On Blaming, and Being, The Patriarchy

My recent discussion with Alexis regarding my myriad feelings around being a white, middle class man who is also a feminist interested in race theory, queer theory and social justice has got me thinking even more about it, trying to formulate how I feel into something a little more clear than I've been able to so far. (One of the joys of being friends with Lex, for me, is that she often encourages me to think more deeply, in different directions about things, even when it's uncomfortable for me; she's also wonderful at pointing out blind spots.) The whole thing started because a Peanuts cartoon reminded me of how some people see me and how, because of this, I sometimes see myself.

Bad Guy
The basic idea is this: I have been told (accused?) that my motives for studying feminism (and race, and class, etc.), for calling myself a feminist, for focusing (at times) on feminist theory and practice (to whatever degree) are in fact merely just window dressing for my actual motive, which is said to be: I don't want to be the bad guy.

And it's not a far reach for me or for others to think this. I don't like being a bad guy--who does? And this feeling does sometimes motivate me in ways that I don't really like. For instance, I've stayed in relationships longer than I ought to have because I was afraid of being the bad guy. (I've even projected this fear onto those who have broken up with me. Sheesh.) I try to not beat myself up that much about this, because I think it's a failing that many/most people have; also, to some degree it really is just some very good intentions gone awry--I think this springs, at least in part, from a very real, sincere desire to just not do harm to people, but that such intentions are of course not enough. It's possible that I let my desire to be thought of as an ally in the big ol' world of feminism override my desire for simply being that ally, and for trying to find justice as regards sexism.

Getting Some
I've also been accused of even more 'base' motivations, which I'm also open to being possible motivations: Wanting to get laid. And, just like not wanting to be a bad guy, who doesn't want to get laid? Also, this is apparently a fairly pervasive problem throughout feminist circles that include men--men who latch onto feminism because, well, that's where a bunch of women are, aren't uncommon, apparently. And this sort of complaint about my possible motivations goes even deeper because of some gender/sexuality issues that I have, where (if you've ever seen the show) it becomes hard for me to watch The L Word simply by virtue of the guy named Lisa(?--I think) who is self-identified as a lesbian, because that caricature of a character hits close enough to home--or to what some people perceive as my home--to make me squirm like Bush Jr. during an unscripted Q and A. Except, y'know, with less smirking.

Womens' Studies, or Studying Women?
Some examples of when I've been taken to task for my possible motivations may be in order. When I was first becoming interested in feminism proper, I started taking some women's studies courses in college. I was excited, dubious and nervous about it, all rolled into one. The first women's studies course that I took was on queer women fiction writers, and it was both lovely and horrific for me. As the only man signed up for the class, I didn't feel particularly welcome, but it was hard to separate my fears and such from any genuine dislike for my being there--though my feelings definitely came from both places. I didn't understand, at that point, any of the nuances of women's-only spaces (though I came to understand it better while in the class) and what they might mean especially to the women in a college class. And actually my experience of such courses in general is that they aren't thought of as women's only spaces in general, and I would imagine that sentiment is even more true now. Still, I didn't understand that my sincere desire to learn amounted to something of an invasion to some of the people in the class, good intentions or not.

Silencio!
During that time, I tried to be as unobtrusive as I could be. I was probably the quietest in that class that I have ever been since I went to college, really. I didn't cut my input down to nothing--I thought at the time that doing so would actually be a negative thing, because then there I am, listening in but not contributing. If I had pressing questions that I thought shouldn't take up class time, I would talk to my gracious prof after class. It did give me a wee little bit of insight as to how one might feel marginalized in a classroom setting by one's gender (and I was able to draw on that experience later in my college life when one of my classmates complained that her profs were sexist regarding who they called on in class--it was more readily apparent to me that she was spot-on in part because of my similar (though not the same) experiences in women's studies classes).

As I took more women's studies classes, I eventually made some friends with people that were in that first class. (It's a pretty small circle, really--or at least it was back then.) I finally got up enough courage to ask some of them about it all, and to a person (ok, there were only two of 'em) they told me they had been pretty much convinced at first that I was there to either cause trouble or to hit on them. So both of these women, who were friends in only the school-chum sort of way, both confided in me that they still weren't sure about me, and about my motives. And it's not as if I blame them--not only have I seen the sort of behavior that they were wary of, I am also wary of such behavior from myself. These two women had clearly had experiences such that they might always question my motives, and this is a fact that I have to accept. This is part of what being who I am (male, white, middle-class and feminist) in this particular patriarchy entails.

