feministy issues

Why You Shouldn't Tell That Random Girl On The Street That She's Hot

Miri, , , , , , 664 Comments

Ah, spring. What a wonderful time of the year. Flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, terrified college students are graduating, and dudes on the internet are pondering that age-old philosophical question: “But whyyyyy can’t I tell that random girl on the street that she looks hot?”

It seems that men are finally starting to realize that many women do not like street harassment (or, in the parlance of the uninitiated, “unsolicited compliments about a stranger’s appearance”). This is really great and a sign that activists are doing a good job.

However, predictably, I’ve also seen a surge of men desperately trying to find loopholes so that they can still, yes, give women their irrelevant and unasked-for opinion on their appearance. Hence all the “But what if I say it this way? But what if I say it that way? But what if I make it REALLY CLEAR that I’m NOT TRYING TO BE CREEPY? But why can’t I just give a girl a compliment for crying out loud?”

Okay. Before I say what I’m going to say, here are some things I’m NOT saying:

  • Finding a random woman attractive makes you a Bad Person.
  • Wanting to tell her she’s attractive makes you a Bad Person.
  • Every time you compliment a random woman on her appearance, it makes her uncomfortable/scared.
  • Every time you compliment a random woman on her appearance, that is harassment.

Here’s what I AM going to say:

  • If you find yourself really invested in the idea of complimenting random women on the street, you should do some serious soul-searching and figure out why that idea appeals to you so much.
  • It may very well be possible to compliment a woman you don’t know on her appearance in an appropriate way.
  • But, if you choose to compliment a random woman on her appearance, you run a high risk of making her uncomfortable/scared, even if she doesn’t show any outward signs of it. Are you willing to take that chance?
  • If you choose to compliment a random woman on her appearance, you may be harassing her.

So, about really wanting to compliment random women on the street. I’ve seen this attitude from many guys that women “deserve” compliments when they look good or that they “should” feel better about themselves, and it bothers me for many reasons that are articulated very well in this article.

The idea that women are all wallowing in a miserable pool of their own insecurity and desperately need a man to come save them by giving them compliments is really just a modern take on the Prince Charming fairytale. Yes, many women are insecure. Most of them are insecure not because no guy has ever expressed a desire to fuck them, but because of the dangerously unrealistic standards our society sets for women’s appearance and for the behaviors they must perform in order to maintain that appearance.

So as nice as it would be if all that could be solved by noble, kind-hearted men taking valuable time out of their day to compliment female passerby on their appearance, that’s not gonna happen. Women don’t need men to save us from insecurity. We need to stand up and speak out ourselves against the ways in which our culture keeps us fearful and insecure, and the ways in which we help it to do so.

Of course, this is rarely, if ever, what it’s really about when men “compliment” women they don’t know on how they look. If it were, then the collective male response to women’s advocacy about street harassment and our insistence that these “compliments” make many women feel violated, scrutinized, and afraid, would be, “Oh fuck, sorry, I had no idea. I’m going to think very carefully before doing this again, if at all.”

And really, how often is that really the response?

Usually, it’s a little more along the lines of, “Oh come onnnn, it was just a compliment, why can’t you just say thank you, why can’t I tell a girl she looks good, why’s everybody so over-sensitive these days.”

So it’s not really about making me feel nice, now is it? If this is your response to our opinions and you’re still claiming that you “just want to make a girl feel good about herself,” then this is a serious look-at-your-life-look-at-your-choices moment for you. Because maybe it’s not really about making people feel good. It’s about making yourself feel good, about feeling the power that comes with judging and expressing opinions about a woman’s looks–even if those opinions are positive.

Here’s the thing. Men in our culture have been socialized to believe that their opinions on women’s appearance matter a lot. Not all men buy into this, of course, but many do. Some seem incapable of entertaining the notion that not everything women do with their appearance is for men to look at. This is why men’s response to women discussing stifling beauty norms is so often something like “But I actually like small boobs!” and “But I actually like my women on the heavier side, if you know what I mean!” They don’t realize that their individual opinion on women’s appearance doesn’t matter in this context, and that while it might be reassuring for some women to know that there are indeed men who find them fuckable, that’s not the point of the discussion.

Women, too, have been socialized to believe that the ultimate arbiters of their appearance are men, that anything they do with their appearance is or should be “for men.” That’s why women’s magazines trip over themselves to offer up advice on “what he wants to see you wearing” and “what men think of these current fashion trends” and “wow him with these new hairstyles.” While women can and do judge each other’s appearance harshly, many of us grew up being told by mothers, sisters, and female strangers that we’ll never “get a man” or “keep a man” unless we do X or lose some fat from Y, unless we moisturize//trim/shave/push up/hide/show/”flatter”/paint/dye/exfoliate/pierce/surgically alter this or that.

That’s also why when a woman wears revealing clothes, it’s okay, in our society, to assume that she’s “looking for attention” or that she’s a slut and wants to sleep with a bunch of guys. Because why else would a woman wear revealing clothes if not for the benefit of men and to communicate her sexual availability to them, right? It can’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s hot out or it’s more comfortable or she likes how she looks in it or everything else is in the laundry or she wants to get a tan or maybe she likes women and wants attention from them, not from men?

The result of all this is that many men, even kind and well-meaning men, believe, however subconsciously, that women’s bodies are for them. They are for them to look at, for them to pass judgment on, for them to bless with a compliment if they deign to do so. They are not for women to enjoy, take pride in, love, accept, explore, show off, or hide as they please. They are for men and their pleasure.

Some men who want to compliment random women on the street are genuinely good guys who just don’t understand why their comments might be unwelcome. Some men who want to compliment random women on the street are creepy predators. Most are somewhere in between, and guess what? I don’t know you, I don’t know your life, and I have no idea if you’re going to leave it at “Hey, you look good in that dress!” or follow it up with “But you’d look better without it! Har har! C’mon, where’re you going? I know you heard me! Fucking cunt, nobody wants your fat ass anyway, bitch.”

When you compliment a random woman who doesn’t know you, no matter how nice you are about it, there’s a good chance she’s going to freak out internally because for all she knows, you could be that latter type. And I get that it’s really unfair that women would just assume that about you. I get that it sucks that sometimes, expressing totally reasonable opinions like “hey you’re hot” will make women terrified of you or furious at you. That’s not fair.

But if you’re going to lay the blame for that somewhere, for fuck’s sake, don’t blame the woman. Blame all the guys who have called her a bitch and a cunt for ignoring their advances. Blame all the guys who may have harassed, abused, or assaulted her in the past. Blame all the people who may never do such a thing themselves, but who were quick to blame her and tell her to just get over it. Blame the fact that if she stops and talks to you and then something bad happens, people will blame her for stopping and talking to you.

In a perfect world, none of this would happen. In a perfect world, you could tell a woman she’s hot and she would smile and say thank you because there would be no millenia-long history of women’s bodies being used and abused by men, no notion of women’s beauty as being “for” men, no ridiculous beauty standards. Complimenting a woman on her appearance would be just like complimenting a person on their bike or their shoes or the color of their hair; it would not carry all the baggage that it carries in this world.

But that’s not our world, and it may never be. Yeah, it sucks that women often take it “the wrong way” when you give them unsolicited compliments. You know what sucks more? Yup, patriarchy.

So, guys, if you find yourself wanting to compliment a random woman you do not know and who is not asking for your opinion, ask yourself this: why does your opinion on her appearance matter?

Why do you absolutely need to express that opinion, even knowing that it might make her uncomfortable?

Why is it her responsibility to deal with that potential discomfort or “get over it,” not your responsibility to keep your opinions to yourself unless they are relevant or solicited?

And, most importantly–if complimenting people matters so much to you, why not compliment a female friend who knows and trusts you? Hell, why not compliment another man?

