Very fair point.

In my general experience, though, the odds are a lot higher that a straight white man (or any two of the three) is just going to be completely oblivious to any analysis of oppression, discrimination, bigotry, and harassment in jokes, and much more inclined to dismiss all protests with “it was just a joke! if it upsets you so much I won’t tell it again!” than any woman is; than any gay person is; than any person of color is.

I know that “it’s not all about me”, but perhaps I ought to explain a few things to those of a different generation and perhaps a different and better temperament. Like many older people, I tend to think that the young have a chance to be kinder and more ethical and all-around better than the older generation. Most of the time I try to be kind and open, and obey the Golden Rule – but sometimes the “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” bit doesn’t work out if old attitudes of self-contempt come to the surface, and the “do unto” correspondingly sours. Some people of the older generation still bear the mark of the culture they grew up in, no matter how hard they try to unlearn these attitudes. There are still people like me around, who have residual internalized self-hatred from misogyny and homophobia and implicit transphobia *, and whose bad attitudes crop up on “down” days. It is far easier to recognize the human worth of others than it is to recognize it in yourself.

The whole “hooker” thing was about the old accusation that women succeeded by “sleeping their way to the top” because they couldn’t compete otherwise. “Hooker” included by extension anyone who used their sexuality for profit or unfair advantage, and assumed that they were not coerced into doing so. Yes, it’s misogynistic – and it’s part of the standard-issue mental equipment of most older people brought up in a striving middle class. It’s harder than you think to eradicate all mental and emotional traces of one’s early upbringing in a specific conformist culture. Rare is the person who wholeheartedly accepts being an outsider in childhood and teenage years.

I am just old enough to have been brought up in a culture where employment ad columns were labeled Men or Women, women were expected to be secretaries or nurses, and women were considered presumptuous if they aspired to be lawyers or doctors. Women had to conform in small ways if they dared to aspire to men’s occupations, and one of those conforming ways was to dress modestly, meaning, not too much flesh showing (skirt length below the knees, clothes not clinging, makeup “natural” and without strong colors). In other words, the strategy was to defeminise personal appearance without being butch – the “Dress for Success” mode. You hoped that your boss would forget that you weren’t one of the boys, and would take you seriously. You didn’t want to have people think that you were sleeping your way to the top. A lot has changed in the past 40+ years, but I still have the residua of growing up expecting to be taken on sufferance. Consequently I expect women in male-dominated jobs and professions, when appearing in public (including photos as well as TV appearances), to dress in a dignified manner, and if the men are wearing business clothes, the woman should also wear business clothes or other modest dress, and have a no-nonsense nonsexualized demeanor. Women who dressed in an overtly sexual style, “as if going clubbing”, with short skirts and tight tops, seemed to me to be discrediting women who wanted to have their ideas recognized in very conservative employment venues. It doesn’t help all that much that I never felt comfortable being female or publicly (and privately) acknowledging sexual feelings# – that I am still the stereotypical prude when it comes to my own clothing – and that part of my discomfort with sexualized expression in the workplace was the knowledge that I would always lose out because I couldn’t play the game.

* implicit because “transgender” was not recognized as a concept at that time
# perhaps I would have fit some form of “genderqueer” category, if these had existed at the time

One of the awkward and odd things about heterosexuality: what can a feminist do when she falls for a man who is transphobic and/or homophobic?

Hate to say this, Jes, but it’s also one of the awkward things in a queer relationship: what can you do when you fall for a woman who’s transphobic or (internalized) homophobic or racist or classist or ablist or…
It’s not just the straight kids who have to deal with this one. It’s all of us in interracial relationships, cross-class relationships, even relationships where all things are equal except the bigotry of the person we fell for. None of us is extra-safe from that problem. There’s no inherent safety for women in dating other women, whatever we tell ourselves: there’s still domestic violence and abuse, there’s still sexual assault, there’s still issues of race and class and ability. Maybe the chances are a bit better with someone who has a better chance of “getting” your oppression, sure, but it can still happen. As much as I value that I’m marrying another woman, and one who’s queer-identified and of-color and all, I could very well have fallen for a different queer brown girl who was transphobic or fatphobic or gods-know-what-else. The odds were better she’d get it, especially the oppressions we share, but there’s never a guarantee. The ex who sexually assaulted me was another trans person, who should have understood how vulnerable I was, and should have been better about the weird racialized stuff they pulled on me. But it wasn’t so.

I think it’s just one of the weird and awkward things about love.

I was also thinking something along these lines, although it doesn’t require that her boyfriend be “telling” her anything. It may be that she simply doesn’t want to admit to herself that he’s a bigoted dickhead.

Random commenter dude probably doesn’t have transphobic boyfriend reading all the comments his transphobic joke stirred up and telling his feminist partner to ignore and deny any hurt caused by her posting the joke as per his instructions, because his joke was funny and these people are just PC-clones.

One of the awkward and odd things about heterosexuality: what can a feminist do when she falls for a man who is transphobic and/or homophobic? Things have changed over the past twenty-five years since I came out, but the problem of loving someone who is bigoted towards other people is still the same: either you’re the kind of person who says “I love you but shut up with the bigotry”, or you’re the kind of person who finds all his jokes funny, including the misogynist/transphobic/homophobic ones.

…but then, I’m not even convinced that BitchPhD sees her boyfriend’s transphobia/homophobia as a problem.

Vanessa: Goes back to the same sorry story where it’s a bigger insult to the privileged person to call them out on their oppressive behavior than it is to enact that oppressive behavior in the first place.

Yeah. :-(

Goes back to the same sorry story where it’s a bigger insult to the privileged person to call them out on their oppressive behavior than it is to enact that oppressive behavior in the first place.

Overheard in the neighborhood chocolate shop/cafe today:

Her: I don’t drink because I do terrible things when I’m drunk. Once this guy was hitting on me, and I pushed him through a plate glass window, head first. Nothing happened though. And I say all these racist things! Only when I’m drunk. But when I get drunk I just…say anything. Is that part of me? I don’t want to be a racist, so I don’t drink.