Go Team Patriarchy

If you've never read Cat and Girl, you oughta.

Women Are Controlling. Also, They Love Shopping

Also:
Women need men to take them shopping and men play video games.

It Would Be Dark (Like This Blog Has Been for a While)

This is how I feel about feminism right now:
Not that feminism is dark, of course, just that it's very complex and can produce endless debate--and for right now, most of what I can come up with isn't much more than something like "It would be dark."

But I'm getting there. Hopefully back soon.

Men Matter: Boys Are People

I'm easing back into reading some feminist blogs, and one of my favorite feminist bloggers, Jill of Feministe, has a great post up today where she reflects on a new study that shows that (gasp!) adolescent boys think of adolescent girls as more than just sex objects. My favorite part of Jill's analysis:

And this is another “thank feminism” moment. The idea that boys just want sex (and girls don’t) is at its heart conservative and essentialist — and it’s a stereotype that lays the groundwork for requirements of “femininity” that inevitably involve refusing sex until a big fat diamond enters the picture, and bartering virginity for financial and social security. It’s not feminists who argue that boys are mindless animals only interested in sex; no, that argument comes from your anti-feminist social conservatives, who manage to inject it into abstinence-only sex education...

On Burnout, and Bigger Pictures

Warning: Personal Rantiness Ahead

I've been on a road trip for a week with limited internet access. For a few weeks before that, I found myself not wanting to blog about feminism. And now that I'm back, I'm trying to ease back into it, but I'm finding myself still feeling burned out on it all.

Immediately I feel the pull of privilege--when I think about taking an extended break, my first thoughts are about how I 'get' to do that more easily than some others do, in part because I'm a guy, in part because I'm middle-class, in part because I'm not a person of color. But then I realize that I haven't stopped thinking about feminism, about class, about race (and their intersections). I have stopped feeling like I'm contributing to something that helps the world. Instead of being inspired by others, instead of inspiring myself, instead of feeling part of a larger movement, all I seem to be able to focus on lately are the hurdles in front of us, the infighting that is so prevalent so as to seem inevitable, and the mountainous pile of work to do to just stay in one place as regards equality, not to mention trying to move ahead.

I know that a lot of these feelings come to anybody committed to social justice. This is what burnout does--it narrows your focus to the negatives, for a time. But I also know that, for a few years now that I've been reading and writing feminism online, I'm not feeling any progress. That includes progress (or lack thereof) on a macro level, but also includes the lack of progress in my own ideas about feminism, class and race. Mostly I feel like there's a lot of pointing to sexism, and not enough analysis of the whys of sexism's pervasiveness. As much as I think it's important to keep pointing out sexism--silence is permission to whatever degree--I've definitely found myself stuck in pointing-mode, without much analysis to make my pointing useful, or interesting. Also, I find myself parroting the 'talking points' of feminism, without incorporating more of feminism(s) into my larger world-view.

So, if anybody is still reading, I'm going to ease back into writing, probably with some posts on gender in the comics, but with an eye toward also analyzing why I think pop-culture stuff is central to understanding social inequalities. But I'm not ready quite yet. Hopefully I come up with enough interesting stuff that people will come back and read. If not, I'll still feel better that I'm not just reiterating what others are saying, but contributing something to (at least) my own world view.

Absence

I've been away. Not literally. Wait--can you be away literally from a blog? There are various reasons, not completely unlike Roy's reasons at No Cookie for Me and legions of other bloggers everywhere, I suppose. Issues of relevancy, of utility, and of being just plain burnt out. And then, of course, as a male feminist blogger, there are added issues of privilege--the idea that men can more easily take a break from understanding sexism does tend to pop into my head, though I know it's more complex than that.

And now I am going to be out of town for a week or so, back The second full week of February. So I'm going to let my road trip help me percolate up some of the ideas I have for change here at Feminist Allies into ideas worth writing about. Something clearly has to change so that I can feel not only like I'm creating some interesting ideas in people's heads, but also that I'm not setting myself up for another burnout.

My original conception of this blog was for 4 or 5 men (and women) to post middle-length posts about men, masculinity, and feminism. When the groupblog didn't work out, I resolved to do short little posts on a 5-a-day basis, with perhaps a long-ish post thrown in once or twice a week. This appears to be too much for me--I just haven't felt like I've had enough to say that often. So I'm working on some other ideas, which I'll hopefully start up when I get back from my trip.

