Sexuality and Gender

So…about those “good men”…

I wasn’t expecting much from yesterday’s post about the Good Men Project. It certainly got a lot of attention, though. It appears that this is a pretty important issue for so many people. Thank you all for your comments, emails, tweets, and follows. I’m so glad that I was able to write about this.

This morning, a friend posted this comment on Facebook (and I hope he doesn’t mind that I’m shamelessly stealing it for my blog):

“Newsies”. Such a great movie with a great message. Shows that when you put a large number of small voices together, the message rings louder and clearer than one giant voice.

Yes, my friend, you are right. We don’t need one voice—or even a few individual voices, all in our separate spaces—to make a difference. We need all of us, all the time, making it clear what we expect.

It pains me to read some of the garbage on Good Men Project’s web site. But it pains me just as much when I see women who think we need to depend on male feminists/allies to make change. What we need, first and foremost, is each other. We make up half the population. How is it that we have failed to put our collective voices together to demand what men have without question? And what can we do to remedy that?

We women have made incredible progress in the last century. To think that my great-grandmother was among the first women with the right to vote is mind-boggling. Was it really so recently that we couldn’t participate in electing those who represent us? We’ve made strides in so many areas. That is something to celebrate.

Yet at the same time, we still have so far to go. We still have so many places where our leadership isn’t welcome. What I wouldn’t give to replace last night’s Presidential candidates with two wise, articulate women! I can think of at least ten women on each side of the political divide, as well as a number of women who belong to neither party, that I would trust. It saddens me that I may not live to see it happen (though I still hold out hope).

We need to learn from our past. How did we make those changes before? We seem to think that if we just vote for the right candidate, it will fall into place. But that’s the equivalent of trusting the men-folk to know what’s best for us. Surely we can do better. We are more than a decade into a new millennium. It’s time we used the power of numbers to make change. And if some of those actual good men want to come alongside us and add their voices too, well, I certainly won’t say no. But it needs to start with us.

The Not-So-Good Men Project

Women

Yesterday, I inadvertently got involved in a Twitter battle of sorts. I retweeted someone else’s opinion about the Good Men Project, with which I happen to agree. This is what it said:

Why don’t @goodmenproject just be honest & call themselves The Good Misogynist Project?

Well. I didn’t start the controversy, but I certainly ended up in the thick of it. You can read a good part of it here.

There’s enough overt misogyny in the articles themselves, as evidenced here, here, here, here, and here. But the thing that bothers me is the attitude that “men need space to be men without having to be feminists.” Guess what, dudes? That already exists for you. It’s called all the time, everywhere. Just because we don’t want you all up in feminist space with your non-feminism doesn’t mean that you can’t do it someplace else. You don’t need a whole web site, a whole magazine, a whole online kingdom in which to be manly men who aren’t “feminists.”

Additionally, it would behoove men to stop looking at respect for women as something to do because it hurts you if you don’t. As in, “We men can’t be our authentic selves because Big Bad Patriarchy says we must be assholes to women, and if we treat them that way we won’t get what we want. Which is actually to be Big Powerful Manly Men who can wear aprons and stay home with our progeny. Rrrrr.”

It’s absolutely true that patriarchy is bad for men. You won’t hear me arguing. But the reason for respecting women shouldn’t be because patriarchy is bad for you. If we all based our treatment of others on the idea that it will hurt us if we don’t play nice, we will never actually achieve mutual respect. Consider schoolyard bullies, for example. Punishing them with trips to the principal and out-of-school suspension rarely deters them. That’s because the rule is, “Don’t bully or you’ll get in trouble.” That’s not enough of a reason for most kids to stop.

Respect for others should come from the fact that we’re all people—living, breathing humans with hopes, fears, failures, ambitions, passions. Every person deserves respect. And to bring this back to my original topic, women deserve respect not because men will be hurt if they don’t, but because we are every bit as worthy of respect as men.

Real Good Men exist. I know because I married one. I am related to them. I have befriended them. I have read things they’ve written. I’ve met them in my travels and my online circles. I saw them speak up in the Twitter conversation yesterday.

