The evolution of Male Chauvinist Pig to SPERM

Content note: explicit discussion of violence against women, violent misogyny and rape culture.

They call themselves "men's rights activists," and we've let them get away with it.  They have been clever, using language of "rights" and liberal ideas of equality, all the while demonising women and reinforcing sexist oppression.  A Voice for Men, Masculinist Evolution New Zealand (MENZ), the New Zealand Equality Education Foundation and the Union of Fathers have stolen liberatory language while they work on restoring men to their rightful place as top of the heap.

It's about time feminists called this out.  Second wave feminists in the 1960s and 1970s called sexists male chauvinist pigs.  They didn't let MCPs define the terms.

This international "men's rights" movement includes "activists" celebrating domestic violence murders as men fighting back.

Then there is A Voice for Men and their take on fathering daughters:

The night winds on, with discussion of rape and the smothering of penises, the sorrows of false accusations and the narcissism of young girls. A sore point for Factory, who has two daughters, who, like young women everywhere, he says, compete for the most exaggerated rape claim. It is, he says, a status thing. When one of his daughters came home one night and said she’d been raped, he said, "Are you fucking kidding me?" Sitting with us, he hikes his voice up to a falsetto in imitation: " ’Oh, I just got raped.’ " He laughs. There’s a moment of silence. A bridge too far? "I told her if she pressed charges, I’d disown her."

Elam, whose attention has drifted, grins through his beard. "That’s good fathering," he says."

Here in New Zealand MENZ help men to avoid protection orders for domestic violence and tell you what to do if you're accused of rape.  The face of MENZ is John Potter, convicted child sexual abuser.  Posts and comments on the page are Misogyny 101.

Let's call these male chauvinist pigs, with all-new equality lingo, what they are.  Sexist Protectors of Extra Rights for Men.   

SPERMs have many concerns, what with all the feminism.  Recently they got worried about Mad Max and Hollywood being unfair on men.  I'm just going to leave this here, thanks Human Rights Commission.

Increasingly though, the focus of SPERMs is domestic and sexual violence.  They argue men are just as likely to be victims as women, and women are just as likely to be perpetrators as men. 

This argument is well-advanced in Aotearoa, and while MENZ and John Potter may seem fringe, SPERM academics like David Fergusson and MSD's new Chief Science Advisor Richie Poulton who focus on undermining "ideological" approaches to gendered violence, do not.  Nor do the regular deluge of emails from other SPERMs to policy analysts inside government.

Fergusson and Poulton have been arguing for years - with super approving commentary at MENZ and elsewhere - that women are as violent as men, based on research which uses the Conflict Tactics Scale.  I stab you, you push me away, we've been equally violent.  The CTS has been heavily critiqued for missing self-defense, not addressing context like whether or not you're afraid, and not measuring sexual violence in relationships.

Fergusson and Poulton can't explain the gender differences in hospital admissions, rates of seeking protection orders, rates of reporting to the Police, numbers of families in Refuges.  Even they haven't been able to pretend sexual violence is gender neutral.

I do not wish to pretend that men never experience domestic or sexual violence.  There's good evidence that boys are targeted for sexual abuse at previously unsuspected rates,  if not at the same rates as girls.  And with emerging data showing high rates of victimisation for trans* and intersex people, acknowledging diverse experiences of violence is vital.  

But saying violence is always an awful thing - whatever your gender identity - is not the same as pretending it happens at the same rates across gender.  SPERMs are not happy with acknowledging male victims exist; they need them to exist equally with female victims.  And they need female perpetrators to exist equally with male perpetrators.  Contrary to evidence.

New Zealand's Family Violence Death Review from 2013 tells us that in 55 cases of violence which led to death:

• 51 deaths were of female victims of men's violence; 1 death was of a male victim of women's violence; 3 deaths were new male partners killed by ex-male partners
• 53 murders were committed by abusive men; 2 murders were committed by abusive women, one of a male partner, one of a female partner

It will be very interesting to see whether Richie Poulton's ideological influence at MSD leads to a degendering of domestic and sexual violence.  Will he try to further SPERM positions like encouraging female victims into counselling with men using violence and removing state supports for women leaving violent relationships?  How will funding for groups working with male survivors increase?

