A strange thing happened on October 8th. Commentary began to circulate about an interview with Chris Brown in the Guardian, propelled by the implications of an offhand reference he made to his own sexual history. Brown described his first sexual encounter at the age of eight with a teenage girl.
The reaction itself, originating largely from a Flavorwire response to the interview, arrived on a Tuesday, a full four days after the interview was published. The initial post and its responses were marked by a sort of dawning realization. Chris Brown had been a victim of sexual assault. It’s just that — partly because he was Chris Brown — no one had noticed.
To their credit, the writers broadly recognized the dissonance between the reaction (or lack thereof) to the revelation of what actually happened. What felt like a big deal somehow wasn’t. Flavorwire’s initial piece was largely focused on the enmity that Brown draws from the culture at large and speculated that Brown’s violent behavior and public volatility might have subconsciously originated in the abuse.
Colorlines wrote about the pitfalls of outing someone as a rape victim even when they wouldn’t necessarily agree to the characterization. Author and poet Olivia A. Cole characterized the self-erasure of male sex assault victims as a symptom of patriarchal culture.
Something that many of these writers touch on, but don’t fully explore, is the connection that’s evident in this case between sexual violence and gender. It’s a subject with which I am unhappily familiar. I was an undergraduate when Jerry Sandusky, a defensive coordinator for Penn State’s football team, was arrested and charged with 48 counts of sexual abuse, committed against boys he met and groomed through his charity work. The public reaction to the case was explosive, and rightly so. Toxic and systemic functions of patriarchal culture were laid bare – the use of the charity to target and groom disadvantaged children, the willful ignorance of Penn State’s venerable coach Joe Paterno and the deliberate aiding and abetting of the abuse by many in Penn State’s football administration besides.
While the public reaction to the scandal was one of uniform horror (barring perhaps a minority of delusional Penn State fans), reaction in the circles I worked in was muted. I was involved in campus feminist activism as an undergraduate: our groups organized Take Back the Night rallies, spoke to freshmen about violence, and fought the school administration to ensure our campus Women’s Center continued to receive funding. The work was important to me. I had come to feminist activism as a survivor. It was little surprise that my friends’ and colleagues’ reaction to the Penn State scandal troubled me the way that it did.
To a certain extent, the disconnect between mainstream public reaction to the case and those of the activists that I knew was rational and expected – we who knew the nature of sexual violence as a function of patriarchy and its true prevalence had moved beyond the point of shock from such revelations. Once the first accuser appeared we knew with some certainty that more would materialize. It made a terrible sort of sense to us.
But the knowing calm was underpinned with something troubling. It was something I had felt, like an itch, for some time. The everyday caution expressed around my male identity was evident and (I thought) largely justified, but there was a particular kind of tension that arose when I presented as an out survivor of sexual violence, a sense of disorientation. Their words were supportive, and I believe that they cared about me and my experience, but it sometimes felt as though I represented a paradox.
That conceptual frustration was later expressed in several articles asking how the scandal would have landed had the victims been girls instead of boys. On its face this was a legitimate question to ask. How would things had played out differently, if they had played out at all? But it felt to me as though, passed around on social networks by my friends and mentors, it served more as the release of a pressure valve than anything else.
It felt as though the parts of the feminist movement I was involved in were at war, caught between liberal (and to some extent, intersectional) notions of solidarity and collective advocacy, and radical notions of gender, patriarchy and structurally enforced power. That tension was most evident to me in sexual violence advocacy. The early and vital radical work around defining violence, through Mackinnon, Dworkin and others, was necessarily and essentially gendered: the victim as woman and the perpetrator as man, forever and for all time. This was the root of the confusion I experienced with my friends.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my particular experienced has been nominally championed by so-called Men’s Rights Activists (a label that falls apart at the slightest inspection). Whatever imperfect ways feminist activists may have arranged support structures, the foundational argument of anti-violence radicalism remains relevant: Violence, sexual violence in particular, is both a function and an instrument of institutional power and privilege. This much appears evident. Whatever position it claims to take, men’s rights as an ideology rejects this tenet, and thus can never represent any sort of victim of violence. Their work is fundamentally destructive even as it claims to constructively advocate.
Conversely, the position of such advocacy within feminist work remains fraught. There are two typical positions: the first and most common is that anti-violence work as it is practiced now produces a trickle-down effect that benefits even those who aren’t necessarily represented by name or group. That “the patriarchy hurts everyone” is a refrain frequently heard among liberals, often in order to build a coalition around pre-existing work (that it makes less sense when placed in the context of lived privilege is a topic for another essay).
The rarer, and perhaps more honest position, is that anti-sexual-violence work isn’t meant for men and never really was, at least in the sense of advocacy. Men are still privileged; we must still take responsibility for anti-violence work among ourselves. But the inclusion of male survivors in the context of anti-sexual-violence advocacy is an awkward retrofit. The anti-sexual-violence movement, such as it is, was built over decades by female feminists, particularly radical feminists, particularly radical lesbian feminists, particularly around college campuses and other such places where safe spaces could be fashioned. The safe space, and its inherent gendering, was critical. Observe the history of any venerable Take Back the Night movement within a community and chances are good that it will have been women-only before a certain point in time, if it isn’t still. That fact speaks to the purpose of anti-violence work, as articulated through radical theory, as a specifically gendered movement.
