Not a “women’s” issue

A post from Girlythoughts on the topic of rape to continue our theme from down below, but also to talk about another;

… the coupling of anger or power with sexuality looks to me like a symptom of our culture’s, and most cultures’, messed up characterization of what it means to be masculine.  When sex is described as nailing, screwing, hitting, banging, scoring, conquering, something is fucked up.  When men can’t express emotions in front of other men like love and sadness without being ridiculed or having to make up for it with anger or drunkenness, [or getting high] something is fucked up.  And we wonder why we have a rape problem.  “Oh, it’s probably because of the way girls dress.”  Yeah.  I bet.  (FYI: sometimes women who cover from head to toe get raped.)”

This is why feminism is not really, in my opinion, only about women’s liberation. Truly, I think the aim is to free  everyone from societal constructs in which “men” behave one way and “women” behave another way. (And “queers” behave in X way, and “blacks” behave in Y, and … ad infinitum for however many categories we can put human beings into.)

These categories and sets of behaviour that are attributed to one group or another are deliberately divisive, and (more importantly) innaccurate, and don’t allow for the full potential range of human expression. How much innovation, art, literature and more has been lost to humanity because people were forced into little boxes that didn’t accurately reflect who they were?

In addition, notice that the qualities attributed to  maleness tend to be the opposite of the qualities attributed to femaleness. This dynamic doesn’t reflect the reality of the world and it suggests rigidly immutable realities.

This harms all people, not just women.

(Well, I”m also making a wild leap and assuming that you believe women are people, but we’ll go with that for now.

Great Women in History: Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry

America‘s foremost black playwright and author of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry was born May 19, 1930, in Chicago.

In 1951, she joined Freedom magazine, a journal founded by Paul Robeson. She began work on A Raisin in the Sun and in 1957 read the first draft to publisher Philip Rose. That same year, in a letter to the Ladder, she wrote that “It is time that ‘half the human race’ had something to say about the nature of its existence.” She called for a new approach to combat a sexist society, “as per marriage, as per sexual practices, as per the rearing of children, etc.,” adding that: “In this kind of work there may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma.” This stance, notes Gay and Lesbian Biography, was “at once far-sighted and, in 1957, extremely courageous,” marking Hansberry’s “strong commitment as feminist and pro-lesbian spokesperson,” which, “only in recent years has this contribution been noted.”

According to the book Completely Queer, Hansberry began to identify herself as a lesbian in the 1950s and was one of the first members of the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis.

A Raisin in the Sun, which came out in 1959, brought Hansberry immediate fame, becoming the first play on Broadway by a black author; it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and her screenplay, completed in 1960, won the Cannes Film Festival Award in 1961. She continued writing in the 1960s, and became increasingly involved in supporting the civil rights movement.

“It’s ‘just’ rape.”

“It’s ‘just’ rape.”

That’s what one of the first year students said in my class today. “It’s ‘just’ rape.”

Of course, this has a context, and in this context we were discussing Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved.” Our professor asked us to think about the dehumanizing indignities that were inflicted on the African-American characters. Several examples were shouted out by my classmates, including one person who said, “Rape.”

To which one young man replied, “But I don’t think you can count that the same thing as something dehumanizing. It’s ‘just’ rape.”

Maybe he didn’t mean it to come off as flippantly as it did, but it did come off that way. I couldn’t contain myself (I rarely can), and I said, “Rape is inherently dehumanizing.”

This is an undergraduate course. As a graduate student I really shouldn’t be interjecting myself into their education. My heart pounded in my chest and the blood pumped so loudly I swear I could hear it. I bit my tongue, in a situation I would otherwise have lambasted the utterer of such a statement. (This is, I recognize, not the most effective method in getting my point across or in getting people to listen to me. I’m working on this.)

It’s “just” rape.

Doesn’t that get to the heart of the problem? Doesn’t that tell us how much work is left to do on this campus? Especially as this campus is supposed to be an island of enlightenment?

But,  it’s “just” rape.

Rape is one person imposing their will upon another, and taking away that person’s power and autonomy*. To take away someone’s free will is to render them less than human. And if you are less than human, you are also not human. It is, as our professor noted, the difference between being object and subject.

de·hu·man·ized, de·hu·man·iz·ing, de·hu·man·iz·es 1. To deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility: slaves who had been dehumanized by their abysmal condition.

And so, I believe that rape is always  indistinguishable from its dehumanizing properties. I also believe that it’s never “just” rape. Because to say that it’s “just” rape is to imply that it’s “just” about sex (and somehow in our society it’s accepted that men are unable to control their baser instincts… A bullshit notion that is as un-feminist a view as there is, and a post for another day.) As though somehow if it’s “just” about sex, it’s understandable.

