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CB: To have sexes means to have opposite sexes, by definition. Two opposite sexes is part of the definition of sex. You can’t have one sex.
JR: Then you are not aware that from the time of Aristotle, to the 18th century, I believe, the common-sense thinking was that there was “one sexâ€.
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CB: Yea, I have heard that , but common-sense was wrong.
Aristotle’s physics and astronomy was wrong too. They had to throw out all of Aristotle’s physica and astronomy to make progress in those areas in “Modern” times.
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I will quote from a book that describes this in detail. The sex was “man/male†and what we now call woman/female was believed, for a very, very long time, to be a lesser or aberrant man/male, but a man/male nonetheless. The science of the time had “reasonable†explanations for how this was the case, and why. So, my point, again, is that the discourse you are using, and what you are referring to is “a point of view†that is not transcultural or transhistorical.
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CB: I didn’t say it was transhistorical. The Europeans have had messed up ideas about sex for a long time. So, what ?
Now that one sex idea, only men, that’s male supremacist and “patrirarchal”. You are putting forth a grossly male supremacist view as a retort to my analysis of sex ? And you claim to be arguing as a feminist ? I’d say I have the better feminist argument on this.
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If the Mbuti Pygmies have no terms for “boy†and “girlâ€, “woman†or “manâ€, and they share childcare and other social work, if physically they are the same size, in what sense is there an “opposite†sex in that society?
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CB; Pygmies are not an exception to biological sex as I have explained it to you here at length. A biologically male pygmy cannot produce a baby with another male ( pygmy or American). Same for biologically female pygmy and another female of any culture.
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There are some anatomical differences among the people, yes. There are many physical differences in Western European societies/cultures too. Blue eyes and brown eyes are real, right? But Hitler and his gang made “blondness, blue-eyedness, paleness, and certain other physical features, that really do “exist†to use your discourse, as a way to create races, and call them “naturalâ€.
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CB: The biologically invalidity of the concept of race consists in the claim that certain physical types are correlated with greater or lesser morality or intelligence or “courage” et al. It is not that certain people don’t have different actually existing _and_ genetically or naturally generated skin colors, hair textures ,and facial features. It is that these physical characteristics are not correlated with inferior or superior morality, intelligence and all the other things the racists claimed that they were.
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It is no different with “sexâ€.
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CB: Yes it is. It is objectively true that members of the same sex cannot produce offspring together. They must mate with the opposite sex to do so.
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Some physical differences are noted, some are given significant meaning, some are given mythic meaning, some political meaning, and once those meanings are “set†into the society, they are taken as “natural†and “universalâ€, when, really, really even in “biology†they are not “naturalâ€.
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CB: Wrong
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Race is not “naturalâ€. It is a human construct, made real through force and other social means. Dark skin pigmentation, and pale skin, and different shaped eyelids, and various shaped noses and lips are all “realâ€, right? But to say they make up “races†is a huge leap away from “biology†into politics.
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CB: Correct. See above.
Race is an invalid biological category. It is a valid political category; valid not in the sense that it is good, but that the world has in fact been shaped by this immoral political category.
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The same with gender/sex.
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CB: Wrong on sex. True on gender.
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No difference, except in patriarchies,
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CB: No Even in non-patriarchal society, sex is a valid category.
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this observation is like saying “Jesus was a human being who was born to Mary, from her DNA, and a male’s DNA–Joseph’s or the man who possible raped her†to Christians. It’s called heresy, blasphemy, sacrilege. The Left has its own religions, usually unowned as such, with their attendant stories and myths, and the myth of “opposite sexes†is among them, in both Right and Left worldviews.
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CB: The concept of sex as I use it here is not a religious concept. Wrong.
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CB: The notion of one sex is nonsensical, because two opposite or complementary sexes is inherent to the definition of sex.
JR: Oh, just you wait till I quote the passages from a “history of sex†book I have read. You’ll be amazed, and will realize how the way you think of things is entirely particular to this time and location in which you live. (I’ll post that later today or Monday, hopefully.)
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CB: There are other times and places that use the same concept of sex, because it is an objective reality. You mean that there was some non-sense in the “common-sense” of Europe as you described above. That’s people who believed that the earth is flat or that the sun goes around the earth. In fact, it’s a lot of the same people. So what ? Their thinking has been superceded by a way of thinking that corresponds better with objective reality.
Would you cite people who believed the earth is flat as some kind of proof that the spherical earth theory is just another subjective and ethnocentric concept, no more or less valid than the flat earth theory ?
