I don't know how to protect kids from their peer groups

[rinue]

I continue to be horrified by contemporary American teen boy culture. I stepped out of the paint store and a group of white boys in a car started yelling "hey pussy, hey pussy, hey pussy, look at you pussy." The five women on the street immediately tensed up - but no, they continued with "does that P stand for pussy," at which point I figured out they were catcalling the one guy on the street, who had a P on his shirt that I'd guess represented some sports team or school. When one of them women was obviously upset, the boys' response was a defensive "it's okay, he's our friend." As though by yelling they weren't also talking to everyone else on the street.

It actually makes it worse that it didn't occur to them to take into account the five women present, that we were invisible to them. It's the ultimate misogyny, the ultimate entitlement, to not bother to notice who is on the street with you. What luxury to not think other people have feelings, or ears. What privilege to assume they can't or won't hurt you back. And this is Winchester. You can bet every one of the women had graduate degrees, money, lawyers, and some measure of political influence.

I don't remember it being this bad when I was younger. I don't remember white guys from 16 to 80 feeling free to call me out or shout sexual profanity without a sense that it was transgressive. Some measure of that has to come from good luck, and from being something of a hermit; I'm sure that played a factor. But I don't think that explains it all the way. I don't understand how macho culture can be so resilient, or who is passing it down, or why we seem to have decided again that it's not important. There was a moment in the late 70's and early 80's when we were going to change things. And then we didn't. Maybe it's because the Cosby Show ended. Maybe it's because Jim Henson died. I don't know.

Comments

[movingfinger]

If the cops pull the little shits over and take them in for disturbing the peace, their parents will sue. That's what changed.

[rinue]

Right, but why won't all those women sue? And what mom is cool with that behavior, or cool with a husband who is cool with that? I don't get it. I also can't imagine thinking my kid was perfect, which seems to be a meme, so there's that.

[movingfinger]

The cops would have to take it seriously enough to do something when a woman complained. Clearly they don't and I doubt they will. If the catcallers were operating their vehicle erratically, notice might be taken.

The my-children-are-perfect-how-dare-you-imply-otherwise thing has been carried to a rare height recently, yes.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

It's wrapped up in a discussion about appropriation/subversion of revolutionary tactics, especially the sex-positive movement, but the shortest way to say it is the failure of Third Wave.

So, you know, Haraway FTW.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not saying it's the FAULT of third wave. I'm saying that the movement was appropriated. These ideas were not able to hold off the patriarchal opposition because it changed to subvert them (although I think that by taking a stance that is essentially woman-power-to-women and man-power-to-men is just asking for trouble). Ergo it failed. I phrase it this way because if you don't, you lose the chance to emphasize how Third Wave ideas have become incorporated into the problem and are not part of the solution. Everyone knows misogyny is bad. What they don't know is how Third Wave has become a tool of misogyny.

How do we get from there to teenage boys saying pussy in the street? As a vernacular phrase, most of them probably started using it well before they knew its denotation—so it was already deeply rooted in their vulgar lexicon. As they reach puberty and their sexual perspectives become important to them, they learn dominant attitudes about sexuality which have not changed as much as they were supposed to, in fact only disguises themselves (this is actually pretty well encapsulated in Demi Moore's bloody-mouthed utterance of "Suck my dick," at her CO in GI Jane). There's an edge of "irony" to "pussy" that allows it to function in a "post-feminist" (good fucking god) mainstream—"No, it's okay, he's my friend." (Or, "I was just repeating a movie line from a movie that's supposed to take place in the 70s," or, "I didn't mean literally pussy. I would never ACTUALLY say pussy," or "Isn't it funny that I said something you're not supposed to say but now isn't offensive because we're all open about our sexuality," or whatever.) Macho culture persists because of its ironic defenses and because of an idea that it has an innocent authenticity to it. It's "the way men are." It "belongs" to them.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

I should also add that I don't think the main issue with Third Wave was how it regarded men—even if you decide it treated them primarily as antagonists, it must be noted that that was a fairly accurate description of majority male behavior, and that a certain amount of rising up to slay your oppressor is always necessary. I actually think its main weakness was how it regarded women—essentially "female" (a word and construction built under patriarchal authority), natural victims/prey, and limited to womanly powers and powers rooted in mystical metaphors about sex (even if you stretch the boundaries of "womanly," or titillate with female grease monkeys and female soldiers, you're still agreeing with the algorithm of misogyny—you've just replaced some of the variables).

