Sorry, Poe’s Law.
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"The worst thing about this phenomenon, one woman remarked, is that it’s often “a general feeling, not necessarily a momentous incident. And that makes it feel less real.”
I think I know what she means, but this also strikes me as the kind of “gut feeling” stuff that Trumpers use to justify building a wall on the border-- it just “feels right” even without evidence (of course the quote is vague, we don’t know what behavior she’s referring to, constant sexist jokes are probably a valid tip-off.) I don’t dismiss the reality of faux-feminist predators, but sometimes a person you think is creepy might turn out to have Asperger’s instead of being a psycho.
I wonder what the corollary to ad hominem is when what’s being inappropriately (and, derailingly?) slandered that way isn’t a person, but a web site.
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It’s rough because it’s not easy to separate the assholes from the innocents in life overall. In addition to people on the spectrum, there’s also just dudes who are Doing It Wrong, well-intentioned and eager to help though they may legitimately be. And then there’s people who aren’t constant assholes, but who have tremendous asshole moments, misogyny and all. And there’s plenty of reason for women to be hyper-sensitive about that, to err in favor of “Fuck off,” when that might not be -strictly speaking- necessary.
Predators don whatever guise they need to in order to stalk their prey. And though predators are usually a minority of any given group of people (outside of government and the C-suite), they’re really out there and they really use your trust to get close. It’s hard to tell on the outside if someone’s just being awkward or if they’re stalking you and waiting for a moment when you’re alone, and it’s often not worth the risk in making sure you’re totally accurate on that judgement call.
One of the things that gets compounded in circumstances like this is the shame and guilt of being a victim. You trusted someone you shouldn’t have, and you feel like a fool, you feel manipulated, you feel somehow responsible for what happened. But I think the counter-narrative there is very important: someone else’s actions are never your responsibility. You’re not at fault, you’re not to blame, you’re not a fool. Shitty things happen to good people who are well-prepared for life, and I wish that that wasn’t the case, but you are not to blame for someone else’s cruelty to you.
One of the most toxic elements of our internalized protestant ethic is this idea that if something horrible happens, that we’re somehow responsible because we weren’t X enough or we weren’t Y enough or we weren’t Z enough.
Yes, announcing you’re a feminist is no guarantee that you’re not also a creep (or at least being creepy). The reality is that creeps hide everywhere. But if you trust a creep who calls himself a feminist, then that’s not your fault.
Which is easy enough for me to say, I suppose, but I wish it was easier for everyone to say, probably especially those who have been victimized by garbage like these guys.
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Pretty much every “bro”, “bruh”, “brah”, “dude”, etc. ever wearing a “save the ta-tas” shirt.
I’m on the fence about that.
But you know how it is. You find out more and more about a gal who you initially found to be unattractive, then you start to like her, admiring her voice, humor, and the way she moves, then you fall in love with her and end up firmly believing that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. Unfortunately, we know a lot about Conway now… and she is still unattractive and in the most meaningful ways possible.
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Basically, any person who makes themselves the center of a topic that isn’t based on their experiences (male feminists, white anti-racists, cishet LGBT allies, etc.) send up red flags for me. It happens all the time. It happens in every discussion of topics about non-white not-men on these forums. What these people don’t understand, and the lack of understanding is deep and visceral, is that it is not about them. They have an infantile belief that everything is directed to them and is meant for their consumption and commentary. Some cishet people, for example, see/hear the word “cis” and read/hear “you, specifically you” even though the context is clearly a general discussion of a topic that is not about cis people, such as the murder of a trans WOC. I don’t have a point, other than it is incredibly difficult to have discussions with these people around because they constantly derail and try to make the topic about them. It is the most irritating thing in any kind of discourse.
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You mean the tedious wrangling about whether some particular action makes it fair to label a person a “misogynist” is less important than the effects on others of what that person did? Who knew?
/s
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“I, I, me, Trumpity Trump Trump Trump.”
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Yep, yet another creep pretending to be a feminist.
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Another thread about fauxminists?
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Right?
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Not to contradict your point, but in a way it is about them, isn’t it? Or at least it’s hopeless to ask them to consider anything from any perspective other than their own.
I think the danger of insisting that feminism is not about men (or anti-racism is not about white people, etc) is that you might convince them. Those men may decide “feminism is a thing women do, in feminism-land all I get to do is listen to other people talk”, and they’ll look somewhere else for theory and practice around gender. And as we’ve learned from the exploding MRA movement, there’s plenty of toxic stuff out there for men searching for answers.
