Re: Pesky Gender, another rant [was: First posting...

aqua@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>Right at the moment I hate, loathe and detest gender.  And at the same 
>time I want to hug my femaleness.

Your femaleness is part of who you are. You shouldn't have to deny or 
camouflage it in order to be appreciated as a brilliant thinker. That 
type of ***ism tends to be most rampant among intellectuals who truly 
should know better by now.

>Because I _liked_ being a zie online.  I identify with being a zie 
>online, and to some extent in person.  And yet, I can't, it appears, be 
>a zie online, because my world is too ****ing ***ist to allow that.  It 
>keeps stomping on me, making sure my experience of the world is forced 
>to be different, angrier, more frustrated, more time wasted on battling 
>prejudice against me, against other women, against other groups my world 
>defines as inferior.

Why is your solution a retreat into androgyny? I think all brilliant 
women should push to be respected as both brilliant beings and women. 
They should not have to choose between one and the other, as though this 
were a simple binary construct to begin with. We are inherently 
multifaceted beings adaptable to a host of different conversational 
contexts and social situations in which certain traits are privileged 
over others. In an online academic environment, your gender might be 
entirely disregarded, whereas at a bar, it might stop all activity.

>And keeps telling me that it'd be easy for it to give up its ***ism, if 
>I would only demonstrate I was worthy of that:  Worthy of giving up 
>***ism requires me to be twice or three times as good as a man; and 
>requires me to put up with existing ***ism while doing that; and 
>requires me to put up with existing ***ism while transforming my effort 
>and hard work and natural skills into something even they can see, 
>through their ***ism, *is* in fact two or three times better than any 
>man; and fighting to make society see that some of the things I already 
>do, that are devalued as woman's work, are in fact hard work, skilled, 
>admirable; and also fighting to make things easier for other women who 
>might, just possibly, not feel quite up to the task of achieving all 
>those things.

It might be useful here to step back and define ***ism for you, because 
you frame it in terms of putting up with ***ism while becoming three 
times as good as a man at everything. What you're confronting here is a 
conflict of interests around what both genders consider to be a zero sum 
game. Even you are caught up in this misconception, assuming that 
there's only a limited amount of ***ist-free life available to the 
world's pool of brilliant women. To get it, they have to endure ***ism 
while proving they're twice or thrice as patient, self confident, 
creative and intellectual as any man. This assumes a few things: that 
men control who gets the cookies, that there's a limited number of 
cookies and that men give most of them to one another. Many fields are 
so dominated by powerful women that any man hoping for his cookies had 
better learn to play by these women's rules. I am thinking of 
publi****ng, modern art, fa****on and ****tions of academia, all of whose 
cookie quotas are largely disbursed by women. Your second assumption is 
that ***ist men would somehow get the memo that you've graduated into 
the ***ism immunity camp and leave you alone. The very point of ***ism 
is that nothing you could do as a woman could or would render you immune 
from ***ism. To a ***ist, your entire purpose on this planet is the 
gratification of his desires to dominate socially, professionally and 
***ually. Brilliance would preclude such domination, thus making it moot 
whether you were twice or thrice smarter than the brightest lights of 
the male species. Your third assumption is that there's a mythical world 
devoid of ***ism and that powerful men are conspiring to keep you locked 
out of that utopia. There is no such mythical world; suffering is 
pervasive and ubiquitous, affecting both genders, all races and cl*****. 
Suffering may feel different to different people, and it's always 
possible to assume that certain people we consider privileged only 
suffer negligibly. Part of the disconnect here is that you're lumping 
all men together in a ***ist conspiracy against you and failing to 
distinguish between those who would actually want to keep you down and 
those who would do everything possible to make sure you can build 
yourself up as high as you want to be. If there is a ***ist conspiracy, 
its primary aim is to make you feel as alone and powerless as possible, 
especially alone when it comes to male alliance. The more you believe 
that all men are secretly ***ist and ultimately aiming to keep you 
barefoot and pregnant, the less you try to forge useful alliances with 
men who would probably sacrifice their very lives to help you or get out 
of the way if you wanted to do it all alone. The ***ist manipulation 
brigade wants you to feel frustrated like this in hopes that you will 
eventually be worn down by constant battles against an amorphous enemy.

