A woman's handy guide to navigating the patriarchy

[sqbr]

So I woke up at 5am this morning coughing and couldn't get back to sleep, and filled the time with whatever random links I came accross, as it happens a whole bunch of feminist discussion. This combined with various ideas and stuff in my head to create A woman's handy guide to navigating the patriarchy. Definitely a first second draft, what with the whole "made at 5am" thing, and obviously it's a bunch of huge generalisations, it's satire. (And much snarkier satire than I do normally, being up at 5am makes me cranky)

I've had the idea for a flowchart illustrating the fact that women are screwed whatever we do for a while, mostly inspired by various commenters on posts about sexual assault going "But if she'd just...". Specifically, the realisation that the level of attention we're expected to give men to be "polite" is higher than the cut-off for the level of attention which counts as "leading a guy on, it's your own fault if you get assaulted".

Some specific links which got me thinking for various reasons:
Comics oughta be fun!: a serious note and various follow on posts
Versions of Equality
Why I never want to hear the term 'high maintenance' again
Why I am not a feminist
WARNING: has fairly graphic rape description Real consent manifesto and it's comments (especially the guy who kept saying "But if she'd just used a safe word...")

Stupid muse giving me ideas I'm ill equipped to implement, I suck at diagrams. Cam helped a lot in making it clearer, and the "worthy of respect" box was his idea :) There's a lot more things I could add, but it's complicated enough as it is!

Comments

[nicholii.livejournal.com]

Whilst, yes, I can see that this is designed to be a satire, it still puts me off somewhat.

I don't feel that I need to defend myself, I know that I don't treat women like that, and it doesn't really matter what other people think of me (though I'm pretty sure that those around me also know that I don't treat women like that). I realise that I treat women differently to men, but I don't feel that I do this in an unfair way, I just find girls to be attractive in a way that guys cannot be.

So what problem do I have with this? I don't know, it just sets off alarm bells. I went through a sort of mentally destructive period of misandry in my teens (or at least I feel that it was destructive). I feel that in a way, analysing myself in terms of "evil" male desires that I should supress, in many ways was misogynistic because it led to warped or skewed ways of relating to girls.

I'm not saying that talking about "the patriarchy" is exactly like that, but I am in many respects tired of gender analysis. Too many of my tutorials and classes in history have come down to analyses of gender power relationships, where in many cases I feel that this is a dangerous oversimplification.

Also, I feel that cultural or social ways of judging and viewing gender cannot be called patriarchy, or matriarchy for that matter, since culture and society involve both males and females, and saying that females are only defined by the way that males view them, is obviously incorrect. One can describe hierarchies of power as patriarchal or matriarchal, but only in the way that power is allocated and integrated, and I do not feel that the way that material wealth or power is the be all and end all of gender.

I do not think that I know that much about this topic, partly because of a degree of apathy that I will freely admit (one might criticise my male privilege, but I do not think that a fatal flaw in this regard). It does not so much matter to me how other people view gender relations, what I care about is how I relate to those around me, how I feel about myself, and how those whom I care about feel about themselves. I am far more likely to feel that I have a responsibility to make those around me feel good about themselves, than I am to care about how some academics define gender.

So I may well be far less knowledgeable than the others whom pass comment on this topic, but I do not feel that my opinion is any less valid. I just felt that I should make some comment, as you have always seemed to be an interesting person to me, and yet I feel less and less able to engage with the things that you post about these days. There is a degree to which I flinch away from the perceived high-and-mightiness of some of your posting, and in a certain way it strikes me as irrational, even though you may post about real events.

I may just be being difficult myself. I don't know. Maybe I am divorced from reality in some respect, but I feel that truth is found in living and in feeling, not in empirical or psychological analysis. But that is straying close to metaphysical arguments, so perhaps now is a good time for me to shut up.

[nicholii.livejournal.com]

And, rereading over what I just wrote, I feel that i should express my own amusement at the mannerisms in my writing, which in are in ways confused and perplexing.

Re: my latest post

[alias_sqbr]

Just so you know, I do intend on writing you a specific reply, but decided it was best to get the broader stuff out in a separate post or my ideas would get too muddled and long winded to make any sense.

But first: Weight watchers!

