A Driscollian Hermeneutic: "Sweeney Erect"

In an offhand conversation with my agent earlier, we were remarking on this post from Mark Driscoll. You don’t have to read the whole 4300 words, but it’s worth having a look at part 3 and Driscoll’s literal reading of Ezekiel’s preaching to dry bones. Apparently, it means that zombies are real.

I’m not going to bore you with a reason as to why Driscoll is wrong here (because, come on, Zombies? In the Bible?), but I will note that metaphor and simile seem lost on the man. I mean, we knew as much when he interpreted Song of Songs to be about wives giving their husbands blowjobs. But I guess I never realized the depth (or is it shallowness?) of his literalism. And when he sees metaphor, he seems to always see the one that couldn’t be more wrong.

As Hannah and I were discussing this post and this idea, a thought occurred to me: if Driscoll is this bad at interpreting ancient Scripture that he reads zombies and blowjobs into prophetic works, what, then, would he do with poets actually influenced by Freud, religion, sex, and Enlightenment philosophy?

And thus, “Mark Driscoll Reads the Classics” was born.

Poetry’s never been my strong suit, but I’ve a feeling that it isn’t Driscoll’s either. So in the interest of parodying both the stuffy literary criticism (which I actually love, considering I have a degree in English Literature) and Driscoll’s literalism, this (maybe series?) is born out of a desire to see what happens when you misapply and misinterpret things through the way Driscoll sees the world. This is what happens when you approached the text with a desire to make it say what you want it to say, rather than letting the text speak for itself (and doing research to see what others have said).

So here it is: a Driscollian reading of "Sweeney Erect" by T.S. Eliot, a poem that actually is about sex and Calvinism. "Driscoll's" comments are in italics.

And the trees about me, Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks Groan with continual surges; and behind me Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!

Okay, it sounds like we’re in an apocalyptic waste land here: desolation. And of course, the only thing left after an apocalypse will be the bad women – those wenches! So there’s our setting.

Paint me a cavernous waste shore Cast in the unstilled Cyclades, Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

I looked up “Cyclades,” and according to my trusty copy of Wikipedia, it’s a group of islands in Greece. So obviously, this is a reference to the Greek New Testament and the “old” philosophy falling apart because it is apart from God. And it’s Greek.

Display me Aeolus above Reviewing the insurgent gales Which tangle Ariadne’s hair And swell with haste the perjured sails.

At first I thought Aeolus meant “areola,” and thought we were diving into sex a bit soon (I mean, the poem IS called “Sweeney ERECT”) but apparently it refers to the ancient Greek God of the winds. So clearly, this is a reference to the ancient philosophies of Greece being “full of wind.” I mean, Socrates was kind of a windbag apart from God, am I right?

And Ariadne? Wasn’t she that girl in Inception? Oh, Wikipedia says she’s associated with mazes and labyrinths. Well, obviously! She’s a woman!

Morning stirs the feet and hands (Nausicaa and Polypheme). Gesture of orang-outang Rises from the sheets in steam.

Alrighty! Sheets and steam! Obviously, sex. Totally. So Nausicaa and Polypheme are getting down! Nausicaa is an evil woman from the Odyssey, and Polypheme is a Cyclops, a one-eyed monster? Obviously a metaphor for penis. This poem is about sluts! It's warning us about getting involved with sluts. Sluts will bring on the apocalypse, and we're seeing the beginnings of it in our culture already.

This withered root of knots of hair Slitted below and gashed with eyes, This oval O cropped out with teeth: The sickle motion from the thighs

Wow, this TS Eliot was a sick bastard. This is obviously unholy sex in an apocalyptic waste land – it’s like our modern culture! Teenage girls running around with their Polyphemes, getting pregnant and chasing vampire demons. Clearly, Eliot’s talking about demonic images and orgies that will happen in the end times.

Jackknifes upward at the knees Then straightens out from heel to hip Pushing the framework of the bed And clawing at the pillow slip.

Whoa now. Mr. Eliot, I don’t like your pornography, sir.

Sweeney addressed full length to shave Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base, Knows the female temperament And wipes the suds around his face.

Okay, this is just silly. No metrosexual, chickified shaving of … parts … on my watch.

(The lengthened shadow of a man Is history, said Emerson Who had not seen the silhouette Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.)

Emerson is obvious a reference here to another poet. But I don’t like this idea of Sweeney – a man – straddled. Clearly, in this apocalyptic wasteland, women take control even in the bedroom, and this does not bode well for the males of the species. This is what we’re headed for, men! Do you want to be dominated like this, men?

Tests the razor on his leg Waiting until the shriek subsides. The epileptic on the bed Curves backward, clutching at her sides.

These “shrieks” are obviously, inhuman, demonic shrieks, because everyone knows that women only shriek in porn or if they’re feminist harpies. Epileptic here is a reference to a disease, a disorder – in this apocalyptic world, Eliot imagines a world turned upside down. Women leading outside the God-ordained order, turning men into women (Sweeney is shaving his legs!), and seeking after only their pleasure!

The ladies of the corridor Find themselves involved, disgraced, Call witness to their principles And deprecate the lack of taste

And even in the midst of this women-power fantasy, the women are unhappy! See! Go outside the ordained order, and God will make you unhappy.

Observing that hysteria Might easily be misunderstood; Mrs. Turner intimates It does the house no sort of good.

I think I like this Mrs. Turner – she knows what’s up. She knows women going out of line is bad for them. It does the house – obviously, “the body” – no good!

But Doris, towelled from the bath, Enters padding on broad feet, Bringing sal volatile And a glass of brandy neat.

But no one cares – Doris wanders about naked, tempting men, bringing on the apocalypse.

__________________

Notes:

1. This is a parody of how I imagine a caricature of Driscoll would read a poem. It is meant as parody, and is therefore protected speech. Shut up, Mars Hill lawyers.

2. A note of apology to my former professors who taught me in literature and exegesis classes: I am so sorry. This is intentionally bad literary criticism and it pains me to write it. You did not do a bad job with me, I promise!

