Humanism needs Feminism.

Recently in a conversation about oppressive masculinities a respected friend and colleague told me she is no longer a feminist. “I'm actually a  humanist, because I care about how men suffer from rigid gender roles too.” 

This puzzled me. This comment came in the last 5 minutes of our meeting so at most I managed to mumble out: “but feminists care about those things too.”

After stewing about it on the BART and letting my brain sleep on it I now know what I should have said.

It's not that humanism and feminism are in conflict. In my mind they are overlapping and perhaps even concentric movements seeking to reduce the harm caused by oppression & inequality. Much of the work done by feminists serves to support the infrastructure of humanist goals. Part of what I assume my friend has resistance to is the characterization of feminists (or any anti-oppression activists) as narrowly and exclusively interested in a specific and inflexible subset of social inequalities (in the case of feminist 'the concerns of women'). 

While this characterization does apply to a small minority of modern feminists (and a sad majority of 2nd wave feminists), feminists who refuse to acknowledge how the work on women's concerns relates to addressing the concerns of other marginalized people are being rightfully critiqued and becoming obsolete. Intersectional feminism is the feminism of the future, and it's this exact feminism that secular humanism desperately needs.

Secular humanism provides a useful perspectives on inequality and harm reduction, but it is general and I would argue often assigns too an unrealistic amount of power to an individual's conscious mind. It's not enough for us to just  individually acknowledge with our conscious minds that all humans are equal (what I see as one of the core tenants of humanism). In order to build a more humane world humanism needs the the specific and necessary work of more specifically focused lenses and rhetorical approaches to inequality. This is where movements like feminism, anti-racism, disability justice work, and consent education can be conduits to real world actions that contribute to a more humane world.

A humanizing ideology, while providing an excellent foundation, does nothing to intervene in specific or systematic instances of dehumanization.  Harm reduction does not happen at the abstract level. It starts by recognizing specific groups or individuals who are systematically marginalized and consistently dehumanized. 

This sort of work also requires that we think critically about not only the oppressive systems humans share, but also how we personally have adsorbed these systems into our thought patterns and habits. Intersectional feminists seek out, take responsibility for, and attempt to eradicate the way our personal  conscious and subconscious habits replicate and support systems of oppression. By design this is how intersectional, anti-oppression communities functions. I can think of few more humane activities than personally reducing the very real harm I cause to because of the damaging systems of culture I have internalized.

That said. I'm the first to admit that this process is difficult, scary, exhausting, and sometimes impossible. But it is worth doing (impossible or not). It gives us practice in deconstructing oppressive habits and reconstructing new less damaging ways of treating humans together. And as secular humanists we should all want to be less oppressive right?

Rarely if ever do I straight up identify myself as a humanist. The reason I don't is simple. I assume that when when I say “I'm a feminist” or that when someone sees me doing anti-oppression work they can already tell I am. Feminism for me is an articulate lens and tool for doing humanist work.

I am a humanist AND I am an intersectional feminist. My politics aren't confined to women's issues nor do my politics exclude them. My politics are flexible overlapping and have room for all different kinds of humans.

In my understanding humanism regularly contends that the universe and humans especially bend toward complexity. In order to give this principle practical real world application humanism needs to welcome highly focused movements that force us to do more than just acknowledge that complexity exists within the human experience. In order stay honest to this vision of complexity humanism needs intersectional feminism, because intersectional feminism (like many of other specific anti-oppression movements) is in the business of not just recognizing, but making space for all complex humans to exist.

A Feminist Analysis of Carrie: Violent Projections of Womanhood (MEGA SPOILERS)

I watched Carrie for the first time this October.

I was alone. And I was ready to be scared.

I was not scared. If anything I was creeped out. Not by the film itself but because it's exaggeration of the violence that women face reminded me of the reality of how difficult it is to be a woman sometimes. And how strange and difficult and lonely it is to be who you are in a world where you have no (real) support and your peers are vastly more privileged and comfortable than you.

A lot of people will think upon viewing Carrie will find a sympathetic character in the gym teacher, Miss Collins, but I don't think she is a actually friend to Carrie. In fact I find her to be a faux-ally. She doesn't reach out to Carrie out of compassion. She reaches out to her to encourage and enforce the her own roll as benevolent teacher and the role of Carrie as a blossoming adolescent. Miss Collins needs Carrie to be successful socially because she see herself as being validated by doing so. She approaches carrie in a passive aggressively predatory manner, trying to make her better fit into her social group, and make her into the "girl" that she is nostalgic for. She is attracted to the an idealized version of Carrie and is not actually interested in the person that Carrie is.

In the beginning of the film when speaking to the principle about slapping Carrie in the shower Miss Collins says "In that moment I knew why those girls wear doing what they did and I just wanted to smack her."