>And I have a pretty good hunch even if I succeeded, I'd just be the 
>exception, the one who isn't really female, so extraordinary it doesn't 
>require anyone to change anything for any other woman, because clearly 
>the system isn't so totally oppressive that the utterly exceptional 
>geniuses can't manage to make their presence felt, and so we don't need 
>to worry about the merely brilliant women, let alone the above average, 
>let alone the average, let alone those who need all our sup****t and help 
>to reach their full potential, whatever it it turns out to be.

Here, your assumption, shared by many feminists, is that ***ism never 
benefits women. Difficult as this may be to believe, many women actually 
thrive on ***ism. They build vapid celebrity careers as actresses, 
fa****on models, **** stars, strippers and prostitutes. They marry men 
who provide for their every whim in exchange for breeding, housekeeping 
and ***. They coast along in male dominated fields, content with mere 
crumbs thrown down to them so they'll stay motivated. Then, you assume 
the presence of a monolithic body of men who can and do agree on which 
women should get the ***ist immunity pass, as though there were a finite 
number of criteria set by a finite number of individuals which you could 
fulfill in order to get that pass. Of course, men are not at all in 
agreement about much of anything, let alone which brilliant women should 
get the nod. Therefore, your assumption that your efforts don't matter 
is predicated on the idea that an examining body of men sits around 
deciding which women's efforts in fact do matter. You also assume that 
this nonexistent body of male examiners grade women as you have here: 
brilliant, average, traditional and barely functional. If these 
categories in fact existed, they probably would not be static. Thus, a 
woman could belong to the brilliant category in one context, while only 
average as a paragon of beauty or housekeeper. On the other hand, a 
woman might turn every head in the room, yet fail to construct even the 
simplest sentences. Just like nature, which is your specialty, people 
are quickly socialized to develop those traits that will insure their 
social position. Sometimes, the "rules" are explicit, as in 
fundamentalist or pretentiously wealthy strata; other times, people 
figure things out on their own. All along, you seem to be operating 
under the assumption that Western society privileges the good looking 
dumb broad who knows only enough to make conversation with men, performs 
every ***ual service and pops out babies on schedule. This caricature 
precludes the myriad choices women make regarding their social status 
and the means they choose to use to attain or preserve it. Yes, I said 
choices.

>It looks like I might be merely brilliant, rather than utterly 
>exceptional.  That's equivalent to failure in that game.  Not that I 
>wouldn't be perfectly content with being merely brilliant otherwise, but 
>it's not good enough in this case and I have to recognise that and 
>direct my efforts elsewhere.

Please explicate the difference between utterly brilliant and plain old 
exceptional. Who sets these standards and why didn't I get the handbook? 
How did you get the handbook if you're merely exceptional? It would seem 
that if you're in fact insanely brilliant, such a secret handbook would 
be kept from you at all costs. Yet, you seem to have cracked the code at 
least concerning these standards you think you can't possibly meet. What 
if there's no handbook after all? What if the illusion of a standards 
handbook is meant to keep you paying those psychiatric bills assuming 
you'll never be good enough? What if your only essential goal in life is 
your individual happiness? What if even that turns out to be meaningless 
and selfish? What if the goal instead is the happiness of as many people 
as each individual can help make happy?

>And of course, I'm the one paying the 
>psychiatric bills to sort this out - that I've been turning into a 
>nervous wreck because I couldn't reconcile how exceptional I know I can 
>be with how inferior and overwhelmed I felt: that had to be my problem, 
>something wrong with me, entirely my responsibility to deal with.

