#dee graham

[piv-negative]

PIV & Heterosexuality: 7 Quotes

“In patriarchal societies, laws, institutions and social customs guarantee and organize the unconditional right of men to heterosexual sex. … Each time a woman lets herself be penetrated, she implicitly recognizes her individual subordinated status, as well as her belonging to the collective category of the subordinated. … As the founding paradigm of male domination, sexual intercourse is the ultimate hierarchizing act. Hence the question: can male domination be abolished as long as heterosexuality remains the norm?” -- Francine Sporenda

“The heterosexual ritual … operates on a continuum which begins with male definitions of what constitutes ‘normal’ sex … Within the terms of the heterosexual ritual only penetration followed by penile thrusting and ejaculation is defined as ‘real’ or ‘normal’ sex … This definition of what constitutes ‘real’ or ‘normal’ sex creates the expectations from which actual sexual behaviour follows.” -- Angela Hamblin

“Fucking is a large part of how females are kept subordinated to males. … It is very important to the maintenance of male-supremacy that men fuck women, a lot. So it is required; it is compulsory.” -- Marilyn Frye

“The reduction of women to holes, serving only to define those who fill them, is central to how misogyny perpetuates itself. ... These assumptions are there whenever it is decreed that women cannot have full ownership of themselves. ... We want women to lie on their backs and just take it." -- Victoria Smith

“Fucking is entirely a male act designed to affirm the reality and power of the phallus, of masculinity. For women, the pleasure in being fucked is the masochistic pleasure of experiencing self-negation. Under the male-positive system, the masochistic pleasure of self-negation is both mythicized and mystified in order to compel women to believe that we experience fulfillment in selflessness, pleasure in pain, validation in self-sacrifice, femininity in submission to masculinity. Trained from birth to conform to the requirements of this peculiar world view, punished severely when we do not learn masochistic submission well enough, entirely encapsulated inside the boundaries of the male-positive system, few women ever experience themselves as real in and of themselves. Instead, women are real to themselves to the degree that they identify with and attach themselves to the positivity of males. In being fucked, a woman attaches herself to one who is real to himself and vicariously experiences reality, such as it is, through him; in being fucked, a woman experiences the masochistic pleasure of her own negation which is perversely articulated as the fulfillment of her femininity.”

-- Andrea Dworkin

“Because men want women’s sexual services for themselves only, seeing female-female sexuality as taking something from them, men make women’s heterosexuality compulsory. …. Choosing to give up sex with men or to withdraw from men because men are physically violent toward women is not considered a legitimate option for women.” -- Dee Graham

"Within the lesbian spaces and the feminist spaces that I have known, at the beginning it was quite a revelation to realize that not all lesbians are feminists, that not all feminists are lesbians, and that not all spaces are open for feminism. ... In any case, I believe that when the issues addressed by feminism are understood from their roots, there are several opportunities to realize that remaining in heterosexuality leaves us exactly in the same traps as the patriarchal systems of oppression that feminism identifies, questions and deconstructs. In various ways, the reflections proposed by feminism eventually lead to lesbianism and vice versa." -- Itzel Danae

[woman-for-women]

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7. Captive Sees Outside Authorities Trying to Win Her/His Release as “Bad Guys” and Sees Captor as “Good Guy.” Captive Sees Captor as Protecting Him/Her

The need to keep men happy, along with women’s need to deny the survival-dependent aspects of this need, leads to the apparently strange fact that women take on men’s perspective even when it appears counter to our interest to do so. Just as hostages come to feel that the police trying to win their release are the “bad guys” and that their captors are the “good guys,” many women paradoxically believe and feel that men, not feminists, have our best interests at heart. This fact has led Alison Jaggar (1983) to argue that “any theory that claims to express the standpoint of women must be able to explain why it is itself rejected by the vast majority of women.” Many women side with men against feminists, and many women side with men against lesbians. In fact, women who are anti-feminist tend also be anti-gay (cf. Minnigerode 1976). Thus, many women believe and feel that those persons trying to win our release from male domination and trying to end male violence against women— feminists and lesbians— are the “bad guys” and men are the “good guys.”

-- Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham

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Lack of Feelings of Entitlement

In general, women are no less satisfied than men are with their jobs and pay, despite the fact that women earn less than men for “objectively similar performance inputs” (Major 1987). Also, despite the fact that women know other women are paid less than they deserve, women think that they personally are not underpaid. Similarly, women express no less satisfaction than men do with their marriages, despite the fact that women do more of the household chores, do more child care, and have less say in important decisions than men, even when both husband and wife work full time (Major 1987). Do women believe we deserve less than men?