Despite her friendly approach she is still trying to force Carrie into a role. In the infamous pigs blood scene Carrie recognizes Miss Collin's falseness and "sees" her gym teacher laughing along with everyone else. Like all of the women in this film Miss Collins feels the need to discipline ridicule or change Carrie because of her failure to live up to what she considers normal and acceptable for the role of woman.

To an excruciating and delightfully acted degree Carrie's mother projects the expectation of innocence and virginity onto Carrie. The girls at school project the expectation of teenage normality onto her. The gym teacher is complicit in this although she works her butt off to make Carrie's mandatory assimilation into her version of womanhood as comfortable and humane as possible. Kind but ultimately misguided.

Carrie is a whipping girl, a repository for every other female characters expectations of womanhood. The array of the projections she suffers are often delivered violently. In the literary sense I'd argue, that the heightened adversity she suffers from these projections is the violent crucible from which her powers to arise (much like a superhero is often motivated by tragedy/abuse).

For this reason I view Carrie as a parable about the horrific consequences of women willy-nilly projecting their impossible expectations onto other women. I love this film specifically for it's unique focus on relationships between women. Yes it is violent but the relationships between woman often are (one of the ways the patriarchy maintains itself is by pitting women against each other). And some of my all time favorite movies demonstrate this (Mean Girls).

Call it misandry if you must, but I also find it very funny that all of the men in this movie are inconsequential. Their characters basically only exist to serve the aims of the female characters seeking to undermine Carrie. It's a deliciously strange reversal of how genders are usually represented in film. The women and their twisted motivations drive this film.

Carrie is often billed as a revenge flick and honestly I think that's an oversimplification. Carrie doesn't burn down the school, flip the car, and bring her house down because she wants to get revenge on all of people who have violently projected their crap onto her. She does it because the world as she knows it is a terrible horrible place where if you don't live up to people's expectations you get ridiculed and abused.

She burns the world to the ground because she's had first hand experience after experience of just how fucked the world is. She isn't in it for revenge, this move is a murder suicide story.

In this sense it's telling that Sue, the only survivor of Carrie's rampage, never spoke directly to Carrie and felt actual remorse about the shower incident. Sue made no attempt to change or solicit anything from Carrie at all. The only person in the film who gave Carrie anything without expecting her to fill their ideal role of womanhood was the person allowed to survive. Although she is left haunted by what she witnessed, as are all of us who live in a world were women are pitted against one another for not living up to skewed and violently enforced ideals of womanhood.

Feminism In Action's Open Mic was magical! (a review)

Last night, at a Feminism In Action Open Mic at the Delores Park Cafe in SF, I got up in front of a crowd of complete strangers and read a section of a freewrite/poem.

I felt some measure of security in that the room was full of self professed feminists raising money and awareness for domestic violence. A stranger to the Bay Area, I arrived early and an hour before the person who'd invited me. The venue was packed wall to wall with people. I stood for most of the performances I leaned on a wall near the bathroom and tried not to feel like I was in the way

The people at this event were all stripes of gorgeous. So many good looking queers and my goodness I wish I'd had the gumption to talk to more than a few of them. More than once during the music and poetry I would glance around the room hungry to watch the way people enjoyed and accepted the sounds into their bodies. En mass this collection of humans was exceptionally lovely. This audience was trusting and open and I knew it would be a delight to be in front of.

I had a couple printed off, toiled over poems in my pocket. A poem about being a fish and a poem about how animals navigate using the moon. Now don't get me wrong, I will stand the fuck by scientific poems as being poems of the people. But Graciela, the MC for the event was so thoughtfully insistent about addressing all the performers by their preferred gender pronouns that changed my mind. I did something raw and wild instead. I knew I had to read some of the words I'd drafted about gender and pronouns that very morning.

I am ashamed to say I spent several of the sets half listening frantically editing the freewrite on my iphone so it would be more cogent and have the ending I wanted. Despite being wrapped up in writing there were some unforgettable moment that made me snap out of the obsessive act of editing. The heat and unabashed to resistance to gentrification, racist/sexist/classist oppression kept pulling my eyes up from my own work. Again and agin I was reminded back into the shared discomfort of solidarity.

Even though I was too nervous and unfamiliar to join in, it warmed my heart to watch the small contingent of folks makeshift a dark grinning dance floor during one of the musical sets. The love was so apparent in the room that it overflowed and the streets I'm sure got messy with its healing. Even halfway down the block as I left I could hear its joyous laugher moving like honey in the air.

It was the most fun I've had in a crowded room this season.
I say well done to the organizers and I hope they pulled down a butt load of money last night.

Marketing Feminism: I'm not buying it

So I'm wildly excited about this.

I support this project 100%. I think it is a vitally important development in safety and transportation. The critique this project has inspired has nothing to do with this product or its development (both of which I applaud). It has to do with marketing.