It’s a little more uncomfortable for people to imagine that rape is about something else. Because if “just” rape is about “just” sex, then it’s easy to blame the victim, isn’t it? Because somehow she was asking for it, or leading him on, or… something. And the poor man “just” wasn’t able to control himself.

But if rape is not “just” rape and it’s instead about something else? Well then, that puts the responsibility on the perpetrator. And WHOA, does that make people uncomfortable. Because if it’s not something the victim can control or bring on through her/(his) action or inaction… then that means… it could happen to me.

Because that means it’s not really about me. Because rape is not really about sex.

Rape is a weapon of war, a mark of ownership, and act of colonization, a method of conquering someone who is “lesser-than.”

Rape is about power. And exerting that power over a fellow sentient, autonomous being. And forcing that sentient, autonomous, fellow being to do something that they do not wish to do. And that? That is dehumanizing.

So yeah. It’s never “just” rape.

~~~~~

(*Yes, there are “shades” of rape, and “not-rape”. For the best analysis of such that I’ve ever read, check out Latoya’s piece at Racialicious.)

Great Women in History: Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1652/1653), daughter of well-known Roman artist, Orazio Gentileschi (1563 – 1639), was one of the first women artists to achieve recognition in the male-dominated world of post-Renaissance art. In an era when female artists were limited to portrait painting and imitative poses, she was the first woman to paint major historical and religious scenarios.

orn in Rome in 1593, she received her early training from her father, but after art academies rejected her, she continued study under a friend of her father, Agostino Tassi. In 1612, her father brought suit against Tassi for raping Artemisia. There followed a highly publicised seven-month trial. This event makes up the central theme of a controversial French film, Artemisia (1998), directed by Agnes Merlet.

he trauma of the rape and trial impacted on Artemisia’s painting. Her graphic depictions were cathartic and symbolic attempts to deal with the physical and psychic pain. The heroines of her art, especially Judith, are powerful women exacting revenge on such male evildoers as the Assyrian general Holofernes. Her style was heavily influenced by dramatic realism and marked chiaroscuro (contrasting light and dark) of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573 – 1610).

fter her death, she drifted into obscurity, her works often attributed to her father or other artists. Art historian and expert on Artemisia, Mary D. Garrard notes that Artemisia “has suffered a scholarly neglect that is unthinkable for an artist of her calibre.” Renewed and overdue interest in Artemisia in recent years has recognized her as a talented seventeenth-century painter and one of the world’s greatest female artists. The first book devoted to her, Artemisia Gentileschi – The Image of The Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art. by Mary D. Garrard, was issued in 1989; her first exhibition was held in Florence in 1991. A TV documentary, a play and, more recently, a film have advanced her notoriety .

Drunks are better in bed?

Are they really better in bed ? Well, according to a new study men who are moderate drinkers are better in bed than non-drinkers.

But that’s not the whole story actually– the study actually says that they have a lower rate of erectile dysfunction… and this is getting translated as “better in bed.”  Really? Really?

Someone needs to alert the noozmedya that an erect penis does not make someone good in bed.  Or, are they really saying that those menz are now able to have a good time in bed?  Anyone talk to the women to see if they were having a “better” time in bed?

Guess not, huh?

Yes, feminists HATE children!

From feministing

(I can’t figure out how to embed the wretched video they got from this right-wing christian site.)

I am now regretting I didn’t call my blog “The Monstrous Regiment of Women.” THAT would have been a super catchy title!

There is so much wrong with that documentary, I don’t even know where to start! Feminists HATE children! Feminists want the state to raise their children! Feminists encourage teenagers to get pregnant so that they can have lots-of-abortions! In fact, that’s the goal of the feminist movement! If you’re raped it’s because you’re a slut! (Or because you secretly wanted to have an abortion?) Abortions all around!

{head meet desk}

I think you are working with a faulty definition

… of women’s sexuality.

“In a similar line of thinking to Chivers, Marta Meana, psychology professor at University of Nevada at Las Vegas, argues that female desire is is actually based on being desired. After all, she led a study which found that while watching heterosexual porn men focus on the woman in the film and women focus in equal measure on the men’s faces and the women’s bodies — or, as Bergner suggests, “the facial expressions, perhaps, of men in states of wanting,” and “the sexual allure embodied in the female figures.” Meana, a self-described feminist, argues that women’s lust is “narcissistic” and guided by “the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need.”

Just. Go. Read. It.  Go on, I’ll wait right here until you’re done.

{Whistling}

Done? Ok, good.

Now wasn’t that research the biggest pile of horseshit you’ve ever read?