Secessionists might not be too broken up about that, but the rest of us are probably concerned.
What worked for me was not realizing that feminism wasn’t about me, or that I wasn’t supposed to hold or express opinions about it. The opposite - it was realizing that despite being a man, women are a big part of who I am. My personal life, my social environment, my world, all are made of lots of women. So their problems are my problems to the extent that we really are in this together.
Other people do tend to know more about the problems they face than I do, but this doesn’t mean I should stay silent or keep out. It just means I should have respect for their expertise while also trying my best to contribute constructively. And like everyone else, what I have to contribute is my own perspective. It is not generally as valuable as the insights from people who directly experience problems like sexism, but it can still be uniquely useful sometimes.
I think the key is to figure out how it can be about everybody without having the people with the most social power pulling everyone else’s discussion into theirs. But maybe that’s impossible, and the only hope is to flatten the power hierarchy itself…
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I ask my five-year-old, “How do you think your sister felt when you did that?” It doesn’t seem like a hard question. This isn’t some magical existential philosophy problem.
I think everyone who can’t consider anything from any perspective other than their own ought to be held back in grade 1 until they figure out how.
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You are literally doing the thing that I described.
And this where the impasse occurs. You still believe that you need to share your perspective, despite intellectually recognizing that your experiences don’t apply, because somehow you may be unique among all and must be recognized as such. Not really true, though.
In your reply, you use considerable space to center yourself in feminism and place women and their experiences around yourself. “Their problems are my problems” sounds nice, and sounds like solidarity, but it can also be indicative of a real misunderstanding of the fact that marginalized people have problems that others, including people like you, will never experience. That one cannot really understand. One can have sympathy, empathy, and/or compassion for people, but not real lived understanding. That means that, in the end, the outside perspective is unhelpful because, no matter the context, it often comes across as explaining other people’s experiences to them which signals a general disbelief of marginalized people’s experiences. This why people are often told to just shut up and listen.
I’ve now said all that I care to on the subject, so have a good one.
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Well, maybe I’m making it unnecessarily philosophical, but the important distinction to me is the difference between self-negation and self-expansion. So when someone says “feminism isn’t about you”, it could be uncharitably interpreted as saying “the experiences you’ve had are not important or valid, and you should stop talking about them”. I think what feminism is actually trying to convey is that those experiences are important, valid, and worth talking about. But also, there are also a lot more experiences that we should identify with and integrate into our perspectives, because expanding our sense of self makes us better people. So sure, talk about your experiences if it seems important. But when considering it, try to account for all the other experiences and decide if it’s still important. Often the answer will be no, but not categorically so.
Possibly just a long way of saying people need to have empathy?
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Thank your spelling this out.
I see this kind of behavior as symptomatic of unconscious collective dominance. It happens in racial terms too, a kind of, I’d say, unconscious entitlement to being on center stage. I think it often comes from being accustomed to being listened to, to being automatically taken seriously, at least by other people like oneself.
Like, “I’m a nice guy! [or, I’m a nice white person!] So of course I have something to contribute to this conversation, something worth hearing. What do you mean, you’ve already heard it before? What do you mean, me and people like me are taking up A LOT of the oxygen in the room? What do you mean, I should step aside and let others talk, maybe invite them to talk, and listen to them?”
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In an increasingly nihilistic world, I’m hard-pressed to prove that I’m unique or special, but I doggedly persist in believing it anyway. Critically, though, I believe that you are just as unique and special.
Criticizing me for centering myself is basically the same as reminding me that feminism isn’t about me or my experiences. But all I can speak from are my experiences (even quoting or linking to women is filtering or curating that info through my experience), so I’m not sure there’s a way I, or anyone else, can contribute without centering themselves. Of course, if you actually just don’t want me to talk to you, I can respect that.
Yeah, definitely. If I didn’t convey that I recognize that in my earlier reply, that was my bad.
This is a good point, and I try to keep it in mind but can always do better. So if I say “from my view, it seems that X” it can come across as saying “X is objectively the case because I have observed it”. It might not be my intention, but because of the social/power dynamics in play, that’s the effect. This is a major problem, but taken as an absolute (“the outside perspective is unhelpful no matter the context”) it basically implies that communication is impossible. If I believed that, I would give up hope completely…and I worry that others already have.
But I can see how even this exchange could be falling victim to the problem you describe, so as you suggested, this is the last I’ll write on it.
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I’m gonna use this bit of space to center myself.
Nobody else post right here. This is mine.
Aaaahhhhhhh, there we go. Not too shabby. I get the appeal. (surveys horizon, nods)
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