Feminism Friday: Rape Jokes Aren't Funny

Late, I know, and not much from me: I'm just pointing you at these three posts below from Melissa McEwan at Shakesville.

Trauma-Trigger Alert: Melissa describes her own rape in harrowing detail in order to point out how rape is not funny, and although the discussion threads start out thoughtful and interesting, they end up invaded by shockjock fans who troll the thread with graphic threats of rape directed against Melissa and other commenters.

Aren't we feminists lucky, we get some cyberbullying to go with the defense of rape jokes as well!

Melissa has decided not to delete them in order to show just what sort of threats these jerks perceive as "jokes" that we "need to get a sense of humour" about.


Rape Is Hilarious
Rape Is Hilarious Part II
Rape Is Not Only Hilarious; It's No Big Deal

Cyberbullying:
Kate Harding has a great post in response to the cyberbullying. Let those folks read it who claim that men bloggers get flamed and threatened just as much and as creepily as women bloggers. Suuurrrre they do.

As usual for Feminism Friday, feel free to leave a link to recent Feminism Friday posts from other blogs in comments - your own or others.

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Feminism Friday: using FF101 FAQs for more than blocking derailments

I've just done a bit of retouching to the "Why Was I Sent To This Blog?" post, aka FAQ:I Asked Some Feminists A Question And They Sent Me Here: Why? The main reason I reworked it is because I have both great gratification and some disappointment from how I see FF101 being used to deal with disruptive questioners in feminist discussions.

I'm a bit tentative to put this out there, because not only am I not the high priestess or pope of any feminist anything, I'm not even an anointed acolyte; I have no actual control over how others use links to this blog in their discourse with others (and wouldn't want to) but I do have a vision of sorts, and that vision isn't quite happening.

That vision is that links to the FAQs are potential conversation starters, not just conversation-derailer stoppers.

I'm seeing lots of referrals to the blog from threads where someone is asking 101 questions and disrupting a more theoretically advanced discussion, which is terrific, but I don't think that those getting the referrals, or the lurkers who also click on the link, are being best served by a habit that I'm also seeing.

What habit is that? Dropping a link just to this blog's index page, instead of taking a few moments to check out which FAQ here best addresses the disruptive question and drop a link to that relevant FAQ in the thread. I think it's only fair that when asking people to go and do some homework that a little bit of groundwork gets done by the referrer, otherwise it really does just seem totally dismissive and unhelpful.

It may be hard to avoid seeing questioners you suspect are trolls as worthy of dismissal and unworthy of help in finding the answers, and sometimes you may indeed be right: why bother for "obvious trolls"? But remember, only a small fraction of readers are commenters, and only a small fraction of commenters are trolls. The trolls aren't going to be persuaded, but other commenters and certainly the lurking majority might well be, but only if we feminists are actually persuasive and not just dismissive.

Please consider using the link to the FAQ roundup rather than just the blog alone for questions that seem genuine, or use the link to the "Why was I sent to this blog?" post for someone pouting about their questions not being answered. (I've noticed a couple of people have blogroll links to the FAQ roundup rather than just the FF101 front page, and I think that's an excellent idea, as that's the proper core of the blog.)

Now, the core of the vision, really: think about whether the disruptive questioner actually had the basics of a good discussion starter in the question, if only it hadn't been such a derailer to the discussion already happening. If it was a good question, something that you do actually find interesting or worth addressing separately, then maybe throw up a post which addresses some aspect of what the questioner wanted to know?

That way, if the questioner has actually followed the link here and done some reading, then the questioner gets a chance to be part of a discussion about that without being viewed as a derailer. (Corollary: if it was a really disingenuous question aimed solely at a derailment, maybe a post that dissects exactly why the question was disingenuous, and that indulges in a bit of recreational troll-mockery, might be an equally valid conversation starter). These are the sort of posts that will draw in lurkers to comment who are intimidated by more intermediate/advanced topics, and isn't enticing lurkers to join discussions a big part of the reason for online feminist discussion in the first place?

Obviously, lots of feminist bloggers have no interest in addressing 101 questions at all, and that's a totally valid position. That's another reason this blog exists. If you're a feminist who just doesn't want to deal with introductory stuff ever, I hope you still find this blog valuable for blocking derailments and troll-stopping. But please consider taking the time to find the link to the pertinent FAQ for the disruptive question nonetheless. We may well never win the heart/mind of a single disruptive questioner, but we may well sway swathes of lurkers with just that little bit of effort. We do want to sway some hearts and minds, right?