This is not to say that the anti-violence advocacy is inherently flawed – indeed, the reasons behind the necessity of gendered safe spaces are intuitively reasonable. Leaving aside notions of “collapsible women,” the need for survivors to actively avoid triggers (which sometimes includes the presence of men), is a basic and vital function of the work. But when male survivors are introduced our problem becomes immediately clear. Some argue for a separate activist arm, for men and boys who have experienced sexual violence to rely upon each other. This is an idea that’s worth considering, but it may have been articulated too late. The broad rhetoric of the anti-violence movement has in large part already moved beyond the essential, in order to accommodate oppressed people outside of its initially narrow definitions.
Before I came to college I had barely any awareness of anti-violence advocacy in general, let alone advocacy among men. Women’s studies (and other critical studies departments) were essentially the only game in town, as far as entry into anti-violence work was concerned, but it was also the only shelter to be had as a survivor, the only place I could exist free of stigma and fear. Notions of a critical masculine study around which an autonomous advocacy might have formed was uniformly met with apprehension and scorn (and not without reason). The slow realization that I was in some ways an interloper in the place I felt safest was upsetting.
Independent advocacy isn’t an inherently lost cause – despite distrust from the wider advocacy community and high-profile failures like the Good Men Project, some modest resources continue to be available, in addition to those provided by generalist organizations like RAINN – but my personal situation, in light of the safe space issue, is untenable. As a survivor of male violence, the same reasoning that places me outside of feminist safe spaces makes the concept of a male-gendered safe space inherently inappropriate. I am left with no natural platform for advocacy. Perhaps that is the end of it. If there’s a solution to my dilemma, I have yet to find it.
The hypothetical gender-flipped Sandusky case represented among my fellows a visceral outcry against the perversion of their work, a reclamation of territory in a zero-sum game. There was a worry, not unfounded, that the Penn State case would dilute attention toward narratives of violence against women who desperately needed it. And yet, while simultaneously benefiting from male privilege, I have also never been embraced by the wider culture as a survivor. As Cole beautifully elucidates, sexual violence against men complicates the already narrow definition of what such things are. It puts the lie to a fabricated notion of what a male experience is and should be.
The feminists I worked with still could not contain my experience or that of the Penn State victims in its essentialist strictures. I have a great love of feminism, but so long as I am vocal as a survivor I exist as a troubling puzzle to traditional anti-violence activism. As I am, I continue to serve the way that privileged people ought to, as amplifiers for oppressed people, because it’s the right thing to do and there are other people’s lives at stake. But the network of feminist amplification is not reserved for me or those like me. Anti-violence work is an apparatus that I will always support but I do not expect it to support me.
My friends I can rely upon, but revolutionary advocacy does not consider me one of its first concerns.
Initially the measured and thoughtful response to Chris Brown’s admission struck me as odd, given all of this, but in many ways Chris Brown is a “safe” victim to consider. That Brown was victimized by a woman, in an abusive context that many consider to be technical or statutory rather than “actual,” marks him as a case that can be analyzed without confusing vital notions of gendered violence. There is little dissonance to be resolved in that respect. I hold hope that greater adoption of intersectional feminism(s) could, in some possible future, reduce this fundamental discord. But for now, I — and others like me — remain problems to be solved, rather than assets to the cause of ending sexual violence.
Tags: chris brown, intersectionality, john w. thompson, mens’ rights activism, sexual assault
Wow, I think everybody is afraid to comment!
Yup. That was a very powerful story, and he made some really good points, and I’m like… I have no idea what to say in response.
I tried, but my comment as not approved, because I do no agree with where Thompson is coming from.
I am the only one moderating today, and I approved your comment as soon as it came across the transom. We’re not in the business of censoring people unless they’re real jerks or disagree with us about almonds.
Cool, thanks! Maybe there was something funky with my browser. I apologize for getting upset. And I promise to never disagree with you about almonds (I’m not a monster).
I hate when people who’ve posted before go to moderation for no reason. Jessie-Lane Metz is an AUTHOR, and I always have to manually approve her comments.
I blame the patriarchy.
I’m so sorry for your experiences, and think you make many valid points. However, I wonder if things will change for you once you leave university. I have multiple male friends who both identify politically as feminists and have experienced sexual assault, and I’ve never felt conflicted about supporting them. Not to be the Anecdotal Contrarian, but I wonder if that peculiar, university-bred dogma flu is responsible for making it hard for you to find safe spaces.
I am fairly familiar, as an activist, with the larger physical community that is available to John (shelters, rape crisis centers, various non-profits, governmental agencies, etc) and basically, no, it doesn’t get much better. This is not an issue isolated to John’s specific campus, or to university campuses. And based on my experiences with internet feminism, it’s not a regional issue, either.
This blew me away. I’ve only really heard discussion of male victims of sexual assaults from men’s rights activists (which you critiqued brilliantly) in really problematic ways or in ways that actually say “women don’t matter.” This was SO brilliant and just showed the shortcomings of the current system. I identify very strongly as a feminist but even though I hear that we need to be more “intersectional” I rarely see it in practice and I find the “feminist apparatus” to be (understandably) defensive and unwilling to allow for those intersections of identity and to diverge from its preset narrative. Am I the only one? Perhaps my experience is limited to certain advocacy groups.
