Woman

I have been inspired by this post to have a think about what it means to be a woman, to various different people. A number of years ago my family was sitting down to dinner, and my brother and I were discussing the situation in Sweden, where either parent can take paid leave to look after their infant child(ren). On hearing this, my mum commented that she didn’t agree with this because, “Women were made to have babies.” Obviously my own view is pretty different. I believe gender is societally determined, and, as such, a women is, basically, anyone who has not been in a privileged position in society, because of their gender.

My research for this post isn’t going to be the most substantial thing ever – the first thing I’ve done, pretty much, is googled ‘Woman’. The first thing that came up was three image searches: the first of these was a photo of a woman wearing a sheer black shirt, a black thong and fishnet tights. When I clicked on the image I could see her nipples. The second image was the oil painting “The Pregnant Woman” by Alice Neel. Neel has apparently said of this, “I thought the whole picture of woman without pregnancy was . . . trivial. It’s treating woman as sex object. But you know, sex results in something.” The third was a slightly bizarre image. It was a Muslim woman in a headscarf, but at the same time sexual. When I clicked on the photo it said it came from this site (by the way – take a look, there’s some stuff there that I just don’t think we are aware of as much as we should be), but I couldn’t find the photo on that page.

The next item on my google search was the Wikipedia entry for woman. I know wiki has it’s flaws, but if you’re looking for a basic overview of public thought, there’s not much better. This defines woman as an ‘adult female human being’.

I am interested, and to be honest quite surprised, that the first thing that came up were images. Also, when I type in ‘man’ there are no image results that are shown at the beginning; in fact the first 4 entries weren’t even about man, the male adult human being. And what do the images mean about how women are viewed? The first two are simple: woman as sexual being/sex object (interestingly the image came from a site which just had loads of photos – as such I’m inclined to say sex object) and woman as mother. The comment made by Neel shows this as well. Sex does, sometimes, result in children – but that doesn’t only affect women, it makes men into fathers as well. The third image is obviously a lot more complex. Apart from anything, I couldn’t actually find the image directly, so it’s hard to comment without context specific to that. The one thing I will say is that, from conversations I have had with Muslim friends, in a similar way to the modesty that is required is Christianity, the headscarf is there because, basically, it is a woman’s responsibility not to, I guess, ‘tempt’ a man. I know this is a simplification. I know as a white woman I can’t really understand this and I don’t want to offend anyone with what I am going to say, but I am going to say it. From that, I think this is about sex too.

Onto the wiki entry. To a large extent, as you would expect from Wikipedia, it was reasonbly balanced. However they frequently made reference to womanhood as beginning when a girl starts her period. There were also references to a woman after her period has ended. To me, once again, this speaks of motherhood, or at least fertility, which is certainly linked.

I remember another conversation I had with a couple of male feminist friends a couple of years ago. We were talking about gender being fluid, and stuff like that. I, along with one of the men felt that, as feminists, we were aiming for a society where people weren’t defined by their bodies. The other person disagreed, saying that he thought there was something special about the ability to bear children. At the time, I disagreed, and as time goes on, the more I think about it, the more I disagree with this. Where would this leave post-menopausal women? Infertile women? Or even women who just don’t want children? To be honest, also, where does this leave men? As incomplete human beings? There are big problems with presuming anything about somebody on the basis of their body. Obviously, with womenhood being equivalent to motherhood, women are natural mothers, and men are just best leaving them to it!! Apart from the obvious issue that this leaves men with a perfect excuse about looking after their own children, I think it probably puts a lot of pressure on women to be perfect mothers, straight after an incredibly physically traumatic experience. That’s not so fair.

I’m going to quickly leave you with this, from the post that originally encouraged me to write this:

So alright, you need ovaries and a uterus and a vulva for having a baby. Breast-feeding is a pretty awesome thing to do. But anybody can change nappies. Or sing a baby to sleep. Or take a kid to school and to the piano courses. Genitals and chromosomes don’t have anything to do with making a kid feeling good and safe and loved and teaching it everything it needs to know.

NB. I know I haven’t really covered the sex-object part of ‘woman’. But I guess I blog about that a lot, and motherhood is something that is expected of most women, and also affects a lot of women.