One area he's likely to attack - because SPERMs hate it - is the White Ribbon Campaign, which focuses on ending men's violence towards women.  White Ribbon commemorates 14 murders by a male engineering student who killed women on a course he missed out on in Montreal in 1991.  Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust, Family First and MENZ all come out swinging on this one, pretty much every year.  They actively campaign to stop others participating - one comment on the MENZ link above explains how they stopped New Zealand Courts displaying any White Ribbon materials.  They argue the White Ribbon campaign should be about male victims too, despite how insulting that would be to the 14 murdered women the campaign honours.

One final note.  I've trained close to 50 sexual violence prevention practitioners in New Zealand over the last few years, with nearly an even gender split.  The vast majority of the men doing that work understand gendered dynamics well, and are constantly looking for new ways to encourage other men to behave in respectful, playful and equity based ways when they are sexual with other people, and to intervene if they see men around them supporting violence.

Just one SPERM in that time is probably pretty good going, though I still worry about the damage he may be doing with the young people he works with.   Our training included how to facilitate a session on "Blurred Lines" to encourage conversation about gender norms.  The vicious misogyny of this song, when you actually read the lyrics, is difficult to miss.  The SPERM was most concerned about these lyrics:

"So, hit me up when you pass through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two"

He was worried that young men who don't have big enough penises to "tear asses in two" would not feel masculine enough.  This SPERM was thinking like a rapist.

"Men's rights activists" are not fighting for rights and equality.  I'm sick of being polite about them, using their language and having to re-prove, over and over again, that sexist oppression exists.  Sexist Protectors of Extra Rights for Men want to always be the centre of attention, setting all the rules, having all their needs met, being the only voices heard.  Enough.  Let's take it back.

____________________________________________________
For the first time, I am closing comments on a post.  I've been the target of SPERMs in New Zealand before, and while I can't control what they write about me on their own sites, I'm choosing not to allow that here, for this post.  Apologies to all our fabulous readers who would no doubt enjoy discussing and debating the issues above.

Wellington's fair is queer, yeah

Well hats well and truly off to the Out in the Square organising committee who have changed the tagline of Wellington's annual fair for the queer community from the exclusionary "Wellington's Gay and Lesbian Fair" to the more open:

In their words, the reason they have chosen to do this after the old tagline was raised as a problem:

We've changed our tagline on the logo. It's more inclusive, the right thing to do and a reference to our proud history too.

I couldn't agree more - wonderful to see the queer community responding to issues to do with power, language and naming with such integrity.  Now if only we can get that John Key to listen about the ways he uses words that refer to queer people.....

Is there some kind of course we can make the marketing departments take?

There's a new shared space* in Auckland's CBD, in Darby St, and a party to celebrate this innovative approach to urban planning on April 15th.  They've got the Mayor, and Kidz in Space and there has generally been much marketing riffing on the "space" theme.

Which is all well and good until we get to the casually exclusionary language being used to promote it all:

Putting man back into space

There was a "Man In Space" advert in the latest OurAuckland, in every letterbox in the superb Super City area I assume, and there's a "putting man back into space" tagline on the poster for the big launch.  You can see it on the Facebook event page.  So cute, so witty, so blithely ignoring the fact that there may be sharers of this space who aren't men.  And that being inclusive actually outweighs having a snazzy marketing idea any day of the week. 

What's particularly disappointing is that it doesn't appear that it was always labelled this way - it seems to have been changed to the "man in space" idea at some point since this went up on the Auckland Council website on 24th February:

There's another page up on it now (in addition to the Feb one which is still up) that has similar text and the exact same picture but with the new heading "putting man back into space".

When did the change happen?  Who made it?  And why? 

And when will people ever stop responding to legitimate concerns about this kind of casual exclusion of real people with the oh so predictable "man means mankind, which means humankind, which means people, silly"? 


*  Shared by pedestrians, cars, cyclists, dogs, trees, wheelchairs, and many more.  It'll be interested to see how that works out, as a first attempt at getting this to work in car-obsessed Auckland.

Mind your language

Cross posted

In the Dominion Post this morning:

MIND THE LINE, IT MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE

Blue lines on roads in Island Bay mark the furthest point that a worst-case tsunami has been calculated to reach.

