Cocky

H/T to Womanist Musings and Feministing

Transcript:

We are often told that we are living in a mans world, and this culture no image represents power more than the phallic symbol and if the penis equal power then I am illegally armed. My body full of freckles and curves is like a stealth bomber, I fly just under everyone's radar, but only because they choose not to see me. Only because no one wants to believe that a sweet petite green eyed girl like me could ever possibly be packing heat. They say it's not the size of the wand but the magic that it does. Well after many months on estrogen my penis is pretty darn small, but she has supernatural powers. She is like some pissed off ancient Greek goddess. My penis changes the meanings of everything, and because of her every single one of my ex heterosexual girlfriends has slept with a lesbian, and every guy who hits on me these days could be accused of being gay. Because my penis bends everyone who is straight and she can make the most entitled catcallers and womanisers scurry away with their balls between their legs. All because of six small words, I used to be a man. And being a transsexual I realize that most people see my femaleness as a façade, as an elaborate hoax, but I am more real than any of them could ever hope to be. I am real because unlike them my gender is not based upon what other people think of me and that may make me an object of ridicule but I am not the butt of anyone's joke, because I know that people make fun of trannies because we are the one thing that they fear the most. I am more badass than any gangster, more dangerous than any marine core , my penis is more powerful than the cocks of a million alpha males all put together. Because when a man is defined as that which is not female and a woman is defined as that which is not male, then I am the loose thread that unravels the gender of everyone around me. They say it's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean, well my penis gives most people sea sickness. It makes people dizzy because most people are not secure enough in their own masculinity or femininity to serve a night in the sack with me. My penis turns simple sexual pleasures into political acts. She turns biological impossibilities into cold hard facts. My penis is the curiosity that you have been told will kill your cat. See, my penis can be deadly, especially to me, and I have hear d almost every true story about what frightened macho boys do to trannies; every bludgeoning and mutilation, bodies beaten beyond recognition and I have imagined it all happening to me first person. Everytime I get up in front of a crow to perform one of my outspoken word pieces, I can feel myself morph into a slow moving target. After the show when I walk back to my car I will be holding my breathe half expecting that inevitable blow to the back of the head. Sometimes I wonder why it hasn't happened yet, and sometimes I wonder why they just don't get it over with and sometimes I just wish I was dead, I wish I was dead. You see I never wanted to be dangerous and I spent most of my life wishing that I didn't have a penis. I used to hate my body for not making any sense to me and these days I often hate it for being so in between. Some mornings I can hardly get out of bed because my body is so weighed down with ugly meanings that my culture has dumped all over me. You see I have made to feel shame and self loathing so that everyone else can take comfort in what their bodies mean. And if I seem a bit cocky it is because I refuse to make apologies for my body anymore. I am though being the human sacrifice offered up to appease other people's gender issues. Some women have a penis, some men don't and the rest of the world is just going to have to get the fuck over it. If I am destined to be the loose thread that unravels the gender of everyone around me then I am going to pull and pull and pull and pull and pull until everyone is exposed, till they all finally see that all along that they were merely wearing the emperor's new clothes . I know that people don't like it when I turn the tables on them but what the hell else am I supposed to do, play a hand from a deck of cards that was stacked against me? If I seem a bit cocky, it's because I have spent my entire life being backed into a corner and like a frightened animal packed full of adrenaline and sick of hunger and hiding I am finally desperate enough to come out fighting.

Defining Sexism

A comment on this entry at Shakesville really tweaked my interest. First, the comment:

"A little off topic, but I just wanted to jump up and down a little waving my arms in frantic protest over [another poster]'s insistence that various "isms" - sexism, racism, what have you - are monodirectional.

For one thing, it's problematic because this isn't the way the vast majority of people use these words. For just about everyone (not to mention every dictionary under the sun) racism (to choose an example) is prejudice or discrimination based on race, full stop. Limiting the word to institutional prejudice or discrimination against specific racial groups in specific cultural contexts creates all kind of confusion - not least because not all the world is made up of the kind of neat binary hierarchies of oppression this kind of definition demands.

