What am I? The Explanation of a Left-wing Liberal Feminist Socialist

Note: following is an essay I submitted last semester for my Political Science class

Would I describe myself as a liberal? Yes I would. I would even go as far as to describe myself as a Left-wing liberal feminist socialist. I believe that you should not be restricted by law from doing anything, providing your actions do not cause harm to others. In conjunction with this, I believe that the State should provide support, financial and otherwise, to those who are unable to support themselves through no fault of their own.

A person does not need to come from a particular part of the political spectrum in order to identify as liberal. During the South Carolina Republican Presidential Debate on 5 May 2011, current United States Congressman Ron Paul, while he is Right-wing, made clear his liberal position by stating that the laws against heroin, cocaine, and prostitution should be revoked. “The freedom to use drugs … is equivalent to the freedom of people to ‘practice their religion and say their prayers.’ Liberty must be defended ‘across the board … It is amazing that we want freedom to pick our future in a spiritual way … but not when it comes to our personal habits.’” Paul’s argument is that the majority would still not use cocaine or heroin if they became decriminlised (Gerson, 2011). It is the belief that people are more responsible and able to look after themselves than they are given credit for, mainly because the State takes away the chance for them to prove themselves through making laws and regulations which dictate how people are to live their lives. This is backed by being opposed to ‘Big Government’. People with the same political beliefs and values as Ron Paul are libertarian, or utilitarian liberals.

My own feminist beliefs are very much utilitarian. I have, and should have, the freedom to choose what types of clothes, shoes, and makeup I wear. It is my own happiness that matters, and it is having that freedom of choice that is the point of feminism, something which third wave feminism in particular is very focused on (Jervis, 2004). A woman being told that she is not allowed to wear revealing clothes, high heels, and stay home to raise a family because those things are all anti-feminist is just as oppressive as the patriarchical environment that feminism is supposed to be fighting against. Being a feminist is about having the freedom to be sexually empowered and being free to choose what is right for yourself, above the opinions and claimed rights of others.

On the other end of the the political spectrum, there are people like Sue Bradford. These people, rights liberals, are more in favour of ‘Big Government’, providing the State uses its power through laws and regulations to the benefit of the rights of the people, and therefore increasing the freedom of the people. During Bradford’s time as a Member of Parliament for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand from 1999 to 2009, she passed three Member’s Bills through Parliament for the benefit of the New Zealand people. These were: “… amending s59 of the Crimes Act so that children now receive the same protection in law as do adults; lifting the youth minimun wage to adult rates; and extending the length of time some mothers in prison can keep their babies with them” (Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, n.d.). Through these bills, Bradford increased the freedoms of the, often, neglected and forgotten members of New Zealand society. If a child in New Zealand suffers from child abuse, they are now free to have the offender charged with assault, and the offender cannot claim they used reasonable force. Young adults/the youth employees in New Zealand are now free to be recognised that they are just as capable at their job as an adult employee, and receive the appropriate remuneration for their work. Female prisoners are now free to bond with their baby, potentially creating a stronger relationship between mother and child.

Bradford “… [helped] bring about genuine, positive solutions to the unemployment, poverty, social and environmental problems which plague so many people and their communities in Aotearoa today”, and it is these problems which infringe on people’s ability to be free (Green Party, n.d.). This is where socialism blends in with the principles of rights liberalism. Unfortunately, there are always members within a society that are unable to support and provide for themselves. Where utilitarian liberalism is more focused on the happiness of the majority over the suffering of the minority (where the minority are the unemployed, the sick, and the elderly etc), the blend of socialism and rights liberalism is more about setting up a system which looks after the disaffected minority, who are often struggling against the rest of society through no fault of their own. This goes against utiliarian liberalism because it enables the development of a ‘Welfare State’ and encourages growth of a ‘Big Government’. While I do not favour ‘Big Government’ (especially in terms of who I am allowed to sleep with, what happens in my bedroom, and what I put in my body being regulated and restricted), I also do not favour small government, where people are bascially left to their own devices. I would much rather pay tax which goes to the support of the disaffected minority now, because there is a chance that in the future I may become a member of that affect minority, either through illness, inability to find a job, or some other misfortune, and the tax paid is my insurance that I will also receive help and support.

I am a Left-wing liberal feminist socialist. I believe I should have the freedom to make my own decision about how I live my life, who I live it with, and what I wear while I am living it. If something happens to me which means I am no longer able to properly participate within society, then the State should provide me with support until I am fully functioning again.

Bibliography:

Gerson, M. (2011, May 11). Ron Paul favors legalizing heroin: Texas congressman deservers first-tier scrutiny. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from:

 http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Ron-Paul-favors-legalizing-heroin-1374192.php

Green Party of Aotearoa NewZealand (n. d.). Sue Bradford. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from:

 http://www.greens.org.nz/people/suebradford

Jervis, L. (2004, Winter). The end of feminism’s thirdwave: The cofounder of Bitch magazine says goodbye to the

 generational divide. Retrieved on May 13, 2011, from: 

http://www.msmagazine.com/winter2004/thirdwave.asp 

Privilege Comes in Many Packages

After following a link to skepchick (shared with me by Amanda from Pickled Think, she’s on Twitter here), I read a post by Rebecca Watson.

