I recently had a gigantic epiphany which probably should have occurred to me years ago: the reason so much of feminism was illegible to me when I first got there was because my experiences are not that of the typical American woman. I simply did not receive much, if not most, of the social programming women are supposed to receive (thanks mom and dad!), and as a result what I bring to the feminist table is not unlike male privilege*. Sometimes it makes me feel alienated from feminist discourse. Sometimes it makes me angry, because my experiences are so often erased from feminist conversations. Sometimes it makes me really angry, because my experiences are sometimes not only erased but actively denied as possible experiences for an American woman to have had. Usually it makes me grateful. And sometimes - stupidly, massively arrogant as this sounds - I feel like an example of what can happen if we could just raise kids without filling them full of stupid gendered baggage. The end result of all of this is that I've had to discern typical female experience through a very different lens than most women. And I think what I've found is kind of interesting. I hope you do too.
This is the first post in a series about Stuff That I Don't Get.
------------------------------------------------------
The world is full of gorgeous people. I love to look at them. When I'm with a friend and I see a gorgeous person, I will often mention said person to my friend. More than once I've been questioned about this by confused friends. They find it puzzling how I can talk a good game about gender, yet objectify individuals right and left. It seems incongruous to them. It didn't seem at all incongruous to me, but I wasn't sure why that was, so I thought about it. The answer, as they so often are, is complicated.
I was raised in a house where beauty was discussed a lot. My mom has always been very vocal about people she finds beautiful (and they are many), sometimes going so far as to tell complete strangers how lovely their faces are. When watching movies, she'd always mention the actors she found attractive. I grew up thinking that it was totally normal for women to be vocal about people we find attractive, be they actors or fellow humans. I didn't realize this was uncommon until a few years ago.
Along the same lines, I was told how beautiful I was by my parents pretty much from the time I was born, so unlike many women, I never felt pressure to be beautiful - I believed I already was. However - again, unlike most women - there was never a comparative or evaluative element to my perception of my own beauty. One of feminism's most important points is that patriarchy works to turn women against each other, and one of the most mundane ways this happens is in comparisons of beauty. Women are encouraged, in ways both subtle and obvious, to judge their beauty not by internal standards - how pretty they feel - or external standards - how pretty people tell them they are - but by what I'm going to call internal perceptions of external standards: how pretty they think they are as compared to other girls. By this logic, astoundingly pretty women should make girls feel bad. And since girls and women are held to external beauty standards that are in most cases physically impossible, most girls and women think everyone else is prettier than them.
This was always baffling to me, not to mention occasionally infuriating when I spotted this behavior in my friends. My attitude for as long as I can remember has basically been, "Hey, I'm beautiful! And you are too! And so's she over there! Isn't it great?!" It never occurred to me to compare myself to other women. I had moments of comparison-sadness, certainly, but those were always based in my ability to present myself in a stereotypically feminine way rather than on anything inherent to my appearance. I pretty much always liked the things that were inherent to my appearance.
The third piece of my psychological puzzle is that although I've always had a positive conception of my own beauty, it never had a ton to do with my self-worth. It weighed about as much as everything else - intelligence, talent, sense of humour - with all of those dominated by the thing I was raised to believe is most important in anyone: how well do I treat the people around me? Unlike many women, I was not raised to believe that my self-worth and my beauty have anything to do with each other. Yes, I thought I was pretty, but more importantly I thought I was a pretty okay person. In measuring myself - or anyone else - it never would have occurred to me to factor appearance in. (I'm not denying that there are unconscious impulses we take towards people we find attractive, simply that my calculations of whether or not someone was a good person never took their physical appearance into account.)
An important caveat to all of this is that while we talked about attractiveness frequently in my house, we never talked about unattractiveness. It was never "she's gorgeous, but she's ugly" or "I would bone him but not him". We just never went there. We thought about beauty; we didn't think about its reverse. The only times I can remember us talking negatively about someone's appearance is when we were shit-talking them anyway and it was just one more thing we could add to the list of reasons why they suck. That's not good, obviously, but it's a far cry from placing everyone we meet on a spectrum from beautiful to ugly.
So, to summarize: I was raised to figure out whether people are attractive to me and to talk about it. I was raised to think I'm beautiful. I was not raised to compare myself to other women. I was not raised to use beauty as part of the calculation of someone's worth. All of this adds up to a person who thinks of the human body as, along with everything else it is, an aesthetic object capable of incredible beauty, which beauty says absolutely nothing about that person's worth. And here's the thing: even now, as a foot-stomping feminist, I think that's totally okay. I think it's okay to see someone, think they're beautiful, and comment on it. (Whether or not it's okay to comment to them is a different and much longer conversation.) I think it's okay to want to have sex with someone only because they're beautiful and for no other reason, as long as they are not led to believe otherwise. I think it's okay for people to want to have sex with me for no reason other than that they find me beautiful. I think it's okay to see someone beautiful and have no thought go through your head other than that they're beautiful and you'd like to see them naked - no thoughts regarding their conversation acumen or life goals. Bodies - all bodies, regardless of size or shape - are beautiful, and it's okay to think that about the ones that are beautiful to you personally.**
However. And this is a huge "however."
