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Archive for the ‘feminism’ Category

Blaming the victim

Posted in Bruce Byfield, feminism, misogyny, Personal, sexism, sexual assault, Uncategorized, victim-blaming, tagged , , , , , , , on May 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Ever since the Vancouver Slutwalk a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about why society is so quick to blame victims for being sexually assaulted. I suppose that many people would attribute the tendency to sexism, and probably they wouldn’t be wrong. But discussion usually ends with that diagnosis, so it still leaves me wondering why.

Logic, of course, has nothing to do with this assignment of blame. Both anecdotal and statistical evidence make clear over and over, that what a woman wears has no correlation to how likely she is endure catcalls or face assaults. Whether a woman is wearing a baggy sweat suit or a mini-skirt and stilettos just doesn’t seem to affect her safety; if clothing did make a difference, then a niqab would be a sensible outfit.

So why is the idea that the victim is to blame so much a part of our culture?

Part of the reason may be that our modern industrial culture usually assumes that women are responsible for all forms of sexuality. Just as women are the ones supposed to be responsible for contraception, so they are assumed to be responsible for being assaulted. The fact that power is at least as important as sex in sexual assault is simply ignored.

But the main reason, I suspect, is connected to the middle-class perception of autonomy. Given the degree of comfort in technological society, middle-class, urban North Americans generally assume that they have complete control of their lives. This assumption is strengthened by the fact that life is so comfortable in our suburbs that many of us are well into our third or fourth decade before we personally encounter serious injury or death. That is why the September 11th attacks were so devastating in the US, even on the other side of the country – people were used to assuming that such violence could never happen so close to home.

In this shielded world view (which affects almost all North Americans, because middle-class values are the ones that the media mostly depicts), the first tendency when faced with a crime is to wonder what you (or the victim) could have done to avoid it. Assuming that wearing different clothes or that walking in a different part of town could have avoided the crime is a way to preserve the belief in autonomy in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is often false.

Faced with the details of a sexual assault, assuming that certain actions can prevent them may be more comforting than the truth that these incidents are random and largely outside anyone’s control. And from there, it would only be a short step to blaming the victim for not following the practices that are supposed to ensure safety.

Never mind that these practices are as useful as carrying a lucky rabbit’s foot. Perhaps psychologically, what matters is not so much whether the precautions work, but that believing in them helps preserve the illusion of autonomy.

Perhaps that is why, too, the victims are ostracized. Just as people who have been seriously hurt or lost someone close often find that friends expect them to get over their problems quickly and will drift away if they don’t, so a victim is shunned because they are living witnesses to the fact that our self-autonomy doesn’t exist. Only those who have seen enough of the randomness of the world to understand it are likely to stand by a victim, because no one else can understand their experience – and because, secretly, everyone else is afraid to see the illusion for what it is.

In other words, what I am suggesting is that blaming the victim is not just a matter of callousness or stereotyping. For some people, the assumption may simply be hiding the fear that something similar might happen to them.

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Why feminism is still needed

Posted in Bruce Byfield, feminism, men and women, misogyny, Personal, sexism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

Last weekend, I had coffee with a woman I hadn’t seen in six months. Well, actually I had a milk shake and bagel, but you know what I mean: we were eating and drinking in a public place as an excuse to talk. She was unemployed, and the doubts she was having about herself demonstrated, very concretely, one of the reasons why feminism is still important.

This woman, you should understand, is someone who could only be called accomplished. When she was young, she not only traveled around the world by herself, but lived in the Middle East and Japan. She is a mainstay of one social advocacy group, and worked for poverty wages to set up another from scratch. At times, she assists a leading civic politician. Intelligent, occasionally rowdy, committed and well-read, she is very much the sort of person I would like to be like more often, but whose example I can only occasionally match (if that).

She was just back in town after three months away, and having trouble finding work. But, where a man would probably blame the economy and try harder, she was convincing herself that the fault was hers. She had been ousted from the group she set up by office politics, and had a reputation in some circles as overbearing and aggressive.

Having worked with her a couple of times, I am in the position to say that this reputation is in no way deserved. Yes, she is business-like when organization needs to be done. But she never gives needless orders, and the way that she always pitches in with whatever work needed doing is proof that she doesn’t let authority go to her head. If she were a man, you’d say she was a competent and efficient leader.

