There’s an interesting post at Feministe in which blogger Jaclyn grapples with some of her thoughts about dating a “cisgender man” (viz.: a biological male who was born that way and presents/performs male gender) after a long period of being involved exclusively with women and transmen. I’ll suggest in passing that some of the unease she’s expressing may be linked to something I talked about in an article on Alfred Kinsey form a few years back: the fear that displaying any kind of fluid or protean sexuality may feed social conservatives’ belief that anyone can just “choose” to be hetero.
What’s most interesting, though, is the question (and ensuing discussion) of whether men can be proper “feminists” or just “feminist allies” or junior-varsity auxilliary feminists or whatever else. The definition some of the commenters are employing seems quite stringent—so much so that I expect very many progressive-leaning women wouldn’t pass muster either. Being formally in favor of gender equality is not enough by a longshot: You have to “get it,” which means not only understanding and embracing, but internalizing in a fairly deep way a sophisticated analysis of how male privilege operates. I won’t claim to be crystal clear on every detail, but certainly if you harbor any reactionary doubts about whether strip clubs are intrinsically and necessarily an unconscionable form of exploitation, you may turn in your decoder ring.
Now, far be it from me to dispute any movement’s decisions about how to define its terms. But these rather strong criteria strike me as incompatible with the expressions of frustration we sometimes hear about people’s reluctance to self-apply the label “feminist.” The criteria in those cases seem rather looser: “Don’t you support gender equality? Don’t you think people doing equivalent work should be paid the same? Aren’t you opposed to rigid gender roles and double-standards? Well, then you’re a feminist!” If that’s the standard, then I am a feminist, and so are the vast majority of people I know. If the standard is the wholesale acceptance, in practice as well as theory, of the ideology held by the modal Feministe commenter, I suppose I’m not and probably don’t aspire to be. But by that standard, neither are most women I know.
One definition might be as good as another, depending on the context. But as long as a significant number of people are vocally defending the more stringent one, it seems rather too quick to suppose that anyone who’s circumspect about self-applying the label does so because they regard it as a slur, or because they’re in thrall to some crude stereotype of the feminist as hairy-legged man-hater. It may just be that they don’t want to presume to claim full comprehension, let alone acceptance, of a complex ideology that goes well beyond a simple commitment to legal equality or opposition to the most overt and uncontroversial forms of misogyny.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Kevin B. O'Reilly // Aug 8, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Feminism is not unique in possessing these contradictory impulses. Some libertarians go around claiming that anywhere from 15% to a majority of voters share their views or are “instinctively libertarian” or something like that. Meanwhile, others want to toss Randy Barnett out of the libertarian camp because he favored the Iraq war. I mean, you want broad acceptance of your viewpoint but at the same time you want it be *your viewpoint* — not something so watered down that it is meaningless.
2 Tony // Aug 9, 2007 at 8:22 am
A good example of the problems of the feminist movement is when the word patriarchy appears. When I read that, I reflexively begin to discredit what I’m reading or hearing. It’s clear that we’ve moved beyond equality and into a blanket search for all the ways men oppress women. And all men are in some way complicit in the perpetuation of the oppression.
I always figured it’s better to tell someone how to achieve something better than why they’re so horrible. Count me into your sentiments on feminism.
3 William Newman // Aug 9, 2007 at 11:24 am
“Aren’t you opposed to rigid gender roles and double-standards?” Mm, if you took that literally enough that it called for opposition to conventional female prerogatives in child custody disputes, I wonder what proportion of feminists you would find.
4 tigrejones // Aug 9, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Oh good sir! Please do not assume that commenters on a blog represent the “majority” of a movement of any kind-they mostly represent the majority of people commenting on that topic. William is perfectly right that every movement has about as many opinions on who is “in” as there are people in the movement.
Also, you are clearly hurt by the implication that you would not be a feminist, which is a good thing, but your use of terms “decoder ring” “junior auxillary whatever” and “hairy-legged man hater” are a bit, unkind? reactionary? defensive? In any case, not really setting you on the trajectory (as aftercorbu puts it) to gender-equality.
And William, haven’t we learned anything from Kramer vs. Kramer? I suppose I can only speak for myself, but I advocate (as a feminist) equal parenting time if both parents are equally good parents. The tradition of moms taking custody would only encourage men to not be involved with their kids and moms to not get jobs. But I’m sure a mom in a divorce will sacrifice ideals of equality if it means getting to spend more time with her kid(s)…I bet most people would sacrifice a lot of ideals for that.
5 Janus Daniels // Aug 9, 2007 at 10:01 pm
“… fear that displaying any kind of fluid or protean sexuality may feed social conservatives’ belief that anyone can just “choose” to be hetero…”
1) They are not social conservatives; they are homophobes. They dignify their bigotry by calling themselves social conservatives. We (and real conservatives) shouldn’t.
2) To fear that some of us might have a choice of our gender lends credence to bigotry. It implies that we have some fearsome reason to not choose minority gender.
3) The idea that choosing our gender has moral significance requires that our gender has moral significance. It doesn’t. I now choose to reverse my sexual polarity (or race, religion, language, whatever). Alakazam! How does that have any moral signigicance? It has no moral signigicance, and we shoul act like that. If you can choose your gender, congratulations & enjoy it.
4) Extreme doctrinaire positions do more damage to proponents than to opponents; feminism is only one example.
6 elyzabethe // Aug 10, 2007 at 2:03 pm
“… but certainly if you harbor any reactionary doubts about whether strip clubs are intrinsically and necessarily an unconscionable form of exploitation, you may turn in your decoder ring.”
I was going to say that I don’t think that’s exactly true or fair. And there are tons of self-avowed feminists who would disagree with that statement, commenters at one feminist blog nonwithstanding.
Of course, then I realize that I’m operarting under that precarious position where I’m defining a proper viewpoint on things as the way that me and some other people I like see it, a Brink-Lindseyian “no-no-no, everyone really IS such-and-such they just don’t know it” inclination like Kevin mentions above …
But I still think the strip club statement isn’t true or fair. I hope not, at least. I’d like to keep my decoder ring.
7 Julian Sanchez // Aug 12, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I didn’t meant to give the impression I would be “hurt” if some particular definition of “feminist” excluded me from the category. If my underlying views remain the same, why should the outcome of a semantic dispute concern me either way?
“Decoder ring” and “junior auxiliary whatever” are indeed meant to poke a bit of fun at the whiff of tribalism I caught emanating from some of those comments. It’s not exactly meant to be “kind,” but neither do I see that it bears especially on my “trajectory” toward gender equality. And “hairy-legged man-hater” is preceded by its identification as a crude stereotype; I’m not sure what’s supposed to be objectionable about that.
8 Julian Sanchez // Aug 13, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Liz-
Well, I certainly didn’t mean to *endorse* the view I alluded to as the uniquely correct feminist view. Just that some people appear to believe that it is. I suppose on reflection I’ll take back the first half of the previous comment: To the extent that “feminism” describes an important and positive tradition, I too would prefer that this kind of narrow definition not win out, at least insofar as it would spare us the trouble of coming up with another term to describe someone who’s in favor of gender equality but rejects this sort of simplistic reduction of sexual display to male power.
9 tradesmen // Apr 9, 2013 at 3:52 am
I’m curious and considering what you’re currently talking about here.