Another new series: Hill is shrill!

I'm seeing a lot of dumdum shit from progressive White guys in the last couple of days since Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination. It occurred to me that this election might create an opportunity for feminists/womanists/women from the future to educate misogynist progressives (ha).  I'm going to (try to remember to) keep a running list here of the "teachable moments" I encounter.  Sometimes I get so astounded by something shitty said to me that I forget to throw a little knowledge  back at the shit-sayer.

(Note: A lot of times, I'm going to say "we," "us," "girls," and "women" knowing full well that I cannot and do not speak for all women, particularly not women of color, women with disabilities, queer women, transwomen, poor women, immigrant women, incarcerated women, etc.)

(1) Don't tell us that Hillary's nomination is an important thing for women and girls (and trans folk, but I'm not seeing trans folk come up in the rhetoric at all.  [Shocker.])  First, don't tell us anything about what's good for us. Further, it's a great thing for men and boys, too. Figure out why.

(2) Related to (1), but definitely it's own thing:  Especially because Hillary is a White woman, you should learn something about the history of feminism because saying something is important for women and girls is just a super White thing to say.

(3) Code words!  There are so many code words!  For today, I'll do shrill. A personal example: When Rachel and I first started teaching, she was advised by a dude teacher that she should raise her voice when necessary to assert her authority in a class where she had some rowdiness.  Yeah right.  When a dude raises his voice, it's most of the time commanding.  When a White woman raises her voice, it's most of the time received as either ridiculous or annoying or both, but definitely not authoritative.  Y'all get to raise your voice, and we don't.  Don't call us shrill.

(4) Don't ask us to teach you this stuff.  Do your own work because you're exhausting me.  And insulting, but the insulting is kinda whatever.  It's just tiring to talk you through things from step one. Read something.

I took down almost everything I've written about the prison work.

sympathy

I saw a stunningly gorgeous (in a conventional way -- White, blonde, thin, probably a symmetrical face or something) woman the other day, and my first thought was, "Oh hell, it must be horrible for walking down the street.  So many men looking her up and down and yelling at her."

No doubt there are privileges, too.  

"dominance, ego, and authority"

This piece is tripping me up this morning.  Particularly right here: 

Casebolt's behavior, as in all cases of police brutality, was not about protecting and serving. It was about dominance, ego, and authority, and when confronted with a young black girl it manifested itself through a sexual and physical aggression that was patently inappropriate -- but unsurprising. There are some who will say that it is a "reach" to accuse Casebolt of sexual assault. But in the case of a grown man physically dominating a 15-year-old girl, it's hard to see how else it can be described.

Yes.  As someone who has been an important teacher for me said on FB: "This. Is. Sexual. Assault." I don't really have a stomach for reading/watching stuff about child abuse and/or sexual assault, so the on-pointedness of what she's saying here is making me a little nauseous.

"@Xmukexziamx: RT #craigranch #RETWEET pic.twitter.com/kEXV5yCXKS" This is not okay. It's not fucking okay #McKinney

— girl . (@larryftniell) June 8, 2015

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My White woman teacher-friend Mary and I were talking yesterday about being a young White woman authority figure (in the official world) in a classroom where Black and Brown masculinity holds power (in the unofficial world).  

Mary (who's for sure conventionally beautiful) and her (dude) partner are both teaching at the JDC here in the city, and she was explaining to me how interesting it is to get to see how the students there respond to him as a teacher versus her.  In the boys' classroom and in the girls'.  She said that her partner remarked that she seemed to have an easier time connecting to the boys.  She rolled her eyes and said that of course she knew that it had something to do with "being a woman."

And then we had this conversation where for the first time (for me anyway) we acknowledged that sex has a lot to do with teacher-student rapport.  Not actual sex, of course, but... you know, all the swirling stuff associated with sexual attraction.  We both admitted, real awkwardly, that we know that we've used how we look to get an initial in with a student, if that's what it takes to get to someplace where meaningful learning can happen.

I told her how two of my incarcerated colleagues explained to me how a major rapport challenge for them is student resistance to being dominated, and thus emasculated, when the teacher is another incarcerated man.

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Last week, a really shitty experience I had a few months ago with misogyny got resurrected.  I hadn't thought about it for a while, but now it's back to being turned around and around in my head:

A man who was a classmate, and with whom I had a friendship that was rife with sexual attraction (and all the swirling stuff) attacked me in a group email in response to my request to be allowed to write with him and two other men about work that all of us in the group had done together last year.  A favorite excerpt: 

"Don't try and insert yourself now for your "intellectual" labor. You didn't do shit on the original proposal, it wasn't your idea to hold a roundtable, you might've contributed, perhaps, through casual conversation."