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[JR wrote:] But these sexes have all the same hormones (in varying proportions), both have nipples, both have labia (male labia are fused), both have a highly sensitive nerve-packed organ with a shaft and head (clitoris, penis), both have pleasure zones beyond those fixated on in patriarchy, both “biological sexes†cry, both bleed, both hurt. Bot can excel in sport, in academic pursuits, in caring for young. What’s opposite, then, about women and men?
[CB responded:]
CB: Only one two members of the opposite sexes can have _fertile_ sex together.
JR: In philosophy, this is called tautology, isn’t it?
CB: No, it is not a tautology. It is an empirical observation.
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You have set up the terms, their meanings, such that there is no way for you to comprehend anything outside what you have set up as “true†or “realâ€.
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CB; No, it is a way of describing the empirical facts that have been observed. There are sperm cells and there are ovum cells. A given individual never has both, etc. The definitions of sexes are based on these empirical observations.
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This is why it’s so damned annoying, among other reactions, to speak to some white supremacists, or some fundamentalist Christians, who hold so tightly to “The way the world is†that to suggest any other possibilities is to be “ridiculous†“absurd†or “insane†(or evil). Leftist scientists would just as soon avoid dealing with the assumptions they carry into their perceptions and “objective findingsâ€. I think you are doing this too–being rigid in this way, fundamentalist, as it were, with a Leftist accent.
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CB: I could say the same thing about you. You are religiously wed, ( a new religion) to the world not being constructed as valid biology has discovered it to be. It conflicts with your politico-religious agenda which doesn’t want to see two opposite biological sexes. So, you are rigid in denying the biological version of the world. It is you who are like the religious white supremacists.
And you share with these white supremacist religiosos the denial of biology. White supremacist religiosos are right now trying to get biological science, Darwinism out of the schools.
So, it is u who is closer to the white supremacist religiosos, in that you both deny the findings of modern biology.
In Marxist terms, you are both idealists/religious, not materialist , philosophically. Over the last ten years I have been arguing this same issue with post-modernists of various types, and long ago I realized that post-modernists are philosophical idealists in their denial of the existence of objective reality. So, a while ago I started analyzing them as falling into religion. So, this is not a new criticism I make of your position.
The fun part here is that it is _you_, not I, who has a common philosophical position with the rightwing, racist religiosos. Your anti-biology causes you to fall in with strange bedfellows.
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CB: A man and man can’t impregnate each other. A woman and woman can’t impregnate each other. Only a woman can be pregnant by a man. Only a woman can be pregnant. Only a man can impregnate. This is a rigorous definition of the oppositeness of the sexes, their complementarity.
JR: Many women and men, too, cannot cause impregnation, when “togetherâ€. Does this make them something else?
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CB: Yes, they are not actually functioning members of either sex. This doesn’t invalidate the general principle I describe above.
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Only some females can be pregnant, and others of many ages cannot. Again, you take “blue eyes, pale skin, and blond hair†and turn it into a race. I do not.
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CB: No, _I_ don’t turn it into anything.
It is invalid as a biological category in the sense that the physical characterisitics do not correlate with moral or intellectual or other characteristics. Racist society makes the socio-econo-political concomittants of physical types actual.
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I don’t attribute the same significance to these “biological differences†that you do, nor do I think “difference†equals “oppositeâ€. And now you are making synonyms out of “opposite†and “complimentaryâ€. Check the dictionary: those aren’t synonyms.
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CB: That would be “complementary”, rooted in “complete”. To have a complete fertile pairing takes one from the two opposite groups or classes of biological types.
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I will respond to the rest at another time. (I’m outa time for now.)
Peace and power to you, Charles.
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CB: Yea, Black is beautiful.
13 March 2006, 4:49 pmCharles Brown:
* Hey, y’all might wanna skip on over to the “Shootist†room and check out the discussion there. Ties into some of the stuff here. And Julian, I’d absolutely LOVE to hear your voice over there!
R.S.: I’m glad that everything went smoothly for the movie showings. And I also appreciate your commentary, over here and on the “Shootist†post.
C.B.: Hey. Hope all’s well with ‘ya.
You know, I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a bit of an “anthro-nerd†myself, and that I do posess a B.A. in said field of study. Probably my favorite class, though it was by no means the class I scored the highest in, was human osteology.
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CB: Oh , I didn’t catch that you got a degree in it. And you went to Mexico. I bet you visited the National Museum of Anthro there. How about the archaeological digs in the subways ( Of course I was there in 1973 !)
