Coworker #1: I saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo recently.
Coworker #2: Was it good?
Coworker #1: I didn’t like it; there were like 3 rape scenes.
Coworker #2: So you’re saying you didn’t like it because you’re a girl. [chuckles]
SuicideWinder: [Coworker#2], do guys like rape scenes?
Coworker #2: All I’m saying is that girls don’t.
Coworker #1: Yeah, but why would a guy like one?
Coworker #2: … It’s … psychology!
It’s PSYCHOLOGY, people.
[TW homophobia, sexism, racism, misogyny, ableism, classism, Christian privilege and fat hatred ]
Another post about my awful class and blah blah blah.
The other day we were discussing Shirley Phelps of the Westboro Baptist church, which is known for picketing the funerals of U.S. soldiers with signs such as “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and other such charming witticisms. We also discussed the subsequent ruling of the U.S. supreme court on the matter and my teacher’s opinion that sometimes we take things too far with regards to freedom of speech in the U.S. This is a fairly non-controversial opinion and easy to agree with, but the next thing he said was that this was a subject he was “emotional” about and so, basically, dissenting opinions would not be addressed or tolerated.
He has also made a few references to another class he teaches, where he led a discussion about that awful woman who put her baby in a microwave for reasons I don’t remember right now. One of his students had wondered aloud what would happen if you tried to microwave a fly, to be funny or something, and my teacher told the student (or at least he says he told the student) to “fuck off.”
I don’t think there is a single person in our class who would have said anything in support of the Westboro Baptist Church or Shirley Phelps, and in this case I do agree with my teacher that they should not have been allowed to do what they did. And I’m also not trying to say it’s okay to make jokes about killing babies.
However, this is a man who says incredibly bigoted and blatantly false things on a daily basis and pretty much laughs at anyone who tells him these are offensive things to say. But when we get to a topic of discussion that he, personally, feels deeply about, suddenly there are some things that are off-bounds, and suddenly it’s okay to swear at people.
Has he even thought of the fact that when he says something like, “I don’t think men and women will ever be equal in this society, because we’re just different” this might sound just as offensive to the women in his class as “thank God for dead soldiers” does to him?
Or how about this one: “Same-sex relationships mirror heterosexual ones, because one partner is always more dominant than the other one?” Or how about “I personally consider the Wiccan religion to be a cult?” Are there not people in his class who aren’t straight (hi) or who have at some point practiced Wicca (nice to meet you) and might think that these are awful things to say?
Or how about the day we talked about poverty, and I pointed out that almost everyone in the class was talking about poor people like they live on some other planet, and he said they might as well live on another planet, since “we” don’t often interact with them? (Well, I have and I do, other members of the class have said they do, and nice use of the word “we” you asshole.)
Or the time he said that Deaf people shouldn’t try to become police officers (he’s an ex-cop) because they “don’t have what it takes” or the time he implied that reverse-racism is actually a thing, or that the “Obesity Epidemic” exists or basically anything he’s ever said at this point. I don’t even remember every single example of absolute garbage anymore. (And then I remember that I took out loans in order to pay to sit in this room and listen to all this bullshit, and that just makes it worse LOLsob.)
The point I am trying to make is that it belies an absolutely huge amount of privilege to shit all over the genders, religions, races, classes, levels of ability and sexual orientations that you are not a part of, have no experience with and know next to nothing about, and to not understand why people are getting so angry at you all of a sudden, and THEN, when everyone is discussing something that affects you personally, to tell everyone in the discussion that they aren’t allowed to disagree with you or make jokes and that you might actually swear at them.
It belies privilege, also, to be able to state that you have strong emotions about something and still consider yourself objective, when you routinely dismiss people who disagree with your views based on their personal experience or strong emotions as biased because of these emotions or experiences.
To my teacher: The fact that you can’t take what you dish out should be a reasonable topic for humor, although obviously I would prefer if you’d stop dishing it out to begin with and we could just have a nice, non-hostile learning environment. Every other teacher I’ve had has managed to cultivate such an environment 80-99% of the time (although that probably means I’m just lucky to have had such teachers. I still think that’s what a teacher should do, though).
When you stop having control over my grades, or if I suddenly stop caring about that, maybe one day I will put it in terms that you can understand: Every time you imply or state outright that people who are not White, Christian, middle-to-upper-class, able-bodied, straight men are somehow inferior, weak or stupid, I hear “what would happen if you put a fly in a microwave?”