Numerous studies have been carried out in an attempt to understand women’s paradoxical responses to employment and pay injustices. The studies typically use an experimental situation in which male and female subjects are asked to do a task in same- or mixed-sex groups. At the end of the task, the subjects are asked to pay either themselves or their partner any amount up to a maximum. In two such studies, Callahan-Levy and Messe (1979) found that females paid themselves less than did male subjects. This sex difference in self-pay occurred at all age levels, from first graders to undergraduate college students. In fact, the older the girls, the less they paid themselves relative to what boys their same age paid themselves! The sex difference in self-pay was not due to females feeling they had done a poorer job than males, for there was no difference in the two sexes’ self-reported evaluations of their performance (Callahan-Levy and Messe 1979).

Major et al. (1984) asked subjects to count sets of dots in various spatial configurations. Subjects were told, “Our only requirement is that you do as much work as you think is fair for the amount of money we have been able to pay you. The $4.00 is yours to keep regardless of how long you work on the task or how many sets of dots you count.” Females worked longer than males for the $4.00. They also counted more dot sets, counted dot sets correctly more often, and worked more efficiently than men. Despite the fact that women outperformed men on every measure, men and women did not differ in the performance evaluations they gave themselves! These findings regarding women’s feelings of entitlement indicate that, as females, we do not believe our labor is worth as much as men believe theirs is worth. The results therefore suggest that women have internalized male culture’s view that women’s labor is worth less than men’s.

-- Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham

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5. Captive Is Hypervigilant Regarding the Captor’s Needs and Seeks to Keep the Captor Happy. In the Service of Keeping the Captor Happy, Captive Tries to “Get Inside the Captor’s Head”

Once men show women any kindness, however small, women do whatever we can to have the kindness continue. If men feel warmth toward women, they might not do violence to us, so women do what we can to encourage feelings of warmth. If men feel warmth toward women, they also might not let other men hurt us. If women can arouse the kindness of any one man, maybe other men also will think we are valuable and therefore won’t hurt us because they will respect that man’s property or fear his wrath if they show us disrespect. (Such thinking, of course, rarely occurs at a conscious level.)

Desperately wanting to keep men kind, women try to get inside men’s heads, so to speak, so that we can know what makes them happy, sad, angry, depressed, or appreciative. We try to decipher every nuance of men’s verbal and nonverbal behavior. For example, females more than males look at the person with whom we are talking. Rubin (1970) suggested that women’s greater gazing “may allow women to obtain cues from [our] male partners concerning the appropriateness of [our] behavior.” Laboratory studies repeatedly show females to be better decoders of others’ nonverbal cues than males at all ages (Hall 1987). Women are more sensitive to the feelings and thoughts of males than of females. More particularly, a woman engaging in a task in which she is subordinate to a man is much more sensitive to the man’s thoughts and feelings than one engaging in a task in which she is dominant (Snodgrass 1985).

Weitz (1976) found that women were “nonverbally more submissive with more dominant male partners” and nonverbally more cold with more affiliable male partners. She found, on the other hand, that female nonverbal behaviors were not associated with the dominance or affiliableness of their female partners, nor were male nonverbal behaviors associated with their female partners’ dominance or warmth. These findings led Weitz to propose that females use a “monitoring mechanism … [to] adjust their nonverbal communications to fit the male in the interaction,” thereby helping to ensure that women’s interactions with men go smoothly.

Given that women’s primary need is to survive, all needs other than keeping men happy assume secondary importance. To the extent that these secondary needs diminish women’s ability to keep men happy, they are denied . For this reason, women as a group are less conscious of our own needs, wants, and perspectives than we are of those of men. Women may not even know what our own needs, wants, and perspectives are (J. Miller 1976), though we can articulate men’s feelings with hardly a hesitation. Women’s survival depends both on taking care of men’s needs and on men knowing women are doing this, so that men will (continue to) feel kindly toward women.

-- Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham

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1. Captive Shows Symptoms of Ongoing Trauma or of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

The American Psychiatric Association defines Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as “the development of characteristic symptoms following a psychologically distressing event that is outside the range of usual human experience. … The stressor producing this syndrome would be markedly distressing to almost anyone.” But McCann, Sakheim, and Abrahamson (1988) note that “it is increasingly recognized that some traumatic events are generally within the range of usual human experience.”

McCann et al. categorize PTSD symptoms as follows: emotional, which includes fear, anxiety, depression, lowered self-esteem, anger (though this may be absent where the victim fears retribution for expressed anger), guilt, and shame; cognitive, which refers to perceptual disturbances such as de-realization and dissociation; biological, which includes somatic disturbances such as increased ulcers, headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, asthma, and menstrual problems; behavioral, which includes suicidal behavior and personality disorders; and interpersonal, which includes sexuality problems, and relationship problems such as decreased trust and fear of getting too close. Some of these symptoms arise immediately upon victimization and may persist for some time afterward (e.g., fear, anxiety). Other symptoms arise immediately but are unlikely to continue (e.g., depression, anger). Still others may arise later and are associated more with long-term effects (e.g., self-esteem problems).