It wasn’t Rebecca’s post in response to Richard Dawkins’ response to her own experience with a creepy guy in a hotel elevator late at night in a foreign country that inspired my own post (seriously, go read her post, his privilege is showing so bad, it’s hard to imagine that he can’t see it). It was the following comment that was posted:

Hi there!

Oooh, thank you for bringing this up again!

I used to be on exactly the WRONG side of this argument. Let me explain why.

I’d considered myself a “feminist”, because I’ve always supported the idea that women should have exactly the same rights as men. I’m a pretty femmy guy myself, for a heterosexual dude, and I’m very comfortable with that. So I’ve always been about Yay Women’s Rights! Woo!

But I’ve always felt like I keep running up against the wrong side of the argument when I get into a discussion about “harassment”. In my opinion, “harassment” has always been clear-cut and well-defined. Harassment is what happens when a guy lays his hands on you and tries to get into your pants by threatening you with demotion or termination at your job. I believed that harassment was what happened on Mad Men. Really sleazy boardroom groping kind of stuff.

Then as we eased into the 21st century, people started getting more “sensitive” to workplace (and other-place) harassment. Now harassment wasn’t just grabbing a woman’s backside in the copy room, it was telling dirty jokes where other people could hear. It was telling a co-worker that her sweater looks nice. I’d always object to this “new” definition of harassment, because some of my dirtiest, most shamelessly suggestive co-workers have always been women.

The response was that I don’t know what the Hell I was talking about, because I’m: 1) Male, 2) Laboring under a veil of Privilege, and 3) Probably a latent rapist. This always struck me as offensive. As I said, I’ve always been a proponent of equality between the sexes, and for me to be viewed as a Schrodinger’s Rapist until proven innocent just seemed to be going a little too far.

Some women that I knew told me to just be quiet and go off in a corner somewhere and read some feminist literature until I wasn’t so damn ignorant. So I resolved NEVER to get into a feminist discussion with anyone, ever ever ever again.

Ooops.

Eventually, quite by accident, I discovered that I WAS ignorant. Not because of my MALE privilege, ohhh no.

I had … um … “nice guy privilege”??

Whenever I’ve been hanging out with my female friends, we cuss, and make sexual innuendos, and flirt, and touch each other all the time. This is because I’m a “nice guy”. I am quiet, and inoffensive, and gentle, and nerdy. I can get away with things that would ordinarily be considered “sexist” and “harassment”, because I just don’t skew as “creepy”.

But recently, I’ve actually had the opportunity to hang around some “REAL MEN”. The kind of guys who have locker room about the women they’d like to bang, and how big their mighty Johnsons are. I knew that this kind of male existed, and I’d always thought that it was just harmless male braggadocio. But these guys were different. They were having a -scary- conversation about women. It was about sex and the hot babes, but the whole tenor of the conversation was much more … aggressive? It wasn’t a conversation about: “That woman is physically appealing to me and I would love it if she would agree to a sexual liaison with me in the future”, but more: “If I thought I could get away with it, I’d hit her over the head with a rock and drag her into an alley”. And it’s not like these were all a bunch of drunken frat boys or anything. To look at them, you’d have though that they were any other group of guys, probably with families and kids of their own.

Okay, so no one SAID that, outright, but I just got the feeling that I’d walked into a much different dynamic than I was used to. I felt downright uncomfortable. I didn’t know that guys like that still existed. When I joke about sex with my nerdy friends, It’s always in good fun. But this was just so much more … “rapey” than I was used to.

Since then, I’ve been more aware of this kind of male. The creepy neanderthal type. I think there are more of those guys than I ever realized.

No, I’m not trying to say that I am some kind of paragon of male respectfulness and politeness. But that I don’t know if there’s a “male privilege” so much as just a general cluelessness. If one of THOSE guys had ME alone on an elevator, I would have been scared, too. It’s not like I was being creepy and offensive to women all these years and just didn’t know it. It’s that the creepy harassment guys are much more prevalent than I’d previously thought. I thought that those kind of guys were pretty rare. But apparently they’re everywhere. I never would have believed Rebecca’s “you should be raped” e-mail if I hadn’t recently met exactly that type of guy. (and if she hadn’t copy-pasted it, of course)

So I apologize for any male/nice-guy/cluelessidiot privilege that I might have had, but I GET IT now. Those guys are just CREEPY.

Even if they’re a respected evolutionary biologist.

[apologies on the long-winded post]

– Craig

This comment just made me think “Yes! This is exactly it!” Here is my reply to Craig:

Oh my god yes!! I, as a woman, also used to feel that way about sexual harassment, but that was before I read my own feminist literature and a true realization dawned on me.