[TW Racism]
So this happened on Halloween.
I live with my parents for the time being, and we are in a “safe” suburban neighborhood that gets a lot of trick-or-treaters. After a small group left our front porch, this conversation (paraphrased) happened.
My Mom [Laughing]: That little girl was in blackface!
Suicidewinder: WHAT? Why are you laughing?
My Mom: Because… It’s supposed to be so wrong.
Suicidewinder: For a reason!
My Mom: I know, I know.
Suicidewinder: Was one of her parents there?
My Mom: I’m not sure [whose parents were whose].
I can’t believe that girl’s parent/s let her do that. The extent of my shock is undoubtedly due to my white privilege, as I don’t encounter interpersonal racism on a day-to-day basis and don’t personally experience it at all. I am glad I can be shocked, though, because it should be treated as a shocking thing for a parent to think it’s a good idea to let their child trick-or-treat in fucking blackface in 2011.
[TW for misogyny, gender essentialism]
It is true. I don’t.
I don’t really think of this as some shocking, depraved or in any way unusual aspect of my character. It’s become increasingly apparent to me, though, that this is how other people think of it. So apparent that I felt the need to write about it.
I have known I don’t want children since the very first time I learned that my reproductive organs made it possible for me to have a child. I think I was about ten years old. I had a very basic reason back then: what I knew about the mechanics of giving birth to a child suggested that it hurt, a lot, and I didn’t want that. Since then I have, of course, developed a greater understanding of the matter, and revisited this decision many times. And you know what? I still don’t want kids. I don’t want to give birth to, adopt, or raise any children, ever. Naturally I have plans for my future, and lots of them. Kids aren’t anywhere in there.
I’m not really going to explain my reasons for not wanting children, because while they’re not irrelevant, they’re not as important as the simple fact that I don’t want children and explaining would feel a bit too much like justification to me at this point. I don’t need any justification for this.
There are people who think I do, though. I’m not sure how many, but it’s pretty much everyone I mention it to. And whatever reason I give, even the ones I completely make up so that the responses don’t feel so much like personal attacks, are dismissed as not being good enough. I get called “selfish” a lot, I get called “unnatural” somewhat less, and I get stared at a lot like I’m an alien life form.
Selfish
It’s been said much better elsewhere, but basically: Having a child you don’t want and subjecting that child to being raised by a mother who doesn’t want them seems a lot more “selfish” than remaining childless, and even more selfish is deriding someone for not making a choice that you think they should make. This is an old, old argument, and is probably on a misogyny-related bingo sheet or two.
Unnatural
It’s not “unnatural” to refrain from doing something just because you happen to have the appropriate anatomy to do that thing. In fact, there are people who choose not to move their bodies very much, for their own reasons. There are people who choose not to have sex, even though they have genitals, also for their own reasons. Et cetera. Lots of people choose not to do lots of things that their various body parts were “made to do”. Most of them are not frowned upon (some of them are, which is a topic for another post).
I suspect that what “unnatural” really refers to is my apparent lack of a maternal instinct. I’m pretty sure that the people who use this word believe that women are born with a big neon sign in the largest part of their brains that says “MAKE BABIES,” and that a woman who doesn’t have this feature is broken. I don’t put any stock in gender essentialism, having seen it disproven about a gazillion times, so this is an argument that I feel fairly comfortable not taking seriously.
Alien Life Form
You know what? Sometimes I wish I was. An alien life form that does not have ovaries, a uterus or fallopian tubes and therefore *can’t* have kids. *Can’t* have kids is something people can understand, although they can be very insensitive about that as well. But yes, I would gladly give away my ability to have children to someone who can’t have kids and really wants to, and just be infertile. If I ever get myself into some kind of “trading spaces” situation involving a genie and a cursed lamp, I know what I’ll wish for.
You’ll Change Your Mind
Even worse are the people who insist that I really *do* want kids, I just don’t know it yet. Because I am just that incapable of knowing how I feel. I certainly don’t know how I feel better than you do. That would just be silly.
I am not the kind of person to pull that crap on, however, because thanks to years and years of intense therapy, I actually *do* know how I feel, all the fucking time. Every second of every day. It’s pretty awesome. It follows, therefore, that if I ever change my mind, I will know it right away. Hasn’t happened yet. And I’ve been hearing things like this for years. And if I do change my mind, why would I tell you about it? You clearly have no ability or inclination to regard me as a capable decision-maker.