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At the University of TN we have a really big, well-respected dead-body lab called the Body Farm. We’re technically not supposed to call it that, out of respect for the families of people who donate their bodies, we’re SUPPOSED to call it “The Facility.†For some reason that seems creepier to me than the Body Farm. But at any rate, if you’ve heard of the lab, that’s it’s popular name. But I’ll come back to this lab and all that in a minute, ’cause I need to address something you said while talking about sexual dimorphism.
CB: In paleontological fossil finds, females can be distinguished from males based on sexual dimorphism , including pelvis width, and a few other characteristics. They never have a problem categorizing a fossil as male or femele. This is a good way to demonstrate the acutality of sexual dimorphism, and the difference between the sexes.
Alright, y’all, I’m getting ready to wax osteological so, I’m just giving fair warning, this might be boring as all get-out.
Elaina: ‘K. Charles, there’s a good reason that folks use the phrase “never say never.†What you’re saying here about paleontological osteology just isn’t true. I know because I’ve had conversations, both with paleontologists and students who are studying to BE paleontologists about sexual dimorphism and indeed, at times it can be quite difficult to distinguish male and female human samples from one another.
There aren’t any concrete areas of skeletal biology that can guarantee that the skeleton in question is male or female. And the bones, themselves just as bones, are not the only guide; a person looks at markings on bones, i.e. at the grooves and dents in bones where the muscles attach, such as the nuchal lines in the skull and the deltoid tuberosity on the humerus. But what I’m saying here is that, when you are learning how to sex a skeleton something that you have to learn first is that the answer is usually not obvious, and these manifestations of dimorphism are only there most or some of the time, and you really shouldn’t rely on them individually to determine sex. They are cumulative. You take the measurements, from the pelvis and the skull and even from the long bones, and you punch them into a computer program (FORDdisc) and then budda-boom, budda-bing, the computer says it’s a boy! (I’m simplifying here. Sometimes when it’s difficult to sex the skeleton, frequently the case, and very frequently when the skeleton’s sutures are not fully fused and show evidence of being that of a subadult, osteologists and forensic anthropologists and all those “pro†folks have to rely not just on what the ‘puter tells them, but their own eyeballing, and a multitude of other factors to figure out what’s going on.)
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CB: Yes, I am interested in learning more about this, and my description before should not be taken as anywhere near technically advanced
‘K but basically, in general you seem to be confirming that sexual dimorphism is central concept in the Farm and paleoanthropology. The fact that “it” can’t always be determined from the bones, doesn’t contradict the notion that most of what you describe above seems to be an effort to use “it” , sexual dimorphism, no ? Your whole discussion above assumes that sexual dimorphism is a valid concept, unless I misread it.
I didn’t make up sexual dimorphism. It was taught to me by anthropologists; and your discussion confirms that it is a anthropological concept.
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See, this is why I think that attempting to base the struggle between the genders in biological science is shaky at best. Because SCIENCE is shaky at best. Scientists admit to this. The scientific method is designed to generate theory from hypothesis, not provide “exact†answers, especially not as it pertains to social problems. Gah.
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CB: No , I would cop to the above demonstrating that science is shaky at best. Of course, the evidence of sexual dimorphism is mainly in living populations. They just use it to try to distinguish fossils.
And I don’t agree that scientific approach doesn’t give answers to social issues. The different levels of exactness don’t invalidate social scientific conclusions.
For example, the notions of male supremacy,racism and capitalism are the products of social science. Pretty much our whole feminist approach is based on social science.
So, I am not down with dissing social science or science.
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And Charles. “Pelvis width†is a PART of “sexual dimorphism,†and the “few other factors†are actually several.
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CB: Yes, I like getting back to more specifics and details.
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When a forensic anthropologist is working on sexing a skeleton,
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CB: The important overall point here is that they do _sex_ skeletons. That makes my point in this discussion. As I say, I am glad to get your tutelage in more specifics of forensic anthro, but these details don’t contradict , but rather support , the main point I am making here.
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they don’t just measure cross-ways the pelvis in millimeters and say, “this is wider than those of males, so it’s gotta be female.â€
Small measurements have to be considered, such as the width of the pubic bone, the sub-pubic angle, the width of the greater sciatic notch (less reliable than pubic bone, but used in many cases due to the whole pelvis not being intact,) the auricular surface and the preauricular sulcus are all factored in. These measurements are always taken, it’s part of the “rules.†Even if a forensic anth. eyeballs the skeleton in question and it’s one of those really rare ones where all the primary and secondary sex characteristics are right there where they “ought†to be, they have to take all these things into consideration.
