Posts by BenWilson
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Anyway, I'm not saying that radical action doesn't work. I'm just saying it's not the only thing that works. It also has the side effect of polarizing opinion so that any path down the middle is forced to one side or the other, you're either a friend or an enemy of feminism. Such a forceful action is sometime well justified when there is a massive inequity. When the inequity is a lot less, it can work backwards. I think the inequity is a lot less than it was, so radicalism just seems less and less sensible.
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So you think that the workers' movement victories were due to the establishment becoming suddenly more enlightened and benevolent?
No, but I think the movement got traction because workers felt empathy for one another, and collectively they are a massive group, holding enormous power.
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Ben, I feel like your argument could be boiled down to 'if you'd just ask more nicely...'
I'd dispute that. I'm not even talking about what women should do. I'm talking about what men should do. I'm talking about that strange place held by male feminists, how it can work. If you don't accept that I'm a feminist because I just practice it in my own life rather than beat people over the head with it, then yeah, OK, you read it how you like. You're basically not the intended target of what I'm saying, although I'm perfectly open to whatever it is you think is bad about it. I just see it as another path, one that men can walk.
Part of my difficulty in all of this is that I'm not surrounded or even in contact with any oppressed women. The extent of it is usually a bit of slackness about the house on the part of men, and some shit talk which they're usually too scared to actually say in front of the women. Does this mean that feminism is basically an irrelevance in my world? I don't think so, it's more like a given.
BenWilson, it's worth remembering that your whole experience of being so involved in caring for your children has at least in part come about because of feminism. At its best, although feminism prioritises as better life for women, it not not meant to be better than men, just better than the lives women have now, and ideally, better for everyone. Y'know - the "patriarchy harms men too" thought.
I know this. I learned feminism from my parents. It's my natural way of seeing things. Only if I'm allowed to be a feminist, rather than just a bourgeois white man who happens to not oppress anyone by some strange mysterious process of fate.
As for rape, I just don't see it as a feminist issue. It's a human rights issue. Everyone has the right not to be raped. Sure, only men ever do it, but that is never going to change, no matter what prism we see the world through.
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A demonstration isn't democratic: the people on the street may well be a minority, but they say look, I believe in my cause more than you believe in the status quo, and I'm quite prepared to make your life as miserable as I can until you accept my demands.
I don't think it's making life miserable for the status quo that leads to change. It's making it clear to the status quo how miserable you are, seeking change through empathy. If anything is served by radical demonstration, that is it. If it's about being a nuisance, of course the establishment is always in a better position to do that back. That's what they do.
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Hey wait, aren't you the guy who'll spend hours debating philosophy? :)
I am, but this particular debate is not one I've ever felt particularly included in, and that's from a very young age. Part of that is because I fall into the white wealthy male demographic. It's not really a surprise that JS Mill was the first person I felt was actually talking to me, rather than attempting some form of indoctrination. He was also a privileged white male.
But... there sort of isn't a carrot. Or, at least, it isn't a traditional carrot.
It's a carrot for me. Changing societal notions about childcare isn't just about acknowledging that it's work. It's also about acknowledging that it's work men might actually want to do, rather than be forced to do.
Waiting for privileged people to become magnanimous isn't a society-wide solution.
And I'm not suggesting it. I'm talking to the men, as one of them, practicing what I preach. Woman don't need to be told of the hardships or the joys of childcare. Or do they? Perhaps they do, if they have formed ideological notions that it is degrading work. I don't find it so.
Feminism isn't just a struggle for more equality in the care of the children and work opportunities. Are you suggesting to way to get society to take rape more seriously is to offer men a carrot?
I didn't say it was. But I'm talking about what I do, and I'm not a rapist, nor do I know any, so I don't have anything much to say on the matter, other than that it's a very sick crime. I guess, however, that understanding why people do it might actually help more than simply treating rapists harshly after the fact (although that should also be done).
> Certain fights demand that a certain amount of anger be brought to them.
But wouldn't that mean... you're Damaging Your Cause By Being Angry (TM)?
Anger is good, sometimes. But it's the stick, and can be overused. Carrots are actually better for a great deal of behavior change.