Nice guys

I think a lot of feminists have a tendency to a double standard, or sorts. I do too, although this is something that I’ve tried hard not to do. A lot of the time we will refuse to blame women who are victims – which is absolutely the right thing to do. A lot of people, when a woman is in a violent relationship, for example, will question why she stayed there. That this is the first question we ask is indicative of some problem in society, and I wish I knew how to change that! On the other hand, a man that is being abusive is treated, among feminists, as having complete control over every decision he made, every one of his actions. Of course he shouldn’t be let off, but feminists, I think, need to work on ways to educate all men so they understand that women are people too.

The Perfect Vagina

I saw a little bit of the show that was on Channel 4, but not very much of it. This review, on the F Word, is really good. And this is the part that particularly rang true with me:

Those small pieces of pink, wrinkly skin lying on the operating table were probably two of the most sensitive areas in Rosie’s body, and she had just had them cut off because she thought they didn’t look nice.

This is key. Our bodies don’t exist for the viewing pleasure of men. This is true of our entire bodies. They are just the way they are: largely functional. This is the way the human body has evolved. But I can kind of understand the way women have been convinced that they need to look ‘good’, by dieting, wearing clothes to ‘flatter’, and so forth. I don’t support it, but I can vaguely understand it. I really don’t like the way it is now expected that women will shave their pubic hair. These are our bodies – what the hell is wrong with them? But, you know, pubic hair grows back. It’s not the end of the world.

But our genitals exist for out pleasure. And women are making permanent changes to parts of their bodies which solely exist for pleasure. How is it that we criticise the practise of female genital mutilation in other cultures, but we are doing exactly that? It is exactly the same – we are mutilating women’s genitals in order to please men, despite the fact that it’s reducing the pleasure that these women will experience – admittedly to a lesser degree.

We talk about how sexually liberated we are, and yet we still do this. Is this not an indication of how, actually, even in this sexually liberated society, sex is something women do for men? Women’s pleasure is secondary to men’s.

Rape

A number of years ago when I was debating the premise of feminism, I liked the concept of ’sex-positive’ feminism. I did quite a bit of research at that point, mainly using various feminist blogs, and they contributed a lot to the feminism I subscribe to now. I’m not sure if I am a radical feminist, but I’m certainly not ’sex-positive’ (NB. I’d also like to stress that I’m not ’sex-negative’). Anyway, one of the best blogs I read, was “Den of the Biting Beaver.” Sadly, the blog itself has either closed down, or been changed so that only her friends can read it. But there is an archive here. I’d like to post her rape checklist, directly, because it challenged things a lot for me. BB’s points are in bold, and I have made comments, where I’ve felt necessary.

Domestic violence

After my previous post I just wanted to put a few links up. While I wouldn’t say the relationship I have with my ex-girlfriend is now, or ever has been, abusive, on that one occasion I was abusive towards her. I once did some training on domestic violence, and there is a lot to it.

So anyhow, I’m going to link to websites or organisations that deal with domestic violence. I’ll update this from time to time, as I get new information, as well. One thing I want to stress is that there is help, not only for victims of domestic violence, but for perpetrators (or potential perpetrators). I, along with a lot of feminists, get angry at the thought of domestic violence, and angry at the thought of men abusing their wives and partners. However, people make the choices they do for a reason – decisions aren’t made in a vacuum, and that isn’t only true of the oppressed class, but of the oppressors. Men are taught that women are worthless – they end up believing it, and that’s why they rape women, and abuse women. The thing is, I believe that men can make a conscious choice not to make these decisions, so I think it’s important there are organisations to help them do that.

I didn’t intend on saying that much, and it’s more of a general thing, than specific to what I’m doing now. Apart from anything else, it is an oversimplification. Anyway:

Broken Rainbow – a helpline for victims and perpetrators of domestic violence in gay relationships

Women’s Aid

Refuge

ManKind – an organisation which supports male victims of domestic violence (unfortunately I don’t know anything specific about ManKind, or any other organisation that works with male victims, but I thought it was important to put one in)

Respect – support for perpetrators (again, Respect isn’t a charity that I know – but I think it is particularly important that people are aware that there is support available for perpetrators who want to change).

