Lesbians can't be misogynist, can they?
March 26, 2015 12:30 AM   Subscribe

 
I'm enjoying reading these. At this point I'm reminded of a quote I read recently. I can't remember where from. The idea was that lesbians love women and their bodies, so when they're telling you there's something fucked up with page 3 or in porn you know something is really wrong.

(Or women who love women in general obviously, but this example refered to lesbians especially.)
posted by Braeburn at 1:47 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


I worked at a queer-friendly restaurant as a line cook with someone who identified as a butch. I'm not sure if it was because the line cooks and prep cooks and dishwashers were guys (all straight, and all pretty rough as line cooks can be), but she was always leering at women out in the restaurant and passing on commentary to her lads on the line.

I'm not saying that she's stereotypical of anything, but the last article reminds me of her.

At that time the restaurant was, as I mentioned, queer friendly. Most of the waitstaff openly identified as gay, and while it wasn't a gay hangout exactly, there was a lot of openly gay clientele. So at that point in time, the restaurant working environment wouldn't have been particularly threatening... there wasn't much need for posturing.
posted by Nevin at 2:52 AM on March 26, 2015


This passage from the Lesbian Misogyny article:

Across the board, the most common example was of women being verbally harassed by nightclub door staff and other lesbians for “not looking gay enough!”

got me wondering... isn't it possible that they weren't really "harassed for not looking gay enough," but rather, nightclub staff doubted they were gay? Perhaps the club was meant as a safe, gay-only space and the door staff were wanting to exclude hetero women... and this was simple misidentification? Isn't it regarded as "okay" in gay circles to have gay only venues?
posted by jayder at 3:28 AM on March 26, 2015


jayder: Gay only spaces like support groups make sense; gay only bars lead to problems like excluding queer people who don't look "queer enough" or the friends of queer people.

People should be excluded on the basis of their behaviour, e.g. if a hen party is being annoying, ask them to leave. Don't police other people who aren't bothering anyone.
posted by jb at 4:11 AM on March 26, 2015 [21 favorites]


You know what's terrible?

People. People are terrible.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:18 AM on March 26, 2015 [88 favorites]


I really don't understand these acts of performative masculinity. They're not meant as flirting; they're directed at other male/masculine/butch people. What is their point? A search for validation? Reassurance? What?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:35 AM on March 26, 2015


It's about status. It's a worldview where the best way to get the ideal woman is to be at the top of the pecking order among the dudes. And that the best way to be at the top of the pecking order among the dudes is to get the ideal woman. And of course it's full of all sorts of terrible ideas like the idea that one would "acquire" a partner as a possession.
posted by idiopath at 4:48 AM on March 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm a little baffled, often, by women like the one who opened with how artificial the butch/femme thing is and protested against being boxed into those expectations... and then still ended identifying herself as "feminine presenting". I have no problem with the idea that some people enjoy gender performance going one way or the other or sometimes both, that's fine. But I don't know how you can expect people to do gender performance and then divorce it from a cultural context full of toxic masculine expectations. On an individual level, I think people should behave better... but collectively, yes, I expect butch behavior to be steeped in the same misogyny as the straight guys who grew up in the same communities and exposed to the same media. The next generation will probably be a bit better about it, and the one after that a bit better still, but there's this niggling sense to me that people are expecting butch lesbians, because they're still women, to be more virtuous than their male counterparts.

What is their point? A search for validation? Reassurance? What?

People enjoy creating a persona for themselves based on their cultural influences and ideals and then being that person in front of other people. People like to dress up and go out. People like for other people to think they're cool, with "coolness" defined by said cultural influences and ideals. For some people, these things involve bow ties, or lipstick, or whatever. That much seems universal enough. Given this, though, dividing queer women up into two categories based on traditional ideas of gender performance and then expecting the result not to carry a lot of that baggage seems a bit unreasonable.
posted by Sequence at 4:53 AM on March 26, 2015 [7 favorites]


It's not just about status: it's driven by insecurity, that is, the fear of being perceived as being of low status. (Definition of high status: you own a breeding partner. Blech.)

There may be crossover here with patterns of sexual dominance that aren't currently admitted in our culture but which persist elsewhere: the classical Roman thing (it's acceptable for high status individuals to possess a penis and stick it into low status individuals; it is unacceptable for low-status individuals to penetrate those of high status), or the classical Greek (and contemporary in parts of Afghanistan) custom of pederasty. Both forms demonstrated status in terms of penetration of a sexually possessed other, and while we're hundreds of generations removed from those societies, the cultural echoes reverberate down the centuries.
posted by cstross at 4:54 AM on March 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


Butch Lesbian Red-pill-ers?

Well, there's my daily reminder of the essential irrationality of the human experience.
posted by mikelieman at 5:01 AM on March 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


mikelieman: bigotry is fractal.
posted by cstross at 5:02 AM on March 26, 2015 [16 favorites]


Um....are we surprised that women can be sexist and objectifying?

So two points...1) they're raised in the same culture as every other sexist objectifying arsehole... why would being a lesbian innure someone to that? And 2) as far as I'm aware, there's no lesbian super power anti patriarchy kryptonite shield. I've noticed that all my lesbian friends are pretty much as fascinating, boring, clever, stupid, left wing, right wing, flawed paragon-like as any other cross section of society. They're just people and lots of women (almost all?) struggle with internal sexism at some time on some level.