As it turns out, this problem is not caused by anyone in particular, but 
rather by a culture whose economic aims require the proliferation of 
mixed messages. Since there aren't enough white privileged men flooding 
the work force, educated white women are socialized to work alongside 
men as near equals because they're needed. However, since most men are 
actually hetero***ual, they also need female consorts, whose duties and 
obligations often trump those of the working women also required to keep 
the economic machine belching out progress. Then, since women actually 
do have brains and aspirations independent of those dictated by men, 
there are often clashes between what society wants women to be and what 
women themselves would prefer to be. During these clashes, society rolls 
out its paramilitary weaponry aimed at quelling the rebellion of choice, 
freedom and rejection of narrow minded paradigms. So, society puts 
slender women on magazine covers so that the rest of the hapless drones 
will go on their little anarexic and bulimic diets to keep thin, all the 
while making sure the food supply is amply "enriched" with processed 
corn byproducts intent on keeping everyone fat, lethargic and dependent. 
Society gives women political and economic power, while failing to 
prosecute rapes consistently, insuring that any woman, regardless of her 
power, has to look both ways before walking to her car. Society educates 
women to fill its work force, but concocts all sorts of barriers to 
their advancement, so that the gender "balance" is maintained. The 
insidious ****tion of all this is that society used to be able to send 
direct messages to women that they're inferior, weak, meant to focus on 
physical beauty and intellectually suspect. Now, since women's 
intellects and leader****p skills are necessary for the economic machine, 
society is doing an about face, telling women that they can in fact 
accomplish whatever they desire. Just as the poor and minorities are 
frequently kept dependent on drugs and crime for survival, women are 
kept dependent on a ceaseless self questioning meant to deter them from 
seizing too much power. In short, the more you feel this tug between 
your intellectual brilliance and sense of inferiority, the more "the 
man" keeps you in his proverbial clutches, preferring to let you second 
guess yourself than post centurions on every corner to keep you in line. 
If you think you're so crazy that you fear a nervous breakdown, you 
can't very well seize too much power, which is exactly what the powerful 
want. So, fire the psychiatrist and stop second guessing yourself. 
You're not inferior to anyone. You've always had a brilliantly nuanced 
and rigorous thought process that the world truly needs to see and hear. 
If you mess up sometimes, so what? Even the greatest geniuses err.

>And still of course no-one gives a **** about all the energy, work, and 
>contribution towards a better future I could have made the last 20 
>years, that's been not so much wasted, but non-existent, because there 
>was no place for it and apparently that doesn't matter, and that's a 
>great way to kill *my* motivation anyway, right there.

What do you mean "there was no place for it"? I ask because I feel 
similarly about my particular type of musicality. If a farmer grows snap 
peas in a culture that seems to have no use or taste for them, he can't 
even give them away, let alone sell them. In an ideal world, we all 
figure out how to give our lives meaning based on cultural expectations; 
in other words, we learn to color within the lines our cultures impose. 
But, there are always people born to the wrong culture, whose calling 
involves values and skills about which the culture cares little--if at 
all. During these twenty years, what would you have done if your culture 
had had use for what you wanted to do? Brainstorm here. What would a 
meaningful life feel like to you if your culture valued your every 
thought and choice? Where would you be? How would you live? Now, we're 
back in reality; these twenty years have passed and you feel you haven't 
progressed towards your ideal life because you feel your society has 
prevented it. If you could make those roadblocks disappear, what would 
you do? Do you even feel capable of making those roadblocks disappear on 
your own? I know I don't.

>And don't get me started on motherhood.  I don't have children.  I chose 
>to not have children.  It is becoming increasingly clear that I made 
>that choice (albeit subconsciously, but you know, my subconscious is 
>*smart*, I have more and more respect for my subconscious every ****ing 
>day) because I knew that I had no hope of getting anywhere on any of the 
>previous paragraph's activities if I also had children, because I'm not 
>quite that much of a superwoman, all awe as I am at the women who seem 
>to be.

Many of those "super women" are accused by feminists of calluding with 
***ism.

>I do not have children because our society is completely, totally ****ed 
>up in its attitude to children, their upbringing, who takes 
>responsibility for that upbringing, and my particular personality 
>characteristics mean I should only have children in a society where 
>these particular **** ups are not around.

On a larger scale, what you're speaking to is the contradiction between 
collective and individual responsibility. On one hand, society feels 
some collective responsibility toward children because future 
generations will keep the economic machine going. On the other hand, the 
individualistic strain posits the idea that the future can take care of 
itself and that current generations should not make themselves 
responsible for raising future ones, especially if those future ones 
come with genetic blemishes, economic or intellectual disadvantages. The 
individualistic strain tends to be focused on the present and seeks to 
maximize economic productivity at all costs. So, if a mother needs time 
off to be with her child, the business world hesitates to give it to her 
because that will be time during which she is not producing on the 
clock. If a father similarly requires time to be with his child or help 
his wife with child raising responsibilities, it will mean a sacrifice 
of productivity on his part. From the business world's viewpoint, it's 
always cheaper to hire people with few familial obligations, illness and 
other "impediments" to their consistent productivity. Similarly, 
everything taught in schools that does not directly address productivity 
is deemed suspect, luxurious and unworthy of public funding. The other 
factor here is litigation culture. It's hard for a village to raise a 
child if it can get sued for any perceived infraction. the 
individualistic model assumes that we're all in competition for scarce 
resources and therefore oughtn't trust one another, whereas the 
collective model assumes that we're mostly working together because we 
need one another to survive. Obviously, the individualistic model will 
encourage more litigation, capitalizing on paranoia about everyone's 
motives.

