If you'd just agree, I'd shut up
posted by M. LeBlanc
Ever since I read this post at alternet about how white feminists don't want a real change in the social order, merely to have the same privilege as white men, I've been thinking about why I publicly identify so much as a feminist and less with other kinds of activism.
It's not because I don't have a desire to engage with other social problems. A couple of friends have asked me why I didn't fuse my feminist thinking with my legal career to try and pursue equality for women. There are two reasons. First, I think the law has, for at least a decade now and maybe ever since Roe, ceased being a useful tool to fight the patriarchy. What could I do? Represent victims of domestic violence in court? Sure, but retribution isn't going to erase what these women went through. Work for an organization that seeks to do impact litigation on discrimination in schools, workplaces, and churches? Sure, but there's already a glut of lawyers willing to do that work in relation to how successful such suits are. Second, I think that there are more pressing problems ripe for being addressed by legal action, namely, among others, the treatment of people in prison.
My work, unlike that of other women I know who have worked on prison issues, has not focused on women in prison. Women, when they are incarcerated, face unique and difficult challenges; they often flow from the same problems women face everywhere, which is that they are subject to rape and violence. No, all my incarcerated clients are men. I say this not be self-congratulatory, but because I am still trying to figure out why it is that I devote nearly every moment of my free writing and arguing energy to talking about feminism, and my whole workday fighting on behalf of a group that is uniformly men.
I suspect it's because I have hope that even today's jurisprudence, which is woefully limited as to the extent which it recognizes individual constitutional rights, may offer some protection for men suffering under the brutal and security-obsessed hands of their jailers and their governments. I have no such hope for women. As a somewhat clumsy conceptual framework, I'll explain the requirements for a class action case, which is the sort of case that you want to use to substantially alter the way a group of people is treated. The requirements: "One or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all only if (1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable, (2) there are questions of law or fact common to the Class, (3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class, and (4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class" (Fed R. Civ. P. 23(a)).
It's those second and third elements of the test that are really problematic. Women of the world, no, even of the United States, face so many different manifestations of sexism that it's impossible to even catalogue them. The gender-related problems that a wealthy white woman, a poor Hispanic woman, and a middle-class black woman face overlap, sure, but they also wildly diverge in ways that often seem insurmountable to someone trying to address them all with a cohesive strategy.
How is my work as a feminist, such as it is, of writing and talking about sexism, usually in language, advertising, cable news, politics and personal relationships, help women who are working as maids for rich families in Los Angeles? Answer: it doesn't. I don't have any illusions about that. I can't do it all, so I do have to make choices; why do I choose this? Especially when I care about those people that my efforts can not and will not ever reach?
Because awareness is a real bitch. Once you've started to view the world through a feminist lens, it is simply impossible to take the lens off. You can put on other lenses, sure, but it's like wearing glasses over your contacts. And because I keep seeing sexism everywhere I turn, when I turn on the television, when I open a book, when I read the paper, when I talk to my friends, when I fight with my boyfriend, I can't help but point it out.
But here's where the rest of the world comes in. See, by and large, there always seem to be people in my space, whether it's on the internet, at school, or in my extended social circle, who don't like it when I point out sexism. Invariably, if I point out an example of it, it tends to be categorized in two ways: 1) it's so egregiously and obviously sexist that the person responsible is morally reprehensible and not even worth bothering over; 2) it's not sexist. Why can't I just shut up?
I can't shut up because every time that you protest too much, when you leap to the defense of a phrase or idea or image as soon as I impugn its rightness by calling it sexist, it just makes me feel more strongly that I have to continue to be a feminist thorn in the shoe of this oppressive culture of subtle subjugation. I would really like to devote more of my blogging and arguing energy to talking about capitalism, or the prison-industrial complex, or the systematic warehousing of black men by the American government.
But as long as you keep maintaining that no, housework doesn't have implications for gender roles, and no, , Hollywood isn't sexist, they're just responding to consumer preferences and no, Clinton's not being subjected to sexist attacks, and no, prostitution isn't problematic because in any job you become an object to serve an end, I will not be able to stop talking about the sexism and misogyny I see in the world.
