Serene of the Oakland Serenes

That's one reason I acknowledge it when I'm discussing these issues. IMX, it helps guys realize that no matter how angry I am, I'm not male-bashing.

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I'm not all that interested in making sure that every time I talk about feminism, I make a disclaimer that says "Oh, and feminism isn't about bashing men." I think that helps perpetuate the idea that I need to expend energy to make men comfortable when discussing issues of feminism, and I disagree.

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Neither am I. But to me this is not just an issue of feminism -- although God knows it is emphatically that. It's part of a whole analysis that can be discussed under the feminist rubric, but that may not necessarily be seen that way.

It's important to me -- doesn't have to be to you -- that I acknowledge both the core issue (unwanted touch, human beings being treated as property) as well as the gender and power dynamics that make this overwhelmingly a problem in which males hassle females.

(And even here I want to speak of the complexity: overwhelmingly males hassle females, lesbians in particular, gay men, T*-folk, children of any gender, and any/body with less power. Orientations, race, class, and ethnicity also matter.)

It's important to me to acknowledge the invisible victims. That does not in any way invalidate the ones who are beginning to be visible.

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gramina.livejournal.com

Thank you. Exactly.

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redandfiery.livejournal.com

But darlin'... didn't you know? Feminism is really *all about the men*.

Removing my tongue from my cheek, I say WORD to your opinion on this.

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Yes.

And thank you.

I can't comment over there because I've run out of patient. It would not be productive.

But yes. Some people will fight tooth and nail against saying, "Most sexual assault victims are women. And most perpetrators are men." I'm watching the person there just go out of control in their efforts to avoid coming out and saying that and I just don't get why they won't see and say the simple factual truth.

I think it's because actually admitting that truth is painful. And scary. And I think some women have an idea that if they kiss up to men they'll be somehow seen as good and somehow the world will magically protect them from assault.

Never worked for me. I wish I understood it, but I'd rather deal with the painful truth and the scary things and start changing them instead of fighting to not talk about them and denying them with psychobabble and feel good talk whenever they are raised.

I appreciate your comments and I'm sorry there was a troll like person over there who seems to think that because you don't completely and gushingly agree with him that you were saying, "fuck you" to him. That was... kinda sad.

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Where's the original thread on this?

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The one we're talking about is a locked post.

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My apologies for referencing back, even parenthetically. I screwed up doing that.

It's been a surprisingly rough few days here, internets aside, and my common sense and information boundariez are not as good as they should be. I am sorry about that.

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I think it's fine. I just don't want to identify the person, as much because I said I wouldn't as because the post was locked.

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pir-anha.livejournal.com

i agree it is tiresome when any attempt to address an injustice that's systemically applied to women gets immediately turned around to end up all about the relatively few menfolk also affected.

but it's not a distraction for me in cases where i am asked to promise to act a certain way. i interact with people as individuals, not as gendered groups, and if i choose to invest effort, or even put my life on the line, i do it for an individual person, and whether the person is male or female is entirely irrelevant. statistics do not, for me, outweigh the plight of any individual person right then, right there.

and i sometimes consider it more useful to look at systematic remedies for certain issues without the gender lens, because it's possibly easier to fix that way -- since things are more easily fixed if the other half of the population takes an interest.

also, IME the herring is only orange, because i've run all my life into feminists who trivialized the mistreatment of individual men and the chains put on them by the same system that puts them on women. i don't think that justifies the constant "but men suffer too" interruptions in feminist discussions, but it's my own impetus for wanting to say such things now and then (i try to sit on it, but i fail occasionally). beyond that, i think that some injustices are better fixed without focus on one gender.

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abostick59.livejournal.com

This is personal. I am a man who was, as a child, repeatedly raped by a woman.

One of the consequences of this has been that recently, while working this through with my therapist recently, I entered a phase of finding intolerable the experience of having my chest and belly touched, even by a trusted lover.

And I found the Open Source Boob thing to be deeply disturbing -- a personal squick.

I find the idea of being expected to adopt a label to deny permission to touch one's breasts to be appalling. I don't feel that this is a gendered response. Because of my experience and the damage I took from it, I feel enormous empathy for other people who have had or are at risk of having similar experience.

And of course I recognize that because of the sexism that runs to the very roots of our society, the majority of such people are women.

At the same time I am bitter about the way in which, as a man, my experience and those of other men like me are disappeared. For example, in a groundbreaking self-help book for male sexual abuse survivors, men raped by women as children are relegated to a footnote in a sidebar. Discovering this felt like a slap in the face, and turned me away from that book, which could have been great help to me.

And your rolling of your eyes at the assertion, "But men get raped, too!" feels like another slap. I don't think it was your intention, but I still feel it.

I like to think that my experience gives me empathy for women. Yes, I am a man, and yes, I have misused my privilege as a man (I still do from time to time despite my best efforts). Feminist values are core values to me.

It hurts me to be a victim of collateral damage when someone like you returns fire upon the jerks and assholes attack those feminist values that we share.

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But see, I know you, and I know that this -- this telling of your sad and important story, thank you for being willing to share it -- isn't your only, or even your first, reaction to hearing about injustices toward women. In fact, some of the things I find out about the way this society fucks with women, I find out first from you.

I am not rolling my eyes at the assertion that men get raped, too. My [beloved male relative] was raped as a child, repeatedly, and it's a deep pain running through my family. What I am rolling my eyes at is the seeming inability of some people to resist making every discussion of women's issues about men.

Edited Date: 2008-04-25 01:58 pm (UTC)

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wild-irises.livejournal.com

One thing that I think is important here is the difference between "this isn't about women because it also happens to men" and "this isn't entirely about women because it also happened to me." We all live in our individual experiences, our individual histories, very much including the painful parts of those histories.