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Feminism Friday: Roundup

Unapologetic Female: Feminisms. Plural.

Thinking Girl: The Weaker Sex

RebelGrrl has had a few Feminism Friday posts she didn't let us know about the last few weeks:
Fairy Tale Endings
Vilifying Yoko Ono

Bluemilk hasn't tagged this as Friday Feminism, but I'm going to add it to the roundup anyway: Yummy Mummy, Are You Happy?
(This led me to two of bluemilk's I missed last month - Work and Family - A Very Unequal Marriage and Sorry, is our struggle stifling your productivity?)


Please add other recent Feminism Friday posts, or posts which could have been Feminism Friday posts, in comments.

Feminism Friday: Safety vs. Patriarchal Overprotection

Reader Justin wrote and asked me for advice on an ethical balance problem, and with his permission I quote his email:

I have a question which has been bothering me for some time, and which may/may not be worth addressing on the site. In any case, its something I don't feel precisely comfortable asking my close friends, but it does bother me. Not that you have any obligation to spend time assuaging my liberal guilt, but worth a try.
. .
I'm a male college student from the Midwest and I've been self-identifying as feminist (or feminist ally) for quite awhile. Through activism and academia, I'm pretty familiar and comfortable with feminist thought. About a year ago, my best friend--who attends another Midwestern college--was raped at knifepoint by two strangers who attacked her as she walked to her dorm one night. As I've attempted to help her work through the fallout of that experience, I've grown very protective (read paranoid) of my female friends. Particularly, I feel like I should refuse to let them walk home by themselves at night, and do my best to convince them to let me
accompany them after parties, etc., which usually isn't a problem.

Still, sometimes I feel a bit patriarchal and condescending, and I recognize that discouraging women from walking at night is a sort of variation on the whole "asking for it" theme, shifting the blame from the victim to the victimizer. My question is, how do I find an ethical balance between protecting my friends from often underestimated dangers, and avoiding stereotype reinforcing paternalism. Obviously, in a sense my personal stake in this issue is minor compared to the actual threat of sexual violence, but I would still like to know how best to handle these situations. . .

Thanks for listening to my ramblings; any thoughts you have would be appreciated, though certainly not demanded. . .

Now, as I mailed back to Justin, I had two immediate responses come to mind.

1. although your protectiveness is noble, as I'm sure you're aware most sexual assaults are date/acquaintance/partner rape, and you can't be there for that. So the utility of your protectiveness is, through no fault of your own, limited.

2. the greater work to be done is challenging sexist attitudes in men around you when women aren't there. It's a long term effort, with no short term fanfares of triumph, but as more and more profeminist men undertake to challenge misogyny it's more likely to make a difference in the end.

Now, while I was waiting for Friday to roll around, Kate Harding posted her terrific essay that I quoted in the FAQ: What Can I Do For Feminism?, which addressed my #2 above.

As to #1, I certainly wouldn't want to minimise the fear, pain and distress of stranger rape, and I don't have the personal experience to back it up, but I'm sure from what I've read of others' experiences that the fear, pain and distress can only be multiplied when the rapist is someone known and trusted, and there's sadly little the Justins of our world can do about untrustworthy deceitful men.

EXCEPT: as said above, don't reinforce their casual misogyny about crazy bitches who are asking for it.

You might not know which of the men around you are untrustworthy deceitful misogynists, but guaranteed that some of them are, and if blokes who would never bully or harm a woman play along with the crazy-bitch jokes just for a laugh, some of those men laughing are getting their misogynistic violence fantasies reinforced by what they perceive as acceptance from other men.

Justin, thanks so much for writing.

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Feminism Friday

I haven't managed to come up with a particular Feminism Friday post myself this week. Luckily I came across a couple to recommend:

A specific Feminism Friday post from Erimentha on melding Western feminist theory with Indian feminist action: Here and Now

A serendipitous find - a thoughtful post and thread from an Anabaptist blog on "The Problem with Feminism"

Updated to Add: Feminism and Rape - two posts from Feministe that discuss why rape victims are subject to so much more scrutiny and skepticism than victims of other crimes, and why so many people are comfortable with failing to distinguish between accusations that cannot be proven in court and false accusations from lying women.

The first is a 2003 post from Lauren, written in response to the press about the Kobe Bryant case, relating how she was raped as a teenager and why she didn't tell anyone at the time, much less report it to police.

The second is a post from Jill, in response to the dropping of charges against the three charged men in the Duke rape case. Warning - the thread is already 200+ comments long, and the anti-feminists are out in force.

