I was reading an article (a column, actually) in a Swedish newspaper… I am not sure why I even bothered. Anyway. It was re: International Women’s Day, and the title was “I am tired of all feminists”. Not written, mind you, by a middle aged man who lost his job/a prestigious debate/ the right to insult his secretary because of a young woman with feminist beliefs. Nope. Just a women in her forties. Who can’t, in my belief, have anything to lose to feminism. Her problem?
Well, I should be tolerant and all that shit. But since the main part of her rather pathetic argument (I am not saying this to be mean, normally she makes great arguments, although I have yet to find myself agreeing with any of her point) was against lesbians having kids and she ended the text with proposing a national day for heteronormativity and “boring, married women who like men,” I can only guess that she felt threatened by increased rights for gay people and people in same-sex relationships.* Which is understandable. I am convinced that people prefer the status quo at all times, and that, as the early pragmatists said, knowledge spreads like a grease stain in fabric -slowly, unwillingly. And to be honest, gay rights and the gender debate is a big topic in Sweden right now. We don’t have as much of a history, but we are doing way better than the US at this point.
This is not what pisses me off. The KJ in me, or at least the Anna that has taken far too many anthropology classes for someone who claims she doesn’t like them, knows enough about family structures around the globe to say that it is if not idiotic, then at least very naive, to prefer the Western nuclear family. In addition, the definition of a nuclear family (within anthropology) is rapidly changing, and has come to mean only a woman and her offspring, not mommy-daddy-kids. Not because anyone dislikes men, or because they are not considered important, but because there are multiple societies where fathers are not present as a part of the constant nucleus at all, for economic, religious, or just plain cultural reasons (think polygynous society: a man has multiple kids with multiple wives. Where is the nucleus if not with every woman and her offspring? Or in a matrifocal society like the Garifuna, where the sire of the children participate only by sending money every so often, because he is working in the few places where there are jobs?) Does anyone seriously believe that these kids grow up with gross personality problems because of lack of father figures? Please, please please people, stop referring to the importance of parents of both sexes without knowing the facts. Maybe the reason kids with divorced ‘rents who grew up without a father are messed up to a larger degree than those with two parents is that they have to live with the knowledge that they were abandoned by one of the people who created them?
That was number one. The second issue I have is with her phrase “… who like men.” Because only straight non-feminist women like men. All lesbian hate men. All feminists hate men. Why do people think that just because you don’t support the general dominance of one group, you dislike all the individuals within it? I don’t understand how she can see this, and still not notice the underlying misogyny that is everywhere. Beer ads. Reality teevee. Rape trials. Book reviews. It is one thing to be the privileged group and talk about violence against a non-privileged group (please don’t argue with me on this point: we live in a patriarchy. I will be okay with you arguing with anything else, or with the value judgement of it, but this is a fact. Patriarchy is defined as a system that privileged the interest of men as a group over that of other groups. I think we fill the definition; we have yet to see a female prime minister, you have yet to see a female president.) It is completely different for a non-privileged group (namely, women) to talk about violence against the privileged group (namely men) because the will have less of an opportunity to carry it out, and because it means something else coming from another angle. To hit downwards and to hit upwards are two entirely different things. A drunk frat guy hating girls because one wouldn’t sleep with him once is different from women with lives full of mistreatment, discrimination and maybe even rapes making jokes about making it even. That’s what makes S.C.U.M funny. In addition, the way western patriarchy has tied its power and prestige to the phallus to the extent that it is now suffering from collective castration anxiety is *really* amusing.
Point three. In the same paragraph, she talks about men being not only the main perpetrators, but also main victims, of violence, and of her being tired of the gender debate. Excuse me? Maybe the fact that this situation exists to begin with is a sign that there is something fucked up about how men are trained to be, well, men? Maybe they’d be less of both perpetrators and victims if the debate was kept alive, if the functions of gender were investigated.
Four. The passive-aggressiveness about just being a boring straight women. BS- it’s the belief that other people’s sexuality being OK would suddenly make one’s own invalid. In a situation where no one’s sexuality is ’special’, no one’s sexuality is boring, either.
Five. We don’t have heteronomative day because every day is. Because a straight married woman is as high status in the eyes of society as it goes. She has daycare for her kids. (well, in Sweden she does) She goes to the GYN and the right assumptions are made.
Feminist is needed because women are afraid, and rightfully so. Because even in “the world’s most equal country” 50/50 salaries are not always the case, because raped women are asked what they were wearing and robbed men aren’t, because fewer women are CEOs, professors, and ministers. Because a boy can still be beaten up for wearing eye-liner, and a girl for not. Because we still wear those ridiculous shoes.
* Basically, the same thing that happened with the marriage amendments in the US.