If you watch the promotional video, which is masterfully cut and filmed you'll notice that it and the article I cite lean primarily on the novelty of "women doing science" to sell their product.

I am wildly excited about this helmet as cyclist, science enthusiast, and feminist.

In that order exactly.

I am excited that women in technology are making fantastic products, but honestly I feel pandered to by their marketing strategy. I gives me big sads to realize that the idea of women doing good science is so alien to most people that it's actually considered an unexpected marketing idea. Women have been doing science all over the world for a long time. It's not a novel thing folks.

I appreciate the fact that Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin highlight the ways in which they faced sexist discrimination and I think their stories around it are important. But right now what's important to me for their product launch is their product information.

You know what would excite me more than the 'shocker' that women are doing hard and concretely useful science? Actual specs on how this helmet works. I want to know if and how this helmet protects against neck injury and whiplash (something traditional helmet are notoriously bad at protecting from, but that this inflatable model looks like it might reduce). I'm curious about the tests run on it.

In this case my practical concerns for safety as a cyclist trump my concerns as a feminist. Not everyone viewing this product will share my priorities, but putting the rocket of girl power behind this product's ad campaign implicitly sends the message that it's more important that women like this product than it is that it will save lives. Impracticality is not feminist.

In general and in this case I am opposed to gendered/sexist marketing strategies. If this helmet's primary features are life saving ones (that make it safer/more practical than traditional products on the market) then all cyclists should be marketed to.

Looking cute and girly is a wonderful thing but I'm sure it's not the top concern for all the cyclists who're interested in this helmet.

As I mentioned before I am excited about this product. My irritation at its gendered marketing is only emblematic of my constant irritation with gendered marketing strategies in general.

Since their advent of public relations marketers have been looking to get consumers to buy things through the use of psychology and manipulation. I think there can be ethical marketing strategies, but marketing in the US comes from a long history of such manipulation.

The Hövding helmet's marketing strategy is to stimulate solidarity and support for the women who made it. They are selling the false feminist novelty of women doing science.

I think solidarity & support for women scientists and entrepreneurs is excellent. I think giving women in science and tech fields more visibility is excellent. But neither of these things should be a marketing strategy. The use of feminism as a marketing device is unappealing to me. It limits feminism to those privileged by a capitalist society.

As much of an anti-capitalist as I am, I delight in products that're both useful and considerate of their users in design. The Hövding helmet appears to be exactly that. But no matter how much girl power is pumped into its marketing campaign, buying one will not make me a better feminist. I want the marketing to stop telling me that it will.

On Restorative Justice and Breaking Cycles of Abuse

I don't know much about cycles of abuse. I have never had to learn. What little abuse I have suffered has either been incidental or been suffered at the hands of institutions I'd trusted to take better care of me and my concerns (employers and schools). I'm also just starting to learn about restorative justice (and I want to know more). So I'm extremely hesitant to talk about this and probably have very very few pieces of this puzzle. Please, please, please note that this post is part of a daily blogging project. This topic came up today unexpectedly probably as a result of the things that have been happening in my communities lately and what I've been reading.

I fully intend to come back to this topic. This is just the beginning of a long and ongoing conversation. It is highly likely that some of the following content will be poorly worded or just plain wrong.

What I want to talk about has to do with restorative justice and survivors of abuse and oppression. All humans at some point suffer from oppression but not all humans suffer equally. Often this oppression takes the form of (systematic) abuse.

An integral and necessary part of radical politics is acknowledging this oppression, it's discriminating distribution, and offering space and resources for the healing processes of those hurt by oppression and abuse.

image credit 

This is the sankofa bird. It's associated with the Ghanian proverb “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," which translates "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten." and emphasizes the value of of reaching from the past in order to move forward with wisdom.

I chose this image to demonstrate that finding wisdom in the past is essential to moving forward sustainably. I also believe the reverse to be equally true. If we do no make strides to move forward after going back to retrieve what we have forgotten, it may not mature into the wisdom we need.

When the healing process in our communities stops us from moving forward it stops history from becoming wisdom. This doesn't mean forgetting or abandoning our histories but moving forward means not dwelling on our own healing process to the detriment of others who want to share our community.

Helping each other heal is one of the most important functions of radical politics, but it's not its only function.

So what does this mean in the real world? It means that women who claim they cannot heal in spaces that includes people with genitals and childhood experiences of gender that differ from their own ('feminists' who exclude trans women) need to realize that their healing is not the only job to be done.

It means that while victims/survivors of harassment & assault deserve to have their community insulate them from their abusers and offer resources for their healing, the abuser and those who match the abuser's demographic must still be respected as human beings.

Being treated in an inhumane way does not give the recipient of that suffering someone a free pass to treat others inhumanly or incite the inhumane treatment of those who contribute to their healing process.