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Sorry to shoot and run yesterday. The irony is I've been consumed by childcare since, and even writing this post is hard <pause to play tummy-eating monster with baby>. My whole life is work and childcare these days, newborns take a lot of time <pause to roll baby>. Not that I grudge it, yesterday was glorious and would probably be best put on the love thread. I'm not sure which wave of feminism fits with giving my wife a break so she can just breast feed the baby and then sleep, whilst I take the elder to Pt Chev Beach on the bike <pause to change CD of nursery rhymes>, slowly coaxed him out of his comfort zone up to his hips in lovely warm water, made sand castles and pools, collected shells, wrote in the sand <pause to clean up bathroom from eldest's newfound love of washing hands>, deck-changed his nappy, shared a snack, rode to Pt Chev to the only open cafe where we shared a muffin, and he surprised me by drinking from an unfamiliar cup which he held in his hands. As I write this, both boys are chatting to me, and I chat back <pause to notice that baby has discovered how to roll over the other way, as far as I can tell for the first time. He giggles happily when I praise him>.
Now I'm the sole breadwinner, by stint of 2 things. Firstly, wife decided to take an extended break when the second baby came. Second, her workplace made her redundant anyway. Given that their main justification <pause, wife back from hanging up clothes, wants to plan day> for that was because she was pregnant, which is highly discriminatory, we opted to marry the 2. I helped her negotiate <pause to change baby, give sponge bath, apply medz> a decent payout, which ended up being way larger than her maternity pay was going to be. It was a weird negotiation, in a room full of women, and me. Women seem to have been given the dirty job during the recession of handling laying off the other women, and this incredibly polite, careful, respectful thank-you-now-fuck-off-and-look-after-bubby, was done in the most professional way I've seen. They worked hard to play up the guilt side that my wife should be resting, needs the time with the new baby etc etc. I played up the guilt side of sacking a pregnant woman after 11 years of loyal and hardworking service <pause to make bottle>, how does that look to the other women, etc etc. Wife cried on cue (perfect timing, I could see that really hit the other women in the room, although I thought I actually detected a slightly smug sound from the ozzie woman on the phone, a hateful cow who (when I worked in oz in the same firm) always struck me as someone who's own glass ceiling was fixed by the disdain she always showed for her female co-workers <pause to discipline elder for hitting walls, and that most scary one, himself>. The offer ended up being reasonably generous, and the door was left open for her to return after baby has got older. It seemed like a win-win. My own hope is that after a while away, my wife will find she does not miss that particular workplace, and can look for something a bit closer to her talents, possibly amongst the customers who sang her praises on a daily basis. But that's all her choice and I will support whatever it is. If she doesn't want to work, I'm happy, but I doubt it will go that way.
Which puts me in the spot of basically having to up my hours a lot - gotta pay the way and help out with the doubled childcare at home. We divide the labor as we can - mostly I look after the old one when he gets unmanageably bored (can't wait for preschool to come back from holidays, he really enjoyed it), and give bottles to the baby, or keep them both entertained while wife does other chores. I could do the chores instead, but she wants the break from the kids, totally understandable. As my Mum put it, she didn't have any thoughts that took more than 20 seconds to form for about 8 years when the house was full of me and my siblings.
This is my form of practical feminism. The theoretical side is basically something I don't have time for - moral lessons do really need to be a bit simple sometimes, or people who are busy can't learn them. Men don't need to learn guilt at the hands of polemicists, they need the carrot instead, to take the time to enjoy childcare, to see the values of various women in the workplace, to learn that a shared life isn't all about power. It's meant to be about love.
Pollywog, if you are still reading, I'm sorry to see the way it's gone here. I don't think you're a wanker, but you really do need to learn the art of online respect. I see things you do that I used to do. You can change your tone, and if you want to write here, you should. I got mildly ragged on by Sophie ITF for hassling you a while back*, and I thought she was right, then, that it was hard to dislike you when we got to know you. Stick to that, give the tribal-rivalry a rest, ask Russell nicely, and we could still get the benefit of hearing about how your form of practical feminism works.
*I'm presuming you were Dubmugga before, you have the same avatar and tone. If not, I feel a little silly.
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My little piece of Sofie's garden is flourishing, spreading the love a bit wider.
I discovered the damnedest thing - it seems like aloes like being surrounded by weeds.
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Arguing about feminism is inherently more difficult for men.
Me.
how about we drop the facade and stop pretending we're nothing more than cavemen with laptops, one step above the animal world.