Just because they're women...huh, it doesn't mean squat. Some of the least helpful voices of all time, in advocacy for women, are other women.
posted by taff at 5:09 AM on March 26, 2015 [18 favorites]


I'm attracted to both men and women, and when I was in high school I thought I was a lesbian for a little while. I also dealt with some gender confusion although at this point in my life I 100% identify as a woman. At some point I realized that, for all that I in some ways wanted to be male, I never, EVER wanted to have a penis. It did not interest me at all and the idea of having one squicked me out (this is also something that helped me as I was becoming more accepting of trans* experiences, something I'm ashamed to say I had to learn, but realizing that if I had a penis my instinct would be to panic and shout "YUCK YUCK GROSS HORRIBLE GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF" like I do when a gross bug lands on me helped me realize that, if I'd been born with one, I would feel the same way and just want it GONE and I wish it hadn't taken a realization for me to be understanding and empathic but thinking about it that way did help).

Anyway, I realized that I was definitely not a trans* man but I also experimented a bit with different gender identities in high school especially and eventually I realized that I think what I wanted was to be socially male. I dealt with this by adopting the male gaze and consciously trying to be a "cool girl" and "not like other girls" and having conversations with my female friends about how we were only friends with women who weren't friends with other women (completely ignoring the illogic of this since there were like five of us and we were all friends). In a world where you had a lot more status by buying into and supporting the patriarchy instead of trying to smash or question it (and high school is surely such a world), I did what I could to get by and that included selling out femaleness and consciously taking women as a concept less seriously and being super bro-y in some ways and talking about how hilarious The Man Show was to demonstrate that I had a sense of humor (not like other women).

It seems like a lot of people in this thread don't understand WHY women act like this to other women, and I'm hoping my experiences can shine some light on that. I am now deeply sorry about the way I treated the category and concept "women" (although, that said, I was like fifteen) but I also really didn't want to be one because I'd completely internalized the idea that "woman" = "bad" and since I didn't want to be bad or dumb or humorless I went overboard to establish myself in the other direction. So when Nevin talks about the line cook loudly objectifying other women, or people ask "what is their point", I think part of what's likely happening is that so many of us have accepted, on some level, the idea that anything feminine is lesser that we work really hard to project an image of masculinity, even machismo, both for ourselves and for others.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 5:37 AM on March 26, 2015 [66 favorites]


Damn, I should have previewed instead of posted...I think to sum up, I basically meant to say that I think a lot of us, including sometimes myself, hope that society as a whole (and our own selves) will give us a pass on the sin of being women as long as we make it clear we don't actually thinking being a woman is okay.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 5:39 AM on March 26, 2015 [37 favorites]


taff, it's interesting to me because of the historical association of lesbianism and feminism, with lesbians (and feminists) apparently too enlightened to ever indulge in such heteronormative, misogynistic practices as treating another woman like sexual property. Going back further to the Victorian era, there was the idea that women were basically a civilising influence on brutish, nasty men. Mind you, it was only certain women, who also got to be on pedestals for their pains. I'm not saying either ideal is justified, but I think they do inform where we are today.

Even today, queer culture is meant to be this sort of utopia where everyone is tolerant and accepts everyone else's differences, is never biased, etc. We've had threads before about misogyny amongst gay men, transphobia, biphobia etc. I thought it would be interesting to look at misogyny amongst lesbians. Of course straight women can be sexist or misogynistic too, but this is not that post.

I'm a lesbian, but I don't get out much. Sometimes when I do, my tiny little mind is blown by the way I see other lesbians behaving. One of the most recent times featured one woman adjusting another woman's nametag and copping a feel at the same time - if a man did this he'd be slapped, told off and/or shunned. Instead everyone laughed, including the woman being groped. Well, not everyone; I thought it was awful and didn't laugh. But I didn't say anything either - didn't want to emphasise my sense of not fitting in? Dunno.

I also think it's interesting because so many of the examples of how to desire women have been created by men. Those examples (advertising, porn, romantic comedies, dramas, the list goes on...) are certainly far more prevalent than any women-desiring-women counter-examples. So those of us who are women and suspect we might rather like other women have few models of how to demonstrate this desire and interest other than to imitate men desiring women. Which takes us right back to maintaining heteronormative relationship models like butch/femme.

Of course we are not limited to that. Many of the women writing these articles point that out as well. But as long as things go unexamined, they are less likely to be challenged and changed.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:55 AM on March 26, 2015 [14 favorites]


Oh, it's interesting for me too! I'm not a lesbian but I try to be the very best ally I can....and I'm constantly fascinated by my own internalised sexism and that of women around me. I'm becoming hyper vigilant as I raise two small girls...but it feels unrelenting, omnipresent and eternal.

I hope I didn't come off as criticising you for posting this. If so, I unreservedly apologise. I intend to share it widely. Thank you for your discoveries and effort to post. Muchly appreciated. Xx
posted by taff at 6:02 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


What is their point? A search for validation? Reassurance? What?

Yes and yes, and more generally about being part of the group and demonstrating status.