“As I am, I continue to serve the way that privileged people ought to, as amplifiers for oppressed people, because it’s the right thing to do and there are other people’s lives at stake. But the network of feminist amplification is not reserved for me or those like me. Anti-violence work is an apparatus that I will always support but I do not expect it to support me.” Bam. Wow. What an amazing piece.
This reeks of male entitlement.
First of all, I am not comfortable with men calling themselves feminists, particularly because men in feminist circles will often want to shift the focus to their issues. Case and point: this post. In fact, I didn’t know he wasn’t an MRA until I got to the paragraph about MRAs.
I have much empathy for male victims of sexual violence, but the vast majority of sexual violence perpetrators are male and the majority of victims are female. Feminism, which is a movement by and for women, has every right to name the problem (male violence) and address the issue in a way that helps members of its movement (women).
Look, I’m sorry that the feminist movement has not helped you in the way that you’ve wanted it to, but the feminist movement is not FOR you.
Are female victims of sexual violence necessarily a feminist ONLY space, then? Yes, attention to sexual violence is a result of the feminist movement but 1 in 8 boys will be sexually assaulted before they are 18. While that is dwarfed by the number of woman who are sexually assaulted it is still an alarmingly high number. They have to receive care and support, as well, and I don’t believe that doing so is contrary to the feminist movement. For me, the fight is against patriarchy and everyone it harms- which sometimes is also men.
No, female sexual violence victims are not necessarily a feminist only space, but Thompson was discussing feminist spaces in his piece and that’s what I was referring to in my response.
I’m a man and I consider myself a strong feminist ally, and I agree with klemay. There’s no reason that feminism needs to become an all-encompassing progressive force. It is best suited to addressing the issues that woman-gendered persons face. There can be many progressive movements, and I think the answer to the question that John poses is not to reshape or co-opt feminism, but rather to create a complimentary movement, which can share common goals (e.g eradication of sexual violence) but not necessarily other things. I think that it’s dangerous to try and wrap one movement around all problems!
Thank you, Ward. I was too upset about this piece to say this in the way that I wanted to, but this is what I was getting at!
I totally agree with you on that. Feminism should NOT apologize for not serving men (duh, that’s sort of the point cause everything else is there to do that already.) The vast majority of victims are female and advocacy groups should focus on women. I think it becomes problematic when advocacy groups actively silence male victims. And, at least in groups I’ve been a part of, men do not feel comfortable even sharing their experiences because they would be accused of shifting the focus. The question becomes, is there any way for male victims to get support without it being problematic?
Yes, they can form their own movement and safe spaces.
Did you miss the part that dealt with why an all male environment wouldn’t be a safe space for someone who had ben abused by a man, or do you just not care? (You’re not obligated to care, except that you said you were coming from a place of empathy). Based on your comments, I honestly feel like we read different articles. I don’t see a single demand. I see an observation that the status quo sucks and that all the alternatives also suck.
That sounds like a very unfair thing to say to victims. Seeing how I actually did, verbally, apologize because I was molested twice to three women; going from being sorry for even letting that fact being known ALLLLL the way to creating a safe space for myself and others all the while avoiding the MRA sticker and keeping the feminism seal of approval is just a little much.
At the same time, I’m not going to ask anyone to talk for me either.
Just to clarify, I apologized to three women (at a college whilst smoking outside) and NOT that they attacked me. It was sorta my fault though, as one lady that I was very well acquainted with mentioned that she didn’t know any males that were abused, and I brought up that she knew me. It was a bit awkward, as I wasn’t “coming” out. But the point was how reflexive I was about apologizing.
“The vast majority of sexual violence perpetrators are male and the majority of victims are female”
This part rubbed me the wrong way. I am not interested in a feminism that addresses experiences and issues affecting only the majority.
I’m not interested in a feminism that has to apologize for not serving men. You’re right, I should have phrased that differently. I was trying to get at the fact that feminism is a movement for women, so it makes sense that it would focus on this majority in particular, even though the minority here is still important.
I’m not going to speak to “the feminist movement,” but my feminism doesn’t have my male entitlement alarms set off by John’s narrative. I want to lift the patriarchy off everyone’s foot, and this makes me feel like gender norms and expectations hurt all of us, women and male allies alike, and limit us all.
And, FWIW, I spent, like, the last two nights reading Twisty Faster archives, so my trans-INCLUSIVE rad-fem powers are strong right now.
(I’m married to a dude, I love men, but one day we will be able to take their seed and move on. Jk, sort of. NO, it’s a jk. Sort of.)
If only TIRF didn’t rhyme with TERF, I’d be all over that.
I will admit that my male entitlement alarm is perhaps more sensitive than that of the average feminist. The patriarchy does hurt everyone, but my priority is and always will be women. My sense of sisterhood is intense, maybe even militant at times.
I am an ally to several social justice movements and I always appreciate it when members of the movement keep me in check. I hope John feels the same way.
It’s funny that your male entitlement alarm is ringing from this post, because my non-inter-sectional feminism alarm is ringing from your comments. How would you feel about a trans woman who wanted to partake in feminism and feminist spaces? What about people who just don’t fall perfectly on one side of the gender binary? How far does it have to go, making feminism just about the ‘sisterhood’?