Look. When women want your opinion on how we look, we will ask for it. But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

~~~

Note: I’ve written about street harassment before and I’ve tried not to repeat any of the same arguments, but regardless, you should read that piece if you’ve ever heard a guy say–or been the guy who said–“Yeah, well, I’d LOVE it if women ‘harassed’ ME on the street!”

Update: Hello, new readers! Please take note of my comment policy. I’m pretty strict about it and let’s just say that quite a few of you are failing to follow it! 🙂

Why You Shouldn't Tell That Random Girl On The Street That She's Hot
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Does Sexist Humor Matter? A Review of the Research

Miri, , , , , , , 32 Comments

[Content note: sexual assault]

When people call out sexist humor, they’re often informed that “it’s just a joke.” While some seem to believe that humor inhabits a special dimension of the universe in which things don’t “really mean” anything, psychologists tend to disagree.

There are many, many reasons sexist humor matters. It hurts people, first of all. Beyond that, it may activate stereotype threat or generally make women feel unwelcome in spaces dominated by men. But it can also have effects on those who consume and enjoy it. Here, I’m going to examine one particular piece of that puzzle: sexist humor and men’s attitudes toward sexual violence.

An early study examined men’s enjoyment of sexist jokes and found a correlation between how funny they found the jokes and the degree to which they accepted myths about rape (such as that women lie about rape or that some women deserve to be raped), how likely they claimed to be to rape someone, and all sorts of measures of aggression (Ryan & Kanjorski, 1998). Men who found the jokes funny also tended to score higher on a measure of adversarial sexual beliefs, which is basically the idea that men and women are “adversaries” in the game of love and that women will deceive and manipulate men to get what they want (therefore it’s also a measure of good ol’ sexism). The study had female participants, too, and for them, the degree to which they enjoyed the sexist jokes was also correlated with their endorsement of adversarial sexual beliefs, but not with their self-reported likelihood to rape or any measure of aggression.

If you’re curious about the types of jokes used in the study, here are a few examples: “Why did the woman cross the road?–Hey!! What’s she doing out of the kitchen?” “What’s the difference between a bitch and a whore?–A whore will screw anyone. A bitch will screw anyone but you.” “What’s the difference between a woman and a light bulb?–You can unscrew the light bulb.”

Ha, ha, ha.

So anyway, that was a correlative study. It provides no evidence that sexist humor causes men to become more likely to rape someone or to accept rape myths to a greater extent.

So that’s useless, right? Not really. Women/feminists who dislike sexist jokes often claim that it’s evidence that the person who’s telling them is a sexist, to which they’re told that “IT’S JUST A JOKE GOD STOP BEING SO SERIOUS.” However, whether or not one causes the other, there’s good evidence that they tend to co-occur. (For you stats nerds, the correlation between enjoyment of sexist humor and acceptance of rape myths was .39, p<.01).

Later studies expanded upon the work of Ryan and Kanjorski both theoretically and methodologically. In their 2007 study, Viki et al. cited what’s known as Prejudicial Norm Theory to explain the possible effects of sexist humor:

Prejudiced Norm Theory (Ford & Ferguson, 2004) argues that prejudiced jokes activate a conversational rule of levity, resulting in a non-serious mindset on the part of the receiver, which prevents the message from being interpreted critically. By switching to a non-serious mindset, the recipient of the joke essentially accepts the local norm implied by the joke. As such, when exposed to prejudiced jokes people may begin to accept the norm of prejudice implied by the joke. This may result in greater personal tolerance of discrimination.

The authors then cite a bunch of fascinating studies on the effects of sexist humor on men’s tolerance of sexism in general, to which I may return in a later post. But the gist of that is that being exposed to sexist humor may make men more likely to accept sexist behavior, such as harassment, especially for men who score high on measures of hostile sexism. Remember when I talked about myths about man-hating feminists and discussed the distinction between hostile and benevolent sexism? That comes up again and again in these sorts of studies.

So, returning to Prejudiced Norm Theory. If prejudiced jokes can cause people to accept–to however marginally greater a degree–actual prejudice, what does this mean with regards to sexual assault and the various biases, such as victim-blaming, that go along with it?

That’s what Viki et al. examined experimentally. Male students were randomly assigned to either read a few sexist jokes or a few non-sexist jokes. They then read one of two vignettes–one in which a woman is raped after going home from a party with a man she met there, and another in which a woman is raped by a stranger while walking home alone at night. The participants then answered a bunch of questions about the extent to which they blame the woman for what happened, how likely they might be to act the same way as the man in the vignette (rape proclivity), how much they think the woman ended up enjoying the situation, and, finally, how long the jail sentence should be for the man if he were found guilty of rape.

To summarize, it was a 2 x 2 design; each participant was assigned to one of four conditions: sexist joke/stranger rape vignette, sexist joke/acquaintance rape vignette, non-sexist joke/stranger rape vignette, or non-sexist joke/acquaintance rape vignette.

The results were, to put it mildly, interesting. Rape proclivity was about the same for the stranger rape conditions; there was no significant difference between the self-reported rape proclivity of the participants who read the sexist jokes and the ones who read the non-sexist jokes.

But for the acquaintance rape condition, the participants who read sexist jokes reported a significantly higher proclivity to rape.

The same effect happened for victim-blaming. In the acquaintance rape condition, participants who read sexist jokes were significantly more likely to blame the woman in the vignette for her own rape. In the stranger rape condition, there was no significant difference. And likewise for recommended sentence length: participants in the sexist-joke/acquaintance-rape condition recommended a shorter jail sentence than those in the non-sexist-joke/acquaintance-rape condition.

Predictably, in general, rape proclivity and victim-blaming were both higher in the acquaintance rape conditions than in the stranger rape conditions.

In a later study, Romero-Sánchez et al. (2010) replicated these results and added two additional variables: ambivalent sexism and aversiveness of sexist humor. This second measure was meant to examine the degree to which the participants found the sexist jokes aversive–didn’t like them. The researchers hypothesized that aversiveness would be a moderating variable–men who found the jokes very aversive wouldn’t differ in rape proclivity regardless of what type of jokes they read, because reading sexist jokes wouldn’t increase their rape proclivity scores.

They were right. In fact, people with high aversiveness to sexist humor actually seemed to report a slightly lower proclivity to rape in the sexist joke condition, although it’s unclear whether or not this effect reached significance. The researchers also examined hostile sexism as a variable. They found that while participants high in hostile sexism reported greater rape proclivity overall, there was no interaction between hostile sexism scores and type of joke.

So, what does this mean? First, a cautionary note about self-reported rape proclivity. These measures typically ask participants how likely they would be to behave like the person in the vignette–that is, to rape someone–assuming they could get away with it. In reality, they may not be willing to take that chance. They may also find that despite their intention to rape someone, in reality, they may not be able to go through with it. They may also be responding in a biased way, assuming perhaps that the experimenter shares their beliefs and wanting to conform to what they perceive to be the norm. The authors of all of these studies are careful to state that they do not wish to imply that exposure to sexist humor necessarily causes sexual assault. Of course, it may, but no ethical study could possibly determine that for certain.

It’s important to note, too, that many rapists rape because they believe they can get away with it. In this sense, rape as a crime is not like murder or theft. With murder or theft, everyone generally knows that if there’s enough evidence to show that the suspect is guilty, then they will be convicted. With rape, many people realize that even clearly-guilty suspects often go free because the defense was able to discredit the victim somehow. So the hypothetical “Would you do it if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?” question might not be entirely hypothetical.

So, again, these studies do not show that being exposed to and/or enjoying sexist humor makes men rape people. They do suggest, though, that sexist humor may cause men to be more accepting of rape, to blame the victim more, and to treat rape as a crime less seriously by assigning a shorter jail sentence to a hypothetical rapist. They also show that, in general, enjoyment of such humor is correlated with acceptance of rape myths and endorsement of hostile sexism, or misogyny, and that men who have a strong distaste for such humor may not experience these effects. Finally, they show that it’s not stranger rape we should be worried about when it comes to sexist humor–it’s beliefs about acquaintance rape that seem to be affected, and people are more likely to blame the victim in these situations as is. These are also the majority of rapes.

To put it simply, reading and enjoying sexist jokes can change how you think about certain things–perhaps without you even realizing it. This is far from a novel concept in social psychology, but many people seem to have trouble accepting it when it comes to pesky stuff like sexism. Do all those sexist jokes you hear all over the place–on TV, in your office, from your friends at a party–really matter? It appears so.

An interesting future study might include some sort of behavioral component, perhaps assessing a male participant’s response to a female confederate who discloses having been sexually assaulted. That sexist jokes affect attitudes may seem like common sense, but if a study could ethically show that they also affect behavior, that would have even more important implications. A neurological component might be interesting, too. Do people show a different neural response while reading a vignette about sexual assault if they’ve been reading sexist jokes versus non-sexist jokes? I’m not a neuroscientist, so I have no fucking idea, but it’s interesting to think about.

As last time, let me know if you have any specific questions about these papers, since only one of them is freely available as a PDF. Also let me know if any of the psych/stats jargon was incomprehensible and I’ll try to make it less so. 🙂

—

Romero-Sánchez, M., Durán, M., Carretero-Dios, H., Megías, J. L., & Moya, M. (2010). Exposure to sexist humor and rape proclivity: The moderator effect of aversiveness ratings. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25(12), 2339–50. doi:10.1177/0886260509354884

Ryan, K., & Kanjorski, J. (1998). The enjoyment of sexist humor, rape attitudes, and relationship aggression in college students. Sex Roles, 38(9-10), 743-756. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018868913615

Viki, G., Thomae, M., Cullen, A., & Fernandez, H. (2007). The effect of sexist humor and type of rape on men’s self-reported rape proclivity and victim blame. Current Research in Social Psychology, 13(10), 122–132. Retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp13_10.pdf

Does Sexist Humor Matter? A Review of the Research

Busting Myths About Feminism With SCIENCE!

Miri, , , , , , , , , 95 Comments

Well, Monday’s April Fool’s joke left such a bad taste in my mouth that I was compelled to hurry up and write this post, which I’ve wanted to write for a while.

Feminist activists are invariably compelled to respond to silly, derailing claims about feminists’ supposed appearance, personalities, sex lives, attitudes towards men. You know the ones. Feminists are ugly. Feminists are angry and bitter. Feminists just hate men. Feminists just need a good lay.