Since the lines were painted in February, after consultation with GNS Science, almost every coastal suburb has expressed an interest in having them.

"If there was a big earthquake in Wellington, and you live on the coast and have seen that line on the street, then hopefully you grab your wife and kids and go to behind where that line is," Wellington emergency management office senior adviser Dan Neely said.

You grab your wife and your kids...

So many possible meanings there. Maybe it's because only men are capable of taking action, or because men are the ones who take responsibility for action, or because when it comes to disaster planning, we plan for men. Also, you will note that we only plan for nuclear families, and families that have a husband and a wife at that.

It's such a small thing, but it's revealing. It shows which people are regarded as being the norm, the average, the ones from whom all others are different.

And it's so easy to fix. All he needed to say was, "... then hopefully you grab the people around you and go to behind where that line is."

Maybe that's what he meant to say. I'm sure he is concerned for the safety of everyone in Wellington. It would just be nice if that thought got out into public discourse too, instead of using language that reinforces notions of men as normative, and women as others who need to be cared for.

language matters

so i failed to be impressed with brian edwards' attitude towards the high school student who objected to being told she looked like a slut (or somesuch). there was a healthy dose of not getting the point that using abusive language towards a student was not actually going to shock her into behaving in a manner whereby she would be safe from sexual violence. because there is in fact no such behaviour that will guarantee safety.

he tops that effort with a post highlighting the lack of courage shown by tradespeople who won't be honest about the fact that they are unable to take on a small job. which is a reasonable complaint - if you're too busy to do the job within a reasonable timeframe, say so and let the potential customer deal with someone else.

but look at the descriptors he uses to describe this lack of courage:

These pathetic wimps, wusses, chicken livers, cream puffs, crybabies, fraidy cats, milksops, momma’s boys, pantywaists, sissies, yellow bellies and big girl’s blouses do not have the cojones to tell even a little old lady they can’t concrete her drive...

surely it's not just me who objects to the fact that most of these descriptors equate lack of courage with feminity ie with being like a woman or being close to women. really, you couldn't have made your point without "momma's boys", "sissies" or "big girl's blouses"? it's such a terrible thing for a man to be close to his mother that this mere fact needs to be used as an insult? and just to ram the point home, he adds the implication that courage is dependent on having male genetalia. nice.

i'm also not liking the fact that he is equating a "lack of assertiveness" with lack of honesty. the problem is not that these tradespeople have trouble in being assertive, it's that they have trouble being honest about their workload and their ability to do the job. lacking assertiveness is not a bad thing, in and of itself. some people aren't assertive by nature, but that certainly doesn't make them less than anyone else. having seen a couple of people being put down simply for not being outgoing and assertive, i know how harmful that kind of judgement can be. perhaps mr edwards doesn't believe that the meek shall inherit the earth, but that doesn't mean they deserve contempt.

as i've said before, language is often a tool of discrimination, and he has provided a healthy dose of it here. language matters, it shapes the culture and environment people live in, it can aid in marginalisation, especially when it's used in the way it is here. mr edwards works in the field of media and communication, so i can't imagine that he would be unaware of this fact. i can only deduce that he chose to ignore it.

HRC on hone harawira

the race relations commissioner has reported back on the racially-charged email outburst from hone harawira last year, which you all probably remember seeing as how it called so much outrage. i wrote about it at the time here.

at the time, this is one of the points i made:

there's one point though, that these complainants may be missing. the impact of mr harawira's speech will, in actual fact, have little effect on them other than the emotional distress it causes them. no-one will hurl abuse at them in the streets as a result of that speech. they will not face barriers to employment, nor find it difficult when trying to get a rental house to live in. they won't face fear or restriction in their daily life....

what mr harawira said was wrong. but it's not the same. it's will never have the same effect as public speech that denigrates a minority group. and a minority group will never have the same ability to speak back in the way that the majority group does.

and this turns out to be one of the findings in the report:

Were the comments racially divisive; did they excite racial disharmony?

The comments provoked an angry response from many Pākehā, but they were also deplored by many Māori, including the Māori Party. They were potentially divisive in the sense that they were negative about Pākehā. Rather than provoke widespread hostility against Pākehā, however, they attracted criticism of the author and expressions of anti-Māori sentiment.