Our theory leads us to expect that symptoms of PTSD will become fully apparent in women only when men no longer threaten us with their violence and we have begun to feel safe. As long as men’s violence against women continues, women as a group are not likely to show full-blown PTSD symptoms. Rather, women will show symptoms of ongoing traumatization, or symptoms likely to immediately arise upon victimization: fear, anxiety, and depression. Because retaliation is likely if anger is expressed, one would not expect to see women expressing a lot of anger at men. It is interesting therefore that symptoms of what may be construed as a traumatic stress reaction have repeatedly been noted in women as a group: otherwise unexplained physical and psychosomatic problems, clinging behavior, feelings of helplessness and powerlessness, depression, occasional seemingly illogical outbursts of anger and rage, ambivalence in relations with men, and low self-esteem.

-- Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham

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In the last chapter we examined the possibility that all women are exposed to conditions conducive to the development of Societal Stockholm Syndrome: threat to survival, inability to escape, isolation, and kindness. Men’s violence against women encourages women to bond with “kind” men for protection against other men, setting the stage for men’s one-on-one oppression of women (Brownmiller 1975; Dworkin 1983) and the institutionalization of heterosexuality. This violence is mystified as normal under the guise of the masculine sex role. In this chapter we ask if the conditions giving rise to Stockholm Syndrome, operating at a societal level, structure women’s psychological development, creating a women’s psychology based on Stockholm Syndrome. That is, is women’s psychology accurately described by Societal Stockholm Syndrome psychodynamics? We consider women as a group and show how Societal Stockholm Syndrome psychodynamics appear in women’s psychology. According to our theory, to the extent that Stockholm Syndrome-conducive conditions are intrinsic to the life situations of women in patriarchal culture, so that no part of women’s lives is untouched by these conditions, Stockholm Syndrome psychodynamics should be present to some extent in all women’s relationships with men, in women’s relationships with every man, and in every encounter between a woman and a man. However, because women differ in the extent and nature of our exposure to the four conditions (for example, by virtue of social differences associated with class, race, and individual experiences), women differ in the extent and possibly in the configuration (that is, organization, pattern, or structure) of Stockholm Syndrome manifested in our individual psychologies and in our individual relations with men

Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham

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In considering men’s kindnesses to women— chivalry, male protection of women from other men’s violence, love, and heterosexual privilege— it is necessary to keep in mind the context in which these kindnesses occur. Perhaps most influential to the development of Societal Stockholm Syndrome is kindness offered following traumatization caused by male violence or threats of male violence. Women are more likely to turn to men rather than other women for nurturance and support following traumatization— because we are isolated from other women who might provide us comfort and because we perceive that men are better able to protect us from male violence. (Only after men and their institutions fail to provide this support do most women turn to other women for it.) The more women need comfort and support, the more likely we are to bond to men when men provide them, even if the comfort and support provided are minimal. In fact, the less support we are given, the more dependent we become and the more grateful we are for any crumbs of kindness. We present all these observations so that readers may determine for themselves whether men as a group show kindness to women, or more to the point, whether women perceive that men show them kindness. Some men are indeed genuinely caring toward women, at least on occasion. Some men swim against the general stream, working as individuals against societal oppression of women by men. However, it is beside the point whether a few men or groups of men feel actual (mutually empowering) love for women or are genuinely kind to women. Kind slaveholders may have made slavery more bearable for their slaves but that did not make the institution of slavery any less heinous. Also, kind, loving men can always do an about face and stop being kind and loving. The threat of withdrawal therefore serves as a means of social control of women, keeping women focused on men and working to keep men kind (cf. Stringer 1986). The only real kindness men can show to women is to join with women and support women in our struggle against male domination. The “kindnesses” presented in this section are ones which our society mandates that all men provide women— even if only to some women and only if we are deemed to deserve them. They are worthy of examination as a group for that reason alone. Why would a culture characterized by male violence against women— a patriarchy— mandate male kindnesses toward women? Examination of the social conditions that give rise to women’s need for such kindnesses and of the functions that these kindnesses play within patriarchy leads to the conclusion that patriarchy is strengthened by the kindnesses men as a group are mandated to show toward women. Through men’s acts of kindness, women are given a stake in patriarchy (cf. Bunch 1983). These kindnesses wrap in a chivalric cloak the misogynistic core of our culture, disguising the actual situation of women. If men’s kindnesses toward women were really only kindnesses, a man would be pleased if another man or woman offered these kindnesses to him. He would be pleased if another man or woman lit his cigarette or pulled out his chair for him. He would be pleased to derive his income, prestige, power and even his identity from his partner. He would take pride in another man’s or woman’s offer to walk him to his car at night. But in fact, “one of the very nasty things that can happen to a man is his being treated or seen as a woman, or womanlike.” (Frye 1983)

Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham