Tag: feminism

The Origins of My Misogyny*

The Origins of My Misogyny*

Women like me: middle-aged women who spent much of their youth around men and boys; who viewed ourselves as strong, feminist, independent; who were tomboys; who could “take a joke”; who could tell harassing strangers to fuck off, but took shitty comments from our male friends as good-natured verbal roughhousing; women who rolled our eyes at women who were offended by those friends, who rolled our eyes at women who complained at all; who looked down on girls who dressed “like sluts” and got drunk alone at parties – of course they weren’t asking to be assaulted, but they weren’t doing themselves any favors; women who saw it as our duty and privilege to put up with men’s shit, to not let it bother us, to be strong and impermeable and masculine … we were not only terrible bitches ourselves. We were fucked over more than anyone could have convinced me at the time.

How does an educated, leftist, feminist artist from an activist family learn to hate women? Pervasive, systemic, toxic male supremacy, baby!

I had many fascinating discussions with friends who fit the description above after the #metoo movement took hold. Stumbling in the light after the obscuring veil was ripped off our heads, having to cope not only with our own experiences of harassment and assault, but our own practices of misogyny and complicity with abuse is an ongoing struggle. I talked about this a bit in a previous post, but this time I’m indulging my curiosity about the foundations of that misogyny. And I’ll have to start with my poor, blog-abused father (who is still not ready to face the realities of history that I highlight in this blog, though he has come a long way. I’m thanking age-induced diminishing testosterone.)

My dad wanted a son. That was clear to my mother, and clear to me once I was old enough to get it. But he didn’t complain when a second young girl entered his life; he made the best of it. And making the best of it meant believing in my ability to do anything. That is, to be as good as a boy. Being a superior woman in my own right wasn’t an option – women could only be exceptional by being like men, or my being exceptionally beautiful and regal, which wasn’t really an option for me. Did you all see this Super Bowl ad in 2006? B & I were half-watching the game for the commercials with another cis, hetero couple, all sex-positive and socially conscious people, but none of us particularly focused on feminism or sexism at the time. And every one of us cried when this aired.

Why? What did this tell us that hit so hard? I think for me, at least, it was the de-normalizing of something I had simply accepted my whole life. My dad was continually coaching me not to throw or catch or run like a girl, and it didn’t take any explaining for me to understand what that meant – doing anything like a girl was the shitty way to do it; thus behaving like a girl or, later, a woman, was to be avoided at all costs.

When the Wonder Woman movie came out, the first big female Super Hero movie, less than a decade ago (where I again was again crying, crying over the glorification of, respect for, and deference to, female strength, skill, determination, and reason), there was plenty of backlash over her depiction as a person with feelings, as a person who loved nature, as a compassionate human being. This made her inferior to male superheroes. Those who wanted her to compete with them were let down by her feminine qualities. They wanted her to be a female superhero who was the same as the male superheroes, but still female. What makes her female, then? Her tits? Her outfit? If there is no difference between male and female superheroes, why do we even give a shit if she’s a woman or not?

This, in a nutshell, was my dilemma. I wanted to fight for women’s rights. I wanted to be a great woman. But I didn’t want women to be any different than men. Except – physically? You can understand why I was so thrown by the idea of transgender folks when I was young. But… but… if men and women are the same except in the stereotypes imposed by society, why would anyone need to change genders? I’ve been fascinated with body dysmorphia since I first heard about it, in large part because I thought it might help me – help us- understand the TRUE differences between men & women. (In some ways, it has.)

It’s just like Whiteness. If there is only one standard by which behavior is measured, then anything non-White (collaboration, expressiveness, oral tradition, integration with nature) is inferior, laughable, or aberrant. If Masculinity is all there is, then both femininity and any mashup of the two, or other gender performance, is necessarily inferior. So why would I want to be Feminine? Ever? I allowed myself to exhibit some feminine qualities considered acceptable if inevitable, some things that women contributed to society to soften the male edges. But even those never seemed right because they were fucking FEMALE. Though I never questioned the gender I was assigned or the body I was in, I rejected everything female except those characteristics most prized by society – beauty and sexual attractiveness. (Not even sexuality, necessarily. I definitely got enough slut-shaming media to fear my own needs & desires.) Why did I still care how I looked, while rejecting so much of the rest? Because I needed to be validated by men, and that was the easiest way for me to do it. If men are superior, the approval of women hardly matters. Do you see how confusing this was for me?