Count me as down, but not out.

See you in a week or so!

Roe v. Wade

On this, the 35th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, I'm digging Courtney Martin's take on things, which includes complex analysis and inclusion of the opinions of many:

As we celebrate the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade this week, I hope we can remember a bit of the spirit at the Women's March for Choice in Washington, D.C. -- a gathering of over a million people according to some estimates -- back in 2004. Surrounded by men, women and children of all ages, I felt empowered to stand up for every woman's legal right to reproductive choice (not to mention health), but also free to disclose my complicated feelings over the issue. There was space for transformational dialogue as we lay in the grass, listening to the diverse speakers. There was time to look women of all ages in the eyes and say, "This is where I'm coming from. How about you?"

Gender in Comics: How Soft is Your World?

I was probably one of the last people to discover A Softer World, an interesting 'comic' that utilizes pictures of the real world, but sticks to a three-panel daily comic form. Usually the third panel has some sort of turn-around in thought. Mostly they are charming, funny, and full of bleak humor--and the bleakness is certainly part of the humor. One often finds oneself thinking, "Ouch!" while chuckling all the same. For a good example, check out this one. But sometimes, not so much. After reading through a bunch of their archives, I've found way too many references to violence against women than one would have expected from such a witty source.

As is par for the course with a lot of the comics I detail here, I actually really like this comic, generally. So, once again, this is tough love.

There Is Always More 'Humor' About Stalking, It Seems
Am I an old feminist curmudgeon? Perhaps. But this sort of thing still doesn't touch my funny bone at all:


I Said Peanuts
Poisoning Somebody? Not funny. Thinking About Poisoning Somebody? Funny...?


See What I Did There?
Another reference to domestic violence that's not really happening, so it can be funny, right?


The Cat's Out of the Bag, Hopefully
And finally, just out and out 'humorous' misogyny!
Because fantasizing about killing all of your ex-girlfriends and then playing video games is hilarious.

Gender in Comics: The Women As Objects Edition

I'm going to pick on F-Minus a bit this week, but that's not because I think it's more of a problem regarding gender stereotypes than any other comics. In fact, it's often better around gender and race. I love F-Minus. So think of this as tough love.

What Better Present Than a "Secretary"?
The root of this joke is pretty funny, actually--the idea that somebody would employ somebody around their home for writing daily emails or whatever (though how a secretary would do that with a steno pad isn't clear--I think the steno is there in lieu of a nametag that says "secretary", as an identifier). Thing is, as it stands, it's just creepy, what with the short-ish skirt and the fact that, by default, the secretary is a woman.

Even Creepier: A Womb as a View
Or is my title for this comic even creepier? Probably.
I think what bothers me most about this is that this represents at least a couple of things going on here that are only very slightly magnified for so-called comic effect--things that people do and experience daily. The sign isn't far from how some men talk and think about women. And the experience of having to walk by such a sign, as a woman, isn't far from the general harassment many women go through daily.

Dating Women as a Class of Things
There's an interesting storyline going on in Monty over the past few weeks, which I'll probably talk more about, because it's relatively nuanced for a comic. But some of the first strips are great examples of what men sometimes do: They attempt to date a gender, rather than a person:
Single? Check. Woman? Check. And that's all it takes, because they're interchangeable objects!

bell hooks Monday: God and Love and All That Good Stuff

Since I haven't responded yet in detail regarding a bunch of comments from my post Can God Be a Feminist?, I thought I would at least offer up a different point of view (than my own) from one of my favorite feminists on god and worship. For bell hooks, what is central to the necessity of a spiritual life is the need to keep our focus on love. It's interesting to note that she moved from being a Christian, to becoming interested in Buddhism and Islamic mysticism, to just keeping in mind that love is where we often find truth.