The relevant sections of the Human Rights Act, s61 and s131, which relate to racial disharmony and exciting racial disharmony, have a high threshold given the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The effect of the comments was to attract hostility rather than to excite it against the group criticised. It is not a breach of the Human Rights Act to use offensive language.

it will be interesting to see the reaction, if any, to the whole report, and whether there is any pressure to change the laws around hate speech. i have to say that i'm secretly hoping there will be, because i'd love to see the greater protection for minorities that would result. but in the end, the report shows that for cases like this, changes to the law aren't required. there was public censure, there was action taken by the maori party, there was a futher apology from mr harawira.

hate speech

i have to say i'm laughing a little at all the complaints lodged with the human rights commission regarding comments from mr hone harawira. not that i disagree with the complaints - i totally disagree with tarnishing a whole race of people because of the actions of some. if nothing else, it's a stupid move because it pisses off your allies within that group.

it surprises me though, that all of the complainants weren't aware that the commission is unable to act in this case. that's because we don't have laws against hate speech, and the commission is very limited in what it can do. the only time you can take legal action against speech is in the case of incitement to violence, and that comes under the crimes act, not the bill of rights nor the human rights act. and say what you will about mr harawira's words, they weren't a direct incitement to violence. they weren't even the coded messages inciting violence that we're hearing from the likes of mr beck and mr limbaugh these days.

there is also s61 of the human rights act 1993, which provides protection against any publication, broadcast, or speech at public places or meetings which are threatening, abusive or insulting “being matter or words likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt any group of persons in or who may be coming to New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or national origins of that group of persons.” there are a couple of problems with this though, one being that the threshhold for a successful complaint is really high and secondly that it doesn't really cover the internet very well. mr harawira's "speech" was in a private email, although he knew it was going to be publicised.

the closest we've ever come to even considering the laws around hate speech was the select committee inquiry in 2004(ish). that inquiry arose out of the inquiry into the films, videos and publications classifications act, because there were some issues raised that couldn't be dealt with under that act and the MPs on the select committee wanted those issues investigated further.

how do i know this? because i submitted in written and oral form to both inquiries. and i had a spot on eye-to-eye against judith collins (and a couple of other guests) about the hate speech issue, arising directly as a result of my submission. but the select committee that inquired into hate speech never reported back to parliament. so all those submissions are still sitting there somewhere, gathering dust.

there was actually quite a lot of response to the inquiry. there were many people opposed to any legislation or regulation on hate speech, quite a few of them from the right-wing churches. their main concern (though they didn't quite put it that way) was that any such legislation or regulation might hamper their ability to speak out against muslims or homosexuality. they wanted to be free to discriminate in their public speech, and resisted any moves that would stop them.

others objected on the grounds of civil liberties and the freedom of speech provisions in the bill of rights. the supreme court had already ruled that freedom from discrimination did not over-ride freedom of speech (which in effect means that freedom of speech over-rides freedom from discrmination). this group had the stronger argument, in that limitations to freedom of speech had ramifications that could be oppressive.

so, there was a lot of opposition, particularly in the media, to this inquiry and it was quietly sidelined. but i just wonder, how many of the people who have lodged complaints against mr harawira would be the same people who would be opposed to any regulations against hate speech? and if that inquiry were to be opened up again today, would they support it? would they have supported my submission? i just wonder about that, and that's what makes me laugh. because i suspect (and yes, i admit that it is only wild speculation) that some of these complainants want to have discrimination against themselves penalised, but want to also be free to discriminate against others in their own public speech.

there's one point though, that these complainants may be missing. the impact of mr harawira's speech will, in actual fact, have little effect on them other than the emotional distress it causes them. no-one will hurl abuse at them in the streets as a result of that speech. they will not face barriers to employment, nor find it difficult when trying to get a rental house to live in. they won't face fear or restriction in their daily life.

compare this to hate speech against minorities. let me compare it to a direct and personal example, to make it more clear. the danish cartoons depicting mohammad were published by some fairfax newspapers on a friday. in the next 48 hours, i had 3 incidents of strangers shouting abuse at me or making rude gestures. i had no say when it came to those cartoons being published. none of these people bothered to ask me my views on the matter. but i was punished, and became afraid to go out because of resulting public speech by commentators and talkback hosts and callers that denigrated muslims as lacking humour, unable to take criticims, etc etc. that speech affected the public mood, which affected my ability to function.

what mr harawira said was wrong. but it's not the same. it's will never have the same effect as public speech that denigrates a minority group. and a minority group will never have the same ability to speak back in the way that the majority group does.

