FAQ: Aren’t feminists all lesbian man-haters?

Short answer: No. Feminists come from a variety of backgrounds, with a variety of values and opinions, and (among other things) are in no way uniform in their sexual preferences. Some feminists identify as lesbian, some as heterosexual, some as bisexual, some as asexual, etc. As for the “man-hating” moniker, it has more to do with a backlash against women speaking out about oppression than it does with true incidents of “man-hating” perpetuated by feminism/feminists (see this FAQ entry on conflating the alleged actions of an individual with the ideology of a group).

Feminists as lesbians

Myth#3: Feminists are bitter because they are ugly, hairy and lesbians.
Why would any good consumer be bitter over saving gobs of money by rejecting the billion dollar beauty industry, aimed at manufacturing stepford wives?

What’s wrong with being a lesbian? Let me guess:you think its unfair competition for heterosexual men with little foreplay skills? I say, competition is a good thing; it allows the best lover at the lowest emotional drain to win the girl.

[Aspazia (Mad Melancholic Feminista): Feminism 101: Myths and Facts.]

As you can see by the above quote, the “all feminists are lesbian” myth is often coupled with the myth of all feminists being hairy legged/flannel wearing/mannish/ugly. Neither of which, it’s noted over and over again, is a bad thing. The problem is that these attributes are 1) being used as shorthand for “bad” in a way that allows the speaker to casually dismiss the group and its members, and 2) being forced on people in the group who do not subscribe to them, thus creating effectively erasing their experiences.

Beyond the individual level, however, it’s also important (especially for heterosexual feminists) to recognize that lesbianism has had played a significant and positive role in shaping modern feminism. Notably, Lesbian feminism(Wikipedia link), for all of its flaws (especially regarding its erasure/rejection of trans* people, identity, and issues), called out mainstream feminism on its homophobia and heteronormativity. As the qlbtq article on Lesbian Feminism states, “Indeed, one of the most significant accomplishments of the lesbian feminist movement was to facilitate a network of social and political support that helped lesbians cope with the isolation, stigma, and legal problems that many homosexuals battled.”

Feminists as man-haters

Unlike the “all feminists are lesbian” myth, the “all feminists are man-haters” myth would be a very bad thing if it were true. Good thing, then, that it’s not (this is discussed in more detail in the Why do you feminists hate men? FAQ entry).

Beyond the fact that the “man-hating” myth is, well, a myth, it’s important to note that it has roots in homophobia:

The idea that feminists hate men seems to be based partly upon media representations of 1960s and 1970s radical feminism, especially the horror of lesbian separatism. Here we have a very marginal, but radical, aspect of feminism highlighted and made representative of the entire movement. This claim also compounds the homophobic link between feminism and lesbianism…

[Winter (Mind the Gap): Springing the Traps: On Countering Anti-Feminism(Article no longer available).

]

Indeed, mainstream feminists in the past hoped to distance themselves from the “man-hater” stereotype by distancing themselves from lesbians/lesbianism:

[Betty] Friedan, and some other straight feminists as well, worried that the association [between lesbianism and NOW/the emerging women's movement] would hamstring feminists’ ability to achieve serious political change, and that stereotypes of ‘mannish’ and ‘man-hating’ lesbians would provide an easy way to dismiss the movement.”

[Wikipedia: Lavender Menace.]

Of course, the “threat” to men inherent in both lesbian and feminist thought is that women need not, and should not, position men as the center of their lives:

The Woman-Identified Woman‘s] authors claimed that lesbians and lesbianism are of central, rather than peripheral, importance to the feminist movement. The woman-identified woman, they contended, undermines patriarchy by withdrawing her energy from men, by affirming a connection with other women, and by validating women on their own terms, independent of men. So long as women seek the approval of men and male institutions, they argued, they cannot become autonomous human beings.

[glbt: Lesbian Feminism.]

Related Reading:

• FAQ: Why do you feminists hate men?
• FAQ: Aren’t feminists just hairy-legged makeup haters?

Introductory:

• Melinda Kanner and Kristin J. Anderson: “The Myth of the Man-Hating Feminist” in Michele A. Paludi [ed.] (Praeger, 2009): Feminism and Women’s Rights Worldwide: pp. 1-26.
• glbt: Lesbian Feminism.

Clarifying Concepts:

• Claiming man-hating as a distraction technique:

  It does not really matter whether or not a few individual feminists “hate” men (I haven’t met one yet but I promise I’ll tell you if I do), for accusations of misandry constitute yet another distraction technique. When encountering this statement, don’t go on the run and start talking about your lovely boyfriend and men friends who you (obviously) don’t hate. There’s no way you can prove that feminists don’t hate men to someone who believes this to be the case and, anyway, the argument is again a strategic one. Ask them what man-hating feminists have they met? Can they direct you to references to man-hating feminist articles and books? You’d be interested to read them. Or, if you want to be really provocative, ask them if they understand why some women have good reason to have issues with some men? I mean, if my husband beat me, I might not hate all men, but I might justifiably be very frightened of them. Ask them what they think could be done to stop women feeling frightened of men and feminists from being angry?