As a woman, I have never had my thoughts about beauty reinforced by the dominant culture. Men's bodies are not socially objectified in the same way that women's are. Men's bodies are not acceptable objects for discussion, like women's are. Men's bodies are very very rarely used to sell items, like women's are. Media is made with the male gaze rather than the female one, and so I could not turn to magazines or television to bolster my opinions on men. Never did I hear the proposition that a man should be valued primarily for his body or appearance. Never was I told that men were there for me to look at and I had the right to their space and time. Never was I told that anyone I found attractive should sleep with me and deserves to be cursed at if they won't. On the flip side, men are not told - constantly, repeatedly - that their main value lies in their appearance. Men are not under the same pressure to be attractive (and one kind of attractive at that) as women are. Men are almost never encouraged to play up the parts of them deemed by society to be most attractive as a means of securing favours or getting what they want. In short, the appreciation for bodies, and specifically the male body, that I grew up with was never warped by society into a belief that reduces men to nothing more than their bodies.
So you know what? I get it. I get why many feminist women argue against any viewing lens that incorporates the body. When you've been viewed as nothing but a body for so long, and in many cases viewed yourself thusly, it makes perfect sense that transcending that sort of degrading self-image would entail its total rejection. I get that, and I respect it. Further, I get that trying to get a non-feminist person who thinks that sort of body-centric assessment of those around them is a-ok to move away from that sort of understanding is a whole lot easier if you frame it as "yer doin' it wrong" than as "well, you're doing it wrong, but it's not wrong if I do it this way, but it's wrong if I do it this way, but you can do it this way." So I'm not arguing against the feminist response.
I am, however, really fucking sorry that we've lost touch so totally with the beauty of the body. In tying women's appearance so deeply to their worth and barely even talking about men's appearance (hello, het-male-dominated discourse!) we've trampled nearly any possibility of a genuine discourse of bodies. And as someone who loves bodies - looking at them, touching them, experiencing them, playing with them - this strikes me as really sad.
I don't know how to fix this. There's so much that needs to be unpacked and thrown out and reconstructed before we can even start. But I do hold out hope that it can be fixed. I'd like to be able to talk about bodies as things to be appreciated aesthetically without being damaging. Even as I write this, I'm worried that some misogynist asshole will take it as license to continue being misogynist. But I think it's important to say. Feminism is, in some sense, about tearing down the current structures, and I'm all for that - but we can't, in the process, lose certain things entirely. In upending misogynist and damaging perceptions of the body, we shouldn't discard it entirely. So maybe this is my attempt to build something.
*My own shorter definition of male privilege: being able to just not think about stuff that women are forced to think about every day on account of you're a dude.
**Yes, beauty is 100% subjective, and yes, I believe every person is beautiful, because every single person on the planet is someone else's perfect physical specimen. If the only people I was capable of admitting are beautiful are the ones I want to fuck, then most of the world ain't gettin' fucked.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
dating courting mating.
I recently read part of a really cool history of 20th century courtship through the 1960s for my masculinity class, and it got me thinking about dating and courtship and how we handle this stuff in the 21st century. I've had occasion to think about this in detail before, when I've found myself in the difficult position of trying to make modern dating habits legible to my dad. (Results have been mixed.) Let me make something clear: I'm not talking about relationships that develop organically between people who are initially friends, or relationships that start with casual hook-ups. I'm talking about the process of investigating another person in a non-sexual context to see if there might be romantic compatibility between you. I think that process operates differently for us than it has for previous generations, and that's what I'm interested in discussing.
From my perspective, the characteristic that most distinguishes modern courtship is its informality. I've been on a lot of dates, but very few of those were explicitly defined as such prior to the date itself. More commonly, I'd meet a guy who interested me (or was interested in me) and we'd mutually plan to meet for dinner. At this point, romance status is entirely unclear. Are we interested in each other, or is it one-sided? Does someone just want to be friends? (Usually one can err on the side of mutual interest, but with nothing stated explicitly it's wise to not come down on either side of the question.) Typically, dinner is necessary to figure this out.
Ever since I was in high school, my first step in determining whether or not something was a date was whether or not the dude paid. (Hypothetically I could have paid for myself and him and settled the matter, but that would mean I was assuming that we both thought it was a date, and a wrong assumption would embarrass me so much that I would probably die on the spot. Therefore, I usually follow the gentleman's lead to avoid spontaneous combustion.) This has nothing to do with me thinking the guy "should" pay and everything to do with what I have termed The Code. The Code (which we all understand without talking about it) says that the payer pays in order to send the signal, "HEY. THIS IS A DATE. IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING. YOU ARE HERE IN ORDER THAT WE MIGHT FIND OUT IF WE ARE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THIS FARTHER DOWN THE MORE-THAN-FRIENDS PATH." This is usually the guy, because we're still somewhat trapped in a 1950s model of courtship - but what makes that really interesting is that in my experience guys don't pay because they think it's Right For Men to Pay. They pay for one of two reasons: either they think it's right to pay when you ask someone on a date (and they're not afraid of affirming that that's what they've done), or they explicitly pay to send the coded signal described above. What was once a rigid social convention has become almost entirely semiotic. And if you don't think that's cool I'm not entirely sure what to do with you.
