Good Feminist

[Phoebe]

If you haven't had a chance to see Oprah's speech from the Golden Globes, it is short and worth it:
Although I cry for make-believe stuff readily, I'm usually an icy old crow when it comes to real life business. I felt very prepared to watch this, nod at some wise phrases, and then move on to the next thing. Somehow, though this is all fully televised and staged and rehearsed, somehow this one got me. I think it's because she made us think for a moment about the magnitude of the horrors that people inflict on one another, and how shocking it is that things like the story she told can happen fully outside the normal systems of justice and accountability, even as a steady nasally drumbeat of whining about people's failure to take responsibility for things is heard in the background. Yes, when will people actually ever have to take responsibility for things like this as a matter of course?

The other reason is that I'm thinking about my kids and she brought the kids-watching thing in well.

Still another reason is that it amazes me how ubiquitous these problems are. I was just talking to my husband last night about this general topic, trying to give him some friendly advice about how NOT to phrase some of the things we discuss together, when he takes it to the outside world. I don't disagree with his actual take but was explaining that there will be times he should refrain from offering it, or should offer it differently. I tried to explain to him that he will be dealing, inevitably, with people who aren't telling the world their personal histories but will silently judge, from that context, any careless words he drops on the subject.

And then it struck me, there is really something about having to survive all the crazy stuff life throws at you, knowing that nobody ever is held to account for it, but that you personally are held to account for it all the time. And you have to carry on with that, through all that, moving forward regardless. When you're in the middle of the moving it can seem like no big deal - this is simply the normal state, and it's okay, and we carry on. But the genius of what Oprah said somehow paused the clock on this to point out, it is really something to simply go on living a normal life carrying this crap. Shrugging it off, moving along, because it's SO normal and you just do not have TIME for it. As she put it, paraphrasing loosely here, you are busy with your job and kids and things to do and there is no time for that. Wow. She has lived this herself for sure, she has been through terrible, terrible things in her life, and you really felt the truth of what she said about time. She does not have time for that burden she was forced to carry; she picked it up, kicked it down the road like an old can and built an empire. And all the women she pointed out, who are cleaning houses and working in factories and on farms, they don't have time for it either. They have had to just drag it along and cope. It's pretty profound. Without justice, without anyone listening or giving a damn. Maybe absorbing the message, like I have seen so many times I've lost count, that women who have been through things like this are somehow damaged or nuttier, and you're just smiling and thinking, how would anyone know that, when I don't know any women who were spared that damage? Then you think of your kids; it's devastating. That's how she ended the speech - Oprah - and I'm thinking, will MY kids maybe be the first generation spared? Is this a universal of humanity? Or can we choose to live a different way? What if we can? Wow.

[Phoebe]

James Damore, oh wow guy. I didn't think it could get much worse with him and then look where it went! Google's almost entirely white and Asian workforce is discriminating against him for being white, apparently. Oh sorry and the 70% of his fellow men are discriminating against one of their brothers. And conservatives are magically now a protected class because they have sensitive feelings.

[Phoebe]

Katie Roiphe thought she was about to publish a splashy takedown of #metoo, by exposing and shaming a woman who started (and then within a day ended) a list of harassers and rapists in her industry. Instead, in a surprise twist, the story is now about the exposure of Roiphe's own practices as a journalist.

If you're familiar with Roiphe's oeuvre, it's amusing because in the process of all this coming to light, a) she has tried to argue she cares a lot about proactive consent as an ethical social practice, and b) in the past, she has literally argued that the absence of whispered allegations, like the one she was trying to expose, is evidence of the absence of bad behavior.

Update: this is hilarious. I'm sorry if the mean-spirited response to her comeuppance seems misplaced or the whole topic is way out in the field for those who don't know who she is, but she got her start writing about how all the campus feminists were hysterically mislabeling rape that wasn't "actual" rape, and mostly these incidents were their fault anyway. At the time, I was pretty young and was pretty hostile to all things feminist, both because I was a vigorous PRO-LIFER (knew very little Biology) and the only feminism to which I had been exposed was the "your mom and grandmother wasted their lives being mere housewives" wealthy white lady feminism, which made me want to shoot rage-lasers out of my eyes. Roiphe gets credit for being one of the first people to make me step back and think, if this is what criticism of feminism looks like, I might not want to be so critical of it after all, because I'm not really into calling out as liars people who have suffered.

