I was surprised to see Molly I below linking to an article about how sexism still exists, because I read another article today from Pajamas Media blogger, self-appointed "Advice Goddess," and Whiskey Fire comments troll Amy Alkon -- and Alkon, like, totally proves that there aren't a lot of overbearing sexist jerks who try to make women shut the hell up! And if you believe otherwise, you're "stupid"! Besides, it's all your fault, girls, for just taking it from all those completely nonexistent overbearing sexist jerks out there! HA! Ha ha ha HAH! And why am I using exclamation points?! Because Alkon writes like normal people scream when they're trying to be heard over a fire alarm in a crowded theater -- people who are also actually on fire! It's LOUD!
(Adjusts volume control)
That's better. Alkon is driven into a frenzy by this LA Times opinion piece by Rebecca Solnit. Solnit's article is a wry account of how even accomplished, articulate women can be bullied into silence by overbearing sexist jerks, and how these overbearing sexist jerks almost always seem to get away with it, even now in the USA in this day and age. Here's Solnit:
let me just say that my life is well-sprinkled with lovely men, including a long succession of editors who have, since I was young, listened and encouraged and published me; with my infinitely generous younger brother; with splendid male friends. Still, there are these other men too....
Yes, it's true that guys like this pick on other men's books, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories,but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered.
Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.
This syndrome is something nearly every woman faces every day, within herself too, a belief in her superfluity, an invitation to silence, one from which a fairly nice career as a writer (with a lot of research and facts correctly deployed) has not entirely freed me.
That's about right. Like she says, it's not always the case that pig-ignorant loudmouthed assholes are men, but it is pretty much the case that men get a pass on such posturing a lot more easily than women. And some guys press this move especially hard the more they dimly suspect they're in the wrong on the merits. No, not every man does this. As Solnit says. But the "invitation to silence" (a nice phrase) is always there for women, even if it's not extended to all women in the same exact way in each & every social situation.
Alkon, however, consults her genitalia and together they decide to tell Solnit to shut the fuck up:
Solnit mewls on for 1,863 words about how women are patronized and silenced by men.
But, wait. Let me check. (Peering down into pants and then panties) Yup, there’s a vagina in my pants, which suggests I’m either a woman or there’s a matched, escaped set of labia taken up hiding in my underwear. Most mysteriously, I don’t seem to suffer the myriad conversational injustices from men that Solnit and so many other women apparently do....
Solnit claims this terrible injustice is something “nearly every woman faces every day,” which “makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field,” and “keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare.” (“When they dare”? The woman writes like Mr. Darcy is going to pop up from behind the copier at any moment.) Solnit goes on and on about how this “syndrome” (yes, everything must be pathologized) “crushes young women into silence” and “trains” women “in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”
Hmmmm. For openers, "when they dare" isn't especially antique phrasing, so the Austen snark is misplaced, Mrs. Norris. Solnit anyway is a better writer than Alkon (who likes to stuff insults into parentheses)(the dope).
More to the point, Alkon may have missed sexist rhetoric directed her way because she appears to be completely uninterested in actually paying attention to what anyone else is saying, sexist or otherwise, a character trait that in my experience seems to be deeply rooted in those who ostentatiously enjoy giving other people "advice." But on another level this is a benefit of being a sociopath that I had not previously considered -- an immunity from sexist insults. I shall henceforth encourage my 3-Year-Old daughter to molest squirrels, set fires, and pee the bed. She'll be much happier that way. Thanks, Amy Alkon!
Because what else are we to make of someone who reads a pretty low-key article by someone who says she's sick of being told by blowhards to "shut up"... and whose immediate impulse is to say "shut up"? Alkon is reading her remunerative pathologies into Solnit's article. Notice the misrepresentation of what Alkon says about Sornit's aside about the plight of women in Islamic nations. Solnit:
This syndrome is something nearly every woman faces every day, within herself too, a belief in her superfluity, an invitation to silence, one from which a fairly nice career as a writer (with a lot of research and facts correctly deployed) has not entirely freed me. After all, there was a moment there when I was willing to believe Mr. Very Important and his overweening confidence over my more shaky certainty.
More extreme versions of this syndrome exist in, for example, those Islamic countries where women's testimony has no legal standing; so that a woman can't testify that she was raped without a male witness to counter the male rapist. Which there rarely is.
How is this exceptionable? Allow Alkon to explain:
Although Solnit comes up continually short on guts in conversational situations, she’s remarkably gutsy about aligning herself and other privileged Western women with a silenced sisterhood of women living under Islam, “where women’s testimony has no legal standing; so that a woman can’t testify that she was raped without a male witness to counter the male rapist.”
Of course, the difference is that women in Muslim countries are not, by law, allowed to testify. Western women like Solnit simply refrain from speaking up. Some loudmouth cut her off? Wow. While Muslim women fear lashings and death if they speak their minds, Solnit’s simply too limp-willed to say, as I’ve said numerous times, and to men and women, “Don’t interrupt!” or “My turn to talk!”
Right, it's all about you, and what you've said on numerous occasions. It's certainly not about understanding what the words "more extreme" might actually mean in English. And "of course," Solnit is not "refraining from speaking up." I'll note, for openers, her fucking op ed in the LA Times.
There's a lot to be irritated by in Alkon's screed, not least her idiotic attack on Solnit for not linking to her source for statistics on domestic abuse (NB: most online newspaper op eds don't provide such links; if the LA Times did, Jonah Goldberg would be totally fucked. Also, use the fucking Google). But I'm done. Besides observing that going after the victims of assholes and not the assholes themselves is typical and depressing, "of course."
I'm a feminist. You know why? Because so much of saying "I'm a feminist" boils down to "I refuse to act like an asshole towards other human beings, including several of those I dearly love."
I don't see why that's so big a deal, but the fact that it apparently is says more about our culture than anything else.
See also Susie.