  [Winter (Mind the Gap): Springing the Traps: On Countering Anti-Feminism(Article no longer available).

  ]

• Addressing the homophobia of the myth:
  

  Where women are concerned, the line taken is “I don’t want to be a feminist because feminists are all lesbians.” Calling upon homophobic stigma, this claim also presumes lesbianism to be a bad thing with which one does not want to be associated. When young women calmly express the view that they don’t want to be feminists because feminists are lesbians, I am most concerned that these young people are still so comfortable with their own homophobia. Is the existence of lesbians within feminism enough to render the movement disgusting? Are lesbians really considered such socially abject creatures? As a lesbian feminist, the idea that my identity is a source of revulsion to young men and women is not a little disconcerting. There is no point in giving them examples of heterosexual feminists and to do so is again to implicitly disavow all the lesbian feminists. Instead, I would just tell them I find their homophobia utterly repulsive. If they don’t consider themselves homophobic, this might shake them up a bit and open to the way to an actual discussion. If, however, they are happy homophobes, you might be better off finding someone worth talking to.

  [Winter (Mind the Gap): Springing the Traps: On Countering Anti-Feminism(Article no longer available).

  ]

FAQ: What is “slut-shaming”?

Short answer: Slut-shaming, also known as slut-bashing, is the idea of shaming and/or attacking a woman or a girl for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings, and/or acting on sexual feelings. Furthermore, it’s “about the implication that if a woman has sex that traditional society disapproves of, she should feel guilty and inferior” (Alon Levy, Slut Shaming). It is damaging not only to the girls and women targeted, but to women in general an society as a whole. It should be noted that slut-shaming can occur even if the term “slut” itself is not used.

Focus on: Equal Pay

Here’s an excellent column by Amanda Teuscher in Ohio U’s student newspaper which sums up the issues regarding the defeated Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act:
The Feminist’s Corner: Equal pay litigation is justice, not an inconvenience

There’s not much commentary around pointing out that the proposed legislation would have enabled more than just women to have more time to sue for pay discrimination. Any employee with an unequal pay case would have gained the same time extension to enable discovery of the discrepancy and timely litigation, no matter whether the people they were being paid less than were of a different race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic class or physical ability level.

The major stated objection by the Senators who voted to block the bill was that it would enable “too many lawsuits” seeking restitution for pay discrimination. The idea that companies who behave unjustly and illegally should be forced to provide restitution seems to have entirely passed them by.

When did it become the province of the Government to protect corporations rather than its citizens? This trend of legislation which essentially provides corporate welfare has become rampant in the USA (note the revisions to bankruptcy laws which benefit corporations over citizens yet again). It’s apparently also an emerging trend in other countries where economic conservative politicians hold the legislative power.

Links from FF101 readers to instances of blatant protection of corporations over the interests of citizens in other countries would be greatly appreciated.

Update: A Lurker sent me a link in email to some fine reportage by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate giving more details of the US Republican Senators arguments against the Ledbetter bill, as well as to links of the Majority and Minority Reports from the judgement made by the Supreme Court. I neglected to point out that some of the language used by Republicans just assumes that women are too stupid to know their own best interests. Despicable.

Event Announcement: Chicago screenings of Nubian’s documentary

“Nubian” is the nom du blog of the writer of Blac(k)ademic, Kortney Ryan Ziegler. She is fundraising in order to finance the final post-production phase of her documentary, an experimental film project titled still black: a portrait of black transmen, and there are screenings this weekend in Chicago.

Directed by experimental filmmaker Kortney Ryan Ziegler, still black is a feature-length documentary that explores the lives of six black transgender men living in the United States. Through the intimate stories of their lives as artists, students, husbands, fathers, lawyers, and teachers, the film offers viewers a complex and multi-faceted image of race, sexuality and trans identity.

It sounds like a 101 on intersectionality, doesn’t it? There are some clips from the film at the film’s website.

Details of the screenings are here, including contact details and a link where you can donate money if you like her work but can’t make it to the screenings.

Open Thread: Feminism, Sexual Orientation and Social Hostility

This thread is a response to a comment from Astrodyke in the Suggestions thread:

I don’t see tags for “lesbian” or “sexual orientation”. It’d be nice to have some FAQs about lesbianism and how it relates to feminism.