Intellectual in quotes.  That's the part that gets me.  The general idea of the whole email is that I didn't do any work because I'm not smart enough to have done so.

In reality, I did a shitload of the work -- both intellectual and logistical.  As well as a lot of straight up grunt work.  All of the other people included on the group email (bar one) reached out to me privately to incredulously affirm that.  

So to this asshole: my work was invisible, my intellect negligible, and my right to a voice in the description of what we did collectively was his to silence or allow.  "Dominance, ego, and authority" all underscored by our history of sort of dating for a little bit and having one drunk night a few months before this exchange, and therefore most definitely underpinned by my vulnerability from being a woman in a (hetero) sexualized context.

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I'm still moshing this all about.  Certainly I don't mean to liken my experience with this fucker to the sexual assault of Dajerria Becton by that fucker.  Hell no.

I guess I'm just pinning them up side-by-side and stepping back to wonder.  Sex and violence.

staying single forever and ever and ever

Here’s something that’s true for me and will probably not be for others.  And it’s something steeped in my experiences of sexism as it intersects with hetero, White, and thin privilege:

When a straight woman and a straight man are coworkers (or even classmates, friends, whatever), it is sexist and horrible for the man to initiate anything romantic/sexual, but it is fine for the woman to do so.

I can think of five times in the last three years that this has happened to me, that a straight male co-worker/friend/whatever has tried to get fresh or something, and every time it’s been… ugh yuck.  Bad.  Awkward.  No.  Shit.  Ugh.  Needlessly anxiety- and guilt-producing for me.  

Most obviously, it’s sexist because it’s a reinforcement of the woman-as-sex-object thing that’s straight up old school sexism.  See any Gender Studies 101 class for more information about this.  Women are just ogled more than men are.  It’s more (potentially and/or actually) damaging for men to ogle women, too – especially when that ogling gets all up in there with the combination of masculinity as virile (powerful, in control, instinctually violent, etc.) and femininity as submissive.  When men ogling women becomes normalized.  It’s “natural” for men to be obsessed with sex.  Boys will be boys.  Blah blah blah barf. 

(And I don’t mean that men aren’t ogled often.  I ogle men all the time.  I once initiated a game of Hot or Not amongst my coworkers in our shared office space.  Pictured below.) 

What’s more insidious for me than this obvious my-face-is-up-here type enactment of sexism is the way that women and girls, myself included, are so often socialized to internalize male supremacy to the point that we, I, feel compelled to do what I can to avoid “emasculating” men I care about.  (Again, holy heteronormativity, I know.)  My friend Amy noticed this tendency in me years ago and used to try various ridiculous activities to condition me to be better at saying “no” to men who were creeping on me: She’d repeatedly put her hand on my lower back, for example, and try to get me to swat her away at faster and faster rates.  It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I have so many times let men who are friends do that – put their hand on my lower back, hug too close for too long, or put their arm around me – while I’ve cringed inwardly.  But I didn’t say anything because of the particular way that I guess I’ve internalized sexism.

Further, beyond allowing these micro-unwanted advances from male friends, I have felt tremendously responsible for smoothing out the social awkwardness they cause.  In one instance, the male friend in question and I were working together in a very tenuous context that he was officially charged with facilitating.  Later in the night after the meeting during which he slipped me an unwanted romantic note, I agonized about how I was going to let him down firmly without messing with his ego in ways that would slow or stop the progress of our committee’s work.  But I didn’t fucking do anything wrong, so why the hell did I feel so responsible?

And the thing is, it’s not like I have any male friends who are pronounced misogynists.  Actually, I would be surprised if very many of my male friends didn’t identify as feminists.  I’ve never been afraid that one of my male friends would assault me, sexually or otherwise.  But I don’t think that the kinds of fake male feminism I have encountered amongst some of my male friends is unrelated to our larger rape culture.  Um: 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence.

And I don't think that any unwanted advances from female me toward a male friend exists on that same continuum of violence.  Again, it's sexist for them to do it, but not for me to do it.  No such thing as reverse sexism. 

I really like what this woman says here about fake male feminism.  She recounts,

I would meet a man who led a feminism reading group and become involved with the women, pissing them off to vision-blurring rage.  I would meet a man who writes his thesis on Audre Lorde’s idea of a lesbian consciousness but was always the last to leave a party, eyes darting around for inebriated women, prospective bedmates.  I would meet countless self-proclaimed feminists whose mouths would ask, “Have you read Gender Troubles?” while their body language asks, “Is that the passcode to your pants?”  And I would pardon these men over and over again, because they behaved, at least initially, like my male feminist role models.

