Tag: sex

When I started to write this blog about the sex vs. gender debate,  I was going to write a nice, intellectual piece, fully referenced, stating my position. But as I sat down to write it, I realized there is no clear-cut solution and presumably, most of the discussion has been decided in favor of the gender ideology, ranging from post-modern feminists in the academy, to the queer community, to the communist left.

In a recent antiwar speech in Washington, D.C., Angela Davis, while giving a laundry list of oppressions, mentioned both gender and LGBT, but failed to mention the word “women.” Sonia Sanchez, in the same event, left out categories having to deal with women’s liberation altogether (although in her poetry she did make the pronoun gender neutral).  

At the same time, mainstream feminists (what is generally referred to as the white middle class women’s movement) seem content to deal with reproductive issues such as abortion and contraception, rape and wife battering in a piecemeal fashion, with little overriding ideology or causal framework.  (One positive note: there is a new coalition of young women, WORD [Women Organized to Resist and Defend] which seems to be trying to fuse the concepts of sex and gender back together – along with race, class and imperialism. I look forward to seeing what their analysis will be since so far they seem to be mainly an activist group).

So what, if anything, do I have to contribute to this discussion? As a second wave socialist/ lesbian/ feminist born to a first wave socialist feminist, I have worked on projects with third wave feminists and raised a son who is active in the gay-rights movement.  I believe that my long history in these communities might give me a perspective worth sharing.  I also hope younger third wave feminists will not write me off as one of those smug old second wave feminists who thinks she knows everything.

By the rambling nature of this blog, you can probably tell that I am writing in a stream of consciousness “consciousness raising” style, true to my second wave “the personal is political” roots; although I believe this form is also regaining popularity among third wave feminists.

To begin. I came into feminism out of a Left Trotskyist organization about the same time I left my marriage of several years, right into the arms of the feminist movement.  Most of the women, it is true, were middle class and white and, as a working class woman, I wasn’t sure I would fit in.  I remember the first time I entered the women’s bookstore and one of the women commented on my “bourgie” $26 dollar JC Penney’s pantsuit. I was working as a secretary in the college where I was putting my husband through school.  I was required to wear the pants suit to work (along with pantyhose) even though the professors I worked for could wear jeans. It took me awhile to realize that most of the women in the bookstore wore jeans that cost four times what my pantsuit cost.  

I relate this story because this was my first exposure to identity politics and downward mobility and the tendency of the community to identify one’s class position by external secondary characteristics, not our actual class position. This  foreshadowed a similar tendency in terms of defining the issues of oppression in terms of our sexuality.  Nevertheless I stayed because those women still had something I wanted and wasn’t getting in the male-identified Left.

When I started to write this blog about the sex vs. gender debate,  I was going to write a nice, intellectual piece, fully referenced, stating my position. But as I sat down to write it, I realized there is no clear-cut solution and presumably, most of the discussion has been decided in favor of the gender ideology, ranging from post-modern feminists in the academy, to the queer community, to the communist left.

In a recent antiwar speech in Washington, D.C., Angela Davis, while giving a laundry list of oppressions, mentioned both gender and LGBT, but failed to mention the word “women.” Sonia Sanchez, in the same event, left out categories having to deal with women’s liberation altogether (although in her poetry she did make the pronoun gender neutral).  

At the same time, mainstream feminists (what is generally referred to as the white middle class women’s movement) seem content to deal with reproductive issues such as abortion and contraception, rape and wife battering in a piecemeal fashion, with little overriding ideology or causal framework.  (One positive note: there is a new coalition of young women, WORD [Women Organized to Resist and Defend] which seems to be trying to fuse the concepts of sex and gender back together – along with race, class and imperialism. I look forward to seeing what their analysis will be since so far they seem to be mainly an activist group).

So what, if anything, do I have to contribute to this discussion? As a second wave socialist/ lesbian/ feminist born to a first wave socialist feminist, I have worked on projects with third wave feminists and raised a son who is active in the gay-rights movement.  I believe that my long history in these communities might give me a perspective worth sharing.  I also hope younger third wave feminists will not write me off as one of those smug old second wave feminists who thinks she knows everything.

By the rambling nature of this blog, you can probably tell that I am writing in a stream of consciousness “consciousness raising” style, true to my second wave “the personal is political” roots; although I believe this form is also regaining popularity among third wave feminists.

To begin. I came into feminism out of a Left Trotskyist organization about the same time I left my marriage of several years, right into the arms of the feminist movement.  Most of the women, it is true, were middle class and white and, as a working class woman, I wasn’t sure I would fit in.  I remember the first time I entered the women’s bookstore and one of the women commented on my “bourgie” $26 dollar JC Penney’s pantsuit. I was working as a secretary in the college where I was putting my husband through school.  I was required to wear the pants suit to work (along with pantyhose) even though the professors I worked for could wear jeans. It took me awhile to realize that most of the women in the bookstore wore jeans that cost four times what my pantsuit cost.  

I relate this story because this was my first exposure to identity politics and downward mobility and the tendency of the community to identify one’s class position by external secondary characteristics, not our actual class position. This  foreshadowed a similar tendency in terms of defining the issues of oppression in terms of our sexuality.  Nevertheless I stayed because those women still had something I wanted and wasn’t getting in the male-identified Left.

