Excellent post and ensuing discussion over the way men talk about women’s bodies and whether or not sexism is necessary for cohesive straight male relationships.
The best point Tia makes, for my money, is that anti-feminist men rush to the conclusion that because feminists are the only women who complain about oppression, they are therefore the only women who experience oppression. This is a seriously fallacious interpretation. As Tia notes, non-feminist women absorb criticism and abuse, constantly trying to become the kind of person who will no longer be criticized and abused. If they succeed in becoming a stereotypical “desirable” female, they will not only have to live life emotionally and physically crippled, fearful, and childlike; they also have to face the hatred of individual men who pride themselves on not having stereotypical desires and the hatred of women who cannot live up to that stereotype. If they don’t succeed in assimilating, they face a life in which their own parents, friends, and colleagues constantly remind them, “Well, if you were just [somehow different], maybe someone would love you.”
I’m sure you can deduce what I think.
via Bitch PhD
Thanks for the link, Lauren; it’s a long and provocative post. (And I do relate to “anger disguised as pedagogy”, as she puts it.) Sometimes, the right thing to do is respond not (as so many of us do) with a “Yes, but…” but merely a “Yes.”
What I’ve noticed more often, isn’t this:
“anti-feminist men rush to the conclusion that because feminists are the only women who complain about oppression, they are therefore the only women who experience oppression.”
More often I see these men rush to decide that by identifying it, those women are creating the oppression. As if it wouldn’t exist at all if pesky feminists weren’t point it out. In their minds, it’s not sexist until someone calls it sexist.