Sunday, April 29, 2012

Generalizations

One man critiques many males using femaleness as a put down. Others see that one man as slurring against all men.

Why is it so easy to say that the critic impugns all when he observes a culture of many impugning many? Why is it so hard to observe that culture is formed by many hands making cruel work?

I think women have much to answer for when it comes to sexism. Against men, in some share, and certainly against women. But what of us men? Do we not have a responsibility to recognize our social power, be we European or Asian or African in descent, when most of our ancestors defeated and brutalized women? Is this to be a self-soothing performance of guilt and false humility? No, but we can still recognize our inherited, unearned power, and act accordingly.

And does this prevent us from seeing tyrantesses and confronting them as well? I don't really think so.

I'm a feminist. I believe in women's equality with men, at least as a whole, while individuals of all groups will surpass others in multiple forms of quality. I don't see manhood as something to apologize for, and I don't think Crow does either. I just think it can be--in many if not all venues--a power differential for which to account.

15 comments:

  1. definitely a tight line to walk. emphasis should be placed on humanity of the individual, first.

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  2. Not to be too blunt (which is a misstatement on my part), but not all people get to have their humanity considered, gf.

    I'm not suggesting that there's any right person or people to be arbiter of that, but there are people who give up any claim to that consideration.

    It's to those that I refer. That's not an indictment of all men for the violations themselves, and yet, it still is, only in so much as most of us benefit from the arrangement in overt and subtle ways, and do nothing to change that set of facts.

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  3. Cuneyt: if, say, Jerry Falwell suggested that a woman should have her face smacked for talking back to her husband after he'd had a really hard day, would you see it only as his anecdotal critique of those who nag others who are sacrificing themselves to provide?

    If you would see it differently, why? Would you say that it's unacceptable to fantasize about doing violence to a socially-defined "gender" caste? Why?

    What about firing a black man from his job for being caught playing "Solitaire," then telling the story loudly to others in a public place: "If that black guy comes to work for you, can his lazy ass"? It's just a harmless anecdote, right? Means nothing, just like the one above?

    Do you see any structural patterns within these hypotheticals that might, with a slight adjustment to the nouns, make them set off instant warning bells for you?

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  4. I'm not sure I'm paying attention to the parts of speech there, Arka. It's impossible, for me anyway, to dismiss the context of women and black men within our current culture.

    I don't think I understand your point. Did you make it?

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    1. Only curious to better understand what you were saying above. By "dismiss the context of women and black men," does that mean that context makes you feel that the hypothetical actions above were bad, or that they were good?

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    2. Context helps make them worse, but context doesn't always make a good action bad or vice versa. I think a Falwell encouraging casual violence is bad; that the hypothetical encourages it against women may be considered worse because it combines with larger power differentials.

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    3. That's an interesting point. If someone is the current underdog, then, we should excuse them violent speech directed against the current overlord?

      Let's assume that I'm a bisexual, abused, mixed-race woman. Is it acceptable for me to speak violently about a mature, strong, white man like Jack Crow?

      I don't believe so, and that's why I don't feel that it's right for Jack Crow to discuss attacking the genitals of certain "hypothetical" male targets who might be guilty of violating this or that American law.

      More importantly, though, it's frighteningly, ironically patriarchal to see men like Jack using belligerent, discriminatory rhetoric to discuss re-shaping social relations. Under medieval chivalry, men boasted of killing other men to protect women--and that's exactly the road Jack is walking. He will do violence to other men as a protector of women. Claiming to be protecting them from a patriarchy he defines is little different than claiming to be protecting them from the depredations of the black knight or the infidel raiders. How safe we shall all be, when the big, testosterone-laden Crow drubs men senseless so that we don't have to worry our pretty little heads about it.

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    4. This is why I wish you'd just come out with it, rather than asking oblique questions. Because no, I'd answer both your initial questions with "it depends." White men as a whole don't form "the overlord" any more than Obama as a mixed race individual coming from a broken home is "the current underdog." There's individuals, and then there are trends. And if you don't see any racism or sexism, then that's cool. I do and act accordingly. That doesn't mean I adopt some straw man tokenism that makes your riposte easier.