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CB; But there _are_ primary and secondary _sex_ characteristics. I am very glad to hear your expertise, but you are bringing more evidence for my position in the larger discussion here. That there are “sex” characteristics” is my point. That there are more than the ones I mentioned just make my point stronger, don’t you see ?
I am not disagreeing with you that you have a more sophisticated understanding of sexual dimorphism. I am saying in detailing even more of what sexual dimorphism is you support what I am saying in this discussion.
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AND they have to jive completely with the findings in the long bones and the skull. Ain’t always the case.
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And, in regards to what you’re saying about “sexual dimorphism†being the “exact†reason for male-dominance, and for horrible events such as rape and abuse, I’d like to ask, what part do you think culture plays in these events?
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CB: See _The Origin of The Family, Private Property and the State_ In general, after that period of transition in human culture and history, men started to dominate women . I’d say that that is the cultural origin of rape and abuse, roughly speaking.
I’d say male abuse of general physical advantages is cultural, not natural. I do NOT think the _mental_ state by which human males dominate females is natural. It is an abuse of sexual dimorphism.
Teaching boys not to hit girls is a fundamental human moral requirement, because of this potential abuse of a natural condition.
Similarly child abuse. No one would deny that adults are “dimorphist” with children. But it is critical to human society that children be protected.
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On the other post, I mention that varying degrees of human sexual dimorphism in different cultures has not been studied (at least, not to MY limited knowledge) with an “eye out†for possible cultural factors being influential in shaping biology.
It’s also important to note, going back to the discussion of the human skeleton, that male and female skeletons are more difficult to sex, the younger they are. On a skeleton, “secondary sex†features do not show up until they would have in the soft tissue. Subadult skeletons are incredibly difficult to sex, to the point that it’s a fifty-fifty shot. Teenagers are easier. The pelvis is indeed the place where sexual dimorphism is most evident. But when you start throwing that tired “upper body strenght is the source of male power and the prime illustration of sexual dimorphism†around, well, it’s just not a correct statement, to be blunt, and it’s really taking science only to the place you want it to be and avoiding a lot of factors that are just as “there†as the width of our pelvi.
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CB: The reason domestic violence is not a symetrical problem is that in general, men are stronger physically for purposes of fighting.
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The thing that scientists have done that I disagree with is that they’ve said that this point of physical divergence is the REASON for cultural divergence– and I’m saying that the cultural divergence could very well be just as influential to the human (skeletal and otherwise) biological divergences of which you speak, when applied over long periods of time, as they have.
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CB; I see what you are saying. I am not saying that sexual dimorphism is the cause. Or at least, I am saying that the reason we as feminists emphasize that the problem of women beating up men is not anywhere nearly as important a problem as men beating up women is because men take advantage of this preexisting condition of sexual dimorphism.
I’m not sure if that is what you are getting at as I read again what you say above. Maybe you are saying that cultural differences are causing bigger men to mate with smaller women causing greater sexual dimorphism ? In other words, you are suggesting a way in which culture is causing biology ? Give me a response reiterating what you mean.
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I realize that when I say “long periods of time†that in relation to the entire fossil record maybe the period of time isn’t long, but humans get taller, bigger, and their biologies change, relatively quickly, with the changing winds of culture, or ways of knowing and doing and spreading knowing that are distinctly human.
And I’d like to raise the question, is it purely a biological coincidence that human sexual dimorphism in skeletons becomes more evident in those stages of life in which they are supposed to become, in adhesion to societal norms, “fully†male or “fully†female?
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CB: The only thing is that our close primate relatives have sexual dimorphism, no ? But I don’t mind exploring what you suggest.
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Back to the Body Farm, briefly: During bone lab, one day, my instructor came in to inform us that a new body had been brought in and that the scientists downstairs had been having a helluva time figuring out whether it was a male or female. The long bones appeared to be the normal lenght attributed to a petite female, but the markings on the bones indicated very heavy musculature. The skull’s overall size of the skull was consistent with that of a female but the features appeared very robust and again, the sites of muscle attachment were heavy. There was only a partial pelvis, if I’m remembering correctly, and the measurements therein just weren’t giving up enough information to tell-it could have gone either way. Looking at sutures indicated that the skeleton was an adult. I think the closest they came to an ID was that it was, possibly, a very physically strong female.
Now, I’ve talked to forensic experts, I’ve been in their classes and heard them lecture, and it seems that the general consensus is that there’s a degree of difficulty in establishing the “sex†of a skeleton, even among contemporary humans. Many factors have to be considered and averaged with one another.
