Mansplaining & Misogyny

Among the creative people who regularly gain my attention is one Amanda Bussell, who sometimes goes by the nom de guerre Shinga and produces a webcomic called Head Trip (which can be found here: http://headtrip.keenspot.com/) and a regularly updated blog that is poignant and eminently readable (which can be found at shinga.livejournal.com).  Recently, her anger at a certain species of male ignorance and dogmatism flared up, but focusing on her anger at it seems beside the point.  Anger, after all, is the strong and defiant expression of pain, in fact normally very deep pain tinged with no small amount of sadness.  Her list of grievances (the post that inspired this note can be found here: http://shinga.livejournal.com/1006944.html)  falls under two general umbrella categories.  1).  Men explaining to women what the experience of being female is, how to best cope with and fix female specific problems, and patiently explaining to women how they feel under some sort of presumption that a woman's own feelings are some sort of mysterious realm unaccessible without the aid of a guide possessed of testicles.  2).  Men simply disparaging women as a misogynistic blanket statement, normally for being overwhelmingly emotional and underhwhelmingly rational, for making choices in romantic partners that he perceives as unwise (nearly always a thinly-veiled whine about why women don't choose him), and for living a lifestyle that embraces all of the varieties of sexual experience without even so much as a cursory nod to institutions like marriage and motherhood are the basics of the second umbrella.  My goal in this note is to provide a perspective originating from a person with testicles that is neither mansplaining nor misogyny.  As a writer myself, that seems quite the compliment and a testament to the effectiveness of her work, and that's how I hope she'll take this.

Okay, let's deal with the main problem here right up front.  Women are human beings, equal in every relevant respect to men, and worthy of the same moral consideration, capable of the same degree of diversity, and deserving of the same freedom to control their sexuality and reproduction capacity as any man would have or expect.  These are the basics of having a discussion about women and men that does not devolve into unscientific, unconscionable, and uncivilized ravings.  Males who reject any of these points have made their maleness beside the point and if we should reject their arguments out of hand for the purposes of this discussion their maleness will not be nearly so much of a reason as will their barbarism.  Having laid out my basic feminist thesis here, one may infer from it all the things I will say for the rest of this tone-setting paragraph, but I will set it out plainly in the event anybody misses the broader implications of my position.  A woman's body is her own, her reproductive capacity is her own, and she is the person chiefly affected in every measurable way, except perhaps financial in some cases, by a pregnancy.  Exceptions to any life is sacred rule are already made by virtually everyone not drinking their water through a sieve to avoid killing the tiniest gnat, so I will simply demand any staunch pro-lifer make an actual argument instead of relying upon a thoroughly devastated one.  Rape is a terrible crime, not just because of the increased emotional damage sexual violence has the power to inflict, but because of the violation of any victim's personal power and control.  Long after the vaginal tears heal, the morning after pill is taken, and the humiliation of the rape kit is complete, that loss will remain a terrible struggle.  Consent is the crucial ingredient for moral sexual encounter and lack of it, whether rescinded during the act, because of context of power differential, because of diminished capacity through chemical intervention, or any other reason you can think of, is unambiguously, absolutely, and categorically rape.  This is a fact that is as true as anything we know and argument about it is like arguing the atomic number of Boron.  Lastly, each individual woman is her own self, meaning that she has the same responsibility and rights as any other human being, and that she is not the property of her family, her husband, her children, or anybody else.  Instead, she is a sovereign being capable of being brilliant and terrible in the same breath and doesn't owe anyone an explanation for anything except herself.

Okay, so I'm going to tackle the umbrellas by giving each their own paragraph here.

1).  Men explaining to women what the experience of being female is, how to best cope with and fix female specific problems, and patiently explaining to women how they feel under some sort of presumption that a woman's own feelings are some sort of mysterious realm unaccessible without the aid of a guide possessed of testicles.

First of all, let's establish the basic philosophical principal that informs all my moral reasoning.  A person's individual liberty is an inalienable right that is worth nearly any collateral damage in order to preserve.  This does not mean I'm opposed to government power, so long as it seeks to protect people from one another instead of themselves, and is democratically elected.  It does mean, however, that there can be no initiatives from anyone to ensure what they perceive to be the best interests of another person if those initiatives are clearly contrary to the expressed wishes of that person.  If there's diminished capacity to steward one's own individual liberty, that is one thing, but a certain kind of man seems to be under the impression that women are in this state of diminished capacity, one I'm referring to people like minors, addicts, and the mentally ill by, as some inherent part of their being.  Honest subjective personal experience ought to be enough for any clearthinking man to utterly disprove this and, if it isn't, I recommend meeting more women, or, failing that, acquiring useful tools like an open mind and a teaspoon.  There is, in some respects, nothing special about being female in terms of how one ought to expect to be regarded.  Just as you do not explain to a bricklayer, a Frenchman, or a senator the experience of bricklaying, being French, or governing if you are not these things yourself, you do not explain to a woman the experience of being a woman.  You also do not stick forks in light sockets, eat lead paint chips, or run your head into the wall repeatedly to see how many times it will take to knock you out.  For any man genuinely confused about explaining to women the experience of being a woman, I figured those would be helpful tips as well.  Female-specific problems should be covered under this as well for obvious reasons.  As for explaining a woman's emotions to her, one, whether male or female, should never expect that they know anyone else better than they know themselves.  I don't care how many times you've been down the same road in life that she is traveling because you haven't done it as her.  As infinite is the diversity of human beings, so is the diversity of human experience, whatever gender one might happen to be.  Besides, no man ought to want these things to be true of women.  A woman who needed her own gender explained to her, needed all her problems solved for her, andneeded her own feelings suggested to her would by no means be a woman who constituted good company.  Any man who believes, really believes, women are this way ought to lose no time in embracing homosexuality in the interests of ever having a romantic partner of any charm, interest, or substance.