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    5. I do see racism and sexism in the hypotheticals, and I suspect you do, also. Based on the use of the terms "woman" and "black," we've all been conditioned to see it--but it's not acceptable, currently, to see that same thing as regards "men," so it remains permissible for haters to fetishize hating that caste in ways that would be very unpopular and instantly condemned if the terms were changed around.

      You observed:

      "One man critiques many males using femaleness as a put down. Others see that one man as slurring against all men."

      But it wasn't that way; just as in the hypotheticals, what Mr. Crow said could be explained away as just "One white man criticizes one black man for being lazy. Others see that one man as slurring against all black men."

      We've come to be able to pinpoint that kind of dialogue as wrong vis a vis "blacks;" I ask that we not limit ourselves to the currently popular defensible target.

      Maybe I'm going too far. Maybe it was just a single pointless post. Because, at the beginning of it all, it really was just one poorly raised boy at school saying "make me a sandwich." And from that, Mr. Crow concluded that it was a slur against all women.

      Would you like to have your cake, or eat it?

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    6. Easy to accuse others of hypocrisy when you're the one deciding the standards against which they are judged.

      Like I just posted, I agree with a general point that Crow makes. Not all that he makes.

      Are you saying that "blacks are lazy" is somehow equivalent to "men put women down"? Is this a crucial plank in your argument, that all groups are equivalent and generalizing about any is cruel?

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    7. Also, I don't see racism or sexism in the hypotheticals. I see sanitized and silly oversimplifications that you use in order to try to make your point. I reject the hypotheticals. I'd like you to come out and say whatever it is you want to argue rather than sit back and critique without leveling judgment. Call me a hypocrite, or a sexist, or say that I treat Group A as Evil and Group B as Good, or something. Or else I'll move on, because this is boring me and I prefer direct people who make positive and substantial statements, even if they're attacks.

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    8. Okay--Mr. Crow is sexually frustrated, has a curious obsession with male genitals, and feels that he will be able to please his mother at last if he hurts enough men while saying that he's doing it on behalf of women.

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  5. The person who posts as "Jack Crow" is not a "strong white man." "Jack Crow" is an olive-brown skinned half-Indian, half Italian Jew male of the human species, a bit on the short side, somewhat more than chronically ill, suffering from migraines, venous insufficiency and a recently diagnosed lymphatic condition.

    What I don't have are "psychosexual" issues with hurting men, pleasing my mother or appeasing women.

    I just think rape victims ought to have recourse to castrating their rapists. Writing as I do from an anarchist perspective, it ought to be easy enough for a reader to predict that I won't posit a formalized so-called justice system, a state punishment apparatus, or any appeal to fictionalized rites or rights: leaving the victim the freedom and burden of seeking her own recompense, retribution, vengeance and/or restitution.

    From that, Arka leaps...

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    1. What if a rape victim gets it wrong? When she mutilates the gay, radically feminist, twin brother of the man who raped her, because she was really sure it was that guy, what do you say?

      When, ten years later, the rapist meets the victim at his brother's funeral, breaks down, and confesses that his father had been beating him and calling him a sissy, and threatened to kill him and his brother if he didn't go out and "score some puntang like a normal guy, you little faggot," does the rape victim wonder if she would've made a second mistake even if she'd followed up by mutilating the right guy?

      I'm so sorry. It's been my horror every day since then, even after Dad died. I wouldn't even have done it if I hadn't been taking those pills for my stress that they took off the market--you remember those? It was on TV back then. I'm so sorry I--watch out for that car! Crunch.

      Luckily, ridiculous hypotheticals never happen in real life. Real life is cut and dried, black and white, guilty and innocent, we need to stop having so many of these stupid drawn-out jury trials and just make those antisocial sociopathic fuckers burn without all this red tape getting in the way.

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    2. You all right? Omigod, you all right?

      Down there, he really doesn't look all that scary...omigod, he's not really that different from me...

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