As we noted in the comments to my “blogging our bodies” post, the idea that language and the user of language can be neutral is impossible. Queen Emily noted that it is cisgender white men who write with the “objective” voice, that others are always assumed to be Other, to be biased.
In studying journalism, it’s been pointed out to me several times that women journalists and journalists of color are always presumed to be biased when dealing with issues that relate to their gender or race. White men, by contrast, can be “neutral”–can live up to the famed journalistic goal of being “objective.”
Of course, this is crap.
Straight, cisgender white men write from a straight, cisgender white man perspective. In the field of journalism, most of them are also from the middle or upper classes, are educated, and thus bring additional slants to their writings. (Witness the coverage of the bailout of the financial giants v. the coverage of the proposed bailout of the big 3 automakers.)
In any case, “objectivity” is impossible. I would maintain that facts and truth are possible (at least truth insofar as it relates to empirical fact–George Bush is President, Nancy Pelosi said something, John McCain voted for that bill, it contained this text), but the idea that a journalist can put aside his or her own personal feelings and more importantly, his or her background to write from an “objective” position is impossible. The best we can hope for is, as one of my profs said, verification.
We see more and more verification being supplanted with this false idea of “balance” these days. Balance is even more screwed up than objectivity. Remember Jon Stewart going on Crossfire (a purportedly “balanced” show) to bitch out the hosts for hurting America?
“Balance” means that you go find someone from one side of an issue, and someone from another side, and get both their opinions, and then you’re being “objective.”
Yeah, well, there are lots of problems with that. But the one I’m thinking about right now is that it once again buys into a false binary. The idea that there are only two sides to any issue is a lie, but it sure buys into the way we like to see things in this country.
Democrat/Republican. Black/white. Male/female. Gay/straight. For/against. Enemy/ally.
This leaves out so much nuance that it’s disgusting.
For instance, the auto company bailout. I hate the auto execs–they’ve fought environmental restrictions for years, they’d love to bust their unions themselves, and it was damn stupid of them to fly private jets to Washington to ask for money. I would much rather see $25 billion spent elsewhere. But I think we should do it, because millions of jobs would be lost, because bankruptcy would completely break the unions for good, and because the auto companies are finally starting to invest in green technology, and right now would be a good time to continue supporting that.
In any case, I would argue that our binary fetish is one of the biggest problems we’ve got in this country, and it’s being made worse by this obsession with “both sides” in the media. There are never just two sides to any issue.
It’s even worse when the binary drawn is completely false: black voters vs. gay voters over Prop 8, for example. Two completely different categories–as if one cannot be black and gay, or that these categories have anything to do with one another, even if you accept that they are categories with clearly defined boundaries, which I don’t.
One of the things I liked best about Obama was that he seemed to understand that issues are more complex than two sides. That he can and will talk to people who are on “the other side” and find common ground, and that being biracial, being raised by a white family while being read as black by society, he understood that binaries are not what they appear to be. I hope that continues.
So back to journalism. It would seem that the profession, which often talks about the need for more diversity, understands that bodies and language are not neutral, that one cannot leave one’s body and background behind to be objective. Yet it still clings to these ideals as though there is no other way to be.
Well, those of us in the blogosphere know otherwise. We neither leave our identities at the door, nor bother trying for “balance.” Yet at least some of us try to verify our facts–the very custom of linking to other blogs, to news organizations, YouTube videos, documents, government sites shows that. You can’t just state a fact in the blogosphere without backing it up–well, you can, but you’re soon going to be asked for backup.
And since we have unlimited space to rant and rave and receive comments from readers, we get to explore many, many perspectives on complex issues. Our readership may (except for the occasional troll) agree with us on core principles, but any comment thread on a well-read blog will show you plenty of differences, arguments, and hairsplitting. This is a GOOD thing. It’s far healthier than tossing up Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson and pretending that these two rich white guys actually cover a range of opinions.
“I say a boring word like woman takes all the fun out of being a girl.” –Foxglove, “Death: The Time of Your Life”
Granted Neil Gaiman wrote that line, and he is definitely a guy, a straight white British guy for goodness’s sake, but I’ve been trying to think of where I read it for months now, every time I see these humorless ‘radical feminist’ arguments for some sort of vanilla world where there are no gender signifiers—which, by the way, are totally Western gender signifiers like lipstick and high heels that they’re always fighting, and not any sort of universal perception of women as weak and in need of protection constantly.
I mean, the idea that to “smash the gender binary” we have to all dress in some sort of clothing that provides no hint of the pleasing curves of our bodies, that doesn’t in any way decorate the bodies we were born with—some sort of religious asceticism that says we can’t mess with the bodies God (the Goddess, in those conversations, and often a specific Goddess that, well, wouldn’t even know what to do with those Western gender signifiers if she ran across them, but sure knows what to do with people who don’t take her seriously) gave us… Yeah.
That’s just the outward coating anyway. The lipstick, the clothes, the hair, it’s just the wrapping, and not the problem. The problem is that with the external perception “Woman” comes all sorts of other perceptions about what that woman is like, what she can and can’t do, and whether or not she’ll fuck you, quite often.