Gender performance isn't just a matter of being attractive to the people you're sexually interested in; it's also (imo more so) to show the rest of the world that you're masculine or feminine enough, and the right kind of masculine or feminine.
posted by bracems at 6:10 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


No, you didn't come off as criticising - well, critical, but that's part of a good discussion! It was just you raised a point that I've heard before - we're just like everyone else (which always makes me think of the bit in The Meaning of Life where the crowd chants, we are all individuals and one guy pipes up: I'm not!) It's true and maddening and yet why does it have to be like that? For all that I myself am capable of sneering at naive ideals like women should be better than that, dammit, it's true. How can we expect anyone else to treat us with respect if we don't treat ourselves with respect? This works at the micro as well as the macro level.

Glad you enjoyed the post, and I hope your daughters can make better sense of it all in time :)
posted by Athanassiel at 6:13 AM on March 26, 2015


Patrick Califia wrote an article back in the 90s called "Slipping" (I think; it's been a while). The thesis of the piece was that, when we become aroused, we get slippery, and it becomes increasingly easy to lose our footing. Now, Califia was writing mostly about safer sex at the time, but I think there is also a lot of slippery footing when it comes to the dance of clinging and aversion, power and vulnerability that surrounds sexual/romantic attraction that causes people to maybe lose sight of ideals that they might articulate with a clearer head. (Because, in part, that "clearer head" is not necessarily very attractive -- people like to feel a bit off-balance and slippery with arousal and romance. However, actually "losing your feet" can lead you into dangerous or toxic situations.")

It's not like women or specifically lesbians are immune to this.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:18 AM on March 26, 2015 [13 favorites]


isn't it possible that they weren't really "harassed for not looking gay enough," but rather, nightclub staff doubted they were gay?

As a man who has been policed this way in queer spaces ... these two things are the same, not different.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:34 AM on March 26, 2015 [24 favorites]


Posts like this always wind up making me feel super weirdly socialized as a women who doesn't date men, because I didn't "grow up" around lesbian communities per se--I'd plugged into asexual communities first and later a college queer community which were mostly made up of bi and pan women, genderqueer and nonbinary people of various orientations, a mix of trans dudes and a couple of women again of various orientations, and then a smattering of cis gay guys. And then in ace communities, even ace communities with a lot of non-dudes who date only non-dudes, people are way more likely to identify as genderqueer or nonbinary than butch. (At least, the ones I've been in.) And of course, all of that is going to be blinkered by the sub groups of people I hung out with--for example, looking back I can see some of this behavior among some of the trans guys in my offline community (not all!), but they were never people I really hung out with much.

So this sort of relatively rigid gender role policing is fundamentally weird to me. I mean, I know approximately where it comes from, I know how it ties into a lot of queer history, but it's so very foreign to my expectations of how people interact and how gender relations work and how I would expect to be treated--it reminds me just how many loosely connected but fundamentally self-referential subcultures are out there, you know? And at the same time, it's a really good reminder to me to be careful about how I treat other women, and to be careful about how I frame my reaction to more femme women's experiences.

I do wonder if there may be a effect from framing the largest category of "FAAB people who do not feel comfortable with normative female gender expression but may or may not identify as male per se" from "butch women/masculine women" to "people outside the gender binary," which is the way I'm used to framing things. (I'm actually a little unusual in my experience in that I identify as fully female but gender-non-conforming/masculine-of-center/butch woman if you make me rather than nonbinary, and like Mrs. Pterodactyl I definitely went through a period of quiet gender questioning.)

That is, if you're framing this category of people as female but distinguishing it from other women by saying they're more like masculine people, is there maybe more cultural pressure for people in that category to push their gender expression in stereotyped masculine ways? If you're framing it as people who are neither male nor female, is there a linked pressure to push gender presentation away from both stereotyped masculine and stereotyped feminine presentations? I mean, the popularity of dapper gear and masculine attire in genderqueer fashion pretty clearly indicates it's much more complicated than that, and the inclusion of MAAB people in one group vs the other and the experiences of transfeminine people include a huge additional layer to all of it. But it's an interesting thought, particularly in light of this misogynistic behavior.

I don't know. All of this is very vaguely formed in my head, and like I said, I feel like I'm really strangely socialized for being a woman who pretty much exclusively is interested in people who don't identify as male. And obviously these categories are not perfectly equivalent--like I said, I actually felt a bit weird for a long time for being gender non-conforming but also feeling really comfortable identifying as female, full stop. And I think there is something to be said about conceptions of what it means to be male or female in these contexts, too, and how they're changing over time; except I really don't think I'm confident figuring it out on my own. I really don't want to imply that either way of framing things is better or worse, because I don't think that's true. But I think it's interesting how those subcultural norms influence the way that people perform gender and riff off of the "expected" genders in both their mainstream cultures and their subcultural communities.
posted by sciatrix at 6:39 AM on March 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


From the second link: But here it is, rearing its ugly head in a community that is made up (biologically if not psychologically) entirely of women.

I'm nit picking, but it struck me as super icky to lump trans men in as lesbians while excluding trans women at the same time. Sure, there's some wiggle room in the phrasing, but it was careless enough that I don't feel inclined to interpret it charitably.

Back on topic, I'm not sure why it's so surprising that some people expect better from members of the queer community. Granted, even if the evolving rhetoric from the community as a whole doesn't resonate with some individual's behavior, cognitive dissonance is a thing humans are really good at. On the other hand, humans are also pretty good an analogy if they make the effort, and it shouldn't be hard to draw the parallel between the queer experience and the feminine experience. I see these articles as one part exposé, one part call to arms; not just describing why we expect better, but outlining the means by which we do better.