All the same, I know the gossip that circulates about her. More to the point, I know the type of people who spread the gossip. One that comes to mind (who probably isn’t the one you’re thinking of if you’re familiar with the situation I’m describing)  is a middle-aged man who compensates for living in his mother’s basement by trying to convince everyone how important he is. Another (who probably isn’t who you think, either) is a male geek with a soccer ball for a paunch who is always getting into arguments because nobody is as impressed with his views as he believes they should be.

Both are the sort of men who not only act as though they are single (even if they happen to be married), but give the impression of not having had a date in some time. They are men who are made profoundly uneasy by women, and feel threatened by any woman who does not value them at their own estimation, and who deals with them on her own terms.

Knowing those responsible for the woman’s reputation, I suggested that the problem was theirs, not hers. That was not just a bit of coffee shop philosophy, but literally true. The sort of men I describe are rarely in positions of influence – in fact, that is one of the reasons for their bitterness and for their envy of women who succeed.

But the woman I was talking to only said, “That would be easy to believe.” She went on to describe the difficulty of getting a recommendation from the group she had setup.

Realizing that I would not persuade her easily, I said no more on the subject, not even to mention that she was exaggerating the difficulties. Sometimes, people just want to articulate their worries, and don’t want to hear suggestions. As she went on to wonder if she had made the city unlivable for herself – obviously contemplating a move elsewhere – I realized that this was one of those times.

Inside, though, I was full of indignation on her behalf. Nearly forty years after feminism’s second wave began, this smart and independent woman was blaming herself – never mind that the only alternative was to conform and to hide her talents and kowtow to those whose only claim to superiority was their sex. How dare those petty-minded men take out their own insecurities in spiteful whispers against her? And how stupid are we as a culture, that we raise such obstacles against the capable, solely because they happen to be female?

For all the progress of the last few decades, the woman I was talking to, despite her abilities, had been so worn down by the gossip about her that she was assuming blame in exactly the stereotypical way that women are supposed to do. Nor is she the first capable women whom I have seen act in this way.

Often, of course, feminism is about helping the helpless, from the working mother who needs day care to the victim of abuse. However, it seems to me that feminism is also about enabling the talented, about making sure that talents aren’t crippled by an agony of frustration by the roles that women are still expected to play.

Yet, at that moment, all I could do was provide a sympathetic ear. And let me tell you, I didn’t feel like I was doing nearly enough.

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Why I’m a feminist

Posted in Bruce Byfield, feminism, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 23, 2011| 1 Comment »

In an era when many women hesitate to call themselves feminists, I consider myself a male one. This self-identification is not always easy. On the one hand, some women believe that a man can never be a feminist, and only makes the claim in the hopes of getting laid. On the other hand, many men ridicule the claim as proof of effeminacy or homosexuality, and while I haven’t been called a traitor to my gender in so many words, I have been called a “neutered male” and worse.

Fortunately, I am more inclined to laugh at both these extremes than be insulted, because, as I usually tell people who ask why I take this position, I suspect I have little choice in the matter. If I weren’t a feminist, then I simply wouldn’t be me. I certainly couldn’t live with myself.

If I were feeling flippant, I’d say that I call myself a feminist because that’s what I am. In the simplest terms, a feminist is anyone who believes in the equality of men and women. Since that is what I believe, what else would I call myself?

However, when people ask me why I call myself a feminist, they’re usually not looking for taxonomy. What they really mean is: what makes me a feminist, anyway?

One reason, I suspect, is that I have always quicker to see similarities rather differences, and patterns and continuities rather than chaos and separation. I am not unaware of the biological and social differences between men and women (I am, in that sense, a healthy heterosexual), but except in matters of sex, gestation, and lactation, they mean little to me.

With this perspective, I never got the habit of thinking of men and women as separate species. As I have observed before, gender is not a large part of my self-identity, so I am always surprised to find a man or a woman for whom it is.

More – I remain unconvinced by studies that claim innate gender differences. I consider most of them poorly designed efforts to prove the researchers’ own prejudices. Admittedly, men and women are socialized differently, but watch them talking and thinking about important matters, as I did as a university instructor, and these differences disappear. Or, at the very least, they become no greater than those between individuals of the same gender, or people from different cultures. So, to me, the idea that men and women have the same range of intelligence and talent requires no great feat of imagination. Based on what I notice, the idea seems merely self-evident.