Reclaiming our front bottoms

The "c" word, like "queer" and the "n" word, has been reclaimed - not once, but twice. And no one told me.

My intermittent use of this word is a source of secret shame, since I've often felt it makes me a bad feminist. I don't pull it out in polite company, use it to describe women, or even use it to name a body part, for that matter. I do, however, use it to describe objectionable men, and even shout it at the telly from time to time (although less so since George W relinquished the presidency.*).

Having said all that, the way the word is used in the US - exclusively to denigrate women and women's sexuality, as far as I can see - makes me cringe. My Irish sister-in-law was horrified to hear the "c" word so frequently when she first came to NZ, so vile is it in her homeland. Since then, though, she's told me that she's actually grown to rather like it. Nothing expresses her admiration for someone these days like calling them a 'f*@!ing good c#nt, eh".

The Salon article I linked to above asks that age-old question, why is it so much worse to call someone a c#nt than a dick? (In my vocab, a dick is a slightly comical loser, and a c#nt is someone unpleasant - a bit of a hierarchy, I guess).

Salon answers its own question:

In a larger sense, "c#nt" does not equal "dick" in our culture because "woman" still does not equal "man." This is also why "nigger" remains more offensive than "cracker." And as long as women are the second sex and African-Americans are the second race, slurs that target these groups will have greater power.

What do you think, THMers? Should the "c" word be reclaimed and celebrated as an anatomical term, tolerated as an insult, or consigned to the linguistic dustbin?


* Which reminds me of a pink placard I once saw on an anti-war protest: 'The only Bush I trust is my own'.

reclaim/reframe

i've been thinking about this practice of "reclaiming" words, and i've decided that i just don't get it. what got me thinking about this is the upcoming "rising dragons, soaring bananas" conference this weekend. banana, just in case you haven't yet heard, was the term used by chinese to describe other chinese who had become westernised ie yellow on the outside but white on the inside. mostly used for first generation chinese kids growing up in western countries, who weren't deemed to be chinese enough.

this term has now been reclaimed by those described as banana's, who are celebrating the western culture they've adopted while also celebrating their chinese heritage. hence these banana-themed conferences they've been organising over the last few years, which are becoming increasingly successful.

the only other "reclaimed" word i'm aware of is queer. i'm sure there are plenty of other such words out there, but i remain ignorant of them.

i get the bit where you want to own and celebrate the aspect of the pejorative that you actually don't think is a negative. what i don't get is why you would want to adopt the language of those who are basically abusing you. surely, you'd want to bring another word into the culture which celebrates the essence of your identity, one that brings out positive associations for you rather than negative ones.

reclaiming words feels to me a bit like giving up, a bit like saying "there's no way we're going to stop people using that word, so we may as well just take it on board". but we know that changes in language do happen if there is sufficient pressure, the word "nigger" being the most obvious example. i know that such change takes a lot of effort, and is a burden on a minority group that is already under strain. but even so, it just doesn't sit well with me.

which is not to say that i don't love what they've done with the whole banana theme over the years, it's totally clever and is serving an extremely useful purpose in bringing two cultures together to celebrate some wonderful achievements. but it's just the theory behind reclaiming of words like this that bothers me.

maybe i'm just understanding it all wrong, and would be interested in hearing other views on this.

The Literary Tradition of Women

Women's writing is not determined by biology, anatomy, or psychology. It comes from women's relation to the literary marketplace, from pressures to live public and private lives, from literary influence.

What is women's literature and is there a place for a women's literary history? The academic Elaine Showalter talks about her new book A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Knopf), and discusses some of these issues. Showalter argues that even today, after all these freaking years, women's writing remains largely unknown and that this is to do with the fact that women's writing hasn't been pulled together into a defined literary tradition.