And then there’s the more obviously destructive distinctions. Women are more physically vulnerable than men. We like to pretend that this is because they are naturally both weak and seductive and men more naturally aggressive and aroused, but it is at least as much because we are fed those very “facts” and ingest that bullshit as a society. I was regularly harassed on the street from the time I was 7 years old, and thought that looking, acting, being tough would help protect me. It seems laughable now. My body and strength were indistinguishable from a boy’s when I was seven, and that didn’t keep me protected then. How would anything short of drag or steroids, if even that, help me as a developed woman?

Men don’t have it easy either. The Masculine standard fucking sucks for everyone. But at least they don’t identify with the category they are trained to loathe. They may come out of the programming broken, miserable, depressed, and filled with unquenchable rage, but they’re not typically going after other guys for being what they are supposed to be. Not so for women! We’re taught that we need to compete with each other for the attention of men, and that we are petty and materialistic, so the choices are either to join that group or reject them. I did the latter, preferring groups of boys to groups of girls, though my closest friends have almost always been female. In practice, I loved women. In theory I didn’t. Just like the White guy with the Black best friend who still thinks African-Americans are more naturally inclined towards crime and laziness than Whites are.

It’s so clever, though, isn’t it? I didn’t even realize that I hated women because the characteristics assigned to them were both legitimate and contrived. I thought I was rejecting the bullshit, but I didn’t know what was bullshit and what was real. To be honest, I still don’t. I think it’s healthier to discuss Feminine and Masculine traits as a yin/yang separation, rather than features exclusively found in the biological/hormonal/psychological gender. No one is all Feminine or all Masculine, but we generally associate these characteristics with Girls & Women. Best guess, here are some legit ones:

  • Compassionate
  • Caring
  • Gentle
  • Patient
  • Forgiving
  • Loving
  • Supportive
  • Generous
  • Collaborative
  • Nurturing
  • Intuitive

And here’s some bullshit imposed by society:

  • lazy
  • materialistic
  • quiet
  • seductive
  • stupid
  • weak
  • competitive
  • petty
  • selfish
  • vindictive
  • irrational
  • submissive
  • unfunny

I threw out the baby (and having babies) with the bathwater. (No regrets on the childless part, BTW.) If women were materialistic, submissive, and stupid, then I didn’t want to be collaborative, gentle, or patient either. Hell, I also threw intuition, emotion, body consciousness, and self-respect on the fire. It’s not easy to pick the desirable charred remains out of the ashes.

I was a scarf knit together from a dozen different gauges of yarn. The color and overall shape might look alright from a distance, but if you examine it up close, there was no consistency. Or not to anyone but me. I felt fairly comfortable with my vaguely defined gender theory until I was forced to examine it not only in the face of #metoo and discussions of gender identity, but perhaps even more through my anti-racist education and Buddhish spirituality.

More on that next time.

*image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherdombres/15106273965

Woman Hating and Hatefilled Women

Woman Hating and Hatefilled Women

I was going to do a confessional post about my personal history of sexist, borderline misogynist thought and behavior, and I will, soon. But I have been confronted again by a me-averse woman in a position of power, and this history deserves its own investigation. Doubtless some of the same fucked up motivations will stand out when I turn the light on myself.

I’ve experienced plenty of sexism in my life, but all of the blatantly punishing sexist behavior I’ve been forced to put up with has come from women. Once in high school, once in grad school, and now at my job.