From Wounds of Passion:

"When I come to college, it does not take me long to realize that the really hip people do not believe in god, that no one talks about religion expect the boring born against. My relationship to god is the most private union. I learn not to speak of it. Although in classes it is always I who can name a scriptural reference. I konw the bible and am not ashamed of this knowing. In fact, it surprises me that everyone in my classes is so ignorant, mostly though they brag about being atheist. That's what is really cool--to not believe in the existence of god. I believe."(pp 152)

I had a moderately different experience in college. I did meet some self-professed atheists in college, but mostly I meet people who claim agnosticism, or a generalized 'spirituality' not unlike what hooks tells us she ends up with. Of course, the atheists I did run across there (some of whom became friends!) were relatively vocal in their atheism not unlike the people hooks seems to be talking about. Hooks, for her part, moves along from her Christianity to look around for other paths:

"Mack finds my devotion to religion strange. I have moved away from the conventional church but I have kept in me the love of the inner life, the need to be one with the divine. I search for the meaning of religious life everywhere. I study Buddhism and Islamic mysticism. In town there is a Sufi meeting. I go there to dance in the circle of love. And that I am learning about the mystical dimensions of religious faith takes me back to the heart, to loving. To be with god is to love. It is required and understood that a man be found faithful. The ethics of being that govern my life are grounded in spiritual life.(pp152-153)"

Who can argue with love, or paying attention to one's inner life? I find it interesting that hooks doesn't seem to explicitly talk about the misogynist aspects of various religions--though I haven't read everything she has written. She does, however, express various ways in which religion has left her wanting--the white Buddhists who say race doesn't matter because we all choose our race, those who try to force their beliefs on others, the difficulties of letting go of the things in this world in order to be more spiritual. In the end, she likes the seeking--seeking seems to be her religion:

"I contemplate my work. I pray for divine guidance. It comes between me and Mack that I am turning from poetry to writing critical essays, on subjects that are more political. He feels I am abandoning the aesthetics of the artists life for the mundane realm of social theory. I am trying to invent a world that can sustain me as a writer, as a woman dedicated to the life of the mind. I want to remain a seeker on the path."(pp160)

I sometimes feel this way about feminism itself, actually. The infighting just kills me sometimes. And, the need for the infighting--there are real problems that need to be addressed--kills me too. When I start feeling like abandoning feminism for, say, humanism or some such, one thing that helps me is to understand the ways in which my relationship to feminism has developed, and the ways in which feminism itself has changed and grown, is to look at it in a similar way to the way that hooks is looking at religion. Seeking a better and better feminism seems to be the way to go--still seeking, even while unhappy with the current path. (Of course, I feel this way about humanism, and anti-racism, and lots of other ways of framing the world.)

Shorter Gloria Steinem:

Systems of oppression involving gender and race can only be uprooted together, but gender is way more important than race.

Early on in her latest op-ed piece, she says:

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.

And then a bit later:

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.

Um, yeah, you know, you sort of are advocating a competition, what with claims of what is the most restricting force in American life. And then you offer 'evidence' for this view by noting that black men got the vote before any woman did, ignoring (just off the top of my head) lots of other facts, like the fact that white women weren't literally slaves as black men and women were. Just as a for-instance. Sheesh.

I'm disappointed in the extreme with Steinem's writing here, which feels for all the world to me like Steinem hasn't heard a word that has been said in the past three or so decades from those who have been rightly critical of feminism for being stupid about race.

What Men Can Do Wednesday: Get Some Help with Being an Ally

There is a great discussion going on over at Creek Running North on an 'Ally 101' thread started by Theriomorph around how to be a good feminist ally, and how to keep one's privilege and racism in check as much one can. I encourage everybody who isn't already reading it to check it out.

Some of the comments are simply put, but full of good advice. From commentor Christina, of Say Nothing Charmingly, in particular sticks with me:

I really just think that listening, leavened with a touch of empathy, is what is needed. Since historically, white folks haven’t had to listen to others much, nor feel empathy for others much, it’s not as easy as it sounds to learn it.

Hat tip to BlueAlto.

Tuesday Gender in Comics: Stereotypes and Double-Standards

MmmmMm...Canned Soup and Waffles...
First up, Calvin's dad provides the model for the supposed 'typical' dad, when faced with preparing dinner:
Gender stereotypes are interesting, especially when they feel sort of rooted in reality. Men aren't encouraged to learn to cook as much as women are (unless you get to the 'chef' level of cooking, and then there are more jobs for male chefs than female chefs, and a lot of sexism from higher-ups, apparently). But of course lots of men do love to cook, and lots of women are happier making soup and waffles. My stepfather loves to cook, and my mother (like me) doesn't like it so much. It works out great for both of them, because she often cleans up (and enjoys his meals!), and he gets to do what he thinks is pretty fun (I don't get it), and make meals.

