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Joss Whedon just posted this rather overwhelmed rant about misogyny at Whedonesque, and along with feeling saddened and compassionate, I felt a little amused, because it is not unlike the rant I've been trying and finding myself unable to write for days.
It's been a dark few weeks on this front, for some reason -- for me, and maybe not just for me. Joss is particularly freaked about an "honor" killing in the Middle East that was filmed and is being shown on CNN, in conjunction with the "Captivity" ad campaign that he protested a few weeks back. For me it was largely sparked by the MJ statue and the reading it prompted me to do on what's been going on in comics; I come from a sf background, and that world is also very boys'-clubby in many ways and I suppose I just assumed comics was a similar world, but in reality the amount of resentment, contempt, degredation, and hatred coming out of the source, the creators, and the fans in the sphere of the big comics companies was utterly astounding and horrifying to me. A lot of it wasn't far above the level of particularly soulless and despicable shock radio. And then at the same time, all the ordinary indignities of life, like the gentlemen at FanLib who are going to, I guess, take fanfiction to that all-important Next Level that we disorganized girls haven't managed to find on our own yet (oh, and possibly get just a little bit rich off of women's unpaid labor -- what a great idea! why did no one ever think of that before?), and my boss joining a class-action suit against our employers after finding out that the new, just-out-of-college male management trainees with no restaurant experience are being hired at $10k a year more than she makes after ten years in restaurant management. (She was denied both a promotion and a raise this year; the owner said he thought she was too "emotional" to handle the job -- which might even be semi-sound logic, except for the fact that what she wanted was the title and pay for the job she is, in fact, already doing, and also the fact that only a man would decide that acting like you're stressed out because you work 75 hours a week for less money than everyone around you is somehow pathological. Oh, those girls!)
What's always been comforting to me in the past is that I truly believe a lot of the worst shit going on around me is futile backlash -- just people who've already lost the culture war stomping their feet and making a fuss. And I still believe that, basically, but I guess I've started fixating slightly on the darker side of that, which is, why is this a loss that hurts them so much? What about treating women like people is so terrifying and so untenable to some of these people that they're this intensely threatened by and angry at the prospect?
I've been so fortunate to have so many good men in my life that I often forget how many men there are who arrange their sense of self around their access to women; women are for life's winners to enjoy, and if you're not getting what you want (be it control over your female relatives' behavior or cheap and uncomplaining economic service from someone you don't have to bargain with very hard or acceptance of your personal sexual fantasies as sexual norms), then fuck you, you must be one of life's losers.
That's where Joss and I tend to depart in our analyses. He believes misogyny really does come from the philosophy that women are wrong/bad/broken in some way, whereas I believe that philosophy is itself a defensive reaction to a deeper belief that women have no independent existence and are only relevant inasmuch as they are of use to real people, i.e. men. When we're useful and obedient and satisfying and non-troublesome, there's nothing wrong with us. Of course, being humans, women have never been easy to control and they've always said and done and thought things that they weren't given permission to, and that's when the question became "What's wrong with them? Why won't they act right?" We're hysterical! irrational! sluts! stupid! devious! pathetic! If we weren't all of those things, we'd do our jobs and not be a nuisance like we're supposed to! Then we'd be all right. Only it's just a theory, because control is never absolute -- hell, our pets don't do what we tell them, our computers don't do what we tell them, people *certainly* are never going to do only what we tell them. And if the artificial ideal you believe in is not coming true for you, one of three things must be true: 1) it's a stupid artificial ideal that has no relevance to the real world, 2) there's something wrong with you, 3) there's something wrong with other people. #1 is a feminist response, while misogyny seems to take place in a weird, teetering, unstable space between #2 and #3.
The feminist response just seems so much less vicious and damaging and painful to everyone involved. I continue to fail to see why it is that it's not a more popular sell. There's nothing wrong with us, and there's nothing wrong with you! It would be one thing if we were challenging your actual unlimited access to women, but come on, you've never really had that, have you? All you've had is the promise that it might someday happen for you, and the stress and disappointment of watching it not happen over and over, making you increasingly frustrated and unsure what's gone sideways.
Nothing has gone sideways. This is how it is -- you can't control people and you never could, and furthermore it's not just you. No one can, even the guys you think are managing it. Feminism isn't a threat, it's your escape route from a thoroughly rigged game that you will never win and you will die blaming yourself and everyone around you for not winning.
And now I'm speaking to the "you" that doesn't exist, because I can't imagine there's anyone reading my lj who needs this explanation. I'm just venting.
