Bad Feminist

[Mike]

The Trump supporters I know are ecstatic that we finally have a quality female candidate for president in Ivanka.

[Phoebe]

Republicans presently have a huge number of quality (from their perspective) female candidates who could run for President, yet guess which women they've identified as leading lights who should run for top office? Ivanka Trump, a 35 year old who has never held an elective office and whose business acumen has, shall we say, not yet been impressively demonstrated. Sarah Palin, about whom I won't even bother to add comment because it speaks for itself. Hmm. What do these two have in common, if anything? At least Carly Fiorina had some sort of legitimacy despite being a disastrous business leader, but look how far she got with Republicans.

Meanwhile, do you think that any Trump supporting Republicans you know can even name the longest-serving women in the GOP-led House of Representatives? The first Latina and Cuban-American elected to Congress, who has been there nearly three decades? I guess Ros-Lehtinen doesn't have quite the glamour of an Ivanka, so... And maybe they'd have heard of the highest ranking woman in the Congress if she had more of the "sparkles" Sarah Palin supposedly has (Rodgers is terrible, btw, but she's young and if I shared that foul ideology, I might want her to run for things). As for the Senate, I get why none of them like Susan Collins, since she skirts the edges of the party orthodoxy too often to fare well in the primaries. But for some hard-to-define, mysterious reason, none of the people who see Ivanka as an obvious choice are saying, WOW, we have Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito! I WONDER WHAT IT COULD BE.

[Mike]

Are you blind? Ivanka's, like, wicked hot. Seriously, if she wasn't my daughter....

Trump himself views all women (including his own children) first and foremost by their quality as objects of sexual desire. Any qualities outside of that are an afterthought.

Most people are too ashamed to recognize how much his attitude pervades our culture.

[Cazmonster]

I want Tammy Duckworth to take a run at the Presidency after a few years as an Illinois Senator.

It worked for somebody else not too long ago.

[Phoebe]

Talking about body parts I was birthed into the world with does not make me or anyone else transphobic, sorry. Indeed, a prevailing attitude of greater openness and sanity concerning those body parts makes it far likelier we will enjoy a prevailing attitude of sanity about transgender and intersex people.

[Phoebe]

I am curious about whether other women are having issues in these days of Pres. Trump, related to an increasing inability to tolerate sexism and inequity? I find it difficult at work, for instance, not to unleash the full power of the sarcastic tongue on the Mansplainers, which is not something I ever used to do though I'm surrounded by such people the farther I roll along in my work. I find myself suddenly unable to smile through to a later victory, which always has worked before. I don't believe snapping back ever works, because of, well, sexism! So here we are.

On the home front, I find that fundamental inequities in e.g. the division of labor are far less tolerable than normal, and the slightest objectifying remark that used to possibly even amuse me is now verboten. Seriously wondering if Trump is having a negative effect on harmony among people. I find my day to day mood about my husband is directly linked to things like "fairness". Not great outcome when you have structural inequities nobody can control.

[Phoebe]

Women's strike? Really? That's the big idea now? So the privileged well employed take the day off, no penalty, the not well employed cannot take the day off without penalty, babies still have to be babied and such, and ... Wait, what were the obvious benefits again? How about women spend that day each writing ten letters to their elected representatives, or raising money to elect new ones where needed, or ... Pick anything else, really.

[Phoebe]

The latest example of the problem with liberal intellectual culture:

Long story short: a Wesleyan U student was unhappy that his university touted the success of one of its alums, Lonergan, since he worked with alleged sexual harasser (and more!) Casey Affleck and thanked him for his Oscar win. Given this connection between the two, the suggestion that one of their former students did a good thing means that Wesleyan has condoned sexual violence, generally, and disrespected its victims. I would like to take this opportunity to call Bullshit on the above, not because I condone sexual violence, but indeed precisely because I don't. A real disrespect to victims of sexual violence occurs when people assign serious moral responsibility to a University for celebrating the Oscar win of an alum whose colleague was accused of something, and nothing further.

I would like to know how and why people continue moving instantaneously from the excellent ethical message of "please don't undermine and second-guess victims of abuse" to the imprudent and unethical demand to "fully believe without evidence every accusation you hear and make a pariah of anyone even incidentally linked to the incident, and assign blame to anyone who doesn't do the same as if they are nearly as bad as an actual rapist/abuser." This inability to think in even a slightly nuanced way about what we are actually responsible for and blaming people for is very dangerous in this area. It discourages victims from reporting things, when they don't want to get involved in this kind of dishonest circus. And most importantly of all, it reinforces the difficulty so many victims have in differentiating what they're responsible for and what their assailants are responsible for. Everyone is either 100% innocent or 100% guilty in these cases, apparently, and that's a really bad way to think about them, especially for victims.

