#YesAllWomen

All part of the game that teaches us to protect our belongings

A24, now take that feeling and amplify it by about 10 and then have it EVERY DAY.  Now you have an inkling what it is like to be female in this culture - but you still don't entirely know.  Because if your ex is stalking you, it's probably your fault.  If the guy on the corner grabs your ass on the way by, it's because you wore that skirt.  If a drunk at the dance bar you didn't want to dance with follows you out and yells at you, it's because you should have at least given him a dance and shouldn't have been so stuck up.

While we're at it, can you please explain why you needed to share how this affects you, a man, in a thread about #yesallwomen?  Not trying to be confrontational, but it seems like whenever we start talking about women's experiences, we get an injection of men's experience that may or may not be similar. 

Here's a take on that from Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/27/not_all_men_how_disc...

Quote:

Those tweets say it far better than I ever could, for many reasons. The most important is because I’m a man, so I haven’t lived through what they have. I can’t possibly understand it at the level they do, no matter how deeply disturbed I am by the situation and how sympathetic I may be to what they’ve gone through.

This is not a failing, or an admission of weakness. It’s a simple truth. I’m a white, middle-class male, so I can understand intellectually what black people have undergone, or what women have dealt with, or what Japanese-Americans suffered in America in World War II. As someone raised Jewish, I may have more of an understanding for what an oppressed people have withstood in general, but I’ve never really been oppressed myself. That puts me in a position of—yes—privilege.

So again, I'm not wanting to be confrontational, but I'm genuinely curious how your experience of being worried about a romantic partner's ex hurting you is germane to a discussion of endemic cultural misogyny.

Here's an argument about how what is being spun as the Isla Vista murders being less about misogyny:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/29/elliot_rodger_hated_men_...

Quote:

Elliot Rodger targeted women out of entitlement, their male partners out of jealousy, and unrelated male bystanders out of expedience. This is not ammunition for an argument that he was a misandrist at heart—it’s evidence of the horrific extent of misogyny’s cultural reach.

A motivator for change, maybe.  Who can tel?

@Bacchus - Yes, it is. 

Since the post was edited:

Timebandit wrote:

So again, I'm not wanting to be confrontational, but I'm genuinely curious how your experience of being worried about a romantic partner's ex hurting you is germane to a discussion of endemic cultural misogyny.

I would think that misogynistc attitudes around things like "protetcing what you own" feed into the violent mentality that cost Kembel his life, and I see a common thread between that and men who think they are entitled to women and who violently take it out on women. In that way it highlights why men should be concerned about the issues that feminists raise.

I didn't take this as being confrontational at all, and as I said, if what I'm contributing is not helpful, then I have no problem withdrawing from this conversation.

ETA: Replying to #6, cross posted with #7 and #8

Well, I'll cop to politicizing the situation for my own purpose.  I want this discussion to be out in the open, I want the good guys to "get it" and recognize what they're often oblivious to.  I want that, because I send my eldest daughter out on her own in only a few years and it gives me the willies.  So yes, we're opening that discussion.

#yesallwomen is actually a response to #notallmen.  Yes, we know not all me are like Rodger, or potential rapists or harrassers or whatnot.  The problem is that enough men are that all women have run up against it and continue to day to day.

Additionally, characterizing what I said as "a man barging in" - which I took great care NOT to say - is kind of a passive aggressive way of making the feminist the bad guy.  I simply asked you to notice something that maybe, because of the cultural norms that give you a certain privilege, you might not have noticed.  And now I'm in the position of either softening what I said further so as not to hurt your feelings, or be the big bad feminist who jumps all over the poor guy who was just empathizing.

Short answer - I don't want you to leave the conversation, kiddo, I want you to learn something from it.

Timebandit wrote:

Additionally, characterizing what I said as "a man barging in" - which I took great care NOT to say - is kind of a passive aggressive way of making the feminist the bad guy.