Believe me when I say, that was a hard sentence for me to write. There are certainly people in my history I want to yell at and even do physical harm to. I personally will not hesitate to use physical violence to stop someone from physically assaulting someone I love.

But when we enable and encourage the inhumane treatment of our abusers/oppressors and those who look/behave like them we are enabling the cycle of abuse. We send the message that violence and exclusion are the proper way to heal and even that such violence is radical. We excuse such violence by calling it solidarity for victims/survivors.

I don't mean to invalidate the very real instances where immediate violence is required for personal survival. That shit exists and I hate that it does. I don't think there is a single anti-oppression activist that would feel otherwise. But I now realize that encouraging the violence and exclusion between ourselves and our oppressors/abusers perpetuates the notion that that there are people who are abusers and people who are not.

We are all capable of treating others inhumanely. Saying or thinking that some people just can't help it or thinking that they are unable to take responsibility, enables us to think of them exclusively as abusers and even monsters, and to treat them inhumanely.

This nasty loophole of twisted solidarity & assumption can enable cycles of abuse to continue. Some men abuse some women, and some of those women go on to use their experiences of abuse/oppression as an excuse to to exclude, deny and dehumanize trans women because they are assume that trans women are "like the men who abused them". Some men abuse some women, some of those women and those who care about them say "kill all/your rapists" in order to 'support' survivors of rape. This is the same loophole that allowed 2nd wave feminists of the 70s to claim that all penetrative sex was rape.

Make no mistake. I am in no way saying that rage over experiences of abuse are unwarranted. I feel mad as all fuck about the injustices of rape and abuse. There is wisdom to be found from that rage. And we do not have to forgive or even let go of that rage if we don't want. But we do have to take personal responsibility for it.

It's not our fault that certain traits trigger past memories of abuse and trauma, but it IS our responsibility to treat the people with those traits humanely. Trauma is not an excuse to deny someone from existing. It's totally okay not to be able to deal when past trauma is triggered. But what triggered it, no matter who it was attached to, has less to do with your trauma than the person who inflicted that trauma on you.

I personally struggle a lot with this distinction. I have a tendency to dismiss and feel ill-at-ease around people who show apparent signs of wealth and financial flexibility. If a person I don't trust touches me in a certain way or place on my body my trauma comes up. And sometimes (later) I am viciously angry. But the trigger I have aren't the fault of the people who triggered. Oppression, abuse, and violence are the source. I don't need people who trigger me to be excluded or punished. And doing so will certainly not serve to protect me or other prevent harm to others in the community.

I don't need the people who've abused me to be punished either (though I will want to be excluded from spaces that I & other they have abused will be). Survivors/victims of abuse don't need anything from their abusers. They need support and resources from their community in order to start their healing process.

It's the community that needs the abuser to responsibility. We've been hoodwinked by punitive justice systems to think that someone has to "pay" for what happened. I believe in restorative justice model is better for this. Which doesn't mean that the direct relationships between abusers and those the abuse should be repaired, but that we can raise our expectations and build better more respectful scripts for interaction. It also means that we know who needs to work harder at respecting the humanity of other and taking responsibility for their actions.

Let's stop essentializing abusers, oppressors, and those that look like/remind us of them with violence and oppression. The potential to be violent and oppressive exists within all of us and each of us has the power to be less oppressive and violent. Let's hold everyone acceptable to this. It's what can heal communities and makes them safer, less harmful places. It's how we can both look look back and move forward at the same time.

The necessary unpacking of slut shaming

During the recent and highly contentious exchange between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor I had the opportunity to have lots of interesting and valuable discussions surrounding appropriation, objectification, and sexual expression. Through these discussions I was able to codify my political stance when it comes to slut shaming.

By far the most simple & frequent critique of Sinead's letter was that she was engaging in slut shaming. I understand where the need for this critique comes. It is important but I chose not to write about the slut shaming aspects of the letter in my post and instead made notes about my resistance to use the term.

Slowly I came to realize that my resistance came from a feeling of incompleteness and that it wasn't just this instance of internet people shouting "slut shaming!" that felt incomplete.

I shy away from the using the term "slut shaming" not because I don't recognize and want others to see the sexist behavior it identifies but because I believe the term itself can and has in some instances become a catch-all for very general array of the sex-related oppression women face. In radical contexts catch-alls can easily become problematic excuses to stop defining and going into the complex detail for that oppression. A catch-all runs the risk of overgeneralizing things that are complex and need complex definitions.

In the example I cite in a previous post a friend was asked by "concerned" parents to cover up her "dangerous" breasts so the group of young girls she was traveling with would be "safe" from lusty European men.

We agree that this behavior is both ridiculous and disgusting. We discussed this a potential slut shaming.