As I said I’ll update this list with other organisations that I come across. I would rather only put in organisations that I know, but a much more full list can be found on the BBC website.

Help

All I want to do is curl up in a ball and die, and nobody will even help me do that.

I’m in total self-destruct mode, things are not good. I think I’m just going to keep doing stupid things until one day my life will be totally ruined. But no one will help me.

It would be so much easier if I actually believed all my beliefs (weird sentence, I know). In particular, where I’m worth something even if men don’t want to fuck me. But the other day I actually told this guy I wasn’t sure I was gay because I really really really wanted to feel like someone wanted me.

I am worth something, regardless of how attractive people (read: men) find me. I am worth something. I am worth something.

Masculinity and suicide

I’ve been a bit behind on reading some of the longer posts on my blogroll, but had a look today. This feature is just awesome. We really need more mothers who are willing to let their sons do what they want, however “feminine” that might be. I seriously recommend you take a look.

Penni (the author of the feature) has implied a really important point, too: given that society teaches that “masculinity” (whatever that is) is more valuable, any boy or man who displays any feminine characteristics is going to be looked down upon. The patriarchy hurts everyone: men and women are expected to live up to certain gender roles, which is, quite simply, limiting. And it is true, I believe, most definitely, that men are expected not to express emotions, or whatever. Obviously there are certain times and places where this isn’t the case – but these are far more limited than those times and places for women, who are, let’s face it, walking balls of hormones.

However, it is sometimes said that men are worse off than women, which is shown by the often quoted fact that men are more likely to commit suicide than women. I think a lot of the time this is used to dismiss the claim of feminists that women have it bad! Penni didn’t suggest this one bit, but she did say the following:

I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that it is teenage boys who have the highest suicide rate. They’re conditioned to believe that they can’t ask for help because it is ‘unmanly’.

I’ve said above that I totally agree with the second sentence of this quote. However I’d like to offer an alternative explanation for the fact that more young men (and in fact men in general) commit suicide: quite simply, men are more likely to succeed. More young men commit suicide, but more young women attempt it. This is not only true for young people, but at all age groups. There are a number of explanations for this. Firstly, men tend to use more violent methods. A woman is more likely to take an overdose or similar, which is actually incredibly ineffective. This might well be due to the fact that men are conditioned to be more violent.

There are other considerations, of course. It’s possible that a woman might take an overdose as a “cry for help,” whereas you’re a lot less likely to shoot yourself, or hang yourself for that purpose. And of course, that does tie in with Penni’s comment that I quoted above: men can’t ask for help. Although, I would like to make this point. The first time I took an overdose, I wasn’t certain I would die, I wasn’t even certain that I wanted to – but I thought it was a possibility, and I thought that it would definitely cause problems. I really did not understand how ineffective overdoses were.

Penni’s post deals with a really important issue. As I said above, the patriarchy hurts everyone. I can’t emphasise that enough! But the issue of suicide is often oversimplified.

Feminism

Take a look at this piece in the Times today. The comments turned into a general discussion on feminism, of the sort we see all the time. One thing I particularly noticed was this comment:

Most people my age know that feminism was never about equality – it was about ugly women wanting to be treated the same as attractive women.

I’m so confused by this. Does this person not realise that ugly people* are people too? What the hell is wrong with wanting all women to be treated the same, regardless of how attractive they are?

Oh, I guess it has something to do with the fact that this is how we treat people. Women are quite different.

I do despair.

*I hope it goes without saying that I really don’t like saying that at all. I discussed some of the problems with the whole thing about attractiveness here.

Rape in the US military

I was just reading through my blogroll and saw this on Oh, You’re a FEMINIST. It’s a highly disturbing account of the experience of female soldiers being raped by their colleagues in the US military. Her analysis is, I expect, spot on, too:

The military is probably the oldest “boy’s club” there is and it becomes incredibly easy to “other” women when your ingroup is structured on masculine notions of power, strength, and dominance.

Have a look at the whole post, but be aware that there are some upsetting things there. I haven’t even dared to click on the links in her post.

Trust

This post, from Off Our Pedestals, is amazing. There’s a lot about domestic violence that you don’t think about.