Don't like it? If you'd just agree, I could shut up.
It's not because I don't have a desire to engage with other social problems. A couple of friends have asked me why I didn't fuse my feminist thinking with my legal career to try and pursue equality for women. There are two reasons. First, I think the law has, for at least a decade now and maybe ever since Roe, ceased being a useful tool to fight the patriarchy. What could I do? Represent victims of domestic violence in court? Sure, but retribution isn't going to erase what these women went through. Work for an organization that seeks to do impact litigation on discrimination in schools, workplaces, and churches? Sure, but there's already a glut of lawyers willing to do that work in relation to how successful such suits are. Second, I think that there are more pressing problems ripe for being addressed by legal action, namely, among others, the treatment of people in prison.
My work, unlike that of other women I know who have worked on prison issues, has not focused on women in prison. Women, when they are incarcerated, face unique and difficult challenges; they often flow from the same problems women face everywhere, which is that they are subject to rape and violence. No, all my incarcerated clients are men. I say this not be self-congratulatory, but because I am still trying to figure out why it is that I devote nearly every moment of my free writing and arguing energy to talking about feminism, and my whole workday fighting on behalf of a group that is uniformly men.
I suspect it's because I have hope that even today's jurisprudence, which is woefully limited as to the extent which it recognizes individual constitutional rights, may offer some protection for men suffering under the brutal and security-obsessed hands of their jailers and their governments. I have no such hope for women. As a somewhat clumsy conceptual framework, I'll explain the requirements for a class action case, which is the sort of case that you want to use to substantially alter the way a group of people is treated. The requirements: "One or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all only if (1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable, (2) there are questions of law or fact common to the Class, (3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class, and (4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class" (Fed R. Civ. P. 23(a)).
It's those second and third elements of the test that are really problematic. Women of the world, no, even of the United States, face so many different manifestations of sexism that it's impossible to even catalogue them. The gender-related problems that a wealthy white woman, a poor Hispanic woman, and a middle-class black woman face overlap, sure, but they also wildly diverge in ways that often seem insurmountable to someone trying to address them all with a cohesive strategy.
How is my work as a feminist, such as it is, of writing and talking about sexism, usually in language, advertising, cable news, politics and personal relationships, help women who are working as maids for rich families in Los Angeles? Answer: it doesn't. I don't have any illusions about that. I can't do it all, so I do have to make choices; why do I choose this? Especially when I care about those people that my efforts can not and will not ever reach?
Because awareness is a real bitch. Once you've started to view the world through a feminist lens, it is simply impossible to take the lens off. You can put on other lenses, sure, but it's like wearing glasses over your contacts. And because I keep seeing sexism everywhere I turn, when I turn on the television, when I open a book, when I read the paper, when I talk to my friends, when I fight with my boyfriend, I can't help but point it out.
But here's where the rest of the world comes in. See, by and large, there always seem to be people in my space, whether it's on the internet, at school, or in my extended social circle, who don't like it when I point out sexism. Invariably, if I point out an example of it, it tends to be categorized in two ways: 1) it's so egregiously and obviously sexist that the person responsible is morally reprehensible and not even worth bothering over; 2) it's not sexist. Why can't I just shut up?
I can't shut up because every time that you protest too much, when you leap to the defense of a phrase or idea or image as soon as I impugn its rightness by calling it sexist, it just makes me feel more strongly that I have to continue to be a feminist thorn in the shoe of this oppressive culture of subtle subjugation. I would really like to devote more of my blogging and arguing energy to talking about capitalism, or the prison-industrial complex, or the systematic warehousing of black men by the American government.
But as long as you keep maintaining that no, housework doesn't have implications for gender roles, and no, , Hollywood isn't sexist, they're just responding to consumer preferences and no, Clinton's not being subjected to sexist attacks, and no, prostitution isn't problematic because in any job you become an object to serve an end, I will not be able to stop talking about the sexism and misogyny I see in the world.
Don't like it? If you'd just agree, I could shut up.
Posted at 9:30 AM
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