Safe place for budding feminists

[Mamaka]

As some of us have had our opinions, feelings and questions so completely bulldozed in other threads, I thought I'd try and start a safe place for newly questioning and of course veteran feminists to explore without fear of being misunderstood or ridiculed.

A couple of things I'd like to know:

I've just found out that there is no feminism group where I live and am seriously considering starting one but feeling a little unqualified for it. Any recommendations for where to start if I wanted to do this?

I've just read the equality illusion by Kat banyard in its entirety and now I'm feeling riled up. How can I start to move from anger and frustration towards positive action? (This is really what my previous thread should have been called!)

Buffy, I really hope you will return because everything you have said is so thought provoking.

I have had to entertain the idea of my son growing up to be abusive, because he has already seriously assaulted me, through anger that he can't control me. Some of the ideas he raises also send a flash of ice cold fear through me, because saying it as a cute 8 yr old and saying it at 16 are very different things, so I have to work towards and believe that through talking and a gain in maturity he will never realise some of the stuff he considers.

I didn't read your post as you being unwilling to use the word rapist, you were articulating how, knowing your son, you wouldn't believe he had deliberately, knowingly caused harm, but that he had let all the mythology and misinformation around sex delude him into thinking he wasn't doing anything wrong. And as a parent, I would feel the same way, and that I had failed him as a parent.

Enthusiastic consent is the only safe path through this minefield. I will drum it into him, but at the end of the day he will make his own choices. And I will feel incredibly shit if he rapes.

I didn't read your post as you being unwilling to use the word rapist, you were articulating how, knowing your son, you wouldn't believe he had deliberately, knowingly caused harm but that he had let all the mythology and misinformation around sex delude him into thinking he wasn't doing anything wrong.

And how often do we see the tearful mother saying exactly that about her son? "He's a good boy really"

If you can't face up to the possibility it might be your son and that your son is responsible for his actions you can hardly criticise other women's son's.

You can't make other people responsible but try to mitigate your own child's culpability by blaming it on mythology and misinformation.

I have been reading with interest and have some germane thoughts. Are they welcome or not?

he had [ not] deliberately, knowingly caused harm but that he had let all the mythology and misinformation around sex delude him into thinking he wasn't doing anything wrong

I wonder if a defence counsel were to say that as part of a plea in mitigation prior to the sentencing of a convicted rapists how it would play out on here? I wonder what reaction Ched Evans' mother would get if (miracle were to happen) she acknowledged her son's appalling behaviour yet tried to excuse it like that?

Please do not invent things I haven't said Buffy. I appreciate it wasn't you but I have already had a post twisted inside out on the abortion thread trying to make out I am anti-abortion.

JohnJ80 - you don't need anyone's permission to post!

JohnJ80

One option is for you to start your own thread?

You do not need permission to post, not at all. You might feel more welcomed if you posted on a different thread with your thoughts. Possibly.

Another option is Dadsnet, which is another MN board. Anyone can post there, too.

Okay. This debate seems to have become a circular, unresolvable wrangle about how the statistical probability of men committing sexual violence can best be integrated into a feminist analysis that is not 'anti-men'. This misses the point.

Buffy's analysis is correct to a point. There is no innate characterological difference between the sexes, and what biological differences do exist should not serve as justifications for male sexual violence. And men and women do generally behave differently in different contexts (although they are at the same time all individuals and should be judged as so in moral contexts such as a court of law).

The question then is this: how can such socially produced differences be combated? Should we raise boys to reject masculinist tropes of identity and behaviour? Without wishing to put words in Buffy's mouth I would guess she would say no?...that so called masculinist identity is not per se bad. Rather, stereotypically masculine traits of identity are only a problem when 1) they are seen to be the exclusive preserve of men and 2) they are used to justify violence, rape, militarism and the abuse of power (please correct me Buffy if I have got you wrong).

However, Buffy seems to limit a proposed corrective to questions of power relations and consent. Of course she is not wrong in this as such: verbal consent is crucial and power dynamics should be challenged. But the solution, if one were to call it that, must extend beyond questions of power to ones of justice and morality. It is not possible to address sexual violence purely by attempts to equalize power - which is an almost impossible thong to precisely quantify. Power does not manifest in tangible units. Men can still diffusely abuse power while gaining verbal consent and ticking all the boxes. Besides, such a view could be tantamount to countenancing sexual behaviour in women that one would rightly condemn in men. An equal opportunity exploitation is after all not the answer! Instead I would propose:

1. Raising boys to believe that females are not sexual resources to which they are entitled.
2. Raising boys to believe that a simple verbal yes is not enough (although it is crucial). They should have feelings of deep regard and empathy for the women they are having sexual relations with. Any context where that empathy is obviated should mean that sexual relations should not take place. Even if verbal consent has been proffered, sexual interaction should not take place if there is any doubt about either parties willingness.
3. As there is a minority of women who develop a taste for child pornography or molest the child they are baby-sitting, girls should be made to understand that such standards apply to them too.