What I'm Not Saying
Which is not to say that I think I have it bad, in some sort of absolute way. The cross of the white middle class male feminist is balsa wood, compared with what those who are oppressed by white middle class males have to bear. Their cross is made of heavy oak, full of nails and is 20 feet tall. Oh, and it's on fire.

And I'm not saying that I think it is the feminist community's 'job' to help me feel better about myself.

And I'm not saying that it is any one of my women friend's 'job' to help me understand this better.

And I'm not saying that blaming the patriarchy must include equal parts of 'this sucks for women' and 'this sucks for men'--it clearly sucks more for women.

What I Do Want to Say
What I do want to say is more complex than what I am trying to make it clear I don't want to say. I want to say this: That the feelings of alienation and despair that I sometimes feel are as systemic and pervasive as the alienation and despair that others, for different reasons, feel. That my motivations for wanting to end sexism and the like are myriad and complex. That I sometimes doubt myself in the same ways (or similar ones) that the other feminists around me doubt me.

To put it another way: When Lex says this to me...

sure there are some man-hating lesbos who you might like to fuck who don't want to sleep with you, but everyone doesn't hate you. not the way everyone expects you to earn less because your a woman. not the way everyone expects you to be the mugger because you're black. not the way u.s. citizens expect your slave-ish labor without recompense because you are an undocumented worker who is part of the ages of such who are the ones who really have built, cleaned, fed and served this country.

...it really does hurt, because that's exactly the sort of take on my motives and intentions that I can't really blame anybody for, but at the same time I must feel bullied a bit by.

When I complain about the negatives of being a feminist man in a patriarchy, why is it thought that I think my hardships are as bad as those of others?--I don't. But I do have to deal with my hardships.

Why is it thought that I'm 'just having a bad day' when, in fact, I'm trying to address something I think is institutional and systemic?

Though I do have issues with dykes not wanting to sleep with me(or be friends with me, or let me in the club), why are my complaints of alienation as a feminist man in a patriarchy attributed to not getting laid by dykes, when in fact they have to do with not feeling like I have allies in my struggle? So my struggle doesn't measure up to the struggle most others have to endure--I still have to live through the struggle, and I still need people in my life who understand that and might even help me through it.

What to Do
One central problem of being a feminist man is figuring out what to do. That is, there are all sorts of ways to take down the patriarchy, but they aren't always apparent to those of us who are, to whatever degree, in a position of priveledge. And what a lot of this comes down to for me is that I need to figure out ways of dealing with the feelings I feel (just as anybody has to deal with negative feelings), and, unlike other areas of my life where I have something of a community that understands/empathises and is willing to help me, the people I could call on to help me, the people who could understand and empathise, are often the very people from whom I am alienated regarding this stuff.

Perhaps I just need more white, middle-class male friends who identify as feminists? Perhaps.

But that doesn't change the fact that the biggest possible community of people that I could call upon have better things to do (and they do!); to be alienated from the group of people that I want most to identify with isn't the hardest burden to bear, or anywhere close to what others have to deal with; still, it's also not anything to discount by telling me I'm just having a bad day (even though having a bad day is important!) or that I'm just mad because (some) dykes don't want to fuck me. I'm only singling out Lex's comments as an example of what feels alienating to me, as an example of the sort of thing that I hear more often than I think 'is appropriate'; also, I want it clear that I don't think Lex's comments are outright wrong or out of line, any more than I think that the friends I made in my women's studies classes were wrong for suspecting my motives. But: I do think that these comments and the questioning of my motives (even by me!) shows a lack of understanding(/empathy?) about where I'm coming from, and what I have to deal with.

Filed under:Feminism and Therapy

Absurdity and Therapy

I've hunted and hunted for the exact quote, but I've lost my "The Myth of Sisyphus" book, so I'll just paraphrase Camus. (I mean, what's the point of being an existentialist philosopher if you don't have people misquoting and oversimplifying your points, really?) He notes that it isn't people that are absurd, or the world that is absurd, but our relationship to the world that is absurd.

I'm sure Camus had some deep reasons for thinking this (if he did!), but for me it comes down to this: Sometimes it just feels like a crazy fucking world, and sometimes I feel like a crazy fucking person, and sometimes those feelings are spot on.