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org  

With news of Congressman Anthony Weiner’s indiscretions the word “Hung” has frequently been heard. “Hung Over” too entered our conversations.  Many asked if he was.   “Hung Up” played a powerful role in reflections. “Hung Out to Dry” seems to be the consensus.  Crowds of Congressmen and women, citizens from each political Party, and even those who claim no loyalties, say, The Representative must be renounced. Few wish to admit that Anthony Weiner is but you and me.  

Supreme Court Justices, who served under Chief Jurist Brennan, perhaps, make three.  Any of us might easily say, as the Justices did decades ago; on the subject of obscene or outrageous, “I Know It When I See It.”  We each do. Still, the definitions vary.

While few of us are officially appointed to write “codes” of conduct, as the Supreme Court Justices are, we too avidly watch the actions of another and judge.

I reluctantly write about the mess that is the Anthony Weiner Story because it seems unimportant to significant issues. Or, to qualify, there are aspects of it that are pertinent, but we aren’t talking about them. We have an opportunity here towards greater understanding, if only the media narrative would reflect it. The most persistent lesson of them all is that a life in the public eye provides no privacy. The greatest aspect of the entire story of Rep. Weiner and his internet flirtations might be how internet discourse appears entirely private, but in reality could not be any less so. In another time, had Weiner exchanged pictures with random women through the mail, he might have been more easily able to cover up his behavior. Or at least it would have been easier to pay off a mistress or two. The ease of internet technology is a double edged sword. I wonder if the impulsively sexual Warren Harding, Woodrow Wilson, or Franklin Roosevelt could have been able to keep their affairs a secret in today’s world.

I probably shouldn’t pull punches here.  I find some of the rhetoric and claims in this video a bit suspect.

Perhaps the oddest part for me is that the videomaker is using imagery that she considers disgusting at least, while arguing (it seems to me) that the ads for children’s clothing used by American Apparel are somehow pornographic.

Now there’s a part of me that sympathizes with this view.  And then there’s the part of me that thinks… didn’t you just manage to make an unpaid ad for this company by using the same images as part of your critique?  Aren’t you also exploiting these children by showing the images, and not only that, but unlike the company that paid the models and their parents, you’re exploiting them without any compensation.  (Then again, by embedding this and drawing attention to it, perhaps I’m doing the same thing?)

It strikes me as a very slippery slope, to say the least.  Before I sound like a pontiff from a religion that doesn’t institutionalize child sexual abuse, let me just embed the video I’m talking about, so you can make up your own mind before I continue my rant.

Don’t view the following video if you think it might contain soft-core pron.

This is a critical review of Chris Hedges’ book Empire of Illusion, with further discussion of its relevance in a society with no future.

(Crossposted at Orange and at Firedoglake)

Well, it looks like the National Enquirer who brought us the live burial of John Edwards has finally got the goods on Barack Obama. It’s not enough Obama is an African Nationalist, Muslim Communist and Political Promise Breaker. Not enough he is a shiny-happy war criminal and smooth talking flim-flam man. Not enough Obama swings both ways while he lectures black daddies to take care of their birthing and babies.

President Obama is a philanderer. Our Tiger Woods President.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Nate Beeler, Washington Examiner, Buy this cartoon

I got into a discussion the other day of the kind I really don’t enjoy.  I felt required to defend transsexual women against a stereotype of us.

There are many such stereotypes.  We are liars and deceivers, according to some.  But in the case in point, the accusation was that we are sexually aggressive.  And that brings up a difficult topic to discuss for many transfolk:  sex.

The instance in question occurred in a DADT diary and was referring to gays in the military already:

I never saw overt, mincing, steriotypical “NOLA Fat Tuesday transsexual type” of behavior, but then there are strict codes of conduct for heteralsexual relationships while in Uniform also.

I still am unsure as to what exactly constitutes “NOLA Fat Tuesday transsexual behavior”, but that may be that, while I am indeed transsexual and have been to NOLA many times, it was never during Mardi Gras.

I recently came across, through a YouTube video, a rather unique French public service announcement.  It encouraged heterosexual men to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS by using a condom before engaging in sexual contact.  Predictable enough subject for a PSA, one might think, but the video’s concept was both amusing and novel.  While the American mind would likely appreciate the humor, it would also deem it too graphic to be aired on network television and probably cable as well.  American liberalism has, I realize, a long standing Francophone tradition, just as American conservative thought has an equally lengthy history of criticizing it, so my point is not to cater directly to either camp.  Somewhere between the two is something close to the truth and as such I seek to find it.

To get to my point, in France, sex is everywhere, and yet attitudes towards sexuality in one’s personal life are often more traditional than in the United States.  While on the continent, one often encounters nudity on billboards, street signs, and shop windows while out and about, but the attitude of most residents is that the body is a natural entity, as are public depictions of it without the benefit of clothes to disguise the objectionable parts.  To us, of course, the only truly socially acceptable manner of presentation regarding the unveiled human body is in the art gallery and even then some people have been known to register their visible discomfort.  Furthermore, we deem nudity or frank depictions of nudity in any form to often only be granted as a privilege based on reaching a certain age and with it some perceived degree of maturity, believing that children and minors ought not to be exposed to its supposedly corrupting influences until the age where they can make an informed decision whether or not to partake.  Put that way, it sounds almost as though nudity is some health hazard, like smoking or consuming too much alcohol.  Still, for all the energy we expend spinning out cautionary tales and guilt-laden commandments, one would think we ought to expect more for our efforts.