I don't know how to resopnd, except to say that I'm sorry for having said something offensive.

Timebandit wrote:

I want you to learn something from it.

I want to learn too.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPFcspwbrq8&bpctr=1401397100]Sex educator Laci Green weighs in:[/url]

Aristotleded24 wrote:

This is more along the lines of what my thought processes were, and Hess did a much better job articulating these ideas than I did upthread.

Yeah but men still don't get it, not even progressive men. Either that or you get it and you subconsciously see it as a good deal or just not important because we are women. Where is the men's movement against patriarchy as a system? Where are the men condemning extreme fighting? Where are the men condemning jackasses and extreme gore as bad for men? Where are the men fighting against hockey violence. Where are the men fighting objectification of women as a men's issue because it twists men's sexuality. Patriarchy is arguably at the root of all the major problems facing humankind. Where is the fight to redefine masculinity? This progressive board is full of men but none of them are starting threads about patriarchy and how it harms humankind. There is no forum dedicated to discussing patriarchy amongst men. It's a feminist issue. 

Quote:

Q: Andrea Dworkin witnessed firsthand the betrayal of women by progressive men after the Vietnam war. The support of pornography and prostitution by most progressive men is the most obvious expression of this betrayal. Some feminists say that the only difference between progressive men and conservative men when it comes to women is that conservative men support the private property of women (in marriage) and progressive men support the collective property of women (through the “sexual liberation” of women granting unlimited sexual access of men to all women). Do you agree with this feminist view?

 <http://feministcurrent.com/7977/john-stoltenberg-on-manhood-male-supremacy-and-men-as-feminist-allies/>

Quote:

“The fluid community of Occupy Vancouver has been plagued by abuse, neutrality towards that abuse and even support of that abuse. Calls to “just let it go” or “move on” are demeaning to the safety of the women, people of color and other marginalized groups in our movement and will no longer be tolerated. “

But the solution troubled me. The suggestion that women in progressive movements should depend on a “Circle of Protection” that exists within those communities  is one that, from my perspective, misses the fact that women are often violated and assaulted by the very people who are meant to protect them. It is not uncommon for assault to go unreported in anarchist and activist communities specifically because women are discouraged from calling the cops, essentially leaving these men free from accountability.

When women are abused by those who claim to be their protectors and then are told not to involve the police because the police are thereal oppressors, where do they go?

There have been numerous accounts of women being raped in situations and settings that are meant to be freeing or liberating. Festivals like Woodstock ’99 saw horrific accounts of women being gang raped while bystanders continued with their fun and dancing. Rainbow Gatherings, the hippie-peace-free-love ethos is pushed on women in order to pressure them into letting go of their boundaries (aka: letting douchey dreadlocked white dudes give them massages). There are many accounts of attempted (and, I’m sure, successful) rapes at these Gatherings. The entire “free love” movement of the 60s has been called out repeatedly by feminists who say that all it did was to apply “a new set of imperatives on women’s behavior, a compulsion to say yes that was as inhibiting as the injunction to say no.”

And even if we we don’t consider these events or movements to be necessarily activist movements, the point remains that self-described progressive communities have never protected women from abusive men. Often, a libertarian or anarchist ethos has been used to pressure women into accepting misogynistic treatment silently and peacefully.

 <http://feministcurrent.com/4983/being-anti-state-does-not-equal-being-pro-freedom-misogyny-in-progressive-communities/> 

Is the fact that men were killed for "winning" women supposed to be extra motivation for men to think about misogyny? Isn't the fact that half the human race lives in fear of the other half sufficient? 

So how are progressive men going to fight misogyny? Women are under siege, when are you going to start? (Regardless of whether or not progressives agree that a legal remedy is appropriate); if progressives can't see that the objectification of women and commodification of female sexuality harms women as a class you are not allies.