3. Graphic designed by the amazing Jason Boyett. Y’all should get to know him. He’s awesome.

Slouching Toward Resolution

Part 1 - Part 2- Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6  

Finally, the last of the series! This last two points were so ridiculous I didn't even know if I wanted to bother responding. But, in the interest of finishing what I started, I've said a few words, even though they weren't really worthy of giving a response.

Number 13.

…you’re a misandrist.

If you’re wondering why that word has a little squiggly line appearing under it, there’s a good reason: it’s not a really a word. Well, it is, by the strict means of “misandry” does appear in the dictionary, but it’s not in common enough usage for it to be recognized even by most spell-checkers. It’s not in common usage, and with good reason.

“Misandry” is the companion word to misogyny. “Gyn” is the root that means female; “and” is the root that means male. Think of the word ANDroGYNous. Appearing between male and female. “Misandry,” then, means hatred of men.

So this is a fancy way of phrasing the old, tired, frustratingly dull argument that “feminists are man-haters.”

Right. That’s why so many of us have boyfriends. That’s why so many of us have best friends who are guys. That’s why so many of us have gotten married.

Here, you make the exact same mistake you accused feminists of making – ignoring an argument in favor of going for an epithet. Regardless of prior arguments or legitimacy of debate, you say “You’re a misandrist” and sit back on your heels while you wait for your “wisdom” in assessing the situation to sink in. Beautiful, just beautiful. If we are not allowed to call you misogynist, you are not allowed to call us misandrist. If you are truly concerned about civil debate, as I am, you would not stoop to this level. Frankly, the fact that you bothered to make this list at all indicates that you really only care about “insults” when they’re directed at you, which is pretty shameful and cowardly.

I feel sorry for you.

[caption id="attachment_375" align="aligncenter" width="247" caption="Yes, that was an intentional Potter reference."][/caption]

Number 14.

…you ignore everything above in favor of making personal attacks on the author of this piece. Truth hurts, doesn’t it, feminazis?

Actually, no. Thanks for the presumption, though! As you can see through this seven part series, it is possible for a feminist to respond to your points (which you claim are directed solely at feminazis, but reflect basic arguments used against feminism as a whole) without falling back on tired repetitive arguments of privilege. Game set match, Mr. X.

Truth hurts, doesn’t it?

Sassy Feminist Friend

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5  

Things have suddenly gotten busy in my world, so I apologize for not posting as regularly. There are five more items in the dreaded Mr. X list, and thus two more posts. Today, I’m tackling three (count ‘em: THREE) points of his, mostly because they are rather absurd, and it won’t take me long to respond.

As always, I welcome new ideas for posts, so if you’ve run across items like Mr. X’s list or arguments you just wish you had an argument to debunk or a topic you’d like me to address, hit me up. Send me a buzz. Whatever the lingo is you cool kids are using these days.

[caption id="attachment_372" align="aligncenter" width="354" caption=""You big slut! Good for you!""][/caption]

Number 10.

…you think including a female body part or the word “slut” in your nom de plume is somehow empowering.

When Bitch magazine was started in 1996, it signaled a turnaround in the feminist relationship to the word “bitch.” For decades, the word “bitch” had been used as a means to derail and dismiss feminist argument because, well, if you couldn’t be NICE when making an argument, then what good is your argument? A bunch of feminists in Portland, OR, realized the subjective nature of this word and decided, “Hey, you know what, yeah, I’m a ‘bitch’ because you think I am. This is okay with me because it means I’m riling you up.”

And the word “bitch” was pretty successfully taken back. The new ownership of the word meant that it could no longer be used effectively as an insult. Calling a feminist a bitch, now, just meant that she was doing something you didn’t like and the power of the word disappeared.

The new word feminists (and the culture as it stands) moved onto is “slut.”

What defines a slut? Seriously, give me an answer: how many men does a woman have to sleep with before she’s labeled a slut? 2? 5? 10? 20? 50?

Or does she merely have to dress slutty or behave in a sexual suggestive manner you disapprove of? Does the nature of the relationships in which she has sex matter? What if the “partner” count for a girl is, say, five or six, but each of those instances were in the course of a committed relationship, the last of whom she married? Is she a slut? Or what about a girl who has reasonable fears about the commitment of marriage (due to family history or some other life experience) and instead chooses to live with her boyfriend in a commitment that is like marriage, but not legally so? Is she a slut?

Because guess what: Slut isn’t a word just reserved for women who have had multiple sexual partners. Or even for those who have had sex. “Slut” is flung around as a particularly anti-feminine insult, often implying that a woman who exhibits sexual agency is “whorish” and therefore not to be taken seriously.

Much in the same way “bitch” has been and still is used. So, much like Bitch magazine, feminist bloggers who happily use “slut” in their nom de plume are trying to take the power from the word. They are happily letting their freak slutty flag fly, as it were.

It is like when Christians in the 90s decided that “freak” was a good thing to be called (thank you dc Talk) and took back the power of that word by saying “I don’t really care if you label me a Jesus Freak / there ain’t no disguising the truth.”

Current feminists are attempting to turn “slut” around into a term of empowerment, just as that meeting of feminists in Portland, OR, turned “bitch” into a word of empowerment for women and undermined its power in the feminist community.

So, Mr. X, my question is this: How is it not empowering, when we have evidence of words that have been taken back by marginalized groups and turned empowering? You, again, have the burden of proof of telling me that when someone calls me a “slut” for wearing a low-cut top that it’s somehow not empowering for me to reply with, “Sure I am. So?”

It seems to me like you want to retain these words as insults (I know the other one you’re thinking of – the c-word, right? Right?), and therefore allow language to continue to act as a form of oppression. Awesomesauce for you, but the feminist community doesn’t much like arguments being boiled down to epithets.

Number 11.

…you constantly use the terms “cisgendered” and “privileged,” usually as epithets.

SPEAKING OF! It seems you are mistaken as to what an insult or an epithets actually is. And it seems I cannot avoid the question of privilege any longer – you’ll notice, Mr. X, that I have not mentioned privilege in any of my arguments thus far because I recognize that we have a tendency to rely on this as an argument (not only in feminist discussion, but in all areas of argumentation about oppression).

