Coming home from Wiscon

(this has also been cross-posted to my political blog, because I keep saying I want to blog there more often.)

Coming home from Wiscon gets harder every year. For one long weekend, I can forget that the rest of the world Just Doesn't Get It, because I'm hanging around hundreds of people who, for the most part, are feminists and feminist allies who actually Get It.

This is not a con report. A con report would list all the nice LJers I spent time with -- and there were a lot of them -- and talk about more than one of the panels I went to, and such. This is a "what's on my mind now" post, which happens to reference a Wiscon panel.

At the "Feminism Fundamentals" panel, Chip Delaney said, during his introduction, that men can't be feminists. This statement went by without comment, which surprised me -- that's a controversial statement, one which usually derails the hell out of the discussion. But it did mean that for once, the comment got to ferment in my subconscious for awhile, and I got to have interesting thoughts of my own about it.

One of the other things said on that panel -- regarding something else under discussion, but good advice in general -- was that you have to pick your battles. I don't have the energy or the passion, really, to fight this battle. People who want to argue about whether or not men can be feminists will have to do it without me. However, I do want to explore, a little, why feel a lot of sympathy for this viewpoint.

Naming is a powerful thing. On the one hand, the inclusive choice uses that power to welcome allies, and that can be a good thing. I do think, however, that it's useful to examine the other choice. If we use the power of naming in a more exclusive manner -- one that excludes men, relegating them to "feminist allies" or "pro-feminists" -- what does that say?

It says a powerful thing, I think. It explicitly, linguistically underlines the problem: That it is difficult to impossible for someone raised with privilege to see through that privilege.

This is a vastly important concept, I think. I spend way too much time soothing the ruffled feathers of feminist allies, who want desperately to believe that they're not one of the bad guys. The truth is: we're all part of the problem. Every single one of us. And as long as you want to believe you're not one of the bad guys, well, you're only going to be looking for sexism outside yourself. We're all the bad guys. We've all been raised in a sexist culture and we've been treated differently according to our gender from the time we were a day old. "Feminist" is not the opposite of "sexist."

Recognizing our ingrained sexism requires quite a bit of self-examination, patience, and humility. And telling men that they can't be feminists shines a bright light on the fact that doing that self-examination through the miasma of gender privilege is a whole different ballgame than doing it from the oppressed side. Gloria Steinem has recognized that first moment of a woman's feminist consciousness awakening as a "click" -- when the pieces click into place and she realizes that this feminism stuff applies to her. The personal *is* the political. "[H]er private anxieties, anger, and despair are not personal failings but are understandable responses to the off-the-wall expectations of patriarchy." (The Mommy Myth, by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith Michaels.)

That moment is different -- and much harder to come by -- on the more empowered end of the disparity. We've all got an intellectual immune response that fires off quickly and powerfully when we're presented with ideas that contradict the stuff we've been immersed in all our lives. It says, Balderdash! I know this to be not-true. All my life, I've been told How Things Are, not in words but in actions and deeds, every day of my whole life. Any concept that flies against this conditioning has to break through that immune response. For women, that click moment is when the weight of experiencing daily oppression breaks through the conditioned response. For men, that click is harder to come by. Some men have reported that it happens when something horrible occurs to a woman they're fond of. Some men have been on the receiving end of racism, classism, ableism, ageism, or somesuch, and manage to generalize to the -isms they're not on the receiving end of. Whatever it is, something, sometimes, will break through that automatic response, and start somebody thinking about their privilege. That is, however, not the same thing as the eye-opening click of "Oh. Yes. This is about what I experience *all the time*."

I know this, viscerally. I know this, because I have experienced it in my examination of my own class and race privilege. I will never, ever be able to look at race the way I look at gender. No matter how much I think and analyze before I open my mouth, my class and race privilege comes out often, and the best I can do is to try to be aware of it, and be not just gracious but humble when I'm called on it.

This is not because I'm especially stupid. In this, I am fairly ordinary. And if you think you're especially gifted and should be an exception, I say: you're part of the problem. I know only five men who are especially gifted in that way -- and believe me, I've hunted! At least two of them don't call themselves feminists for, as far as I can tell, pretty much this reason. And all of them are candid about the ways in which they are part of them problem.

Like I said, I'm not willing to fight this battle. On the one hand, telling pro-feminist men that they can't be feminists would leave us with a much smaller, more thoughtful and dedicated cadre of pro-feminist men, and that sounds kinda refreshing. And it would be really nice to be able to stop wasting my time trying to educate people who won't or can't see through their own gender privilege. On the other hand, though, alienating pro-feminist men by denying them the power of the label seems like it's just inviting more of those same exhausting circular arguments with liberal men that already frustrate me. Call yourselves whatever you want, boys, because I'm not prepared to have another argument that's About You.

But I wish, wish, wish, that more men could do what those five Guys who Get It have done: I wish more pro-feminist men could say, "gosh, women that I profess to respect and support -- and oftentimes love -- believe that inequality exists, not just out there, but in here inside of me. And they believe that, so maybe I should try believing that, because I believe in them. Let's try, for a month, to assume that it's true: I am part of the problem, and my privilege gets in the way of me discussing it and understanding it, much less fixing it." And honestly spend that month struggling for the humility required to put one's ego aside and pay attention.

Because I know men who've done things like that, and they're better for it. And the feminist movement is better for it.