“I mean gynocentric categories in an almost Kantian sense. Like the categories of space and time, sexual categories provide the framework by which we perceive, and structure our perceptions meaningfully. Our perceptions have long been shaped by the social assumption that maleness is more significant than femaleness. In other words, the change we are invited to make in our thinking by the gynocentric religious imagery from prehistoric Crete is a very radical change. But it is a change that has not yet been fully appreciated. The challenge to think in gynocentric categories has not really been taken up. Few attempts to explain the gynocentric religious imagery, or to reflect on its significance, avoid androcentric or other limiting socioreligious assumptions.”
There is nothing wrong with being mindful of your own personal safety.
We all have a right to feel uncomfortable, and to act accordingly. It’s okay to cross the road to avoid others, I do this myself.
So too we should all be mindful of how we can make others feel safer when walking home at night – this is just basic common decency.
But what isn’t okay; is to fear monger, vilify and create a cultural panic around ‘men’ as a group.
To talk about men as if they’re monsters forever lurking the shadows; comparing experiences with men to walking through a room of snakes, or swimming in a shark tank, and yes, eating from a bowl of poisoned M&Ms.
This is not advocacy. This is ignorance, and hate.
Neither do such thought experiments help women ‘feel safe’ either. In fact, such terrifying analogies will likely make them feel the opposite.
Neither do you get to tell men (who are at a significantly higher risk), that they can walk the streets at whatever time they like, without fear or consequence – under the protective shield of so called ‘male privilege’.
Walking home at night is not an opportunity for you to inject your bigoted political ideas around men, or stoke fear and division.
I am tired of it.
I am tired of the endless pearl clutching.
I am tired of seeing the conversation of violent crime centred on highly privileged millionaire celebrity women, who are not at risk, and taken away from those who are – which is young, inner city, working class black boys.
I am tired of the conversation making no effort to understand what shapes violent crime, or how to reduce it, to instead fan the flames of a gender war.
I am tired of seeing tragic stories hijacked for political ends, to become yet another bludgeon to hit ‘yes all men’ with.
It is boring. It is divisive. And most of all, it doesn’t achieve anything.
So let’s look at the numbers, for a more reasonable and evidence based insight into violent crime.
Xians will thank their god for everything good in their lives, but are pathologically incapable of blaming it for the bad things that happen. It's either "free will" or "Satan" or some other excuse. This is hypocritical.
If you blame men as a category for violent crime, then you can also give credit to men as a category for the decline of violent crime over the years. To not do so would also be hypocritical.
Or you just blame the extreme minority who are actually responsible.
And if you're still like, nope, changes nothing, then okay. But just do one thing for me. Type: "I'm justified crossing the road when I encounter..." Then go look up violent crime by race, pro rata it, and see how you feel about finishing that sentence. I dare you. If one would make you feel racist about making assumptions about and blaming all members of one group, then the other should also make you feel sexist about making assumptions about and blaming all members of another group.
In fact, such terrifying analogies will likely make them feel the opposite.
This is, of course, a feature not a bug. Women's fear is a valuable political and ideological commodity.
"... as we know from the war on drugs and the war on terror, for those in the business of providing protection, high threat levels are bread and butter. Likewise, for those in the business of healing race relations, racial division is your sworn enemy but your secret friend—so much so that wounding and healing become part of the same operation."
-- Lyell Asher, "Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults."
The same thing applies here. The point of stupid analogies and stories is the same as the threat of hell: to control and manipulate, to gain authority by building dependence through fostering fear.
When someone is encouraging you to be afraid, stop for a moment and ask yourself, why. What do they get out of it?
(рус↓, перемотайте пост до "читать дальше". Я встретила эту цитату в начале своего пути и искренне считаю, что каждая женщина должна прочитать её тоже. Честно говоря, многим это нужно прочитать, и не только женщинам.)
I red this in the start of my path and I think every woman should read it too. Honestly, it feels like many "progressive" folks on tumblr should read it too and stop asking the same question over and over again.