I guess some people get burnt out and eventually it all just reads like a promo for "Misogyny: Fact of Fiction?" on the local network news. But isn't this different? It's not preaching to the choir; its diggig at the guilty in the congregation, and at least in this case, there's a chance the guilty are actually in attendance.
posted by WCWedin at 6:46 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think while we have made it ok to have female body parts, actually presenting as vulnerable, physically or emotionally weak, sensitive, loving, gentle, peaceful, disinterested in power over others, nurturing, supportive of humans because they are human and not because of their marketable skill sets in a workplace, equality based, unmotivated to strive for perfectionism or high performance in a capitalistic workplace, motivated by goodwill and familial bonds rather than money--- etcetc--- traits that match that of people who tended to care for children, the elderly the disabled- to value humans for being humans etc...

These traits are still seen as shit. So yes, you're given more of a pass for having a uterus and breasts,but heaven forbid you actually identify the TRAITS of what was stereotypically considered womanliness-- and which may actually be traits that commonly arise over the course of experiencing female hormones, pregnancy/birth/lactation processes and bonding and caring for small people in the way females quite frequently experience.

Even people who promote feminism, and sometimes those who try to erase gender, are thus trying to erase many women's experience of these traits happening to them because of their gender and their experience of that gender. It's like trying to be race blind in a way that erases people actual lived experience of their race and makes it not ok for them to identify with those experiences or talk about them. Trying to erase gender and force that on everyone,makes it not ok for people to experience a part of themselves that many people is a part of them,not only emotionally or culturally but even biologically, part of their physical experience of their body and life. On the other end, we have trying to enforce and police gender presentation by historical gender roles and culturally designed bullshit (that reinforces the perception of gender designed by the people who tended to have more physical strength and capacity to terrorize everyone into accepting their view of gender roles and social status of those doing what).

I'd like to think we can find a way to support unique variations and personal self expression without in some ways erasing that there are... well.. women who identify with historically expressed womanliness. Like it's ok that some people actually do identify with being gentle, loving, nurturing, family rather than career driven... It should be ok for people of any gender to feel this way- or to have a radical variance from the historical and current expectations of what it means to be someone with certain body parts or who identifies as a certain gender.

I also think that nurturing, family and healing arts-- and the traits that often support and work together in these arts-- typically associated with womanliness-- it's actually a helpful thing to have some language for the grouping of traits that function this way. When you think about how the body doesn't different things during "rest and digest" functioning vs "fight or flight" it's useful to have terms for these different ways of functioning and the fact that many processes unite to work together.

I think the language will evolve to help us have these conversations but I think for now, there are times when talking about mothering involves certain actual physical relationships between a pregnant/birthing/nursing and bonded human to their offspring, and we see the variation in that as a sign that using general terms is never ok, and it makes having conversations where those terms and concepts are useful very difficult and sort of weeds out people who DO identify with the common constructs from even being allowed to describe their experience because people are offended their experience itself, and the needs associated with that experience, represents the dominant narrative. For those in relationships who DO identify as the gentle and more submissive partner, but who don't want to be seen as a manifestation of kink-- they are just a person- it can be frustrating that the view of relationships sees empowerment in very specific terms,that in some ways demeans partners who don't want to always be assertive and powerful and fighting to earn the exact same amount of money as their partner because they don't care that much about money even though they know it matters, it's not their thing. These kinds of people- house spouses, stay at home parents, those suited to domestic duties and loving arts-- they are still seen as shit if they aren't asserting mastery of the financially driven realm.

While socialistic and matriarchical driven feminism (that is interested in the details of the female experience and empowerment that actually challenges male notions of what it means to be empowered) often just transplant all the male driven expectations of what it means to be a good person onto women and says "ok you can have your vagina's and breasts-- FINE, just don't ACTUALLY present as a woman. Be a man, in actions and deeds and concept of self, and you can be part of our club of equality." Notions of equality that oppose ablism (the very basis of a capitalistic society) -and that work for economic justice and equality based on shared experience of humanity-haven't made their way into mainstream feminism in a way that would really free people up to feel empowered and supported to truly present as themselves regardless of gender- because to present as a historically gendered woman is to fail at capitalistic values, and it's innately not ok to present that way unless you want to be treated like shit. Our society is innately abusive to people who identify with the traits of historic womanliness. Identify with and act out those traits and you deserve poverty, starvation, homelessness, sexual servitude to survive or thrive, or public humiliation and shaming for accepting charity to survive and thrive or to provide for children.

We think that the weak or vulnerable deserve to be preyed on. That is the nature of a world where might makes right, and that IS our capitalistic society. The weak are food for the strong. The gentle and kind are a delicacy for the forceful and aggressive to consume. Historically, this wasn't invented by humans. It's a "law" of reality that humans simple accepted and have fed. But it's shitty. And I think humans can move beyond it. So sure, you can have a vagina as long as you're smart, assertive, tough, financially secure, skilled in male driven arts of the workplace, stand up for yourself, never express fear or submissiveness, and accept the heirarchy of things that those who fight for and obtain power deserve it and the rest don't--- but don't you dare present as the traits typified of the female gender (often throughout many cultures so it makes me think there may be more too it that just culture) or you deserve whatever suffering, poverty, mistreatment, abuse, and cultural shame you get.
posted by xarnop at 7:14 AM on March 26, 2015 [16 favorites]


Xarnop, I get what you are saying but I am very, very uncomfortable labeling traits like submissiveness and gentleness as essentially feminine, because those traits are things that are associated with diminished agency. If individual people would like to cede agency in some aspects of their lives to specific people they trust, they are certainly welcome to do that. But I am incredibly uncomfortable with that being applied to my entire gender, particularly in light of the history of sexism and the way that that lack of agency has disproportionately left women very vulnerable to the whims of men.
posted by sciatrix at 7:34 AM on March 26, 2015 [9 favorites]


I'll put it another way, just because a person doesn't want to go around battling everyone around them just to have respect and peace (often considered submissiveness) doesn't mean that they deserve to be mistreated. And yes aggressive behavior is more associated with maleness than historic femaleness.
posted by xarnop at 7:38 AM on March 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


Like if I'm by myself, I'll handle a situation differently than if I've got a kid in tow...because if I act assertively and have to fight someone over it I put my kid at risk.

Women are more likely to have kids in tow and to have to factor things like that into how assertive they are going to be. It's very complicated why historically "submissiveness" has been associated with femaleness, but my point is there may have actually been real reasons, reasons that DO NOT mean women deserve to be mistreated, for this association. The idea that any vulnerability makes a person deserve to be abused is still very alive in our culture. We still think people who are being abused are at fault for it or it's a sign something is wrong with THEM not the person abusing them.
posted by xarnop at 7:42 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Athanassiel, thanks for posting these. I haven't had time to read them all yet, but it's an interesting topic and one that I think isn't discussed often enough. As a feminine-presenting lesbian (and I say that not to carry an identity flag, but because feminine is how I look when I get dressed in a way that feels comfortable to me), I find I get this shit in various ways depending on how I'm dressed. On a normal day, I look like a slightly tomboyish straight girl, and if I go into lesbian spaces alone I'll be questioned about why I'm there (and yeah, having your gayness questioned is not an ok thing; the end result is that I rely on the presence of my partner to "prove" my own identity). On the other hand, sometimes when I dress up I might look like a Femme-with-a-capital-F, and in some lesbian communities that seems to mean there's a good chance that someone I'm acquainted with will suddenly think it would be ok to slap my ass without consent, or someone I don't even know will feel like they can get way too close and personal with my breasts, right in front of my friends and their friends, and expect everyone to laugh and have a good time about it. And these things are supposed to be ok with me... things that would undoubtedly be emphatically not ok if done by a man. As the first article points out, it feels extra fucked up to have these things happen in a community and a space that's supposed to be safe for me. Lesbians should know better (but obviously, we don't).
posted by snorkmaiden at 7:56 AM on March 26, 2015 [7 favorites]


I think that conflating submission and discomfort with direct conflict is a mistake, though. I mean, think about traditionally interfemale modes of aggression like gossiping and manipulating social opinion of people--that doesn't involve direct conflict, but it does involve social jockeying for position and it certainly exercises agency. And I think it really and truly grows out of a cultural history of women not having direct power, but having to find more subtle ways to try and express their agency.

And I mean, for me? I find it much easier to be assertive or aggressive if I'm standing up for a vulnerable person or an ally than if I'm standing up for myself. I think that's actually very common for women. Think about the stereotypes about invoking "mama bears"--if anything, the cultural stereotype is that if children are threatened, that's when mothers are expected to be unusually aggressive to protect children. That's not quite the same as deciding when to escalate conflict and when to deflect it and when to sidestep it entirely, and I do think women are much more strongly socialized to choose one of the latter two options just in general.

For what it's worth, I completely agree that no one deserves to be abused, and that being uncomfortable with escalating aggression is a trait that skews female and which needs to be kept in mind as something which isn't inherently a flaw that needs fixing. I'm just uncomfortable with that being read as submission and it being reified as something which is common to all women.
posted by sciatrix at 7:58 AM on March 26, 2015 [7 favorites]


I'm nit picking, but it struck me as super icky to lump trans men in as lesbians while excluding trans women at the same time. Sure, there's some wiggle room in the phrasing, but it was careless enough that I don't feel inclined to interpret it charitably.

I think people generally are really struggling with language on this -- culturally we simply don't have good language for the complexities of gender and for easily and appropriately making clear what exactly we are referring to in a given moment. There are things were identity is all that matters, other things where biology matters, and other issues where the cross-cutting distinction is something else entirely, but the terms commonly available (outside of specific academic and activist spaces where the language is more codified) don't lend themselves to that fluidity and complexity.

In other words, erring on the side of "I think I can see what you meant, even if what you actually said was inelegant" is probably going to get these conversations a lot further, at least when someone seems to be engaging in good faith, which is very much the case in that link.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:00 AM on March 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


"I find it much easier to be assertive or aggressive if I'm standing up for a vulnerable person or an ally than if I'm standing up for myself. I think that's actually very common for women."

I feel like there is a weird disconnect where you're claiming that I'm talking over women or speaking for you, but you're doing that yourself for other women. It's an accusation that makes it harder to have conversations when we expect a level of inclusive language that depicts every possible variation in every sentence, rather than charitably assuming that the speaker knows they do not speak for everyone. What you described is exactly what I mean by submissive. Preferring not to fight, especially when ones self is involved. And you just said that you too see this as common to women.

