Female Directors

Lots of us get most of our movie fix from Netflix these days. Guess how many of those movies are directed by women? Around 2%.

So, some folks got together using Netflix's API and produced FemaleDirectors.com, which lets you see the movies Netflix offers which are directed by women.

Check it out!

IWD: 100 Years

All y'all already know it's International Women's Day. Right?

I wish I could write more today. But please check out one of my favorite blogs,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif in the spirit of IWD, which covers all kinds of feminisms, but also sheds all kind of light on feminist activism in various parts of Africa: Black Looks.

Also, check out the IWD site, including all kids of events going on:

Simple Sexism: Looking In

I was talking with a woman who works at a cafe I go to about what we each did over the weekend, and I found out that she was in two bike races! I like talking with her because she really likes exercise, and is one of those people who sort of radiates athleticism. Folks like that can be really encouraging to me, when I meet them in day-to-day life, because they can help reinforce the idea that one doesn’t have to be a full-time athlete to be healthy, or even athletic. Weeks ago she had mentioned a tough yoga class she was taking at the college she goes to, and I asked her how it was going now. She told me that she dropped the class--her friends had dropped out of it, it was at an inconvenient time, and there was another problem: Creepy guys from the gym next door kept walking back and forth next to her classroom, staring through the windows at the women doing yoga.

My heart sank.

It’s such a simple kind of sexism, and yet these men managed to discourage this woman enough to have her opt out of her class. It’s a good guess that most of the men don’t even think twice about staring in at the women doing yoga--or if they do, they imagine that they themselves would really love it if women stared at them while working out, not acknowledging the contextual differences between the two situations. And it my cafe buddy made this decision very matter-of-fact-ly: Too many creepy guys, so she stopped going. This is just the kind of decision she sometimes has to make, as if guys looking in at you while you exercise is just something true about the world that you have to deal with, like taking an umbrella with you when it’s raining.

But that sort of sexism isn’t a given--as men, we can recognize how that might make women feel, and adjust our actions accordingly. We might call other men out on it. We might help create a world where the literal male gaze isn’t just one more hazard to be figured in while walking through the world.

Sex-Negativity in Porn Criticism

Whenever folks talk or blog about porn, there are always strong reactions (and lots of hits!), often overstated or oversimplified. I noted a long time ago that I agree with Lisa Jervis when she asks: Can't we talk about porn without having the same conversations over and over again? Human sexuality is complex, and our relationship to porn is complex--the conversations we may want to have about porn should necessarily be kinda intricate.

That said, why is it that most porn criticism I read tends to have an undertone of sex negativity? I like criticizing porn--there are so many reasons to do so, and I think it's important to not just take so-called "porn culture" as a given. We should criticize the industry for its sexism, racism and transphobia (of course, such criticisms should also be dealt out for most industries!). We can examine the ways in which porn and easy access to it can, has and will change our sex lives. But I wish that we were having such conversations within a larger conversation about positive sexuality, rather than framing the conversations within mostly heteronormative, not-kink-friendly frameworks.

Take Marina Robinson's article about the ways in which porn viewing may be changing the structures in the brains of young men. There's some interesting stuff in there. In particular, it's interesting to read her take on how the so-called "reward circuitry" of the brain may reinforce sexual habits in a way that we may want to pay close attention to. I'd say that the science still seems "iffy" to me, but it definitely worth lots of more study, and, like I said, it's interesting.

And yet, she has to throw in subtle moralizing that, for me, undermines her persuasiveness. For instance, she says:

"Masturbation based on imagining affectionate contact with a real potential mate is stimulating enough, especially for a teenager. But masturbation based on shocking stimuli, by gradually numbing the brain, can shift the user’s priorities away from real potential mates."

There is a lot of loaded language here, and it seems to me that she must know that the language is loaded--she was a lawyer before going into the porn-criticizing business with her husband, so I imagine she chooses her words very carefully! And yet, she is above saying quite clearly that one's priorities when having sexual fantasies should be on one's "real potential mates".

To which I ask: Why? And who gets to decide that? I mean, if one's sexual fantasy life is larger than one wants it to be, that's one thing--but the idea that, somehow, the goal of fantasizing is to only imagine "affectionate contact with a real potential mate" seems (if you'll pardon me) perverse.