Another psychological reason for my feminism is that, having started life with a speech impediment that caused many people to denigrate me, I have an instinctive sympathy for anyone who is too quickly dismissed by society. And when such a person attempts self-assertion, my sympathy only increases. The frustration of not being taken seriously, the anger at being held back, the mixture of self-despair and determination to prove your judges wrong – few of the attitudes expressed by feminists are completely foreign to me, and I could not ignore their positions without denying some essential parts of me as well.

Still another reason that I call myself a feminist is that I am a clumsy liar, both to myself and others. My sense of self depends strongly on me being the sort of person who faces facts – even unpleasant ones – and I would be ashamed to pretend that the inequality of women didn’t exist for no better reason than my own convenience.

True, I may not always see an observation first for myself. Yet when someone points out (for example), that my life has probably been shaped by male privilege as much as my own abilities, I have admit that they have a point. Although I squirm, evading the obvious would only make me ashamed.

That same interest in truth also leads me to want my life to be based on something solid. If my sense of self-worth were based – like many men’s’ – on a sense of superiority to women (or anyone else), part of me would know how meaningless it was. It would be like mistaking a job title or empty praise and an award for actual accomplishment. Instead of clinging to such a fragile sense of self-worth and being afraid of womens’ equality, I would rather cultivate a generosity of spirit and support it. To be perfectly selfish about it, I know that the only way that I can be confident of my own self-worth is if I support the right of other people to assert theirs as well.

At any rate, even if I were not temperamentally inclined to be a feminist, do you realize how much feminism has done for modern culture? My own chief field of literature has been transformed in the last thirty years because of feminism. Its re-examination of the past alone would make it worthwhile. Without feminist scholars, Aphra Behn would be less than a footnote, and Ann Radcliffe barely a name. Only two of the Bronte sisters would be known, and each of them for one book apiece. Elizabeth Barrett Browning would be the writer of a handful of conventionally soppy sonnets, and Christina Rossetti dismissed as a quaint writer of children’s doggerel. Or so I would have been told, and without feminism I would have happened on the truth inconsistently, and probably missed it sometimes altogether.

Thanks to feminism, dead branches of the past have flowered unexpectedly, and literature is enriched – no, better than it used to be. And you can make a similar list for all the arts and many of the sciences. These changes are so far-reaching that, even if I disagreed with the criticisms or aims of the many branches of feminism, I’d still be grateful for the broader artistic and scientific perspective it offers.

Really, how can people keep asking why I am a feminist? Under the circumstances, what else could I be?

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Street abuse

Posted in Bruce Byfield, feminism, misogyny, Personal, sexism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Sometimes when I have a spare moment, I browse the Geek Feminism web site. Often, it doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know, but it almost always gives details that help to broaden my understanding. However, one issue caught me completely by surprise: the verbal and physical intimidation and abuse of women on the street.

My first reaction to evidence like a Google map of where one blogger had been harassed in San Francisco was disbelief. For the short period the map covered, it showed at least daily incidents, sometimes more.Catcalling, staring and sizing up, unwelcome innuendo and sexual invitations, being forced off the sidewalk and otherwise physically threatened — if you can imagine a petty piece of nastiness, it was described in the first hand accounts that I read, and I wanted to disbelieve it. Could such behavior really be so prevalent?

But the comments whenever someone blogs about this issue and the responses of various women I know rapidly convinced me that, if any hyperbole existed in the accounts, it was not enough to change the basic truth. The degree and frequency might vary from city to city, or from woman to woman depending on what they were prepared to endure, but such things really were a common part of many women’s lives.

Needless to say, I was shocked. But I was also left feeling naïve and wondering how I could have missed this basic fact.

So much, I thought for the powers of observation on which I pride myself. How could I have missed something so obvious?

Part of the reason, I suppose, is the widespread assumption during my teen years that such actions were disappearing as they were denounced by the second wave of feminism. They seemed then to be a remnant of a dying set of social norms. Cheering the change, I had unconsciously assumed what I wanted to be true – that no modern man would find this type of abuse acceptable behavior. I should have known better, considering how much the culture has changed since my teen years, but somehow I didn’t

Another reason for my ignorance may be that many of these actions apparently take place where no witnesses are about. The type of man who would accost a woman on the street would not want witnesses, especially another man, who might respond aggressively.

Of course, some men in groups also make life difficult to passing women, but I wouldn’t see that, either, because I rarely hang out in all-male groups, and wouldn’t linger in one that would find amusement in making women miserable and uncomfortable.

