There’s a very interesting discussion developing over in the comments thread to an Alas post guest-written by Earlbecke. The post is about the pressure of expectation; the weight of the comments have been about how to define that pressure; this little sidebar was about the diverse pressures on men and women.
There’s something to that. But I think, also, it’s at that point that you can really ask where male privilege turns into imprisonment (albeit a self-imposed one to some degree, I suppose one could argue). I wonder how many of those corporate clones go home, go in the closet-sized private study, pull down the blinds, lock the doors, dig out the pink lacy camisole and the garter belt and stockings, and exercise a small, cramped, lonely release, however temporary. And what would happen if one could open that door a little farther in a non-punitive way.
Those men get one hell of a lot of privilege in exchange for their “imprisonment.” Call me hard-hearted, but I don’t really care if they feel they can only wear nice frilly things at home behind a locked door. They are the top of the heap in this culture of compulsory butch/femme, and if they don’t like it, they should change it. In public, where I can see them, they are at best clueless and at worst no better than brigands in $800 shoes. Not that, say, DiFi or Elizabeth Dole is any better, but at least when political bloggers get on Cheney’s or Lieberman’s case, it’s usually over what they’ve been doing– not over what they’ve been wearing.
I have to agree with Alsis. George Orwell made this point in “Shooting an Elephant”:
And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
But I doubt that he would have traded the weight of the gun for the threat of it.
Belledame222’s scenario also contained a lot of privilege and safety. How many people would kill for a “private closet-sized study,” a strongbox even that tiny, in which to keep their perversions safe from the rest of the world? How many people would love to have a disguise, albeit a disguise, to wear?
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I understand your reluctance to cry any tears for those poor, downtrodden white men, but I think you’re missing the degree to which helping men to construct a less limiting idea of masculinity is deeply helpful to advancing feminism.
It’s the men who most rigidly define their masculine identity in opposition to anything perceived as feminine or weak who are going to fight feminism the hardest. Since their whole identity is tied up in their sense of superiority to and power over women, women claiming power seem to be directly threatening them, and hence must be fought with any weapon available. By contrast, a man who doesn’t embrace conventional gender stereotypes (or who embraces them less enthusiastically) will be more likely to recognize that women doing the same thing aren’t out to get him.
To provide a concrete example: for a traditional man, if his wife announces that she wants to keep her job and split child-rearing duties equally, she threatens not only to become more successful than him, but also to drag down his hierarchical position among his (male) peers (by saddling him with less prestigous work, or suggesting that he’s incapable of supporting her). A man with a less traditional idea of masculinity is more likely to be open to such an arrangement, or see it as an opportunity for him not to miss his kids’ childhood.
(And yes, I know men who would gladly trade in their privilege to escape what they experience as a constant pressure (from other men and from women) to prove themselves)
Hi! I’m so glad I found this blog (via the trackback at alas, a blog! dunno if you saw the response I posted there after the one you comment on here in this post. But I think it pertains here as well.
My main point in that comment is that, regardless of the privileges the vile rich white assholes in the suits have or don’t have, the open gender-nonconformists — more properly, those regarded as open gender-nonconformists — are the ones who most often are punished beyond reason for their engagement in practices of dressing and adornment arbitrarily assigned to the other sex. And the punishments (mockery, exclusion, ostracism, economic discrimination, unemployment, violence, death) seem to me more grave for those regarded as mtf than as ftm.
Short-haired natal women without make-up and wearing pants are at least occasionally visible in most professions, however much their appearance may be ridiculed and discouraged. Coiffed and made-up natal men in women’s skirt-suits wearing earrings, bracelets, manicured long painted nails, and pumps aren’t. (I’m not speaking here of passing transfolk; if you really do pass, you often get a free pass in this regard.) Someone applying for a regular job who appears to be a man dressed in women’s clothes simply won’t be awarded it (female-impersonation jobs excepted). Someone who has a regular job and starts presenting as an mtf crossdresser will usually be fired (barring an effective trans-protection policy).