Sometimes it’s just impossible to see your own privilege until someone or something smacks you hard in the face with it.

I always need to remind myself that even though I’m a fat, queer woman, I still need to check my white middle-class privilege.

As a side note, to those commentors on here who are failing to check their own privilege, as soon as you add ‘but’ to a statement, you have become an apologist and have invalidated everything you previously said.

Until I had read that comment, it had never even occurred to me to think about privilege in other ways, but it makes perfect sense!! Upper-middle class, white, straight, and male may be the privileges that most people are aware of (if they are aware of any at all), though they certainly aren’t the only ones out there. Anything that places you at an advantage over someone else is a privilege.

Any kind of privilege needs to be checked, because until you let yourself become aware of your own privilege, you are blind to the disadvantages of others.

PS. Also one of my first thoughts was that J needs to read this, not really sure what that says… that I think he also has “nice guy privilege” maybe?

PPS. You can see more re Watson vs. Dawkins here (thanks to J for the link).

I Fight Back

I feel the following needs no further explanation.

h/t WWMWD?

*Gasp* You Said A Swear!!

Is swearing that bad? Really?

There was shock and outrage after Melissa Leo accidentally said “fuck” during her acceptance speech for winning best supporting actress at the Academy Awards.

[Dame Helen Mirren] was shocked by the uproar the utterance caused, and thinks people put far too much stock in rude words.

“The whole drama of swearing is so overblown. It’s idiotic that it’s made into such a big deal,” she said.

“I think [Melissa] was totally over-excited. She was trying to show how rough and raw she is and it was a terrible mistake. I do think the fuss is completely out of order.”

- stuff.co.nz

I’m firmly in Helen’s camp with this one. After all, what is a word but a collection of letters which become sounds? There’s supposedly nothing wrong with the sound of “sh” and “it”, but put them together to become “shit” and suddenly it’s this horribly bad thing?

Over time we have placed meanings on those sounds, with the meaning changing as more time passes. The word “slut” is a perfect example of this. From the 15th Century through to the 18th Century, slut was used in reference to a woman who worked as a kitchen maid.

After great pleasure there, and specially to Mr. Crumlum, so often to tell of my being a benefactor to the School, I to my bookseller’s and there spent an hour looking over Theatrum Urbium and Flandria illustrata, with excellent cuts, with great content. So homeward, and called at my little milliner’s, where I chatted with her, her husband out of the way, and a mad merry slut she is. So home to the office, and by and by comes my wife home from the burial of Captain Grove’s wife at Wapping…

My wife called up the people to washing by four o’clock in the morning; and our little girl Susan is a most admirable Slut and pleases us mightily, doing more service than both the others and deserves wages better.

(emphases mine)

Both of the above quotes come from the diary of Samuel Pepys in February 1664.

The comparison to today’s mainstream meaning is startlingly different:

The accepted denotative meaning is a sexually promiscuous woman or “a woman of a low or loose character; a bold or impudent girl; a hussy, jade.”These definitions identify a slut as a person of low character — a person who lacks the ability or chooses not to exercise a power of discernment to order their affairs, such as a cad, rake, or womanizer. The adjective “slutty” carries a similar connotation but can be applied both to people and to clothing and accessories, such as Halloween costumes.

- Wikipedia

This definition of course implies that being a slut is a bad thing, definitely not something that a woman should be, and also implies that a man cannot be a slut.

While searching the Great Internets for the Pepys’ diary entry, I came across this article on Jezebel.

A slut without shame is not a slut at all, and a queer slut is, mostly, freed from all of the still-in-effect stigmas and judgments of straight straight-up sluts. This is because the shame of “slut” is specifically about the fear and subsequent judgment of women making themselves available and in some ways vulnerable to men. But we’re not so much worried about a so-called slut’s emotional well-being as we are afraid of her being used up, spoiled, pregnant with a fatherless baby — because all of that stuff is bad for women, individually and collectively.

- Jezebel

The very idea of “slut”, using today’s definition, is surrounded in shame, it makes sense that if you feel no shame about the number of sexual partners you have had, then “slut” loses all meaning for you. I wonder if this is even more so in the Queer community because there isn’t the male patriarchy towering over above you, judging you as a woman with unrealistic ideals. Maybe there is also an acceptance that in order to fully discover your sexual identity and to know your true self, you need to have a large number of sexual partners. Whereas a straight woman, or a queer woman who has sex with men, is placed into a box and constrained by the “acceptable” number of sexual partners, if they exceed this number they should be ashamed of themselves. But men aren’t placed anywhere near this box. If they happen to have a large number of sexual partners, then they are congratulated by other men, because they have shown that they are a “true” man. And, sadly, a lot of women are accepting of this complete double-standard.

So be proud of the number of sex partners you have, totally contradict those who would call you a slut and feel no shame!! There is absolutely nothing wrong with consensual, safe sex. Go out there and spread the love!!

And to get back to my original point: Fuck, it’s just a bunch of letters and sounds people!!