Feminism Friday: a roundup

A few other bloggers are picking up on this Feminism Friday idea (originally Thinking Girl's idea), which I'm glad to see.

Last week Ilyka (Pandagon) had a cracker on Saying No to Passivity, while there was some good discussion here on Young Feminists and how they find feminist fellowship.

This week Amanda (Pandagon) and I both came up with different looks at compulsory femininity: Amanda took on the common points between headscarves, pushup bras and pantyhose while over at Hoyden About Town I look at how It Starts So Young.

If you decide to join in with a Feminism Friday piece, or if you already have done so in the last few weeks and I missed it, please leave a link in comments.

Feminism Friday: Young Feminists

What with the continually alleged "death of feminism" in this "post-feminist" age, how are young women finding their way into feminism going about it? Particularly those who are not going to tertiary education facilities that offer a Women's Studies Course?

How did those of us who are not so young find our way into feminism? How were we helped/hindered by family and friends?

I had a father who encouraged me to read Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan and always pay my own way on dates at the same time as he refused to agree to my mother returning to full-time work until my 6-years younger sister was in secondary school, and who thought that making a big deal about complimenting me on my body in front of his mates was OK. My mother resented being held back from working after having kids but also expressed doubt about a lot of the Women's Lib (as it was referred to at the time) agenda. Most of my school-friends thought my feminist beliefs were at the simplest (votes, equal pay) obvious and at the more anthropological (dating rituals, sexist language) weird. Mixed messages.

I never studied Women's Studies or feminist theory at a tertiary education level - I've just read a lot of books and made a lot of feminist friends over the years, some of whom have formally studied feminist theory and some of whom, like me, have read a lot and thought a lot about it outside college/uni. Different paths.

So what are young feminists doing for themselves to make sense of feminism here and now?

I just found one young feminist online community linking to this blog in my sitemeter stats: the All-Girl Army, whose tagline is Ovathrow the status quo! which I love. They're a community of feminist bloggers ranging from age 10 to 23, which is far younger than the feminists online whom I usually read. Check it out.

Any other young feminists (let's make an arbitrary cut-off of age 25) wanting to promote their online and/or offline communities/activities please leave a comment about yourselves! The rest of you, please reminisce about the feminist or proto-feminist you aged 25 or under.

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Friday Open Thread and Feminism Friday Op-Ed

Updated 28March07

I've been admiring Thinking Girl's Feminism Friday archive so much that I'm nicking the idea, and I would encourage other bloggers to do the same. Not necessarily every Friday, but every now and then, when you have an opinionated big-picture essay bursting to get out, let that post loose on a Friday and give it the "Feminism Friday" category tag to make it easy to find on search engines. We can have a multitude of virtual feminist salons!

For FF101's first Feminism Friday Salon, I present a guest op-ed by Lori Heine, a fairly new but frequent commenter at Pandagon. Lori adds:

I'm a playwright and essayist, whose work most often appears in the GLBT webzine Whosoever. I live with seven cats and one poor, outnumbered little dog. I am single, eligible and searching for the ultimate woman.

This essay came about from Lori's ruminations on two of the questions in this blog's masthead: "Does feminism matter?" and "What can I do for feminism?". Please add your own ideas on those two questions, and any responses/arguments provoked by Lori's essay, in comments (please go check out Thinking Girl's archive as well). If you've decided to put up a Feminism Friday post yourself, link to that for us as well, please.
UPDATE: Haloscan is eating comments at the moment, so head on over to the FF101 open thread at my other blog to comment, please. (problem appears to be solved)
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Friday Feminism Op-Ed
by Lori Heine

A non-feminist world, throughout history, has almost always been an anti-female world. It is dominated by a human race perilously out of balance.

Every animal species, in order to survive, has evolved in a way that enables its feminine side to exist in harmony with the masculine. For the sake of survival, all the caring and nurturing, creatively-collaborative qualities of a species are given equal prominence with its defensive, acquisitive, possessive and self-interested characteristics. Even most males in the animal world have a highly-developed feminine side. An overemphasis on the masculine would ultimately mean the destruction of the species. No matter how safe it might be from its outside enemies, its members would inevitably be unable to cooperate with one another and eventually destroy each other and themselves.

Feminism does not seek to destroy the masculine, but merely to bring it into harmony with the feminine so that a healthy balance may be maintained. A healthy society respects the feminine and gives it room to realize its full potential. An unhealthy society, in which the masculine suppresses and oppresses the feminine – valorizing selfishness, competitiveness, acquisitiveness and possessiveness – is not long for this world.