Drag queens are murdered at a rate per capita much higher than any social group I can think of. Granted, every year there are in absolute terms more murdered black males than drag queens. But relative to the total population of black males (high) and drag queens (low), the murder rate for drag queens is much higher. I’d speculate that the murder rate for black drag queens is the highest of all.
You’re certainly right that the rich white crossdresser may have access to protected locations and social situations in which to dress safely that are unavailable to the poor drag queen. But that fact in itself addresses — as far as I can see, and maybe I’m missing something — neither the claim that for men the range of clothes considered acceptable is vastly more limited than for women nor the claim that men are punished more severely for gender infractions than women are.
Um. All of this is perfectly sensible, but it doesn’t seem to be so much conspicuously absent from my post as tangential to the point I was making with reference to Alsis’ and belledame’s comments.
Except for this part. I’m not sure whose blog you think you’ve stumbled onto–”Random Musings of a Strawfeminist,” maybe–but it ain’t me you’re responding to.
I…just don’t think I can buy that. Patrick Califia made the point that pants etc. only became permissible for women when they were refashioned with female sartorial cues. Look at suits, for example: a woman’s suit is cut differently, adorned differently, and made with different fabrics and in different colors. A woman who dresses the way men dress, or who seems to be aping men–like, say, a butch lesbian–is subject to all of those things, and does face high levels of harassment and discrimination. And they–I don’t know whether or not it’s proper to use the first-person or the third-person plural–do get murdered.
Just curious–by “drag queens,” are you referring to mtf, mt?, or transfeminine people?
As I just replied over there:
well, wasn’t really suggesting one feel sorry for the politicians, you know; just saying, that is a potential crack in the armor. you know: if it ultimately boils down to “what’s in it for me?” for the Oppressor to relinquish/share some power (and sadly enough it often does). i do have an interest in the approach of “look how frigging miserable this makes you, too; it doesn’t have to be this way,” as opposed to (just) ANNIHILATE THE EVIL OPPRESSIVE MOTHERFUCKERS!!”
not because I necessarily am such a tender-hearted saintly soul that I never think “yesss, ANNIHILATE THE EVIL OPPRESSIVE MOTHERFUCKERS!!” but because, well, it might not work; there’s an awful lot of ‘em. and sometimes, it turns out: we have met the evil oppressive motherfuckers and it is us (too)
***
in other words: what Amy said.
It’s just one more aspect to consider. I mean, it’s not as though there’s some sort of limit on crappy things we can do to ourselves and each other, as a species. and it’s not as though there’s only one simple way out of them, either.
And the thing is: Orwell’s whole life was *exactly* about trading in the gun, as best he could (and he was forever sharply critical of his own failings).
at some point it does have to become about more than good guys vs. bad guys. even if it’s undeniably true that some people , on the whole, behave far more suckily toward their fellow critters than others. it gets nowhere unless at some point you stop and ask *why* that might be so. *I* think.
finally: we may not all be able to afford the physical strongbox of a tiny private room, no. not my point. point being: we *all* have our disguises, we *all* have our secret places…and, my main point, we *all* shrink to fit our imposed limitations, whoever’s doing the imposing (and frankly it’s not always so clear to me where the line between within and without truly falls). What if we didn’t have to, any of us? What then?
I did not say a word in my post about “good guys” or “bad guys.” My point was that a system which defines one class of people as of lesser worth than another will tend to result in the former group having far less power and far fewer resources than the latter. People who can be or seem to be part of the latter group have access to that power and those resources. That’s important. Take a look at mika’s words about “drag queens.” You know why ftms are not reflected in that statistic, why transwomen are much more likely to get killed? Transmen frequently have an easier time passing as cissexual, and transmen get to be men. My body acts as a strongbox. Possessing this body means that I am less likely to get murdered. It would be a betrayal if I pretended that wasn’t a huge benefit to me, or if I tried to equate passing with exposure. Passing is a devil’s bargain, to be sure, but at least I can opt into it. And as Alsis said, that position offers me privilege even with respect to activism.
