Yes, you read that right. Feminists are just as much men's allies as we are women's. For one very simple reason: misogyny and sexism harm everyone, including men. It seems like a strange concept, that hate can harm the oppressor right along with the oppressed. But in the case of the sexes, that's exactly what happens because people aren't stereotypes.
Just like women don't all want to stand barefoot in your kitchen making sandwiches all day, men don't all want to do what their gender role tells them, either. Not all men want to be emotionally distant workaholics who rarely see their spouse and/or children. Not all men want to play football with their sons and ignore their daughters (except to police their love-lives). Not all men like feeling pressured to ditch dinner plans with their wives to go bar-hopping with their friends. Not all men want wives, either, just as not all women want husbands. Some men want husbands. Some women want wives. Some want neither.
Not every man is the self-absorbed chauvinistic asshole society tells him he should be.
And the reason feminists are your friends is because feminists are the first people to tell you "fuck that noise."
See, feminism isn't anti-men; feminism is anti-patriarchy. And yes, there is a difference.
Men are individuals. Men are people with agency. Patriarchy is the system that robs every human being on earth, man, woman, and everyone in between, of the agency they should have and dictates to them what they're supposed to act like based entirely on what gender they're perceived to be. Patriarchy is the force that is reducing your character, your intelligence, and your ability to make your own decisions to a single fucking chromosome and telling you to accept it by giving that chromosome a trainload of societal advantages.
Patriarchy is not just the rule of the world by men. Because even if men were in charge but ruled everything and everyone with respect and dignity, we wouldn't have a problem. Patriarchy is instead the rule of men based solely on the fear and hatred of women. Patriarchy is the division of society into strong and weak, worthy and unworthy, people and not-people, based entirely on which of two convenient little gender tickyboxes they happen to fall into.
It's the system that feminists want to get rid of, because we know that it's what holds us back as people.
Feminists don't just want women to become doctors and lawyers and construction workers and firefighters if they wish, without the fear of harassment over it. Feminists want men to become hairdressers and librarians and secretaries and stay-at-home dads if they wish, because those jobs are not inferior just because they're traditionally associated with women.
We don't just want women to be able to walk down the street in stiletto heels and a crop top without getting catcalled and harassed because we want to feel pretty and confident in peace and safety. We also want men to be able to walk down the street in pink tutus with glitter in their hair because if doing so makes them feel awesome, they should be able to do so in peace and safety as well. Because pink tutus and glitter are not shameful for men to wear.
We don't just want women to be taken seriously even when we're emotional. We want men to be able to show emotion openly and talk about things that bother them. Because emotions are a human thing and their expression should not be a source of shame or derision for anybody.
We don't just want women to stop being blamed for the sexual violence done to them. We want men who are raped and abused to also be able to talk about their experiences and seek help without feeling judged and ashamed or that they "let it happen" somehow. Because nobody ever "lets" rape happen to them no matter how strong they are. Because rape can and does happen to anybody, and no victim should ever feel like they can't tell their story.
More than anyone, feminists believe in the inherent humanity of men. We believe men are not born monsters. We believe that men are in full control of themselves, every moment of every day. We believe that the men who act like assholes choose to do so, because they have been raised in a toxic social climate of patriarchy that tells them such behavior is acceptable and even righteous. And we believe that every man on earth has the moral capacity and empathy for others to reject patriarchy and choose not to act in such a manner.
But if you still need to know what's in it for you as a man who is a feminist? Here are some starters:
If you want women to be held accountable for their actions just as men are, then challenge the notion that women are natural caregivers and incapable of certain behaviors just because they're women.
If you want men to be able to openly like "unmanly" things without getting ridiculed or persecuted, then challenge the notion that everything associated with women is inferior and shameful.
If you want men who are victims of abuse and rape given the support they need, then challenge the idea that men are strong and therefore can't be abused or raped.
If you want men to not be seen as sex-crazed monsters incapable of controlling themselves, then stand up and challenge the rape culture that patriarchy has fostered over millennia.
If you want equality, then help us fight the patriarchal system that tells us all that we are and all we can be is limited by what gender we're perceived as. Help us fight the system that tells us one gender is deserving of respect and dignity and the other is not.
If you want equality? Be a feminist.