For another, society is not a monolith. Even if racism is by definition cultural and institutional, the idea that every institution and sub-culture within a society shares the same biases isn't really tenable.

To return to sexism, far simpler to say (as the OED does, actually) that it is sex-based prejudice and discrimination almost always directed against women."

This poster isn't the first to make this spurious argument and zie won't be the last.

Disagree however you want, but the prejudice+power definition of -isms are sociological in nature and correct. The "vast majority" of people can use a technical term however they want, that doesn't mean they are using it correctly. Perfect example: paradigm shift. This is a technical term, used in scientific disciplines to indicate a sudden and complete change in how the world is viewed by a sub-group of humanity, and in Western culture, can be applied directly to inventions of mass media and mass communication and the effect this had on how the culture as a whole related to the world. In popular lexicon, we use it to indicate a change in how we behave personally, akin to "changing gears" or changing the flow of our lives. It has also been appropriated by motivational speakers for large corporations as a term to get corporate teams to expand their way of working. If one compares the two usages, they seem to have the same basic meaning, but one is technically correct within the context that spawned it, and one is popular misconception and appropriation of the first.

By referencing "every dictionary under the sun", I assume that means zie has read every dictionary under the sun. I doubt this, mainly because if zie had, zie would have noticed that most regular dictionaries are mainly catalogs of common usage in a specific arena, and do not mean the be-all end-all of a word. There is a reason that we have medical and legal dictionaries, as well as dictionaries for different disciplines. These dictionaries may have a word that is spelled the same in each of them, but based on the context, has a differing meaning. Hell, the meaning of a word can differ across languages. Some words don't translate directly from language to language, and some languages have words that others do not. Does this mean that the basic concept does not exist from culture to culture? No, it means that the concepts are viewed differently through different cultural lenses.

Suggesting that your preferred definition of isms is inherently more correct at all times is intellectually dishonest.

In actuality, you can indeed see the binary hierarchies almost world-wide, with adjustments of the standard to the specific group. Example: racial binary, between "white" and "non-white" does exist in most places that I have studied or visited. White in some areas may not look quite like it looks here, but it plays the same role. It can be found echoed through out most institutions and sub-cultures to a greater or lesser degree. The binary hierarchy of sex is also present world wide to differing degrees, even with differences in the definition of masculine v. feminine.

This poster seems to desire the simpler explanation at the expense of dismissing actual intellectual effort on hir part to challenge hir own small view of how the world works.

Sexism is not in the eye of the beholder

Let it be assumed for the purposes of this space, that the definition of -isms are the power+prejudice equation.

No Guts, No Glory

I came across this at Alas, a quote from a gentleman who blogs at Instapundit, or Instaputz as some have termed him. Behold, Glenn Reynolds:

I feel a little sorry for Martin Luther King — his enormous accomplishments got less attention than they deserved because of the cult of Malcolm X, and now he’s being eclipsed by Barack Obama. Though I suppose he’d be perfectly okay with that.

Uh huh...

Jeff Fecke proceeds his own takedown:

Now, we can go on and on about the utter stupidity of Reynolds pretending that W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman are now totally unimportant thanks to Obama’s victory; indeed, we can go further and note how insane it is that Reynolds would think Du Bois, Douglas, King, Malcolm X, Tubman, and the several million other African-Americans who worked for equality through our nation’s long and bitter racial history would see Obama’s victory as anything other than a positive outcome of their work.

I do agree with Jeff, although, I thought to take it one step further...

Reynolds' perspective makes sense when you account for the fact that a good deal of people who are recipients of social privilege tend to quest for nothing more than personal gain, or for the hero-worship that we tend to bestow on figures who represent fundamental social progress (See Betty Friedan and her repudiation of the feminist movement because she did not get enough attention). Even their participation in social justice is for the recognition they will get for what they do, so there is little understanding of someone who does something for the benefit of more than just themselves, of someone who knows that they may never see the end result of the work that they do, but they do it regardless because someone needs to lay the bricks so that the next generation can move forward a little further.