And this betrays her view of masturbation in general, a view which has rung out through the ages: Masturbation is practice for the real thing. And this is a limited (and limiting) viewpoint. Masturbation can be practice, for sure. But it can also be having fun with oneself. Sometimes we may want to simply be alone and jerk off. Of course we might want to take care that we don't over-isolate by doing so, and we will need to navigate our other sexual relationships (if I jack off too much when I'm alone, and don't feel like having sex with a partner, that does mean something). But starting from a place where we only masturbate as practice is limiting ourselves unnecessarily.

And the sex-negativity comes out in other ways. I mean, she argues against the use of "sex toys" (though she doesn't define what a sex toy is--are buttplugs sex toys? are feathers? how about a bed?) as another "overstimulator". These are toys! You play with them! Of course they shouldn't be the only thing you use to get off--unless, of course, that's what you're into.

It's stuff like the above that makes me question whether the science is being made to fit very limited views of sexuality, rather than coming in to explain what's going on.

A Bunch of Men Argue About a Woman's Right to Choose, Part 4,580,800

This is a fascinating piece of video to watch. It's long--I recommend watching it while doing some chores or whatever, but then you won't get anything done, because you'll keep coming back to it. The short version is this: A bunch of men argue about a bill to restrict a woman's right to choose, and the only woman who attempts to speak (at 1:09:15) is first of all repeatedly not recognized to speak, and then is shut down, even in the face of her pointing out that a bunch of men have just been allowed to speak about a law that only affects women.



Hat tip to: Crooks and Liars, although the folks at C&L then also cut off the sole woman congressperson by cutting off the clip just as she begins to speak. Sheesh.

If I Don't Lurve the Good Men Project, Am I Evil?

Recently I wrote about how much I was enjoying The Takeback, and about why I enjoy it more than The Good Men Project. I prefaced that piece by noting how exciting and great it is to have so much good writing around redefining masculinity in positive ways--when I started blogging, this just wasn't so much the case.

Thomas Matlack didn't *quite* appreciate my "faint praise" of his GMP, which is sort of understandable--who loves faint praise? And yet, I think his response to my criticisms deserves a response. Thomas says:

Well as the founder of THE GOOD MEN PROJECT I take this as faint praise as worthy of the cause. I actually think manhood in 2011 is a complex topic that doesn't fall easily into one user fits all definition, of what it means to be good, a good dad, husband, worker, son or man. That's why we promote discussion rather than playing God. If you want to hear what you already believe perhaps that is uncomfortable. But we think its important. Please come join us.

So. Here goes.
@Thomas:

Thanks for stopping by--it's always nice when the A-listers (a published book and a for-profit blog? I say you're an A-lister!) take notice.

I do have to ask: Are the ALL CAPS really necessary? I mean, I already linked to your site a couple of times. Then again, you're making money and I'm not, so what do I know about promotion? :)

I don't appreciate the condescension ("if you want to hear what you already believe perhaps that is uncomfortable"), but such a response does rather reinforce my point that I don't enjoy GMP as much as The Takeback, in part because the GMP isn't explicitly pro-feminist. If you *really* think that my preference for explicitly pro-feminist writing means that I only want to hear what I already believe, then we probably don't have a lot to "converse" about. :)

That said, I've already responded on your site (in some comments) to all y'all's "boilerplate" response to criticism, which amounts to, "Hey, we don't take sides (or, "play God", as you put it--though most people wouldn't count necessary, practical editing of content as playing god) because we want everybody in the conversation."

I had a complaint, which was part of a conversation, on your site. The "conversation" that was being had started with a post that can be summed up as "men shouldn't get married because women are gold-digging bitches and the courts hate men because of feminism" included this super interesting sage advice:
"

Learn from your partner’s behavior. How does she act when you disappoint her? What is her reaction to hearing the word “no,” or when you choose your way instead of her way? If she takes it in stride and moves on, then you might have a keeper. However, if she responds to the fact that you went golfing when she didn’t want you to by cutting you off in the bedroom for a few days, or by telling you how selfish and immature you are for having any interests that don’t revolve around her, what do you imagine she will do when she fully believes that you are responsible for every ill in her life?