Statcounter
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
We Can't Call Ourselves a Democracy Anymore
Or at least we can't until every last member of Congress who is on the Koch brothers' and Heritage Foundation's payroll has been sent home packing. That's what the last few years of escalated pointless infighting should be teaching every single person in the country who is eligible to vote.
The word itself comes from the Greek δημοκρατία, meaning "rule of the people." This busted-ass system is as far removed from that as it can get at the moment without throwing up its hands and asking England to come back and take over. You cannot call yourself a "rule of the people" when your government is doing the exact opposite of what the people want because it's following the money rather than the voters.
The problem we have is that due to the deep pockets of millionaires who hate government making pesky laws that tell them there are only so many ways they can abuse people for a quick buck, the system has been rigged since the Gerrymanderpocalypse of 2010 to elect people to government who hate governing.
The irony, of course, is that this is all coming from a group that claims to love the U.S. and wishes to rescue it from the hands of filthy progressives. The irony is that they "love" the U.S. like a NASCAR fan loves his battered wife.
See, the Tea Party's whole crusade against taxes because they love America is the stupidest damned thing since NASCAR itself. Federal income tax was implemented by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican president from a much different time when the party platforms were flipped; the Republican Party was originally founded by anti-slavery activists, and the insistence on small government was in regard to stopping the plantation system that left small, independent farmers with shitty land because rich slaveowners bought up all the good stuff. The original Republican slogan was "free labor, free land, free men."
Republicans originally wanted small government not because they believed government is inherently bad, but because the government at the time was both large and corrupt as hell. And that small government would start with the abolition of slavery, or so they thought. Even then they were the party of business, but for different reasons. The original goal of the party was to keep what it viewed as government's sticky fingers out of private business. Because that's where corruption starts.
They were the party of business, yes. But small business. Republicans of Lincoln's time up until the 1930s were about protecting the mom-and-pop family-owned ventures from being run out of town by huge corporations they could never compete with. They felt everyone had the right to success, and that right would be best preserved by making business fair.
Remember Theodore "Trust-Buster" Roosevelt? The guy who fought to break up shit like price-fixing and gentleman's agreements between large businesses that were squeezing out little-guy competition? He's the Patron Saint of the old school Republican party.
So what happened that changed the party ideals? Two things: The Crash of 1929/Great Depression and World War II.
The 1929 stock market crashes that precipitated the Great Depression could best be described as "too much of a good thing." By the Roaring Twenties, government had abandoned agriculture for big-city business, such that rural populations were giving farming the finger and moving to the city where they hoped to find work. Credit and investment had just become a thing, and people were partying like a kid on their 21st birthday with them. Republican economic policies only saw the short-term benefit (read: shitloads of money), and not the long-term risks.
Once the crash happened and Ted Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, became president and started enacting common sense stuff that works (Medicare, Social Security, etc.), that was the beginning of today's Republican party, trying to reclaim the completely unsustainable prosperity of the 1920s.
Really, the Republican Party of today, and the Tea Party in particular, are more like the NASCAR fan who is trying to make his battered wife starve herself back into her wedding dress so he can re-live the glory days when Dale Earnhardt was still alive and diet soda didn't exist.
To that end, the GOP's answer isn't so much "smaller government" as "no government." See, "government doesn't work" is a self-fulfilling prophecy; progressives have proven for nearly a century that government totally fucking works when you have people running the country who want to make it work. When you hire people who hate their job, of course service is going to suck. A trip to Wal-Mart is enough to prove that.
We tried the GOP's way of doing government twice in the last thirty years. Once in the 1980s, and again in the 2000s. Both times failed spectacularly, and both times it took a Democrat who cared about the country as a whole instead of just his campaign donors to get shit done.
What we need to do now to fix this country and get it back to a sustainable state is, ironically, to do what any business would:
Get rid of the people who don't want to do their fucking job.
The word itself comes from the Greek δημοκρατία, meaning "rule of the people." This busted-ass system is as far removed from that as it can get at the moment without throwing up its hands and asking England to come back and take over. You cannot call yourself a "rule of the people" when your government is doing the exact opposite of what the people want because it's following the money rather than the voters.
The problem we have is that due to the deep pockets of millionaires who hate government making pesky laws that tell them there are only so many ways they can abuse people for a quick buck, the system has been rigged since the Gerrymanderpocalypse of 2010 to elect people to government who hate governing.
The irony, of course, is that this is all coming from a group that claims to love the U.S. and wishes to rescue it from the hands of filthy progressives. The irony is that they "love" the U.S. like a NASCAR fan loves his battered wife.