It's been a dark few weeks on this front, for some reason -- for me, and maybe not just for me. Joss is particularly freaked about an "honor" killing in the Middle East that was filmed and is being shown on CNN, in conjunction with the "Captivity" ad campaign that he protested a few weeks back. For me it was largely sparked by the MJ statue and the reading it prompted me to do on what's been going on in comics; I come from a sf background, and that world is also very boys'-clubby in many ways and I suppose I just assumed comics was a similar world, but in reality the amount of resentment, contempt, degredation, and hatred coming out of the source, the creators, and the fans in the sphere of the big comics companies was utterly astounding and horrifying to me. A lot of it wasn't far above the level of particularly soulless and despicable shock radio. And then at the same time, all the ordinary indignities of life, like the gentlemen at FanLib who are going to, I guess, take fanfiction to that all-important Next Level that we disorganized girls haven't managed to find on our own yet (oh, and possibly get just a little bit rich off of women's unpaid labor -- what a great idea! why did no one ever think of that before?), and my boss joining a class-action suit against our employers after finding out that the new, just-out-of-college male management trainees with no restaurant experience are being hired at $10k a year more than she makes after ten years in restaurant management. (She was denied both a promotion and a raise this year; the owner said he thought she was too "emotional" to handle the job -- which might even be semi-sound logic, except for the fact that what she wanted was the title and pay for the job she is, in fact, already doing, and also the fact that only a man would decide that acting like you're stressed out because you work 75 hours a week for less money than everyone around you is somehow pathological. Oh, those girls!)
What's always been comforting to me in the past is that I truly believe a lot of the worst shit going on around me is futile backlash -- just people who've already lost the culture war stomping their feet and making a fuss. And I still believe that, basically, but I guess I've started fixating slightly on the darker side of that, which is, why is this a loss that hurts them so much? What about treating women like people is so terrifying and so untenable to some of these people that they're this intensely threatened by and angry at the prospect?
I've been so fortunate to have so many good men in my life that I often forget how many men there are who arrange their sense of self around their access to women; women are for life's winners to enjoy, and if you're not getting what you want (be it control over your female relatives' behavior or cheap and uncomplaining economic service from someone you don't have to bargain with very hard or acceptance of your personal sexual fantasies as sexual norms), then fuck you, you must be one of life's losers.
That's where Joss and I tend to depart in our analyses. He believes misogyny really does come from the philosophy that women are wrong/bad/broken in some way, whereas I believe that philosophy is itself a defensive reaction to a deeper belief that women have no independent existence and are only relevant inasmuch as they are of use to real people, i.e. men. When we're useful and obedient and satisfying and non-troublesome, there's nothing wrong with us. Of course, being humans, women have never been easy to control and they've always said and done and thought things that they weren't given permission to, and that's when the question became "What's wrong with them? Why won't they act right?" We're hysterical! irrational! sluts! stupid! devious! pathetic! If we weren't all of those things, we'd do our jobs and not be a nuisance like we're supposed to! Then we'd be all right. Only it's just a theory, because control is never absolute -- hell, our pets don't do what we tell them, our computers don't do what we tell them, people *certainly* are never going to do only what we tell them. And if the artificial ideal you believe in is not coming true for you, one of three things must be true: 1) it's a stupid artificial ideal that has no relevance to the real world, 2) there's something wrong with you, 3) there's something wrong with other people. #1 is a feminist response, while misogyny seems to take place in a weird, teetering, unstable space between #2 and #3.
The feminist response just seems so much less vicious and damaging and painful to everyone involved. I continue to fail to see why it is that it's not a more popular sell. There's nothing wrong with us, and there's nothing wrong with you! It would be one thing if we were challenging your actual unlimited access to women, but come on, you've never really had that, have you? All you've had is the promise that it might someday happen for you, and the stress and disappointment of watching it not happen over and over, making you increasingly frustrated and unsure what's gone sideways.
Nothing has gone sideways. This is how it is -- you can't control people and you never could, and furthermore it's not just you. No one can, even the guys you think are managing it. Feminism isn't a threat, it's your escape route from a thoroughly rigged game that you will never win and you will die blaming yourself and everyone around you for not winning.
And now I'm speaking to the "you" that doesn't exist, because I can't imagine there's anyone reading my lj who needs this explanation. I'm just venting.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 08:10 pm (UTC)From:Feminism is unladylike, I suppose. Heh. (and thanks for the link)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 08:21 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 01:16 am (UTC)From:Otherwise, word. With Word sauce. Brought by Ronon. Who pours it over your body and licks it off.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 01:17 am (UTC)From:http://pandagon.net/2007/05/20/sing-it-brother-joss/
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 01:46 am (UTC)From:Otherwise, word. With Word sauce. Brought by Ronon. Who pours it over your body and licks it off.
Aaaaand there go all my thinky thoughts for the rest of the night....
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 02:01 pm (UTC)From:I think the response you call feminist-- which I would call just less psychologically fucked up-- is not more popular with men OR women because, hmm, to put it as briefly as possible, most people are pretty fucked up, and fucked-up thinking is comfortably familiar.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 09:06 pm (UTC)From:I don't think Joss' post is straw-graspy so much as it's achingly searching. Hth definitely takes the premise a few phases deeper and really gives us some good theory as to reasons, but I don't think that Joss' point in posting was quite the same. He wasn't really posting from a place of perspective, I don't think. He seemed like he was just bleeding onto the keyboard.
It's a different vibe, with different aims and ends.