Harraway's main point is the abolition of essentialism, but even more interesting than that is how she understood that in order to correct misogyny/patriarchy/gender-divide, you have to completely change your understanding of what it means to be human, to interrogate the accepted relationship to your own biology, to expand the sphere of the argument well outside men and women, to abandon philosophic underpinnings (teleology, Plato, etc) that are in many ways unrelated to sex or gender and therefore never make it into discussions of gender equality. You also have to address culture with methods that culture understands — bra burning and so forth are simply too blunt.

[rinue]

Okay, this makes more sense. The Haraway FTW was throwing me off because I thought you were saying that Haraway had won and caused this, which didn't make sense to me, when you were in fact saying "this is why one must operate according to Haraway to beat this."

It occurred to me the other day - and I don't think this is unique, and it isn't unique even to me but is something I keep turning over in my head and rediscovering - is that any individual bad actor is stronger than any individual good actor (if we are thinking of "good" as basically compassionate and "bad" as essentially selfish) because the good actor will move slower and have access to fewer options. (Fewer options in this case doesn't speed anything up, because you're still having to take into account many more people who will be affected than the bad actor does.) So the only way the good guys win is either through sheer numbers or through sheer persistence, which work out to roughly the same thing if you think of them in terms of man-hours.

In that context, it becomes vitally important that you don't have attrition among the good guys, because the only way to not drown is to have overwhelming numbers on the good guy side. Which makes controlling the culture and the cultural really, really, really important. (Also, I'm tired of people talking about Hollywood as liberal. They may donate to Democrats, but they are not liberal or they would be making different movies and TV shows.)

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

I think that last parenthetical belongs on t-shirts and bumper stickers.

[rinue]

You know I have issues with several aspects of the third wave, including "I will give up my life to raise my children because that is the essence of WOMAN, as is suffering." I think there's been a general lot of whining from the children of boomers, and fake spirituality, and wanting to believe the easy things are also the noble things. The self-esteem problem.

But I don't buy that it's the feminist movement's fault that sporting event culture that's been around since at least the turn of the century is still around. And I can't imagine it's feminists who are telling their sons this is okay, or telling fathers and teachers and coaches it's okay to train their sons to be this way. I also don't really think the feminist movement is responsible for the state of television.

I might think that we should be more aggressive about those things (bearing in mind that most theorists don't recognize the existence of the fourth wave and believe that people like you and me are third wave, which they say started in the 90's), but do I think we're creating them? I don't. It would be nice if it was that simple, because I think I'd have a much easier time marshaling co-feminists than marshaling everyone else.

I suspect you meant something different than how this comment comes off to me. But I don't know what that meaning is. I would have guessed that you were saying that this goes to show you can't have a feminist movement without thinking of the place of men in it, which is completely true (and as discussed is the third-wave separatist failure that has to be remedied by fourth wave), but I didn't think that was most of Haraway's argument, which I thought tried to be post-gender and therefore would include men (and which certainly wouldn't look kindly on reducing women to a body part a la "pussy"). What am I not following here?

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

For some reason my reply posted funny. It's actually above.

[rinue]

I think that's my fault. I was messing around with my comment to fix an accidental elision.

[(Anonymous)]

Can't remember what the hell I was reading recently, but it had some comment along the lines that, regardless of age, race or class barriers, ask a group of women when they remember being first made aware of their sexuality, and the majority will associate it with some arsehole talking shit at them.

It's the ultimate misogyny, the ultimate entitlement, to not bother to notice who is on the street with you.

I hear you.

(tree)