Slut shaming as defined by wikipedia is: "the act of making any person feel guilty or inferior for certain sexual behaviors or desires that deviate from traditional or orthodox gender expectations."

Based on her account and this definition I don't think it was. Or at least not just that. To me it was straight up sexual harassment and body policing at the hands of trusted authority figures. In fact they way she was dressing had little-nothing to do with her expressing her sexuality. It was the parents that assumed her clothing choices were "sexual", so how could it have been slut shaming?

When slut shaming is identified those doing the identifying run the risk of making the mistaken assumption that the subject of the bullying/harassment/shaming is indeed expressing their sexuality. Regardless of what they are wearing we can't know for certain that someone is expressing their sexuality unless they tell us explicitly.

The language of slut shaming is especially problematic in light of recent efforts of some groups to reclaim the word "slut" as an identity.

When "slut" becomes an identity (as some are struggling for it to become through its reclamation) it separates women into categories of sluts/nonsluts. This distinction divides feminists communities and does nothing beyond support individual declarations of identities (which should not be the primary/only function of feminism). 

Instead of dividing women based on sexual identities let's acknowledge that we are all humans and we all experience desire. Do we really need a label that denotes that some of us are willing to express the sexual ones?

When slut becomes an identity the harassment/shaming that is related to the expression of sexuality become about identity. The body/behavior policing, the sexual harassment and the gross slew of things referred to as slut shaming isn't about the identities of those targeted (beyond the fact that they are women). It's about their behaviors and expressions.

Slut shaming is not about "you are wrong" but are about "you are doing it wrong". And by "it" I mean womanhood. Slut shaming is about tacitly enforcing the misogynist rules of womanhood. If we want to be radical (get at the root of things) we need to dig in and figure out what specifically is being denied and why. We can't just be satisfied by just calling oppressive behavior "slut shaming" because it's not just about the (slut/nonslut) identity of the person being shamed, it's also about how that shaming fits into the broader context of oppression.

It's not enough to see the objectifying oppression of a woman and call it "slut shaming". It's a great first step, but it is just a start. In order to combat the complex nature of sexist oppression
we need to continue making space in our politics for corresponding complexity.

Why I Demand Trans Feminism

Trigger warning: transphobic shit to follow.

This exchange occurred after tweeting about my complete belief in the future of feminism including, supporting, & validating trans feminism.

It's taken me a month to boil down, suss through, & address all of the messy assumptions in this exchange.

Firstly imbuing any body part (like a phallus or say large breasts) with inherently threatening or dangerous qualities places people's bodies and body parts into a hierarchy. It makes some bodies and body parts "more okay" than others and hence more deserving of our support validation and defense. A person's body should never be the grounds for deciding what levels of solidarity they deserve.

Insinuating that a penis or penis haver is inherently threatening is as fraught as insinuating that too much cleavage is dangerous or say causes earthquakes.

The idea that a phallus or phallus haver is inherently threatening to a vagina or vagina haver uses the same broken logic as is used when blaming women's bodies and "sluttyness" for the actions or motivations of an assaulter/harasser. Assumptions that the size, dress, race, and shape of a woman indicates her sexuality run rampant. So too does the assumption that expressions and qualities we deem  masculine are inherently violent. Both of these assumptions are of the same type and are damaging. They serve only to offer security by separating people from one another. Which is not a form of security I believe in. It comes from a place of personal fear for survival/not getting hurt.

This tweet objectifies and ultimately limits the potential motivation of both groups of people indicated. They are either penile (threatening) or vaginal (deserving of protection). It's a well accepted and wise rule of the queer world and trans world that we accept that someone's identity and humanity are bigger than their body or what we can perceive about their bodies. Reducing people and their possible motivations and ways of being to their body parts is straight up oppressive objectification. It tells them that they are indeed just their body parts.

If the focus on penis vs. vagina is removed, the tweet above merely becomes someone saying that one person's concerns are more important than another's just because they have differing body parts. This tweet’s emphasis on the concerns of a particular group being more important than another’s requires that we believe there is a scarcity of concern and a hierarchy for compassion. Anyone with half a hope for intersectional politics knows that this idea is broken.

I understand that some folks have have traumatic associations with certain body parts, but personal trauma does not justify censoring or excluding the people whose body parts are associated with that trauma. I've been assaulted by two redheads, this doesn't mean I have a right to assume that all gingers are dangerous/threatening to me.

Having a traumatic association with a particular body part does not mean those body parts or objects are always to be harbingers of trauma. Past performance of one member of a group does not determine future performance of all members of that group.

The idea that the phallus (or any other male-associated body traits) is inherently threatening actually reinforces paradigms of of violence against women (a la evolutionary psychology so familiar in the rhetoric of rape apologists). It essentializes violence as inexplicably connected to male bodies. Believing that the phallus/masculinity is inherently violent creates a closed loop definition that makes confronting actual instances of violence perpetrated by men defensible because "well having a penis/testosterone just makes you more violent." This is absurd. It casts all those with masculine traits as irredeemably violent and not worth intervention.

