Ideas for the New

A preview of a guest blog post I pitched to Bitch Magazine about creating feminist spaces people can actually enjoy without sounding too utopian, which I’ll link to once it’s finalized (fingers crossed): 

• Engage with each other. Feminist spaces are de facto safe spaces and you should feel free to get real with each other about your concerns, from your own personal relationships to sexism around you. While this may sound obvious and be the most intuitive piece of advice, you’re obviously engaging with each other because you’re interested in other women’s experiences living as females within a specific cultural context. You want to learn from your lady friends and generally communicate with one another and promote a culture of solidarity by making each other’s voices a priority. Ask each other questions and learn how other women deal with issues which concern you as well. For example, I’m interested in the treatment of heterosexual sex, relationships, and femininity as performed in both mainstream and alternative media, and that is something I generally ask other feminists about within these circles to start dialogue. Does it make them want to start a riot in anger like it does me? Or do they find unique instances in which these can be inspiring?

• Don’t make assumptions about other people’s lived experiences and avoid a hostile, judgmental environment. Most of us are gendered into acting certain ways around males and females. One helpful thing to remember when communicating with other feminists is to try to check those assumptions at the door as much as possible to allow for a more liberating and freeing atmosphere. It’s equally easy to assume that because you’re at a feminist workshop that all attendees share common backgrounds and beliefs. Half of the room might be sex-positive feminists while a minority may feel uncomfortable labeling themselves that “branch” of feminism; some may be queer feminists, radical feminists, religious feminists, women of color feminists, second and third-wave feminists, and of course the endless overlap of feminism(s). By learning about each other’s unique backgrounds and upbringings, you can avoid fostering a judgmental environment and instead learn about why something that may seem problematic to you is empowering to someone else, or conversely, why something empowering to you may be offensive to someone else. Context is key!

   

• Be inclusive and form affinities on the basis of mutual respect. If all participants are able to overlook superficial differences (she’s an X- feminist and I’m a Y- feminist) it is easier to form substantially deeper and more meaningful affinity groups with one another than it would be if all participants shared the same politics. Oftentimes we forget that feminism is itself political, which should override other loyalties. That is not the same, however, as saying that feminism is more important than ties to one’s religion or ethnicity, and it is crucial to respect the full diversity of other women’s lives and not expect them to subtract part of their identities from their feminism.

   

• Avoid creating or recreating “hyper-masculine” spaces of egotism, rivalry, or competition, and other -isms (racism, homophobia, ableism, etc.). By allowing everyone to speak and calling people out when they are acting on a privilege or making assumptions about others, it is easy to avoid falling into the same logic of male-dominated discourse that you find in classrooms, the workplace, at home, etc. which usually centers on masculine culture and priorities. The trick to avoid creating an atmosphere that enables a female-female rivalry situation or the like is to remember that we’re on the same team and can destroy patriarchy together by learning from each other while also realizing our common goals: empowering each other.

• Set a goal for one thing you’d like to see change as a group and realize that. Form an all-female band, hone artistic skills, and host a self-defense workshop are just a few ideas of goals I have for changing the way women are relegated to second-class status in nearly all aspects of society from music to art to representation as public objects in public space. There are numerous ways we can change that by creating our own changes and inviting others to be part of our activities while prioritizing female bodies, thought, community, involvement and leadership.

I’m probably omitting a lot of good ones but am trying to keep it to a 10-point list.  What am I leaving out? 

A great man once wrote that a revolution must be not only be structural but super-structural - meaning a society must take into account both its economic set-up as well as its ideal/ideological/institutional framework.  What this man failed to see is how this full-fledged anti-capitalist revolution applies to gender relations and relationships — especially of the “hetero-normative” variety. 

This isn’t to suggest that all hetero male-female relationships are singular or that they are all intrinsically backwards or oppressive; on the contrary, these can be excellent sources of social transformation on the most basic level of social relations.  However, “progressive” and transgressive exceptions notwithstanding, (especially within the radical culture of the Bay Area) there are still problematic symbolic and social (as well as economic and systemic) roles and effects that both parties may be subject to without being aware of their complicity to this violent, insidious phenomenon (- excepting explicit role-playing scenarios where parties have pre-agreed to such, which is a separate issue for another post on another day). 