These claims are extremely effective as derailing methods because they compel feminists to respond to these ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims (since they’re personal attacks, basically) rather than the important issues that actually matter.

There are several ways to respond to these comments. One is to simply ignore them. (I immediately delete all such comments from this blog because I don’t consider it productive or worth my time to respond to them.)

Another is to attempt to provide anecdotal evidence to the contrary–“Actually, I’m in a happy relationship with a man.” “Actually, I do shave my legs.” This might be the inspiration for those “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts and stickers. This response is tempting–it was a personal attack, after all–but I don’t think it’s ultimately effective. It’s too easy for the derailer to claim you’re lying or that you’re an exception, and besides, the entire conversation has now been shifted to what they want to discuss–your attractiveness or lack thereof.

A third response is to question the question the assumptions latent in the claim. Who cares if we’re not as “attractive”? So what if feminists don’t shave their legs? Is that a problem? I think this is a more effective response than the previous one because it forces the derailer to justify their claims. However, it may also promote inaccurate stereotypes because, well, it sounds like a concession.

The fourth response is my favorite: “Citations or GTFO.” Tell them to prove it. And for good measure, you can cite evidence yourself, because thanks to science, there’s good reason to believe that the crap people say about feminists is simply false. Let’s examine two papers.

Paper 1: Do feminists hate men?!

Did you know that there’s a psychological measure called the Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (AMI)? Well, now you do. Anderson, Kanner, and Elsayegh (2009) administered it to a sample of nearly 500 college students to see if there’s any truth to the constantly-trotted-out stereotype that feminists hate men.

First, a quick background on the types of sexism being studied. Although many people believe that sexism necessarily involves hostile attitudes (i.e. “Women are vain and shallow”; “Men suck at understanding feelings”), attitudes like these are just one component of sexism. The other is benevolent sexism, which may seem positive based on its name, but really isn’t. Benevolent attitudes is stuff like, “Women need men to protect them,” and “Men need women to take care of them in the home.” The AMI is designed to measure both components, HM (hostility toward men) and BM (benevolence toward men). Keep in mind, again, that “benevolence toward men” doesn’t necessarily mean liking men. It means holding attitudes toward men that seem kind or affectionate on the surface, but actually support traditional gender roles. Finally, ambivalent sexism is the concurrent support for both of these seemingly contradictory sets of beliefs.

So, the participants in the study were a large, ethnically diverse sample of college students. The majority (66%) were women. The participants completed the AMI and were then asked to define feminism and state whether or not they considered themselves feminists (“unsure” was also an option). Those participants who provided a definition of feminism that did not include “any reference to equal rights for women, the acknowledgement of inequality between women and men, [or] the need for social change on behalf of women” were excluded from the main analysis of the study. (For instance, a few people defined feminism strictly as being “ladylike” or “hating men,” without any reference to gender equality. I presume that the researchers assumed that these participants simply didn’t know what feminism is and should therefore be excluded from the analysis.)

In general, men reported more BM than women, and women reported more HM than men. This is consistent with earlier research. But when it came to feminists specifically–you already know where this is going, right?–feminists scored less on hostility toward men than did non-feminists. And it’s not because of the feminist guys in the sample, either: “The presence of feminist men alone cannot explain the relatively low levels of hostility toward men in the Feminist category because there was no significant Gender × Feminist Identification interaction on hostility toward men.”

So, not only do feminists not “hate men” any more than non-feminists do; in fact, they hate them less.

Caveats about this study:

  • It turned out that a relatively small percentage of the sample identified as feminist (14%). This, combined with the fact that many people gave shoddy definitions of feminism, caused the researchers to collapse the ethnic categories into just two: white people and people of color. Obviously, this is not ideal.
  • On a related note, because the sample was so diverse (83% of the final sample were people of color), it’s also important to note that, historically, feminism has been a white, middle-class movement. People of color are therefore less likely to identify with it, and that might be why there were so few self-identified feminists in this sample.
  • Also, the participants were all college students. That brings with itself all sorts of problems with generalizing to a larger population, but also, the researchers suggest that younger people are less likely to identify as feminists, so there’s also that.

There are many reasons why the stereotype of feminists as man-haters might persist. First of all, as both this paper and the next one note, there has been a concerted effort to discredit feminism in the media and in the political arena. Second–and this is just a personal thought–I think many people, especially men, have a serious misunderstanding of what the term “patriarchy” means. It does not mean “men are bad and evil and want to oppress women.” It means, “a societal system that, in general, privileges men over women.” Both men and women, of course, are complicit in this system, and that doesn’t mean that men as a group intentionally make it so. (Although some probably do.)

But men hear feminists talking about patriarchy and think that it’s secret feminist-speak for MEN ARE BAD AND EVIL AND I HATE THEIR PENISES and so the stereotypes persist.

Paper 2: Do feminists have crappy relationships?!

Noting that “past research suggests that women and men alike perceive feminism and romance to be in conflict,” Rudman and Phelan (2007) set out to address this question by surveying both college undergraduates and older adults about their romantic relationships. In the first study, they used several hundred heterosexual undergraduates, both male and female, who were currently in a relationship, about the extent to which they and their partners are feminists and how favorably both they and their partners view feminists. The participants also completed a 12-item questionnaire that assessed the health of their relationships; two example questions are “How often do you and your partner laugh together?” and “Do you confide your deepest feelings to your mate?” For each item, participants responded using a 6-point scale. (By the way, since I have access to the full paper and you probably don’t, feel free to ask for details, such as what all 12 questions were, in the comments if you’re curious. I didn’t want to bog down the post with details like that.)

Predictably, women were on average more feminist than men, and the extent to which participants reported that their partners are feminists correlated with their own level of feminism. Overall, there was no correlation, positive or negative, between participants’ feminism and the quality of their relationship. However, women who reported that their male partners were feminists seemed to have better-quality relationships. The authors note, “Because self and partner’s feminism were strongly related, feminism may indirectly promote relationship health, through the selection of like-minded partners.”

Meanwhile, although men who were dating feminists reported more disagreement about issues of equality in the relationship, feminist men reported less disagreement about such issues. It’s important to note, though, that there was still no significant correlation overall between a person’s feminism and the quality of their relationship (as measured by the questionnaire).

In their second study, Rudman and Phelan employed an online survey of older adults, theorizing that perhaps people who grew up during the second wave of feminism would have a different take on relationships, or that older adults would have become jaded in their relationships. They replicated the first study almost exactly, but they added a few questions to the relationship questionnaire, including several about sexual satisfaction. Again, women’s feminism was not related to their relationship health, but their partner’s feminism was positively correlated with relationship health, including the new measures on sexual satisfaction.

To make a long story short, here are Rudman and Phelan’s conclusions:

  1. There was no evidence that, for women, being a feminist is incompatible with being in a romantic relationship (with a man).
  2. The greater the extent to which women reported that their male partners are feminists, the greater their reported relationship satisfaction.
  3. For men, both being a feminist and having a feminist female partner was correlated positively with certain measures of relationship quality.

Now, some caveats:

  • As always with self-report measures, bias may be an issue. Many people may feel a certain amount of pressure to respond positively about their partners and relationships. However, I can’t think of a compelling reason why feminists would feel this pressure more than non-feminists, especially in light of the stereotype that feminists just want to complain about stuff.
  • This doesn’t mean that being a feminist makes your relationships better, or that having a feminist partner makes them better. It could just mean that people tend to select partners who resemble them in various ways, including politically, and that this leads to better relationships. But even then, the stereotype that feminists suck at dating is given no support by this research.
  • One limitation is that the study had participants report their perceptions of their partners’ level of feminism. A better design would be bringing both partners into the lab and having them report their own level of feminism (as well as that of their partner, perhaps, to see if there are disagreements). If you’re dating someone with whom you disagree strongly, you may feel tempted to minimize those differences in your mind in order to alleviate the cognitive dissonance that can result from being very close to someone with whom you disagree strongly.

The researchers conclude:

The fact that feminists are unfairly stereotyped suggests a political motive underlying negative beliefs. Whenever women challenge male dominance, they are likely to be targeted for abuse, and particularly along sexual dimen- sions, perhaps to discourage other women from embracing feminism and collective power (Faludi 1991). Because this strategy appears to be effective (Rudman and Fairchild 2007), it will be important for future research to examine whether educating people might alleviate their concerns that the Women’s Movement has disrupted heterosexual relations. Far from supporting beliefs that feminism and romance are “oil and water,” we found that having a feminist partner was healthy for both women’sand men’s intimate relationships. Contrary to popular beliefs, feminism may improve the quality of relationships, as opposed to undermining them.

Here’s my take on feminism and compatibility between partners: if there’s something you really really dislike about your partner’s political views (or any other kind of views), you may have trouble making a relationship work. That’s just the reality. Blaming this on your partner’s views may be tempting, but it also sort of misses the point. We all have qualities we look for in a partner, some of which are absolutely necessary while others are not. I could never date a conservative or an anti-feminist, but I don’t claim that this is because conservatives and anti-feminists are undateable or can’t be good partners. It’s just because I don’t want to date them.

Similarly, if you hate feminism, don’t date a feminist. Every non-feminist guy I’ve met has a story about That One Meanie Feminist Who Got All Pissy When He Tried To Pay For Her Dinner Like A Real Man, and while I clearly make fun of these guys, I also sympathize with how uncomfortable and frustrating it is to try to date someone whose worldview just keeps clashing with yours in every conceivable way.

So don’t do it. Someone who’s better for you will come along.

And all of us feminists can just happily date each other.

Oh, and while we’re talking about myths, here’s an easy one to bust that requires no research papers. It’s amazing, by the way, how many self-described skeptics just adore Snopes but have never managed to find their way to this page.