Casting the phallus itself or those who have a phallus exclusively as violators who need no support or protection becomes widely and obviously incorrect when you consider the terrifyingly high rates of violence and exclusion trans women experience. Our legal system has already enforced the assumption of trans folks as violent perpetrators. This objectifying assumption actually enables such violence against both women AND trans people. 

It is totally fucked up to say that some folks (those with vaginas) have a right to feel unthreatened while others concerns for safety are disregarded completely (because they're cast as inherently threatening due to their body parts).

When I strap on a phallus I don’t magically become less of a feminist or become more dangerous to vagina havers. A cock is not a gun. It's a tool. One that can be used for violence but it isn't inherently violent any more than it is inherently pleasurable. It is just a body part.

Statistically speaking, having a phallus makes one likelier to have privilege BUT having privilege doesn't in and of itself, make a person violent or entitled. 

I understand that what most trans excluding feminists fear is this stereotype of phallus-related violence & entitlement. But employing body-based stereotypes like this is not only discriminatory but a downright inefficient way of screening for violent behavior.

No person's body or body parts is better or more inherently deserving of concern or protection. As a radical feminist and vagina haver, I personally resent that other folks seem to think myself or my body parts need to be protected from those scary phalluses.

I know that as a person with vagina I'm at higher risk for sexual assault than a cisgender man and that statistically that assault is more likely to be perpetrated by a cis guy. But I have been physically assaulted by cis women with higher frequency than cis men. Based on this history I resent the assumption that I am “safer” around cis women. I want to be allowed to use my own ability to discern who my allies are. I don’t need this arbitrary body-based separation and I certainly don’t approve of it.

My writing this is NOT an effort to tell those with traumatic experiences related to masculinity & the phallus to "get over it". That trauma deserves space and support. But when we work for intersectional politics (which the future of feminism must be) a single narrative of trauma cannot always be the focus of our actions.

I know this seems callous on some level but it is necessary. But as I’ve written before nobody is entitled to the be listened to or to have the attention/protection of the community. No one has a right to feel safe. It is always a privilege. In order to distribute this privilege effectively community members must

1. Acknowledge that others have trauma and that all trauma is valid even if not addressed and processed.
2. Accept that the personal experience of trauma one person has doesn't map onto the experiences others have with their trauma.
3. Accept that no experience of trauma is more or less deserving of our compassion.

Excluding those who have body parts that have been fearfully defined as dangerous robs our feminist communities of solidarity and the imperative discomfort of bearing witness to the trauma of trans folks.

I want demand these experiences be welcomed into my feminist community.

Branding & Activism

Part 2: The "Sex" in "Sex Positive"

Mini intro for those of you who missed P.1:

In activist communities there are movements towards re-defining certain terms, then using those terms loaded with new meaning to talk to a public that has not been educated, consulted or even invited to accept these new definitions. This practice of re-definition mimics the use of language in academic communities. In this sense it is (unintentionally) exclusive. It creates communities of activists privileged with newer enlightened definitions and excludes those that aren't "in the know". The use of community-specific language can be alienating or confusing to a person who is using more traditional definitions. Ineffective and inconsiderate branding harms both the movement itself and those who're invited into an activist community under the banner of poorly branded terms.

I feel pangs of annoyance and resistance to certain branding efforts; for products whose names do not receive recognition in my neural net, campaigns that try so hard to seem natural that they lose their authenticity.  When I see Bing, with their sad product placement and blatant failure to complete with Google, I feel a familiar annoyance and resistance. It's the same awful feeling I get I when see the words "sex positivity" used in a way that demands displays of "pride" (aka performative sexuality) or excludes people based on their appearance or their preferred intensity of sexual expression. I can't stand under the banner of a "sex positive" movement because of the way it has ineptly tried and failed to force a re-branding of "sex".

I believe the sex positive moment is doing some damn fine work. Most sex-positive folks I know will tell you right off the bat that "sex" had a broad definition (this is good!). But In the past when I've dropped "I'm sex positive" in conversation, I always tended to find myself talking about how sex positivity is actually more about consent than about sex (these days I'm using consent-positive). Despite my efforts to the contrary, the people I've spoken with outside of the sex-positive community hear the words "sex-positive" and by and large still think I mean "I like penis in vagina action" or "I like to have sex". 

This is a fundamental yet unacknowledged semantic misunderstanding. Refusing to acknowledge it and make space for this misunderstanding is not only inconsiderate, it implies that whatever understanding a person does come to about "sex" is the one true "sex positive" principle. This is how you get men expressing sentiments like "I'm totally a sex-positive feminist! I love having sex with women!" Refusing to acknowledge the likelihood of misunderstanding stops those we're attempting to educate from taking accountability for their own understandings.