Me again.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that it is possible to become insanely educated about feminism, most men won't. But they will still have opinions on it, and could even contribute. If they don't, and can't, then their patriarchal attitudes are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For myself, I've been surrounded by feminists most of my life. It's so automatic it's basically religious - the idea that women are equal to men was never seriously challenged in my mind until I reached adulthood, and made a mental choice to challenge my preconceptions.
To that end I very seldom find much of interest about feminism in the works by women on the subject. It basically always feels like they're talking about me, not to me. Men think this, men think that. It wasn't until I read "On The Subjugation of Women" by J S Mill that I first felt actually guilty about my attitudes to women. I recognized myself in what he was saying.
Of course feminism has moved on hugely since then. But my attitude still roughly aligns with that. I've never been convinced by "affirmative action" or its other more loaded synonyms "positive discrimination" or "reverse discrimination". The way I see it, male responsibility for feminism ends at "giving woman an equal chance", and the rest is the job of women, to seize those chances, to make good on them, and the flipside of this empowerment is taking the responsibility for failure too. I think this has happened, and continues to happen. Which actually means it's the job of women to sort out the extreme feminists, to put them in their place, to decide what position to take.
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I think that about anyone who conducts a sexual affair behind the back of a partner -- people having sex is all good fun, consistently deceiving someone to whom you're supposed to show love and loyalty is creepy and wrong. But any time I say that I get told to drop the sanctimony and mind my own business :-)
I'm not surprised. Sexual morality within legal boundaries is rather private. Panty sniffing, as Craig so often calls it. Of course if you've gone a long way to cultivating an image of the loyal husband as part of some branding thing, then you're making a rod for your own back if that's not your thing.
However, I can imagine that one may very well start out as loyal, never expecting to become the worlds most famous golfer, and thus the kind of person who is inundated with offers. Having discovered that one is a sex addict, it would be an extremely difficult job to reverse all that PR without massive financial damage to oneself and everyone backing one. There would be pressure from a lot of people to keep it under wraps. So he could either just deny what he wants, for the money, or get what he wants and risk exactly what has happened. I actually don't think either position is better than the other. I actually find the idea of "Tiger Woods, Sex Addict" far, far more interesting and believable than "Tiger Woods, Famous Billionaire and Loyal Family Man", which strikes me as the kind of hateful constructed life that royalty are expected to live. Fantasy lives are usually just that, a fantasy.
I don't think all right thinking people should ignore celebrity gossip. People are allowed to be interested in what they're interested in. I'm not really much interested in this one, though. I was quite surprised to hear in the first place that Woods even was a supposed family man. That a man of his fame and money cheats around didn't surprise me in the slightest. It's pretty hard to even imagine what his sex life must be like when pretty much any single woman he meets is going to be very interested. I don't know anyone like that personally.
Like Gio, I'm somewhat cheered by the massive losses from it all. Only because they represent the crashing down of media constructed personas. I felt much the same way about Jennifer Aniston losing Brad Pitt. "Why the fuck would he even bother with her in the first place?" was always on my mind until a mate pointed out that it's because women like Aniston, so the whole thing made sense from a PR POV. Which is all very well until you realize that part of the point of being rich and famous is so that you can live a life you choose, not something your PR team cooks up for you. If he fell from grace as the World's Sexiest Man (a title formerly held by the likes of Tom Cruise), but got to use his dick the way he wanted to (and smoke the drugs he wanted to, iirc), I think he made the right choice.
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Damn, Ben. You seemed conspicuously absent here over last week or so, and then you wander back in and go Bam! Still soooo much to learn about all this.
Couldn't think of anything sensible to say for a week. I'm experimenting with keeping quiet during those times. I'm not so sure I like it, but I need to give it a good go to be sure.
Might crack open my gift bottle of West Indies Mount Gay Rum (my daughter sniggers every time she spots it)
I'm still sniggering. Hope it went down with a yo ho ho!
Some very bad bits, some thoroughly shitty moments but on reflection
You don't tend to get the really good bits without risking the shitty. My first experience of childbirth was traumatic, but I wouldn't have got the joy of child rearing without it.
Wow Ben - look forward to hearing about the next decade.
I don't think what I did in the noughties was remarkable. Most people who are trying to live good lives will do all that and more. But it can be tempting to try to summarize the whole thing down to some keywords, where in actuality, a lot happened and if you reflect on the good things, it can be encouraging.
Being the start of a new decade, do we make New Decade's Resolutions?
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