[mimekiller]

i hope oprah becomes president but it turns out she’s a pol pot-esque tyrant

[mimekiller]

lmao ok I thought the answer was going to be "well it's kind of stupid" but I guess it's more involved than that.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/2018/0 ... 013630001/

[Phoebe]

Why do people want Oprah to be President? Having a TV star is working out really well for them, I guess. At least she probably wouldn't go on the record wanting more Norwegians and less people from "shitholes". Our standards could still go lower, though - I have great faith in Trump in this regard. Our standards will doubtless sink even lower.

[mimekiller]

Shaking in anger thinking about a sweetie not getting the kind of wine they want

https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari ... ssion=true

[Phoebe]

I heard about all this and I don't want to go there because it risks stirring real-life feelings (like: "oh, did he suddenly appear with a shotgun when she tried to escape?") that divert from the cool exercise of reason, which is all I'm doing. Oh look, Margaret Atwood is exactly as applicable here as anywhere - both lines important!:

"Why have accountability and transparency been framed as antithetical to women's rights?

A war among women, as opposed to a war on women, is always pleasing to those who do not wish women well."

[mimekiller]

It's insane that Eliza Dushkus horrific story got buried by the Aziz one

[Phoebe]

[mimekiller]

lmao the plot thickens
http://ew.com/tv/2018/01/17/hln-aziz-an ... D=ref_fark

[Phoebe]

Finally some moral clarity on this topic from a woman who has been sexually assaulted and speaks for people who know that greater agency and clearer communication is the best way forward. It is not nice and not okay to diminish the stories of real people who have had real problems beyond their control by sensationalizing a non-problem that was chosen. (This is one I'm sending to my daughter - she and her friends already know allll about this case without my help.)

[mimekiller]

this is also a good one

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ge-matters

[Phoebe]

That was awesome, thanks. And unless she has some sort of very popular Twitter feed, it seems like she got thrown into a larger conversation she may not have wanted to have in such a public way. But I'm glad she did and that a student wrote something so powerful, when the reactions of some of our supposedly leading light feminist intellectuals have been less helpful in this matter.

[Phoebe]

I'm curious about whether any of the men here have talked to the women they're closest to and heard anything new since the whole me too movement started happening in the media. Or maybe you didn't hear anything new because you already had a list. If you do have a list, whether old or recently obtained, I'm just curious how long and varied it is. I was thinking about this the other day because of an incident that didn't involve me, and I already knew this was true, but I have trouble even documenting the list because it's so long and full of stupidity. I tried to explain some of these things to my husband and I'm like dude, you just can't even fathom the level of b******* that is the norm. And I wonder if, despite all the women I hear affirming this, and all the men who have suffered abuse that you almost never hear about and we need to start hearing about, it still remains a little mysterious exactly how normal this is for people. How lifelong. And literally nothing as far as I know has ever happened to any person who did any of these things to me, and I'm sure it's that way for many other women and definitely for men.

I'm curious because it occurred to me one day that someone I used to talk to was pretty honestly blindsided by all this, as recently as a few years ago. It was like, how can all of this really be normal for women? Is this really normal? And I was thinking to myself, yeah. So normal.

[Eliahad]

This is one of those times where I could state that my anxiety is such that I think I'm on a lot of people's lists. Or maybe I should be. I have no way of knowing. Then, following the pattern, you will all tell me that I should stop having said anxiety and the status quo will be maintained.

[Phoebe]

Obviously I'm not in a position to weigh in on your methods. However, I'm one of those old-fashioned crazies who thinks consent is a pretty clear hard line, and that complaints about lesser things are dangerous and destructive because they muddy this clear hard line, disrespect people whose experiences are on the other side of the clear hard line, and rob everyone else of the autonomy that is absolutely essential to meaningful consent in the first place. If people told you NO and tried to get up and leave and you pushed them down and kept going, you're on the wrong side of the line. If people told you NO but then gave you a blow job because they couldn't think of a good reason not to and they knew they were completely safe in your presence and could have waltzed out the door any time, then you're on the right side of the line. I don't know how much clearer it can be.