"

When some folks (who are, y'know, part of the conversation that you're all wanting to have, right?) criticized the author (I use the term loosely) for not only his bitterness, but also his thinly veiled misogyny, and then criticized all y'all for your editorial decisions around letting this douche post his bile, one of your editors chimed in with your boilerplate editorial response to criticism:

Henry P. Belanger says: Mordicai, would you like our staff determining / defining “good” for everyone? It’s unfortunate that our name can be misleading, but I think you’d agree that a magazine that told everyone how to be good wouldn’t be around very long. Goodness also entails being open, listening to divergent voices, allowing for the possibility that people’s minds can be changed, believing that “once bad” doesn’t mean “always bad,” etc, etc. I can’t tell you how many comments we’ve had in the past 8 months that sarcastically put “good men” in quotes, suggesting that we did not meet their standards for goodness. these commenters have come from all across the political / ideological spectrum. The more it happens, the more confident I am that our approach here — being a wide, open marketplace for ideas — is the good approach to take.

I responded with this:

Your “editorial” position is either not well thought out, disingenuous, or both. Putting forward that you want to encourage conversation doesn’t absolve you of drawing *some* lines. There are men, after all, who believe that “being a good man” includes physically and emotionally dominating women and other men–-presumably you wouldn’t allow a well-written, clear article which centered “being a good man” on how to beat the crap out of any person who challenges one’s opinion. So, you do draw lines circumscribing the conversation that have nothing to do with how well-written something is. You just don’t keep folks like Paul Elam from adding his voice to the conversation. What folks like Mordicai and SaraMC are saying (in part) is that this sort of unsupported tripe isn’t just one more opinion among many (as you imply)–rather, it’s unsupported misogynist tripe.

Which is fine. It’s your site. Just don’t expect everybody to pretend along with you that it’s a useful conversation.

Short version: Criticism of your site and/or its authors is part of the conversation.

I'll probably keep reading The GMP (for some reasons I'll give below). So, in effect, I already have joined your conversation. But I'll likely keep complaining that you're giving voice to opinions that aren't "complex"--they're sometimes misogynistic. And you'll continue to get called out on that for as long as people who read your site care about women (and men, and folks of all genders). Saying "it's all a conversation" doesn't get you off the hook for criticism of the editorial choices you are making.

Having said all of that, there are some things I like about the GMP, in the way that I will read BUST magazine, but prefer Bitch magazine, if I can get it--you're writing to men about alternative masculinities, even if I'm of the opinion that at least some of those masculinities aren't alternative at all, but rather more of the same (e.g. MRAs who love privilege and making more money than women but hate alimony). I mean, right now you've got a great post by a transguy. It will be a long time before traditional men's magazines have such an article, I'd guess. So, yay, I welcome the GMP. That doesn't mean I have to always loooooove it.

Shall I STFU?

Or:
It's All About Me, Right?

Sometimes, I don't do well with people who are in positions of authority. It may be the case that I have a neurotic problem with authority--in part because I grew up watching my mother struggle with sexism in her workplace, with her husband, and in the larger world. I think that having "problems with authority" may be a relatively healthy reaction to an unhealthy society, where it is often the case that those in power are harming those with less power. What is an appropriate response to oppression, other than a desire to fight back? (Of course, this is oversimplifying--other responses include caretaking of self and others, compassion and empathy. But I think a desire to fight should be in there too.)

And yet, there is another aspect of my resistance-to-authority, and it is rooted in patriarchy. Men are taught The Hierarchy, and are shown over and over again, that they have a place in it--above some men, below others, above all women, etc. And generally, we are told, we should be striving to be as high up on that ladder as we can be. This is putting it very starkly, of course, but this is essentially a big part of what men are taught. So, I resist authority in part because, on some levels, I want to be higher up on that ladder of hierarchy than the men (and women, and folks of all genders) who are currently above me.

Given these two factors, and many others, my instant reaction to having bullshit called on me, and/or being told to shut the fuck up, is that my hackles go up, and all of my defenses come to the fore. (Of course, having the safety and space to be defensive, may be a reflection/product of my own privilege.) So I am sometimes left in the following position, when somebody is attempting to call me on what they see as my own bullshit: I have to decide--Are they right, in which case I need to stand down and apologize? Or are they being bullies, in which case I need to step up and perhaps take them down a notch?