There are consequences to assuming the sex positive definitions of sex & consent are simple easily accepted or free from the effect of mainstreams assumptions about "sex". Folks who don't openly express their affinity for sex or certain types of sex often have their voices invalidated and excluded from visibility. Oppressive stereotypical roles can creep into sex positive spaces. The status quo is often disguised as radical. In the case of sex positive the branding has gotten away from it's original campaign and is being used to justify unquestioned objectification. Under the brand of "sex positive" those who express dislike, or refuse to comply are ridiculed and ostracized. Sexual availability and expressions of desire become compulsory.

The importance of radical non-presence in maintaining intersectional integrity

Note: This is an idea I am still very much mulling over and would LOVE to hear any feedback folks have about privilege, oppression, & intersectionality as it relates to presence/non-presence.

As a teenager, before I explored myself sexually, before I maturbated, before I began writing about my fantasies, & before I began to interrogate my own desires, I accepted the romantic paths society laid out for me. More simply put: I identified as straight until I was 23. Fortunately during my sexual oblivion I gravitated toward the queer youth space in my hometown. I attended weekly meetings and identified myself as a straight ally. My very best friend had come out to me in middle school and I wanted to be the best ally I could.

These meetings provided vital challenges to the way I conceptualized my world. I encountered and began to process the reality of trans and genderqueer folk for the first time. One of our regular leaders spoke with raw vulnerability about living with and contracting HIV. I was blown away. I value what I learned there more than I can say.

A year into my attendance of these meetings a decision was made that the meeting space would available to LGBTQ -identified individuals only. I considered saying I was queer or questioning, but back then straight still felt most comfortable. Conflict & anger burbled in my belly and often escaped my mouth in the shape of resentment as I spoke about the group’s decision. “It’s mean and discriminatory and I feel like I’m being unfairly excluded”.

After listening to my complaints, calmly and at length, my best friend opened his mouth haltingly but without apology. "Sometimes, it's just better to be around people who've had the same experiences you do."

Those simple words clicked instantly. I understood the reason my experience of straightness was excluded from a queer youth space. I didn’t have words for it then but it didn’t matter. I understood. I understood that spaces can be more deeply healing and illuminating when the people in that space have a shared experience & history with specific tools of oppression (in this case trans- & homophobia). At 17 I’d never had someone hate or question me for being queer. More importantly, I hadn't had it happen to me on a repeated, systematic basis. My friend was telling me that the most valuable support I could give him was my non-presence as a person full of a lived history of straightness.

The exclusion of my straight 17 year old self from my hometown's queer youth space facilitated deeper, unquestioned explorations of internalized and subconscious trans- & homophobia. The lessons I’d have learned by continuing to share that space would have no doubt been valuable. But my experiences of straightness took up space in that room. I required time and information to connect deeply to others’ experiences of homophobia and transphobia. I wanted to be included in explorations of those tools of oppression. But it wasn’t the job of those suffering from trans- & homophobia to educate me about that experience. It is never the obligation of the oppressed to educate others about the deep level of systematic oppression they experience. This is especially true if they are present to explore that oppression for themselves.

Is financial independence the ultimate scapegoat for compromising on feminism?

So I recently read the book Female Chauvinist Pigs. It had some gratingly problematic uses of transphobic, gender-essentialist, & objectifying rhetoric but oh, did it ever get my ears pricked for instances of women spouting gendered oppression.

I wanted to share a depressing instance of what female chauvinism looks like to me. This progressively intentioned project wants to "help" get women into the tech industry and specifically into professional coding field. The problem of course is that much of the advice given and projects proposed enforce gendered stereotypes that do nothing for women as a whole. This approach would only serve to (maybe!) garner success for the individual woman who make those compromises.

Small example : "it’s our job (for now) to be easily integrated into an all-male team, nonthreatening, and hyperskilled"

This might just be lazy or "hip" rhetoric employed by their copy writers which bores me. I really hope they don't mean it. Because this is not feminism or if it is, it's a twisted sort of feminism. And it's a great example of why I have issues with "financial independence" being a feminist goal (identified as such in bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody). It is not surprising to me that when the goals of feminism try to mix with the goals of capitalism it invariably ends up looking like female chauvinism. But this point seems to fall through the cracks (even in Female Chauvinist Pigs) when it comes to other self-professed (successful) feminists.

Am I nuts, or is bowing to capitalism in order to gain financial independence becoming the ultimate scapegoat for compromising on feminist goals? Case and point:
many of the responses to the kerfuffle this project has caused decry that the compromises the Lady Coders project is promoting are necessary and that those dissenting are merely being ideological purists. So I guess personal success is more important than standing for your own boundaries & beliefs about sexism?