When I was a Junior in High School, our retired, male drama teacher was replaced by Ms. Martin, a bland, mostly forgettable blond woman in her 40s. I was disappointed by the previous teacher’s departure, in large part because he clearly liked me, and as a junior, I might now (juniority!) have a chance to earn good roles in the school plays. The now departed senior class was filled with talent, but this crop of seniors didn’t have a lot of dedicated actors. This was my chance! Yay, ME!

Or so I thought. After a semester of me working my ass off (you ask for a monologue, I’ll give you a one woman play), and of course trying to get Ms. Martin to like me (because that is a weakness of mine), I auditioned for the musical, Oliver! I knew it well because I’d been one of the urchins in a production when I was a kid. I’m not a great singer, but since we were an all-girls school (my two year punishment for skipping much of 8th & 9th grade), there were plenty of roles open. And we didn’t have great singers. After a long audition and callback process, all my classmates agreed that I would surely be Dodger or Nancy and I was antsy with excitement on the day the cast was to be announced.

But before that happened, Ms. Martin asked me to come to her office. She closed the door. She said, “Z, before the cast list goes up, in case your name isn’t on it [she was the one and only person who put the names on it], I want you to know why.”

“Oh. Okay.” I was already hurt, but curious, and took the “in case” seriously. Was there something I could do now, here in this office, to earn that spot?

“Well, even if you did give the best audition, I feel that if I cast you, you would rile the troops against me. I mean, why would I cast someone who’s great who I can’t control, when I can cast someone perfectly good who I get along with fine?”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” (Yes, I said thanks. I was in shock.)

I walked upstairs to my Physics class and told my best friends, my drama friends, what had happened. They all agreed it was awful. I had never “riled the troops” against her, or anyone. I had asked questions in class, I had wondered why we were doing things – the kind of behavior that made confident teachers love me, and the kind of love that made me feel comfortable in school in a way I never had at home or, since, at work. In school, in the schools I went to, good teachers genuinely wanted students to question them, challenge them, bring in new ideas. I’ve never consistently experienced that in any other type of institution.

So the cast list went up, and the friends with whom I had sought comfort were on it, and I wasn’t. And they stopped talking to me. Junior year was miserable. When I finally got one of them to communicate, late in the second semester, and asked why they cut me out, she said she didn’t know. It just happened. But I knew when it started. And, ridiculous as it was, my existence apparently undercut their talents. If I hadn’t told them, they wouldn’t have rejected me. But I had to tell them, because when you have been targeted you feel alone and you feel a little like you’re losing your mind and you seek solace in your friends. Ms. Martin didn’t just take away a stupid performance, she indirectly deprived me of my support system. Fortunately, I had friends who weren’t actors, in the class above me. I made sure to get the fuck out of that school once they graduated. I even moved across the country to do it. I took my chance making friends in a new state my senior year over staying with a bunch of lost souls who left me to drown alone. I don’t hate them, but their weakness was a crushing revelation.

Over a decade later, I was happily studying literature in a small Graduate program in Southern California. It was intimate and the professors were challenging and smart and I was super excited about my second semester, because I’d decided that 20th century American lit was my true love and I’d be able to take two classes in that genre. Both with the same professor, it turned out, who was also the head of American Lit in the tiny department, which had only 3 full professors. The first day in my first class with her, she asked a question about something in the play we were reading. It wasn’t a very good question, and the dozen folks in the class met her with silence. I have always felt bad when teachers are met with apathy, deserved or not, so after a minute I took a stab at it. She was unimpressed with my answer, and responded in a way that misinterpreted what I had said. I attempted to clarify, and was met with

“Z, you shouldn’t be so contentious.”

Again, I was stunned into silence. Was I picking a fight? I thought we were just having a discussion. I was thrown and dizzy and didn’t say anything else. She rambled on with her theory. No one responded. At the mid-class break, a half dozen people, most of whom I didn’t know, surrounded me outside the building.

“What was that about?”

“Do you have a history with her?”

“Why is she after you?”