If progressives buy the notion that this represents female power over men then they are buying into the patriarchal model of male female relations. You are buying into what set Elliot Rodger on his killing spree. The notion that female sexuality is a power women wield over men and dispense or withhold based on male performance does not empower women. It defines our sexuality as a thing that exists for men as a bargaining chip. 

I do feel the progressive community has failed women massively and in doing so severely limited progress in countless ways. Our consumer society is heavily invested in female empowerment through competitive self-objectification and the male quest for acquisition. We have been sold this cartoonish view of human sexuality and are being molded to conform to it, not only mentally but quite literally in the case of plastic surgery. It shouldn't be considered a feminist issue. Human sexuality is being exploited and deformed not just female sexuality. Women cannot win the battle alone but men see themselves as passive consumers who are just accepting what's offered. 

Unionist wrote:

Thanks for being here, TB.

<3

Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that the oil patch is a hotbed of poisonous hyper-masculinity.  Not the real kind, the cartoon kind.

what away to put it, "the cartoon kind" when I go back to Grand Prairie next week am so going to use it!!!

what away to put it, "the cartoon kind" when I go back to Grand Prairie next week am so going to use it!!!

Double post

Timebandit wrote:

A really good article by Arthur Chu:

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/28/arthur_chu_mansplains_entitlement_to_ner...

Quote:

But the overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.” That if we try hard enough and persist long enough, we’ll get the girl in the end. Like life is a video game and women, like money and status, are just part of the reward we get for doing well.

Rebecca Solnit on the topic of the Isla Vista murders:

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/27/yesallwomen_rebecca_solnit_on_the_...

Quote:

I think what’s important is to look at the broader picture. He killed six people, but three women every day in the United States are killed by domestic partners, ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, etc. You know, this is not an isolated event, but part of an epidemic. And you can look at other things he did earlier. In his 140-page sort of manifesto autobiography, he talks about trying to push women off a ledge at a party because they weren’t paying attention to [him], throwing coffee on girls who didn’t respond the way he wanted them to. And you can see these micro-aggressions, and just as you can see Laurie Penny being given rape and death threats, that there is a huge, broad network that we need to look at, and not just this guy, but the fact that, as the hastag says at #YesAllWomen, yes, all women face these kinds of things, not just the women who died and were shot in Isla Vista and the male—you know, the men who got caught in the crossfire. So, you know, I think that we need to broaden the focus from this one guy, who’s no longer alive, and his misery and rage, and to look at the broad picture of how well he fits into a culture of entitlement, how well he fits into a culture of rage, how well he fits into a culture that considers women tools and playthings and property. And then we need to start addressing that. Or maybe we just need to broaden and deepen the way that some of us have been addressing it for decades, including you, of course.

I've had some long and interesting talks over the dinner table with my daughters (and my partner) about this.  The small ways that the culture puts fences around us.  I was at a film festival over the weekend, and I was there on my own.  It's interesting that my male friends volunteer to walk me back to my hotel from the after-party without having to be asked and that my female friends worry that I might walk on my own because it's a given that it isn't safe for me to walk five blocks alone late at night.  What's even more interesting is that it was just totally normal that we do this and I didn't really give it much thought until later on. 

The whole scale is there, from the little inconveniences you take for granted to the outright terrorism that took place in Isla Vista. 

I found some of the comments (misremembrances?) by Solnit interesting, if only because i just recently read another article doing the same thing.   I read the majority of the manifesto, and article, and Rodgers tried to push people off the ledge (unsuccessfully), his target was both male and female.   His first victims, and he had this planned, were his male room mates.   He didn't just throw coffee at a woman, he threw it at a couple who were displaying affection.  

I read another commentary, in the blog section, which kind of does the same thing:  he writes being upset that he isn't getting affection, sex and love from his university experience.  The commenter decides to change this, (misdirect us?) to 'attention, sex and love".    I am interested in words, and how they can be used, or abused, in order to tell a story, or leave an impression.   This is a guy diagnosed with a disorder that enabled him to justify his decisions.   Even the PUAhater group thought he was out to lunch, but i see a few references trying to lay the blame on the existence of that and other sites.    