Men should be made to understand that sexual violence is not just a violation of power but a violation of a moral code; that it is something for which they should feel deeply ashamed.

Without such a moral perspective but only an atrempt to harmonise quandaries of personal choice, power, identity and statistical metrics - such debates as this become unintelligible. Morality is not just a matter of how people act - but of their character - of how they FEEL. We should be socialising men to develop the right kind of moral character and cultivate the right kind of feelings.

JohnJ80 you acknowledged on another thread that once you start with an idea you find it difficult to stop. This is part of why I suggest you start with your idea on your own thread. You are welcome to do that, I think, and it might be more helpful for the board because you will not take over this thread and can be explore your thoughts on another thread instead.

What do you think about this suggestion?

Fair point. I'll leave this one with my above comment. Hope people are interest. Regards. J

*interested

Actually, I think that post was entirely relevant and well thought out. I agree with your thoughts.

Thanks.

Thank you John for your grace in taking my point on board.

I am considering starting a thread to ask the question "What does Foucauldian mean?"

Maybe I will do that. Who knows?

I'm not aware that I have, but if so then I have made a mistake that wasn't deliberate.

You haven't and I didn't mean to say you did. I said wasn't referring to you but referring to another poster on the abortion thread who twisted something I said to imply I am anti-abortion.

posted too soon. I was referring to your ticking off in relation to future posts.

I started googling Foucauldian then though sod this, i might go read about religion in schools. That bothers me too.

Lass, it's not a fair comparison to consider what buffy might say or think about your son if he was accused of rape. The fair comparison would be what you yourself thought about your son, in that situation. Wouldn't you have a blend of horror whilst trying to reconcile with your view of him?

It is heart wrenching, of course, to consider that our own children, whatever age they are now, might one day commit a crime. Of course it would be hard to be dispassionate and objective in that situation. Just as it is hard to be so as the victim of a crime, or of related to the victim of a crime.

I have never believed in the death penalty, and still do not, but when a friend was killed, did my heart want the man who did it dead? For a few days, yes.

Of course our feelings when we are emotionally involved are different; that doesn't mean we'd change the justice system to accommodate them.

I don't think it is worth a thread on its own but I quite like this so I'm shoe horning it in.

Boys choosing to wear a school uniform skirt because skirts are cooler than trousers in hot weather.

Teenage boys in Rottingdean school skirt protest over hot weather - www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-36868781

Thanks Buffy. I think Foucault is partly correct in his analysis but in rejecting enlightenment and humanist values all he affirms is power. That's a problem for ethics (either moral or political) because - like Nietzsche - he is saying there aren't any. Or rather he is saying they are only historically local manifestations of power.

It sounds conservative to be talking about moral values (which both the new left and the new right have rejected as restrictive of individual agency) but it doesn't have to be. A progressive ethics can inform feminism and Marxism - in fact it has to. After all, they are philosophies concerned with social values - with what is right and wrong. Hardly surprising that in spite of their potential differences feminists and Christians can meet on an opposition to sexual objectification, for instance.

It is essential to challenge unjust power relations, but you can only do so intelligibly if you at the same time assert ethical principles. Otherwise you are just working with a very individualist concept of freedom and power that sits uneasily with the ethical demands a social justice movement rightly places on men.

It's a bit like multiculturalism. People as are now saying it has failed. It kind of has, but not because it is impossible for culturally diverse groups to co-exist harmoniously, but that is impossible for them to do do in a system of rampant capitalism and market competition. And I think SOME feminism, despite the noble intentions of its proponents, gets very easily distorted to by that late capitalist concept of individualism.

You've made some really eloquent points I think. Sorry about the other day - I was totally OTT.

The fair comparison would be what you yourself thought about your son, in that situation. Wouldn't you have a blend of horror whilst trying to reconcile with your view of him?

I would not , and I appreciate it wasn't Buffy who said this, make the excuse for him that I "wouldn't believe he had deliberately, knowingly caused harm but that he had let all the mythology and misinformation around sex delude him into thinking he wasn't doing anything wrong"

No, I don't think I would reconcile it.

Oops...meant: " of freedom and power that sits uneasily with the ethical demands a social justice movement LIKE FEMINISM rightly places on men.