The distinction you're trying to make (which I think I understand) is probably not going to come through to someone who's hurting. For me, framing the issue as being about "victims" or "survivors" covers a lot of useful territory. And, at the same time, no one is just a victim, and I don't want to label any whole person that way.

Hard stuff.

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ailbhe

The BBC did it this week in their reporting of the Congo - "It's not just women who get raped," they said, and conducted along interview about a man who was raped too.

It makes me angry. It's like the recent "middle-aged white guy with bulimia" thing. Crime vs crime against women. Grr.

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Imagine the news coverage a generation ago: City invaded, property destroyed, soldiers killed! And oh yeah, some women claimed they were raped, har har, probably just didn't get paid enough.

I'm a radical feminist. I've been one since the Joan Little case was big news. Women's oppression by men is still big news. But it isn't the only news -- just ask Amanda Marcotte.

Rape is NOT just a women's issue. Seriously addressing the pain of victims of any gender is not a distraction from the pain of female victims.

Maybe when someone tries to use the "men get raped" argument as a pure rhetorical strategy, it would be useful to explore that path a little with them. "Yes, they do. What does that mean to you in terms of preventing rape of all people? Can you talk about the power dynamics going on with male rape? In what ways can women protect themselves? Can men use similar strategies?"

They're good questions -- and they will foil someone who is using male rape as a way to dismiss the overwhelming power of rape as a female experience, the constant back-brain calculation, the ongoing subliminal fear that we have to deal with every day.

Edited Date: 2008-04-25 08:55 pm (UTC)

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What do you do when the person won't hear the question?

I have tried to talk to people about this, and they -were- using the whole, but men get raped too and I want to talk about pepople as individuals as two ways to shut down the discussion of the power dynamics going on behind male rape.

What do you do when the person just won't hear it, because they don't want to admit there are power dynamics, don't want to examine them, and don't want to see where their behavior is adding to and reinforcing the power dynamics?

Personally, at that point, I leave. But if you have found other strategies that were productive, I'd be curious. I am not sure I want to spend my time on people like that - I get much more return on my investemnt from others, but I am curious.

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If acknowledging it doesn't work, and directly addressing it ("Why do you want to cast this as a purely personal phenomenon? It happens in such vast numbers that it is a political one") doesn't work, then write them off. If they try to push the discussion, politely decline. "I'd rather not discuss it." Don't give a reason. Just ignore them.

Socially, the cut direct is an amazingly effective weapon.

And if the person is a Libertarian, give up. IMX, they generally believe that there are no power differences whatsoever between individuals.

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Sorry it took me a while to return to your comment, but thank you for writing.

I pretty much do that, which means staying out of certain discussions and staying out of certain spaces sometimes.

In some spaces, this stuff keeps coming up and coming up, and I'm not yet sure that when I say, "I disagree strongly and do not wish to discuss this with you any further, let's try to enjoy the things together that we do share," will be heard and respected. Some of that is the people in the space, some of that is the space as a whole (sum of the people and the environment almost is like another personality on the whole,) and some of it is that I'm still learning how to say it clearly, firmly, and early enough.

So I pretty much use the same strategy as you are suggesting. It makes me sad to cut off potential connections, but there are some things that I do consider Writing Them Off level issues. Thank you for your thoughts. I'm enjoying the nuance to your writing.

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micheinnz.livejournal.com

Recently, a rapist in my city told his victim _as he was raping her_ that it wasn't about power, it was about sex.

He had obviously heard the message that rape is about power, but had decided to twist it to his own ends.

I'd already been horrified by the attack, but this just made it about a million timess worse.

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lcohen

i'm not sure if my post yesterday reads that way to you, or not. because the same thing that you are speaking against bugs the heck out of me, too. but i think that both men and women walk through the world thinking that only other people behave X way and that they are insulted when people imply that they, too, might sometimes stumble over X. which was more the thrust of what i was trying to say, but that might not have been clear.

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epi-lj.livejournal.com

I can totally understand your position here, but I need to make this clear: While "People who are taking action to stop the systemic mistreatment of women are not claiming men are never mistreated," is certainly true, "Some people who are taking action to stop the systemic mistreatment of women are claiming that men are never mistreated," is also true. I have had numerous conversations with people on rape awareness forums and other places who have claimed both that men do not get raped -- that any claim that they do is a ploy by men who want to steal the thunder from women on this issues -- and by people who claim that although men do get raped, that it happens in such small numbers that people should not mention it or do anything about it and that pretending or outright stating it doesn't happen is good and right, because that keep the focus on women.

I don't think that it should necessarily be brought up every time assault and rape of women is mentioned, by any means, but I have seen cases where I did think it needed to be brought up. For example, if somebody states categorically that rape is a crime committed by men against women (which is something I have seen in many places) then I do point out that that's not true.

I do agree with the idea that bringing it up in cases where the opposite was never intimated can really detract from the situation, so I'm not trying to say that what you're saying here is something I completely disagree with. I just think that there are situations where it feels important to me to point it out.

(I also feel like I should mention that pointing out as a form of argument on this issue how much more often it happens to women than men can be a bit of a hot button for me, as it's happened to me so many times that that has been followed up with the argument that therefore the issue of it happening to men is unimportant and should be dismissed entirely (from all contexts, not just whatever discussion is happening at the time), and after a while that really gets under your skin.)

Edited Date: 2008-04-25 05:54 pm (UTC)

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sinboy.livejournal.com

I like the person that you're quoting, and she's a friend, but I think she's wrong on this. I'm sorry the two of you are butting heads on it, and I hope you can both keep being friendly in the social circles you guys move in.

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