Might a society that goes too far to the feminine extreme also destroy itself? We don’t know. History offers no precedent of such a thing. Since it’s never happened (and men are, by their very nature, unlikely to let it), it’s hard to tell if this is a legitimate worry. As it is highly unlikely that such a thing would ever be allowed to happen, it’s doubtful we need lose sleep over the prospect.

As a matter of fact, feminism enables the masculine side of human nature as well. Patriarchy forces girls and women to suppress that element in themselves. This is yet another way to keep people from being complete. It also attempts to deny those who are female the ability to defend themselves from male bullying. “Real” women are not supposed to stand up for themselves.

There are, however, many constructive ways for both women and men to resist this oppression. To begin with, we can recognize how crucial it is that society – and the individuals in it – respect the feminine. There is no need to fear that this might “weaken” men, as every whole human being is a balance of both the masculine and the feminine. We can strive to be complete human beings, regardless of our gender. And do our utmost to allow all other human beings to do the same.

If you are female, waste no time wishing you had been born a man. Seek access, for yourself and other women, to all privileges men have traditionally hoarded for themselves. A bigger pool of human talent and good ideas expands the potential for every person. If the best among us are allowed to reach their full potential, they will contribute to the quality of life for us all.

If you are male, dedicate yourself to justice for all. A world in which the rights of any human being are trampled upon is a world in which no one’s rights are secure. A world in which most other people are happy will be a world in which it is more likely that you will be happy, too. Unhappiness and injustice are like contagious diseases, and when a society is infected with them, the growth and potential fulfillment of every individual – female or male – is severely inhibited.

We can refuse to listen idly to sexist remarks or ignorant stereotyping about women. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, we can ask questions that do not seem to occur to others. Let’s help people think in creative and liberating new ways. How many of the diseases that still plague humankind might have been cured years ago, had women been permitted equal access to careers in science and medicine? How many devastating wars might have been avoided, had more women been given the chance not only to govern, but to make the presence of the feminine perspective felt on a wider scale?

Feminism is all about liberation – for men, as well as women, and for straights as well as gays. Most of the great leaps in human rights have taken place because of the influence of women. The feminine influence in society has made life better for everyone. Had we waited for men alone to change things for the better, most of us – including most men – would still be waiting.

The children of happy and fulfilled mothers grow up to be happier adults. This is as true of sons as it is of daughters. It has been widely observed that the men who respect women generally seem happier, and more at peace with themselves and other men, than do those who are contemptuous of women. It doesn’t hurt for us to point this out when we get the chance.

The male-supremacist insistence on seeing men and women as two totally different species is suicidal. And unchecked, it can only get worse. Where will the male-supremacists allow it to end? Will they be happy when they’ve exercised the ultimate in masculine self-assertion? Thanks to one of the chief male contributions to history, the nuclear weapon, we may one day get the chance to find out.

Socializing boys to be “all boy” is essentially dehumanizing. In their compulsion to separate themselves from every trace of femininity, men have succumbed to a sort of insanity. They are now being made to believe that showing any emotion beyond derisive humor, rage and lust (for women, of course, in a detached and objectified sense) is “girly.” At no time in history have men ever been so limited. They are no longer allowed to feel, to learn anything in school (again, too “girly”) or even to take the most basic care of their own health.

If that isn’t insanity, then what is?

They can abuse alcohol, drive recklessly, deny themselves medical care and do their utmost to kill themselves and others. They’ve come a long way, baby.

Some people – including many women – say that it’s the name “feminist” they find objectionable. Call it something else, they say, and they will be fine with it. “Mankind,” “fellow man,” and the rest – terms that make maleness the all-encompassing human norm – they have no problem with, but a word, merely suggesting that women are people too, sends them into a tizzy. Even those who embrace the concept have been bullied out of using the word. But if the word itself can no longer be used, how much longer will the concept itself be permitted?

Feminism is nothing less than an attempt to bring humanity into harmonious wholeness. As yet another generation of American GI’s returns from yet another senseless conquest war – trained to kill, to suppress feelings, to scorn compassion – we will have to deal, once again, with the fallout of male supremacy. Another generation of young people have been broken, inside and out. And what do the powers-that-be blame for the problem, as they do for every other? Why feminism, of course.

But are feminists the crazy ones? Watch Spike TV for an hour and you’ll find out. No, watch the news for even half an hour and you’ll know the answer to that.

(C) 2007 Lori Heine
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Have a lovely weekend, everybody!
Update: remember, you may comment using this link while Haloscan is not playing nice.