Gordaen's Blog

As I promised a few days back, I am going to do a post about the totally awesome book that I have the honor of reading for my Women’s Studies class. The book is called Women’s Voices Feminist Visions and I wouldn’t do a door the dishonor of using the book as a door stop.

Although sharing some conditions, including having primary responsibility for children and being victims of male violence, women’s lives are marked by difference.

The emphasis is mine. This is the second sentence of the second chapter (which was the first chapter we had to read for class). My open mind nearly shut just from this sentence. That is what women have in common? Now I know this is supposed to be a feminist book, but I just could not see how this was a reasonable statement. Not only are males more often victims of crimes, not only are men 4 times more likely to be murdered than women, but if you compare female murderers to male murderers, females choose male victims 80% of the time and males only choose female victims 25% of the time! I guess I find this strange because, I find it hard to believe that a masculinism book would say the following:

Although sharing some conditions, including having primary responsibility for paying for everything and being victims of female violence, men’s lives are marked by difference.

Is that how feminists define themselves? I guess it goes with the whole “blame everything on the fact that you are a victim” strategy. Maybe, due to the fact that I am a male, I don’t understand. A guy would think, “What can I do to fix it,” but apparently the feminist perspective is, “What can I do to complain?” After a little bit, I calmed myself and continued to read, thinking maybe just that one line was poorly worded, then I read things like this:

…White people can count on cashing in every day…

I am especially good at doing this by applying for minority scholarships (compared to caucasian scholarships).

Systems that facilitate privilege and inequality, subordination and domination, include racism based on racial/ethnic membership (African American, Asian American, Latino/a, Native American—note this also includes anti-Semitism, or discrimination against Jews, as well as discrimination against Arab Americans and/or those who are Muslim [especially a problem after the bombing of the World Trade Center and the consequences of the War in Iraq])

Notice that it doesn’t include Caucasian people…

And, within women’s sports, some are more “White” than others. Examples that immediately come to mind are gymnastics, ice skating, equestrian sports, tennis, and golf (all relatively expensive sports) as most women’s sports—outside of basketball, volleyball, and track—are dominated by White Women.

See, white people, even if they are women, are evil.

The English language is structured in such a way that it maintains sexism and racism.

That’s why black coffee is what the “toughest” people drink. That’s why the hardest ski runs are marked with black markers. That’s why “in the black” means financially secure (no loss of income). That’s why “bleeding someone white” means to drain someone of their wealth or resources. That’s why a “whited sepulcher” is poetic term for a hypocrite. Isn’t it funny how, if you completely ignore the other side of a position, you can make anything sound the way you want? White and black are both used for positives and negatives (and even for the same thing such as “white/black out”). If you want to claim this is racist, then at least mention that there are terms that go against your agenda. All these examples focus on the “racism” of the English language, because that portion of the book gave no example of how it is “sexist.”

The book goes on to say things like parts of a woman’s body are used as insults (unlike parts of a man’s body, which is why calling someone a “dick” is a compliment, right?). Every example is against either whites or males or both. When anything is examined, only the side that supports the book’s argument is shown.

I had hoped that the book would be about empowering of women and the female perspective, because I feel that could be beneficial to me. Unfortunately, the book is based on blaming all problems on whites, men, upper class, and even the English language. Especially frequently mentioned in the book is how women earn less than men. Of course, the book never provides a context or even fair comparison. This is one of the most common feminist arguments, but it is barely true in the United States. Quotes from Wikipedia:

On the other hand, although only full-time workers are included, the FTYR gender gap figure does not account for the fact that full-time male workers, on average, work longer hours (8 more per week) than full-time female workers (Rones et al, 1997). If this factor were included, it would be more apparent that the gender earnings gap overstates how much more men earn. Even more importantly though the gender gap does not take into account the fact that men have on average more years of work experience than women. Women (much more often than men) leave their careers for years at a time to care for children, resulting in fewer years of pay raises. This distortion is large enough to question the value of this simplistic statistic.

Some studies, including those done by the Independent Women’s Forum, conclude that when taking into account the following variables when comparing male and female employment within the United States: same job, time worked, benefits (for example maternity leave), women make 98 cents to the dollar of a man.

Warren Farrell reports that childless women who have never married earn 117 percent of their childless male counterparts, when the comparison controls for education, hours worked and age.

And just in case you thought pornography wasn’t sinful, here are two quotes from the book you might enjoy:

…pornography can be defined as the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words.

Others oppose pornography entirely as a violation of women‘s rights against objectification and sexualization for male pleasure and believe that people’s rights to consume such materials are no longer rights when they violate the rights of others.

Damn those men who force women to go into the pornography industry and then force the women to objectify themselves! These quotes make it sound like there is no male pornography, that females hate pornography, and that women have no choice when they are forced to pose for Playboy and the like…

As my final argument I would just like to ask one question: If the world is so anti-female and pro-male, why is it that “masculinism” is not considered a word by MS Word or Firefox 2.0, but “feminism” is?