To be clear, I acknowledge that compromising on one's boundaries & beliefs in order to survive is often a valid and unfortunate necessity. I would not fault anyone for doing something like identifying with a previous and inaccurate gender/name in order to receive unemployment/social services. Their subsistence depends on that compromise. This is fucked up because folks in such situations are at the actual mercy of the social services system. And is completely different from compromising on your boundaries & beliefs to accrue a higher financial and professional status. If you have a skill/attribute that is valued and sought by an industry that you choose you have power. You are not at the mercy of that industry/system in the way that others are.

And, oh yeah, for all those folks defending the project as looking to be "effective" in their compromise and that this will (slowly) make the environment more diverse:

This whole Lady Coders mess comes to me via my partner who is a (cis-male) web dev. He is furious because this means that even though this project will get more women in the room, the level of diversity of ideas and experiences will be discouraged and disparaged by its approach. And coding (by his account) is a creative, knowledge based work. In such work you NEED a diversity of ideas in order to approach the incredibly diverse of problems with appropriate solutions.

It would actually behoove the tech (and other knowledge-based) industries to welcome diversity with open arms. It is risky, but in the long run it stands to make them more successful, competitive, and flexible. The idea that (potential) workers must compromise their identity in order to work in certain places is the oppression of capitalism at work. It alienates workers from their labor & progress which depletes recourses of experience and ideas that business will have to call upon.

This mandated compromise also creates a system of shaming in which women who have compromised and gained success/status express disdain for women who did not. Often saying that if women don't trade on things like their appearance or novelty that they are just "not trying hard enough". The Lady Coders project offers no challenge to this status quo & appears to be a great project for getting big tech companies those token female techies who'll help them look progressive while publicly excoriating those who refuse to compromise their feminist values. 

Not radical ladies, really, just not...

A few rageful thoughts about why 50 Shades of Grey is NOT and should not be everybody's BDSM

There was a protest last week in NYC against a 50 Shades of Grey inspired training workshop called "The Hands Tied for Two". I have no clue what the workshop actually entailed and actually want to talk more specificity about the connection the protestors are making between the book/workshop and violence against women. What caught my attention and (incomplete) solidarity this was this particular bit of messaging: "50 Shades of Grey: BAD FOR WOMEN! BAD FOR SEX!"

Perhaps because this group of protestors sees all/most BDSM as (contributing to) abuse/rape, or maybe because they wanted to keep their message simple, they missed a very important third group of folks that this book is especially bad for. Yes. 50 Shades of Grey totally is bad propaganda about women & sex/pleasure, but it is also bad for BSDM'ers and BDSM communities. BDSM communities and relationships are already inundated with the tired tropes, images, and stories about women submitting and it being the job of a women and specifically a submissive (woman) to have their limits pushed. It is expected that they will always submit to those pushes regardless of whether or not they think they'll enjoy or be able to endure the pain of having those limits pushed.

Not having read the book I don't know what the play/sex scenes actually entail, but from what I have gleaned, the protagonist receives rewards (in terms of material goods, financial security, and affirmation) for her participation in the role of sub. For this type of play to be the most preventive of abuse or danger, it needs an acknowledgment of the incredible power inequality it is playing with, more importantly it needs an escape route for both parties, but especially for the one with the least power (who risks the most damage). Part of this means (for me) exploring where the power dynamic you're playing with comes from culturally, what it has been used for in the past and how it might affect the people about to play with it.

What's more, this type of power play is only a single facet of BDSM play and NOT the one that should be anyone's (certainly not everyone's) entry point. High risk play is dangerous and better approached AFTER a rigorous setting down of ground rules and communication tools for power/pain play. I have sometimes called type of play represented in 50 Shades "transactional" because it involves one person receiving goods/social capital for their engagement in the play. It is a valid form of play, but I can't stand that through 50 Shades it has become the face of BDSM right now. It's over-prevalence now and historically diminishes the idea that anyone would engage in (non-transactional) pain play without being coerced or compensated.

Pain play and power play are not inherent bedfellows. This book will and has confused people into thinking that you can't have one without the other and that all BDSM is transactional; that all BDSM play requires someone always be there just to endure until they are rewarded by their partner. Bull. Fucking. Shit. This book also makes it seem like you can't engage in BDSM unless you or your partner have lots of extra money, time, and toys (this is whole other topic).

As I, and others, have said previously a lot of this same shitty oppressive tired broken crap really DOES happens in BDSM communities. And it does need to be called the fuck out. The narratives of 50 Shades seem like they'll just add to the crap-pile with more tired broken notions and more people who blindly believe and act them out. Which adds to the work that already needs to be done around BDSM. So yes 50 Shades of Grey IS bad for women and bad for sex, but it's also really bad for anyone who wants to build better BDSM communities!