The good news can be found in the progress that Showalter describes.

And the end of the story? In an earlier work, I talked about the phases of British women's literature: "feminine" (bowing to male expectations), "feminist" (rebelling), and "female" (articulating women's experience). By the 1980s and 90s, I think, we'd entered a new stage: "free." Women had joined the juries, as publishers, critics, reviewers, authors. No longer restricted to certain subjects, they could, for example, write about violence and boxing, as Joyce Carol Oates does. They could, like Raymond Carver, be minimalists (look at the understated style of Amy Hempel or Ann Beattie). They could write from any perspective, even a male one. They were multiculturalists.

That doesn't mean that their work has become fully integrated into our literary culture: That's why I wrote the book.

More here.

The Metaphors we use

I have been trying not to use 'mad' as a metaphor in my writing, but some posts are harder than others. I found it really challenging to write a post about holocaust deniers without saying "these people are batshit crazy". Over at Alas there's been some discussion of this and Donaquixote articulated the reasons for avoiding madness as a metaphor very well:

I also get the insane = disconnected from reality definition you were going with. But there’s a huge difference between an illness that disconnects you from reality as a result of neurochemical processes and the condition of being willfully disconnected from reality because you don’t want to have your opinions challenged. One is an illness, the other is a character flaw, and the two ought never be confused. The problem is a lot of our terminology quite purposefully does confuse the two.

Many of the derogatory metaphors that come most easily to us are about comparing something we don't like with the powerless.

Metaphoric language is powerful - even as cliched metaphoric language as 'batshit crazy'. I don't think we should give up metaphors, I think we should be creative, more precise and more true in the metaphors we do use.

I thought a way of doing that would be to open a thread for discussion so people could post their metaphors, and other derogatory language, that don't pathologise powerlessness.

I'm not suggesting we start calling everyone we dislike a futures trader, but I think there are lots of smart articulate people who comment on blogs I write on. We can do better than the derogatory terms we do now.

I'm posting this on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty, Alas and The Hand Mirror, for maximum discussion.


Please don't post in this thread unless you're actually interested in developing new metaphors. If you're doubtful about the usefulness of new metaphors then go talk about that somewhere else.

foreskin's lament?

just a really quick post. it seems to be a day for old fullas to be absolute morons. this from bob jones is bordering on the bizarre:

"It's typical of the Government where they have gone berserk with this sort of stuff." "It's not a feminist takeover, it's a lesbian takeover in Wellington," Mr Jones said.
"There's hardly a Government head that's not a lesbian ... so many lesbians are in top jobs and they don't want to acknowledge any sex.
It's a neutralisation of sex instead of saying foreman or forewoman."

this little rant happened because someone has decided to use the word "foreperson", to ensure gender neutral language. now i'm not particularly fussed by the use of the word "foreman", but i am fussed by this response by mr jones. how is he any authority on the subject, and why would his opinion matter at all? could it be that because mr jones is now a columnist for fairfax, this is just some free promotion by the paper? no matter the reason behind this little article, it's crap.

Monday Funday - In Black and White

This one's for anyone who, like me, gets irritated with those who argue "chairman" is a gender neutral term. It's a 1985 "Person Paper" written by Douglas Hofstadter under the moniker William Safire, and it imagines a world where "black libbers" are challenging the dominance of whiteness in English (eg "one small step for a whitey, a giant step for whitekind"). Hofstadter is not arguing that there is no racism, but is instead punctuating a discussion about racism in a parallel universe with many of the objections faced by those who point out the sexism of the generic terms spokesman and Mankind.

Hofstadter has added a postscript to his essay which includes this observation:

My feeling about nonsexist English is that it is like a foreign language that I am learning. I find that even after years of practice, I still have to translate sometimes from my native language, which is sexist English. I know of no human being who speaks Nonsexist as their native tongue. It will be very interesting to see if such people come to exist. If so, it will have taken a lot of work by a lot of people to reach that point.

Has it really been 23 years already?

(Sorry for the delay in putting this up, I've been getting a lot less online time than I'd anticipated lately, although hopefully I'll be back to normal in the next day or two.)