~~~

Anderson, K., Kanner, M., & Elsayegh, N. (2009). Are feminists man haters? Feminists’ and nonfeminists’ attitudes toward men. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 33(2), 216–224. doi:10.1111/j.1471-6402.2009.01491.x

Rudman, L. A., & Phelan, J. E. (2007). The interpersonal power of feminism: Is feminism good for romantic relationships? Sex Roles, 57(11-12), 787–799. doi:10.1007/s11199-007-9319-9

Busting Myths About Feminism With SCIENCE!

My Oppression Is Not Your Thought Experiment

Miri, , , , , 21 Comments

[Content note: sexual assault]

There seems to be no shortage of people just itching for the opportunity to turn real, tragic human suffering into intriguing little thought experiments for their own amusement or political gain.

This time we’ve got a college professor attempting to make some sort of bizarre claim about drilling for oil using Steubenville and sexual assault:

Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm—no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?

[…]As long as I’m safely unconsious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits?

Unfortunately for Steven Landsburg, the author of this rationalization, analogies only work when you know what the fuck you’re talking about.

Sexual assault isn’t wrong (just) because people don’t like it. It’s wrong because we have decided, as a society, that people’s bodies belong to them and only them. You cannot use someone else’s body for your own needs without their consent. You can’t harvest their organs. You can’t force them to get a piercing or a tattoo or a haircut. You (theoretically) can’t force them to have a child or an abortion, although we now seem to be getting closer and closer to forcing people to have children. You can’t compel them to undergo a medical procedure or experiment. You cannot go up to a stranger and touch their body. You cannot punch someone except in self-defense or, again, in a consensual setting. (Of course, all of this completely falls apart when it comes to children, which I think is ridiculous and wrong.) And you cannot use someone else’s body for sex without their consent. Your body belongs to you.

This, at least, is the ethical framework under which we normally seem to operate. It falls apart all the time, of course–with children, as I mentioned, and with pregnant women. It falls apart when we insist on the right to touch a Black stranger’s hair, and it falls apart when the police have been given the authority to use deadly force on innocent civilians. But in general, most of us have come to the conclusion that a just society is one that grants individuals the autonomy to decide what happens to their bodies, and that this power can only be taken away when there’s a compelling reason (i.e. the person is a child who is refusing medical care, the person has entered a coma from which they are extremely unlikely to return and their families now have the final say regarding their treatment, the person has committed a crime and is refusing to cooperate with the police, etc.)

That you feel like having sex with them and they’re unconscious so it won’t hurt them anyway is not a compelling reason. I refuse to debate this point. This is elementary.

Of course, Landsburg’s analogy fails on the other side, too, because people who criticize oil drilling generally don’t criticize it on the grounds of BUT IT MAKES TEH LANDSCAPES LESS PRETTY. But whatever.

This tendency to philosophize over real, painful, tragic issues that some of us are actually trying to do something about shows up all the time. It shows up during pro-choice activism. It shows up during suicide prevention efforts; I can’t count how often someone would appear on some post where I was discussing suicide prevention and attempt to engage me in some vague pseudo-philosophical ramble about whether or not it is truly ethical to prevent people who want to kill themselves from killing themselves, completely ignoring the fact that I am only here writing this by virtue of the fact that there were so many people who really didn’t want me to kill myself, once upon a time.

And it especially shows up when we talk about sexual assault and the proper way to respond to and prevent it.

I have spent a lot of time arguing about sexual assault with people who want to use all sorts of creative analogies about the violation of someone’s body when that person wasn’t (supposedly) doing everything in their power to prevent that violation. It’s like leaving your bike unchained! It’s like leaving your front door unlocked! It’s like leaving your keys in the ignition! In fact, it’s just like taxing someone, because money is just like bodily autonomy, so at best taxation is just as bad as violating someone’s actual, physical body. (Yes, that argument has been put forth in one of my comment sections. No, I won’t go dig it up.)

My body is not a bike. It’s not a house. It’s not a car. It is not money. Using my body without asking me first is not like robbery. It is not like taxation. You know what’s it’s like? It’s like sexual assault, because that’s exactly what it is.

To be clear, I don’t hate philosophy or discussions thereof. I think they can be really fascinating and useful. However, there’s a time and a place, and, in my opinion, an obligation to be sensitive when you’re trying to abstractly discuss things that actually hurt, traumatize, and potentially kill people.

