Diana Rajchel » feminism

Deconstructing masculinity–and probably scaring the crap out of a few so identified

di — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:44:38 +0000

I’m brainstorming a series that deconstructs Western masculinity.

Heh, I wonder how many knee jerks that got?

I’m still very much a feminist. I don’t see feminism in television’s simplistic reduction to “be what you want,” nor do I believe for a minute feminism is some sort of war on men. (At least, not the type of feminism I practice.) I do believe that feminism does also benefit men, because with the right attitudes and intentions, it also frees men from restrictions about “being a man” that might, someday, get society to look at a person and what a person does, decide, Hey, no one is being hurt or losing something because of this person’s individual decisions, and get on with the whole being society/moving organism thing. I think a culture where it’s simply not possible to emasculate someone because masculinity isn’t even a thing (nor is specifics of femininity) might help people chill out, a lot. Pride, after all, is about hanging on to something that doesn’t serve you or anyone; it’s dignity that matters.

I also don’t subscribe to most of the “It’s Biological!” camp when it comes to human behavior. Genetics are about adaptation and exploration in order to survive, not about “OK, this is it.” We are at the mercy of our genetic combinations up to a point that does include sexual orientation and sexual fluidity, to varying degrees depending on whatever sex-based drama went on up a person’s chromosomal chain. We have certain givens, and beyond those givens, it’s about how much we get conditioned by culture – or choose to think about our conditioning and opt for something different, something we can imagine despite imposed limitations, something that best serves our own pursuit of pleasure.

I also say this as a heterosexual woman who has lived a heteronormative life to date. I know what else is out there, and while I don’t necessarily want those things for myself – unless menopause really does something fancy to my hormones bisexuality is a permanent out for me – I think seeing more of these “not normal” things that harm no one are good. I think we need more of it. I think that the traditional institutions and traditions Republicans and other conservatives fight so hard to protect are in fact what’s destroying society, and a little creative experimentation far and beyond someone else’s self-serving and now world-poisoning belief system might, I dunno … make things better? Rather than going “What does the Bible say?” a moral system that starts with “Is anybody actually being harmed by this?” seems more effective, more reasonable – and way less arrogant.

I think we’ve already gotten that ball rolling, but I also think that while men are most certainly not an endangered species, a little talk – ONLY FOR ONE SERIES, EVER – about how men DON’T have to be might at least put it out there that it’s OK to just BE, whether you like mascara or Marlboro. Yes, a lot of greedy white men still have power, and we can’t fix them. They’re going to hang on to it until the Viagra does nothing. But getting the idea out there that sharing power is in no way LOSING power, and releasing “traditionally masculine” traits that harm people (Mars and Venus BULLSHIT Dr. Gray) including those hanging on to the traits (just as releasing “traditionally feminine” traits can also release potential for harm) creates the possibility of positive strength.

Gender is a knot that’s so impossible to untie replacement of the concept will take about as well as Esperanto, at least for the next fifty years. But I can at least put it out there, trigger the imagination, get someone to consider the possibility of just being rather than “being a man” or “being a woman.”

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Accidental misogyny near miss

di — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:30:29 +0000

My friend sat at my kitchen table, still processing a recent dust-up in a local group. “They’re demanding we take leaves of absence if we’re not going to be there.”

My reaction came from the gut. “Please, it’s not like you’re a coven.”

“Yeah, that’s what I ought to tell them!”

My eyes widened, as I realized he meant to actually repeat my words to the group of women bullying him. “No! Don’t! That will not go over as well coming from you as it would from me!”

“What’s a coven again?”