Growing Fat and Love Handles
A 'classic' For Better or For Worse spells out a double-standard pretty clearly:
It's interesting to note that this 'classic' strip is probably 15 years old, at least (rather than just retire outright, Lynn Johnston has opted to do some new strips and some 'flashback' strips), so it may be slightly dated, but still mostly holds true. I think things are changing in this regard, at least in the realm of the pressures of advertising. Men are more and more encouraged to buy products that help them appear/feel younger-looking, thinner, hairless and the like. I would be happy that things are evening out if it weren't for the fact that they are evening out in the 'wrong' direction; instead of people of all genders being happier and healthier at various sizes, men are becoming (to some degree, anyway) objectified in ways that will likely not be good for their self-value.

It's Just That Simple
Mutt 'n' Jeff sum it up:

Men like to read. Women like to shop. Enough said!

bell hooks Monday: Men Who Change

Sorry, only enough time for some insightful words from bell herself this morning. Back to more regular posting soon.

From The Will to Change:

"It is not easy for males, young or old, to reject the codes of patriarchal masculinity. Men who choose against violence ar esimultaneously choosing against patriarchy, wherther they can articulate that choice or not." (pp73)

"Ultimately, the men who choose agaisnt violence, against death, do so because they want to live fully and well, because they want to know love. These men who are true heroes, the men whose lives we need to know about, honor and remember." (pp74)

Men Who Do Feminist Work -- The Men of the Movie "Protagonist":Mark Pierpont, Joe Loya, Mark Salzman and Hans-Joachim Klein

I recently had the great pleasure of watching Jessica Yu's film, Protagonist. I am sometimes a bit of a documentary film junkie, and I was looking around for something to watch on ye old online-dvd-in-the-mail service's webpage, and ran into this film. Yu has several other prior films to her credit, and I haven't seen any of them, though I hope to see them all, now that I've seen this one.

The premise of the documentary is simple: Yu interlaces the stories of four men who, on the face of it, only seem to have a few things in common. As the film goes on, the relationships between the men's stories begin to come into focus, and it turns out that all four men have been struggling with various strains of traditional masculinity, and, though self-analyzing struggle, have found different sorts of masculinities to embrace.

I'm being extremely heavy-handed in my analysis, but the film itself has a pretty light touch. It wasn't until the last third of the movie that I realized that masculinity was really at the center of things for these men--and recognizing the ways in which they could reject rigid gender roles helped them to overcome some of the central difficulties of their lives. Feminism isn't mentioned by name here, and it's pretty clear that the men involved might not characterize themselves as doing feminist work, but, since feminist theory has done so much of the heavy lifting as regards railing against traditionally rigid gender roles, I say they are doing feminist work nonetheless.

I encourage everybody who is interested in documentary storytelling, men who are struggling with traditional conceptions of masculinity, and pro-feminist men in general to check out the film. And I don't think I can encourage you to do so more than by giving a bit of background on these four men. From the movie's site:

The Stories At the heart of each man's story is the quest to transcend his imperfections. While each man's motivations are highly personal, the stories demonstrate how the individual struggle between fate and character can have far-reaching consequences.

HANS-JOACHIM KLEIN suffers through a cruel childhood in a working class neighborhood near Frankfurt, Germany. When Klein joins the leftist movement in the 1970s, he is driven as much by idealism as by the desire to rebel against his authoritarian father, a cop. As Klein's activism evolves from radicalism to terrorism, he becomes a trusted comrade in the Revolutionary Cells (RZ), an offshoot of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang. With the RZ he joins Carlos the Jackal in the violent kidnapping of eleven OPEC ministers, which leaves three people dead and Klein with a near-fatal gunshot wound.