I would argue that some people can't see any reason to be a visible activist besides the "glory," which is a symptom of the tendency to white-wash history and try to show it without full context.

If all you can remember of the civil rights movement is the so-called "glory" that came with being Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then there are some serious gaps in your knowledge and understanding.

Granted, it was pointed out to me that the very nature of history and historical recollection is about selective editing, and therefore has gaps by definition. I don't entirely agree. I think it is possible to be honest about history to a point. We can never escape our own perspective, and objectivity is especially difficult in the arena of social movements and trends, but we are still able, and obligated, I think, to be as honest as possible when looking back.

The American practice of making shining and pure paragons of virtue out of our historical figures has been key in helping to promote the blindness of the privileged classes in this country. We forget that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, we forget that Helen Keller was a radical feminist and socialist, we forget that Woodrow Wilson was a racist SOB...etc. We want our heroes to be moral exemplars, and forget that they were only human. It only serves to obscure the historical context and reality not only of these people, but of our own time. If we cannot honestly look at the past as something more complex than simplistic children's stories, then how can we create comprehensive solutions for the present?

I would also argue that this heroification leads to the "glory" perspective, these people did the things they did to be heroes, to get the spotlight...and it distances us from our own abilities to affect change in our world. Most "heroes" were and are ordinary people doing what they see as needing to be done at the time. I'm pretty sure Harriet Tubman wasn't risking her life for attention sake, or for recognition of her "great accomplishments". Some have the chance to come in at a time when they can get a lot of attention, some are largely ignored until decades, sometimes centuries after their deaths. When the people who pushed for change are regarded as exemplars of society, "special" if you will, then we assimilate the idea that we can change nothing because we are just "normal" people, and forget that the world is changed by normal people who choose to make a stand.

I have always wanted to be one of those people who change the world. My aunt (who was more like my big sister growing up) has always said that I have an over-developed sense of justice, and a need to fix things that strike me as wrong just because they are wrong. When I was young, I not only wanted to be one of those activists we always read about, I wanted to be the Special kind, the ones that stand in front of crowds and cause a national uproar when they are arrested...I thrived on stories of heroes, and I wanted to be one. Not a comic book or cartoon hero, but a real live historical hero.
As I got older, I realized that being that public recognizable hero is only possible when the groundwork is laid, and that I couldn't just wait for the groundwork to come to me. So I started volunteering, writing, speaking, making a stand in my small high-school student way. After a few years of this, it hit me that I may never be that hero the way I initially envisioned it, but that I had a hand in making possible for one of those heroes to come forward. I am fine with putting a few bricks in the road so that the next group coming behind me can go just a bit further than I did.

When I see my twelve-year old sister taking apart the bullshit of the world designed to break her spirit and put her in her "place", and dismissing it like an annoying fly, I feel like a cape-wearing, swishy-haired, bona-fide super hero.

And that is enough for me :D

Your Intrepid Explorer Risks Eye and Sanity...

okay, I did a bad thing...

I went over to Glenn Sacks' blog, mainly because it is rude and fallacious to criticize someones position without actually knowing anything about their position. I am not going to link to it, simply because its not hard to find on your own, and because the last thing I need right now is a deluge of some of the people who read those blogs. I am not in the mood to heavily moderate comments to maintain a safe-space.

When I was there, I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, because as much as I have a serious problem with MRAs, there are inequalities that men face that I am against. I mainly disagree with the source of these inequalities, and the technique for solving them that most MRAs seem to advocate. They want to blame feminism, or feminists, which ends up turning into a fight against the very group of people with the history and experience to solve the inequalities they are being blamed for.

I only managed to really analyze one thing before the whole space started to really bother me, so I will make this a gradual thing. I will start with one, and if I can stomach spending more than a few minutes over there, I may do this again.