Shockingly enough I do not get turned on by the idea of being the object of erotic admiration! (Well, not usually… maybe in a rare instance.)  No, in fact, when I’m turned on it’s usually because I’m objectifying someone else! Shocking! I have a sex drive! I get turned on! I actively seek out things that turn me on! I’m not a passive receptacle, nor do I need a man/partner in order to … um… enjoy myself.  If I only got off on my ability to turn someone else on, doesn’t it seem counter intuitive that I would be interested at all in sex when I’m not— oh—say, actively turning someone on????

Frankly, this all goes back to what Figleaf terms the N0-Sex Class. (That link is reverse chronological, so start at the bottom and work your way up. Really, it’s a good read. Go on! Go!) He says what I’m thinking much better than I could here– and why reinvent the wheel when his wheel is so nice?

And scientists? Methinks you need to rexamine your data outside of the no-sex class paradigm.

Kthanxbai!

Girlhood Heroes…wait, are there any?

Children's bible

I was at my grandmother’s for Christmas this year and I came across a book she was sending to my 4-year old nephew for his birthday.  She was sending him The Jesus Storybook Bible. (Note, I am fairly–99%– certain this is the right book, but I haven’t had a chance to confirm.)

Now, this is not a post about the inherently misogynistic characteristics of most religions (I’ll save that post for another day I suppose.), rather this is about a certain lack of female representation I noticed in this book. (Which yes, may have to do with the inherently misogynistic characteristics … yada, yada, yada… Like I said, for another day!)

I began thumbing through the book and it began dawning on me that my favorite stories were missing. Where was Ruth? Where was Esther? What about Deborah?  There was a passing mention of Eve (Kinda hard to blame all sin on her if she’s not included, dontcha know…), a short piece on the Virgin Mary, (Hard to have a Jesus without her… and we won’t touch the virgin question at this time. Ahem.) and Mary Magdalene was barely included. (Oh, there was also a short story about Namaan’s servant girl… who doesn’t have a name. AWESOME.)

There was story after story after story of heroic men. But where were the women?  This was even more baffling to me given that these stories were written by a woman!  Were there really NO women in the bible who showed heroism? Miriam? RAHAB? JAEL?

The more I read through this the more I was appalled– not for what was included, but for the women left out. And the real people literally left out of this version of Christianity? The little girls who will read this (version of) the Bible.

Who are they supposed to identify with? Who are they supposed to look up to as role models? What does this say to them about #1) Their PLACE in Christianity (Which is to say– NO PLACE), and #2) What the expectations are for them as they grow up. (OH wait, I forgot. The Christian Right has made clear that a woman’s role is to remain a virgin until she marries, and then she can fulfill her secondary role in life, which is to be a mommy.)

I thought of myself– severely lapsed Baptist that I am–and I thought about the girl I had been.  How sad! How sad would it have been never to know about strong women who do exist in the Bible! Women who were NEVER, NOT ONCE discussed in any sermons (that I can recall) of my childhood.  Fortunately I was an avid reader and during those boring sermons I would read and re-read my favorite stories, and I discovered Deborah and other women I could identify with. (I think I’m an oddity though– in my experience with the fundamentalist crowd, rare is the person I’ve encountered who has actually read the book they profess to follow.)

But how many little girls won’t make it to that point? How many will say to themselves, “I guess there’s nothing here for me,” or “I guess there are no women of note (and therefore women aren’t notable) in the Bible.”

How depressing!

And yet doesn’t this speak to the way in which women in this society are expected to view the world through a MALE point of view (POV)? No one would ever consider having a book on the Bible that consisted of 20+ stories featuring female protagonists and only 3-4 stories with a male protagonist and ALSO consider that a book for both genders. No, that book would most certainly be targeted and marketed as a “girl” book.

And why is that? It’s because women and girls are trained from a very early age to see the world through the eyes of men, to identify with men. Men? Are most certainly NOT taught the opposite. (As a point of reference pick up a women’s magazine and a men’s magazine sometime. What will you find? In BOTH? That 90% of the images are of women. And why is that? It’s because women view other women through a male POV.) (Note: This is also similar to the way in which people of color are expected to identify with white men/women in advertisements, but when an advertisement features a person of color that advertisement is perceived as marketing specifically to THAT segment of the population. It all has to do with the dominant paradigm in this society which is still… even after all these years…. Male and White.)

And so, I’m sad. I’m sad that my grandmother couldn’t understand why I was so upset about this. I’m sad that my nephew is going to be read these as bedtime stories and potentially never know about the other important stories. (It’s a long story as to why I can’t teach him myself–and as for my sister teaching him? Well, let’s just say she’s one of those fundies who has never actually cracked the spine of her Bible. She believes in Jesus the same way she believes in Santa Claus; he’s a nice old guy in the sky who gives her presents when she asks for them.) But mostly? I’m sad for the hundreds, even thousands of little girls who will be taught that this is what’s out there for them– and what is out there is nothing of substance.