And sometimes the question is very easy to answer: If I use the word "lame" and get called out for ableist language, it's pretty clear that I need to apologize and take a step back to examine my privilege in that regard. (For some reason, "lame" has been a hard habit to break for me.) If an MRA guy tries to call me out for not including his woes around child support in a post about how women make less, on average, than men, I can be pretty assured that he's a douche and a bully, and is trying to impose his opinion in a way that isn't helpful (in part because of the aforementioned privilege that makes him think he needs to/deserves to move up the ladder with every interaction). And of course, somebody can (correctly) call me on my bullshit and also be cruel and rude about it: But that doesn't make them a bully in the sense that I'm talking about. It matters who is holding privilege--women feminists being cruel to me can cause me some pain, but they (generally) aren't using their privilege to do so. Which, y'know, matters.


Sometimes, though, it really is hard to tell whether I am responding to a sincere bullshit-call-out or a bully. And in these cases, I tend to err on the side of re-examining my own privilege, because, really, who couldn't stand to do that some more? Also: I don't have to stand up to every bully myself--I am part of various communities that do social justice work, and there are lots of people ready to stand up to bullies in those communities. And this is also a situation that will always recur: Given that I live in a patriarchal society, and given that I engage with both activists and folks in the larger world, I will sometimes screw up and get called on my own bullshit, and I will sometimes run into bullies who need to be stood up to. It just will happen.

All of which is to say that I have myriad reactions when I read Twisty's words at I Blame the Patriarchy:

But really, it’s comical, the predictability with which dudes who fancy themselves feministically enlightened just can’t seem to shut the fuck up when they are found to be duding the joint up a little too hardcore.

My first reaction is that my hackles go up. (Ok, my *first* reaction is to chuckle at "duding the joint up," because that's great use of language.) But then I reflect on where that feeling I'm having is coming from (privilege!), and where the criticism is coming from (Twisty, who knows her stuff, generally)--and I have to let it go. And it's not that I can say, "Well, she's not talking about me." She *is* talking about me, and men like me, when we screw up and can't see our privilege getting in the way of our thinking and talking. It does happen, even to those of us who are trying to not let that happen. I do my best, and I will sometimes get it wrong. Nobody likes to think of themselves like a douchebag, but all of us find ourselves saying stupid stuff sometimes, getting things wrong sometimes. So, sometimes, if I'm told to STFU, it's good to do just that.

Enjoying The Takeback

Or:
Why I'm Enjoying The Takeback more than The Good Men Project

Is it just me, or is there a cacaphony of intelligent, thoughtful writing right now that centers around redefining masculinity in ways that reflect at least some of the progress that has been made by feminism against patriarchy? Most recently, I've started reading both The Takeback and The Good Men Project.

Originally, I thought I'd write a long post comparing and contrasting these two sites, but upon further reflection, that seems like a lot of work, and there's no real reason to do that. The two groups of men are coming from different places, have different goals, and will therefore produce different content. And, though there are interesting articles in both places, The Takeback is explicitly pro-feminist, while The Good Men Project embraces the idea that they are allowing "both sides" to have a conversation (as if feminism, with its long history, is on one side while MRA's, who are comprised mostly of men who love the status quo of patriarchy except where it means they don't get laid and/or get custody of their kids sometimes, are on the other side).

Which is not to say that The Takeback is free from controversy, or that I like everything they're writing about; rather, it's more clear that the men (and women, and folks of all genders) who are putting The Takeback together are obviously more aware of the work that has already be done by feminists, and want to build on that. The Good Men Project is more obviously a profit-motivated sort of enterprise, with aspirations of a media empire--and as such, they cater more toward the mainstream.

It reminds me a little bit of what I perceive as the difference between Bitch magazine and BUST magazine--Bitch appeals much more to me, in that they take a more feminist stand on lots of things (for instance, they don't accept tobacco ads, in part because it's a feminist issue), but I can totally see why folks might want to read BUST, because it is something of an alternative to traditional women's magazines. At any rate, I think it's good that The Takeback and The Good Men Project are both out there, though I'll turn to The Takeback more often for more interesting conversations.

And I have to face it: The Takeback is the sort of thing I had envisioned Feminist Allies becoming someday--only it's way more slick, interesting and inclusive than I could ever have made this site, probably. But I'll happily read them, quote them and link to them!

Men Doing Feminist Work: Poetry Edition!

I think this is a first for Feminist Allies (which is kind of embarrassing, really): Poetry. Andrew Rihn, a reader of FA, let me in on his chapbook Outside the Clinic. I don't know much about poetry, but I know what I like: A man writing about reproductive rights in wonderful language. My favorite is "PETA weighs in", but I also really like "Midwestern Sex Talk" and "The Life Counselor". This is a man doing some great feminist work.