Anyway. At this point, if the guy has paid, I am left with a choice. If I want to say "Yeah, this is totally a date, and I'm cool with it - let's see where this goes," I'll make a token protest for politeness' sake but let him pay. If, however, I do not wish to agree to the date, I'll raise holy hell. I don't think I've ever actually succeeded in buying my own dinner in these cases, but I do usually insist on buying dessert or coffee. This is my way of saying "No dude, this is not a date. We're friends having dinner. Get it?" My active refusal to let him buy me dinner means I don't agree to continue down the road of romance. It doesn't mean we can't be friends - it just means I don't want to get involved. What it also means is that most dates are only defined retrospectively. I've been on dates that I was at the time very careful to not label as such, which I'm perfectly comfortable calling dates now.
Lest I appear down on this system, I'm not. I think it's great. I think it's fabulous. It allows for the complicated waters of acceptance and rejection to be navigated without ever having to have an awkward conversation, and because of that, it allows people to become friends in a way that may not have been possible before. Guys who I've tried to date, and guys who have tried to date me, have become my dear friends once we moved past the trying-to-date phase, and I think that was able to happen because we were able to investigate each other as potential romantic partners without ever having to own that - and therefore without ever having to reject each other.
Of course, this isn't the only system out there. I've been on dates that were explicitly defined as dates beforehand, and for all that I love the system I just described, it's always been a bit of a relief to know what I was getting into! However, more important to the development of relationships than explicit dates are the sort of extremely casual, non-date-related interactions that have given me, and most of the people I know, our most serious relationships. The thing is, dating, while fun, often isn't based on much. I go on dates with guys who I'm interested in seeing if I could be interested in. I get into relationships with guys who I'm interested in from the start.
It tends to look like this: I meet a guy. Maybe I meet him at a coffee shop or in class or on a plane. And I find myself thinking about him a lot because talking to him was in some way Good. My first thought isn't "Let's go on a date and see where this could lead," because that's the thought I'd have if I was marginally interested and was curious to test the waters for more. It's "wow, this person is cool, and I want to get to know him better." It's much more organic than I've found dating to be. Dating, in my experience, is something I do when I want to meet Someone (Anyone) and am curious to see what's out there. When I meet the right person, we can just hang out. And stuff happens.
In discussing this with a friend (hello RJ!), she pointed out that there is a sense where we're more formal than previous generations: we frown on dating multiple people at any one time, whereas this used to be the norm. I think the difference here isn't in action but in terminology. I've definitely been in situations where there's a few people who I'm pursuing and who are pursuing me, and I've never felt there was anything morally "off" about it. The difference between us and previous generations, I'd argue, is that our generation tends to put more weight on named things than our parents did. We frown on dating multiple people because for us, calling something "dating" means more than it did for our parents.
I know this system can backfire, and backfire hard. I've had that happen to me numerous times. But I still put my faith in it. (I also think that any system probably has the same capacity to backfire as this one, just in different ways.) What we lose in clarity - sometimes, I freely admit, to the detriment of everyone involved - we gain in space and safety. By space, I mean space to come to our own understandings of what we're doing with each other without external pressure. I mean space to let feelings develop organically, without labels telling us what we're supposed to feel and when. By safety, I mean the rejection cushion I was referring to above. Ambiguity can be dangerous, and assholes exploit it to avoid having to commit to things - but it can also allow for people to find their own way to each other in a manner that didn't used to be possible. Call me crazy, but I think that's valuable.
From my perspective, the characteristic that most distinguishes modern courtship is its informality. I've been on a lot of dates, but very few of those were explicitly defined as such prior to the date itself. More commonly, I'd meet a guy who interested me (or was interested in me) and we'd mutually plan to meet for dinner. At this point, romance status is entirely unclear. Are we interested in each other, or is it one-sided? Does someone just want to be friends? (Usually one can err on the side of mutual interest, but with nothing stated explicitly it's wise to not come down on either side of the question.) Typically, dinner is necessary to figure this out.