I also don't understand why it is so hard for people to recognize that different people have different kinds of epistemic responsibility in such cases. We don't expect a victim's mom to think about a case the same way the district attorney does, and that is for good reason. They have different jobs to do here. Likewise, what we expect of someone's friend, or their university, or the general public, can be quite different and depends very much on what information people have access to and how certain it is. Nowadays a strand of liberalism seems insistent that widespread and severe public condemnation follow every accusation as if they are all equally bad and equally certain. Well... no. That's not how it is, and to do otherwise HURTS THE VICTIMS.

[El Jefe]

The weirdest part about that is that you're not even going after an alleged perpetrator. It's not about Casey Affleck, it's about somebody who happened to work with him.

I get if you don't want to support Mel Gibson. You don't watch his films. Sure, I can understand that.

If you tell me that you're not going to watch any film in which the DP, who happened to also work with Gibson, also worked...that's getting into the territory of that toucan-favored breakfast cereal.

[Phoebe]

Yeah, I have no illusions that this Lonergan person is a nice guy I'd feel like having supper with, but it does zero favors to the larger cause of stopping abuse when we have to witch hunt everyone who remains associated with anyone who has been accused of misconduct. It's one thing to know that a Sandusky is up to something and sit quiet on that knowledge. It's quite another to continue working with a person who was accused of sexual harassment as part of a broader lawsuit, denied it, settled the lawsuit, and nothing else has come up since then.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the massive inconvenience the day's "general strike" will doubtless bring. It will be nice to see the higher wages, better working conditions, and legislation favoring women that comes from ... wait, are those the goals? What are the goals again? Who is being asked for concessions exactly? No idea.

[Phoebe]

San Bernardino, man kills his ex wife in her special ed classroom and kills a student and injures another. Headlines: another school shooting. No. It's a domestic violence shooting that occurred in a school classroom. Horrible, but I just gave up on reading news tonight. Headache inducing top to bottom. Egypt, they showed us pictures. Burnt into brain now. In Syria they let them get kids to the hospital, as witnessed by drone checking on things, and then bombed the hospital. There is no circle of hell for that. Satan is like, sorry, too scared of those evil fuckers to let them in here. Someone else take them! They can go wherever the prison people who scalded the man to death are headed.

[Phoebe]

The feminists are trying to teach me that my sexual preference for men with male genitalia is some species of phobia or sexism or both. I am a poor student of this lesson. Some people have preferences of sexual partner or genitalia that are more or less prevalent than others as a proportion of the total population, and that's it. Neither is more natural, more sexist, more of a personal choice, or more better. It strikes me as, if nothing else, a political nightmare for feminism to be identified with the position that it is Phobia or Sexism if you like men and also like them to have certain body parts that interact with your own body parts in a certain way. When was it decided that feminists have to believe this?

The feminists are trying to teach me that if a political candidate is not 100% pro-life in every way they want him to be, that he is wicked and an abomination and must be opposed, and anyone self-described progressive who supports him is a hypocritical sack of shit. I am also a poor student of this lesson. I would like to see the occasional candidate with progressive views on economic issues and climate change and social and racial equality to win an election. If candidate A is rabidly pro-life and candidate B is mildly pro-life, and in every other respect candidate B is better for progressive issues, why on earth are feminists demanding that candidate B be tarred and feathered so that candidate A can prevail? Baffling.

[El Jefe]

[Phoebe]

The feminists are trying to teach me; it's a real-life thing. All this is new to me too and I'm having trouble figuring it out, assuming that deeper principles are even involved. My limited knowledge of the research is that things like same-sex and opposite-sex attraction are almost never chosen, though the exclusivity of the attraction can vary, and obviously people can make themselves do all manner of things they might not feel like doing under other circumstances. Other desires are powerfully shaped by cultures and ideas, which doesn't necessarily mean they're freely "chosen" or easily changed, but there could be benefit to deliberately un-choosing them or at least giving a little scrutiny, especially when we can identify pernicious ideas related to the desire (like racism). That's about all I know for factual general talk - for my own part, I simply don't believe it's discriminatory of me to like only guys, and then only a very limited number of them, who'd also have to pass the (literal) smell test - isn't that really the essential factor in all this, no matter what else we like to tell ourselves? - and ideally they would have certain functional manly parts. I'm willing to negotiate on that if Jacques Pepin is interested, since it might be enough to stroke his forehead meaningfully and eat the cooking.