First of all, do not attempt to insert yourself and your philosophical theorizing into spaces where people are trying to do activism. Philosophy can and should inform activism, of course, but when someone’s discussing rape prevention, that’s not the time to start pontificating at them about what rape really means and isn’t it just like a theft of property and whatnot.

Second, this is tangential to the main idea of this post, but very relevant anyway. Take special care when playing devil’s advocate. Tell people what you’re doing. Tell them you’d like to work through some possible counter-arguments and allow them to refuse. Why is this important? Because it’s so incredibly draining and hurtful for activists to be asked to listen to the same offensive and basic arguments over and over and spent their time and energy arguing against them, only for you to conclude with, “Oh, whatever, I was just playing devil’s advocate.” Cut that shit out.

Third, know what you’re talking about! Landsburg clearly didn’t. Or, if he did, he still managed to completely minimize that in favor of his convoluted view of rape-as-bad because people just don’t liiiiike it, in which case, should it really be illegal if it doesn’t cause them “Real Harm”? After all, it’s not illegal to call someone a poopyhead! So there. (I may be editorializing slightly.)

Fourth, take care that your philosophizing is not unintentionally contributing to the problem that you’re discussing. There is a long history of rationalizing away sexual assault, and Amanda Marcotte notes in her post:

Colleges in this country are suffering from a  rape problem that is all too real and not some kind of cutesy thought experiment. Rapists and their enablers are known to seize on claims like the one Landsburg is kicking around here, that it doesn’t count if you didn’t have to beat the victim to subdue her. In fact, one of the witnesses who saw the Steubenville rape but didn’t try to stop it used exactly that excuse: “It wasn’t violent. I didn’t know exactly what rape was. I thought it was forcing yourself on someone.” Having a popular professor casually endorse this rationalization through wanky and ultimately irrelevant thought “experiments” isn’t just offensive, but could be dangerous as well.

In other words, your fun little thought experiment might actually make things worse. It’s not just a fun little thought experiment, really, because ideas and attitudes have consequences out in the real world, into which Landsburg might consider venturing sometime.

My Oppression Is Not Your Thought Experiment

Where Feminism Fails: The Ongoing Need for Men's Rights Activism

Miri, , , , , , , 12 Comments

So, this might be kind of awkward given my past writing and activism, but it’s time for me to come clean: I’ve decided to become a Men’s Rights Activist.

I’ve realized that feminism’s biggest failure–much more important, in fact, than its historical disregard for women of color, poor women, and trans* people–is that it does absolutely nothing to address issues facing men. It starts right with the name “feminism.” If feminists really cared about equality for everyone, men included, they would’ve obviously called it “equalism” or “egalitarianism.” But they didn’t, because at its core feminism is only about helping women, perhaps even at the expense of men.

Of course, some might argue that the reason for the name “feminism” is that the movement started out to correct a perceived imbalance of power between men and women. However, if such an imbalance ever existed, it was unquestionably skewed in women’s favor. How could women really be societally disadvantaged when they were the ones who got to sit around at home while their husbands worked to support them?

The actual supposed “gains” of feminism, too, clearly privilege women at the expense of men. For instance, feminists have now made it possible for women to legally get abortions. That’s great for them, but what about for the fathers of those unborn babies? What if they don’t want them to be aborted? Why doesn’t the father have any say? Conversely, a woman who gets pregnant accidentally can choose to keep the baby even if the father doesn’t want to have a child. Yes, it’s the woman’s body or whatever, but it was the father’s sperm. Doesn’t that count for anything anymore?

Feminists also seem to believe that it is the responsibility of men, not women, to prevent themselves from harassing and assaulting women. They claim that men are not, in fact, controlled by their penises and are perfectly capable of choosing to get consent first or just ignore their sexual urges, just like women. Clearly, feminists are misandrists and think terribly of men. A more empowering ideology–men’s rights–would hold that men are completely powerless over their own sexuality and need women to dress modestly, avoid drinking in their presence, and make sure to say “no” loudly and clearly if they don’t want to have sex, even if they happen to be passed out.

Feminism has also historically ignored the issue of friend zoning, which primarily affects male-identified individuals. It’s ridiculous in this day and age that a man could treat a woman well–be a good friend to her, even–and get nothing in return (that is, no sex). If feminism is all about “fairness” and “equality,” it would’ve addressed this problem by now. Similarly, on dating sites such as OkCupid, women receive many more messages from men than the other way around, and men’s messages to women rarely receive a response. This suggests that female privilege is alive and well in the 21st century. How are men supposed to get laid when everything about modern dating gives women the upper hand?

Frankly, it appalls me that female feminists aren’t spending more time addressing issues that primarily concern men rather than women. After all, the best activists are those who haven’t personally experienced the issues they’re working on, so it’s not exactly reasonable to expect men to do this work themselves. Men should certainly be allies to women who are advocating for men’s rights, but if feminists really care about helping men as well as women, they’ll pick up the slack.

Unfortunately, rather than improving the status of men in society, feminism has actively made men’s lives worse. The truth is that until feminism came about, men simply weren’t facing all these issues. They didn’t have to feel so much pressure to be strong, “masculine” breadwinners. They weren’t expected to provide for their wives and children. It was understood that men could be just as adept at raising children and maintaining a household as are women (whereas nowadays you always see commercials in which stupid, clumsy men ruin the laundry or feed the kids cheez-its for breakfast or whatever). Before feminism, men weren’t the ones who got drafted into the military, who were expected to die for their country while women stayed safe and comfortable at home. Men who were raped and wanted to press charges were actually taken seriously.

If this sounds like a drastically revisionist version of history, maybe that’s because it is. Maybe it’s time to question the assumption that freeing people from strict gender roles could possibly free men from them as well, and that encouraging people to believe and support survivors of rape means that they would also believe and support male survivors of rape. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending that helping women succeed in their careers would mean that women would earn more money and be able to support their families as much as men can.

Or maybe I’m full of shit and completely incapable of logically justifying this bizarre worldview, and so are MRAs. Happy April Fools’ Day!

Where Feminism Fails: The Ongoing Need for Men's Rights Activism

More About Justice and Less About Revenge: On Reading the Steubenville Coverage Too Early in the Goddamn Day

Miri, , , , , , , 47 Comments

[Content note: sexual assault]

I don’t want to hear anything more about the “ruined futures” of Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond. The verdict did not ruin their futures. They ruined their futures, when they made the decision to rape someone.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how you shouldn’t drink if you don’t want to get raped. One could get blackout drunk every single day for a lifetime and they still wouldn’t get raped unless someone decides to rape them.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Jane Doe didn’t “affirmatively say no” and how Mays and Richmond thought they had consent. They said, “She is so raped right now.” They knew exactly what they were doing.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Jane Doe has been known to lie. Her rape was caught on video.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how it’s only rape if there’s a penis involved. It’s rape if someone is made to participate in sexual activity without their consent.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how hopefully girls and women will “learn from this.” No. Hopefully those who think they can assault others with impunity will learn from this.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how hopefully Mays and Richmond will get raped in prison. This is rape culture.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how “dangerous” partying is for young women. 40% of rapes occur in the victim’s home; an additional 20% occur at the home of a friend, relative, or neighbor. Only 24% happen in the early morning hours between midnight and 6 AM.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how “remorseful” Mays and Richmond were. They cried and begged for forgiveness only after the verdict came down. Sorry, that really doesn’t mean much.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how we need to crack down on teenage partying. Sure. But what we really need to crack down on is rape culture, violent masculinity, and the glorification of sports.

I don’t want to hear anything more about where Jane Doe’s parents were looking while she was out partying. Where were Mays’ and Richmond’s parents looking? Where was their coach looking? Oh, right, he said he “took care of it.”

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Mays and Richmond were “just kids.” Kids may not be ready for adult responsibilities and rights, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing when they assault someone.

I don’t want to hear anything more about how Mays and Richmond are just “sick,” how they’re “monsters,” how nobody you know would ever do something like that.

