For a very long time, feminists fought for women to be recognized as fully human. They wanted to reclaim the word “people” for women in order to avoid hearing insulting and degrading verbal atrocities of the “people and women” or “human beings and women” variety.
In my own very chauvinistic language, an expression “A woman is a human being’s best friend” is very popular. We also have a very common proverb that says, “A hen is not a bird and a woman is not a person.” You can hear it on television, at the workplace, at school, or in the street all the time.
And now, finally, certain American feminists decided to turn back the clock and proclaim that, yet again, women are not people. And referring to women as people is offensive and wrong:
So I’m reading this CNN story about a dude who hacked into the accounts of famous “people,” also described as “individuals,” “entertainers,” and “celebrities.” There’s something all of these “people” seem to have in common, besides being famous, but I just can’t quite put my finger on what it is…
Of course, if you read an article by a male journalist and saw that he refers to women as “these “people””, you’d probably decide that he is a chauvinistic loser. Why is it, I wonder, that the most chauvinistically piggish anti-women statements so often come out of the mouths of feminists?
Clarissa's Blog 
It’s gotcha identity politics — which supports my thesis that identity politics is often a sado-masochistic system in its own right.
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S&M gives pleasure to both participants. Identity politics is similarly painful and pleasant at the same time. It wouldn’t work otherwise.
I have to say that it’s very gratifying finally to meet somebody who gets me on this issue and has very similar ideas. And somebody in Australia, too. 🙂
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We are learning from each other, maybe. Your views are helping to consolidate mine. The changing of the goal posts all the time, so that one is never quite able to attain the inner moral purity that one seeks via identity politics — yes; that maintains the pleasure/pain quotient. But it also retains the stasis of the system as it is. It’s the hamster treading on its mill, going nowhere, but enjoying itself.
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Do you ever feel tempted to participate in identity politics?
I agree with the hamster on the wheel metaphor. A collective identity is a fictitious concept that needs to be recreated through constant reiteration on a daily basis. You spin the wheels just to stay in the same place.
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I don’t get involved in identity politics directly, but I have often engaged in trying to reverse engineer it, so that somebody who employs a system of rhetoric against me gets a surprise they weren’t bargaining for. I suspect I once gained some small satisfaction from this, but these days I have much more insight into the actual levels of intelligence that are required to play this particular game — and really, it is almost none at all.
I should make it clear that I do not think that those who have any sort of identity politics are engaged with fictions of their imagination all the time. I really don’t think that this is true, because we do form identities on the basis of an emotional need to belong to a group and receive protection of our interests from that group. And, I think that on the side of both the left and right, we maintain our emotionally identified interests through projective identification. And this subconscious, emotional identification with a group — it has a real, material effect on other groups, or individuals, who may be less advantaged or different in some way. There’s a great short play, by the subject of my thesis, Dambudzo Marechera, where he casts a Beckett-type scenario, with two traps who have forgotten their true identities due to the traumas of the civil war/war of liberation in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. It’s called The Alley. Ah, here is the quote I am looking for: “I cannot get away from you, though that’s the only thing I want from life, from the whole last ounce of the universe. You also want to get away but, like me, you can’t, and for the same reason. I am your wall, and you are my wall. And the game we tried during the war of mounting each other like dogs in severe heat has not yet been settled.”
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“Why is it, I wonder, that the most chauvinistically piggish anti-women statements so often come out of the mouths of feminists?”
I asked somewhere before how you would reconcile the word feminism with gender egalitarianism. I think the answers to these two questions might just be connected.
Or, from another perspective, what kinds of people do you think a racial equality movement would attract that calls itself “white-ism”?
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Do you do this on purpose or something, Adi? Usually, I have very easy answers to the multitude of questions I get on my blog. But never yours. 🙂
I get what you are asking. I always hoped that the term “feminism” could be reclaimed for a struggle against any and all kinds of gender stereotypes. I come from a place where the gender balance is very VERY different from what it is in North America. But still, the term “feminism” meant an anti-gender stereotyping movement for all of us. I don’t see why I should abandon this term and the beautiful dream that attaches for me – and so many people in my culture – to it because some (with all due respect, but this is my cultural perspective) – very coddled and spoiled American ladies reclaimed the term for their weird and anti-feminist concerns. Why should I be the one who cedes way to them? Because they are American? Because their hegemony reigns supreme?