On the other hand: I've been thinking about therapy and about how people are trying to be very supportive about it, but they are sort of shy to talk about it, are supporting me (I think) because they think they ought to, but it's sort of like telling people that you've finally stopped drinking when you're an alchoholic. They want to be supportive, but they don't quite know what to say. "Good job!" doesn't quite fit the bill, because wouldn't it have been better to not have been an alchoholic (or a person in need of therapy) in the first place? Sure, people in need of therapy may not be like alchoholics in important ways, but the feelings I've gotten from people make the analogy hold, for me, to a certain degree.

But the thing is this: This is a crazy world sometimes, and it would be sort of strange if some of us (?) didn't just freak out sometimes about it. For instance, I'm reading a book on Rwanda right now, and that stuff is just freaking crazy. In a way, of course, it's not--there is a good causal history leading up to the massacres of the 90's. If Belgium, France and others had behaved differently, if the Rwandans themselves had built a different culture, if lots of other things had gone differently, perhaps that massacre woudln't happen. But that massacres happen is also in some way just really, really strange, and should cause some important, strong reactions in people. Reading about terrible wrongs done in the name of [whatever] makes me anxious. It both helps me understand the world better and at the same time makes things just seem absurd. To be slightly trite: It's no freaking wonder that I get depressed and don't clean my house sometimes.

Point being, it would be crazy to not be crazy sometimes, given the person I am, and the world that I live in.

Clean
Which brings me to another, related, point. Made a good connection in therapy the other day--my therapist, upon hearing about my worries of becoming the shut-in-packrat that my uncle (who died a few years back) had become, and hearing about my fear of rejection by people in the world in general right now brought on (in part) by my feelings of rejection that I'm still feeling from The Breakup(tm), pointed out that maybe part of the reason I make my home pseudo-inhabitible at times, and maybe the reason I'm doing it more now, is that I want to push people away on some level.

Ding!Ding!Ding!We have a winner!

One reason I haven't bought a couch, for instance, is that I'm sorta poor--but another reason is that it isn't a priority because it's not a priority to get people to come over to my house; and that's not a priority, in part, because I'm afraid to invite people deeper into my life.

It's keen/obvious/in-my-blindspot little insights like that which will probably keep me going to therapy for as long as I can afford it.

Filed under:Philosophy and Therapy

Flat Tired

I haven't gotten enough sleep this week. Partly it's because I'm trying to 'live life', which includes trying to not let my need to get 8 hours sleep a night dictate so many of my actions. You know, you want to go to bed, but you realize that you've been getting 8 hours sleep a night for weeks now and you suddenly get a flash of 'Dead Poets' Society' that you're "food for worms, lads" and you want to ride your bike down the hill and scare the shit out of the flocks of birds down there, all the while shouting "Carrrrpaaaaaaaay Deeeeeeee-emmmmmmmmmmmm!" and thinking dirty thoughts about your professor (c'mon, "O Captain, my Captain!" should probably be said over said 'captain's' lap, shouldn't it?). Maybe it's just me.

At any rate, that's part of it. But another part of it is just bad luck, getting woken up by various stuff. And part of it is still anxiety, I think, which causes me to have nervous sleep. Working on the anxiety stuff, but it's slow coming, and I may never really rid myself of anxiousness altogether, which, of course, causes me some anxiousness.

I've long known the connections between sleep and moods, especially for me. It's not that a lot of sleep equals happiness, but it is the case that lack of sleep pretty much causes unhappiness. Sleeplessness pretty much has no long-lasting good effects for me. I become listless and angry, in turn. I am easily distracted.

So last night, I thought I had fixed a flat on my bike, and I played some video games with K, and then checked my work on the tire and...sure enough, I patched a hole but I had missed a hole. And with my neato new bike, taking the wheel off is really easy, but taking the tire and tube off of the wheel well is a lot harder--I'm sure there are good reasons, but it doesn't matter at the moment; I have the right tools and some experience, and it's still not easy to do. Hopefully I'll get better, but for now...it's time-consuming and frustrating and it makes me wonder why I bother patching tubes at all and don't just buy a bunch of spares, really, because...well, there I go getting frustrated.