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CB; OK. But none of these biologists doubts the validity of the categories female/male , do they ? This is the point I am arguing with Julian.
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When talking of paleontological samples of skeletal remains, the degree of difficulty increases, due to the fragmentary nature of the remains that we have, a lack of complete skeletons to compare to one another, and also a lack of completeness or an intersectional focus of study; that’s to say an insufficient degree of study, together, of biology and culture working together. I mean, there aren’t just piles and piles of complete skeletons of early hominids lying around to study the “bare bones†in such a way that would determine concretely what you’re saying they determine, Charles.
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CB; Yes, what I am saying does not depend on it being easy to tell sex when the fossils are fragmentary (!) I never said it is always easy to tell.
The point here is that everybody assumes there _is_ something to distinguish. That’s the cogent point in this discussion. My argument here doesn’t fail because they can’t tell everytime from the fragmentary remains they have. They always assume that if they had the whole organism, there would be females and males. That’s the critical point in this discussion.
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So, here’s my “pick apart your comment†answer to some of the other stuff you’ve said here re: sexual dimorphism and rape:
CB: It is uniquely a male crime exactly because of sexual dimorphism, the general physical differences between women and men. This has to do with strength,
Elaina: You are completely ignoring culture, and that culture teaches men to be domineering towards women at the same time it teaches women to fear men.
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CB: I don’t know that I am ignoring it. Furthermore, if women were just as strong as men, I’m really not so sure that most of them would just take being beat up because they are enculturated to be passive and dominated. I really have to question you on that. Most of the women I know would not stand to be beatup or raped if they had the physically ability to defend themselves.
Also, rape introduces a qualitative sexual dimorphism factor.
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This is key in Gringo Capitalism. It wouldn’t work without this cultural indoctrination. And the degree of dimorphism of which you speak doesn’t occur in extreme degrees the majority of the time. Men would have a hell of a harder time raping women if women weren’t taught to fear them, and if men weren’t taught that women existed only for them and as receptacles of their wants and needs and abuse. “Sexual dimorphism†is not the key determinant in the oppression of females by males. It might be part of it, but it ain’t a final answer.
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CB: I didn’t say that sexual dimorphism is the key determinant in the _overall_ oppression of females by males.
I said that it is the key factor in domestic physical abuse and rape being overwhelmingly male against female. Domestic abuse and rape are not the totality of male supremacist oppression.
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C.B.:…but also the qualitative difference between the sexual organs of males and females. A woman can’t very well force a man get turgid, the necessary condition for the man to have sex with the woman.
Elaina: Well, I have to add here that a woman might not be able to “force a man to be turgid†but it’s very feasible that a woman could shove something hard and pointy into a man’s asshole. The forceful shoving of anything into an asshole is a form of rape. I’m just putting that out there. My time is limited, I’m looking at the clock and getting antsy, so I can’t afford right now to go into the exceptions to this “rule†you’re talking about.
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CB: Yes, that’s true :>). And nowadays, the woman could have a gun to dominate in the force part.
Note your “submissive” enculturation as a woman didn’t prevent you from thinking up this aggressive plan. :>)
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I agree that rape is a masculine weapon against women. But taking it completely out of a cultural context and attempting to explain it using biology is shaky ground, at best. There is no “hard science†that explains in a way that isn’t questionable the “biological†differences in physical strength between men and women in a way sufficient to account for patriarchy.
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CB: I’m not trying to account for all of patriarchy by it. For that see _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ , for starters.
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As I said, this conversation here is crossing over into the discussion happening on the “Shootist†post, and I’d like to see y’alls views on what’s going on there.
In the meantime, I’ve gotta go to work!!
Peace.
Comment by Elaina — 3/6/2006 @ 3:25 pm
13 March 2006, 5:43 pmCharles Brown:
Darwinism, the origin and evolution of species, is a central thesis of modern scientific biology. Species are multigenerational lifeforms. There can be no multiple generations without reproduction. Humans are a species that reproduces sexually (not all species do; the earliest species cloned themselves)
The objective and natural reality of sexual reproduction and sexes ( as I defined them earlier , opposites and complements) is a fundamental principle of modern, scientific biology. To deny it is to deny the validity of modern biology and Darwinism.
So, to deny the objective and natural reality of sex puts leftists in an a similar position as the rightwing , religious deniers of Darwinism and scientific biology,who also deny biology’s objective and natural validity.
14 March 2006, 4:43 pm