And here’s the rub: I know from experience that you do not believe privilege exists. For people who don’t know what it is, here’s a primer. Essentially, privilege is the advantages that the majority group has in a system that privileges one and oppresses the other. For example, when applying for a job, a white person doesn’t usually have to worry about their race getting in the way of being hired. Or, in a more relevant example, a man doesn’t usually have to worry about covering or watching his drink when he goes to a bar for fear of being roofied (I know three women in the last six months who have been roofied when out for a drink with friends, by the way).

But there is no way I can convince you that systemic privilege and oppression exists on a large scale. I cannot make you see that you are privileged as a white male – this is a revelation you must come to by yourself. And while it is possible to address arguments without mentioning the principle of privilege, it’s also very hard. And you know, feminists are people, too, and we get tired of responding to the same terrible arguments over and over. We, like a lot of people, get tired, and lazy, and annoyed, and temperamental. And when we see the same arguments presented over and over again (“There is no wage gap because of x factors that women have that men don’t,” or “Women should just endure an abusive husband because the husband is the head of the family,” [actual argument made by John Piper] or even the simple “Free speech dur I can tell a rape joke derp”), we tend to get sick and tired of repeating ourselves. So we, for better or for worse, informed the person arguing to check his privilege at the door and come back without being condescending.

It’s a crappy style of argument, I know, but, as your list shows, not all of us are inclined to put a whole lot of time or evidence/fact-finding into an issue we’re sick and tired of talking about, especially if the discussion has been going around in circles for ages.

So, yeah, we do tend to rely on the concept of privilege, for better or worse, but what needs to be noted is this: There are some arguments in which privilege is a real barrier to productive discussion and if you are being condescending in your privilege to a marginalized group, members of that group are not inclined to react nicely. You can deny privilege all you want, but don’t put the onus of problematic discussion on us when we get tired of explaining things to you like you’re a three-year old asking “WHY WHY WHY?”

Number 12.

…you dream of a Matriarchy.

Hah! Hahahahahah! Haha! *snorts and wipes eyes of tears of laughter* Oh that’s a great one! I love that joke!

Oh.

Wait.

You weren’t joking, were you?

You seriously think that “dreaming of a matriarchy” is a goal? You seriously believe that feminists want to gain power and oppress the men we are trying to work with?

What are you ON and can I have some because it sounds like one hell of a drug.

Okay, that wasn’t the nicest response, but, y’know, Mr. X, for this one, the burden of proof is entirely on you. Even of the crazy radical feminists I’ve encountered, I don’t know of a single one who dreams of a Matriarchy. And I find it extremely humorous that you claim to know our hopes and dreams. I suppose my secret plan to dominate all the men in my life and force them be put out to pasture like stud horses only used for breeding more feminist drones has been exposed. That’s it; I’d better pack it in.

Seriously, this point is so, so ridiculous that I don’t know if I can even deign it with any response except laughter, but I’ll try: A system which would simply flip the areas of marginalization from women to men would still be a broken and dangerous system and feminists recognize that. I, for one, love the men in my life – always have, always will – and would never wish for them to be oppressed in any fashion and would never seek to have Queenly power over any of them. And every feminist I have ever read who is taken seriously feels the same way. Sure, there may have been some militant feminists with crazy views back in the day, but it’s your responsibility to demonstrate how feminists of the current time dream of a Matriarchy, not just accuse us of it.

At this point, it seems that you have encountered the crazies (as in, literal crazy people) of the feminist world, and ascribed them to a much large sphere of influence than they actually have and that scares and hurts you. And with this point, I’m inclined to laugh and tell you to write a sad poem in your journal and move on.

Try again, buddy. Try again later.

Heavyweights (and lightweights and everything in between)

Sorry for going AWOL on you there! This weekend was my father’s 60^th birthday, and I had friends down to visit, as well as almost more family than I can handle. But here we are, happily continuing our Feminazi series. Friday Finds and Absurd Sexism of the week will be continuing per usual this coming weekend, despite it being a holiday (you’ll need SOMETHING to read in between setting off fireworks and sparklers, eh?).  

Today, we delve further into the “rape” subject, as Mr. X apparently had a problem with the dialogue concerning rape when he was making this list. Needless to say, I'm getting a bit tired of repeating myself.

Number 8.

…you mock the idea that men can be raped anywhere other than prison, and shrug-off prison rape except in cases of a male guard raping a female inmate.

This one is almost not worth responding to. I know of no one except already chauvinistic men who openly mocks prison rape or mocks the idea of male rape. Most feminists I know take the issue very seriously, and as I’ve already stated, just because mainline feminism does not usually acknowledge male on male rape or female on male rape, it does not mean that we do not find these issues important. The people who question whether or not a man can be raped are, most often in my experience, men themselves, not feminists (and I don't mean this as a "no True Scotsman" sort of thing, but in that the people who question it are not those who self-identify as feminist, either).

I seriously don't have much more of a response than that. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse at this point – the feminist dialogue on rape, yes, does focus on it as a woman’s issues, because it mostly is. Not acknowledging a nuance in the goal of going after the most efficacious argument may be a technique that needs to be refined, but it is hardly an issue unique to feminists, and this isn’t the Oppression Olympics.

Number 9.

…you believe “rape” includes consensual sex that a woman later regrets, or that a woman who had a sip of wine or half a beer before engaging in consensual sex was actually under the influence of alcohol and therefore unable to give consent.

Here’s the thing, Mr. X: Rape is defined, most often, by the victim, within the parameters of the law, and as I’ve said, repeatedly, 60% of rapes don’t actually get reported, and if they are, there’s only a statistical likelihood of 1 in 2 of someone actually being arrested, an 80% chance of conviction, followed by a just under 70% chance of actually spending time in jail. The odds that a rape case actually makes it to trial are few and far between because the victim is put under a massive amount of scrutiny, either by the police, the attorneys involved, or the media. A rape victim, coming forward, has a number of obstacles to any sort of justice, and if she was drinking or behaving poorly that night, then the chances decrease massively because there is this odd impression that “she deserved it.” So there’s not exactly an inclination for rape victims to proclaim consensual sex was rape.