I don’t want to hear anything more about justice being served. I mean, yeah, let’s give credit where credit was due. But what will happen in just a few years when Mays and Richmond are released? Will they have changed? Is Jane Doe getting the help she needs? Are we doing everything we can to make sure this never happens again? That would be justice. Our work is not done.

Here’s what I want to hear more about:

What will this community do to support Jane Doe? What will it do to impart better values not just to its children, but to its adults? What will it do to ensure that being a football player gets you absolutely no special privileges? What will it do to try to help Mays and Richmond become productive members of the community without letting them off the hook for what they did?

I want to hear more about rape culture, violent masculinity, and the glorification of sports.

I want to hear more about how rapists rape because they know they’ll get away with it, not because the victim was “asking for it” or because men are too pathetic and driven by sexual urges to control themselves.

I want to hear more about what makes you a rapist and less about what makes you a victim, more about structures and less about individuals, more about justice and less about revenge.

More About Justice and Less About Revenge: On Reading the Steubenville Coverage Too Early in the Goddamn Day

Stop Hating On Female Condoms For No Real Reason

Miri, , , , , 30 Comments

Every time I do this I feel like I’m a really lazy blogger who’s just going for the low-hanging fruit*, but I feel compelled to once again criticize a Jezebel article.

Tracie Egan Morrissey, whose writing is usually quite good, has written a post called “Stop Trying to Make Female Condoms Happen.” The post is what I can only call a screed against female condoms–a strange target for an online takedown.

Morrissey writes:

After never really catching on in the 30 years since its invention, the female condom has received a redesign with the hopes that women will change their minds about wanting to line their vaginas like a waste paper basket.

She then notes that female condoms absolve men of the responsibility for providing birth control, which they hardly ever have to do:

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that these methods afford us the ability to control our own bodies. But putting on a condom is like the only time that men are ever held accountable in their role of preventing pregnancy or the spread of STDs. They shouldn’t be exempt from that obligation. And it just seems like female condoms enables them to think that they are. Or worse: to not think about it at all.

On a different note, female condoms are just ew.

It’s a short post; that’s about all there is to it. In the process, Morrissey ignores a whole slew of relevant facts about female condoms:

  • Female condoms are made not out of latex but out of polyurethane or nitrile, which means that people who have latex allergies can use them.
  • Because they’re not made of latex, you can use them with oil-based lube in addition to water- and silicone-based lube.
  • Many male-bodied folks say that female condoms feel better than male condoms because it’s less restrictive and there’s more friction on the penis.
  • With female condoms you don’t have to worry about losing your erection or having to pull out immediately after you cum, and they’re also much less likely to come out than male condoms are to slide off.
  • Because female condoms also cover some area around the vaginal opening, STI transmission may be reduced.
  • Unlike male condoms, you can put them in hours before having sex if you don’t want to worry about it in the heat of the moment.
  • The outer ring of the female condom can stimulate the clitoris.
  • They can also be used for anal sex if you take the inner ring out.
  • Because they’re not stretched tight over a penis, female condoms are much less likely to break, and also, unlike with male condoms, there’s really no chance that the penis will be too big for the condom.
  • If you don’t have health insurance and don’t have sex very often, female condoms can cost less than hormonal birth control (although they do cost more than male condoms).
  • If your partner refuses to use a male condom, they may still be willing for you to use a female condom (a reality for victims of abuse that Morrissey completely denies in the comments section)

Do female condoms have disadvantages? Sure. They can be a bit tricky to put in until you’ve had some practice, and if you’re not paying attention the penis can slip in between the outside of the condom and the vaginal wall, which defeats the whole purpose. As I mentioned, they do cost more than male condoms, although you can sometimes get them for free at health centers. Like male condoms, they can cause chafing and you’ll need lube.

But all birth control methods have pros and cons, and it’s important to know about them in order to make an informed choice. Morrissey ignores both the pros and the actual cons of female condoms, instead dismissing them because “ew.” Which I don’t even understand, because they’re just the inverse of the male condom, so they’re not ickier than that.

The point she makes about male condoms being the only type of contraceptive that male-bodied people have responsibility for is a good one. It’s reasonable to expect that a male-bodied partner help with contraception, and it is really unfortunate and unfair that most of that responsibility falls on women. However, partners can still split the cost of birth control to make it more fair, and furthermore, because many people simply prefer female condoms, it’s not necessarily the case that women are being “forced” to take responsibility for it when they don’t want to.

However, the more salient point, which Morrissey also ignores, is that female condoms can be literally life-saving for victims of abuse and for sex workers, whose male partners may be unwilling to use male condoms but who may nevertheless accept the use of female condoms (and maybe they wouldn’t, but sometimes they do and that makes the effort to increase awareness and access to female condoms worthwhile). That’s why female condoms are being used to help prevent the spread of HIV, for instance.

Not every method of contraception will work for everyone. If Morrissey is so grossed out by female condoms, that’s perfectly fine! She doesn’t have to use them. But a blog about women’s issues should be promoting accurate, helpful information about birth control that will help people make these important decisions, not just knee-jerk reactions like “ew” that have no grounding.

This is especially the case with methods that are less popular and not very well understood even though they could potentially be very helpful to people. Morrissey’s post was actually a response to a news story saying that the female condom has been updated and improved so that they no longer make an awkward rustling sound, except that this actually happened in 2005 and the website Morrissey linked to seems to be a bit slow on the uptake. Even if you don’t like female condoms, isn’t it good that they’re being improved?

In any case, I for one am very glad that people are still “trying to make female condoms happen” for those who may really need them.

*There’s a good chance that this article was just clickbait, in which case it’s feasible that someone might disagree with my decision to write about it. However, it’s good to keep in mind that Jezebel is an extremely popular blog whereas mine is, let’s just say, indie, so whatever relatively meager number of hits I give them will be offset by the fact that a bunch of you have probably just learned a lot of useful facts about female condoms that you didn’t know before. Yay!

And look, at least Kate and I are really excited about female condoms!
Continue reading “Stop Hating On Female Condoms For No Real Reason” →

Stop Hating On Female Condoms For No Real Reason

Totally Unsolicited Advice For Feminist Guys

Miri, , , , , , 114 Comments

Jezebel has a pretty good piece up about feminist men and what “we” (by which I take it the author means feminist women) want from them. Some excerpts:

[E]ven allegedly unfunny feminists acknowledge how extra-dry fighting sexism can be, and so we hope that when men join us, they, too can have a good, not always so self-serious laugh about gender roles and the complications in working to level the playing field….That said, it’s nice when a dude can see how utterly unjust the way women are still treated the world-over, and get a little pissed about it.

[…]You don’t have to call yourself a feminist to be welcome at this party. Not every dude is going to fly the feminist flag proudly, and that’s totally cool (not to mention, lots of kickass women don’t identify as feminists either).

[…]We don’t care how you got here, as long as you mean it. That means no sensitive ponytail man schtick to get more ‘tang. I’m sure more than one woman has met a male feminist who seems a little too preoccupied with our safety, a little too willing to jump in and rescue us, a little too into the narrative of the vulnerable woman and the man who’s here to show her he’s not like those “other guys.” Gross. Women need men who want to work as our equals and helpmates, not our protectors and guardians.

[…]You don’t have to be perfect….Feminism is about change and progress, and unpacking prejudice, not hairsplitting the backstory of every person who is out there saying good things.

[…]Dudes are important influences on other dudes when it comes to changing how gender divides us, and men who support these advances shouldn’t be afraid to point out when something is utterly sexist and bullshit.

[…]Don’t be afraid to challenge masculinity….When men show a comfort level with the spectrum gender exists on, it shows other men that gender isn’t binary, and redefines what being a “man” is anyway.

I think the piece brings up a lot of really good points, especially the one about not having to be perfect. Something I hear from many progressive men is a lot of anxiety about being “good feminists” and toeing the party line. My advice would be to not rely entirely on Internet Feminists for validation and criticism; try to find some trustworthy female feminist friends that you can ask for feedback that is actually constructive, as opposed to the destructive and counterproductive “call-outs” you see online. That said, if you’re a male feminist and a ton of women keep telling you that they disagree with a particular stance you have or feel uncomfortable with something you’re saying or doing, then it may be time to seriously reevaluate it.