Ever since I was in high school, my first step in determining whether or not something was a date was whether or not the dude paid. (Hypothetically I could have paid for myself and him and settled the matter, but that would mean I was assuming that we both thought it was a date, and a wrong assumption would embarrass me so much that I would probably die on the spot. Therefore, I usually follow the gentleman's lead to avoid spontaneous combustion.) This has nothing to do with me thinking the guy "should" pay and everything to do with what I have termed The Code. The Code (which we all understand without talking about it) says that the payer pays in order to send the signal, "HEY. THIS IS A DATE. IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING. YOU ARE HERE IN ORDER THAT WE MIGHT FIND OUT IF WE ARE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THIS FARTHER DOWN THE MORE-THAN-FRIENDS PATH." This is usually the guy, because we're still somewhat trapped in a 1950s model of courtship - but what makes that really interesting is that in my experience guys don't pay because they think it's Right For Men to Pay. They pay for one of two reasons: either they think it's right to pay when you ask someone on a date (and they're not afraid of affirming that that's what they've done), or they explicitly pay to send the coded signal described above. What was once a rigid social convention has become almost entirely semiotic. And if you don't think that's cool I'm not entirely sure what to do with you.
Anyway. At this point, if the guy has paid, I am left with a choice. If I want to say "Yeah, this is totally a date, and I'm cool with it - let's see where this goes," I'll make a token protest for politeness' sake but let him pay. If, however, I do not wish to agree to the date, I'll raise holy hell. I don't think I've ever actually succeeded in buying my own dinner in these cases, but I do usually insist on buying dessert or coffee. This is my way of saying "No dude, this is not a date. We're friends having dinner. Get it?" My active refusal to let him buy me dinner means I don't agree to continue down the road of romance. It doesn't mean we can't be friends - it just means I don't want to get involved. What it also means is that most dates are only defined retrospectively. I've been on dates that I was at the time very careful to not label as such, which I'm perfectly comfortable calling dates now.
Lest I appear down on this system, I'm not. I think it's great. I think it's fabulous. It allows for the complicated waters of acceptance and rejection to be navigated without ever having to have an awkward conversation, and because of that, it allows people to become friends in a way that may not have been possible before. Guys who I've tried to date, and guys who have tried to date me, have become my dear friends once we moved past the trying-to-date phase, and I think that was able to happen because we were able to investigate each other as potential romantic partners without ever having to own that - and therefore without ever having to reject each other.
Of course, this isn't the only system out there. I've been on dates that were explicitly defined as dates beforehand, and for all that I love the system I just described, it's always been a bit of a relief to know what I was getting into! However, more important to the development of relationships than explicit dates are the sort of extremely casual, non-date-related interactions that have given me, and most of the people I know, our most serious relationships. The thing is, dating, while fun, often isn't based on much. I go on dates with guys who I'm interested in seeing if I could be interested in. I get into relationships with guys who I'm interested in from the start.
It tends to look like this: I meet a guy. Maybe I meet him at a coffee shop or in class or on a plane. And I find myself thinking about him a lot because talking to him was in some way Good. My first thought isn't "Let's go on a date and see where this could lead," because that's the thought I'd have if I was marginally interested and was curious to test the waters for more. It's "wow, this person is cool, and I want to get to know him better." It's much more organic than I've found dating to be. Dating, in my experience, is something I do when I want to meet Someone (Anyone) and am curious to see what's out there. When I meet the right person, we can just hang out. And stuff happens.
In discussing this with a friend (hello RJ!), she pointed out that there is a sense where we're more formal than previous generations: we frown on dating multiple people at any one time, whereas this used to be the norm. I think the difference here isn't in action but in terminology. I've definitely been in situations where there's a few people who I'm pursuing and who are pursuing me, and I've never felt there was anything morally "off" about it. The difference between us and previous generations, I'd argue, is that our generation tends to put more weight on named things than our parents did. We frown on dating multiple people because for us, calling something "dating" means more than it did for our parents.
I know this system can backfire, and backfire hard. I've had that happen to me numerous times. But I still put my faith in it. (I also think that any system probably has the same capacity to backfire as this one, just in different ways.) What we lose in clarity - sometimes, I freely admit, to the detriment of everyone involved - we gain in space and safety. By space, I mean space to come to our own understandings of what we're doing with each other without external pressure. I mean space to let feelings develop organically, without labels telling us what we're supposed to feel and when. By safety, I mean the rejection cushion I was referring to above. Ambiguity can be dangerous, and assholes exploit it to avoid having to commit to things - but it can also allow for people to find their own way to each other in a manner that didn't used to be possible. Call me crazy, but I think that's valuable.
Friday, April 24, 2009
numbers.
I've been gone for awhile. Turns out it's really difficult to blog about sex and gender without referring to one's personal experiences. As those tend to involve other people, all of whom would be identifiable to anyone who knows me well, I am uncomfortable writing about them. It's been difficult for me to see a way through this, and so I disappeared. I've been looking for a way to come back for awhile, though, and I've decided to do so.