“Regret sex” being pinned as rape, I have already covered, is a myth. Again, the burden of proof is on your end – give me statistics of innocent rapists, show me, through facts and figures, that false rape or “regret sex” is epidemic.

Sex under the influence of alcohol is actually a massive area of debate concerning consent, but I’ve never heard anyone argue what Mr. X says here in the last part of this statement.

At the risk of getting too personal: I’m an extreme lightweight when it comes to alcohol. I start feeling buzzed after half a glass of wine, which is why I don’t drink very often (also because I’m usually providing the transportation, and driving buzzed is a bad idea). We cannot judge another person’s capacity to consent by our own alcohol tolerance, which is why we need to trust victims.

And that, buddy, is why this list makes me so angry. Feminists, on the whole, argue that we need to trust a victim’s testimony because in rape cases, as it is often the only thing a case has to go on. If you are drinking with a girl, and you are afraid of being accused of rape the next day, don’t have sex. This isn’t CSI – there’s no forensic way to really tell if someone was raped (don't believe me: examine the evidence in the recent “cops raped me while I was passed out drunk” case in NYC…in which the cops were found not guilty, despite having a confession on tape).

And trusting the rape victim isn’t something society does well.

ETA: This argument about having sex after drinking, surprisingly, came up in the comments section of a Jezebel article today, in light of Bristol Palin's discussion of how her virginity was "stolen" and she shouldn't have been drinking. The user "YouCanCallMeAwesome" wrote a pretty succinct response better than I could:

No. You have to be impaired to the point of being unable to give consent. There's a big difference between that and what you're saying [about drunk sex being rape]  - you can be "impaired" without being "impaired to the point of being uanble [sic] to give consent." In terms of what alcohol does to your body, you become impaired after one drink in that your reflexes become slower, you start to lose small-muscle control, you're less alert and more relaxed, etc.

I'm not implying that Bristol wasn't impaired to the point where she couldn't give consent. I'm just trying to say that simply because someone was drinking alcohol even to the point of being "drunk" does NOT automatically make it rape. It's also not automatically date rape just because one person was drinking/impaired and the other wasn't. At least legally, the issue is ALWAYS going to be whether the person is in a condition to give consent and in fact did so. From her statements in the video and the book, it seems like she is implying that she was too drunk to consent, but I don't think that's 100% clear. In any case, I think it's irresponsible to go around making the blanket statement that if you're drunk and you have sex, it's date rape.

[With] pious action we do sugar o'er the Devil himself

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  

Today, I decided to cover just the one point because it's a doozy. In fact, it's such a doozy that I had a really hard time deciding whether or not to even put an illustration with it (but, obviously, I decided to go with it). I can't exactly say 'enjoy' with today's post, but I do hope that you take something away from it and begin to reconsider your narrative.

Number 7.

…you think that a woman claiming to be raped is entitled to anonymity while the man she has accused should be tarred and feathered in the court of public opinion, because any man accused of rape must be guilty.

Whoa whoa there, buddy. Tell us how you really feel. As we saw in my post yesterday, if a rape case gets reported (remember, only 40% of rapes actually get reported), there is only a 1 in 2 chance of arrest. That sounds pretty high, but keep in mind that the chances of arrest in many large cities for a violent crime are usually 70% or higher. I probably don’t need to spend the time rehashing the unbelievably low instance of arrest, prosecution, conviction and actual jail time in rape cases. I want to focus more on your initial statement – the assumption that a rape victim isn’t entitled to anonymity.

Ask yourself this: Why do you want to know about a rape victim? What could possibly change the veracity of her testimony? Is it absolutely vital, for example, that we know that the woman Strauss-Kahn attacked was an illiterate immigrant? Would the case be any less tragic if she was a white working mom with a Master's degree? Does it benefit us to know that one of the three women Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of raping was a worker at the hotel he was in and his “entertainment” manager? What, specifically, would change about a person’s testimony if you knew that, for example, she (or he, as men do get raped) was a dancer at a club? Or a prostitute? Or a church-going virgin? Or any number of types of people who fall between the poles of the whore and virgin dichotomy?

Ask yourself this, if you find yourself agreeing with Mr. X here: How does it help your narrative if you know intimate details about the victim?

There’s this odd urge that we have to justify violent crime, especially when it is something so baffling as rape. Murder possibly has a motive – the killer likely has something specific to gain from killing that person. Robbery, too, has a clearly defined profit. Rape has no such well-defined motive. Rape is one person dominating another for the sole purpose of domination. As I’ve said before, rape is about power, not sex. In some cases of rape (i.e., when both parties involved are impaired in some form and the guy just refuses to listen to the girl’s no), sex is a factor, but that does not mean it isn’t rape and isn’t a violation, on the basest level, of a person’s sense of self.

So, in a way, knowing about the victim is a way for us to fix our narrative, especially when we know or respect the persons involved. We saw this quite clearly with the Julian Assange case: this man was held up as a hero by many for his work on promoting government transparency (whether or not the means were good is an entirely other topic). He also allegedly violated Sweden’s laws concerning rape by having sex with a woman, changing the conditions under which they’d agreed to have sex, and then not telling her. As far as I know from the specifics of the case, they agreed to sex with a condom, the condom broke, and Assange kept going. The reason that this is prosecutable (in Sweden, but not in the US) is that if the conditions under which you agreed to have sex suddenly change and your partner neglects to tell you, you are no longer consenting. If you agree to sex with a condom and your partner goes without, you did not consent to that sex. This is the statute under which Assange was charged.*

Now look at the press coverage: lots and lots of Assange’s fans jumped to his defense, complaining that the women involved had bragged about having sex with him and had gone home with him from a club, so those sluts shouldn’t be pressing charges. What this narrative neglects is that idea that Assange can both be a hero of the freedom of information and still be a douchebag in his personal life. The rape case does not remove the good work he (arguably) did, just as Anthony Weiner’s sexting with consenting parties does not undermine his political positions as a Congressman (and I have a post all set up for that debate if you want to disagree).