From the author's note:

As a male, I’ll never have an abortion. One of the privileges of
my sex is that I will never enter an abortion clinic as a patient.
However, according to Dr. Leroy Carhart, a friend and
associate of Dr. Tiller’s, “men have had unlimited availability to
‘abortion’ since the beginning of time. Men can walk away from
unwanted pregnancies with virtually no response from
government.”

While our current political discourse typically rests on binaries
(good and evil; them and us), poetry often resists such
discourse. Its lines are less clean cut, less distinct. It
encourages us to see people as complicated human beings, not
simple rhetorical subjects.

And a review:

“The American debate about abortion and contraception is too often
conducted with anger and violence. Outside the Clinic is a powerful
look at these issues and those who stand on either side. It reveals
everyday truths that are often drowned out by the politicization of
abortion. It looks beyond the commotion and into the heart.”
—Kellie Copeland, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio

Buy the chapbook here.
Read it online here.
Check out Andrew's blog: Midwestern Sex Talk

Wolf vs. Friedman

Naomi Wolf vs. Jaclyn Friedman: Feminists Debate the Sexual Allegations Against Julian Assange

(Note: You have to sit through 2 minutes of pledge drive before the 10 minute video begins...)



Shorter Naomi Wolf: It's not rape if you don't repeatedly say no, even if you're being threatened and held down.

Shorter Naomi Wolf: It's not rape if he starts putting his cock in you while you're asleep.*

It's much more apparent to me now why Friedman and Valenti named their book Yes Means Yes. If somebody like Wolf who has worked with survivors for so many years can get consent so wrong, I just don't know how we're going to shift cultural norms around rape. Perhaps if Wolf had spent less time during the interview expressing how offended she is, while providing a litany of experience, her "arguments" would be more clear to me...

*of course, if such a scenario is talked about ahead of time, and asked for with an enthusiastic "yes!", that's different.

Donate to RAINN

Sady Doyle is doing most of the work for us. Do your part and donate to RAINN now, and your donation is doubled by RAINN.

https://donate.rainn.org/

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Today is International Stop Violence Against Sex Worker Day. From the Sex Worker Outreach Program site:

December 17th is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. This event was created to call attention to hate crimes committed against sex workers all over the globe. Originally thought of by Dr. Annie Sprinkle and started by the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA as a memorial and vigil for the victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle Washington. International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers has empowered workers from over cities around the world to come together and organize against discrimination and remember victims of violence. During the week of December 17th, sex worker rights organizations will be staging actions and vigils to raise awareness about violence that is commonly committed against sex workers. The assault, battery, rape and murder of sex workers must end. Existing laws prevent sex workers from reporting violence. The stigma and discrimination that is perpetuated by the prohibitionist laws has made violence against us acceptable. Please join with sex workers around the world and stand against criminalization and violence committed against prostitutes.

Please check out the site, participate as much as you can, and donate some cash to help SWOP continue to do this work.

Good Men?

I was really interested when I first heard about The Good Men Project--and I haven't read the book, but a look at the site is discouraging in many ways: I'm disappointed in its overall tone--seems to be pretty based on a gender essentialist framework that isn't (to my mind) particularly helpful. Some examples, from just a cursory look:

Snowden Wright has a long-ish article describing what are (to my mind) the horrors of rushing a fraternity during college, and then ends his article with a stereotypically "no regrets" attitude, even about his own misogyny:

But the pain wouldn’t last. We had been different people back then. On our way home, I thought back on the person I was during those years, rude and crass and smug, without any sense of regret or shame. None. Call me an asshole, label me a misogynist, wish me an early death. Doesn’t matter. I will not apologize for having one hell of a good time. Because that’s the point of college: not only to figure out who you want to be as an adult, but also to spend four years being the person you don’t want to be.

Tom Matlock (the creator of The Good Men Project), in an interview, is the dictionary definition of a gender essentialist:

“I actually disagree with your POV here, Henry. I don’t think it’s about transcending gender at all. I think it’s about men being men. We are different. Just look at all the various statistics about what men are doing and how it differs from women, from education to incarceration to parenting. And what we as men like to do, what interests us, what inspires us. I would hate to think that our mission is a great leveling of the genders. I love women. Because they are so different. I quite honestly cannot tell you how or why my wife does or says or thinks what she does. But I love her for it.

(Because, y'know, women just think differently!)