<< During the question and answer period after one of my campaign speeches in Delaware, a man rose at the back of the hall with a pencil and paper in his hand. "You say that over 2000 women are raped every day in this country. I did some quick figuring. That makes about 40,000 a day worldwide." Significant pause. Then he exploded: "That's the number of children who starve to death every day! Think about that!" And he plopped down in his seat with a smug, duty-done look on his face.
At that point, another man, encouraged by his colleague's outspokenness and impeccable logic, arose and pointed out that no matter how bad incest is (he called it "child abuse" since he was apparently unable to face the implications of "incest"), he was furious at my saying that what happens to females in incest is far worse than anything that happens to men in wars. How could I be so insensitive! How do I think he'd felt, leaving the blasted bodies of his buddies strewn all over Vietnam's battlefields? Didn't I have any conception that men were being tortured even as we sat there, in El Salvador, for instance?
What they were saying to me was very clear. As long as any male, anywhere is suffering, women are selfish to mention that they are suffering, too. I'm sure neither of those men realized the woman-hatred behind their feeling that everything and everyone should come before women.
I pointed out quietly that in every country where children are starving, women are starving In every country where men are being tortured, women are being tortured also. I was insensitive enough to point out that Vietnam is also strewn with the blasted bodies of women, and that many, many of those bodies were not simply blown up, but were also sexually abused – raped, gang raped, used up in prostitution, tortured (cutting fetuses out of living bellies and beheading them in front of women's eyes before they died themselves was a favorite sport. My Lai was not an isolated incident.) No matter when or where or what men suffer, women's suffering is on some totally different, more exquisite, plane.
No one wants to hear that women are suffering.
I told them that I did not intend to belittle anyone's suffering, only to put women's in perspective. I pointed out that all the one man said about men and war has been glaringly visible for thousands of years. Men's ordeals are recounted and described and depicted in every conceivable way in every medium on earth, and have been from earliest history. We are always asked and expected to look at and listen to and understand and sympathize with men's pain and suffering, and we have always done it, all of us, men and women.
I told them that it seemed only fair to ask that the capacity to acknowledge and understand and deplore another's pain be extended to the other half of the human race, though I knew that for obvious reasons, this had always been and was still forbidden. Women's agony at the hands of men must never be revealed. If women steadfastly and courageously began to tell the truth and would not stop, would not be co-opted, would not become afraid, the truth of our enslavement would be undeniable, and the jig would be up. That this might indeed happen is terrifying to most people. It would stand the whole world on its head. This is why any time women say, "Look at what is happening to us!" someone invariably rises up on the spot -as patriarchy has trained us all so well to do -and shouts, in order to divert us, to frighten us, to remind us of our vulnerability and danger: "But what about men?"
"This is what you are doing for this group," I explained to the distraught man whose buddies lie in fragments all over the corpse of Vietnam. "You are performing this function here tonight. May I interrupt this well-rehearsed performance to point out that we have given men 5000 years of undivided attention." (Is it any wonder they have remained spoiled little boys?) As Pauline Bart points out: "We are not allowed, even now, to speak of women's suffering without someone saying, 'and men, too,' although we have always spoken of men's suffering without adding 'and women, too!""
Patriarchy has worked hard to make women's experience ce a appear so trivial and so invisible that it is inconceivable to most people that we warrant any attention at all. Otherwise, it would not be so maddening to them to have to listen for a whole hour to a speech about women, though they listen willingly day after day, year after year, to talk by and about men. For many hundreds of years they have heard about nothing but men -their wars, their ideas, their art, their politics, their science, their blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam. >>
(C) Going Out of Our Minds by Sonia Johnson
«В конце зала поднялся мужчина с карандашом и бумагой в руках. «Вы говорите, что каждый день в этой стране насилуют более 2 000 женщин. Я быстро подсчитал. Получается около 40 000 в день по всему миру». Значительная пауза. Затем он взорвался: «Столько же детей умирают от голода каждый день! Подумайте об этом!» И он сел на место с самодовольным выражением выполнившего свой долг. В этот момент другой мужчина, воодушевленный откровенностью и безупречной логикой коллеги, поднялся и указал на то, что, насколько бы плох ни был инцест (он назвал это «жестоким обращением с детьми», поскольку, очевидно, не мог смириться с тем, что несло в себе слово «инцест»), его разозлило мое утверждение, что происходящее с женщинами во время инцеста гораздо хуже того, с чем могут столкнуться мужчины во время войн. Как я могла быть такой черствой? Почему я не подумала, как он чувствовал себя, оставляя на поле боя во Вьетнаме разорванные тела товарищей? Неужели я не в курсе, что мужчин пытают даже сейчас, когда мы сидим здесь - например, в Сальвадоре?