I just keep thinking that that needs to be a new word. I’m not sure I want to call myself a feminist anymore if so many people think that being a feminist means that male sexual assault survivors don’t get to partake in the movement or the safe spaces. I’m for equality, period. I’m for consent being the rule in sexual interactions. I’m for gay rights, trans rights, civil rights, people of all colors, creeds, religions, ect. ect. being able to be be treated with respect. Why isn’t there a word for this? Clearly feminist isn’t that word.
I just didn’t get a male entitlement vibe from this at all. In fact he seems very cognizant of the reasons for why he wasn’t a priority in feminist spaces, and he didn’t seem to be suggesting that he should have been. I think he was just trying to highlight the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a strong community that exists to promote healing for male sexual assault survivors, or prevention of male sexual assault.
But do we really have to divide up the fight this much? I’m straight, white, cis gendered female. I know I have a ton of privilege, and I’m not okay with just fighting against the oppression I face. Everyone deserves equality, that’s kind of the point. We’re not really going to get anywhere with infighting and deciding who gets to participate in which cause.
could you please not use trans women’s existence as an argument to include men in feminist space/dialogue/etc
i mean i am on the authors side all the way here but you can be too without pushing us into potential minefields and implying we are sorta half men
For what it’s worth, I did not read her as implying that a trans woman is sort half a man, but as noting that there are some circles of feminism/lesbianism that take exactly that stance. The Michigan Women’s Music Festival is struggling with this very issue this year, and the Indigo Girls made an onstage statement that they wouldn’t be back.
Given that I’m cisgendered hetero male, you wouldn’t think I had much at stake. However, both my daughter and one of my best friends are trans women, and they are powerfully affected by these attitudes. In case it isn’t clear, I support them, and you as women, full stop.
yes i am aware. i don’t see how anyone is helped by giving a mirror image of TERFs own slippery slope arguments. exclude trans women bc that’s almost like letting in men <-> include men bc that’s almost like excluding trans women. either way we are rhetorically half- (or whole) men, not women with issues distinct from them.
thanks for the support tho i guess.
My own reference to trans-inclusive radfem was just to make clear that I have no interest in trans-exclusive radfem, not to relate it to John’s story or his experience of feminist spaces, FWIW.
I get the impression, though, that he would agree with you that feminism is not a movement for him. It seems as though the change he wants to see is not necessarily a male-problem-inclusive feminism, but a separate movement that does address his problems (and is also not terrible, thereby disqualifying the MRA movement).
Thank you for your comment, I know it’s sincere and this is important to you, but it’s important to me too and I have to be real. So:
That’s the whole point, isn’t it? That we’ve defined “survivor” in a very strict way, for a very specific purpose. The sense I came to very early on was that it was a mantle that was not mine by blood right, and that despite my abuse I not entitled to it. And I’ve had many people, like yourself, present themselves as gatekeepers and regulators of what a survivor is, in terms of meaning.
You’re right that there is a fundamental problem of space at play. One of the first things that I learned when I started work in activism, probably the most important thing, is that voices carry at different volumes, and that people have a finite capacity for hearing. As a man I will be paid attention to, I know that. I’ve held onto these thoughts for so many years precisely because of that. I’ve no desire to steal the voice of women and girls who were victimized, but it’s been made clear to me, more than once, that I already have by being “out” as a survivor. I’ve stolen something that doesn’t belong to me. This is what I referred to when I called activism a “zero-sum game”, it is the source of vexation that plagued my friends and teachers. Essentialist feminism cannot suffer me to exist, I am abominable to it.
But even knowing that, even knowing that people might turn to me as some sort of authority for no good reason, even though I potentially threaten the good work of people holding perverse philosophies, I couldn’t keep myself from writing these things. I will never claim to speak for women survivors, or most male survivors for that matter. In fact, I actively reject such claims. I have to write these things because as much as I would rather it not be the case, I exist and continue to exist as a survivor. If I could do what is requested of me, wrap myself in silence and bury myself somewhere where I’ll never be seen and disrupt delicate hothouse praxis, I would, in a heartbeat, but I can’t. It sits there in the middle of my chest and there is no sheet large enough to cover it and no blanket heavy enough to smother it. There are a lot of people like me, not necessarily with my exact identities but with identities that stink of wrongness to some cross section of activism that claims dominion over what is and isn’t germane to shared work. Trans* people, indigenous people, sex workers, the mentally ill. They can’t wait until other people come to a consensus so that they might be spoken for. They speak for themselves, as they must. They shouldn’t have to wait to be slotted into someone else’s carefully constructed rhetorical framework. And neither should they shut themselves up if some academic or NGO or venerable activist declares that they don’t matter.