Andrew Ladd has a slightly more nuanced take on things, but still ends up playing up the stereotypically "male" traits as positive, by noting that being a good man often means being a sissy:

So what to make of all this? Should we all go back to acting like Don Draper? The Man with No Name? Bogey? No. I stick by my own sissiness, and those iconic men of the past century are hardly perfect either. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that what we talk about today as being “good” masculinity often is sissiness, with all the word’s pejorative connotations, and not the purely positive thing we make it out to be.

As if being a sissy can't be a purely positive thing...

Also, the creator of The Good Men Project, Tom Matlock, explicitly distances it from feminism:

The way Boston-based founder Tom Matlack tells it, the website owes its existence, at least in part, to one very important feminist in his life – his mother. “My parents don’t like it when I call it this, but I basically grew up in a commune,” he says. “My mother had a strident form of feminism and it influenced me on a personal level – I found it scary.”

Although Mr. Matlack understandably won’t label his project “feminist” – its mandate includes topics too broad to be boiled down to any one political agenda – he admits there is a relationship. “I think it’s feminism on its head,” he says. “Women were trying to get out of the home. Men’s challenge is the opposite: how to be at home.”

To my mind, any work that men do toward shifting from the traditional male masculinity models to a greater breadth of what it can mean to be masculine is great, but starting from a Men-Mars/Women-Venus perspective is bound to eventually leave out a lot of potential for change.

Healthy Male Sexuality?

Jaclyn Friedman, co-editor of Yes Means Yes, is writing a new book, and is doing a workshop related to the book, and she's asking for folks who want to participate to contact her:

When it comes to sex, should I always avoid the things that make me uncomfortable? How do I know if the person I’m flirting with is safe to date? Is hooking up always damaging? What do I say to a friend who’s making sexual choices I think might be bad for her? What if that friend is questioning my choices? How do I encourage others to be safe and sane about sex without teaching them shame?
...[b]ut before the book can reach the page, Jaclyn is looking for a dozen volunteers to be the very first people to ever read the book, engage with the exercises, discuss the process with each other and with Jaclyn, and help shape the finished book.

The books sounds fantastic. I contacted her just to verify that the book, and workshop, is about/for women- or female-identified folks, and she quickly responded that, yes, it is. No problem there: All books have to have some sort of scope, and a book about healthy female sexuality framed in the way she's framing it is a pretty wide scope already.

At the same time, male-identified folks need a book like this as well--many of the resources I find when I search "healthy male sexuality" revolve more around viagra than around complex male sexuality.

Please share any good resources all y'all know about!

I'll start. This book seems to have a gender analysis at the beginning (though it starts with a discussion of Viagra), touching on at least some of the intricacies of male sexuality: The New Male Sexuality

Tim Wise on Guilt and Responsibility

Great video on Sociological Images from Time Wise (transcript below, courtesy of SI):


The clip is great, as far as it goes. I would have loved for him to have linked responsibility to privilege more explicitly, however. For instance, regarding the analogy to environmental pollution, it’s the folks who have benefited most from past corporate policies who have the most responsibility to change things now, just as the folks who have benefited/are benefiting from gender and race injustice historically who have the most responsibility to make changes now. That doesn't mean we don't all have work to do, of course, but some of us should take more responsibility than others.

I'd also like to point out that guilt and responsibility aren't mutually exclusive, though it might be helpful to sometimes think of them as such--guilt that drives one to action is useful. Guilt that drives one to shame and inaction is selfish.


Transcript:

Transcript for those who need/want it:

Questioner (off-camera): Um, as a white male, should I feel guilty for the sins of my fathers. I affirm that they exist, but should I feel guilty for them?

Tim Wise: No. You should feel angry. And you should feel committed to doing something to address that legacy. It’s like, for instance, with pollution, right? We think about the issue of pollution. Now none of us in this room, to my knowledge, are individually responsible for having belched any toxic waste into the air, or injecting toxic waste into the soil, or done any of the things… we didn’t put lead paint into the housing, you know?

Individually we’re innocent of that. But someone did that stuff, and we’re living with the legacy of it right now, or in this case might be dying with the legacy of it, getting ill, right?.

So it isn’t about feeling guilty about what someone did, even if you were the direct heir of the chemical company that did the pollution, but it is about saying, all of us in the society have to take responsibility for what we find in front of us. There’s a big difference between guilt and responsibility.