>I do not have children, as a political statement: this society does not 
>deserve any woman making the decision to have children, and it should 
>treasure and fawn over those women who do, and I completely admire and 
>sup****t the women who do, but excuse me if I secretly think you have to 
>be at least a little bit crazy to make that choice, because just look at 
>all the preposterous rubbishy **** you have to put up with because of it.

On the other hand, progressive mothers are the greatest untapped sources 
of global change because they directly control many stages of child 
development and can therefore inculcate better values into their 
offspring. They can raise non-***ist boys and girls who don't lapse into 
anorexia to keep up with the beauty myth. They can raise boys who won't 
ignore women's brilliant minds and girls who won't hide genius beneath 
toothpaste smiles. They can raise boys who would never even consider 
rape and girls who can whoop any rapist's ass.

>So yes, this is my political statement: I am a woman.  I have breasts 
>and hips and a vagina and I menstruate every month and go for a pap 
>smear every two years and I have to think about contraception and rape 
>and ***ual harrassment and I have to wear something to sup****t my breast 
>when I go running and I have to modify pants I buy to fit my hips, so 
>that they don't gape around my waist.
>
>And yet, I am also a "zie", because my intellect, my ability to see 
>connections between things no-one else has seen connections between, my 
>ability to abstract out just enough of a problem that my assumptions 
>will not lead to meaningless garbage for results and yet progress can 
>still be made, these are rare and valuable abilities and skills, and I 
>want them appreciated, and I don't trust they will be when the pronoun 
>"she" is hanging around me.

If men can make brilliant connections without losing our *****es and 
broad shoulders, you shouldn't have to sacrifice even the pronoun "she" 
in order for your intellect to be entirely appreciated and admired. 
Don't buy the lie. Minimizing your gender is not going to get you those 
cookies because the folks handing out the cookies cannot be fooled into 
thinking you were never a woman. Also, I think you might look at what 
all that acceptance would actually do for your life. Is it precisely 
what your intellectual development needs, or will it ultimately harm 
you? Only you can answer that in a personal rather than political way.

>I sup****t every woman's right to an abortion just because she damn well 
>feels like it, because I want that right to be available to me.

When a woman becomes able to make life without men, I will sup****t her 
exclusive decisions regarding the life forms she creates. Until then, 
you can't enlist someone to make something and then tell them their 
opinions don't count when deciding what to do with it, especially if 
that someone isn't merely being paid for a service. A sperm donor gives 
sperm for money, not caring how, when or if his samples are even used. 
If a man creates life with a woman with the intention of parenting, it's 
plain unfair for that woman to cut him out of the picture. Her time to 
cut him out would have been before ***ual involvement. All that said, I 
sup****t all women's rights to free abortion, although it's downright 
impossible to get societies to compromise sufficiently on its 
parameters.

>I 
>sup****t every woman's right to be pissed off and rage at the world, and 
>not have to waste three times as much time again playing nicey-nicey to 
>the poor privileged men who don't understand what the problem is, 
>because I want that right to be available to me.

Speaking as one of those nondescript, supposedly privileged men, I don't 
want to be the target of any woman's blindly directed rage, especially 
when I've never dealt with her directly, much less harmed her. Although 
it's an attractive fantasy for women to get pissed off at the world and 
lash out randomly, it's no fun when you're the one being lashed out at, 
just like it's no fun when you're the woman being objectified, 
intellectually discriminated against, raped or stoned to death. In 
short, two wrongs don't make a right. Being pissed off may alleviate 
anger and frustration in the short term, but in the long term, it's this 
very same anger that keeps people fighting each other so that "the man" 
can screw all of them simultaneously. So, while men and women are busy 
quibbling over past legacies even though they haven't actually harmed 
each other in the present, power structures inhibit valuable alliances 
from being strengthened.

Orlando