Personally, I do not ever want to have a relation of any kind with someone who is not absolutely bursting with joy at the prospect of doing so. I mean, I do not want even mediocre thumbs-up and yes, I want ENTHUSIASTIC YES because goddamn it, if you aren't freaking out with excitement over me why would I waste my effort instead of getting, like, a nap in? Indeed, I don't want to even entertain the prospect of dating someone unless I'm getting enthusiastic yes. If some dude is like, well, maybe, possibly, probably perhaps I could see us maybe someday possibly having some kind of romantic something or other, then FUCK IT, I'm out. Why are you dabbling with me? I'm not for dabblers, I'm here for total yes I want it now. Obviously this is a hypothetical because I'm not dating - if I were I sure would have needed Enthusiastic Yes first, so this is what I hope other people are saying.

Unfortunately, men apparently aren't usually in the position of being able to wait for Enthusiastic Yes, maybe because our culture teaches women repeatedly not to give Enthusiastic Yes. I'm just talking typical heterosexual relationships here - I really don't know how it works elsewhere because I've heard some evidence on both sides. Maybe wanting same-sex relationships or unusual sex where people need to dress up like a pony helps solve some communication issues, since that's probably going to need to come up at some point. Maybe there's a better culture for gay and lesbian relationships where it's accepted that people want to have sex and like it. Maybe not. Maybe there's also a lot more risk in making your desires known to people, whenever there is uncertainty.

Anyway, IMO the solution to this is both to keep insisting on the clear hard line of NO, without muddying it at all, AND to teach women (and men) that Enthusiastic Yes is the Gold Standard they are expected to follow because why would one live any other way? How are you supposed to avoid having nothing but crappy sex if you can't even talk about Step One, I either really do want this or not? Is that how the rest of the whole thing is going to go, tragically? Well, there you are, trying your best, and I'm staring at the ceiling tiles? No, that's not what we want in life.

[El Jefe]

[Bonefish]

I had this relationship. Not a boy friend/girlfriend relationship, but more of a friends with benefits. We were both really attracted to each other, but also really shy. Now, a couple of times I brought her to my apartment after a night out, and each time she feel asleep on my couch, so I would leave her on the couch. This is before we ever had sex, and she got really mad at me for a few weeks, because she thought I wasn't into her.

Weeks later, our mutual friends had to push us together. And on the ride home, I made the move and told her how into her I was. That started us on a lengthy and mutually satisfactory relationship. But, we had to work at it.

[Phoebe]

That is a really nice story, thank you. It's unfortunate that your friend felt that way initially - like, he's not into me because he would have made some move - but I get how both women and men are put in that position by this weird culture around romantic relationships.

I had an experience one time about 25 years ago that perfectly illustrates for me the location of the Line. My friends threw me a birthday party and a guy who lived in that part of the dorm showed up. We were talking and we went over to his dorm room, which wasn't much like leaving the party because it was right there. But there was loud music playing and he shut the door to the room so I would have had to scream pretty loudly to be heard outside. So he starts to try to make out with me, and I'm not into it because I know he has a girlfriend and that's not cool. I'm like hey, if you want to go out sometime that would be awesome, you're cute and I likes ya much, but not while you have a girlfriend. He was very enthusiastic about yes despite this. So there was a period where we were still on the right side of the line, where he was expressing his very enthusiastic yes in various manners, trying to convince me to abandon my reservations, and I was not yet clearly saying no way but I had a problem with it, morally speaking. I don't have a problem with people doing this. Persuasion that one can safely walk away from is just him taking his shot. Then it seemed pretty clear he wanted to have sex, so I said, No, No Way in Hell, I have never had sex before and I'm certainly not starting today right here with you. And that No is where The Line lives. I started to get up and assemble myself and leave the room and he repeatedly tried to (non-violently) pull me back in, kiss me, etc. That was wrong of him. I'm very lucky because I was able to get up and leave without any further unpleasant fight, and I could have beat his ass down if that's what I needed to do. But nobody wants to have to get into a knock-down-drag-out fight for their damn autonomy, and I don't want to have to disentangle myself from someone at all if I have already made the No crystal clear. After that I just stayed the hell away from him and told others, you know, avoid or be ready to have a problem.

I mention this story just because I think it's a good illustration of what I mean by the clear line. But please don't take this as a bad story - nothing horrid happened and it was fine. I don't tell many of the bad stories; I just want people to know how incredibly common they are, and how easily and freely people will cross that line.