MARK PIERPONT has a strict religious upbringing in New Jersey. The "black sheep" of the family, he realizes his attraction to other men, but desperately wants to avoid this sentence to "eternal hell." Pierpont's drive to suppress his homosexuality leads him to become a missionary, preaching abroad to crowds of thousands. Back in the states he infiltrates gay bars to spread the word of Jesus, convincing himself that his "homosexual problem" has been cured.

JOE LOYA also comes from a home steeped in both love and fear of God, as enforced by his zealous father. At age seven, Loya's mother dies, and his father's grief explodes into violence against Joe and his brother. When Loya finally fights back against years of abuse, the act of dethroning his father ignites a sense of intense power, of triumph over hypocrisy and brutality. Loya's determination to recapture that thrill leads him to his own life of brutality, in which he eventually robs over thirty banks.

MARK SALZMAN comes from suburban Connecticut. The smallest boy in his class, he is the subject of relentless torment from his peers and his mild-mannered parents offer little guidance. Upon seeing the show "Kung Fu" on television, Salzman is convinced that he can achieve personal transformation through the study of martial arts. Though he becomes best friends with the chief bully in his school, Salzman's quest to become a man of physical and spiritual strength is warped by his allegiance to a sadistic master.

PROTAGONIST seeks not to judge its subjects or make political pronouncements, but rather to use these stories as a window into human nature. Though our subjects' backgrounds are diverse, their shared experience points to a universal conflict: the conflict between the desire to control our world, and to accept our fundamental limitations.

What these descriptions don't tell you is that all four men were able to creating something of a reversal of their own fortunes, even though there was still a cost associated with how they were before the reversal.

Thanks for Jessica Yu, and to these four men, for creating such an interesting window into the inner lives of men and their relationship to traditionally rigid conceptions of masculinity.

New Book!

Y'all should check out Shira Tarrant 's new anthology by/about/for pro-feminist men:
Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power.

I can't hide that I'm jealous as heck that the piece I submitted didn't make it into this anthology, because it looks pretty neato. I'll be buying it in spite of my bitter heart, and I'll enjoy it, dammit!

New Year and All That Crap

(Go by Mark Tatulli's Lio book, please.)

I get a wee bit more excited about New Year's Eve than Xmas, though I have mixed emotions about NYE as well. I like the ideas of renewal, of taking a look at one's life, of looking toward the horizon for new ideas and feelings. I hate the idea that one changes significant things in one's life by deciding to on a particular day, which is often doomed to failure. (There are always lots of people in the gym I go to in January, and it's almost always empty the rest of the year, for instance.)

I do have some goals for Feminist Allies. I want to try to revive posting every day, and try to include something on the weekends. I want to have more in-depth posts a few days a week at least, rather than mostly blurby-goodness. I would love more discussion. And I'm hoping that this year I might find some allies who are interested in turning this into something of a groupblog again. (I'm also not going to jump into it with anybody--I've realized that to blog with somebody you need to not only have a passion for the subject; you also need some other things in common.)

Mostly I just want to read and write more, and get into more discussions with people. I've expanded and changed what feminism means to me since this blog was started, and I've 'met' lots of interesting people with complex ideas, and I'd love to understand it all a lot better. And hopefully help make some change.

Have a safe New Year's Eve everybody!

Men Doing Feminist Work: Michael Flood

Michael Flood is one of the 'fathers' of the modern pro-feminist men's movement, and an activist for feminism among men. He's one of the founders of XYOnline, a resource for pro-feminist men. And do I mean a resource. The Men's Bibliography alone would warrant much thanks for Michael. It's organized by subject, and contains thousands of article listings of interest to feminist men. (Though I do have reservations about the Men's Strength campain that XYOnline supports, as I think it helps to support rigid traditional gender roles to some extent--i.e. that strength=masculine.) He's critical of the so-called Men's Rights movement (and various offshoots/related movements) in a serious way. The trap that some pro-feminist men fall into is to attack these movements as some sort of man-on-man grudge match. Instead, Flood uses (in part) core feminist principles to ask pointed questions.