I'm taking a class right now called Masculinity in America, and we recently read a chapter from a book discussing Victorian courting practices. The chapter goes into some detail about the ideal Victorian relationship, which was understood as a meeting of two souls that were "sympathetic" to one other. It stresses that romantic relationships were conceived of as largely desexualized until marriage, and that reflection on one's partner's sexuality threatened to destabilize the delicate balance Victorian men had to find between the aggressiveness they were taught to cultivate in their personalities and the ideal of self-control, sexual and otherwise, that predominated during this period. Just one catch: this romantic ideal was entirely impossible. Men's and women's social spheres were so separate as to preclude "meetings of the minds" almost entirely. For any man to become interested in any woman, it would have to be rooted in sexual attraction, simply because there was literally no other way for something to begin. Victorians just pretended that's not what was going on so they didn't get cognitively dissonant and crazy. Thinking about this brought me back to one of the stranger phenomenons I've experienced in my life: getting asked for my phone number by random men I've exchanged maybe ten words with. This has happened twice, once on a bus and once at a park, and both times it struck me as weird.
Asking me for my phone number is generally understood to mean you'll call me and we'll have coffee or dinner, something along those lines. This may be where I differ from most people, but I'm not usually interested in having coffee or dinner with someone unless I think we might have things to say to each other. This information cannot typically be discerned from a fifteen-word conversation on a bus or a two-minute one in a park. What can I get from those conversations? A sense that you're probably/probably not deranged and a sense of whether or not I think you're physically attractive. If I was willing to go on a date with every attractive man I saw who probably wasn't deranged, I'd have a list of numbers as long as my arm, most of whom wouldn't have worked out anyway due to sheer statistics. (Not even to mention my taste, but we'll get to that later.)
My point, then, is getting asked for my phone number by a random guy seemed to me the equivalent of saying, "Hey, you're pretty hot. Can I bone you sometime?" Since he's got no other information about me other than my looks and maybe ten words I've said, what else could he be asking? I had to be missing something. I also thought there might be a different cultural dating norm at work than what I'm used to, since I've only ever had this happen with guys from inner-city Chicago. I decided to ask a friend of mine about it who I thought might have some insight on the matter. He did indeed. His argument, basically, was that if he and a girl have exchanged some pleasant chatting and some flirty looks, there's no reason not to extend that into a drink and see if there's some compatibility there. Basically, he's advocating being largely non-discriminating in one's choices of people to go on dates with. This is where I differ completely.
I've been on a lot of first dates, and I've flirted with a lot of guys, but I've had only a few boyfriends. I've also had very few legitimate crushes. (In fact, when I started college, I hadn't had one in so many years that I was scared I'd never have one again. True story.) This isn't because I'm an ice queen or something - it's because I don't fall for people easily, and I have no control over that process. I wish I did - my love life would be a lot more interesting (or maybe a lot less interesting) - but I don't. I also have a Type, in terms of personality. It's thin on the ground, I can spot it pretty quickly - more accurately, I can spot not-it pretty quickly - and I've never really deviated from it. Again, this is not by choice. This is by having no control over what I fall for, just like everyone else on the planet. Because of this, I see very little point on going on dates that are virtually guaranteed to be failures.
You could call this conservatism or fear if you want, but I prefer to call it realistic honesty. I know what I want, and I know what I like, and I know where it flocks. I also know what I don't want, and that's something casual. I've done that. It was great. I'm very, very over it. I want something serious, something long-term. Something with legs. And the chances of me finding that on a cross-town bus, while there, are so slim as to be non-existent. So while I no longer perceive random number requests as code for "let's bang sometime" - and let me be clear, I don't necessarily see anything wrong with it if they are - I'm no more interested in them than I used to be.
Share with me your thoughts on dating liberally versus dating conservatively! Also, your random-stranger-on-the-bus-asks-for-your-number stories.
I'm taking a class right now called Masculinity in America, and we recently read a chapter from a book discussing Victorian courting practices. The chapter goes into some detail about the ideal Victorian relationship, which was understood as a meeting of two souls that were "sympathetic" to one other. It stresses that romantic relationships were conceived of as largely desexualized until marriage, and that reflection on one's partner's sexuality threatened to destabilize the delicate balance Victorian men had to find between the aggressiveness they were taught to cultivate in their personalities and the ideal of self-control, sexual and otherwise, that predominated during this period. Just one catch: this romantic ideal was entirely impossible. Men's and women's social spheres were so separate as to preclude "meetings of the minds" almost entirely. For any man to become interested in any woman, it would have to be rooted in sexual attraction, simply because there was literally no other way for something to begin. Victorians just pretended that's not what was going on so they didn't get cognitively dissonant and crazy. Thinking about this brought me back to one of the stranger phenomenons I've experienced in my life: getting asked for my phone number by random men I've exchanged maybe ten words with. This has happened twice, once on a bus and once at a park, and both times it struck me as weird.
Asking me for my phone number is generally understood to mean you'll call me and we'll have coffee or dinner, something along those lines. This may be where I differ from most people, but I'm not usually interested in having coffee or dinner with someone unless I think we might have things to say to each other. This information cannot typically be discerned from a fifteen-word conversation on a bus or a two-minute one in a park. What can I get from those conversations? A sense that you're probably/probably not deranged and a sense of whether or not I think you're physically attractive. If I was willing to go on a date with every attractive man I saw who probably wasn't deranged, I'd have a list of numbers as long as my arm, most of whom wouldn't have worked out anyway due to sheer statistics. (Not even to mention my taste, but we'll get to that later.)