It seems pointless to point these things out, when there are a lot of bad things that go on in the world.   i think there is a desire tho, to try to squish this round peg depressed, delusional mentally disturbed kid into a square hole and try to hold him up as an example of something.  Especially when the entire story  is ignored or rewritten in order to make him fit into it.    

I think there is enough damage done in the world by those who are doing it willfully and without mental illness driving them.  I don't like the attention being taken away just to ride on the tails of a new and sensational story.   

fortunate wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Timebandit wrote:

Here's an argument about how what is being spun as the Isla Vista murders being less about misogyny:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/29/elliot_rodger_hated_men_...

Quote:

Elliot Rodger targeted women out of entitlement, their male partners out of jealousy, and unrelated male bystanders out of expedience. This is not ammunition for an argument that he was a misandrist at heart—it’s evidence of the horrific extent of misogyny’s cultural reach.

This is more along the lines of what my thought processes were, and Hess did a much better job articulating these ideas than I did upthread.

 

I just wrote something along the lines of the same kind of point.  Having read many of the things that he wrote, along with a very good article on the topic, I got led to the conclusion that he targeted men and women, and in fact what he actually did supports that.  He first kills his male room mates, he has no issue with the plan to kill his step brother as his final act.   His point seem mostly based on envy of the relationships other men had with women, and the woman's choice to have relationships with anyone other than him.    He's mentally disturbed, it isn't like we can get a really clear idea of what he truly believed or thought.    But i do see a lot of people claiming they know exactly what he was thinking.

 

He spends a lot of time talking about love and relationships, and envy of the men the woman chooses to be with, rather than expressing feelings of entitlement to sex from women.  Why don't they love me, is the theme, not why won't they sleep with me. 

Which to me strongly suggests that these men would not have been killed if he hadn't felt jealous of the affection they received from women. Just that the misogyny isn't out in the open or necessarily obvious doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Quote:

"You're not sure it's such a big problem until it happens in your bar," said manager Regina Rooks.

Last week, she bought glasses fitted with lids and straws to sell at her bar. Her hope is that patrons buy them to fend off use of the date rape drug. One of her servers was recently a victim of it, and was rushed to the hospital when friends noticed something amiss.

"The date rape drug is becoming quite prominent in the southeast," said Envision counselling supervisor Krista Daku.

Envision has centres in Estevan, Weyburn and Carlyle. Daku said sexual assault and date rape drug rates are up across all three areas. Estevan's reported incidents have increased as much as 156 per cent between 2008 and 2012, she said.

"I think there's frustration, and there's definitely a lack of trust within our community."

Despite the centre's numbers and concerns shared by residents like Rooks, the local RCMP and city police service in Estevan have not seen an increase in sexual assault or date rape drug cases. Estevan police Chief Paul Ladouceur highlighted both the challenge of trusting statistics in low-population areas like Estevan, while also acknowledging that sexual assaults and date rape drug victimization often go unreported.

"An unattended drink belongs in one place and that's down the drain," he said.

Rooks agrees that the responsibility can't fall solely on the potential perpetrators.

"Like, don't put yourself in danger. And, yes, guys have to realize how wrong this is."

Not just wrong, criminal and dangerous. After reading this next report, I wonder how many men would report their buddies if they saw them use a date rape drug or found out that they did after the fact. 

A man, Walsh, turned in a friend for child porn including video of him doing the abusing:

Quote:

After Chanin’s arrest, Walsh wrote on Facebook: “I take no pleasure in doing what I did. Many doors of friendship closed for me that day. Those of you who are disturbed by behaviour such as this need be reminded that we are all capable of speaking up.”

He doesn’t regret doing so, even if it cost other friendships.

“What I find sad is how society wants people like Brad punished, yet those like myself who act, suffer an equal but silent rejection from their own peer groups. I am no exception.”