Those who prefer not to fight or aggressively assert their will in situations where people are being disrespectful or trying to remove agency, does result in people losing agency. In a world that celebrates assertiveness, and assumes those who don't celebrate this innately deserve to have their agency removed-- those who aren't fighting for their own agency are losing it, and are considered submissive. Since I think this is a semantic discussion in a lot of ways, I'll invite you chat with me more about this by memail if interested and won't further discuss it in thread. I think we're essentially on the same side here, personally, but would be happy to see if we can do the word gymnastics required to feel that way if you like.
posted by xarnop at 8:06 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ah, yeah, identified the issue--we've got different definitions of "submissive." Got it! I'll leave it at that, since I agree with you that this is a bit of a derail.
posted by sciatrix at 8:10 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Great post, and that first link is wonderful—I particularly appreciated this caveat:
Sometimes these moments seem innocent enough. Desire makes us do strange things, and wanting someone a great deal is a slippery slope. Crushes are difficult territory to navigate, especially ones that never come to reciprocated fruition. I understand feeling very strongly about someone you love; some dynamics will always feel possessive by virtue of their participants’ natures. I think most of us have dealt in the kind of relationship that drenches you in passion and then wrings you out, and if you haven’t, you are probably lucky, and a little less worn for the road. Love – and all the other lesser named ways that humans get attached to each other’s hearts and bodies – is even more complicated and nebulous than our constant musing on it imply.
It's important to remember that doing things right will always be difficult because we're human-all-too-human, and we need to temper our righteousness with compassion.
posted by languagehat at 8:20 AM on March 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


snorkmaiden:
"when I dress up I might look like a Femme-with-a-capital-F, and in some lesbian communities that seems to mean there's a good chance that someone I'm acquainted with will suddenly think it would be ok to slap my ass without consent, or someone I don't even know will feel like they can get way too close and personal with my breasts, right in front of my friends and their friends, and expect everyone to laugh and have a good time about it"
I'm a guy and typically not too transgressive about gender stuff. But this one time a few friends and I made a pact that we would wear women's clothes to school the next day. It was a lark, really, and I followed along though it was not my idea, because hey why not. Turned out I was the only one that actually followed through, and I learned a lot from the disrespectful way my friends treated me (uninvited touching especially). It's scary to realize that the stupid scripts about gender roles are more powerful than our interpersonal relationships.
posted by idiopath at 8:34 AM on March 26, 2015 [14 favorites]


I really do not like how we are all expected to some degree to perform a gender role in a cis-centric model for the particular gender presentation we are choosing at that moment. It feels overly restrictive and fake.

It is my opinion that queer communities need to examine the usefulness of the expected cisnormative behaviors that get attached to gender presentation and redefine what those behaviors are so they become less harmful to the whole. To say that masculinity is built on hegemonic power structures is more correct than saying masculinity is what creates them. Masculinity is a component alongside privilege, physical might and class that when harnessed and projected properly contains, categorizes, ranks, objectifies and owns everything around it. I call that attitude and manner of being "colonialist" myself. It is my belief that being colonialist in our actions does not require masculinity to exist, femme people can act that way too, but masculinity sure helps enforce a more extreme and violent colonialist mindset.

I guess I am saying that in my own opinion, ownership without consent, objectification and groping and all that horrible crap that happens is an extremely harmful cis-centric, heteronormative behavior based on a lot of factors that is not exclusive to any gender, but rather it is a part of a larger model of class and privilege. I think, as queer people, we should be working together to clearly separate gender from privilege so that butch and masculine gender presentations are allowed to carry less socially encoded baggage that expects and reinforces the colonial mindset of the patriarchy.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:23 AM on March 26, 2015 [6 favorites]


I also think it's interesting because so many of the examples of how to desire women have been created by men. Those examples (advertising, porn, romantic comedies, dramas, the list goes on...) are certainly far more prevalent than any women-desiring-women counter-examples. So those of us who are women and suspect we might rather like other women have few models of how to demonstrate this desire and interest other than to imitate men desiring women.

Perhaps more for an Ask, and hopefully not too much of a derail, but, what are some non-binary, non-objectifying, counter-examples of women desiring (women or men or both)? What aesthetic choices support placing women's wanting and subjectivity at the centre of a piece, particularly in visual form? I have little concept of what that looks like.

I also wonder whether it's possible to entirely get away from power-plays in any relationship between two people, and whether that basic interpersonal dynamic near-inevitably winds up taking on the flavour (or, maybe more appropriately, the habit) of dominant cultural schemas, without significant additional effort. (And, though I'm het/cis, I'm interested in what that effort looks like in different places.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:47 AM on March 26, 2015


I also wonder whether it's possible to entirely get away from power-plays in any relationship between two people

I am sort of gobsmacked by the idea that power-plays are a necessity in interpersonal relationships. If for no other reason than that I have found it super easy not to have relationships that involve them, simply by not engaging in them myself.

Which isn't to say I have never been on the receiving end of game-playing nonsense, but when you don't play along and don't accept it as normal then it's not that hard to just drop such people. Most of them, in my experience, aren't all that interested in it from a one-sided approach anyway.
posted by phearlez at 11:48 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Sorry, breaking this down for cis/het people is not on my To Do list.

Well, I apologize if my question was misdirected. I understood feminist questions to be part of the problematic in the OP, that's where I was coming from. I'm taking your objection on-board, though. Thanks for the lead, cheers.