An ad that occurred right after the first article:

Discover how she has 'played' you. For the first time ever, a book that tells you exactly how manipulative and deceitful women win against their unsuspecting prey--and there's detailed information about what you can do about it. Read Roy Sheppard and Mary T Cleary's book "Venus: The Dark Side".

An alternate title for this book, when you follow the ad's url, is "That Bitch" (You cannot make this shit up.) It was changed because the authors wanted to reach as many people as possible with their message of "evil conniving" women who victimize "innocent" men. If Mr. Sacks and his movement are not interested in demonizing women, why have an ad for something so flagrantly anti-woman? ETA: Since it came up in the comments, when was the last time you saw a book about abusive men titled "That Asshole"? Even more than that, was it advertised on a site run by gender equality activists?

To be fair, many blog ad programs simply search keywords and post ads that match. We find that on feminists sites as well, a discussion of eating disorders or fat acceptance flanked by diet ads, a discussion of porn or sex-workers rights surrounded by ads for "free" porn sites, discussion of abortion rights bringing up ads for pro-life services. This is why a good deal of feminist bloggers have very limited ads, and tend to stick to ads that they can approve pre-posting. It is possible that this is what is happening here. Make of it what you will.

I am skeptical, mainly because all of the other ads seem directly applicable to the content of the blog.

I have heard a lot of excuses from MRA's about how they aren't anti-woman, they are just anti-feminist, or even how they aren't anti-feminist, just anti-radical misandrist feminists. I personally do not see that distinction being made here.

Keep an eye out for later posts examining the inner-workings of the MRA blogosphere...

I Don't Think I'm Better Than You

Has anyone else come across this "women are morally superior to men" trope? I have heard it before, mainly in philosophy classes, but I came across it again in the Feministing Community, in an entry by Wendy_notsid about a book called Hating Women : America's Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex By Rabbi Schmuley Boteach. (Sorry, not linking to it.)

There was, of course, a lot of commentary in the book regarding the awful stereotypes presented of women in the popular media, how men are being groomed to view women, and the over-sexualization of young women in popular media and culture that I heartily agreed with, but there were passages of the book that annoyed me greatly, as a feminist and as a humanist in general. Not only was it his criticism of the feminist movement for concentrating too much on being like men and leaving behind their “natural feminine virtues” (I’m not taking this word for word), or his belief that women were respected more prior to the twentieth century (though that really got to me, but it’s a point to pick apart for another blog), but it was also his stressing of how men and women are not equal, but that women are superior beings.

I am sure that the Rabbi meant to help, seeing that he has daughters and seems to subscribe to certain beliefs that indicate that women are to be valued, which is a good thing. I take issue with what is intended to be valued from women, and how this is still limiting to us, as well as the implications for a feminist movement that were to be held to this standard. From the Feministing article:

...he stated the usual evidence of the so-called female superiority: more women do charitable work, more women attend religious services, women are more likely to be sympathetic to the troubles of others, more women excel academically… I know also that there is a belief in a number of Jewish denominations that women are the holier sex because we can bear children and are naturally more moral than men. Another idea is that man was God’s first try in creating a physical being in Its image, and that woman was God’s second, more successful, try.

The idea that any one group of people is morally superior to another is problematic.

First of all, it feeds into the exclusionary stereotype that follows liberation movements, and gives credence to those privileged whiners that are pissed that there is something in the world that doesn't include them. Seriously, why give them more ammo?

Second, it places more responsibility on the shoulders of women to behave "properly" and allows a pass for men to behave however they want with the excuse that they are just "naturally flawed." Women are already blamed for the violence and oppression they face, this just makes that idea even stronger.

Third, this can be used to silence those of us who still insist on pointing out inequality. If we can be placated with the head pat of being "morally superior" (which, by the way, doesn't prevent rape, murder, domestic violence, job discrimination, education discrimination, etc) then we don't need to be treated "like men" (translation: like people) because our needs aren't the same.

The false dichotomy of one group being better than the other prevents any real critical analysis of constructions of personhood and identity, and recreates double standards that are "impossible" to argue against.