Feminism & a Genoa WTO Protest Update

[queerbychoice]

Remember that horrible police violence at the anti-WTO protest in Genoa, Italy in July 2001? There were frightful pictures on the Indymedia website of walls covered in so much blood that there were numerous areas splashed solid red in shapes bigger than an entire human body. Well, now an internal investigation has revealed even more of what the Italian police did wrong, and that the police in question were trained in Los Angeles, and the American corporate media are making no mention at all of this.

Also, this is a pathetic revelation of how ridiculing the entire male population should not be mistaken for feminism. You don't make people into decent human beings by teaching them that the mere possession of a penis automatically renders them idiotic jerks. If you want to make people into decent human beings, it would be helpful to show them other decent human beings who do possess penises, heap praise upon those decent human beings, and explain to all the less-decent human beings that if they too learn to behave so decently, they too will be rewarded for it with greater appreciation from everyone they know.

Comments

[jvb419.livejournal.com]

About the "male-bashing" article--deeply misogynist portrayals of women are still the norm. More to the point, deeply misogynist *treatment* of women, by men, is still the norm. One of the people on my Friends list--I can look back and find out who, if you like--listed the conditions that she, like every other woman, lives with. They're numerous and all to real but just to sum up: if a solitary woman arrives at a subway platform late at night and sees men there, she will feel a well-founded fear; reverse the genders and it won't be the man that feels fear. I don't know who those two "scholars" are but they sound like apologists for patriarchy, always a lucrative niche to fill. In fact their trick (or the article's author's trick) of "substitute Black for male" is deeply dishonest, because it conveniently ignores the realities of power (illustrated in the subway example.) Humor that lets subordinate castes laugh at the privileged is *not* equivalent or parallel to humor that reinforces privilege and inequality, and in general it's only the defenders of inequality and privilege--of the rotten status quo--who pretend that it is. I don't think jokes at men's expense stand between well-meaning men and feminism; the only thing that moves men toward feminism is an awareness of injustice (wherever that awareness comes from), a realization of their role in maintaining it, and an acceptance of their responsibility to end it.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Feminist males often seem terribly unwilling to acknowledge that there are ANY disadvantages to being male in addition to all the disadvantages of being female. I find this denial to be highly counterproductive: in order to truly fight gender roles I think we very much NEED to start acknowledging that gender roles DO oppress all genders, even though not in the same ways nor to equal extents.

I stand by my praise for the article. I posted about this precisely BECAUSE I am acquainted with far too many feminist males who don't want to talk about this and will prefer to argue back with me in the way that you just did. I do insist that the issues raised by the article ARE important ones.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

I know this is late but:

in order to truly fight gender roles I think we very much NEED to start acknowledging that gender roles DO oppress all genders,</>

Um, yes. Right on. I agree completely.