late night thoughts (or, of course we can't eliminate patriarchy. and?)

This probably is obvious and silly to quite a lot of people. But I, in grand and selfish form, am not writing for quite a lot of people. I am writing for me, in order to puzzle out all sorts of vague and theoretical ideas for my very own self.

So here is the question, which I might ask a hypothetical radfem, who would hypothetically think I was silly and out of my league, and that perhaps I ought to just put on some more lipstick and continue furthering the interests of The Man, Inc., and meanwhile stop asking stupid questions and let her get back to her Important Business.

This is, like I said, hypothetical. No offense intended to anyone who does think I am silly, or asking stupid questions, or who must return to their Important Business. Please, return to it.

Ahem.

Now that we're quite alone, I ask:

If patriarchy is everything, if it determines everything and controls everything and none of us really has any agency and none of us can really escape or even have any concept of what it might be like outside of patriarchy or how we might make the world better because everything we do is just contributing to the system, like some evil feedback loop, then what the fuck are you doing?

Yes, that's it. I said it. What are you doing, hypothetical radfem? Spreading the anti-gospel that we're all in a world of shit, have always been, always will be? Convincing others that we're totally SOL and nothing can possibly ever change that?

Why?

Isn't everything you are doing, your activism and writing and reading and thinking and walking your dog on a bright Spring morning, part of that system? It's a secular predestination doctrine, isn't it? If nothing matters, then nothing matters. Not even telling me that nothing matters. Not even being right, or changing laws, or anything. At all. Because we have no power and no way of getting it.

Now I want you to understand, hypothetical reader (regardless of your radness) that I am ohsotempted by this kind of reasoning. Friends and family wail and gnash teeth, or at least leave the room, when I start in on this type of thing, because they know it might go on for HOURS. Nothing matters. I am a speck of dust. We are at the mercy of forces larger than ourselves. I am sad, lonely, and emo. Etc.

So, if patriarchy = gravity, a powerful and inescapable force, then what?

Well, then, I suppose, whether or not something is truly feminist and liberated is utterly beside the point, because nothing is. Then, I suppose, we must create a new kind of measure for our activism, our creative work, and our lives. We must ask new questions.

If we cannot ask, "is this act sufficiently feminist?" perhaps we might ask, "is there a way to make this situation better? is there a way to harm fewer people? to help more? to create more joy than pain? to make someone smile?"

We could ask, "can I contribute in a way that is meaningful to me? that will brighten my day, or my life? can I build something I might be proud of? can I create memories that I want to carry with me?"

Maybe these are the questions we should have been asking all along?

Hypothetical radfem is displeased, perhaps - "but you are merely a tool!" she says. "You are not empowered! You are not free!"

And neither are you. And neither is anyone. And so, perhaps there isn't really much use in discussing it anymore. Would you like some wine?

10 reasons why I don't really know what I think about Iceland's strip club law

So, Iceland passed a law banning strip clubs, which "will make it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees."

When I first read the headline, I thought, "Hmmm." And then I read this quote by Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold," and I thought, Right. The fuck. On.

And then I headed over to Feministe, and read Jill's take, and I actually started thinking. Because, really, isn't this kind of the Central Debate of Our Day. Or any day? Isn' t this a Big Divisive Feminist Question? Even in my own head, it's a Big Divisive Question. And even if you know why, I'll tell you why anyway.

1) Because I am skeptical of laws that limit personal freedoms. At least in theory. I think we should trust people to be able to make their own decisions. I am concerned by laws that tell you what you can and cannot do with your body. I am concerned with the idea that women are just always victims, and categorically unable to make choices.

2) Because I am aware how often the "person freedom" schtik is used to support abusive, exploitative, power-hungry, victimizing people, organizations, and practices. Personal freedom means little to a lot of people. Personal freedom is money. It belongs to the people with the money and it is their prerogative to share it, or not.

3) Because I don't know where the line is between my right to self-determination and social good. Because there is a line; there has to be - if you deny that you're an absolute anarchist. We must all, to a greater or lesser extent, consent to have our freedoms limited if we are to live in a society, for the good of that society. Blasphemy, I know.

4) Because I am not a sex-worker, and never have been, and am perhaps not likely to be, and so any of my ideas or theories are necessarily based on second, third, or tenth-hand information, and therefore anything I have to say is really not at all relevant.

5) Because I hate the "you're not a real feminist because..." arguments, even if I join them sometimes. Because I hate the privilege inherent in saying, "that's not good for you, trust me I know." Because I don't know, and neither does anyone else who isn't you. Because I think that in a world that doesn't respect or honor individuals, that doesn't really often listen to them, we need to listen to them.

6) Because making sex work of any kind illegal is, to me, kind of beside the point. Because if you want to make sex work illegal because (you assume) women are forced into it due to poverty and addiction, you are not actually fixing the problems of poverty and addiction. You are, in fact, maybe making them worse by removing one potential method of income for some women. If you want to make it illegal because it's not safe, you're not actually making women safe. Because you're assuming, somehow, that sex work is the cause of the lack of safety, that the behavior of the women is the problem, that violence just happens, that it grows organically next to sex work in some kind of natural symbiosis, you're taking the perpetrators out of the equation entirely. AND because making it illegal probably won't stop it.

7) Because it's hard for me to accept that we are going to encourage any sort of gender equality in a society in which the unspoken last resort of women is to sell their bodies, in which women bought and sold and on display is just part of daily life, in which the constant message is that we're valuable first and foremost for our bodies, for what we can provide, for how available we are to eyes and hands and other things.

8) Because we live in an increasingly global world, and even if one suddenly found NO representations or realities of objectified women in Iceland, it wouldn't fix anything. Those representations and realities are everywhere else. Because I don't know how taking away those representations will actually change the minds of the people who make up culture, of the people who buy and sell and create and destroy and write the scripts, for all of us, all the time.

9) Because, as Jill writes, "at the end of the day you can’t regulate or legislate respect."

10) Because patriarchy is like air. It's everywhere, in everything, it not only permeates the atmosphere it IS the atmosphere. There is nothing separate from it, nothing that can really escape or live in isolation from it. I believe this. I didn't used to. Advertising, books, movies, history, music, religion, fashion, humor, wars, resources, politics, business, street names, social systems...it's like air. And therefore nothing we do can really be apart from it, and none of us can really be immune. It doesn't matter what we do.

On that nihilistic note, I suppose I will end.