The word feminism offers so much promise both for women and men in our FSU countries that I really don’t feel like giving it up because some Americans screwed up. For normal men and women in my culture, “feminism” is like a code word we use to recognize each other. Why should I give this entire movement up because of some very deluded creatures at Shakesville? Why should the pampered American ladies always win? This is my central question.
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@Clarissa
Arent you American now?
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I haven’t even started wearing jeans yet. 🙂 So the process of Americanization is slow. 🙂
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Sry Clarissa. I’m just better at asking questions than coming up with answers.
I don’t see anything wrong with holding on to a dream but it sounds like you have a personal attachment to the term “feminism”. Why? If your dream is true gender emancipation (as is mine) and someday this is accomplished, then who cares what we call it? A movement should aim to make itself obsolete anyway just as teaching should aim to make itself redundant to each student.
So, you define feminism for yourself as gender egalitarianism and those who don’t agree you call antifeminists. Fair enough, but what stops them from doing the same and calling you antifeminist? Who gets to decide what a label really means? The dictionary? That is far too vague and practically encourages the emergence of conflicting versions. Besides, the dictionary follows the language and not vice versa.
“Why should I give this entire movement up because of some very deluded creatures at Shakesville? “
Unfortunately it is the a-holes that tend to get the most attention. I mean, if you walk home past five thousand people and one of them calls you a !@$ !@#$ %(*@$^, you probably won’t remember the 4999 people who were not rude while it will be hard to forget the one who was. Also, it’s usually the fanatics who are the most active because they devote their lives to their cause while the sensible ones are usually not even members of any activist organization. So even if it’s just one in a hundred, they still end up somehow dominating the group. In my own experience on feminist forums/blogs, if only one or two individuals are radical anti-male fanatics, they will insult/belittle/blame relentlessly while the vast majority of decent, good mannered people will hardly throw in a word. Unfair as it is on the “good guys”, I can’t help walking away with a distinct impression that the whole blog/forum was sexist and hostile towards men.
But the real bad news is still to come: Just from a marketing perspective, I asked myself “what would my first impression be if I heard the word feminism without any prior experience or knowledge of it?”. And if I was an anti-male sexist, I’d probably feel quite at home with it. This means that, as new generations grow up and learn about feminism and gender egalitarianism, it will continue to be an attraction to sexists and the war you’re fighting so valiantly, will be a never ending, continuous struggle that repeats itself with every new prospective member.
Short conclusion: I think the title is harming the movement. What i don’t know is how much.
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Short conclusion: I think the title is harming the movement. What i don’t know is how much.
Yes the title is hurting the movement but (speaking as a staunt non feminist) its a portion of the people in the movement that poisoned the title to start with. If feminism (and all its derivatives) were replaced with something else tomorrow it wouldn’t change anything. That attitudes would still be there and 30-40 years from now people would be complaining about how that new term has been poisoned.
In my own experience on feminist forums/blogs, if only one or two individuals are radical anti-male fanatics, they will insult/belittle/blame relentlessly while the vast majority of decent, good mannered people will hardly throw in a word. Unfair as it is on the “good guys”, I can’t help walking away with a distinct impression that the whole blog/forum was sexist and hostile towards men.
In my own experience in situations like that there is a kicker. While those anti-males may have been a small minority in comparison to the good ones I have often noticed something change drastically. In the event that you respond to that anti-male minority in any way that might be taken as anti-female or if that anti-male minority is a part of the in crowd (meaning they basically have the blessing of mods to act anyway they want but have the mods to protect them when people talk back) those “good ones” sudden manage to wake up and are very concerned about equality and are willing to dog pile you until either you leave or you are banned. And Shakesville is (or at least was) f’n notorious about this. Its part of the reason I just stopped participating. Its an echo chamber of hypocrites that manage to put up good stuff sometimes.
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This sorta reminds me of a story I vagely remember from a few years back, a group of black teenagers was causing a ruckus in a fast-food place, the manager said “you people need to leave.” and the teens reacted as if he had called them… well, you know.
It was very odd.
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