You’re too Young
This happens a lot too. It often accompanies “you’ll change your mind.” But my age actually has nothing to do with it. Yes, I am young – probably younger than anyone who comes across this blog would ever guess – but as I type this, some thirty-five year old woman somewhere is being denied a tubal ligation by her doctor because she’s “too young.” In the eyes of a society that thinks all women should want children, I will still be too young when I’m forty. No matter how old a woman who doesn’t want children is, she’s always “too young” to know how she really feels, because how she really feels makes people too uncomfortable for them to address it honestly. Much easier to dismiss it.
And conversely, no matter how *young* a woman who *does* want children is, she’s *never* too young. No one ever says “you’re too young to know you want to be a mother.” Because women are expected to want to be mothers. It is viewed as something every woman will decide to do at some point in her life, and those young girls who make the decision earlier than others are just getting a head start. If I had a change of heart one day and decided to tell all these people – the same people who tell me I’m “too young” now – how much I wanted kids someday, they would just fucking congratulate me.
You’ll Regret It
Lots of people also really want me to know that I will be very sorry if I live the full life that I plan to live and don’t have kids at the end of it. Because biology. Well, maybe I will. I probably won’t. And if I do, so what? I’ve already done a whole bunch of things that I regret, and there are even more things that I regret *not* doing, and I am still pretty much fine with the way things turned out. Not having kids might be something I regret eventually, but in no way will that render my life completely meaningless. I’ll regret it the same way I’ll regret that I never went to Paris (also something I know I’ll never do). Not that big a deal.
Besides, if you were really honest, you would admit that because of the pressure our society puts on women to procreate, the number of women who regret *having* children probably far surpasses the number of women who regret *not* having children. I would rather regret the latter, personally.
The Moral of The Story
People who want to judge your choices will judge your choices no matter what. Even when you do exactly what they said you should have done. They will never believe that you are serious, because they wish that you weren’t serious, and any attempts you make to explain just how serious you are will convince them that you are just trying to prove them wrong because you can’t admit that they’re right. (I am sure that if and when I make it to the age of sixty and still don’t have a kid, there will still be people who believe that I really did want a kid and was just desperate to “show them.”)
Trying to please these people is a waste of time, and they don’t actually deserve it.
Being one of these people is an even bigger waste of time. If you are one of these people: please, confront whatever fears, assumptions or bigotries you have that are making you act this way and then just stop it. You have nothing to gain.
On my way out of the gym today I passed a flyer informing me that my school will be holding a workshop on intuitive eating pretty soon, which is awesome of them to do. The flyer said “how to fuel your body the healthy way” and under that “end the diet,” which made me chuckle.
I’m not sure if I’ll go — once I went on a diet for ten days, but quickly desisted once I did a minimum amount of research on diets. Other than that I try to follow the food pyramid, and generally I feel minimal stress about what I eat. I might go, though, just to see what it’s like.
[TW for discussion of misogyny, domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and general douchebaggery.]
Another post about my awful class with my awful teacher.
He opened the class by sharing a story with us about a case of domestic violence in Uganda. It was pretty awful, but not unlike things that happen in the United States every day. Definitely not so unlike them that he was justified in saying “you women should just get down on your knees and thank us guys for how we treat you in this country.” But that is in fact what he said.
Of course my hand was in the air immediately. I could have said something about how thanking people for not beating and raping you is setting the bar a little low, or how just because it’s illegal to beat your wife in the US does not mean we treat women well at all. These things were on my mind.
But I was feeling a little more curt, so instead I just said, “You treat us that way because we had to fight for decades to get you to.”
From the back of the class, someone said “burn.”
He didn’t really have anything to say – half the time, it seems like he just says shit like this without really thinking it through. So maybe it didn’t occur to him that this fantastic (snark), egalitarian (snark) little society we have didn’t just happen on its own; that it took work. And that most of that work was done by women. And that there are women who know this, and who don’t really want to hand him a freshly baked cookie for not being a rapist or an abuser.
Anyone who comes across this blog might think that my professor only says awful things once or twice a month, since that’s how frequently I write posts like this. Trust me, though, when I say that he says things like this ALL THE TIME. I just can’t handle writing about it more than once or twice a month.
Yeah, happy Domestic Violence Awareness Month. SIR.