I (obviously) think the idea that any two individuals are always going to be perfectly synchronized in their desires, needs, and comforts is more shocking than the notion of at least occasional friction or conflict, any negotiation of which is bound to involve some kind of effort to communicate, which is, many times, to influence (with a view towards compromise, if it's not an implicit or overt power play - either way, it's a question of reconciling difference. Often, pragmatically, that does involve influence or the desire to influence, even if it's unconscious). Because no two people are identical. It's a physical impossibility. Hence that question.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:17 PM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


So it turns out if you actually care about your partner's happiness and your partner's happiness makes you happy, and you're partnered with someone who feels the same, the number of times you end up in a situation with a me vs. them worldview is vanishingly small.
posted by Zalzidrax at 12:22 PM on March 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


Oh, it's that easy, ok. That explains the difficulties attending long-term partnerships. We just don't want (them, ourselves) to be happy enough.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:44 PM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you are defining power play so loosely as to include every disagreement where people use any effort to persuade then it is a totally meaningless term.
posted by phearlez at 12:48 PM on March 26, 2015


Hey, like it would be super swell if this didn't turn into a thread about het relationships. I am advocating that we just leave that alone.

I was talking about natural conflict and difference in any relationship that arises as a result of the fact that individuals are individuals. What I think is that when such conflicts occur, people draw from wider discourses to justify their positions - in this case, the discourse of heteronormativity.

If you have issues with het people participating in the thread in any capacity, that's something else, and in that case, fine, I'll leave the discussion.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:57 PM on March 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


I think people generally are really struggling with language on this -- culturally we simply don't have good language for the complexities of gender and for easily and appropriately making clear what exactly we are referring to in a given moment. There are things were identity is all that matters, other things where biology matters, and other issues where the cross-cutting distinction is something else entirely, but the terms commonly available (outside of specific academic and activist spaces where the language is more codified) don't lend themselves to that fluidity and complexity.

Except that the idea that biology trumps identity is really shitty bigotry that happens to be behind things like the various anti-trans bathroom bills in several state legislatures. Saying that female-attracted trans men are really super-butch lesbians while ignoring queer trans women, is a problematically cisnormative erasure of trans people's identities. It's the same sort of ugliness that comes from so-called "trans-exclusionary radical feminists"; "trans women are really men seeking to subvert women's spaces". So yeah, it's a really icky and problematic framing. Also, last time I checked? The queer community in a lot of places is an "activist space", to some greater or lesser extent, and these are kind of things someone who casually uses "heteronormative" and mentions "our community includes a range of identities from cis to trans" really SHOULD be aware of.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 1:14 PM on March 26, 2015 [9 favorites]


That answers one of my questions. Fine, I'm out.
posted by cotton dress sock at 1:33 PM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


What I think is that when such conflicts occur, people draw from wider discourses to justify their positions - in this case, the discourse of heteronormativity.

That to me, is exactly the problem.
posted by Annika Cicada at 1:39 PM on March 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


and throw homonormativity onto the heap of problems I grapple with as well.
posted by Annika Cicada at 1:40 PM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


sciatrix: Xarnop, I get what you are saying but I am very, very uncomfortable labeling traits like submissiveness and gentleness as essentially feminine, because those traits are things that are associated with diminished agency.

I'd argue that his is actually part of the very dynamic we're discussing.

One baseline differentiation I want to put in place is that "feminine" neither implies "female" nor "woman" nor "girl". While the constellation of characteristics is often conflated with the emotional/physical/social experience of being a girl or woman, they are actually different things - the traits of "feminine" are a cultural construct, being a girl or woman is influenced by cultural constructs but also exists in and of itself.

"Feminine" contains the assumption of submissiveness within the context of "submissiveness to a dominant other". The submissiveness is cast as all-encompassing and characteristic. Submissiveness is also associated with "being part of the team" and "being a good support" and the actions of listening to others, valuing what they say, and re-assessing our thoughts and actions based on what they say.

In order to have a group function, there needs to be a mix of listening and speaking, with the majority of people listening the majority of the time. In order for a group to function, there needs to be consistent valuing of what others say. In order for a group to function, one of the ways of managing dissent has to be re-assessing thoughts and actions based on the words of other members of the group.

Ironically, the very prejudices against "submission" often take what could be a functioning group and shifts it into something else; people who don't want to be seen as "weak and submissive (read: lesser)" resist coded feminine actions, which means groups become rapidly non-functional because one or more people simply won't listen, take seriously, and honestly assess the words of others. This, again ironically, actually diminishes the ability of such groups to accomplish goals - which I'd argue is much closer to diminishing agency than simply listening to someone else. The coding of the interaction in terms of "more/less" sets up the group to fail because some of the members end up competing to not be seen as submissive.
posted by Deoridhe at 2:08 PM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


I am so glad that these articles are coming out. This is some real shit. I am an AFAB person with The Genders who hung out with a lot of cis guys for years on end and did misogyny things constantly in order to "fit in" or "be a real man" or "distinguish myself from Plain' Ol' Women". When I was a teenager in the woods I remember trying to figure out how to demonstrate my attraction to women and looking to examples of attraction-to-women I could see around me - misogynist, dehumanizing patriarchy shitbucket examples - and mimicking - and now, half my lifetime later, I'm still pulling up the weeds of those nasty seeds that were planted.

A precious friend and I were talking about this like two days ago, how we have both gone through this horror at our younger selves being misogynist shitbats.