Thing is, I have some new tools, mental tools, to keep me from going totally batshit about it, even though I have a lack of sleep. And some of those tools come just from experience, but some of 'em are coming from therapy, and I'm glad I'm going. Because here's the thing: Even though I had to fix the damn thing again last night at midnight (thereby adding to my lack-of-sleep problem), I got angry, and then pretty much let it go, because I could 'go-meta' and realize why I was angry. And even though I got another flat this morning on the way to work, I understand that my anger/frustration have a lot more to do with my lack of sleep than my lack of ability to properly patch a tube--if I had been 'well-slept', I most likely would have just laughed my ass off about the flat this morning, and recognizing that helps. As it was, I could at least focus on being happy and thankful that I made it most of the way to work before I lost my tube again, that it wasn't pissing rain this morning, and that most likely I'll wait until Saturday to fix the damn tire.




Filed under:
Biking and Therapy

Wanting the World to Be a Better Place...for Me!

One of the things that came up in my first therapy session was that I have a lot of what might be simplisticly (but truthfully?) called white middle-class hetero male guilt. There are at least two senses that this sort of thing makes sense. First off, I can say that about myself (or somebody else) as a kind of dig--the implication being that if I, say, speak up for some feminist/anti-racist/anti-sexist/etc. causes, I may be acting from a place of trying to make myself feel better, rather than trying to further the cause. This is what makes me feel sorta like Charlie Brown:



On the other hand, another sense that 'white middle-class hetero male guilt' might have is the notion that, as a middle-class (sorta) white hetero guy, I have to keep sort of ever-vigilant not only about the world around me, but of my own actual/perceived power in the various realms that I get power by default.

Taking these two senses together, what I end up with is that I have to recognize where I might have power by default and I have to recognize that sometimes I might be acting out of trying to make my life better, rather than trying to make the world a better place for everybody (keeping in mind that a lot of the time, of course, I can do both). Both of these things are incredibly complex, however. I'll try to think/talk about the former some other time--the basic problems being blind spots regarding where I have power and what to do about abdicating the power I do have 'by default'. The latter is a bit more approachable, and that's what I'd like to discuss here.

Well-Placed Guilt and Not-So-Well-Placed Feelings of Rejection
Back to therapy. The reason I starting talking about my 'wmchmg' is that some of my general anger actually comes, I think, from being rejected as a middle-class hetero white guy. That is, one of the great things about dating S was that, while she was supportive as far as my feminist/anti-racist/etc. efforts, she would often also call bullshit when she thought I was being sexist/racist/classist. I want to make it very clear that this is something I valued in our relationship, and something that I value in friends in general. Now that we aren't friends (again, currently--not sure what the future holds), even, it's sometimes hard for me to remember the supportive side of things--my mind tends to fixate on the criticism; given that I have a hard time not focusing just on that, I find myself feeling more rejected and on some deeper levels than I might. That is, I feel like part of us not being friends has to do with her thinking that I'm a racist/sexist/classist jerk. (To be clear, I feel this way not because she has caused me to feel this way--she isn't in the wrong in any way in this regard--but because of my buttons.) That I feel this way is not her fault in any way, really. While there isn't any definitive way to know (because we're not friends now), there's lots of evidence that she doesn't think I am, generally, any of these things.

Fear and Loathing in Jeffland
The thing is, I'm just projecting my own fears about myself onto her when I imagine she thinks of me as this racist/sexist/classist jerk. On some deep levels, I am afraid that I am all of these things.

And of course that's not a completely unfounded fear, is it? I am a white, middle-class (sorta) hetero male, and as such I have been steeped in the racist/classist/sexist elements of culture just as much as the next white, middle-class hetero guy. I think on some levels it's right for me to fear this...I need to keep track of myself in this regard, because living in this culture is the place from where I have to begin.

But I also need to learn to better give myself some slack, sometimes, I think. As my therapist pointed out--asking oneself if one is a sexist is at the very least a very good first step toward not being as sexist as one could be. It's perhaps not enough, but it is an important something.

Not quite sure how to do that, just yet.

Filed under:Health and
Therapy

Irony: Thinking Insessantly About Whether I Think Too Much

K asked me recently in a comment whether I sometimes wonder if I think to much.

Short Answer: Yep.

Long Answer:
And then, because of the inherent irony in asking the question, really--should I just answer off the cuff, like in a rorschach test, or should I think about my answer? Another possible irony: The answers to this question (to me) are so intricate and lengthy that even writing an answer to it is going to take some time.