“As best he could” refers to the immutable privilege accorded to him, not just to his own moral failings. At no point in his life did he cease to be a white Englishman.
hey, piny,
I’m consciously avoiding using the nuanced language our community’s developed (Eskimos, snow) to render the richness and complexity we live with daily. We’re treated as we’re perceived — as one huge unified lump of a threat — by those who don’t share our vocabulary. (Frankly, this is why I think the endless and ever-repeating history of our turf wars and wars over inclusion in the community are so ridiculous. G v. L, GL v. B, GLB v. T, GLBT v. Q, etc. They see us all as sick, despicable gender-traitors. The fuckers.)
So, while I’m consciously invoking the hackneyed cultural stereotypes of the drag-queen (drag performer, “pre-op” sex-worker), I’m also trying to emphasize that the sanctions I”m talking about are levied only on those who are perceived as gender-transgressors. Transfolk who pass, are, by definition, not so perceived. They become subject to punishment only when their transgression is discovered (viz., Brandon Teena and Gwen Araujo). Moreover, sometimes those who don’t think of themselves as trans, such as natal female body-builders and very feminine natal men, suffer punishment cuz they look trans.
I doubt we’re very far apart on this subject! :-) I’m certainly not denying the real physical danger that butch lesbians and ftms face daily! I totally agree that “pants etc. only became permissible for women when they were refashioned with female sartorial cues.” But I do think that now, after dozens of years of western women’s wearing (slightly refashioned) pants, in many (though certainly not all) circumstances women can wear actual men’s clothes without causing comment. This is probably most true in casual circumstances — a weekend party, say, or a bar, or a sports event, where many women just wear a button-down shirt or t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, as men do, without comment. This outfit is now considered just a comfortable unisex one.
Women’s suits are noticeably cut differently from men’s. And I agree that a woman in a white collar job who wore exactly the same male outfit (exact same cut of suit and shirt, same tie, same shoes) as her male coworkers would get chilly and nasty looks and comments. But I do think they’d be of a different quality from the looks and comments that a man with, say, a coiffed women’s hairdo, a dress, and high heels would get. Personally, I’d say that with respect to appearing in public in clothes strongly ascribed to the other gender, men are today at the stage where women were seventy years ago.
Well, that’s true. What of it?
I mean, I kind of feel like we’re getting back into the whole “trumps” business, here. In absolutely no way was I trying to compare some straight dude’s personal angst with what it’s like to be an FTM in this homophobic, transphobic, sexist culture. At the same time I don’t think that the mere fact of mentioning that there might be some suffering going on there, too, takes away from anyone else’s. Yeah?
and you’re right: bad guys and good guys wasn’t quite on; it was late, I was tired.
I meant to say “MTF” there, but it stands either way, I expect, depending on one’s personal circumstances.
but to get back to the Orwell thing for just a second: yes, that’s true, he never ceased to be a white Englishman. None of us really cease to be who we are, in certain respects. So what does that mean, though, to you?
…you know, I think partly this is skewed a bit because the example of the six hundred men was the Republican Convention (right?)–in which case, if *anyone* is, these *are* the powermakers. They write the laws that have effects. So, yeah, anger. I have it too. It maybe muddies the original point a bit.
So let’s back up a step. Let’s say instead of talking about Joe McCarthy, we’re talking about Joe Schmo the construction worker. Married, kids, very manly and “normal” to all outward appearances. Well respected in his church and community. has probably about the standard amount of unconscious sexist attitude (and so on). probably apolitical for the sake of this, doesn’t vote. On nights when the wife and kids are away, he locks the door, pulls down the blinds, dresses up in wife’s clothing and masturbates to orgasm. Is very careful to wash everything and put it back where he found it; if anyone should find out, there is an excellent chance he’d lose everything he had: wife, kids, job, community, church for sure. Joe is dimly aware that he’s not terribly happy, but he doesn’t really have time or energy to give it much more coherent thought than that. Reaction to Joe?