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Feminist Rant section: so what, are we back to “she tempted me?” and women who consciously hurt other women

di — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:30:42 +0000

In case you might have missed it, or don’t follow my other blogs, I am a feminist. I have identified as such since the age of 4, when Sean J. told me boys were better than girls and rather than punching him in the nose, I simply said “Well I’m clearly better than YOU!” and walked away. Such rejection prompted little hearts over Sean’s head, and he somehow managed to get his mother to transfer him into my elementary school classes despite the school’s repeated efforts to keep us separated because the constant arguments interfered especially with my own education. Sadly, Sean’s parents had money and influence mine did not, and thus my early childhood learning disability was a boy named Sean. This was especially true because, since I was not just a girl but a fat Polish girl whose Dad taught for the “trashy” school system, I was automatically to blame for all outbursts Sean caused regardless of how the situation actually conspired. Northwest Indiana, progressive if you’re part of the Taliban.

When at last the family moved somewhere – away from me, which was what was important – my cognitive development grew by astonishing leaps and bounds. Amazing how that worked.

While not conscious, this experience with Sean created a vector of sorts in my life that has repeated over the years. First, I know that at least where I grew up, not only are women not feminists, but the ones that were teachers were very invested in upholding the ideal of female suppression. My kindergarten teacher even had a rule that girls could not play with the toys with wheels on them. That we are somehow distantly related depresses me no end. I figured out early that women were not on my side, and since my household was dominated by women where I was the youngest – my mother actually referred to a pecking order with no thought to how deeply unhealthy that attitude is – I ended up with the outlook that whenever it counts, I’m on my own.

The other aspect of my exposure to spoiled little Sean J. was that every so often throughout my life I’ve attracted some man with misplaced aggression who wants to find a strong woman and put her in her place. Since most woman passively step aside and demur their ways out of this behavior, and because I’m larger than average, I become a favorite target for this particular brand of crazy. All too often, I’m some suppressive asshole’s Big O. Some of these relationships were, thank the gods, sidereal: boyfriends of roommates and the like. However, post-divorce I wound up in three relationships simultaneously that used suppressive/control techniques and at the time I was too lonely and depressed to care even when I did know what was happening. It led to frequent, bizarrely intense interactions: one man was just manipulating me to increase my guilt, another was using the classic withholding strategy, and the last one was on a mission to tell me what to think. While I’ve cleaned out my life of people who pull this shit – women as often as men these days – I’m aware for some reason lately that gender politics are more important than they’ve ever been, and that the recent rising tide of misogyny is probably going to head straight for me.

And part of that is because, most of the time, I like men and I usually prefer their company to what is offered by women.

I bring up this autobiographical wandering because of the recent Jane Doe Girls Gone Wild case, where she actually said “No, I will not take my top off” to the camera crews, only to have a female friend pull her top down anyway. Despite verbally refusing consent and never signing a form – it’s like she just wanted to dance with her friends! – the incident appeared in a video, and a friend of her husband’s found it on a video six years later. A jury determined that if she was present, anywhere near Joe Francis, and female, she knew what was going to happen and deserved what she got.

I can’t say whether the case was worth the 5 million dollars requested – certainly it did damage in her personal life, and it’s pretty clear first that Francis is one of the top ten douchebags in America, and second that this girl was clearly the target of some godawful female competitive syndrome. Not only are the men complicit in what is no more and no less than a sexual assault, but so is the woman who pulled her top down. No word on whether the woman who engaged in the assault and humiliation of Jane Doe is in any way being held accountable.

The attitude that “she was there, she had it coming” is absolutely reprehensible. How would the jury respond if it was someone’s son who had his shorts pulled down in front of a camera? Sure, the incident might seem momentarily funny – until six years later he finds out a buddy of his has a video of it, sold for $10 a pop on late night cable, and it is one of the more popular masturbation materials on the market.

I realize attitudes take the longest to change- certainly men and women have tilted at my attitudes about right and wrong to no avail, and this sense of entitlement to someone else’s body, while deplorable, is clearly sunk in pretty deep. Despite Joe Francis’s own arrogance being sufficient to keep him in jail for extra time, the bastard still walks free and spreads his disease among the vulnerable. And yes, often the girls in the videos are complicit in what happens. But in this case, the girl clearly understood what was going on, made her desires clear – and was ignored. Both Joe Francis and her companion exploited her body, against her clearly expressed wishes. So why are neither of them facing charges, and why is the jury blaming the victim for, essentially, going out in public while female?

