Sabotabby at The AntiSocial Socialist has one of the more active livejournal sites I’ve seen. Unfortunately, her traffic includes more than just the friendly feminist types. She also suffers the company of a classic soft troll, one of those “I’m on your side but everything you do and say is wrong” types who cloaks his wingnuttery under a veil of helpful advice.
Hey baby, I’m just here to help you ladies with your cute little uprising.
You know the kind of advice I mean — like when trolls try to help us understand why the word “Patriarchy” is so terribly damaging to the cause of feminism:
For the few times I’ve been able to stomach reading Ann Coulter (know your enemy), I’ve never seen her attack someone who wouldn’t already be opposed to her. On the other hand, compare and contrast with the word “Patriarchy” – which even gets zingarella’s boyfriend (who I assume is pretty progressive) feeling defensive because it directly dichotomises the genders (feminists good, patriarchy bad) when there is absolutely no need for there to be this dichotomy. Instead, if you called yourself egalitarians against oppression (which I believe is akin to what you are trying to express), you could say the exact same thing without making potential allies defensive and potential neutrals threatened.
The emphasis is mine, and not just because I felt like breaking up his long-winded rant.
First off, I missed the memo on our genders being switched from “male” and “female” to “patriarch” and “feminist.” Does this mean we need new bathroom signs? If so, I vote for a burning bra on the feminist sign and a big, fat, fucking crybaby on the patriarchy sign, because that’s clearly the vibe those guys are giving off these days.
Being a part of the Patriarchy is like being the good member of the Bush family. In your own mind, you don’t have to self-identify with the ugly part of your heritage, but publicly, you need to accept 3 things:
1) This thing you’re born into, even if it wasn’t your choice, has on the whole been responsible for awful, awful crimes against humanity.
2) When people say “The Bush Family sucks” you need to admit the truth of that statement even if you’ve been performing Jesus-like works of samaritanship. Your exceptions don’t cancel out the larger evils carried out over a much longer period of time by multiple generations.
3) You are part of the Bush family and have benefitted massively from their oppressive acts. People have given you breaks and cut you slack even when you didn’t ask for it.
This may seem like a contradiction on the surface — how can you both reject and accept your Bush-ness? But it all has to do with the mode of acknowledgement.
You don’t need to internalize being a Bush — you ought to rebel against it inside yourself and try to be as un-Bush you can be. But you must also accept that people who don’t like what your family’s done will impugn your family, and by extension you, even though you haven’t been as evil as others.
You’ve benefitted from your status as part of that family, meaning you’re privileged and part of the oppressor class whether you like it or not. This exempts you from pats on the back for combatting said oppression (because at best you’re working your way back to even). It also exempts you from the right to bitch and moan when people do their impugning via language you don’t like.
Again, being a well-meaning male and being The Good Bush are quite similar. We didn’t choose to be born into Patriarchy, but we have been. And even though some of us are trying to act in opposition to the Patriarchy, we’re still part of it. So when people rip on the Patriarchy, those insults also target us by default, but since well-meaning males shouldn’t be internally self-identifying with the Patriarchy, the insults should roll right off our backs. Heck, we should be hurling just as many, if not more, of them.
And we definitely shouldn’t scrunch up our buttcheeks over the word “Patriarchy.” The oppression of the Patriarchy is an entirely factual element of the status quo, and we needn’t avoid talking about it by name — any name — because some men will be offended. No revolution gets very far by kissing the ass of the oppressors.
Fairly regularly I get into similar discussions. Some well meaning man will go, “But I don’t support oppression and I’m man and I am offended at the term patriarchy.”
At which time I try to tell them that the patriarchy is a system that exists regardless of gender, and the term is based on a social construct of male privilege and violence that has existed for, oh, since history began, really. That it doesn’t necessarily reflect on an individual (tho’, clearly, being a man in a patriarchical system is advantageous to those men), and it’s patriarchy even if a woman (say, Ann Coulter or Margaret Thatcher) is doing it.
I go on to say that it is indisputable that men have privilege in global society, and to say otherwise means a person is obviously deeply stupid, ignorant or insane (tho’ I usually try to say it a trifle nicer).
Then I try to say that if you’re a man against the patriarchy, it’s like being a freedom fighter. You still live under the system of oppression you fight against, but it exists even as you struggle against it. It wasn’t only kings that supported monarchy, and it wasn’t only peasants that opposed it (tho’, yes, generally that was the case). So, if you’re an aristocrat that fights against monarchy, you can’t deny it’s monarchy, just as you can’t deny you’ve lived a life of privilege as an aristocrat.
Sorta like that.
[...] Marc already wrote a great post about this, but since we’re still seeing this kind of thing, I feel like bringing it up again. [...]
[...] It turns out the Flash Gordon crew had nothing to worry about. Look what happened to Chris Clarke when he peeled off that male privilege and washed it down the sink. That’s what it’s often like when you’re a decent person because you want to be. For fuck’s sake, as long as you don’t tell anyone that you’re only being nice and understanding and shit to get women to stroke your ego, you’ll probably get the same results he did, if you can manage to be half as charming. [...]
[...] for some more discussion of anti-feminist trolling: “Dear Patriarch Kind Sir: I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but mightn’t you remove your jackboot from my throat at your earliest convenience?” [...]