And I’m like, yeeeah. But including and beyond dudes using their feminist credentials to get laid, I’m pissed about men who use their feminist credentials to get ahead professionally.  I’ve seen that shit several times in academe.  Male grad students publishing articles that lean heavily on feminist theories and blabbing to male classmates about sexual exploits with female classmates. All dudes involved in said blabbing sesh keeping it hush-hush because “guy code.”  

Feminism for Facebook likes but not within intimate relationships.  Fuh-hu-huuuuuuuuuuuck that.

Heck. We’re never going to elect Hillary.

oh come on

For the record, I find Sarah Palin to be ridiculous. Insultingly ridiculous as a vice-presidential candidate. Just for the record.

But this photois sexist. A focus on two drooling frat-boys* wearing pink in "honor" of their VP candidate! I mean, she's a girl, right? And girls love pink, right? Gosh, girls are so cute! So silly! I venture to guess that there would probably have been no pink McCain campaign t-shirts printed had Palin not been on the ticket. I don't know; maybe I'm wrong.

I mean, the amount of money they are saying that Palin spent on her wardrobe for the campaign is despicable. Let me be clear about that. That said, I also find it despicable how much the media is relishing in the opportunity to out her as a shop-a-holic. I feel like the argument's going, "What was McCain thinking bringing on a woman? Didn't he know that she would just go crazy with the credit card!? ... but she does look good, huh? Check out those legs," instead of going, "What was McCain thinking bringing on a person who would shift the focus from productive solutions to our nation's complicated problems to petty quibbling over who Obama 'pals around with.'"

This photo is despicable. It reduces Palin to her shapely legs; worse than that it reduces her to the way that attractive young men, mocking her woman-ness in pink t-shirts, gaze at her. I mean, she could be naked, besides those oh-so-girly black pumps, for Chrissakes. You could convincingly PhotoShop those two young men, as well as the slightly older one on the right, into a strip-club scene. The woman was running for Vice-President. Can we please get over the way she looks?

I look at it and hear the words of Jean Kilbourne (especially around 8:12) and Laura Mulvey.

*I realize that I'm rather unproductively stereotyping men in fraternities; forgive me. While I know that not all men in fraternities fit the stereotype I'm using, for the sake of my argument, that mold is a useful characterization of the humiliating and oppressive hetero-male gaze I'm frustrated with.

why is this a song

(hetero)sexism: "We all worship you already!"

My awesome** friends were kind enough to set up a profile for me on GreatBoyfriends.com! How lucky am I!?* Now it can only be a matter of time before Mr. Right appears in my inbox!* [fingers crossed.]*

Conveniently enough, GreatBoyfriends has established these two ranking systems, one for girls and one for boys, so that users can quickly and easily assess whether or not they want to date someone!

for girls:
for boys:
I can't really tell if the best* part about this great* new site is that it tells me right away if a chick is moody/if a guy has got the moolah to buy me a sparkly ring, or if it's the friendly, flattering* rhetoric of their emails.





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* : sarcasm
** : not sarcasm

charming

guy in bar (GIB): "¿Hablas español?"
me: "eh.. Poquito!"
GIB: "Tu amiga, la Chinita, es la mujer de mis sueños."
me: "ah Sí, ella es muy guapa, no?"
GIB: "In dee next life, she will be mine."
me: "Sí, claro."
GIB: "Solo, eh, fucking. ¿Has visto Spanish cock?"
me: "Cassie! Come here, you gotta hear this..."
GIB: "I shock pussy! I shock pussy!"

Dear Guy-sitting-next-to-me-on-the-plane,

You have got to be kidding me.

You wanna know why I don't want to talk to you?

Well, just to name few reasons: (1) you made mention more than once of your desire to physically harm all hippies, all Yankees, any guy that wears a pink shirt, all persons from California, and all persons from Oklahoma; (2) one of your life goals is to "talk to every person in Texas" (What?); (3) you prefaced more than four statements with, "This is going to make me sound racist, but..."; (4) as you got drunker, you edged your legs and arms closer to me, until I, trying desperately to just not have to touch you, found myself plastered against the wall of the plane, which was I guess a good thing; because (5) if I had been taking up my whole seat, you would have spilled your glass of whiskey on me and not just on two-thirds of my seat; (6) you stared at me while I was reading my book, and asked me each time I underlined something or made a note why I was doing that; (7) you stared at me for minutes at a time while I watched a movie and yelled loudly at me "Why are you laughing at me?" every time I smiled at the movie; (8) you woke me up to ask me "Do you prefer Mandy or Amanda?" and when I replied, "I'm not sure what you're talking about," you heatedly responded, with your face an inch from mine despite my desperate attempts to back away, "Listen, Erin, I want to see you again. I like hanging out with you, and I want to see you next week."

I don't like "hanging out with you," and I don't want to see you next week.

Very sincerely,
Ellen