Or so I would like to think, anyway – a revelation of this kind leaves me wondering if I would know whether friends acted this way or not.

However, I suspect that the main reason I never imagined the extent of this behavior is that it is utterly removed from what I would consider proper behavior.

It’s not that I don’t notice attractive women. Like most men and women, I am well aware when I am in the vicinity of a good-looking person of the gender that I’m attracted to – it’s just that I consider it rude to impose my passing interest on them. I can easily imagine how little I would welcome such attention intruding upon me and my concerns, so I don’t inflict mine on others.

Instead, I observe and appreciate quietly, and without obvious or extraordinary efforts to do so. To do otherwise would be a form of rudeness, like stepping too far into someone’s personal space or touching them unnecessarily. To call out on the street, or to deliberately make someone uncomfortable just wouldn’t occur to me.

I suppose I am guilty of egocentricity – of assuming unconsciously that the way I ordered my daily life was the way that everybody did. Could I have failed to see this kind of abuse going on around me simply because I did not think to look for it? Worse – was there ever a time when I could have done something against the abuse, if only stood and glared, but didn’t because I didn’t notice what was going on? I can only hope not, but the possibility seems all too likely.

I’m left feeling appalled and humbled – and worrying what else is going on around me that my expectations and assumptions leave me oblivious about.

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Eccentric masculinity

Posted in adolescence, Bruce Byfield, childhood, eccentricity, feminism, gender roles, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Even before adolescence, I knew I was an untypical male. By that, I do not mean that I was gay, transsexual, or anything else outside the statistical norm. Rather, I mean that I found – and find – very little appealing in the roles available to a straight male in modern industrial society. The times I grew up in, my childhood experiences, and my early sense of myself as an individual all made that impossible.

I can’t remember ever being taunted, much less abused because I happened to be unusual. I was tall for my age until I was fourteen and stopped growing, which meant that others tended to leave me alone. It helped, too, that I was a champion distance runner and a frequent scorer in soccer and rugby, because being good at sport buys respect in high school. And throughout my life, I’ve usually been fit, and moved with the unconscious confidence that brings. Had I ever made the effort, I might have forced a place in masculine society without any difficulty.

However, I never cared much cared to. Taking part in sports was one thing, but no amount of alcohol makes watching them interesting to me. Cars, for me, are merely transportation. Loud comments about women and jokes about them only seem rude.

And where was the place for art and intellect in this bundle of expectations? I refused to believe that such things were a consolation prize for nerds, because from an early age reading was as important to my sense of self as running faster than everybody else.

As for the idea that some tasks were masculine and others female, that seemed ridiculous to me. If work needed to be done, what difference did the gender of the one who did it make?

Part of the reason for my outlook was probably the times. Growing up during the second wave of feminism, I kept hearing that male stereotypes were not only outdated, but unjust. That meant that, since I had grown up on a steady diet of Robin Hood and King Arthur and of how Might didn’t make Right, I could not in good conscience imitate them.

Moreover, at an early age I had had the experience of not being taken seriously and dismissed by those in authority; I entered school with a speech impediment, and was sometimes regarded as mentally challenged by teachers and the parents of friends until it was corrected. At the time, I did not know why I was looked at askance, but I was old enough to resent the fact. Consequently, I had no trouble empathizing with the grievances of feminism. I’m not saying that I never benefited from male privilege (of course I did), but, unlike most boys and men, I could never take it for granted.

Later in life, trauma reinforced these reactions, but the point is that, once I realized that female gender assumptions needed to be questioned, questioning my own came naturally.

By contrast, I can’t remember many models of masculinity that were worth following. Yet that lack never bothered me much. Throughout my life, my tastes in practically everything – books, music, movies, food – have always been outside the norm. I was an individualist from an early age, so I never felt much need to identify with the male gender roles. Unlike most boys, I wasn’t used to a sense of belonging anyway.

Did I miss anything, growing up as an eccentric male? Very likely, but I can’t imagine what it might have been. Perhaps some romantic opportunities, because I wasn’t playing by the expected rules? But, if so, I can’t feel much regret. I doubt that such opportunities could have led to satisfactory or long-lived relationships.

Moreover, while the greatest of all male privileges is not to understand that you are privileged, I like to think that by generally regarding myself as human first and male second, I have been more than adequately compensated for missing any such opportunities by the conversations and friendships I have managed to have with women instead. There isn’t a traditional male who could say the same.

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