Good Men, use your voices. Stand up for yourselves and stand beside us as we work toward ending misogyny. Don’t let the Good Men Project speak for you.

The married elite

LGBTQ+

I found out recently, the way one sometimes does, that a casual acquaintance had gotten married. She didn’t mention it the last time I ran into her over the summer. That’s perfectly fine, of course. No one is under any obligation to divulge any information to others if they choose not to do so. I have no idea why she didn’t tell me. Perhaps she’s an intensely private sort for whom those matters are personal. Maybe her mind was on other things and she was distracted. Possibly she thought I already knew. Whatever her reasons, she wasn’t going out of her way to fill me in on the details of her life.

When I found out, I briefly wondered if she didn’t say anything because she had married another woman. I felt bad that she might have thought I would react negatively. It’s also possible that she was tired of having people impose heteronormative ideas on her about the person she’d married (as in, “Oh, who’s the lucky guy?”). As I said, I really don’t know her reasons (we only know each other through mutual friends, and she isn’t required to tell me anything). It reminded me how much privilege I have.

In most situations, when one ties the knot, it’s a pretty big deal. Even the people I know who had lived together for years before their wedding were thrilled to announce that they’d obtained a state-sanctioned contract. When I got hitched, I didn’t have to gauge anyone’s reaction. I was free to show off my ring and tell anyone who would listen.

I also didn’t have to worry that my job working with children was in jeopardy because of my sexuality (yes, this has really happened). I could show up to my reunion at my (conservative) Christian college with my family, introduce them around, and not fear negative reactions. Heck, I could even have skipped the reunion without wondering if my classmates were going to gossip about my “lifestyle” (yep, that’s happened too). My marriage is not only legally recognized in my state, but if I move anywhere else, it’s recognized there, too.

That, my friends, is what privilege is.

And that is why I fight so hard for equality. I fight with my words and my votes and my actions. What I have shouldn’t be limited to me and people just like me. I want to live in a place where even a casual acquaintance is able to share her exciting news because she knows that the love she’s found is every bit as worthy of celebration as anyone else’s. I want to go to reunions and spend time with all the people I remember fondly, not just the ones who fit the expectations imposed on us.

As for the casual acquaintance that I mentioned above, I hope I run into her again. I hope I have the chance to tell her that our mutual friend shared her good news and that I am thrilled for her. I hope that, in some small way, I can be part of breaking down the wall of privilege that stands between us.

That which makes us men (and women)

Gender Identity

boy as a girl — Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931), Sicilian dress (a boy disguised as a girl). Taormina, circa 1895.

Over the weekend, I read two blog posts, both of which contained phrases that made me cringe a little. Overall, I liked the posts. I thought both writers had good things to say. So my desire is not to be critical of the bloggers or their opinions. And I do understand the place they were coming from, given the fact that it’s really hard to think outside a small circle of personal experience. I also want to be sensitive to this issue of privilege, especially after turning my critical eye on a fellow blogger for how she treated the problem.

But here it is: Both blog posts had obviously cisnormative bias in their writing. Probably unintentionally so.

In the first, About a Boy, Meg Lawton talks with her son about the harsh words used against him at school. It is otherwise a beautiful, wise, gentle post both about the nurturing of our children and about the feelings we as parents experience when our children are hurting. But it contained the unfortunate phrase,

The only thing that makes you a boy, is your penis.

The second post was The church is not feminised – blow your noses on your man sized tissues and get over yourselves! The blogger, Jenny, writes about the tendency of some men (ahem) to complain that the church has been emasculated. I don’t entirely agree with her theology, but she makes a good point: Since men still have the bulk of power in the church, they can’t complain about it becoming “feminized.” This post, too, had a phrase that bothered me:

If you have a penis you’re a man.

Not to sound like I’m obsessed with penises, but what the heck, people?

Neither of the statements made by these bloggers is strictly true. Certainly, it’s true most of the time. But not all. It isn’t the penis that makes one a man. There is more than one reason a man might not have a penis, and more than one reason a person with a penis might not be a man.

