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Whenever men describe themselves as "feminists," I feel excluded from the category. Indeed, I typically go out of my way to state, for the record, that I don't consider myself a feminist. At the same time, though, I'm acutely aware -- even when I pretend not to be -- of the way my maleness, innate or socially constructed, impacts the women I know. I've found it almost impossible to listen to men who want to talk about their carnal exploits with the opposite sex, even when those men are friends. And I almost never talk about my own exploits, modest as they may be, with other men. Almost all the lasting authority figures in my life have been women, from my mother through various teachers on to the women I've been intimate with, not to mention the female scholars I repeatedly reference in my work. And, as I often tell people in social settings, one of my most important experiences growing up was reading the original Our Bodies, Ourselves over and over, not only for the bits about sex, but because I was intrigued by the passages in which a women-only separatism manifested itself. Why is it, then, that I fell compelled to distance myself from the name "feminism?" Am I merely miming the piedra of the Catholic Church, denying what I believe out of expedience and fear? Or is there another reason for my reticence? Mode: ponderish
Muse: Pale Horse - John Vanderslice - Cellar Door
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this is a brave post--very rocky waters here. a junior white male colleague here not only teaches feminist and queer theory in a course one wouldn't expect to see it in (a good thing), but he very much identifies himself with all the causes, going to queer fac dinners and events and really puts himself out there on race, sex, kid stuff, etc. And, the thing is is that it seems like some sort of weird twists happens where not only is he supportive and demonstrating solidarity but he seems to want to be, completely, the other he is supporting so that he ends up always as some kind of victim, personally implicated. and so this sort of line strikes me as difficult to draw. a gesture of non-identification on your part, then, Charile, seems to me to be valuable insofar as it respects the space of another, others, the Other, however you want to draw it.
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This is hard, as others have also said. I think part of the awfulness is in appropriating someone else's identity: "feminist" is a qualifier that is owned by women for a reason--because they need a qualifier that defines themselves Other than "woman." Which is important, and should never be discounted. But I was once mentally chafed by a colleague at UK who, as a part of his opening salutation, counted himself as a feminist. I found his description of himself awkward, and I was unable to respond with appropriate light-hearted repartee. This is not to say I don't admire men who study feminist issues. I adore them, more than any other. I just resist the idea. Not because I don't want men to own the traditionally sacred-female space of feminism, but because it seems...presumptuous to say so. Perhaps in the same way I feel presumptuous when I entertain the idea of saying I'm a Lacanian, an Americanist, a psychoanalytic scholar, etc. I shall think on this issue some more and perhaps I shall have more answers later, when I'm older and wiser.
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Hey Charlie, interesting post. I've always had a somewhat facile (I'm afraid) reasoning behind considering myself a feminist. I think it was Faludi who wrote (and I most surely paraphrase) that a feminist is nothing more than someone who believes women should have the same rights as men and/or that women should earn the same wage as men for doing the same labor. I have no problem labeling myself as a supporter of such beliefs. Tell you what, though. I'm not much of a fan of dudes who throw that self-applying label around as though it is credibility currency, so to speak. I ran into a lot of fellows like that back in the UCSC days, and they always struck me as the type of douchebags who were first in line to check out the empowered womyn's breasteses at the Take Back the Night march on campus, but would have issues when a woman got a better grade, or maybe got the job that they so much more richly deserved.
Anyway, it's funny that the word "feminist" provokes so much discomfort in so many. My friends John and Patricia, solidly liberal boojie stock in other regards, made it a point to disavow feminism when they lived in jerkwater Suquamish, WA. I always got the impression that they were not comfortable having to argue with neighbors and co-workers in a place where cutesy neocon jargon like "feminazi" (thanks, King Oxycontin) got more laffs than shudders.
You've never struck me as one who avoids an argument if it's valid or important, Charlie. I realize labels others have placed on me suck as they are not of my own making:glutton, fatass, dropout, stoner, asshole, loser, knee-jerk liberal, poseur... Believe me, I'm not in a hurry to further pigeonhole myself with the feminist moniker, either, but I consider what I believe it to mean to be more important than what the perceptions of others, with whom I will most likely disagree about most everything else anyway, to mean.
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