The point about labels is also important. Many men call themselves “pro-feminists” or “feminist allies”; that’s cool. I’ll even accept the “humanist” and “equalist” and “egalitarian” thing as long as you don’t refuse to acknowledge that, in most societies and for most of history, men have had privilege over women. Ultimately, what you do matters much more than what you call yourself.

I have some suggestions of my own to add to Jezebel’s list. Note that these are my personal suggestions; the typical disclaimer that I Do Not Represent Feminism Unless Someone Has Nominated Me For Official Ambassador Of Feminism Without My Knowledge applies.

1. Do not lecture women about their own oppression.

Something really awkward that happens fairly often is when a feminist guy comes across an anti-feminist woman and proceeds to lecture her about how sexism is still hurting women and how she needs to be a feminist. Although the guy might be correct in this situation, and I would probably agree with him, feminist men should be mindful of the fact that most women spend our entire lives getting talked down to by men who think they’re experts on our personal experiences. If a woman says she hasn’t been impacted by sexism and doesn’t need this feminism stuff, perhaps respectfully point her to some resources on sexism and agree to disagree. It’s not your place to tell her how to interpret her own life, because even though you’re probably right, she can easily just tell you that she knows her own situation better than you do. And she’ll be right, too.

This, by the way, applies to all allies. White people shouldn’t lecture people of color about their own oppression. Straight people shouldn’t lecture queer people about their own oppression. And so on. Patrick put this really well:

it’s not my job to tell woman-identified persons how to be feminists, even if I disagree with something they have said. My job is to talk to male-identified persons, and *with* people who are not male-identified.

2. Understand and try to accept that you will not always be welcome in all feminist spaces.

Yeah, I get that it really sucks when you know that you’re a caring, informed, supportive ally, but some of the people you’re trying to ally yourself with still don’t necessarily want to include you all of the time. Personally, I believe that the vast majority of feminist activism should include people of all genders, but I also understand that many non-male people who are struggling to overcome the effects of sexism on their lives–harassment, assault, abuse, discrimination–need spaces in which they can feel safe, and sometimes feeling safe means being away from men. As a feminist guy, please try to understand that, even if it hurts to feel “rejected” from these groups or events.

3. Don’t expect a cookie.

I know this sounds harsh, but you are not entitled to extra praise or attention from women because you’ve deigned to support issues that are important to them. You may get that extra praise and attention in due course, though, and that’s great. And, luckily, most of the feminist men I know aren’t like this at all. In fact, many of them have told me that it’s actually almost uncomfortable when women tell them what wonderful people they are for supporting causes like reproductive rights or rape prevention. They feel that they’re doing the bare minimum of being a decent human being, but many women, accustomed to male friends, family members, and partners who treat feminism with hostility, feel compelled to praise guys who see it differently.

To sum it up, you probably will get a cookie respect and admiration from women. You just shouldn’t feel entitled to it.

4. Remember that your feminist credentials don’t mean you can pretend to be a sexist.

Just because you’re a badass feminist doesn’t mean that people are necessarily going to feel okay with you making sexist jokes “ironically” and “reclaiming” words like bitch and slut. If you do something like that and are asked to stop, your response should not be “Yeah well you know I’m totally a feminist!” You should either stop, or accept that the people you’re hurting with your language are not obligated to continue interacting with you.

(Of course, people really vary on this. When I genuinely trust people, men included, there’s actually very little they can say that would offend me. I have plenty of male friends who make sandwich jokes to me and I find them hilarious, not because “hur hur women can’t do anything but cook and clean and serve men” but because I trust these guys so much that the irony actually reads as irony. )

But the fact that you’re a Bona Fide Feminist Dude doesn’t mean that non-male people are required to be comfortable with everything you say and do, especially if it involves stuff that can read as sexism to those who don’t know you very well.

5. Use feminism to address issues that affect men.

Men are harmed by sexism in many of the same ways as women are (gender roles, for example). In some ways, though, their issues are a bit different. Because men make up such a substantial part of the prison population, they are more likely to become the victims of sexual assault in prison, and, in general, male victims of sexual assault face unique and serious difficulties in understanding what happened to them, speaking out, and seeking justice. Men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime and police brutality. And where being male intersects with marginalized identities, such as being queer, trans*, non-white, disabled, or poor, these issues become even more pronounced.

Many people (not just men) have noticed this and, unfortunately, decided to blame it all on women and feminism. These are called MRAs, but what they advocate for isn’t really “men’s rights” at all. It’s just anti-feminism.

MRAs do rightfully point out that non-male feminists don’t spend a lot of time addressing uniquely “male” issues. While I think that addressing power differentials in society will eventually bring about equality for everyone, I do think that these issues are important and should be discussed.

But women can’t take leadership of efforts to address problems that they have never experienced. I can’t tell people what it’s like to be a male rape victim–or how to support male rape victims–because I am not one and can never be one. Men, however, can use the “toolbox” of feminism–examining power differentials, paying attention to intersectionality, critiquing pop culture, etc.–to advocate for their own causes. That’s why we need feminist men who will be allies to non-male feminists while also leading initiatives to support other men, reduce violence against men, and eradicate sexism for everyone.

Edit: Alright, alright, I was just kidding about the damn cookies. Here, have one.

Totally Unsolicited Advice For Feminist Guys

[guest post] We Need To Talk About Incest Survival

Miri, , , , 10 Comments

[Content note: incest, sexual assault, self-harm, eating disorders]

Someone I know and respect asked me to publish this anonymous guest post. -M

Mia Fontaine wrote an article in The Atlantic recently about the incest problem in America. Although we talk about sex scandals, stranger danger, and the abuses of the Catholic Church, as a society, we don’t really address the adult on child abuse that takes place primarily inside children’s homes.

Given the prevalence of incest, and that the family is the basic unit upon which society rests, imagine what would happen if every kid currently being abused—and every adult who was abused but stayed silent—came out of the woodwork, insisted on justice, and saw that justice meted out.

I have felt compelled to write about what happened to me, but I am too terrified of the consequences to post under my own name. Still, perhaps my story might give someone else the courage to do more than post anonymously to the internet. Perhaps someone will read it and realize how important this issue is. Or perhaps I’ll just feel better having written it. All worthy goals.

I was 18 the last time it happened, it was Christmas break my Freshman year in college. I ran and hid in my room and wondered how I’d let it happen again, it hadn’t happened in so long, I was in college now, surely I should have been safe. I didn’t cry, I just shook. In the decade since that night, I’m not sure I’ve ever managed to unpack everything going on inside me at that moment. Fear, anger, confusion, hurt, desperation for love and approval.

I’m not sure when it started. Maybe I was 11 or 12? It started gradually. Inappropriate hugs, hands lingering where they weren’t supposed to be, hands being held where they didn’t want to be. It escalated over the years to being given alcohol, oral sex, and being told that “if your mother ever found out, she would kill me.”

It was never vaginal intercourse and so, until the recent change in definition, it didn’t seem like I could call it rape. And, even though he lived with me, he was a step-relation, so I wasn’t sure whether it could be properly defined as incest. And I loved him, he was family, so I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. And it didn’t always feel bad, some of the things felt good. And when so much of life was filled with hate, criticism, and being ignored, it was really something for someone to show affection at all. At the time, I felt it was my fault and, without any labels that seemed right, couldn’t think of what it was that was being done wrong exactly, just that it made me nauseous to think about. With the massive age difference, I knew it was statutory something. I don’t know, I tried very hard not to think about it.

But then a strange thing happened. My body forced me to think about it. I stopped having my period. I knew, physiologically, that it was impossible for me to be pregnant, but I was terrified just the same. A home pregnancy test confirmed my understanding of anatomy.

After three months with no period, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist at school, but, when I refused to take antidepressants because I was terrified my parents would find out, they refused to see me. Then I decided I had to make an appointment with a gynecologist. My mother was annoyed by my urgency at needing to go. It took two months to get into see someone — a very religious, old Southern man with a private practice.