It helps us feel better about the man who allegedly committed the crime if the victim maybe might have done something small that makes her complicit in her own abuse.

That, my friends, is the ONLY argument against anonymity for victims.

We don’t argue against anonymity in other cases. We don’t hear that someone got mugged and demand to know everything about their behavior at the time of the mugging. We don’t hear about a body being found in the river and start wondering what sort of things they did that made them deserve that. We don’t hear about the victim of a drunk driving accident, for example, and say it’s his fault for getting in the car that night.

There is no cogent argument against anonymity in rape cases that does not involve attempting to find a justification that “she somehow deserved it.” We do not need to know that the woman Strauss-Kahn allegedly raped was an African immigrant who couldn’t read very well. We do not need to know if Julian Assange’s partners that night had 100 previous partners or none. We do not need to know if the cheerleader who got raped at a frat party had three beers or 10 or what her major was or whether or not she has a boyfriend or whether or not she had previously flirted with her attacker, or if she was carrying condoms in her purse or if she had never handled a condom in her life. It does not help her case and instead only serves to traumatize her further by the media picking through every inch of her life, looking for some way, somehow, this attack could have had a motive other than “this guy is just an asshole.”

We don’t like to find out that people we admire could be rapists. We don’t like to discover that our best friend wouldn’t listen to a girl saying no. We don’t like to think that, when we cheered for our favorite team in sports, that we were cheering for a man who sees women as less than himself and uses rape as a way to reinforce that. We simply don’t like to be confronted with a narrative about the people in our lives that does not jive with the narrative of reality. That sort of sudden readjustment of worldview where we have to consider that things are not as they seem is hard - kind of like the first time a kid runs into her teacher in the grocery store and realizes that he has a life outside of the school. It’s much easier to say that he was tempted, that the girl did something to provoke him, that she’s just “regretting” having sex with him because that’s easier to swallow than the idea that your best friend, your brother, your hero, heck, your lover, could be so brash as to disregard consent and commit what is possibly the worst of all violent crimes.

So we argue against anonymity. And at this point, this is not merely a feminist issue. This is a human issue. Men get raped too. Little children get raped. Nuns, coma patients, prostitutes, transgender, homosexuals and heterosexuals. People with no education, people with doctorates. People traveling in the developing world and people laying safely (or so they thought) in their bed at night. When we argue for anonymity of the rape victim, we are arguing for the chance for a teenage girl, a little boy, a grown man, a woman in her 20s, a man in his 30s, a grandma, a grandpa, a parent, or a childfree single man, to have his or her day in court and to not be victimized further by intense scrutiny in the media.

And again, as far as the second part of the statement goes: Open your eyes. Look, for example, at the reaction to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case– many French people would rather believe that a vast conspiracy was set up to bring him down and prevent him from getting power than that hey, maybe he actually raped a lady. Many people would rather believe in a huge government conspiracy to shut up Julian Assange than accept that maybe he’s just an asshole. Many would rather believe that Anthony Weiner was the victim of a right-wing attack than believe that he might just be sleazy.

Where is this “tar and feather” attitude in the media that you speak of? I’ve never seen it.

*It is also important to note that if sex is agreed upon with a certain method of prophylactic (condom), and one or the other partner changes that condition, it is not only a violation of the second person’s consent, but a bodily risk, as sex without a condom can lead to numerous STDs, and, for the woman, pregnancy, which is why many can and should insist on using protection in the first place.

Strange Things Are Afoot at the Circular Argument

Part 1 - Part 2 We are nearly at the halfway point in examining Mr. X's list of "You Might be a Feminazi If..." Today, we get into a confusing mess of arguments about what qualifies as sexism or misogyny, and an involved discussion of rape statistics. Also, language warning on this post. In giving examples of insults toward men, there are a few words that some of my readers may find offensive. You have been warned.

Number 5.

…you mistakenly believe that “misogyny,” which is a hatred of all women simply because they’re women, somehow applies to a man who just hates you for your sexist behavior.

This one is a bit of a hot mess and needs some breaking down. First, he is finally providing the definition for misogyny, which is good. But I already covered that misogyny is a severe category of sexism yesterday, so I’m not going to harp on that again. And it’s not the “misogyny” of the statement that mystifies me – it’s the idea that women are 1. Behaving in a sexist manner, 2. That this sexism is the real reason some men hate women, 3. That this hatred of women is a. somehow justified because of the man’s perceived slight of sexism, and b. unjustified because women accuse men who hate women of misogyny are actually wrong about it being misogyny.

Wait. What?

My friend Alan would likely refer to this point as the error of employing General Eye Zation in one’s debate arsenal. This point makes a number of unfounded assumptions about both men and women. I must presume that Mr. X is thinking specifically of his own interactions with women because I cannot imagine he knows the mind of every man who has been labeled misogynist nor even have a wide enough sample of these interactions from an objective basis to make this sort of conclusion. He also assumes that feminists who call men misogynist do so without provocation or in an extraordinarily mistaken mindset.

I don’t know about you, but if a man consistently declares that “all women are bitches” or that “feminism is so that ugly women can be accepted into society” or that we should “calm [our] tits and quit whining,” I’m not going to be very inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to be inclined to think “oh, he’s just reacting to the sexist behavior of a few women.”

And that leads to the major part of this statement that confuses me. What, exactly, IS sexist behavior of a woman toward a man? Here’s a newsflash: pointing out that you’re being sexist isn’t sexist. Pointing out that you do not have the same experience as a woman isn’t sexist. Pointing out that a man doesn’t need to conform to proscribed societal gender roles isn’t sexist.

Sexism, in the dictionary definition sense, is “discrimination on the basis of sex, esp the oppression of women by men” (Collins English Dictionary). According to the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, it’s “The belief that one sex (usually the male) is naturally superior to the other and should dominate most important areas of political, economic, and social life.”