As I said, I can entirely understand the bias of the writers. In their experience, the people around them are likely to be cisgender, and they are probably unaware of anyone whose medical condition necessitated the removal of the penis. They probably don’t know (or don’t think they know) anyone intersexed. So of course they are going to speak from that perspective. And in the case of the first post, Ms Lawton was also dealing with how to help her non-gender-conforming children process the world around them, which in itself is admirable.

In reading these posts, it occurred to me that I don’t have any idea what makes us men or women. Obviously, I personally don’t believe it’s the presence or absence of certain genitalia. Nor do I think it has anything to do with our interests. I have two non-conforming children, yet both of them (at least at this point) seem pretty clear that their outsides match their insides in terms of gender. So what does make us men or women or both or neither?

I don’t think I could tell you, even for myself. Because I’ve never had to struggle with this personally, I’ve never even had to think about it. I am the possessor of breasts and a uterus; I also just feel like a woman. Yet I wouldn’t be any less of one if I lost my breasts or uterus to cancer. I might miss those parts, but not because I had suddenly become a man without them.

It’s probably something worth considering, especially if I want to be able to understand how others think and feel. It’s worth figuring out why I feel so distinctly womanly, in the same way it was worth thinking about why I feel attracted only to men. (I think this exercise is worth it for any area of our lives in which we differ from someone else, in order to better understand their experiences.)

If anyone wants to chime in, feel free. When you think about your masculinity/femininity, what makes you feel that way? Is it just a matter of “knowing” who you are, or is there something specific?

Notable News, Week of September 15-21, 2012

Blogs, Links, Women

Yay! It’s Feminist Friday, for no particular reason than that I want to post some feminist stuff. Here you go!

1. Dianna Anderson on Privilege

I’m actually linking to this because, for once, I don’t agree with her. And that’s okay!

I appreciated her first post on the subject, which you can read here. But I found the second post a bit ironic. While I recognize that men are privileged, we white women are also privileged in this society (particularly if we are Christians). Where I disagree is that the non-privileged don’t have to tell the privileged what they’ve done wrong—that all that is required is to call them on it, then expect them to “do research” to figure out how to change. Where, exactly, does that research come from? Usually from non-privileged people explaining themselves. It’s just not a logical argument. I think, as a woman, it very much is my job to explain to men why their words or actions hurt me, or why I behave as I do. I also think it’s my job, as a white/cis/straight person, to ask questions and seek to learn from my friends who are not those things. It’s a two-way street, but one doesn’t get that sense from the blog post.

Honestly, what I appreciate about Dianna Anderson is that she is fresh, honest, and often uses humor to articulate her points. She has a very healthy attitude toward balancing extending grace, teaching those who are ignorant of situations, and protecting those who have been victimized. This time, it just felt like she was trying to hard to make a poor analogy fit what she wanted to say. I will be interested in what the third part of the series brings.

2. Once again, Hugo Schwyzer just needs to shut the hell up.

I do realize that in posting this, and linking to the original, I’m actually giving this guy more press. But I’m justifying it by saying that I rarely link to anything he’s written, for a very good reason.

Warning: don’t click the link if you are easily squicked. Here’s the original post: On Digging Out My Ex Wife’s Tampon (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

I mean, really. A whole article on how he had to help his ex wife (his third ex-wife, mind you) with her feminine hygiene product. Ugh. Not only is this gross, it’s extremely violating that he’s made a story about it for public consumption. While he didn’t name her, I doubt it would be hard for people who know either of them to figure out who she is. That is, unless he’s lying about the whole thing. Dude’s been known to make stuff up before.

The problem isn’t just the icky story. The problem is that he’s sold himself as a “male feminist” (you can argue whether there even is such a thing), while simultaneously writing in a way that is bothersome to women. I mean, Mark Driscoll (you knew I would mention him again, right?) writes in a way that bothers women, too. But he never claims to be a feminist. (Circle this day in your calendar, it’s probably the only time I’m going to defend Driscoll on this blog.)