I was so grateful, again, to have my perceptions and my sanity validated. I told them I had never met her before that night, and there was a lot of head shaking. As I trudged on through the semester, two of my three classes with this so called Feminist, Ms. Martin (I am not shitting you), I found out that no one thought she was a good teacher, and legend was she found a female student to pick on every year. Though no one directly stood up to her behavior (it was hard, because it was subtle), I was still comforted when classmates, some now friends, confirmed that she regularly dismissed my contributions as irrelevant or offbase, then attributed them to other students with praise. She gave me A minuses on every paper, and when I would ask what was missing, where I could improve, she never had an answer for me. Her class was the only one in which I received less than an A for my semester grade. (Why did I keep making comments in class? Because I love discussing literature with others more than I hated validating her leadership by actively participating)

But the greatest comfort (and most shocking part of this story) was when the head of the department and my randomly assigned advisor, an equanimous, brilliant little woman with whom I had taken a few Early Modern Lit classes, met with me to discuss my current classes and plans for the next year.

“So, how are things with Ms. Martin?”

I was a bit surprised by the question. “Well…” how much could I tell her?

She got up and shut her door, then returned, sat down, and waited. I told her just a little of what had transpired between us. She told me that Ms. Martin tended to feel intimidated by certain female students. She said she thought Ms. Martin was “not very smart” and “not a good teacher” and was probably threatened by me. She said she was sorry that my interests lay in Martin’s so-called area of expertise. But she was a full professor and there wasn’t much that could be done. Maybe I could avoid her classes going forward?

But she taught most of the American Lit classes, and if I attempted to earn a doctorate I would have no choice but to have her on my committee. So I completed my Master’s and left. At the top of my class, despite Martin’s machinations to cut me down.

Most of my teachers and bosses have been female. Some were good, some weren’t; but until recently, I’ve only had clear, personal problems with those two. Most of my close friends are female. My beloved online sangha is almost entirely female. My fortifying DEI Officers were, until recently, all female.

So it was shocking to get hit with another vindictive female authority figure, at my age. Or not so shocking. The head of HR definitely falls into that pseudo-feminist, going after women, category as well, but I’ve dealt with her for years now. As much as I wish she weren’t there, I at least feel like I’ve seen her worst and can handle it. But now there’s this new CEO. And it is so hard, friends. It is so hard feeling hated and gaslit.

And alone. I attended a training today where the CEO sprayed her hypocrisy all over the Zoom, talking about how important it is that we talk about things in the open and have difficult discussions. Meanwhile she is actively blocking my work and excluding me from opportunities because I’ve questioned her decisions and stood up to her abusive behavior. And none of my like-minded homies were there to text our frustration at each other. I was literally screaming at the screen, with my video and mic off, while she blathered on with her lies. Could you hear me? I’m sure my neighbors could.

So what’s the lesson in this moment? I can find at least a couple.

  1. I gotta get out of this place. Every time I’ve been fired (once) or laid off (once) or quit a job, it’s always pushed me in a better direction. I have to trust that it will likewise do that this time.
  2. Being covertly targeted feels awful. It’s been so long, I had forgotten what it feels like. It is a form of gaslighting and even though I know that term comes from the titular play/movie, it is far more apt than that. It burns and consumes. I feel it eating away at me, and feel the self I bring to the workplace markedly diminished, weakened, charred. Not having allies present to confirm the behavior makes it worse. As I sat writing, burning up in the glow of hypocrisy this week, I thought about all the women and Black and Native and LGBT and other members of non-dominant groups who have been disbelieved and ostracized and shamed and laughed at and had their stories and their feelings dismissed as fantasy or paranoia. My heart opens to them. I don’t like being back in this space, but it does me good to get another taste of their pain and recognize my own complicity in some of that marginalization (again, Feminist Failure blog to follow).
  3. Being decent, honest, well-intentioned, or even right does not mean people will like you. At times it is precisely why people won’t like you. And you gotta decide what you’re willing to risk to keep doing what you think is right, and what it is in your nature to do.
  4. Nothing is certain. You can’t control anything but your own reactions.

I keep telling myself that. One day it will sink in.

Thanks for letting me get this off my shoulders. I’d like to keep it there.