I know full well that the feminist movement is not for me. I’m fine with that fact. But I need to have a voice, to advocate and have others advocate for me, and my concern is that I am so fundamentally wrong to your contingent that my expulsion from first-person feminist advocacy, which I accept, will not sate you. I openly acknowledge that the failure of men’s coalitions (if you call them that) is rampant and sickening, the Good Men Project has used the rhetoric I condemn here with genders reversed, MRAs are not radical activists nor advocates, they don’t care about violence and never have.* I’ve long worried that no platform I stand upon will ever be too small, and I will have to fight you and your cohort whenever I dare to state what I am and what was done to me in public. It breaks my heart that that is the case, but I’ve tried being silent to appease people, it is no longer possible, and if other people feel they need to ensure that what was done to me is not recognized and accounted for, then by God I will fight them no matter how fast and hard they come, no matter their reasons. I’m sick of hating myself for being a survivor and I will never brook anyone telling me that I’m not again. I do the same for my many, many friends who have survived such horror and (imo) worse are abused and harrassed, as they often are, and I will never tolerate it. I will advocate for their recognition, space and retribution. But I have to do the same for myself.
* That you call me an MRA would be insulting to me but I recognize it as a simple manifestation of how my mere existence is incompatible with the beliefs of some in anti-violence work.
This was a deep and thoughtful response to Klemay’s comment. I can only hope that She takes the time to read this not from a defensive position but from one that seeks to understand.
I think you are very brave to speak out about your abuse. I hope this doesn’t seem trite, but the reaction you are getting seems very similar to the bi erasure problem that is plaguing the gay rights movement. Because bisexual people can participate in heteronormative relationships they are seen as being more privileged than homosexuals, and as such are not always welcomed into the movement for gay rights. Your maleness does convey extra privilege, but I sincerely don’t believe that that means that you should be silenced from speaking out about sexual assault as a survivor of it. I think it is incredibly harmful to tell people that they are not allowed to speak out against their own oppressors or the system that encourages sexual assault. We should all have the right to speak out against inequality.
This is really what we mean when we talk about the need for intersectionality in feminism. The idea that men make up most perpetrators, and women make up most victims, and therefore should be the only focus lends itself to other ideas: White women are the majority, therefore, they are the only ones that matter, straight women are the majority, therefore, the only ones that really matter, cis women are the majority, therefore, the only ones that really matter, etc. Feminism needs to be justified on some grounds other than “because women are slightly more than half the population”, and so do feminist sexual violence movements.
this was wonderfully written. i have a lot of feelings about it and will probably come back to comment more coherently later, but i just wanted to thank you right away for sharing in such a thoughtful way
Thanks for writing this, John.
Thank you for the platform, Nicole 🙂
hey Danzig, we’ve talked on the ‘Pin where I’m Judith Slutler, I just wanted to say hey and thank you so much for sharing your perspective.
I was thinking: how did I not know he was Danzig until today, hah.
Thank you for this. There’s a lot to think about in every sentence.
When I was an undergrad, I helped put together a project based on Grace Brown’s Unbreakable project, in which survivors of sexual violence held up signs on which they had written words from their rapist or words from unsupportive friends and family. One of the survivors was male. In that context, I strongly feel that the inclusion of that man made people realize that sexual assault is NOT just a “women’s issue.” It might not have fit perfectly into existing narratives, but I thought it expanded them in ways that were useful and important to advocacy, at least on our campus.
I don’t mean to discredit or challenge your experience, and I really hope that’s not how I’m coming across. I just wanted to say that I have seen a story of male sexual assault incorporated into feminist advocacy in this one small way, and I very much hope that more of that will come.
Not at all. When I spoke at TBTN I know that everyone that I worked with supported me and my the legitimacy of my story and its place in that event, but I knew after the fact that there were those who disapproved. I prefer the company of feminists to all others, I feel safest with the people that I know, but I know that there are “big picture” people out there who see my presence as an affront to their work and to the legacy of feminism, who feel disappointed that it has even acknowledged me. Ultimately I don’t ask that I’m advocated for by them but I demand the right to advocate for myself.
The slow realization that I was in some ways an interloper in the place I felt safest was upsetting.
This sentence is so understated, but out of everything this was what made me tear up.
I understand why some survivor spaces might need to be women-only because of triggering issues, and I understand that activists don’t want to distract from the problem of male violence against women and girls, but there has to be a place for male survivors too, particularly because there’s still an enormous problem of adult sexual violence against children, where both men and women victimize both boys and girls. Where are these survivors supposed to go when they grow up, if the traditional safe survivor spaces aren’t welcoming for some of them? How can we create a safe space with those survivors of any gender who will be comfortable in a multi-gender space?
Vlasic used to make these “mexicana” spears (probably not authentic) which were pickled with garlic and copious amounts of dried pepper flakes and they were really quite delicious. I like spicy pickles, but I’ll settle for the garlicky sort.
I can’t really speak for woman-on-man violence, it was not what I was subjected to, but I think it’s a worthy thing to examine and you’d stand to do a lot of good.
Here’s sort of how I see it, big picture-wise: As I alluded to in the essay and as you point out explicitly, second-wave activists like Mackinnon and Dworkin did a lot of early work in setting the table for anti-violence work, both in terms of physical and sexual abuse, legally and conceptually. It’s difficult to understate the fact that prior to the women’s movement, public perception and legal protection of victims were even worse than they are now, so we have to acknowledge the extreme efforts they put into developing that foundation and their relative success.