I’m not trying to create a hierarchy of suffering, but to distinguish between two different problems: life in a poisonous hierarchy that damages us all as people (which damage transcends the disparities set up within that system), and having a low position in that hierarchy. I mean, the straight dude is damaged and cheated, but he is also protected. There’s also the difference between being closeted (e.g. as a cross-dresser) and being narrowly privileged (e.g. as a real-live panty-rejectin’ heterosexual dude).
I got the sense–and see a whole lot–that a false equivalence was at play in the comments thread. Admittedly, some of my sensitivity has to do with in-community interactions I’ve had with ftms who refuse to admit that they are currently in a different place from yer average dyke. I call it the Passion of the Secret Vagina. It makes my teeth itch.
On a personal level, it means that I can fight the system, but that I have to remain conscious of the ways in which it currently rewards me.
For that matter: does the reaction change if it turns out Joe Schmo is a recent immigrant who’s depending on maintaining his legal U.S. status (which in turn depends on keeping that particular job, and/or maintaining his marriage) to remain here, and going back would mean returning to an abusive fundamentalist culture and rejecting family of origin, one member of which has declared a fatwa on him? (actual client I saw. he was gay, not a cross-dresser, but the “getting caught” thing and all other details was pretty much the same).
How about if it’s Joe Schmo the single, lonely, Dilbertesque white-collar cube rat?
Some of it can also be a little oogy because we acknowledge that being monstrous–which covers any superior position in a hierarchy that subhumanizes other people–is damaging to the soul, right? So you can talk about how a man suffers and is hurt because he’s a violent homophobe.
slip while I was posting yet again.
>the Passion of the Secret Vagina.
HA!!!
>On a personal level, it means that I can fight the system, but that I have to remain conscious of the ways in which it currently rewards me.
Sure. I guess what I’m trying to say though, is: we’ve all got our blind spots. God knows Orwell did (sexism not being the least of them). And yet he’s a writer I keep turning back to for inspiration, again and again; I think that in many ways he was far more gifted with self-insight than a lot of current political voices, even ones I may identify a lot more with more on a demographic level.
I’m not sure why this would make a difference. In all cases, you’ve got someone opting to remain closeted because it allows him to occupy, however dishonestly, a more secure position. In pure abstract terms, almost all of us have this option to one degree or another in one way or another.
Agreed. And yes and yes about Orwell. I don’t think I’m even gonna be able to read his essay on neo-English until the neo-cons leave office. Too creepy for now.
…I wonder, you know, how clear the line between “being cheated” and “being discriminated against” really is. I have this sense that what we’re stumbling around here is the notion of “real” oppression (or anything) as somehow having to be manifest on the material, even legal plane.
but what I’m always interested in is the subtler shit: the soul damage that happens. And I do think it is happening to a lot of people we wouldn’t necessarily deem “oppressed,” and it might be worthwhile to find out why. I mean: maybe Joe Schmo the cube rat comes in with a gun one day and murders half the office. Was this because of institutionalized discrimination that we can clearly point to and go “aha!” Probably not. Does that mean that his behavior is therefore inexplicable, or at least completely divorced from any possible sociopolitical frame? I wouldn’t say so, no.
but I do feel like in political communities/discussions, ofttimes the response is exactly that: well, I can’t fit that into my ideological framework; therefore, he must be just…bad. Or crazy. Out of my purview.
(as you say: such speculation often feels “oogy,” yes)
>I don’t think I’m even gonna be able to read his essay on neo-English until the neo-cons leave office. Too creepy for now.
I feel that way about anything Nazi-related. especially anything related to the transition from the Weimar Republic to fascism. shudder.
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