He didn’t believe me when I said I’d never had sex and forced me to take a pregnancy test–I explained that after six months amenorrheic I’d be showing if I was lying, but that didn’t help. They never asked me if I’d been sexually abused, but who knows what I would have said. They never asked what I thought had precipitated the loss of periods. I guess I wasn’t thin enough to be anorexic, so it didn’t matter, even though it was a clear sign of depression. The fifth or sixth time he asked me if I was really a virgin, I started to cry, I never felt so judged. Not that being a virgin was important to me, but being honest absolutely was.

He wrote me a prescription for some hormone that induced a period and for a year’s supply of birth control. Somehow, the massive cramping didn’t make me feel any better.

I had to go to a family event that fall where He was present. And He had started dating someone I knew, someone I respected and liked a lot. I didn’t know what to do. At the same time, my family was harshly criticizing me for being fat (size 12) and not caring about my appearances. Presumably they thought my unhappiness was from being “too fat to be loved” rather than some negative experience of mine.

I began self-harming–cutting and starving myself. I visited pro-ana websites “out of curiosity”. I would eat a Milky Way bar and nothing else. I would eat with other people so they wouldn’t know anything was out of place and go home and throw it up. I made a friend take all my knives and scissors. I fantasized about driving through stop signs and red lights through traffic and getting into horrible accidents. I drove through the city late at night trying to get lost.

I’m not sure what broke, but finally I went to see another school therapist and agreed to take antidepressants.

It was too late, I felt, to try to tell my parents, and my therapist agreed, but only because she thought my parents were horrible. She felt like I should just try to get them to treat me like an adult and stop complaining about my weight all the time. The incest and rape thing just wasn’t that important because it wasn’t going to happen again, but unless I stopped them, my parents would continue to be awful.

It got better. I stopped seeing the therapist six weeks later, and was much better than I had been. I still occasionally had nightmares, but managed OK. A year after this, I tried to talk to my mother about what had happened. I woke up in the night after a nightmare and was shaking, and my mother heard me walking around. She took me to an all night diner and we talked. I told her what had happened and she told me I had misinterpreted events. I insisted I had not. She didn’t remember the conversation the next day. Her therapist later told me that she wouldn’t survive being told, the guilt would kill her, so she must have blocked it. He told me I couldn’t ever tell her.

I am happy now, I love myself, I love others and others love me. I am doing what I want to do, I am an activist in causes I care about, and I am fighting fights I want to fight. And I can’t find it in myself to fight this fight out loud.

I feel like an enabler, writing this anonymously. Never having confronted him. Never having told the family. What good would it do now, to open all of that up? It wouldn’t help anyone, just open wounds. Just make people hate me or hate him…but probably me. Who wants to do that? To destroy a family? I like a lot of the people who would get hurt.

And so I stay silent. Along with thousands and thousands like me. Justice is not being stopped by a powerful organization like Penn State or the Catholic Church, but by the reality that the victims would be hated just as much as, if not more than, the perpetrators. We’ve broken down some of the barriers to reporting stranger assaults on children, but we haven’t solved the larger problem of helping those living with their abusers. Society isn’t built to fix this problem or help people like me, but it doesn’t always have to be like this. Go read that article in The Atlantic, share it, write about this issue, support RAINN, and be willing to hear the truth, even when it is unpleasant.

[guest post] We Need To Talk About Incest Survival

Feminism and Victimhood

Miri, , , , 32 Comments

What’s this I keep hearing about feminism promoting “victimhood”?

Anti-feminists often suggest that feminism encourages women to “see themselves as victims,” that feminism is actually insulting to women because it suggests they need “special rights” in order to be able to compete with men. The concept of programs that encourage women to pursue STEM professions or that teach men not to rape, therefore, implies that women are poor defenseless victims.

But does it really?

I never really understood this critique of feminism because I remember how powerless I felt before I became a feminist, and I know how powerful I feel now. Maybe there are feminists who feel like hopeless victims of the patriarchy. I don’t know; I haven’t met any.

You know what really sounds like victimhood to me? Anti-feminism.

Anti-feminism says that women must act “feminine” and men must act “masculine,” no matter how they personally feel like acting.

Anti-feminism says that sex and romance must follow certain scripts, and if you don’t like those scripts, too bad. If your desires fall outside of those scripts, again, too bad.

Anti-feminism says that all-male (or mostly-male) legislative bodies can make laws telling women whether or not and on what conditions they may obtain an abortion and how they may acquire birth control. If women don’t like that, well, they can just run for elected office themselves because this is a democracy after all. How they’ll do that while popping out all those babies they didn’t want? You tell me.

Anti-feminism says that men can’t control their sexual urges and refrain from raping women that they find attractive. It says that women do have the power to prevent their own rapes, but only by not having consensual sex, not drinking, not going out alone, not flirting–pretty must just staying home where it’s safe.

Anti-feminism says that if a dude keeps making inappropriate comments to you at work, you should suck it up and learn how to take a joke. Guys will be guys.

Anti-feminism says that if you’re a woman who wants to have children, you’ll have to accept the fact that caring for your children will reduce your career opportunities while the man you had those children with continues advancing through the ranks. If you wanted a more successful career, you shouldn’t have had children.

Anti-feminism says you should spend hours of your day putting on makeup, removing your body hair, fitting yourself into uncomfortable clothes, and tottering around on high heels–in fact, many of these things are often required of women in the workplace. It says that appearance is a reasonable factor to judge people by, because if you’re ugly, you can just choose to take better care of yourself.

Anti-feminism says that if you’re fat, you should spend your time, money, and energy on getting thin. Otherwise it’s acceptable to discriminate against you.

Anti-feminism says that you’ll be happier, a better woman if you marry a man and have kids. Even if you think you won’t. Do it anyway.

Anti-feminism says that if that man abuses you, you should make an effort to be a better wife.

I can’t think of anything more disempowering, more victimizing, than to live by an ideology like this one.

I know why people think feminism is all about victimhood. The reason is that feminism, like all progressive ideologies, rejects the idea of meritocracy. Feminism acknowledges the fact that while hard work and perseverance matter, some people still start out the race already ahead, while others must run the race dragging weights behind them. Acknowledging this reality, documented by decades of academic research and personal narratives, isn’t promoting victimhood. It’s lifting a rug that we’ve swept so much crap underneath.

The meritocratic worldview can be beneficial both to individuals and to society. On an individual level, it maintains the “just world hypothesis,” the idea that the world is fundamentally fair, that those who deserve success will get it and those who get screwed over must’ve deserved it somehow. It can be much more comforting than believing that sometimes people get screwed over for no good reason. And not just because of bad luck, either, but because our society may be set up in a way that screws over certain groups more than others.

On a societal level, the meritocratic worldview keeps people working hard. After all, if you truly believe that hard work is all you need to succeed, well, you’re probably going to work pretty damn hard, unless you’re just lazy and don’t deserve success anyway.

But understanding that hard work isn’t all there is to it doesn’t mean that people won’t work hard. It means that people will try to fix the world’s broken parts rather than pretending they’re not there. Feminism is empowering to me and to so many other people precisely because it shows us that we don’t have to accept the world as it is–even if some of the realizations it provokes are uncomfortable and jarring.

Most people will feel like victims at some point in their lives. Life has a way of putting almost everyone through shit that’s completely reasonable to feel sorry for yourself over. For what it’s worth, I’ve never felt like a victim as a woman. I’ve felt like a victim as a child who was bullied by her own teachers, as an adolescent who lived with untreated depression for nearly a decade, and as a young adult who sometimes feels like there’s just no way to get anywhere in this world without tons of money. Sometimes.

But there are people out there who have had their lives irrevocably altered by sexism in ways so horrible I try not to think about them. If those people feel like victims from time to time, I think they’re completely justified.

And that’s not something that can be blamed on feminism. That’s something that feminism, unlike the dogmatic pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps crap we keep getting fed, is actually trying to address.

Feminism and Victimhood