The lack of solid examples really hinders Mr. X here. I assume that he is referring to typical things that Men’s Rights Advocates propound, like alimony, divorce courts favoring women, women’s studies in college without a mirroring men’s studies*, and the draft. HOWEVER, his phrasing indicates that he is referring not to systemic sexism perpetuated by the culture (of which alimony, divorce courts and the draft are a part), but rather individual acts of sexism perpetuated by individual women. Mr. X seems to be saying here: “You call out individual men as misogynist when, really, they just don’t like you for being sexist.”

At which point, I’m having a lot of trouble wracking my brain for examples of ways in which a woman can be sexist against a man which are not also evidence of what a feminist fights against. For example, maybe it’s sexist for a woman to expect a man to be the breadwinner of the family. This is a typical gender role that a mainline feminist wouldn’t espouse. So that doesn’t work. Maybe it’s sexist for a woman to make fun of a man for being weak, but, that, too, is an example of typical gender roles that feminists fight. Maybe it’s simply name-calling, but that doesn’t work either. Think of the typical insults you can call a man that would really hurt in society (you may want to quit reading here if you don’t like swear words): pussy, cunt, gay, sissy, weak, “throws like a girl,” etc. All of these insults are calling out men for being feminine. Notice, for instance, that "cunt" is possibly the worst thing you could call anyone, but “dick” is usually acceptable. It is the worst thing in the world for a man to be considered feminine and to be identified with female anatomy (most of the insults are slang terms for a vagina). Who is that sexist against, again?

This confusing mess of a point doesn’t work on a systemic or individual level. If a man hates an individual feminist for an abuse that is systemic in society, then he has a problem sorting out the individual from the larger issue, which is, indeed, a large part of misogyny. If a man hates an individual woman for individual acts of sexism, that woman is, most likely, asking the male to conform to traditional gender norms and is being anti-feminist in the process. Either way, this point is a mess.

*Note: I’ve touched on why this is bull in other posts, but in case you need a refresher, you can head back to this post and this post. We don’t particularly NEED men’s studies because everything already is men’s studies.

Number 6.

…you refuse to acknowledge that false rape allegations do, sometimes, occur, and accuse anyone of pointing out that false rape allegations sometimes occur of being a “rape apologist” or proponent of “rape culture.”

This one’s an interesting one because it actually forces us to get into the nitty-gritty of statistics. There is a lot of debate about how many reported rapes are actually found to be false, though consistently reliable studies put that number between 3 and 8%. The largest sexual assault/false allegation study was performed in England and found, initially, that 8% of rapes reported in the 2005-2006 study were found to be “false.” This number was revised when the official standards for what counts as a rape allegation were examined closely, and it was found that in many case the police officer involved had violated official procedure in determining the allegation as false when there was in fact grounds to believe the victim. A similar study done a couple of years before in the Victoria police district in Australia found that of 812 cases reported between 2000 and 2003, only 2.1% of those were false allegations.

In addition, the area of false allegations is rather hairy because there is not a lot published on the issues, and those studies that indicate a high incidence of false allegations are from an extremely small sample. The study that most proponents of the “false rape allegation epidemic” narrative is a 1994 study by Eugene Kainn, which had a sample size of 109 in a small urban town and found 45 of those to be false. The problem with that comes with extracting a general principle from an extremely small study. The study in Britain, for example, examined well over 2,000 cases. The study in Australia was 800. Dr. Kainn, also, did not examine how police officers followed official procedure in investigating rape cases and simply took police officer’s reports at their word, something the later British study proved to be a very bad idea – the police department Kainn examined threatened polygraph of the victims in nearly every case, an operating procedure that does not encourage victims to feel comfortable about coming forward.

The classification of false rape allegations is also sometimes confused with the FBI numbers for “unfounded” allegations. “Unfounded” does not, necessarily, mean false. Unfounded merely refers to not having enough evidence to prosecute, or may even be classified as such if the victim did not fight back (and therefore it somehow wasn’t rape), if the perpetrator didn’t use a weapon (it’s not rape then, either), or if the victim and her attacker had a prior sexual relationship (wives raped by your husbands? Out of luck).

The incidence of false allegations in other major crimes, according to the FBI, is 2%. According to the studies at our disposal, the amount of false allegations concerning rape cases is directly in line with those statistics, if not a negligible amount higher.

This doesn’t even take into account the estimation that only about 40% of sexual assaults are actually reported, and of that 40%, there is only a 1 in 2 chance of an arrest being made. And from that, there is a 58% chance of conviction, and a 69% chance that the rapist will spend time in jail.

[caption id="attachment_344" align="aligncenter" width="352" caption="Image courtesy RAINN.org."][/caption]

We have a fascinating court system concerning rape – because of the American system of “innocent until proven guilty,” a man accused of rape has a number of defenses on his side and his chance of actually going to jail when he is suspected of rape is rather low. This is not to say that, if you are a high-profile person accused of rape that your reputation is not at risk. But, before you make such allegations, I suggest you examine again the public reaction to such recent high-profile rape cases –Roethlisberger, DSK, Julian Assange, Kobe Bryant, Roman Polanski and so on. DSK, for example, has been an interesting case in point: many, many people have leapt to his defense, and, France, a popular theory has been that the entire thing is a conspiracy to sully his name, despite the fact that he had a well-known reputation as a womanizer and had been accused of rape previously. Roman Polanski, even, had sex with a 13-year-old girl and has not been able to return to America because of an outstanding warrant, and he is still in great standing in the film community and is still winning Oscars (not that the Oscar for the Pianist wasn’t deserved, but it seems that his great art has white-washed the statutory rape charge, to the point that when he was arrested in Switzerland a couple of years ago, a number of Hollywood A-listers pooled funds to help him out).

In conclusion, the statistics simply do not support an “epidemic” of false rape allegations, and to say that feminists willingly ignore them is to misconstrue the argument. Feminists acknowledge that rape allegations are very, very serious, and women should not toy with them. Feminists also acknowledge, however, that the statistical studies available do not support the idea that false rape allegations are at high enough proportions to be worrying. We tend to be much more concerned with the fact that 60% of actual rapes don’t get reported at all than with the idea that possibly, possibly a man is falsely accused.