Now we deal with misogyny.

2).  Men simply disparaging women as a misogynistic blanket statement, normally for being overwhelmingly emotional and underhwhelmingly rational, for making choices in romantic partners that he perceives as unwise (nearly always a thinly-veiled whine about why women don't choose him), and for living a lifestyle that embraces all of the varieties of sexual experience without even so much as a cursory nod to institutions like marriage and motherhood are the basics of the second umbrella.

One thing I will not dispute here is the magnitude of women's capacity to hurt men.  Following my own advice from the previous paragraph, I will decline to comment on how much men can hurt women, although I suspect it's fairly severe, but I can tell you from my own experience that women can hurt men very badly indeed.  In fact, it would be very easy for me to embrace misogyny and an ideology that deems all women crazy, as nihilistic and self-defeating as such a pronouncement would be.  However, in order to do so, I'd have to ignore my own mistakes, the wider general context, and positively betray and forget all the good women I've known.  For instance, I suspect that sexuality magnifies and distorts things in ways that simply aren't present in relationships with people who do not fit one's particular sexual orientation.  Of course, my gay friends would be the only ones with any real idea, but I suspect men are just as capable of being irrational and emotional as women in the context of sex and love and that a gay male comic could make his own variations of many of the jokes straight comics have been making about relationships for decades.  Now, there is a certain ugly sense of ownership over women that can creep up in men who do not think of themselves as misogynistic or even as having bad intentions.  When female friends, particularly ones one finds attractive consciously or subconsciously, date someone one disapproves of, this can lead to a lot of texting or PMing that rarely result in anything but oneself looking like a petulant jerk.  Having been warned about the various women I've dated by female friends before, and them having always been right, I can easily concede the point that one might be right about this sort of thing, but that still doesn't matter.  Each individual adult person's life is their own to succeed or fail within and, sometimes, you have to let them.  If he's beating her or something, then yes go ahead and risk the friendship over genuine concern for your friend, but only if you'd do the same if a male friend were in a similar circumstance.  While there is grey area in that scenario, if you simply disapprove of a lifestyle that embraces all the varieties of sexuality available, there are only two things for a morally responsible man to do.  First, shut up.  Second, grow up.  At some point, a point that slams shut like iron gates in its applicability to the context of any other human being's private sexual life, things are none of your business.  An abusive boyfriend is quite a different thing from a polyamorous lifestyle, goth subculture, homosexuality, and any number of other things happening between consenting adults.  Ancient books of Iron Age mythology do not count in terms of moral philosophy an you'll have to do better than that if you want to tell anyone, male or female, how to live their private sexual life.

What I hope I accomplished here is something of a feminist treatise against misogyny and male arrogance.  Feminists and I tend to disagree a fair amount of the time, but there are certain bedrock principles you're seeing here.  Having breakfast with a rape crisis counselor freind every Sunday for three years definitely shows its influence here.  A rape crisis counselor has harrowing tales of mansplaining and misogyny that will turn the skin of any decent man white as snow.  She showed me every week why this kind of thing isn't just an annoying grievance of young women, but a dangerous mindset that can and has led to violence against women.  Women are not born housewives, baby machines, sexual playthings, or Madonnas or whores.  They are people, by which I mean fucked up, complicated, and fantastic and brilliant at the same time.  In my time, I have known women who have an old-fashioned effect on men, including myself.  Some women make me want to tuck in my shirt, stand up straight, and be on my best behavior.  Others are good to get a beer with and laugh and cry with.  A few have made me cry, taken all my hope and self-esteem from me, and left me a broken man with no capacity for faith in any benevolent deity or world that ultimately will see goodness prevail.  Evil women do not cancel out good women or make them unimportant, and the good ones have been worth the evil ones, and the same goes for the evil and good men I have known.  Probably, I have some things in this article that will annoy some of the women I know.  Perhaps this is even true of Ms. Bussell herself.  Good.  It means we're all people and we all have our opinions and we respect one another enough to engage.  When I address women, I am sometimes arrogant, strident, smartassed, and every word of my writing sounds tweedy and egotistical.  After all, I'd hate to tone it down because of some misguided notion of women having delicate natures.  You ladies seem pretty sturdy to me.

-Frank