Linguistics and semiotics have always been cornerstones of critical thought, and while on their face arguments over words and semantics seem trivial, it’s important to recognize the power that words have, not in the typical sense but in their capacity for setting the boundaries of imagination and possibility. Some of the most critical work of the second wave was identifying in language what had previously been unspeakable, making the invisible visible, building communities out of experiences people hadn’t realized they shared. They defined terms, and from terms came theory and from theory came practice. In the crudest, most reductive sense, that’s what happened, particularly with regard to campus / intellectual activism.
Anyway, it’s evident now that the initial work was incomplete, due to simple ignorance or personal fault or intentional compromise for the sake of consistency. Call it a problem of ownership. The issues that the earliest anti-violence advocates set out to address are clearly unresolved. What started as a desperate fight hasn’t really gotten better over time. Anti-violence work (anti-establishment work of any sort really) is always under siege by a majority that doesn’t want to think about such things and fears the implications of facing them.
Naturally the constant fear of giving way by an ounce and being crushed doesn’t provide a particularly friendly environment for diversity in the ranks. So you have a lot of deep, historical divisions. Women of color have always, always been taken for granted by women’s movements, trans* people were openly reviled by the most revered second wave radicals and are reviled still by their descendants, and de Beauvoir’s easy paternalism pervades everywhere, in attitudes toward sex work and parenting and God knows how many cultural borderlands.
… I’m splitting this up into two comments because I’m getting so broad here. Second comment inbound.
The patriarchy. Its some bullshit. Thanks for the terrible article my man
So many thoughts/feels. As it stands, feminist groups are often the only game in town actively fighting against male violence/rape culture/toxic ideas of masculinity and the like, so turning away dudes who are victims of that culture as well just doesn’t sit right with me.
Someone upthread mentioned the specific nature of academia maybe being an issue here, and I tend to agree. The late 20s, early 30s lady-feminists I know can totally throw down with some hardcore feminist theory, but I’ve found that the further we get from school the less concerned with movement purity and more with results we are. You want to overcome rape culture, toxic ideas of masculinity, the pay gap, the war against abortion access, etc? Well, you can just come sit with me in my corner of feminism. Call yourself whatever you want.
I agree entirely. My father was a stay-at-home dad in the 1980s and 1990s. He gave up his STEM academic career to watch the kids while my mom was a physician. He coached my girls’ soccer team, read “Anne of Green Gables” aloud, and explained to me the importance of charitable contributions to Planned Parenthood. In a low-key, unpretentious way, he lived gender expectation-smashing ideals, and sacrificed quite a bit along the way. So don’t tell me he’s not a feminist. You walk the walk, you are a feminist.
A good argument could be made that hegemonic pressure also accounts for the reactionary nature of so much radical activism. Second wave radicals did a ton of work just establishing the concepts of things like sexual violence and with so many wolves at the door they naturally became quite aware of how easily everything they invested in could be pulled out from under them. So when they had their framework for looking at the world and the systems and concepts underpinning all its problems (and solutions) it became solid, preserving it became a struggle in itself. You had a certain amount of leeway with regard to change, solidarity with WoC, etc. but when it came to first principles, particularly with regard to gender, there was no quarter given. If you didn’t have a final and definitive concept of what men and women are, what constitutes them and their experiences, what good is the concept of patriarchy? How do you fight against the evil underpinning all evils when you can’t firmly say what it is?
So it’s easy to see where TERFs and the like come from. It’s less a failure of imagination than a fear of having to revise and replace the “truths” at the very base of everything that they’ve built. To them there’s no good in revision of ideas and rhetoric, they only serve to dismantle feminist practice and countervail progress. So the abuse of trans* people and the erasure of survivors like myself continues unabated. It’s sad how quickly you can go from radical to reactionary with these things.
This was fabulous. I’m a woman, but my own abuse history has not fit a traditional feminist paradigm of gender relations, and am absolutely fascinated by women who rape men (like, fascinated in a way where I’d kind of like to study it for a living). I have also noticed exactly the issue you speak of; when I’ve asked for there to be more gender diversity, I tend to get called an MRA.
In many ways, I think it’s a real shame that the second wave feminist anti-violence movement was so dominated by radical-cultural and radical lesbian feminists. We’re always having to start with that as the foundation, and then add on little improvements here and there, and it ends up feeling like putting on a new coat of paint on a decaying building. I think if the anti-violence movement had been dominated by the other side of radical feminism – the side made up largely of sex radicals, many of whom eventually became big queer thinkers – we wouldn’t have this sort of tension. It is entirely possible to reconcile the amount of male survivors, and female perpetrators, with feminism, by using queer concepts of gender fluidity and deconstructing the gender binary. By moving away from gender-based violence, and towards gendered violence.
But now, we must always start with a flawed foundation. It’s not as simple as “go make your own safe spaces”, because while that is entirely doable for some spaces (like shelters), other spaces are set up to be a central and single hub within a community (like rape crisis centers). While queer theory and the motley crews that make up queer coalitions could do great things on a larger level, it’s also not particularly appropriate for straight cis male survivors to use the spaces queers carve out specifically for themselves and their abuse, as the situation currently is.
And so we find ourselves in quite a pickle. Do you like kosher dill, or bread and butter?
Vlasic used to make these “mexicana” spears (probably not authentic) which were pickled with garlic and copious amounts of dried pepper flakes and they were really quite delicious. I like spicy pickles, but I’ll settle for the garlicky sort.