There are the straw questions, “Don’t all feminists hate men?” or “Aren’t all feminists lesbians?” But there are also questions like, “Why is the word “dyke” used by some men to insult women? Why does that insult work?”

These are all fascinating questions and I don’t have particularly cogent responses to them (although we do have an FAQ addressing the manhating strawfeminist). Lesbianism has been both embraced and demonised by different segments of the feminist movement at various times, and lesbians have often felt ambivalent about the heteronormative focus of liberal feminism as well. Sexual identity as well as sexual orientation is also a source of hostility: the controversies about transexuality continue to excite various anxieties, and trans women especially are subject to high rates of violence and murder due to hostility about their departure from “the norm”.

So I’m throwing the question open to the readership: what is your analysis and experience of the relationship between lesbianism and feminism? Other sexual orientations/identities and feminism? How do assumptions of sexual orientation due to political beliefs act to belittle and intimidate feminists?

Feminism Friday: Open Thread on gender dominance issues in sexuality, slurs and raunch culture

Where do you point a male feminist ally (whose alliance up until now has been based on largely unexamined egalitarian impulses, but who hasn’t read any theory) to find good introductory analysis of gendered dominance in sexual behaviours, and how attitudes towards and about sexual behaviours play back into gender relations more widely?

Some of his questions:

• Do languages other than English use slurs based on domination by penetration to designate others as inferior or designate events as problems e.g. “we’re so screwed”?
  (I believe the answer is yes, but languages aren’t my forte.)
• If other languages use such slurs, does that mean that the penetration=domination paradigm is not just cultural?
  (I warned him against the essentialist fallacy here, in that acculturation is not just ethnically specific, and shared cross-cultural behaviours don’t necessarily mean an underlying biological explanation.)
• Why is popular culture emphasing acquiescence to brutal domination in sexual encounters as being somehow more satisfying than consensual non-brutal egalitarian sexual behaviours?
  (I said “more satisfying for who?” and pointed him towards Faludi’s Backlash.)
• If the penetration=domination is such a monolithic worldwide point of view, how can subverting that paradigm in favour of egalitarian sexuality be done?

There’s an awful lot to unpack in those questions, which is why I’m a bit stumped.

As a start, I’m pretty happy with Backlash as an overview of much background that will be required before he can fully examine the issues he has raised. He’s old enough to be moderately familiar with a lot of Second-Wave personalities and broad concepts from a pop culture point of view, but hasn’t delved more deeply.

What else other than Backlash?

Feminism Friday Round-Up

As usual, not all of these posts have actually been tagged as Feminism Friday articles by their authors, but if a post appears to fit into the category I include it. Please add any other online articles you think fit the bill from the last few weeks in comments.

Amanda Marcotte is out of the gate early this week with this fabulous post: On pigs, basketball, frames, and music

I’d say the two major metaphorical frames about sex would be the conservative-sexist one and the liberal-feminist one. The conservative-sexist metaphorical framework of sex is Sex As Conquest. In this frame, women’s bodies are objects and sex is about the struggle to conquer the pussy. Sometimes the struggle over the pussy is between men (ex: jokes about fathers guarding their daughters’ bodies from young male interlopers) and sometimes women themselves are tasked with defending the pussy from sex. If sexual intercourse happens, by definition, the man who gets to fuck the woman has won and the defender (father or woman herself) has lost. Sex happens when women surrender, in this model.

The liberal-feminist view of sex is that it’s not a war or a game, but more of a mutual collaboration, less like a battle and more like playing music. In this model, to be a sexual person is to be a musician and sex is playing your instrument. Sometimes you play by yourself, sometimes you get with others and jam, and sometimes you actually have a band that you have a long-term relationship with. There aren’t winners and losers, but there can be good and bad sex, just like there can be good and bad music. The collaboration model of sex explains why acceptance of homosexuality and kinkiness are generally liberal views. It makes no more sense to call homosexuality immoral than it does to posit that rock is more moral than jazz; it’s all a matter of taste. Homosexuality creates a lot of grief to those who have a fairly strict conservative view of sex because you can’t even tell who’s supposed to be the offense and the defense. It’s simply outside of their model, and it creates cognitive dissonance, which often makes the person suffering it want to wipe out the source of the dissonance.

These separate models of what sex is explain why threads about rape turn into hellholes pretty quickly—sexists and feminists aren’t even speaking the same language, in a sense.

Thinking Girl has posted excerpts from a thesis by Shannon called the Domestic Goddess Series over the last few weeks:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

A recent addition to the ranks of Feminism Friday bloggers, elorie at Same As A Wildcat has been writing on-topic essays for the last few weeks – here’s her Feminism Friday archive.

Bluemilk takes on Sex and Breastfeeding.

Lauredhel looks at Feminist Ethics and Digital Communities.