See, the Tea Party's whole crusade against taxes because they love America is the stupidest damned thing since NASCAR itself. Federal income tax was implemented by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican president from a much different time when the party platforms were flipped; the Republican Party was originally founded by anti-slavery activists, and the insistence on small government was in regard to stopping the plantation system that left small, independent farmers with shitty land because rich slaveowners bought up all the good stuff. The original Republican slogan was "free labor, free land, free men."
Republicans originally wanted small government not because they believed government is inherently bad, but because the government at the time was both large and corrupt as hell. And that small government would start with the abolition of slavery, or so they thought. Even then they were the party of business, but for different reasons. The original goal of the party was to keep what it viewed as government's sticky fingers out of private business. Because that's where corruption starts.
They were the party of business, yes. But small business. Republicans of Lincoln's time up until the 1930s were about protecting the mom-and-pop family-owned ventures from being run out of town by huge corporations they could never compete with. They felt everyone had the right to success, and that right would be best preserved by making business fair.
Remember Theodore "Trust-Buster" Roosevelt? The guy who fought to break up shit like price-fixing and gentleman's agreements between large businesses that were squeezing out little-guy competition? He's the Patron Saint of the old school Republican party.
So what happened that changed the party ideals? Two things: The Crash of 1929/Great Depression and World War II.
The 1929 stock market crashes that precipitated the Great Depression could best be described as "too much of a good thing." By the Roaring Twenties, government had abandoned agriculture for big-city business, such that rural populations were giving farming the finger and moving to the city where they hoped to find work. Credit and investment had just become a thing, and people were partying like a kid on their 21st birthday with them. Republican economic policies only saw the short-term benefit (read: shitloads of money), and not the long-term risks.
Once the crash happened and Ted Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, became president and started enacting common sense stuff that works (Medicare, Social Security, etc.), that was the beginning of today's Republican party, trying to reclaim the completely unsustainable prosperity of the 1920s.
Really, the Republican Party of today, and the Tea Party in particular, are more like the NASCAR fan who is trying to make his battered wife starve herself back into her wedding dress so he can re-live the glory days when Dale Earnhardt was still alive and diet soda didn't exist.
To that end, the GOP's answer isn't so much "smaller government" as "no government." See, "government doesn't work" is a self-fulfilling prophecy; progressives have proven for nearly a century that government totally fucking works when you have people running the country who want to make it work. When you hire people who hate their job, of course service is going to suck. A trip to Wal-Mart is enough to prove that.
We tried the GOP's way of doing government twice in the last thirty years. Once in the 1980s, and again in the 2000s. Both times failed spectacularly, and both times it took a Democrat who cared about the country as a whole instead of just his campaign donors to get shit done.
What we need to do now to fix this country and get it back to a sustainable state is, ironically, to do what any business would:
Get rid of the people who don't want to do their fucking job.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
You Don't Get to Blame the Bank When the Robber Shoots the Hostage
Or rather, why capitulation isn't compromise, and why Republicans need to go back to both high school English and high school civics to learn what those words mean and how they apply to the governing process.
See, the reason that the bank being robbed is not responsible for the hostages getting shot if they don't hand over the money is because the law does not want to encourage bank robberies by making them easier to accomplish and get away with. And that analogy applies to the current shutdown crisis, too. The Republican-controlled House took government functionality hostage, and demanded the Senate hand over ACA defunding measures. The Senate refused. Republicans shot the hostage, and now they and Rupert Murdoch's minions over at Fox Noise and CNN are trying to blame the Senate (because 2014 is not that far away and laying off -- yes, that's what "furlough" really means in practice -- 800,000 people is kind of a dick move and they know it).
The current problem with compromise is that those in charge of the House don't actually want to. Or at least they don't want to compromise in the way the word is supposed to work. In House Tea Party Republican Fantasyland, "compromise" means "give us what we want, full stop." And this is plainly obvious when you do the math. A simple majority in the House right now is 218 votes. There are 201 Democrats, and about 20 Republicans who have publicly indicated that they would vote in favor of a continuing resolution that leaves the ACA alone. Boehner refuses to bring it to a vote not because the votes to pass aren't there, but because they are and he's under the delusion that he needs the Tea Party's support in order to keep his leadership role (not even bothering with a joke here, it's easy enough that you can make up your own).