My actual reply: Part 1 (aren't you glad I took some of it out?)

[alias_sqbr]

Ok, various points (riffing on the general themes of this post)

*The main aim of the diagram was me expressing an epiphany about the way women are screwed at every turn in society. It was largely aimed at other women and male feminists who already agree with me but would be amused/interested in the particular way I expressed the ideas. A lot of the feminist etc stuff I do is aimed to be accessible to non-feminists, but this wasn't.

what I care about is how I relate to those around me, how I feel about myself, and how those whom I care about feel about themselves. I am far more likely to feel that I have a responsibility to make those around me feel good about themselves, than I am to care about how some academics define gender.

Two issues with this:
First, I and the people around me (and, thus the people around you) experience sexism. This is unpleasant. I've been pondering making a post about the sexism that I personally have experienced since while it's not this Major Unbearable Burden (and I do get very annoyed at other straight white middle class women who act like we're the Most Oppressed Group Ever, because we're seriously not) I do think it is worse than most men realise.

The most unambiguous example I can think of is that pretty much every woman I know who lives with a man is continuously pissed off at having to do an unfair amount of housework. It doesn't matter how much they talk about it and agree it should be fair, or how good the guys intentions, it still ends up unfair. This is even in cases where the woman works and the man doesn't.

This isn't some abstract issue, this is a practical source of major friction in a huge majority of relationships (including mine, though Cam is also just lazy) n.b. I do NOT think this is a result of men being inferior to women in any way. It's a result of the different way the two genders are brought up.

But secondly: I believe very strongly that it's important to care about stuff which happens to people you don't know. I mean..I don't know anyone in Iraq, doesn't mean I don't have strong opinions on what's happening there, you know? I do have some sympathy for mainly concentrating on being a good person to the people around you, and obviously it's just not feasible to care about every single global injustice, but I think you need to consider them at least a bit, especially when your own behaviour affects them (such as voting for a prime minister based in part on their foreign/social justice policy etc)

*I do have an interest in general gender theory from an abstract theoretical POV, as part of a general interest in humanties-ish ideas, and to some extent now that I have the "feminism" hammer everything is starting to look like a gender-related nail. I can see how that would be annoying if you're not extraspecially interested in gender theory.

But that's not where this particular post was mainly coming from. And I don't need academics to tell me the world is sexist, I've just found their analysis helps me get my previously very muddled opinions clear in my head.

Re: My actual reply: Part 2

[alias_sqbr]

I feel that truth is found in living and in feeling, not in empirical or psychological analysis

Ahaha, yeah, that is pretty far from the way I see things, I'm all about the rational analysis and have a deep distrust of emotion. (Which is funny, since I think yours is the more stereotypically "female" view :D) But we all think in different ways, and I'm sure your way works for you.

I will note that this post was one of the rare ones I make which did express unfettered emotion to some extent, it's just that that emotion was anger and bitterness. (This is one of the reasons I distrust my emotions, a lot of them just aren't very nice)

I used to deliberately not express my opinions about this sort of stuff because I knew it would piss people off and I'm a big sook about conflict. For example, the last time I went through a big period of introspection and discussion on a topic like I am currently with feminism etc was about five years ago, about atheism, but I kept it all on atheist discussion boards and almost never mentioned it on my blog. Since then I've decided that's dumb: this is my blog, and if I feel like discussing something and people don't like it they don't have to read it. Otherwise I'm pretending to be something I'm not. Interestingness is definitely a secondary priority, though I do try to put stuff that a large number of people may find uninteresting/annoying under a cut.

You may be amused (or..something) to note that I've occasionally thought to myself "If Nick can use his lj to post whatever he's thinking about without thought to whether or not people want to read it, then so can I" :)

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the train of events was this:
I decide I need to be less emotionally repressed and express my negative emotions
I realise that the one thing that I most often bite my tongue about, and about which I have this huge unexpressed sense of frustration and anger, is racism
I start looking into and talking about racism
As a result I somewhat incidentally learn more about feminism
I get pissed off about that too

So there you go. I do tend to express the underlying "Sophie Smash Patriarchy!" anger through a filter of calm rational argument (for various reasons, partly it just helps me figure out what I really think), but the emotion is definitely the impetus.