Great Women: Hypatia of Alexandria

Welcome to what will hopefully be a regular feature on this blog and join us as we right (Write? Blog?)  the wrongs of history.  There are many, many, (MANY!) great women who have been lost to history because their stories weren’t considered important enough to be told.  This may not necessarily be newly created content, but rather this is a way to draw your attention to some women you may never have heard about otherwise.

Please feel free to email me any suggestions! I know there are a lot of women out there that I’ve never heard of that I really ought to know about!

Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia and the Philosophers of Alexandria

Hypatia of Alexandria (350-370 to 415 AD) was one of the first women to make a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics.

Hypatia was the daughter of the mathematician and philosopher Theon of Alexandria and it is fairly certain that she studied mathematics under the guidance and instruction of her father. Hypatia became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in about 400 AD. There and in Athens she lectured on mathematics and in particular the philosophy of Neoplatonism. Hypatia based her teachings on those of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, and Iamblichus who was a developer of Neoplatonism around 300 AD. She was described by all commentators as a charismatic teacher (and also very beauty) and hundreds of students visited her lectures. The Suda encyclopaedia describes a scene of someone seeing: “a great crowd of people and horses in front of her door. Some were arriving, some departing, and others standing around. When asked why there was such a crowd there and what all the fuss was about, he was told by her followers that it was the house of Hypatia the philosopher and she was about to greet them.”

Hypatia was known more for the work she did in mathematics, primarily for her work on the ideas of conic sections introduced by Apollonius. She edited the work On the Conics of Apollonius, which divided cones into different parts by a plane. This concept developed the ideas of hyperbolas, parabolas, and ellipses. With Hypatia’s work on this important book, she made the concepts easier to understand, thus making the work survive through many centuries. Hypatia was the first woman to have such a profound impact on the survival of early thought in mathematics.

The hydrometer (also called an aerometer) an instrument used to determine the density of fluids is considered an invention of Hypatia.

See: http://www.maa.org/pubs/Calc_articles/ma055.pdf

Hypatia came to symbolize learning and science which the early Christians identified with paganism. In 412 AD Cyril (later St Cyril) became patriarch of Alexandria. However, the Roman prefect of Alexandria was Orestes and Cyril and Orestes became bitter political rivals as church and state fought for control. Hypatia was a friend of Orestes and this, together with prejudice against her philosophical views, which were seen by Christians to be pagan, led to Hypatia becoming the focal point of riots between Christians and non-Christians. A few years later, according to one report, Hypatia was brutally murdered by the Nitrian monks who were a fanatical sect of Christians supporting Cyril. According to another account (by Socrates Scholasticus) she was killed by an Alexandrian mob under the leadership of the reader Peter. What certainly seems indisputable is that she was murdered by Christians who felt threatened by her scholarship, learning, and depth of scientific knowledge.

According to Gibbon [2]:

On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader (alias Peter the Lector) and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames.

Her murder coincided with the death of the pagan world. In 391 A.D., the largest repository of knowledge in the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria, was burned by a crowd of fanatic monks under the leadership of the Christian Archbishop Theophilus. The end of the Olympic games and Plato’s Academy closed by Justinian at 529 AD are a sign of this decline. Hypatias death marks the end of progress in science for about 1000 years until the spirit of ancient Greece started again to shine.

Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian says:

“After a thousand years of night, when the world awoke from her sleep, the first song it sang was the last long of the dying Pagan world. This is wonderfully strange. In the year 1493, when the Renaissance ushered in a new era, the first book brought out in Europe was the last book written in Alexandria by a Pagan. It was the poem of Hero and Leander. The new world resumed the golden thread where the old world had lost it. The severed streams of thought and beauty met again into one current, and began to sing and shine as it rushed forth once more, as in the days of old. A Greek poem was the last product of the Pagan world; the same Greek poem was the first product of the new and renascent world.”

Was the Christianity responsible for the decline of the roman empire and the dark ages? There is a controversial discussion that is not the scope of these notes. What I think is true is that a period of many centuries had to pass until again scientific knowledge and technology again started to develop.

When Raphael submitted a draft of his School of Athens fresco to a Bishop he was asked who is the woman depicted between Heraclitus and Diogenes. Raphael replied: “Hypatia, the most famous student of the School of Athens.” The response of the Bishop: “Remove her. Knowledge of her runs counter to the belief of the faithful! Otherwise, the work is acceptable.”