Annika Cicada I like your comment upthread about systems of behavior and your exhortation to unlimber masculinity from the hell structure of the kyriarchy.
posted by beefetish at 3:53 PM on March 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


Hell yeah, I remember looking at Playboys with guy friends at uni (when I figured it out) and checking out women and generally trying to behave like one of the guys. Because how else do you express that you like women? And it was fun to be one of the guys, to feel that sense of bonding and togetherness, especially when I'd never felt like I really fit in with most girls (I do mean girls, not women). All it took was some objectification! I was taking women's studies classes at the same time and trying to make sense of it from that angle as well. It just wasn't all happening at the same rate, and what my head understood on one level didn't necessarily affect desire I felt in response to, say, the pictures in Playboy.

Once you start factoring in things like the allure of the forbidden - so that if you think a certain kind of behaviour is inappropriate, it can take on disproportionate sexiness. Sometimes I feel like the whole erotic nature of things I intellectually, politically and idealistically abhor is like the pernicious evil of crab grass. You think you've ripped it all out but you know the roots are down there and it will pop up again unexpectedly. No excuse for actually translating those things into behaviour except maybe in nice, consensual roleplaying.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:53 PM on March 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


WCWedin: I'm nit picking, but it struck me as super icky to lump trans men in as lesbians while excluding trans women at the same time. Sure, there's some wiggle room in the phrasing, but it was careless enough that I don't feel inclined to interpret it charitably.

Dip Flash: In other words, erring on the side of "I think I can see what you meant, even if what you actually said was inelegant" is probably going to get these conversations a lot further, at least when someone seems to be engaging in good faith, which is very much the case in that link.

The problem with waving that one through the toll booth is that even as someone who's a masculine maybe-kinda-queer cis dude, i hear about this one all the time. Just recently there was a gigantic party at an underground venue that's stated up front as an everyone-welcome queer party space first and foremost. The party itself was thrown by a sarcastically named local feminist group that regularly throws women only events, but the party was supposed to be everyone welcome.

A huge kerfuffle arose because after a moderate amount of people showed up(and this is a fairly large space that throws parties hundreds of people attend. it's big enough that there's an indoor swingset, or at least used to be) the organizers started griping that there were too many cisdudes in there, so they decided to start letting only women in, and pulling them out of line but trying to do it quietly.

So they let in a bunch of women, and some trans men... and told my friend whose a trans woman to fuck off despite the fact they were obviously presenting female. The whole not queer enough thing came in to play here too in addition to what you're discussing. In the end no ones identities are respected, but it's extra gross because trans men get lumped in with women and pulled in while trans women get kicked out.

This wouldn't be worth bringing up so much if it wasn't a narrative i've seen over and over, seen my friends scream about online and be seriously upset over in person(especially when they weren't let in to something or were grossly misgendered or both), and that didn't seem to just be generally engrained.

"Trans men are basically women so we should include them" is just as shitty as "trans women are basically men", and it's funny because you see people who you could never imagine saying or(you'd hope) believing #2 tacitly practicing #1 as if it's a given.

So it's very hard for me to read sentences like that and go "oh they probably meant well", when a bunch of seemingly-well-meaning-people act really shitty to my friends and just in reality around me with a surprisingly high frequency, being someone who isn't even directly hit with it. I feel like i've heard of it happening exactly like that 2-3 times in as many months.
posted by emptythought at 4:43 AM on March 27, 2015 [12 favorites]


My understanding is that one of the major conflicts of the Women's Music Festival was that trans men were being welcomed in as "basically butch lesbians" while trans women were excluded. Other language I've heard around trans women is "masculine energy" and a description of them as aggressive - as if women aren't aggressive!! - seems to crop-up a lot. I may be wrong about this, but I believe the coalescing core of Trans-Excluding Feminism was around the Woman's Music Festival and how it excluded some women because the decision makers didn't consider those women to be women. My perception is this happens a lot, and the exclusion of trans women from spaces set aside for women is one of the ways in which trans women are made more vulnerable (I would bring in broader contexts, like prisons and domestic violence shelters, here) without actually increasing the safety of other women (intra-women violence and abuse occurs, and a narrative where abuse is a priori a masculine/male thing obscures that).

That isn't to say there might not be gendered aspects to intra-women violence and abuse - I think the observations that a lot of masculine-identified-but-not-male women use presumptive* masculine behaviors that ignore issues of consent as a form of establishing a hierarchy is obvious. I'm not sure that is the only kind of consent-ignoring, even though it's the one prevalent in a sexual context, and I'm more and more beginning to believe our difficulties with consent in sexual contexts is predicated on difficulties with consent in non-sexual contexts, as a learned behavior from childhood.

This may be a reach, but it seems to me that the experience of having ones' consent violated over and over again can fork responses between those who try to never violate anyone elses' consent ever, and those who interpret violations of consent as an exercise of power, and thus pre-emptively act to be the one in power. The aggressive "jostling for space" which seems to be part of many coded-masculine interactions strikes me as being about establishing power as a function of taking up more space, which presumes the others one interacts with won't consent - indeed, the idea of consent is not even on the table. I wonder how much this very early, non-verbal behavior influences how people view interactions when they become more based in language and symbolism.

*I originally used "toxic" here. I am, in my view, referring to much of what the men who coined the term were talking about when they talked about it using this term. I am on the fence about that term being used outside of that original context.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:20 PM on March 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


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