In order to make your argument that 1. False rape allegations are an epidemic, and 2. Men are being wrongly convicted based on these false allegations, you have to provide me with more evidence than a mere assertion that this is the case. We still live in a society where the burden of proof is on the victim and the incidence of actual convictions (compared to numbers of sexual assaults that occur) is extremely low – less than 10%.

The burden of proof is on you, sir. And look, I debunked your entire assertion without ever once resorting to the scary words of “rape apologist” or “rape culture.” Would you look at that.

Four, er...two! For You, Mr. X!

Welcome back to my week-long series on “You Might be a Feminazi If…”, a response to a Mr. X liberal blogger (keeping his name and linkage out of this because I refuse to give him more clicks) and his list. Part 1 is here.  

Some of you may be wondering, “Dianna, why are you bothering to respond? He didn’t mean someone like you.” And that’s what his response is as well – if you’re not a feminazi, then you know it and the list doesn't apply to you. My response is short, but important: any attack on my fellow feminists is an attack on me. There’s this lovely term that developed in the women’s movement called “sisterhood” – even if your fellow feminist is being a jackass and extreme (believe me, there are feminists who make me go, “girl, you nuts”), you are still called to support them as women. You can disagree with them on the basis of argument - for example, I strongly disagree with the radical feminist assertion that all heterosexual intercourse is rape and the only way to be a good feminist is to be a lesbian. But I disagree on the basis of argument; I do not just call that feminist a feminazi, accuse her of being a moron and move on.

And that is my main beef with Mr. X’s list: rather than engage individual feminists on an intelligent level, he stoops to insults and demeaning terms like “feminazi.” And that deserves intelligent, well-thought-out refutation because, well, it's a discussion worth having, is it not?

Now onto Numbers 3 and 4!

Number 3.

…you’re incapable of understanding that doing something sexist doesn’t automatically make that person a misogynist.

Now, I have to say, he does have a point here, to an extent. It is important in discussions to make sure that the language we use actually depicts what we mean. There is a reason my Saturday feature is “Absurd Sexism of the Week” not “Absurd Misogyny of the Week.”

Misogyny, for those who don’t know, refers to a hatred of women. You hate women on the basis of their gender alone. A preacher is misogynist when telling his congregation “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I get my theology from a woman.” My best friend can make a sexist remark, but that doesn't make him a sexist. I have to admit, Mr. X is generally correct here, in that there is a major difference between saying that someone is behaving in a way which is demeaning toward women, and saying that person hates women.

Generally correct, until you look at the actual ways the words are used: "Misogynist" is only ever an adjective. Sexist, on the other hand, is both adjective and noun. You can BE misogynist, but you are not A misogynist. In contrast, you can "be" a sexist in both meanings of the word "be" - you are behaving in a sexist manner and you exist with "sexist "as part of your label. If anything, misogyny's the square and sexism's the rectangle: misogyny is the smaller category here. They are two parts of the same general stream of thought in that if you are sexist, there is a good chance your behavior is misogynist; if you're misogynist, you're definitely sexist as well. Misogyny is, indeed, a more severe accusation, but let's not cloud the use of words when accusing another of doing the same!

The disagreement comes in with the beginning of his assertion: “you’re incapable of understanding.” This is a fancy way of saying “you’re dumb.” Now, now, Mr. X. That’s not nice at all. Mere ignorance of the difference in meaning does not mean that one is incapable of understanding. Give us some credit – have you bothered to explain to people who may not have had your level of education the linguistic difference? Or do you just scoff if your ivory tower when less-educated and/or new feminists use sexism and misogyny as synonyms? I think, Mr. X, if you seriously cared about the use of language, you would not deem feminists “incapable of understanding” and write them off. If you do that, and then accuse of them not improving...well, that's just leaves you to blame, doesn't it?

In addition, your wording, Mr. X, makes it seem like sexism is an excusable offense – a misdemeanor compared with a felony, perhaps. But, both sexism and misogyny are capital offenses. The implied sentiment here is: “You’re wasting your time responding to sexism when your heat and anger should be saved for the larger problem of misogyny.” Feminists who do not use the words as synonyms also recognize that sexism can reveal misogyny: if a friend of mine is making sexist jokes on a regular basis, he does not have to outright say “I hate women” to lose my trust. It seems, Mr. X, that is you who does not care to acknowledge the link between the two and would rather rag on the uneducated portions of our bunch. You go, Glen Coco!

[caption id="attachment_336" align="aligncenter" width="381" caption="And none for Gretchen Weiners. Bye!"][/caption]

Number 4.

…you constantly accuse men and women who disagree with you of being misogynists.

Ah, “constantly.”

I feel like Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Constantly” would require feminists to respond the same way to every single argument. And that’s just not the case. I know no one who could be so consistent in an argumentation as to continually find new and creative ways to say the same exact thing.

Instead, if you notice that feminists are saying “that’s sexist” (because in productive discussion, we attack the argument and not the person…), it’s because there is a lot of sexism in the world. And here, I think, Mr. X, you are contributing to fuzziness of language. The only times I have heard misogynist used as an invective is when a person has said something that indicates it is not a moment of sexism but a continued philosophy of dislike toward women. Mark Driscoll, for example, has said several things that indicate to me that he tends toward misogyny. John Piper is much the same way. Several Congressmen likewise. And yes, even women can be misogynist! If it looks like we’re relying on the sexism and misogyny tropes, it’s likely because there are a lot of misogynist and sexist people in the world, not because we are seeing what’s not there. And if a feminist points out that something is sexist, maybe it's a good idea to listen to her argument about why instead of writing it off, hm?

Feminazis! Or, When Did I Invade Poland?

What is a feminazi?  

This week has had the question churning in my head a lot: am I feminazi? And should I care whether or not I am?