This is unacceptable. I want to know what the jury was told, and I want to see more women holding each other accountable for female power politics. Joe Francis is to blame for publishing this girl without her permission and in fact in the face of her denied permission he is even more solidly to blame. But the girl who pulled her top down needs to be charged with criminal sexual assualt, now. Female competitive syndrome is what is allowing misogyny to build up again so strongly in the United States, and I for one do not fancy yet another backslide in my basic right to exist and make my own decisions about my life and my body. This crappy attitude affects all women – when you decide to “get back” at a woman for being prettier/smarter/bitchier, you do ultimately end up hurting several someones you don’t know who never did a damn thing to you.

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The ALONE factor

di — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:00:53 +0000

I recently had an ugly incident at a movie theater. I went to a movie at Block E, which for all its suburban trappings and high maintenance, still attracts a rather rough crowd at all hours of the day. I was watching the GI Joe movie, and as it happened, I was one of only four people in the theater at the time – and I was the only woman.

I had a small nag, so I got up and moved to a different seat, and predictably, my nag was confirmed: one of the men turned around and beckoned me over. You know, that finger crook that gets used on small children? He of course expected me to just come because he called (oh fun with male privilege.) Instead, I screamed at him, “I’m just here to watch the movie!”

The guy was going to keep bugging me and yelling at me to come to him, but his friend stopped him. But that was it – I had to spend the rest of the movie worrying that this jackass would try something on the way out.

And on the way out, he did do the aggressive eye contact and the predatory body posturing. It infuriated and disgusted me, and I wanted to punish it on sight.

What especially infuriated me was that if a friend had been with me, male or female, I probably would have been left alone. Even more sad, I can think of multiple female friends who, in my position, would have actually interacted with this jerk and thus rewarded his invasiveness.

For some reason, when a woman goes out in public alone, there’s an assumption that she both wants attention – and that anyone who steps in her path deserves her attention. Age and attractiveness aren’t even factors. At some point the “invisibility” sets in, but for me, it hasn’t yet – and the “visibility” is starting to piss me off. In a day and age where you meet people by joining clubs and going online, this bizarre and creepy method of interaction that I see and experience specific to 2-3 blocks of Hennepin Avenue is just pissing me off. You don’t just walk up and start talking to strangers, at least, I don’t. But in that section of downtown, there’s always someone ready to bother me or anyone else minding their own business – and you can always see by their walk and a certain look in their eye that whatever they’re doing, it’s pure predation behind it.

I certainly do some magic to protect myself, but there are risks to inducing near total invisibility – like that passing motorist just not “seeing” you until…smack. I don’t move really fast, so it’s not the best plan where I’m concerned. And there are all sorts of forms of magic I do, shielding, projecting “cop” and occasionally pretending I’m out of my mind on something and running through screaming like a maniac. The last I haven’t quite found the nerve to try.

I’m angered right now because I’m aware I’m slamming my head into something that’s endemic…it’s not just an isolated asshole, because I’ve had similar incidents in the past that have taught me to just start screaming early. I’m running into an attitude, an embedded belief that their behavior is somehow okay or justified. The way my brain works, I don’t want to say something hurtful – I want to say something psychologically kneecapping that forces them to change their ways, and I just don’t know what that is 0r even if I’d hit home.

And this drives me crazy, because I like to go to spectator-type-things alone. One of my small, still pleasures in life is watching a movie alone in a near-empty theater. Or watching a dance performance, especially without someone at my elbow complaining how they “don’t get it” or telling me how stupid it is. I like to sit, alone, and see what images get triggered in my brain – and if I can’t be left alone when I am alone, how am I going to be free to enjoy anything?

I’m not above buying a watergun, you know.

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