Мне было совершенно ясно, о чем они говорили. Пока страдает хоть один мужчина хоть в одном месте мира - для женщин говорить о том, что страдаем и мы, эгоистично.
Я уверена: оба они не осознавали, что за чувством, что все и вся должно быть важнее женщин, скрывается ненависть к женщинам. Я негромко указала на то, что в каждой стране, где голодают дети, голодают и женщины. В каждой стране, где пытают мужчин, пытают и женщин. Я была достаточно нетактичной и указала на то, что Вьетнам усеян взорванными телами и женщин тоже, и что многие, многие из этих тел были не просто взорваны, но и подверглись сексуализированному насилию - изнасилованиям, в том числе групповым, продажей в проституции, пыткам. Когда бы, где бы и от чего бы ни страдали мужчины, страдания женщин лежат в какой-то совершенно иной, более изощренной плоскости.
Но никто не хочет слышать о женских страдания. Мытарства мужчин описываются, описываются и изображаются всеми мыслимыми способами во всех источниках информации в мире, и так было с древнейших времен. Нас всегда просят и от нас ожидают, чтобы мы смотрели, слушали, понимали и сочувствовали боли и страданиям мужчин; мы всегда это делали - все мы, и мужчины, и женщины. Но агония женщин от рук мужчин не должна быть раскрыта. Если женщины стойко и храбро начнут рассказывать правду, если мы не остановимся, если нас не поглотят и не испугают, правда о нашем порабощении станет неоспоримой. Карты будут раскрыты, а партия - окончена.
Вероятность, что такое случится, приводит большинство людей в ужас. Это перевернет весь мир. Вот почему всякий раз, когда женщины говорят: «Посмотрите, что с нами делают!», кто-то неизменно встает (патриархат хорошо всех нас выдрессировал) и чтобы отвлечь нас, напугать, напомнить о нашей уязвимости и об опасности, кричит: «А как же мужчины?»
Я объяснила расстроенному мужчине, чьи приятели лежат в виде фрагментов по всем останкам Вьетнама: «Сегодня вечером вы выполняете именно эту функцию. Могу ли я прервать ваше отрепетированное выступление, чтобы отметить, что мы и так уделяли мужчинам 5000 лет безраздельного внимания». (Стоит ли удивляться, что они так и остались избалованными пацанами?) Как отмечает Полин Барт: «Даже сейчас мы не имеем права говорить о страданиях женщин без того, чтобы кто-то не сказал «мужчин тоже страдают», хотя мы всегда говорили о страданиях мужчин без добавления «и женщины страдают тоже!».
Патриархат приложил немало усилий, делая женский опыт настолько обыденным и незаметным, что для большинства немыслимо представить, что мы вообще заслуживаем внимания. Иначе им не было бы так мучительно слушать речь о женщинах целый час, хотя день за днем, год за годом они готовы слушать речи от мужчин и про мужчин. Столетиями они слышали только о мужчинах и ни о чем больше: об их войнах, об их идеях, об их искусстве, об их политике, об их науке, об их том и об их сем, ad nauseam/и так до тошноты».
Going Out of Our Minds by Sonia Johnson (Соня Джонсон)
"Alastor will cuddle Niffty straight out of a toilet, but has to shake Lucifer's cane and wipe off his hand after. He has contempt for Lucifer and men."
I didn't know whether to use "gynocentric" or "femaric" to describe Alastor, but I'm going with "gynocentric" because I think he's protective of those who identify as women (which excludes feminine-aligned men like Angel Dust), and I don't know if he's acting on platonic attraction, which would make him femaric.
If Alastor was a heteroromantic asexual, does it still count as femaric?