This last week, the feminist blogosphere exploded when a popular liberal blogger posted a bulleted list titled “You Might be a Feminazi if…”. The author, a gay white male, (whom we'll call Mr. X) seemed to think that passion and anger on the part of women in striving for equal rights is something to be discouraged, and enough to merit characterization as a Feminazi. Problematic use of the word “nazi” aside (I’m of the opinion that, unless you’re invading Poland or killing millions of Jews, you’re probably not a Nazi and shouldn’t be called such), Mr. X raised a number of quite common objections to Feminism and feminist work. Rather than give him more clicks and traffic by linking to him, I have copied his list, and will reproduce it here with my own rebuttals.

There are fourteen points on his “Feminazi” list, so I will cover two points per post. It’s a week of Feminazis! I’ll also link to helpful articles and thoughts from other feminist bloggers on the phrase and the characterization of radical feminism.

We’ll start today with two complex and interesting bullet points (they get progressively less well-thought as the list goes on, by the way).

My rebuttals for points 1 and 2 begin after the jump.

Number 1.

…you discount a man’s opinion/case on an issue solely because of his gender, without even dealing with the merits (or deficits) of his argument.

This is a zinger and involves a lot of complex issues that go into a debate. Mainly, the problem here is that our blogger, Mr. X, is drawing a general principle from likely specific encounters. I don’t deny that there have been times I have discounted an argument because it was coming from a man, but those situations were very specific and situational. I do not know a single feminist (and I know a lot of feminists) who does this wholesale, and I’m willing to bet Mr. X doesn’t either.

What are those situations in which specific arguments would be dismissed on the basis of the gender of the speaker? I can only, at this point, speak from my own experience, but these are the arguments that involve discussions about what it is like to be a woman. For example, if a man responds to my tales of cat-calling by saying “You should be flattered,” I am going to dismiss his argument off the bat because he does not have the same experience as a woman. There are a number of issues in which a man’s argument is just as valid as a woman’s, but there are many areas in which the gender experiencing the situation is ultimately more qualified to discuss an issue.

I cannot speak from experience about the pressures to be a manly man and the concept of being masculine. If I deigned to tell one of my male friends how they should respond to a situation in which they are called to fit into a gender stereotype or harassed on the basis of gender, I am not doing my best to be an intellectually honest debater or friend. In the same manner, if a man deems it necessary to explain to me how I should react to a situation that happened specifically because I’m a woman, I am going to ignore his argument on the basis that he, ultimately, cannot relate because he is a man. This is a legitimate method of argumentation that happens to both genders at some time or another.

In explaining more specific examples, take the experience of workplace harassment. If a coworker is sending me emails that are friendlier than the nature of our work relationship suggests, I should be able to make an argument about how it makes me feel uncomfortable, especially if that coworker is male and appears to have amorous intent. Men, on the whole, do not have to deal with harassment on the large scale that women do – while workplace harassment does happen to men and men should not be discounted from telling about and getting justice for their experiences, women are much more at risk to be on the receiving end of inappropriate behavior. For a man (especially one who has never had to experience the fear and confusion that comes from unwelcome advances from a coworker in an environment that does not always support the victim in sexual harassment cases) to tell me how I should react to such an issue is inappropriate, based mostly on the fact that he is a man. This is an example of a proper dismissal of an argument based on the gender of the participants and is in no way a general principle denoting how feminists do or should behave in all instances.

Number 2.

…you constantly accuse a man of “derailing” or “mansplaining” (a gender-specific and therefore sexist insult, by the way) when he’s trying to explain why he disagrees with you about a gender issue. Or any issue.

There are a number of different issues with this point, specifically centered around the issue of the language used. Who, for one, determines what “constantly” means? And who decided that “mansplaining” – a specific phrase developed to explain a specific phenomenon – is a sexist term? Clearly, Mr. X, feels so, but it is not inherently so. “Mansplaining,” for those of you don’t know, is not a morphing of the Ricky Ricardo joke, but rather a simple and quick way of dismissing a man’s argument based on his gender in situations as denoted in point number 1.

Derailing, I’ll quickly explain, is when a person in a position of power or one who lives within the social norm (in male/female relationships, the man is considered the norm and the woman the aberration, the weaker sex) distracts the argument from the purpose by accusing the marginalized person of not reacting in a form that is acceptable to the one in power. It's another way of saying "red herring." Examples of this include: “You’re getting too emotional.” “How am I supposed to know about this if you don’t educate me?” “You’re just looking to be offended!” “You’re taking things too personally” “Don’t you have more important issues to think about?” and so on. Everyone has heard and made these arguments at some point in their life (don’t pretend you haven’t!). The important thing to remember is that derailing is an argument tactic meant to tell a marginalized person how they should interpret their experience and how they should argue, instead of listening to the actual argument or experience being presented.

Mansplaining, in a related form, is a quick phrase that, yes, is meant partially as an insult, but partially as a reminder to a male that he is not the primary actor concerned in an argument. If a man attempts to explain to me how I should feel about being cat called while ignoring the situation for me as a woman, that is mansplaining. If a man tells me how to respond to workplace harassment by being flattered and not taking into account the power relationships between men and women in an office environment, that is mansplaining. It is a simple, quick invective that allows women to give the men in their lives a quick reminder that something they’re saying does not acknowledge the fact that his experience as a man and my experience as a woman are two different things.

And there’s that “constantly” thing. I’ve yet to see a single feminist who engages in dismissing arguments because of ‘mansplaining’ on a “constant” basis, especially based on the dictionary definition:

fixed and invariable; unchanging / continual or continuous; incessant: constant interruptions / resolute in mind, purpose, or affection; loyal (Collins English Dictionary, 2009).

I’m not even sure what “constantly” accusing a man of derailing would look like – basically, one would have to respond to every single argument in the exact same manner … and I’m pretty sure that person doesn’t exist…unless they’re a toddler and that response is “MINE!”

________

So that’s it for today. In future entries later on this week, you can expect to see more of Mr. X’s condescension, mischaracterizations of feminism, and examples over and over of making a general principle out of a specific case.