My point, then, is getting asked for my phone number by a random guy seemed to me the equivalent of saying, "Hey, you're pretty hot. Can I bone you sometime?" Since he's got no other information about me other than my looks and maybe ten words I've said, what else could he be asking? I had to be missing something. I also thought there might be a different cultural dating norm at work than what I'm used to, since I've only ever had this happen with guys from inner-city Chicago. I decided to ask a friend of mine about it who I thought might have some insight on the matter. He did indeed. His argument, basically, was that if he and a girl have exchanged some pleasant chatting and some flirty looks, there's no reason not to extend that into a drink and see if there's some compatibility there. Basically, he's advocating being largely non-discriminating in one's choices of people to go on dates with. This is where I differ completely.
I've been on a lot of first dates, and I've flirted with a lot of guys, but I've had only a few boyfriends. I've also had very few legitimate crushes. (In fact, when I started college, I hadn't had one in so many years that I was scared I'd never have one again. True story.) This isn't because I'm an ice queen or something - it's because I don't fall for people easily, and I have no control over that process. I wish I did - my love life would be a lot more interesting (or maybe a lot less interesting) - but I don't. I also have a Type, in terms of personality. It's thin on the ground, I can spot it pretty quickly - more accurately, I can spot not-it pretty quickly - and I've never really deviated from it. Again, this is not by choice. This is by having no control over what I fall for, just like everyone else on the planet. Because of this, I see very little point on going on dates that are virtually guaranteed to be failures.
You could call this conservatism or fear if you want, but I prefer to call it realistic honesty. I know what I want, and I know what I like, and I know where it flocks. I also know what I don't want, and that's something casual. I've done that. It was great. I'm very, very over it. I want something serious, something long-term. Something with legs. And the chances of me finding that on a cross-town bus, while there, are so slim as to be non-existent. So while I no longer perceive random number requests as code for "let's bang sometime" - and let me be clear, I don't necessarily see anything wrong with it if they are - I'm no more interested in them than I used to be.
Share with me your thoughts on dating liberally versus dating conservatively! Also, your random-stranger-on-the-bus-asks-for-your-number stories.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
this is for you.
I've mentioned on here a few times how grateful I am for feminist men.
This is why.
This Is For You, This Is All I Can Do
This is why.
This Is For You, This Is All I Can Do
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
one thought.
it's been a long time, but all I've got is one thought:
it makes me viscerally angry, and a little bit sick, when women call themselves Mrs. Husband's-full-name. You are not Mrs. John Smith. You have your own name and your own identity, and there is no goddamn reading of that action that can be even remotely feminist. It is disgusting. Take his name if you want - I've talked about that - but for the love of Christ, your first name is still your own.
I will never be Mrs. Anyone. Jesus fuck.
it makes me viscerally angry, and a little bit sick, when women call themselves Mrs. Husband's-full-name. You are not Mrs. John Smith. You have your own name and your own identity, and there is no goddamn reading of that action that can be even remotely feminist. It is disgusting. Take his name if you want - I've talked about that - but for the love of Christ, your first name is still your own.
I will never be Mrs. Anyone. Jesus fuck.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
random musings.
There are a lot of things I want to write about, but I can't seem to get my head around any of them coherently enough for a full post. So, bullet points.
- This whole Sarah Palin fiasco. I don't give a shit that her daughter's pregnant, and I have no interest in getting within ten feet of any slut-shaming conversations. (I haven't actually seen any judgments of Bristol Palin because of this, just of her mother and her mother's utterly broken political beliefs - but I have no doubt they're out there.) I give a shit that her daughter is living breathing evidence that the sexual ethic Palin would impose on all Americans doesn't work. I've said it before and I'll say it again: abstinence is a sexual choice every bit as valid as any other, but it needs to remain a choice, and not become a prescription.
- My current man situation. I'm becoming one of those women I could never stand growing up, who have My Dream Man all figured out and allow no flexibility. My only defense is that it's not within my control. I fall for a very specific personality type, and I've figured out what that is down to pretty small details. Just my luck that one of those details is "frighteningly intelligent." Result: I develop genuine feelings for people very rarely. Bitch bitch moan moan.
- Genderfuck. It stinks of cisgendered privilege to me and leaves a rotten taste in my mouth. Then again, it also fits perfectly into the fantasy world I described here. Contradiction? I think so!
That's more or less the gamut of stuff that's in my head w.r.t. gender and sexuality these days. I will probably write more intelligently about the first two at some point and will probably not write more intelligently about the third, since I don't see a way of doing it that will avoid me sticking my foot in my mouth pretty spectacularly. However, I'd welcome any thoughts to be had on the third one, since it's something I'm thinking about pretty heavily.