Whenever I have something I want to think about that is sort of a huge subject, I try to find a 'hook' into it. A way of beginning to think about it. There are even so many hooks regarding this that it's hard to begin. I think, though, given my recent state(s) of mind and my interest in friendship and love at the moment, that my hook will be this:

You're not the first one to ask, k. ;)

That is to say, here is a general pattern that I sometimes see with friends and lovers who tend to not stay friends and lovers (or even acquaintences who go through the process relatively quickly):
1. Meet Jeff.
2. Find yourself intrigued by some of the conceptual connections he makes, the way he tries to consciously live his life, and the interesting conversations you can have with him.
3. Spend a period of time being interested in him for these reasons.
4. (Optional--mostly optioned by ex-lovers) Slowly start to realize that you think that he's full of shit.
5. Start to become annoyed by the fact that all that stuff you liked about him, it just keeps going, without much of a break.
6. Find yourself wanting him to shut up, turn all that stuff off for just a little while, for Christ's sake.
7. Recognize that he rarely does shut up/stop that stuff, and that you can't take it any longer.
8. Ask him "do you ever think you think too much?"
9. Burn that bridge.
10. Tell him (implicitly or explicitly, depending on how close you were) you still want to be friends 'someday', but that you need a break from him.
11. Burn that bridge and don't look back.

Some of the steps get mixed around, and some of my friends (and at least one lover) didn't go through all of the stages (erm, otherwise I wouldn't have any friends, right? I mean, I'm close to that, but not quite there), but I've had it happen enough times that when somebody asks me this question, I have to make a concerted effort to not get defensive.

On the other hand, if it's been asked of me that many times, seems to me that it's probably a perfectly appropriate question. Recently (months ago) there was some mutual attraction between me and a new-ish friend of mine. We hung out a few times, and there was definitely some chemistry and we had some great conversations. At one point I brought up something she had said, and was somewhat critical of it--to me, I was critical in the sense that I wondered if she knew/thought that what she had said was sort of cruel and, well, shallow in the way that I thought it might have been. Her initial response to me: "Don't drag me into your navel-gazing bullshit." A few days later, she apologized, told me that I had (unknowingly) pushed a button of hers, and that she didn't really think of me that way.

But here's the thing: I recognize that it's irritating, that it may sometimes be self-serving, that obsessing about concepts can even be harmful--and even mean, really. I recognize that it sometimes is navel-gazing, in the negative sense of the term. I try to not obsess. I try to not ask questions that really are a way of thrusting my opinion on the world. I try to read people's reactions to my questions such that I don't keep pressing when they are tired of the tack I'm taking. But I am not always successful in these attempts, so I do get people saying things like this to me:

"Just have a beer, Jeff, and shutup."
"What is this, a fucking therapy session?"
"You're just a difficult person to be friends with."

And I don't think that these questions and comments are completely inappropriate. Something I like in some of my friends is that they'll help break me out of little recursive fits of thinking I get into. On the other hand, there are only a handful of people who will/want to go the distance with me conceptually, and, as it turns out, these are pretty much my closest friends (this isn't true to a person, but it's generally true). In fact, some of my favorite people (my favorite prof from SFSU and Lex come to mind) have more intellectual stamina for conceptual analysis than I have, so I can understand that different people have different amounts of interest/patience in doing lots of conceptual analysis, because sometimes I get tired of it, too.

That all said, I think the implication that people sometimes make (not necessarily K, by the way) when they ask this is that thinking is mutually exclusive from doing. That there is a clear line between 'thinking about life' and 'living life'. I understand the impetus for this implication. Clearly there are times when it would be better for me to just have a beer, or have a good cry; times when it's good for me to just shut up. There are even times when I wish the little conceptual-analysis voices in my head would go bowling or something and give me some peace. At the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge that thinking is a kind of doing. And I don't just mean that in a surface-y definitional sense. I also mean it in this sense: Thinking about things almost always affects how one does things. This is one of the main reasons for doing some thinking...it may seem like navel-gazing for me to ask myself questions constantly, but if the answers make a difference in my life, then I think it's worth doing.

Another aspect of the whole thinking-as-doing-something thing is that I just enjoy thinking about stuff, by myself or with others. Not all the time, and not about everything, but often and with a fairly wide scope. It's just a visceral pleasure for me, a good deal of the time. And, if it's not hurting anybody else, that's a fairly good reason to keep doing it. I also value lots of other things that don't have much to do with conceptual analysis--biking, guitar, sex--and I recognize that a balance is desireable (and sometimes when people ask, "Do you think too much?" this balance is exactly what they are referring to); I just don't like to oppose 'thinking' with 'living life'. I see the former as a necessary, desirable part of the latter.

Filed under:
General, Philosophy and Therapy.