Harper’s Scary

Long Live Bad Puns!

harpersI’m afraid to open this month’s Harper’s magazine, which our mail carrier crammed into my mailbox a week ago, over the objections of a squirrel-deformed jack-o-lantern, a Día de los Muertos calavera, and the dog.

I’ve subscribed to Harper’s continually for nearly a decade, and periodically before that. It was a primary source when I was writing about forgotten female horror writers of the early 20th century in grad school. The Guy & I have a monthly ritual of quizzing each other on the Harper’s Index at breakfast, and the Readings section has provided some of my favorite hilarious lists, bizarre transcripts, and brief personal narratives of all time.

But the last year has made me question my loyalty. It started with the rambling, pathetic, not-mea-culpa by John Hockenberry, entitled My Life in Exile. Continue reading “Harper’s Scary” →

Feminism & Racism: Up Close & Personal

femrac

Some of my feminist behaviors are actually acts of white supremacy.

Damn it.

I’ve been on a Racism Awareness journey over the past year. Well, for longer than that, but aggressively over the past year – reading lots, talking with folks on their own journeys, facilitating conversations on race as much as they’ll let me, going to conferences on equity, volunteering as Secretary on the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee at work … stuff like that.

Simultaneously, I have been on a feminist journey: a #me-tooing of my own. This hasn’t required any books, just a clear-headed, clear-eyed recognition of life as it is and has been for me for decades.

My habitual behavior in the realm of the latter is to recognize blatant sexual assault and blatantly sexist language (and in my case to apply feminist analysis to works of literature and art), but to “deal with” the rest as the necessary burden of being female in the world. To play the game, laugh at the jokes, tolerate the piggery. Because we can. Because we are strong enough to do so. Because we can take jokes. (Unlike men. Don’t panic, guys. She’s a professional comedian.) Because we know how to “play with the big boys.” I realized last year that this is not necessarily healthy, and I’m certainly not the only woman doing it. And while I don’t regret behaving in that way, it is a coping mechanism performed out of defensive necessity. I should not have to be tolerant in the face of offense or attack or abuse. I should be able to call it out and have it redressed. That has been a difficult thing to accept, because I take so much pride in my toughness, my ability to withstand sexist bullshit, but in reality it is much braver to upend the game than to play along. I also have to recognize that I have looked down on women who “couldn’t take it,” who chose to make themselves vulnerable by calling out the crap, and I am not proud of that.

It took a bit more formal education and a bit more time to recognize that there was another destructive aspect to the persona I’ve cultivated in response to sexism. I have made it a point to be heard, to express opinions, to speak out at work, to argue and disagree and confront professors because it is my responsibility to fly in the face of stereotypes of female inadequacy and submission and deference. What I never thought to recognize is that while this might be a stand against patriarchy, it’s right in step with the white supremacist culture in which I was born and raised and live.

I have never thought of my assertiveness as consensual with white supremacy, but it is. It’s hard to say what threatens white men more – women or Black people – the threats are different and context is everything – but as a white woman I have certain privileges that Black men and Black women do not have, and I have taken advantage of that privilege more times than I can count. A big one with me is the right to be angry. While I might be described as shrill or hysterical if I openly express anger, I am not perceived as a threat and I’m not usually written off. That is not typically true for Black people in America, because it feeds into the manufactured stereotypes which I certainly don’t need to explain here.

So this idea of standing up to authority, of being what I am in spite of the powers that be: much of that has been an illusion. And coming to terms with that has been … interesting. It doesn’t mean I stop, but it means I bring a little more mindfulness to that behavior. Powerful white men have always benefited from pitting various “others” against each other, but it’s particularly upsetting when we do it without their (explicit) help.

When you start to recognize that we live in a society anchored in the bedrock of white superiority, your perspective on everything changes. The new vista isn’t always pretty, especially when you’re looking in the mirror. If you’re trying to head off another excuse for self-loathing, it helps to recognize that we are all soaking in it, and it takes a lot of work to scrub this shit off.