(sent you an email)
“the side made up largely of sex radicals, many of whom eventually became big queer thinkers”
sure, if patrick califia and friends had been more concerned with organizing around stopping patriarchal violence than organizing in defense of kinky sex and porn (and at the time, defending NAMBLA for gods sake), that might have been the case. it’s not like radical feminists were recipients of exclusive government grants that allowed them to “dominate.” they did the work because no one else was doing it. in 5000+ years no one asked for male-inclusive survivor space until women, the primary victims of sexual violence, started creating our own. i got the impression the author recognized this.
I think the author is much more generous towards radfems in his historiography than I am, more generous than I think they actually deserve. (And, yes, eventually, they did get exclusive government grants that allowed them to dominate; rape crisis centers now get lots of government funding.)
Seriously? You think rape crisis centers are run by radical feminists?? I work at a domestic violence shelter, and I’m about the only person on staff who would even self-describe as a feminist. Mostly rape crisis and domestic violence organizations are run by social workers who happened to get a job there instead of at an organization for HIV, seniors, homeless, etc. And like most social workers, they’re largely Christian and a bit conservative and judgmental. Do you think RAINN is radical?
I don’t think they’re currently staffed by many radical feminists, several decades later. But either we all have to pay huge amounts of credit to radfems for starting them, regardless of how much they fucked up, or they aren’t to be credited with them then or now, and the argument about how at least radical feminists made some sort of space where we could talk about male survivors several decades later becomes quite a bit more shaky. Which one is it?
Having said that, I get the impression the people in my region are quite a bit to the left of yours.
I have some objections to how you’re framing the idea that deconstructing the binary will bring about an end to sexual violence.
The first is that I know way too many victims who come from–and abusers who continue to operate in–queer communities to have any faith in the notion that there is something inherently special about queering gender that makes those spaces operate differently than cis-het spaces. The same dynamics are there: the excuses, the victim blaming, the lack of accountability, the abuse of power, all of it. Queer communities are broken communities, too.
Second, the way you’re talking about this smells like appropriation. I mean, political lesbianism was douchey; let’s not repeat that mistake with gender-variant, genderfluid, etc. people who are already dealing with binarist crap all day every day. They’re people with lives, not object examples. As far as their usefulness as object examples goes, I refer you to my first objection.
I’m coming from the position of being non-binary, so it’s not as though I’m advocating continuing with an essentialist framing. But binary gender is so, so deeply embedded in our social psyches that it is a lot more complicated than trying to upsize queer theory and communities to the wider world. Much of the dicussion happening in so-called radical queer communities is deeply essentialist and nothing that is fit to be a working theory against sexual violence in the way you seem to be suggesting.
I wasn’t actually saying that that ending the gender binary would end sexual violence, because I don’t think that. I don’t think there’s any single root cause of violence, sexual or otherwise. I was saying there are ways to use *feminist theory* to be more inclusive of survivors within *feminism*, to make it so that it doesn’t have to be either Dworkin or rape culture. It’s pretty clear that most feminists aren’t going to be down with a new movement direction if it means giving up entirely on most or all of the basic concepts the movement is built upon (like, for example, a hypothetical anti-rape movement based on family violence theory). Part of the issue is figuring out a way to be more inclusive without asking people to have huge amounts of cognitive dissonance, and while being able to keep a certain amount of pride intact.
Exactly, that’s really unfair. Not to mention feminism is the only movement that is expected to serve our oppressors, so while I’m glad Bubbles is a-okay with including men, I’d rather think about maybe why that is (women being socially conditioned to appease to others — namely, men?).
I am not attempting to justify feminism on the grounds of “women are slightly more than half the populating.” My feminism is based on the fact that women are oppressed by men. Men are not just “49%” of the population – they are my oppressors. And I should not be expected to include them in my movement.
honestly its really upsetting me to have read this exquisitely thoughtful piece and john’s response to klemay above only for comments to start veering toward the familiar liberal mush of inclusion because inclusion is nicer and the second wave women who organized and founded shelters were just meanieheads.
To be clear, I don’t wish to conflate feminism and anti-sexual violence movements. While the latter is largely born out of the former, I’m not trying to claim that it “belongs” to feminism. I am entirely supportive of anti sexual violence movements that help men (for example, Project Unbreakable is doing a great job of including people of all genders). Not all movements/organizations are feminist, and not all feminist movements/organizations are exclusive of men. I will ALWAYS support and fight for women-only spaces, for obvious reasons (the most prominent one being one that you mentioned – the presence of men can be a trigger, and women deserve a safe space away from triggers). I read your original post and saw it as a critique of women-only spaces in feminism, which I do not feel that you have a place to speak about. If I am wrong, I apologize for that.
Otherwise, I think I am justified for calling you out. We don’t have to share our safe spaces with men. I advocate for spaces that are all-inclusive, or even just for male survivors, but I do not want to give up the one place in the world where I feel safe because members of my oppressor class want in. If you had written this from the standpoint of wanting a space for you to heal and work through your survivor status, I would not be here critiquing you. But when you criticize feminism for not creating that space for you, yes, I’m offended and I’m angry. I’m not looking to kick you out of the Feminism Club because it brings me joy. I am respectfully asking that you do not take this label, apply it to yourself, and then offer criticisms of a movement that does not belong to you, as you continue on your journey to find a way to advocate for yourself and find others to join you.