I agree with the feminist side of this thread (patriachy exists and I am part of it except the assetion that people who support feminism should not get kudos because they should have been doing it the whole time. While I accept the fact that such people don’t deserve such respect the patriachy will be degraded faster if more men join up and more men will join up if you respect them with nice _cheap_ words.
Ugh…. I feel dirty reading the sentence “the patriarchy doesn’t exist.” I feel dirty and partially apologetic to the rest of the world because of the idiots that say things like that. I feel dirty and partially apologetic to the world when I see men saying “I’m on your side! I am a feminist too! Give me a cookie and a pat on the back, praise me, I’m not like them!”
I usually never feel like I have to apologise for my gender. I like being a man. I like the way my brain chemistry is wired. I like the fact that I can pee standing up. I like the additional physical strength.
What I don’t like is the old boys network that I am also unfortunately a part of. I don’t like the position of privilege, because I have done nothing to earn it. I don’t like the fact that I have had to fight against a system that believes that real men don’t cry, that real men don’t open up to other men (that’s not manly apparently) and God knows what else, but it’s a daily thing… When your eyes are open, you realise; Patriarchy doesn’t just harm women. It harms men too. So yeah, on a purely selfish level, I will fight the patriarchy. And on the level of being a HUMAN BEING I will fight the patriarchy because it’s the right thing to do.
FUCK YOU Prince Barin. No pat on the back or cookie for you. Fighting the Patriarchy as a man deserves no special recognition. Not because we’re resetting to zero or whatever, it’s because that’s what decent human beings do. And being a decent human being is supposed to be the DEFAULT SETTING. I’m certainly not going to praise people for the things they’re supposed to do.
http://kalmartheband.blogspot.com
Those with opinions not based on being a fucking idiot are more than welcome.
Sorry to join this discussion here a bit late- thanks StumbleUpon!
I agree with your assessment up to a certain point, but this is the part I have trouble with..
“3) You are part of the Bush family and have benefited massively from their oppressive acts. People have given you breaks and cut you slack even when you didn’t ask for it.”
Sure, men are placed in a position of power due to oppressive acts, but have you considered how much it must suck to be raised as a part of the Bush family? I didn’t ask for the ‘benefits’ of being a male, sure, but I don’t want them in the first place. I don’t want to be told from a young age that I am somehow superior because of my last name or the fact that I have testicles. I recognize that this has given me advantages in the workplace and in social life, but it comes with a certain amount of disadvantage as well- not from a socioeconomic standpoint, but from the standpoint of a struggling human being who is trying to make sense of a world that is really fucking confusing. And now I find myself backpedaling and reevaluating what it means to be a male in the first place. Being told from a young age that aggressive and egocentric behavior is the best way to get what I want is not a no-strings-attached benefit like you imply, but I didn’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter. And I don’t want that position of power because it is at times just as detrimental to mental health as the lies that are routinely shoved down the throats of women are.
I don’t mean to write myself off as a sob-story victim of an oppressive society here, but being a well-meaning male in the first place is a difficult thing to do.
But, Hugh, what sort of support do you think you are going to gain for any cause if you have to sort of bribe your would-be allies into joining by using nice words instead of calling a spade a spade? If they can’t stomach the truth in all its ugliness, how reliable would they be as allies?
And: If you sweet-talk someone into joining a cause that they don’t clearly understand you risk losing them once they realize what it is all about, especially if they are to lose some dear privilege in the process.
You have to be honest, you can’t disguise what you are after, or you’re bound to fail. Plus you might seriously damage your cause because people will accuse you of cheating, and you and your cause will be discredited in the eyes of many who might have been on your side.
Another thing: It is certainly not the term ‘patriarchy’ that offends, but the reality it refers to. The patriarchy is an ugly thing that is a shame for the human race, and even though nobody chose to be born into it, all men in varying degrees benefit from it (and, yes, are damaged by it as well). Realizing that you are part and beneficiary of a deeply unjust system, albeit unwitting and through no fault of yours, is not nice. Seeing the misery caused by this system and realizing that you have participated, even if only passively by enjoying the unjustified privileges it affords you, is not nice. It is quite normal not to be too happy about all this, and to feel rather defensive.
But shooting the messenger (i. e. the term ‘patriarchy’, or the people using it) for the message doesn’t help. The patriarchy is no less offensive if you say ‘Yeah, well, some people, usually men, used to do kind of unfriendly things to other people, mostly women, but not so much lately, but I think it is like wrong, and anyway, if you’d care to join the effort we’ll end this in no time’ instead.
Any new name would soon acquire all the connotations of the old name.
What are those potential allies feeling threatened by? Pamphlets? This “making potential allies … threatened” needs to be seen in perspective. Or can you imagine this?
Using nicer words would imply that it’s the responsibility of feminists to make men feel less threatened. Part at least of men’s defensiveness is their own problem. Perhaps they identify the entire movement with statements made by its more extreme members. Perhaps they don’t know much about feminism. Perhaps they hear “patriarchy” and have a wrong idea about what this word means. It’s their responsibility to inform themselves.
If I were to say that “all English football supporters are hooligans”, the normal procedure would be: they point out I’m wrong, I go “oh”, perhaps I’ll read a few articles on the internet, the end. I certainly won’t get away with saying “…so you’re peaceful, eh? PROVE IT TO ME.” I mean, what are they going to do? Mow the lawn for me? Send me Christmas cards?