Men like this are not going to go away on their own. We need to take charge, to demand that people like him stop invading feminist spaces. We need to demand that feminist spaces stop letting him in. Because until we claim our territory and rid it of people like Schwyzer, there will always be more of them.

~*O*~

Happy weekend, all! See you next week when I begin my dissection of 50 Shades of Grey. Dun dun dun! Hope to see you here.

Letters from your hoo ha*

Relationships, Sexuality and Gender, Writing

Every Tuesday at 9, you’ll find me glued to either the computer or my phone, enjoying live Twitter chat with fellow writers. (You should join us if you’re on Twitter. Just search for and use the hashtag #writestuff.) Each week, we have a challenge. This week’s is to honor our writing space (the physical place in which we write). Last week’s, which is the one I want to share, was to write from a part of our body. No, not writing from the point of view of that part—drawing on its energy and using that to write. Similar, but not identical.

Which is where the hoo ha comes in.

Let me start by saying that I don’t care for romance novels or really smutty stories. Probably not for the reasons you think, though. I have the same issue with romance novels as a genre that I do with porn: unrealistic, objectifying, and unsafe sex. And it honestly doesn’t matter whether the sex is graphic, because it can be just as bad even if the writer doesn’t describe anyone’s throbbing member or heaving bosom. But I have no problem with stories that include intimacy, especially when done well.

My problem was entirely in writing intimacy. I can accept that other people write it, some better than others. But I couldn’t do it. I could not type words on a page that implied or outright stated that a couple were physically acting on the love the have for each other. I suppose that’s a holdover from some of the negativity about sex within the church, combined with my own personal worries that I couldn’t make it come out right. Whatever the reason, I just felt embarrassed.

So I took the challenge to write from a body part.

I realized that there were elements I wanted when writing intimacy:

Realism
Humor
Steam rather than smut
Love and Trust

I suppose that’s because those are the predominant things I feel (and apparently my hoo ha feels) during sex. I’ve written before about how sex is not a magical unicorn. Realistically, it’s awkward, messy, and sometimes funny. But it’s also (under the best circumstances) a giving over of our bodies and hearts to another person. That’s what I wanted to capture.

So I drew on that energy, concentrating less on how it feels physically and more on the emotions. And there it was, a fairly good result. No, I’m not going to post it here, for those of you who are wondering. There are people who would feel uncomfortable. I’m sure just reading this makes some people squirm, and others probably think that I’m at Hell’s doorstep for writing overt sexuality. I also have some young people reading this whose parents would not thank me to expose their children to something like that. Besides, this was more about my comfort than about what I usually write (I’m still pretty tame).

If you’re a writer, here’s my challenge to you: Try writing sex. Even if you never show it to anyone, and even if it’s not your genre, and even if you use yourself and your significant other as the characters. Put it down on paper. Type it into whatever program you use. You can burn it or delete it when you’re done, it’s okay. Draw on your own energy, using whatever body part you feel is appropriate for such a thing.

If you’re not a writer, here’s your challenge: Use your imagination. Before you and your significant other are intimate, imagine yourself drawing on the energy of your body. Consider all the things you feel when you’re together. Consider what the other person is feeling in his or her body. Then use that energy to physically love and enjoy the other person. If you feel uncomfortable, or worried that this might be “lust” in some way, it’s not. If you’re doing this exercise with your spouse, you have nothing to worry about. (Writers can do this too, we just have the added bonus of being able to put words to it and type it on a page.)

Just do me a favor. Please don’t describe how it turns out in the comments section.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Yes, I really did just use that as the title of this blog post.

So…about those “good men”…

The Not-So-Good Men Project

The married elite

That which makes us men (and women)

Notable News, Week of September 15-21, 2012

Letters from your hoo ha*

Let's Be Friends

Sharing

Tip Jar

Shopping Cart

Your Shopping Cart

Supposed Crimes Publishing

Beaten Track Publishing

More Content