The asterisk at the end of your response – A snide remark about how I’m unfairly keeping you out of feminist spaces – tells me all I need to know about your willingness to put your male privilege aside and engage in a productive dialog here. When a member of an oppressed class tells you that they do not want you in their movement, it is your job to take a step back and think about WHY. I don’t know what you mean by “fighting me and my cohort,” because I’m not trying to deny you a platform to speak out about what happened to you. In fact, I don’t know when I *ever* implied that male survivors should be silenced. Saying that men can’t co-opt feminist safe spaces is not the same as saying men can’t have safe spaces at all.
I know in conversations like this, it’s hard to sit back and listen when someone shouts “privilege!” or “entitlement!” at you, because this is a deeply emotional issue and you are not a robot. But the oppression of women is a deeply emotional issue for me, and I care about the feminist movement and my sisters with every fiber of my being. That’s why I left my original comment, and why I’m asking you to listen.
Thank you for writing this, John. It is very important to address this issue across the board. Any victim of abuse needs safe spaces, and I agree with many of the other Toasties that feminism has an ideal starting framework for all to find that space.
My (much older) father was abused as a child by a family member. For many reasons – especially the attitudes of his generation – It wasn’t spoken of, just quietly disclosed by my mother to me at one especially difficult time in our family. I can’t even tell you how much that situation shaped my father’s life, in a negative and painful way, and how that in turn affected the lives of everyone who loved him. Finding support and establishing your safe space is key, and I hope you feel like you found that here.
I know this is kind of late, but I must say as a survivor that I don’t feel like I need protection from (for lack of a better word! Long day today) men. I don’t hate all men by any stretch of the imagination.
What I feel like I need protection from is rape culture, and the way I look at it is: there’s plenty of room for everyone over here by me. To gender survivorship denies people who have been harmed a rightful place. I have long thought it a problem, and I think it’s lovely that you wrote this, John.
Also: really well-written, too. Actually, since I used gender as a verb I doubt my compliment holds much weight, but you know.
I wasn't actually saying that that ending the gender binary would end sexual violence, because I don't think that. I don't think there's any single root cause of violence, sexual or otherwise. I was saying there are ways to use *feminist theory* to be more inclusive of survivors within *feminism*, to make it so that it doesn't have to be either Dworkin or rape culture. It's pretty clear that most feminists aren't going to be down with a new movement direction if it means giving up entirely on most or all of the basic concepts the movement is built upon (like, for example, a hypothetical anti-rape movement based on family violence theory). Part of the issue is figuring out a way to be more inclusive without asking people to have huge amounts of cognitive dissonance, and while being able to keep a certain amount of pride intact.
I think the author is much more generous towards radfems in his historiography than I am, more generous than I think they actually deserve. (And, yes, eventually, they did get exclusive government grants that allowed them to dominate; rape crisis centers now get lots of government funding.)
I don't think they're currently staffed by many radical feminists, several decades later. But either we all have to pay huge amounts of credit to radfems for starting them, regardless of how much they fucked up, or they aren't to be credited with them then or now, and the argument about how at least radical feminists made some sort of space where we could talk about male survivors several decades later becomes quite a bit more shaky. Which one is it?
Having said that, I get the impression the people in my region are quite a bit to the left of yours.
I found this to be incredibly insightful. Your perspective on feminism’s role in anti-violence work and how it impacts male survivors is one of the more honest and unique accounts I’ve read. I’m currently getting a masters in social work and am writing a paper on male survivors and the different challenges they face compared to female survivors. Would you be willing to answer a few questions for me? I’ve found some research on the topic, but I would love to have a personal perspective on the issue as well.
I’m glad I checked back here! Of course, email me. John.w.thompson1986 @ gmail
I'm glad I checked back here! Of course, email me. John.w.thompson1986 @ gmail
I have to say that the idea of sexual violence as a power structure gets on my wick, and is actually FAR more damaging than anything the MRA crowd can produce. If you’re a male survivor of sexual assault, and at least one of your abusers was female, your abuse is not accepted by the narrative of ‘rape as a means to preserve patriarchy’. Because how can an oppressor be a victim? How can men be victims when rape culture is defined by male on female violence? And that makes it doubly hard to get help.
Meanwhile, your life is not like others and is eating you up inside while you wonder ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?’ and blame yourself for your own suffering. You cry like a child from loneliness and wish you could be ‘normal’ like everybody else, but for some reason you don’t understand, you can’t. You don’t look for help partly because you think that people will blame you or tell you ‘Now you men know how it feels’ or even get asked if you’re gay.
And I say all of this because of my own experience.
Feminists have made claims to be allies to male survivors yet object to the subject being brought up, or object to male survivors organisations, unless they do what feminists tell them. It’s all very well for feminists to twist the awful crime of rape for their own political agenda, but what they fail to recognise is that their own self-evidently wrong ideals (rape is done by men to women) has a very real effect on people’s lives. I lost 13 years of my life that I could’ve had if I had the help I needed sooner, but not anymore. Ironically, female rape victims I spoke to were nothing but supportive.
Let’s face it, the only thing that’s damaging is the obsolete idea of sexual violence as a power structure.