Even outside of stereotypical hetero relationships, it is still fairly common among young couples today for the males to define and set the terms for what a “progressive” or radical relationship can be or mean.  Because sex and sexual culture are always already dominated by something called the “male gaze” and the hegemonic male-dominated popular cultural view, a true break away from the standard categories of heterosexual sex and love would entail, on a structural level, allowing the woman in the relationship (or female-identified partner) to set the terms for the relationship sexually.  Many women today complain that their boyfriends won’t perform oral sex on them or will refuse certain acts while expecting/demanding the same equivalent of their partner (expect anal sex, refuse to be pegged; be okay with two-female-one-male threesomes, refuse male-male sexual contact; allow for polygamy while expecting emotional monogamy, etc.).  These are obviously myriad and complicated scenarios, and each “two”some is unique. 

For more modest, conservative hetero couples, this can be as simple as the female rarely experiencing orgasm- or having her sexual needs be secondary to her male partner’s, which by definition of the “hetero-normative” relationship is actually organized around the penetrative act.  What could be more masculine-dominated than heterosexually-defined “sex” wherein the act is structured by the needs of male orgasm?

From an emotional (super-structural) point of view, the romantic and amorous aspect of said relationships can be equally, if not more, complex.  Within these hetero relationships, even feminists with feminist boyfriends or ally partners may still find their feelings neglected out of repression (feeling unable to speak, wondering if their partner will feel overwhelmed or burdened by all of their feminist thoughts) or often trivialized when spoken freely (this can also happen where both parties treat each other as equals without paying attention how they are socially unequal outside of the union, and how some gendered emotions are frequently different and unequal and require/demand that the feminist’s specific needs be given extra attention and care). 

This can be as simple as initiating a conversation asking how your feminist partner feels in the relationship: are her emotional and sexual needs being met?  Is she satisfied and happy?  Does she feel she is being heard and responded to?  Does she feel she is being treated with respect as an equal, mentally and otherwise?  Does she feel that her own independent, individual life is being neglected because she is devoting too much of her time to the relationship?  Is the male partner doing his best to fulfill those needs while also giving her space to make her own life/career/artistic/couple decisions? etc.

You may ask why these needs matter, and the answer is simple: society is driven by and organized around “male” needs.  It is a male sexual culture, and a male romantic/emotional one even - where males decide who they can impose their romantic fantasies on, despite female consent, because male heartbreaks and pain are the only ones that society lends sympathy to. 

After reading Louise Erdrich’s Plague of Doves in preparation for my presentation, I have several questions to raise:

1. Can emotional depth be separated from a discourse (literary or otherwise)?
2. If not, why does affect matter other than for aesthetic theory? Ethics?
3. What happens within a “mutual gaze”?

Echoing the tales of her great-grandfather, the character in Louise Erdrich’s story engenders her own romantic interpellation through various ritual and dramatic gestures, having been subjectivated not by a romantic discourse, but by forms (dramaturgy, etc.) insofar as she is subject to the formal discursive procedure of literary storytelling and narration (folklore) wherein every action is amplified by the weight of its tragic outcome - which has always alreadybeen present at and before its manifestation and invocation.

Properly speaking, subjectivation necessitates a symbolic context in which the subject can enact - or project - its egoistic fantasies - hence the metaphor of theatrics and (psycho)drama.  By staging herself - within the story - and as a character prepared to complete these gestures to invoke and call forth her beloved, the reader witnesses the depth of her emotional palate through these (at times destructive) dramatic gestures (which seemed doomed) - not through content so much as through the connectors of the text - the doves - and the structural nexus in which which everything unfolds and connects.

From a structuralist point of view, the characters themselves are negligible; they are focal points in a structure through which the narrative weaves itself, making the emotional world and interiority of the character irrelevant.  However, back to my original questions, what does that mean for 1.) romanticists,  2.) poets, and 3.) is this too unemotional a view?