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Monday, February 27, 2006

Please fuck me with a sex stereotype

Or, "Because who really needs that pesky feminism anyway?"

I didn't get into Yale, where this email came from, so maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand the real meaning of feminism. So much for that Berkeley Women's Studies degree (actually, it's pretty worthless, so I really do mean that - the rest of this, if you can't note the sarcasm, stop reading here). If saying that, um, I sometimes like guys to pay for me on dates and I sometimes like to pay for them makes me not a feminist, alas, guess I never was one, right? Oh, and be sure to tell the bloggers over at Feministing, and, oh, I don't know, all those "feminist" readers I have too that I'm part of the problem. Or maybe they're brainwashed like me?

Hi. I'm not a regular reader, in part because whenever I do read your column, it's something like this one:
http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0609,bussel,72321,24.html

All you accomplished in this column was to reiterate that many other people who write brainless articles about dating are just as willing to embrace traditional sex stereotypes as you are. Here's the thing. If you want to embrace traditional sex stereotypes, fine. I disagree, and frankly, so do a heck of a lot of readers of the Village Voice who are too annoyed to bother to write to you. But really, if you're going to embrace sex stereotypes, please don't call yourself a "feminist." That's just insulting to feminists everywhere.

I think your piece reflects an unwillingness to consider the plain consequences of what social conventions you choose to embrace, as opposed to question. You seem to see some of those consequences, but you just don't want to focus on them. E.g.:

If a guy simply pays without making a big deal out of it, I'm impressed. It shows generosity and a bit of macho protectiveness that even my feminist leanings don't want to quench. I realize it sounds contradictory to demand equality but still want men to pay, but I'm not advocating being a dinner whore.

It doesn't just "sound" contradictory. It _IS_ contradictory. And the obvious contradiction has nothing to do with prostitution. Expecting men to pay because they are men is part of a whole cluster of social conventions that, taken collectively, are extremely destructive of equality in ways I'm sure even you can see. This kind of convention is part of what makes men think that a huge part of their desirability is their wallets, whereas for women (these conventions assert that) a huge part of their desirability is their physical attractiveness and thinness. People arrange their lives accordingly: I'm sure you can see that men around you arrange their ambitions so as to focus on earning more money -- to a much greater degree than women do -- because of conventions like this one. This may not be as bad as anorexia, but it's a similarly obvious submission to oppressive social conventions about what each gender's attractiveness consists in. And don't even pretend you are offering any serious argument that "macho protectiveness" -- which is apparently bound up in your mind with having a penis -- is some kind of non-oppressive, gender-neutral idea. That idea that men are supposed to be protective and powerful completely distorts the self-images and choices of both men and women. This is the kind of oppressive convention that makes it so hard for all of us of both sexes to live free. Individually, sure, we can behave in ways that don't follow any given convention -- but until columnists like you stop repeating and justifying these conventions, we'll always be "exceptions," and most people will just unquestioningly follow whatever the conventions say, out of fear of social rejection and a desire to be accepted.

You are obviously so caught up in the stupid assumptions of your genre (i.e. women who unthinkingly embrace various gender stereotypes) that you can't see how blatantly anti-feminist it is to blithely write as if we all live an amoral universe where no repressive social conventions impact anybody's life choices or options or ability to make themselves what they want to be.

I don't ask that you write actual feminist columns pointing out the patriarchal bullshit that surrounds issues like "who pays." That would be nice, but all I ask is that you honestly confront the degree to which you are choosing to build up and embrace sex stereotypes rather than tear them down. Think clearly about it and then tell us what you really think. Either stop treating this kind of oppression as trivial or stop referring to yourself as feminist. It confuses people. Also, it makes it impossible to take you seriously.

J

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