- This whole Sarah Palin fiasco. I don't give a shit that her daughter's pregnant, and I have no interest in getting within ten feet of any slut-shaming conversations. (I haven't actually seen any judgments of Bristol Palin because of this, just of her mother and her mother's utterly broken political beliefs - but I have no doubt they're out there.) I give a shit that her daughter is living breathing evidence that the sexual ethic Palin would impose on all Americans doesn't work. I've said it before and I'll say it again: abstinence is a sexual choice every bit as valid as any other, but it needs to remain a choice, and not become a prescription.
- My current man situation. I'm becoming one of those women I could never stand growing up, who have My Dream Man all figured out and allow no flexibility. My only defense is that it's not within my control. I fall for a very specific personality type, and I've figured out what that is down to pretty small details. Just my luck that one of those details is "frighteningly intelligent." Result: I develop genuine feelings for people very rarely. Bitch bitch moan moan.
- Genderfuck. It stinks of cisgendered privilege to me and leaves a rotten taste in my mouth. Then again, it also fits perfectly into the fantasy world I described here. Contradiction? I think so!
That's more or less the gamut of stuff that's in my head w.r.t. gender and sexuality these days. I will probably write more intelligently about the first two at some point and will probably not write more intelligently about the third, since I don't see a way of doing it that will avoid me sticking my foot in my mouth pretty spectacularly. However, I'd welcome any thoughts to be had on the third one, since it's something I'm thinking about pretty heavily.
Friday, August 15, 2008
choices.
Can the choice to do something sexist still be a feminist choice?
The corners of the internets where I lurk (don't judge) have been arguing about this recently in the context of weddings and name-changing. In case you don't feel like wading through 1,000+ comment threads: Side A is arguing that even an informed choice to do something sexist (like taking one's husband's last name as part of marriage, a tradition with painfully sexist roots) is an indefensibly unfeminist choice, and Side B is arguing that that's not necessarily the case.
I find this to be a really compelling argument and I'd like to think it through. Let's stick with a woman changing her name when she gets married, for ease of example. On the one hand, the tradition of name-changing derives from the notion of women as property and marriage as a property exchange. This is - let's not argue - sexist. It's a whole lot sexist. It's also pretty impossible to argue that the tradition as it is today has nothing to do with those roots, otherwise why would it just be the woman changing her name (in the vast, vast majority of cases)? It's all about the subordinate status of women, and there's really no getting around that. Taking the husband's last name perpetuates a sexist tradition and enacts outdated and sexist ideals of male and female status in a way that should give any feminist pause. Given this, it's easy to see how it could be argued that choosing to change your name is an unfeminist choice.
On the other hand, though, women can't ignore the existence of a tradition of name-changing. I straight-up don't believe that there is a single woman in the United States who is unaware that if/when she marries, she will have to make a decision with regard to her last name. Simply keeping one's own name and acting like that's a nonpolitical action (because the tradition of name-changing shouldn't have existed in the first place, so why should we acknowledge it) ignores the history associated with that action in a way that I'd argue is impossible. There are many things I'm willing to give folks a free pass for not knowing, but the fact that American women are expected to change our names when we marry is not one of them. Any choice a woman makes with regard to this is loaded; any choice a woman makes with regard to this is political. Choosing to keep one's name needs to be done in cognizance of this.
There's a huge amount to be said for reclaiming and reinventing former tools of oppression. (This goes right along with the reclamation of language which, while I'm not a fan of myself, I can see the value of for others.) Taking a tool of oppression and remaking it as a tool of liberation dilutes much of the power of that tool to oppress, and while this is obviously somewhat extreme language, the point stands: things can take on new meaning, can be infused with new meaning, and can be used for purposes other than that for which they were initially intended. And if a woman decides that she's taking her husband's name because she likes it better than her own, or because she wants to show her happiness at shedding her old family and becoming part of a new one, or because she doesn't want to deal with the additional paperwork of being a wed couple with two different last names - if she decides this in full cognizance of the history of name-changing, that's a choice I have to acknowledge and respect. Feminism, after all, is about a woman's freedom to make whatever choice she likes.
However - and this is a big however - choices are not made in a vacuum. Choosing to reclaim a sexist tradition and remake it in a nonsexist way doesn't change the fact that reclamation wouldn't have to happen if sexism didn't exist in the first place. The choice to take one's husband's name for personal reasons (thereby reclaiming the choice) is still a choice made in the context of societal expectation that it is what one will do. And it does, as I said above, perpetuate a sexist system and sexist ideas of What Women Should Do. Do I think a woman can be aware of this and still choose to do it? Absolutely. Tons of women do. Does that make their action feminist? Not necessarily.