This becomes either doubly hilarious or doubly sad when as far as the American public is concerned, they have zero fucks to give about the Tea Party. Sad because this demented tantrum is costing millions of people badly needed assistance and paychecks and hurting an already struggling economy, and hilarious because it's like watching Mean Girls, in reverse, with a cast of men who are more than old enough to know better.
Compromise, in the real world, involves concessions that both sides can live with in order to resolve a conflict. When one side refuses to make any concessions and demands concessions they know will fuck over not just the other side, but a shitload of other people (many of whom will die without healthcare coverage they can afford), that's not compromise. That's terrorism. Just not the kind that uses trucks full of fertilizer. If House Republicans had the Senate chamber and every major city in the country wired to explode if they didn't get their way, we'd be calling it terrorism. Using the same tactic without the explosives doesn't make it different.
The irony, of course, is that this is the part where those of us on the left can quote the only intelligent thing that ever came out of Bush 43's mouth.
We will not negotiate with terrorists.
See, the reason that the bank being robbed is not responsible for the hostages getting shot if they don't hand over the money is because the law does not want to encourage bank robberies by making them easier to accomplish and get away with. And that analogy applies to the current shutdown crisis, too. The Republican-controlled House took government functionality hostage, and demanded the Senate hand over ACA defunding measures. The Senate refused. Republicans shot the hostage, and now they and Rupert Murdoch's minions over at Fox Noise and CNN are trying to blame the Senate (because 2014 is not that far away and laying off -- yes, that's what "furlough" really means in practice -- 800,000 people is kind of a dick move and they know it).
The current problem with compromise is that those in charge of the House don't actually want to. Or at least they don't want to compromise in the way the word is supposed to work. In House Tea Party Republican Fantasyland, "compromise" means "give us what we want, full stop." And this is plainly obvious when you do the math. A simple majority in the House right now is 218 votes. There are 201 Democrats, and about 20 Republicans who have publicly indicated that they would vote in favor of a continuing resolution that leaves the ACA alone. Boehner refuses to bring it to a vote not because the votes to pass aren't there, but because they are and he's under the delusion that he needs the Tea Party's support in order to keep his leadership role (not even bothering with a joke here, it's easy enough that you can make up your own).
This becomes either doubly hilarious or doubly sad when as far as the American public is concerned, they have zero fucks to give about the Tea Party. Sad because this demented tantrum is costing millions of people badly needed assistance and paychecks and hurting an already struggling economy, and hilarious because it's like watching Mean Girls, in reverse, with a cast of men who are more than old enough to know better.
Compromise, in the real world, involves concessions that both sides can live with in order to resolve a conflict. When one side refuses to make any concessions and demands concessions they know will fuck over not just the other side, but a shitload of other people (many of whom will die without healthcare coverage they can afford), that's not compromise. That's terrorism. Just not the kind that uses trucks full of fertilizer. If House Republicans had the Senate chamber and every major city in the country wired to explode if they didn't get their way, we'd be calling it terrorism. Using the same tactic without the explosives doesn't make it different.
The irony, of course, is that this is the part where those of us on the left can quote the only intelligent thing that ever came out of Bush 43's mouth.
We will not negotiate with terrorists.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
A Tale of Two Authors: Why It's Okay To Be Proud of Your Work
When Theodore Geisel wrote the manuscript for his first book in 1937, it was rejected by publishers at least 27 times. And Geisel himself got so frustrated with his lack of success that after Rejection Letter #27, he was on his way to chuck it into an incinerator and just forget the whole being a writer thing. On the way to the incinerator on Madison Ave., he ran into his friend Mike McClintock, who had just landed a job as a children's book editor for Vanguard Press. McClintock convinced Geisel not to burn the manuscript, and instead told him he would personally take a chance and publish it.
That manuscript was And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street! And yes, the man who nearly burned his own work because he was that sick of rejection was none other than Dr. Seuss, who would go on to write the books that defined childhood for generations of children worldwide.
When Stephen King wrote his fourth unpublished novel in 1973, he was so disgusted with his own work that he threw all but the first three pages in the trash. At the time, he was teaching English at Hampden Academy, and was so broke he'd disconnected his phone service. His wife, Tabitha, would've been more than justified in telling him to work on resumés instead of horror novels.
But she didn't.