But Walsh offers a final truth.

“At the end of the day, he was my friend,” he says. “If people think that it’s always a stranger that you read about in the paper doing stuff like this, you’re fooled.”

That Walsh lost friends over this illustrates the depth of misogyny and the strength of the patriarchy. 

#YesAllWomen

When I was staying in a hostel a few years back, one of the dudes living there told me a story about a traveler from Asia that had checked in recently and bragged to him about how he was going to use rape drugs to have sex with women. He alerted the manager, who threw him out with no further ado. I thought he had gotten off far too lightly, but I wasn't sure how much you could get the police involved when he hadn't actually commited any crimes yet, but only talked about it, especially when he's travelling from country to country. It disturbed me to think that he would just move on to the next hostel and probably be more careful this time. But what really struck me was the fact that he didn't feel like he needed to hide this behaviour. He clearly thought that this was normal enough that he could chat with a total stranger about it and there would be no consequences. The depths of male entitlement is a scary thing.

fortunate wrote:

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2014/03/06/internet-feminism-hurt-my...

One of my long-standing beefs is with dudes who love to lecture me that I will never win them over to the feminist cause as long as I keep copping a tude. My response is twofold. 1) fuck you dude, and 2) the moral indefensibility of sexism exists independently of my or anybody else’s demeanor; oppression isn’t any less wrong if the oppressed aren’t ass-kissers. And besides, winning dudes over has never been, to my mind, the objective of feminism. Appeasement will never liberate women from patriarchal oppression. What’s that old bumper sticker? “Well-behaved women seldom make history”?

This was another interesting thing, similar to be alluded to in earlier posts here. http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/patriarchy-blaming-the-twisty-way/gu... /

Dudes

Dudes make lousy feminists. Therefore, by popular demand, this blog endeavors to cultivate dude-free discourse. Any comment that expresses views proceeding from any discernible male-identified perspective, even if it is superficially pro-feminist, is not suitable for posting here. Generally speaking, this means: If you’re a dude, don’t post here. Don’t use the comments section either to ask feminists to explain feminism to you, or to explain feminism to feminists, or to explain anything to anybody. The Unique Male Experience of Patriarchy is not an appropriate topic, so don’t be this guy.

You have great links. I do believe that men can be great feminists and better informed on issues than some women even if they don't have the experience of being one but they have to know when it is time to get out of the way.

[url=http://www.dawncanada.net/issues/issues/fact-sheets-2/violence/]DAWN (DisAbled Women's Network) Canada weighs in:[/url]

Quote:

Violence against women with disabilities shares common characteristics with violence against women in general . Women with disabilities also experience forms of abuse that women without disabilities do not. Violence against women and girls with disabilities is not just a subset of gender-based violence – it is an intersectional category dealing with gender-based and disability-based violence. The confluence of these two factors results in an extremely high risk of violence against women with disabilities.

Women with disabilities experience a wider range of emotional, physical and sexual abuse: by personal attendants and by health care providers, as well as higher rates of emotional abuse both by strangers and other family members . They also can be prevented from using a wheelchair, cane, respirator, or other assistive devices.

There remains almost no literature regarding the risk of abuse, women’s experiences of abuse, and barriers to seeking help among women with disabilities. The absence of attention to this issue from both disability and violence researchers has contributed to the ‘invisibility’ of the victimization of women with disabilities ”.

Really frightening statistics are quoted below.