Choices are complicated things, and feminism is all about choice. If a woman is making an informed choice to do a sexist thing, I have to support her right to her choice - but I don't have to support her choice. It seems to me that her informed, thought-out action of making a choice is 100% feminist - but the choice itself is to do a sexist thing and participate in a sexist system. So in answer to my original question, yeah, I think the choice to participate in a sexist system can be a feminist choice. But that doesn't mean it's a choice I will necessarily support. I support and respect everyone's right to an opinion and a choice. That doesn't mean I respect their opinion or their choice - but I will defend their right to make that choice, come hell or high water.
In answer to the question begged by this post, no, I don't like either alternative. Were I to marry, I would do one of two things: either we both hypenate (Ms. Hisname-Myname and Mr. Myname-Hisname), or we combine our names to make a new name. Both of these acknowledge the tradition of name change, and therefore the fact that this decision wasn't made in a vacuum, while acknowledging the new family we are creating together - which is really what the whole name thing should be about anyway.
Please share your thoughts.
The corners of the internets where I lurk (don't judge) have been arguing about this recently in the context of weddings and name-changing. In case you don't feel like wading through 1,000+ comment threads: Side A is arguing that even an informed choice to do something sexist (like taking one's husband's last name as part of marriage, a tradition with painfully sexist roots) is an indefensibly unfeminist choice, and Side B is arguing that that's not necessarily the case.
I find this to be a really compelling argument and I'd like to think it through. Let's stick with a woman changing her name when she gets married, for ease of example. On the one hand, the tradition of name-changing derives from the notion of women as property and marriage as a property exchange. This is - let's not argue - sexist. It's a whole lot sexist. It's also pretty impossible to argue that the tradition as it is today has nothing to do with those roots, otherwise why would it just be the woman changing her name (in the vast, vast majority of cases)? It's all about the subordinate status of women, and there's really no getting around that. Taking the husband's last name perpetuates a sexist tradition and enacts outdated and sexist ideals of male and female status in a way that should give any feminist pause. Given this, it's easy to see how it could be argued that choosing to change your name is an unfeminist choice.
On the other hand, though, women can't ignore the existence of a tradition of name-changing. I straight-up don't believe that there is a single woman in the United States who is unaware that if/when she marries, she will have to make a decision with regard to her last name. Simply keeping one's own name and acting like that's a nonpolitical action (because the tradition of name-changing shouldn't have existed in the first place, so why should we acknowledge it) ignores the history associated with that action in a way that I'd argue is impossible. There are many things I'm willing to give folks a free pass for not knowing, but the fact that American women are expected to change our names when we marry is not one of them. Any choice a woman makes with regard to this is loaded; any choice a woman makes with regard to this is political. Choosing to keep one's name needs to be done in cognizance of this.
There's a huge amount to be said for reclaiming and reinventing former tools of oppression. (This goes right along with the reclamation of language which, while I'm not a fan of myself, I can see the value of for others.) Taking a tool of oppression and remaking it as a tool of liberation dilutes much of the power of that tool to oppress, and while this is obviously somewhat extreme language, the point stands: things can take on new meaning, can be infused with new meaning, and can be used for purposes other than that for which they were initially intended. And if a woman decides that she's taking her husband's name because she likes it better than her own, or because she wants to show her happiness at shedding her old family and becoming part of a new one, or because she doesn't want to deal with the additional paperwork of being a wed couple with two different last names - if she decides this in full cognizance of the history of name-changing, that's a choice I have to acknowledge and respect. Feminism, after all, is about a woman's freedom to make whatever choice she likes.
However - and this is a big however - choices are not made in a vacuum. Choosing to reclaim a sexist tradition and remake it in a nonsexist way doesn't change the fact that reclamation wouldn't have to happen if sexism didn't exist in the first place. The choice to take one's husband's name for personal reasons (thereby reclaiming the choice) is still a choice made in the context of societal expectation that it is what one will do. And it does, as I said above, perpetuate a sexist system and sexist ideas of What Women Should Do. Do I think a woman can be aware of this and still choose to do it? Absolutely. Tons of women do. Does that make their action feminist? Not necessarily.
Choices are complicated things, and feminism is all about choice. If a woman is making an informed choice to do a sexist thing, I have to support her right to her choice - but I don't have to support her choice. It seems to me that her informed, thought-out action of making a choice is 100% feminist - but the choice itself is to do a sexist thing and participate in a sexist system. So in answer to my original question, yeah, I think the choice to participate in a sexist system can be a feminist choice. But that doesn't mean it's a choice I will necessarily support. I support and respect everyone's right to an opinion and a choice. That doesn't mean I respect their opinion or their choice - but I will defend their right to make that choice, come hell or high water.
In answer to the question begged by this post, no, I don't like either alternative. Were I to marry, I would do one of two things: either we both hypenate (Ms. Hisname-Myname and Mr. Myname-Hisname), or we combine our names to make a new name. Both of these acknowledge the tradition of name change, and therefore the fact that this decision wasn't made in a vacuum, while acknowledging the new family we are creating together - which is really what the whole name thing should be about anyway.
Please share your thoughts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