Tabitha King instead dug the manuscript out of the trash and convinced her husband to finish it and submit it to a publisher. Because he had no phone, Doubleday had to contact him by telegram to say that the novel, Carrie, had been selected for publication with a $2,500 advance (1n 1974 $USD; accounting for inflation, that would be an $11,850 advance today). King would go on from there to write a body of work that redefined horror and mystery as genres, and taught us exactly how a book can scare the daylights out of us.
There's more than just a theme here of not giving up. The tale of these two authors is the tale of every artist who thinks they can't art. Musicians, dancers, writers, fine artists... Because as artists, we're told by society from the day we're capable of reasoning that we can't feel proud of our work unless other people like it, and sometimes not even then. We must reject compliments with a blush and a handwave because otherwise, we're proud and therefore sinful.
For every "believe in yourself" story, we're told not to praise our own work, to accept it when what we produce is awful, and to not let praise go to our heads. While "don't toot your own horn" isn't necessarily bad advice -- arrogance is not becoming on anybody -- the problem is that we aren't taught to listen when other people toot it, either. We're given conflicting messages and no way to resolve them. No balance point. No clear boundary between "sin" and "confidence." And so we grow up into our own harshest, most terrible critics because we're taught to believe that confidence is a sin.
That was the lesson that these two men learned, and had it not been for two extraordinary people -- a longtime friend with connections and a nose for risk, and a supportive wife who believed in her husband -- we would be missing out on some brilliant work, and the world would be a much sadder place.
Whenever you feel as an artist that you can't art and you'd be better off throwing all your work on a bonfire and salting the earth, remember these two guys, and the hundreds of other men and women just like them who thought they couldn't art, and ended up transforming the world because someone else thought otherwise.
It's okay to look at your work and think "damn, I'm good." Listen to the people who believe in you. Listen to the people who tell you that your work is worthwhile. It's okay to agree with them. Because like Mike McClintock and Tabitha King, they're more often right than wrong.
That manuscript was And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street! And yes, the man who nearly burned his own work because he was that sick of rejection was none other than Dr. Seuss, who would go on to write the books that defined childhood for generations of children worldwide.
When Stephen King wrote his fourth unpublished novel in 1973, he was so disgusted with his own work that he threw all but the first three pages in the trash. At the time, he was teaching English at Hampden Academy, and was so broke he'd disconnected his phone service. His wife, Tabitha, would've been more than justified in telling him to work on resumés instead of horror novels.
But she didn't.
Tabitha King instead dug the manuscript out of the trash and convinced her husband to finish it and submit it to a publisher. Because he had no phone, Doubleday had to contact him by telegram to say that the novel, Carrie, had been selected for publication with a $2,500 advance (1n 1974 $USD; accounting for inflation, that would be an $11,850 advance today). King would go on from there to write a body of work that redefined horror and mystery as genres, and taught us exactly how a book can scare the daylights out of us.
There's more than just a theme here of not giving up. The tale of these two authors is the tale of every artist who thinks they can't art. Musicians, dancers, writers, fine artists... Because as artists, we're told by society from the day we're capable of reasoning that we can't feel proud of our work unless other people like it, and sometimes not even then. We must reject compliments with a blush and a handwave because otherwise, we're proud and therefore sinful.
For every "believe in yourself" story, we're told not to praise our own work, to accept it when what we produce is awful, and to not let praise go to our heads. While "don't toot your own horn" isn't necessarily bad advice -- arrogance is not becoming on anybody -- the problem is that we aren't taught to listen when other people toot it, either. We're given conflicting messages and no way to resolve them. No balance point. No clear boundary between "sin" and "confidence." And so we grow up into our own harshest, most terrible critics because we're taught to believe that confidence is a sin.
That was the lesson that these two men learned, and had it not been for two extraordinary people -- a longtime friend with connections and a nose for risk, and a supportive wife who believed in her husband -- we would be missing out on some brilliant work, and the world would be a much sadder place.
Whenever you feel as an artist that you can't art and you'd be better off throwing all your work on a bonfire and salting the earth, remember these two guys, and the hundreds of other men and women just like them who thought they couldn't art, and ended up transforming the world because someone else thought otherwise.
It's okay to look at your work and think "damn, I'm good." Listen to the people who believe in you. Listen to the people who tell you that your work is worthwhile. It's okay to agree with them. Because like Mike McClintock and Tabitha King, they're more often right than wrong.
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