Anyway, here is what he has to say on the subject, bolded for emphasis: "So in the summer when I have tomato in the garden or I can get fresh tomato—at the right temperature, not too cold—just with a bit of sea salt on top and olive oil? There’s nothing better than that. It has the taste of what it is. But if I have ground up pork, and I put white wine in it, and cognac and shallot, and I add all of those ingredients together, eventually it tastes like pâté. So it’s like the whole orchestra playing and you have the taste of all of this." I can't complete this analogy adequately, but another useful analogy is that just as one wants to eat a good-smelling food, so too does one want a good-smelling person. I don't mean like in the way of perfume (though it could be in that way), I mean "it has the smell of what it is" and it smells good, chemically.

[Phoebe]

People have plum lost their minds.

[Phoebe]

Conor Friedersdorf comes with another spot-on essay. We obviously have bigger world problems at the moment, but the trends he is pointing out are only going to make the current leadership and partisanship problems more entrenched. I grew up, thankfully, in an era where open debate was encouraged and flourished. That just isn't happening now, and the change came very strangely over about a decade-long period.

[Phoebe]

I'm a bad feminist in two ways today. One way is that I think it's bullshit that women should have to cover up their heads for religious reasons if they aren't interested in the religion. It's one thing to say things like "white clothes must be avoided because they are the color of <the bride> <the Pope> <death> <life>", and then people wear some other color out of deference to your cultural traditions. Or maybe "please don't come to our <business meeting> <diplomatic summit> <place of worship> dressed like Cher at an awards show, even though you normally probably should be dressed like that". But it's a whoooooooole other deal to say "you are not a Muslim but you need to cover your head here" or "you are not <orthodox> <Catholic> <Protestant> but you women have to cover up your head here anyway even though the men do not need to do this". Nah. We aren't having some debate about whether exposing breasts is okay for women whenever it's okay for men (though we could have that debate... just not now). This is about whether women have to be uniquely subject to religious and cultural demands that are not imposed upon men, because the religion/culture is comfortable with that, even when the woman is not.

The other way is that I think it's bullshit that people who dislike Trump for political reasons, especially feminists both male and female, enjoy bashing Melania Trump's looks, speculating about the shitty state of their marriage or whether she's a purchased whore-bride of some sort, and so on. If Melania Trump agrees with her husband, then attack her for her bad opinions. If she supports bad business practices or knowingly plagiarizes speeches (I doubt it so far) or stabs innocent babies with her spiky heels, then feel free to criticize her for that. But if you're going to criticize her for something you would be absolutely outraged if, say, Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama or your own daughter was criticized for? Fuck off. And this is why I am a bad feminist and can't talk freely with my friends, because I don't trust the strength of our friendships enough to argue with anyone about this, and I'm surrounded by people who want to bitch about Melania for superficial reasons.

SIGH.

Also racists. I'm surrounded by racists - the Venn diagram between these two groups only slightly overlapping, thankfully. But what the heck? Normally if people are all racist around me I feel it's my sacred duty to call them out for it. However, sometimes a known mentally ill person is being purposefully racist around you because she wants you to call her out for it and then she wants to drag your friends and work associates and anyone else who happens along into her fun drama. Well, sorry, mentally ill person, I can't take your bait. But fuck you for being such a racist, you should be ashamed.

[Phoebe]

Seriously, if you're a feminist attacking Melania, ask yourself if you would be mad if the same things were said about Michelle. Remember when people would attack her facial expressions or choice of clothing? Or recall that some of us feminists actually do think Bill Clinton is a pervy creep and that his marriage to Hillary was, um, unusual, and there's no real point stacking him up with Trump to see who was worse with women, or Hillary with Melania to compare tolerance levels. Context: the Internet. Also, conversating with people who voted for Bill but not Trump. People who consider Bill dreamy and charming in comparison.

[Phoebe]

This is hilarious:


It yields a number of special quotes, too:
"Yes, douches of any kind don't belong in your vagina."

"How do people keep coming up with things to put in your vagina?"

"Before buying something to put in your vagina, talk to your doctor...a real doctor"

[Phoebe]

People apparently are mad about the CEO of Uber sending a rather unconventional email to his employees regarding their participation in a large company party in Miami. I thought it was pretty good. He tells them not to have sex with anyone in their "chain of command" or without an obvious affirmative consent. Thanks, that seems pretty good, Uber ceo. I still prefer Lyft, but points for making some things clear to your people.