I particularly like his analysis (available as a PDF here) of Men's Rights advocates as riding a wave of conservatism, all the while claiming the mantle of 'new fatherhood':

Anti-feminist men’s groups have ridden the wave of right-wing backlashes against “political correctness” and efforts at social justice.In Australia as in other Western countries, the 1980s and 1990s saw the slowing down, or development of obstacles to, progress in women’s equality and gender justice. Australia underwent an economic and social restructuring, involving the winding back of the welfare state and the increasing dominance of market economics and economic rationalism. There have been at least three forms of attack on gender justice, part of the “revolt against behaving fairly”: justifications of social inequalities through biological determinism, social Darwinism and Sociobiology; attacks on policies or principles which have been a central part of feminist agendas such as equal opportunity and affirmative action legislation; and claims of a repressive ideological regime of ‘political correctness’. Anti-feminist men’s groups are a fourth, and they have taken up such discourses themselves in asserting pro-sexist agendas.

I'll probably talk more about Michael in future editions of Men Doing Feminist work, because, well, he's done a lot of work. But in the meantime, some linky goodness:


Wikipedia Article.
Men's Bibliography.
XYOnline

What Men Can Do Wednesday: Mix It Up

Over my Xmas holiday, I spent a good deal of time watching my nephew open and enjoy some presents, but even more time sitting around with friends and chosen family, mostly eating. I had a lot of good food (but not too much, strangely--I managed to avoid that way-way-way-too-full feeling this year), all of it pretty much prepared by other people. Sure, I did some slicing and salad making, but mostly what I did was dishes. This is something that comes directly from my upbringing--my mama taught me, if you're a guest and food is made for you, you help to clean up. (Exceptions can be made at homes where guests aren't allowed to do such things, by virtue of their guest-hood, but they are few and far-between.) I have extended this to a general rule that I clean up, since I don't enjoy cooking very much at all, and I even kind of enjoy cleaning up.

It's a simple thing, but with my non-chosen family and even friends from the past, too often things play out along gender roles, with men sitting and eating (and maybe carving a bird, or doing the outdoor grilling), but women doing most of the cooking and cleaning up. Even among people who are aware of the perils of rigid traditional gender roles, such roles reassert themselves mercilessly, and one has to keep an eye out for 'em.

One of the things that I love about my group of friends and chosen family is that there is a real effort to erase gender distinctions around who prepares food and who cleans and...well, we just all do a lot of work to make sure the meals turn out good and fun and delicious for everybody involved, and that nobody is left behind when it comes to the work of the meal, or the enjoyment of it (and, for me, they are intimately related). We also tended to choose meals which aren't that labor-intensive, so that we could hang out a bit more.

The other way men can mix it up is to literally mix up the little groups that split up during gatherings--several times I noticed that we had all broken down along gender lines completely, and a couple of times I decided to mix it up a bit. I'm happy to say that my friend group doesn't as often break down along those lines (though it does at times), and that we have enough queer-ish-ness to make some of those lines blurry from the start.

So: Little things, to be sure, but worthwhile nonetheless. Mix it up a bit, guys.

Men Doing Feminist Work: Feminist Dad

Marc at Feminist Dad doesn't have much time for blogging these days, being the father of a new little kid, but when he does find some time to post, he explores a lot of interesting topics, and asks a lot of questions. I'm particularly fond of his discussion on the blog about the ins and outs of him joining a local "mother's" group:

But what about fathering? What does it mean to father, if mothering carries such a gendered connotation? If it means maintaining the breadwinner role, then many fathers today will strongly argue that for years we've been working to redefine what fathering means in our society. If this is so, are we conflating notions of mothering and fathering work? Are we all neutral Parents, or should there still be a "Mom's Group" and then perhaps a separate one for Dads? After all, there are Dads in our neighborhood. They just don't go to the meetings, or at least not the ones that I know about.

He also often notices the ways in which rigid gender roles along the lines of parenting pop up along the way, like when they first began planning a flight with their newborn:

The bad news is that only mothers seem to be expected to fly with (or without) their babies: Mothers flying with, and now without, their child will be permitted to bring breast milk in quantities greater than three ounces as long as it is declared for inspection at the security checkpoint. How about "Mothers (and now introducing, new and improved, Fathers!) flying with their child..." for a change. The rest of the TSA page speaks in gender-free language, mostly by using "you" and "your" alot. But that doesn't change the headlining picture of a mother feeding a baby.

There are lots of daddy blogs out there (Marc has some on his blogroll), but this is a great one for being explicitly feminist.

Go check it out.