Guilt is what you feel for what you’ve done. Responsibility is what you take because of the kind of person you are, right? And so if I see a set of social conditions that have been handed to you, and which not only did wrong by othrs but elevated me and give me advantage that I did not earn, it’s not about beating myself up, I’m not responsible for that having happened, I’m not to blame for it, so guilt is totally unproductive

But in order to live an ethical life, to live ethically and responsibly, I have to take some responsibility for the unearned advantage, which means working to change the society that bestows that advantage. It’s not guilt, but it is responsiblity. It’s no different than looking at the issue of pollution or if you became the CFO of the company, you wouldn’t be able to come in and say, “I intend to use the assets of this company, and I insend to put them to greater use, and I intend to use the revenue stream we’ve got going, but that whole debt side of the ledger? No, I’m not paying any of that because I wasn’t here when the other person ran all that debt up. You should’ve gotten them to pay it before you gave me the job. Now I’m here, and I’m innocent.” We would realize that made no sense.

So isn’t about innocence and it isn’t about guilt, it’s about responsibility, that’s something we all have to take. White folks have to take it, people of color have to take it, uh, men and women have to take… everybody has got to take it, because we’re living with… if we don’t do it, no one does it, and it doesnt’ get done. We’re the only hope we have.

The Straight Guy Box

Thinking a lot about the lack of positive male sexualities, especially for straight-identified men, in part because of a recent post by Hugo.And then, I run into this funny-yet-poignant piece from Dan Savage (who I often agree with and who is often wrong) that sums up a lot of what I've been pondering:

Men's Stories

New men's stories in November during two nights of performance of the Men's Story Project. Anybody who lives in the SF Bay Area, we'd love to see you there. Even more info at the Men's Story Project site, and on Facebook.

A little taste of a previous MSP:

Talking with Men

I've had some interesting opportunities recently to talk to men in contexts that invited me to explicitly involve a feminist lens. While waiting for a "to go" order last night, I struck up a conversation with a guy who was waiting for his food. We were both standing outside the restaurant--I was standing next to my bike, which wasn't locked up, and he was waiting with his dog. I asked him if I could pet his dog (who was super-cute, named "Jack", and very happy to get some pets) and he mentioned that he could bring the dog to the school where he taught 3rd grade, and the kids loved him. Asking some more questions, I found out he's been teaching for over a decade, teaches at a private school in Oakland, has also taught kindergarten, and loves his job. I have a close friend who teaches, and we've talked some about how there is a gendered skew for grade school teachers, most of whom are women, and about how men are sometimes looked at askance for even wanting to teach children. I asked my new acquaintance what it was like for him, being in a profession that has many more women than men.

He had an interesting response that sort of surprised me in its sexism: He said that it was hard to get things done sometimes, because women teachers are more emotional than he was (being a man), and less pragmatic. I was sort of taken aback--I wanted to acknowledge his experience (after all, I had kind of asked a relatively personal question of a stranger), but felt a need to know more, and to respond. Unfortunately, his food was ready at that point, and I didn't get to talk to him further. I didn't get to ask him, for instance, if perhaps the teachers at his school felt "more emotional" than he felt, making it about personal traits, rather than about so-called gendered traits. I didn't get to ask him what "pragmatic" meant to him (did it mean ignoring passionate stances?). I applaud anybody who becomes a teacher, mostly because it's such a tough job, and I'm glad that there are men who want to teach kids, but I found the overly simplified sexism a little disheartening. Perhaps if I had talked to him more about why he felt that way, I would have gained a better understanding of where he was coming from.

Do We Dare?

A new blog for male feminists, written by a feminist man in his 20s: What Men Dare Do

One day, a friend of mine, a girl, who was then and still is one of my best friends, and I were hanging out. I couldn't tell you where or what we were doing, but I think we were perhaps on our way back from a party, or maybe going to one. She mentioned to me, very casually, "You know, Jeff, sometimes you make these sexist jokes, and they're hurtful."

It was in a very casual situation, and perhaps my remembrance of it gives it more weight than it really had, but that was my "click" moment. Somehow, that casual comment, even though I'd already read about and believed all these things about feminism, hammered home the fact that I was not living by the principles I purported to stand by. How I was living was hurting my friends, and not unlike other young people, my friends meant everything to me.

(By the way, this "Jeff" is not me...though I may like his blog more in part because he has such a great name.)

Gender Policing for Moms!