And those ideas come whether or not I’m wearing makeup, when I’m in a man’s top and vest or in a dress and heels, when my hair is short or long.
The idea, especially, that gender is a construct, a choice, a game (an idea I like, personally, a Game of You like Neil said, again, because I’m just on that kind of trip right now), would seem to preclude some sort of need to protect Biological Woman from invasion.
If you want to break down the idea that certain traits come with certain genders, why do you always want to embrace the male signifiers? To me, sometimes, I see the idea of not shaving, of not wearing skirts, as just an embrace of the things that have always been coded male and powerful, rather than any sort of re-empowering those things coded feminine, and so how does that help us any?
These thoughts, of course, have been prompted by another round of what Queen Emily called the Trans Wars. To me, well, it seems pretty damn obvious that when you’re terribly concerned about the biology of the people who call themselves women, you’re probably the one actually upholding, reifying, policing gender binaries.
I mean, I look at it two ways: One is that it ain’t my life, ain’t my gender, so who the hell am I to tell someone that how they feel is wrong, that who they are is wrong? Basic empathy for human beings can get you so much further sometimes than reading books.
And two is that if you’ve got to be an asshole and try to theorize about people’s lives, well, this still doesn’t make any sense. How is the idea that your gender doesn’t necessarily match your body anything but a plus for people who want to get rid of the gender binary? How is the thought that we aren’t trapped by our biology anything but a cheering one for feminism?
Is your oppression so important to you that you have to police it too? Is your feeling of victimhood such an important identity that you have to protect it from outsiders? Or is it just that if you set up impossible goals, you can safely assume we’ll never actually reach that happy vanilla genderless utopia where we all wear what, togas? and no one has kinky sex, or any sex at all really because that might imply gender roles or objectification, oh my? And that way you just get to complain away, continue feeling like a victim, and tell anyone who doesn’t feel like a victim, or who feels like the wrong kind of victim, that they’re wrong?
I don’t feel like we’re getting anywhere by sitting in a corner whimpering about how beaten down we are. I feel like we get somewhere when we fight back. Or sometimes when we get together and laugh, have a drink, and realize that life can still be good. Thinking about how I’ve been fucked over never made me feel strong, but putting on sparkly makeup and dancing on a bar sure has. Yeah, poor deluded me, performing for the patriarchy, right?
See, Foxglove, who said that quote, above? She’s a lesbian. And a rock star. And yes, a character on a page and in Neil Gaiman’s head (and drawn so pretty by Chris Bachalo). Clear-eyed gaze and all. So who’s she performing for when she puts on her tight skirt?
Maybe she’s just doing what makes her happy. So was Wanda, back in A Game of You, when she left behind Alvin and moved to New York. And even though when she died her family tried to force her back into being Alvin, well, Barbie (oh, Barbie you supreme tool of oppression, blonde busty doll) scrawled her real name in hot pink lipstick on her grave.
I’m not trans. And I’m straight. I like men (quite often too much). And even my gender performance is drag. After years of jeans and T-shirts suddenly I wear red lip gloss every day and dresses and skirts, dresses and skirts, and I like it that way. It’s my armor and war paint and the noise that high heels make is much more satisfying to my ears these days.
And I was treated like a stupid little girl and had more assumptions made about my competence, skill, and sexual availability when I wore jeans and no makeup and worked on bicycles all day.
Policing our presentation doesn’t help. You really want to smash the binary? Fight the idea that how we look has anything at all to do with how smart we are, how competent we are, how strong we are. Fight the idea that women can only get anywhere by being just like men.
I’ve got another quote for you, this one snagged off the Twitter of a friend of mine.
“Sexiness and professionalism are both drag. The problems arise when people confuse them for honest attributes.” –Molly Crabapple
Oh, and Lisa, as usual, has much, much more.
I went to a forum with Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers yesterday. Dr. Susan Rice, Denis McDonough, Paul Bucha and Richard Danzig were at Penn, taking questions from whomever wanted to come sit down with them for two hours.
What an excellent campaign strategy. Granted, most people don’t want to sit down and discuss international law with a bunch of policy wonks, but for those of us that do get a rush out of it…how nice to be included in the discussion. How different from the way the current administration–and really, any administration–works.
Dr. Rice (a way cooler Dr. Rice than Condi) pointed out that we need a multifaceted, complex approach to problems.
Paul Bucha impressed me the most, I think, when near the end he said that the different thing about how Obama thinks is that he doesn’t believe in binaries. He doesn’t have to be black OR white, he can be both. Countries don’t have to be with us OR against us. We can talk to them about the things we like and try to work on the things we dislike. The world isn’t black and white.
That warmed my little feminist heart. Especially coming from an old white guy.
This is, again, why I like Obama so much. Foreign policy is the number-one area where the president has real control. They can talk all they want about health care plans, but those have to get through Congress. But the idea that we have people who have real interest in looking at foreign relations in a complex way, not reducing them to good and evil, is very impressive. The idea that we have nothing to lose by talking to Cuba, for instance, is long overdue.
