Another anti-sexism rant I wrote a few months ago and forgot to post

I’ve been working on this thought for a while - trying to find the best words to say it, let me run this past you to see if this makes sense to you. 

When feminists talk about the patriarchy they are talking about a social, political, institutional, legal structure that condones violence against women by men.  When men beat up or rape women they are not doing it because they are mixed-up, or wounded, or they were pushed too far and couldn’t control themselves.  They are doing it because they believe they are entitled to do it purely and solely because they are men, and men are entitled to treat women like that.  They are acting on behalf of all men – saying, to the world of men – ‘I’m doing it the way it’s meant to be done.’

Yes - I get that not all men are like that. I know and respect that there are men out there who like and respect women and see their partners as that - not as punch-bags. I get that. I also know and understand that men are abused by women too, emotionally, physically, possibly even sexually. I get that. That’s not the point.  The minute you get into that ‘Yeh, well, what about men?’  thing, or ‘Don’t tar us all with the same brush,’ you have made sure that there can be no further discussion of these issues.  It just becomes competitive victim-playing. I get that if you are one of those men who respects women, understands that his woman life-partner is a companion, not just a commodity,  and wants his daughters to grow up strong and believing in their rights to exist as an equal, then it must feel like shit to hear women talking about ‘All men.’  I get that your hackles rise up defensively when women publish statistics about the numbers of women killed by their male partners, or raped. 

I also do know that men are abused by their female partners, and even though they are rarely in fear of their lives, the damage caused by emotional abuse is still horrendous. There is an appropriate forum and manner to discuss these issues and I’m glad that men are finding these.  But not in the context of comparing it to the violence done to women by men throughout the world.

The best way to make that point is to compare it to racism.  We live in a world that culturally, politically, financially, legally, institutionally gives whites a privileged position in relation to people of colour.  That’s just a fact.  I didn’t make it like that, I haven’t done anything to reinforce or justify white supremacy. I know I’m not a racist and I treat everyone with respect and never make assumptions about them because of their race or culture.  But I am white. I live in a white world. And when I see on the news that some black guy has been shot by a white guy, just for being black, when I read the statistics of the rates of imprisonment of blacks compared to whites, when I see the results of social deprivation caused by unequal treatment – it’s not the time for me to start saying ‘Yeh, well, I’ve had my problems too, you know. I didn’t get to where I am in life because of privilege and I had to work for it,’ etc etc. It’s not the time to start whining about how blacks just assume I’m a racist because I did something that upset one individual – all that crap. 

Competitive victim-playing does not change anything. That’s the purpose of it – to stop change from happening.

When you, as a man, say ‘Yer, but what about…’ when you are confronted by those statistics, then you are condoning the status quo.  You are allowing the only important issue to be side-tracked, and that issue is ‘How can we change this?’  

There is only one response when I as a white woman see a black person being arrested and harassed by white police, being beaten, killed in custody, any of that, just because they are black – and that is to stand up and shout ‘NOT IN MY NAME!!’

There is only one response by a man when he see the statistics about rape and violence by men against women.  Stand up and shout ‘NOT IN MY NAME.’ 

When you do that you are saying ‘I, as a man, do not condone this.’

That is the only way things will change.

Sexism .... again. And again. And again. why do we still have to explain this stuff?

A message in response to a Facebook friend (no longer) who posted this-  

Dear humourless Feminazi friends, can I just clarify that if I say your profile picture is "stunning", what I mean is it's so dull that I literally fall unconscious from the tedium.

How fucking dare you post this on your page?  How dare you – with your word ‘feminazis’ – imply that women who demand respect are Nazis?

There were several research experiments back in the 70s, when feminism was still fairly new, that demonstrated that when teachers were scrupulously fair in dividing their attention 50/50 between boys and girls in the classroom, the boys ALWAYS perceived the teachers as giving ALL the attention to the girls.

Likewise, researchers have found that men always perceive a roomful of people, with exactly equal numbers of men and women, as being full of women, not half and half.

This is the reaction of privileged people when inequality is redressed. When their privileges are removed and replaced by exactly equal treatment, they see themselves as victims of discrimination. This is what is meant by the phrase “a sense of entitlement.”  I have frequently attended workshops where women were in the majority, with only 1 or 2 men, and the men never failed to comment on how they feel at a disadvantage. If a woman, who has battled her way up through the ranks of some male-dominated career, to find herself attending a meeting where she is the only woman, draws attention to the fact in that way, she is generally judged to be angry and victim-playing.

The same is true for black people in a white world.  As a white, educated, middle-class woman, I know I can feel very hurt by any suggestion that I might be racist because of some unthinking comment.  It’s my privileged position that makes me feel entitled to react like that. My black colleague would be expected just to smile and stay quiet, no matter how offensive the casual assumptions white people make.

So – when a woman tells you, my male friend, that you are being offensively sexist by commenting on her appearance in a workplace context, if  you feel stung and victimized by her anger, that is your sense of entitled privilege reacting. 

We women know damn well that when a man tells a woman she is attractive, unless he is her partner, then the chances are he’s not saying it out of friendship, he’s not treating her as an equal, he is putting her in her place by reminding her that looking attractive to men is her primary purpose for existing on this planet. He is belittling her. It’s all on a spectrum, with groping and sexual propositioning at one end, and casually assuming that it’s a woman’s job to pour the tea at a meeting (as happened to me once) or do the photocopying, while a whole roomful of more junior men don’t even move a muscle.  

And before you bring it up, no – the fact that I am a Lesbian does not play any part in my failure to be flattered by your so-called compliment. It’s because I recognize your remark as the thinly disguised sneer that it is.

You, as a man, are NOT permitted to set the terms of this debate, any more than I, as a white person, am entitled to do so in a debate about racism.  The woman who twittered her riposte to a senior colleague who ‘complimented’ her on her profile pic, had about 400 responses within 24 hours, from women describing their own experiences. After being viral for a few days I assume there have been millions such. Every woman, even in our equal-rights society, has had similar experiences. It is not YOUR place to challenge this, and we don’t want to hear you whining about how none of us can take a compliment, or a joke.

Surprisingly enough, we can tell when we are being respected – and when we are being put down. It’s called emotional intelligence. Most women have to numb and blind themselves to this kind of behaviour, just to get through life. The ones who are prepared to take the risk and speak out are just the tiniest tip of a colossal iceberg.  And we should all be grateful to them – even men.

Refugees and slim slow slider

I sit here, caring for my Mother in her final days, or weeks, sometimes with tears but mostly just accepting.  My dreams are full of the clamour of people desperate to get away from war, struggling to live, just live.  

This poem came:

5^th Sept 2015

Crowding people flee for their lives,

And end up dead on beaches.

Mother waits quietly to die, but

Her wasted body still keeps breathing.

And another:

Slim, slow.

Her bed-time chat is

Who should have

This and that

After she’s gone.

Panting, she slowly

Rubs cream into

Her hands

Before she sleeps.

Slim slow slider

You know you

Gonna die.

But here a while.

We spin slowly, a

Single leaf caught

In an eddy.

Never arriving.