[url=http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2014/03/socially-awkward-isnt-an-excuse/]The difference between socially awkward and creepy:[/url]

Quote:

Here’s the thing about the socially awkward: they don’t want to trip over people’s boundaries. You can almost always track the exact moment they realize that they’ve done something wrong by the way they desperately try to backtrack, apologize and generally try to reassure the other person that they didn’t mean to and they’re so embarrassed and are kind of freaking out and, and, and…

You know what you don’t see? You don’t see them justifying their behavior. Or turning it around and making it about the person whose boundaries they just blew past.  They don’t rely on social pressure – either through making a scene or through other people justifying their actions for them – to make the other person submit to their demands. They don’t argue that the other person is obligated to forgive him, to give him a second chance or otherwise pretend that the awkwardness just didn’t happen. Creepers and predators rely on other people insisting that their social awkwardness is a mistake because it gives them cover. When the “socially awkward” exception is in play, other people are less likely to call him out on his creepy behavior .2 It becomes a way of isolating somebody from potential allies and tricking others – people who might otherwise object to his bad behavior and assist his target – into being complicit in his actions. The Awkward Excemption teaches other people to tolerate, even expect creepy behavior… and to forgive it because hey, “he means well.” It gives the creeper cover and allows him to continue being part of the community; he’s not “Johnny the creepy predator”, he’s “Johnny the decent guy, a little weird sometimes but harmless.”

To expand on what the author of this piece is saying, people tend to give behaviour a pass because the person is "socially awkward," but such behaviour should still be called out. If done with tact, it could actually help the person who is sociall awkward, because then this person understands the aspect of behaviour that is inappropriate and has a chance to fix it.

I agree. I know there are people who cannot be accessed by learning but there are also those who can be reached. Pointing out bad behaviour is essential for those who may want to change their behaviour and thinking based on knowledge provided.

It is not a question of burdening victims with the job of pointing this out-- this is a public social responsibility shared by all observers to call out bad behaviour and expect change.

NS wrote:

The famous anti-street harassment organization Hollaback has been criticized for editing their video to exclude most of the white men who hollered at Roberts that day.

Additionally, black and brown women were excluded, as if we do not exist, or are not affected by street harassment when, in fact, they are more endangered by it. Black and brown women, women of color of size, and trans women are among our society's most vulnerable.

Now,a response from PoC women on street harassment.

 

Doug Woodard wrote:

I think that a long term part of the solution is ensuring that men who use violence against women don't reproduce. Some may remember a gutsy lady named Chantal Daigle who a quarter of a century ago left her violent abusive partner and aborted his fetus.

Abortion rights have value for society, it's not just an individual thing.

Institutions which ensure that women in abusive relationships have an out, also have a role in the evolutionary-biology part of the remedy.

I find this post very shocking and disturbing.

If you can't figure out the problem then how will you answer the question from a person who asks -- "my father was abusive to me and my mother so should I have been aborted? ... Should I be removed from the planet now? What about my kids?"

How about the suggestion to women that seems more like direction than choice?

The point of choice is it is up to the woman to decide. Period. It is not up to anyone else to provide advice on the decision-- just to provide support and access to whatever decision she makes -- and get out of the way.

It certainly is not up to anyone to suggest that people who are alive now should have been aborted. What a horrible message to send to children who have survived abusive homes and never been abusive.

Are you planning to advance data to suggest that being abusive is genetic?

Let me be clear -- I don't think your post was intended the way it comes across. I certainly think that I probably would agree with its intent. But as it is written the result is unbelievably disturbing.

"evolutionary biology" Wow, What we need is not an evolution of any kind but a social revolution with respect to violence. Not biological evolution with the flavour of  eugenics.

As I understand it:

There is a racialized component to this-- while the harassers come from all communities, all ages, all incomes, racism compounds sexism as we know and even when it is not directly part of the harassment it comes up in the reporting and response to it.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I agree. I know there are people who cannot be accessed by learning but there are also those who can be reached. Pointing out bad behaviour is essential for those who may want to change their behaviour and thinking based on knowledge provided.

It is not a question of burdening victims with the job of pointing this out-- this is a public social responsibility shared by all observers to call out bad behaviour and expect change.

Behaviour should be called out either way. If the person is socially awkward, then this person will understand why the behaviour is wrong and won't repeat it. If the person is a creep, this person will be isolated and will have more difficulty harassing people and making them uncomfortable.