As long as I am writing things sparked by My Gracious Host, I should write here that I’ve been ruminating on his post about Clinton, Obama, sexism, feminism, etc, and the response to it. Jed wound up regretting having posted it, and of course he has to assess the positives and negatives to him, but Your Humble Blogger found the post, the article and the responses very helpful for complicating some of the world in a productive manner.
The article in question is Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!, by Rebecca Traister in Salon, and although I it is a far from perfect article, I think it’s informative and provocative. One of the things that I find interesting is what different people see in the article, as its focus and as its agenda.
My take on it (which is the right one, because this is my blog) is that Ms. Traister is focusing on a reporting that, as the subhead says, “Young women are growing increasingly frustrated with the fanatical support of Barack and gleeful bashing of Hillary.” The headline is, then, in the voice of the young women of the subhead, rather than in Ms. Traister’s voice. Having identified this more or less widespread situation, Ms. Traister goes on to document a handful of instances of this frustration and makes a few attempts to identify the causes of the frustration.
Some other people have a different take. In their perception, it’s Ms. Traister in the the headline that is shouting at Obama Boys to back off. I certainly understand that, and although (as I say) I don’t perceive that as the essence of the article, it isn’t strange to me that many supporters of Barack Obama are upset by being called fanatics, and being told that they are upsetting young women. Furthermore, Ms. Traister suggests that one of the causes of the discomfort is that supporters of Barack Obama are regressive on feminism, consciously or otherwise, and even that the reason that they support Sen. Obama (or don’t support Sen. Clinton) in the first place is subconscious patriarchal residue. Nobody likes being told that the reasons they give for doing things are not the real ones. Either these people are lying (to themselves and others) or they are dupes, right?
Or there is more going on?
Ms. Traister reports that there are a lot of young women who share a feeling at the moment. Let’s call this set of women A. Ms. Traister convinces me that the set A is not empty, but I’d be happier with the article if I felt it showed how big set A actually is. That is, of the bigger set of women who support Sen. Obama, is A half? A third? A handful? Well, anyway. The set exists. The characteristic of the set A is that people in A feel that male supporters of the Illinois Senator often express themselves in a way that demeans not only the New York Senator but the members of set A. Are they right? Is this fair?
I don’t honestly know. I suspect it is, because, you know, the Patriarchy. But then, what does this word fair mean? Does it have to do with the feelings of the women involved? Of the men? Is it the right question to be asked at all?
I went to Swarthmore College in the late 1980s, when there was this thing called Political Correctness. Have I written about PC yet? Anyway, this was after the term had stopped connoting somebody who joined whatever political causes were likely to get him laid. It had started applying to language, with there being correct and incorrect terms. The idea was that it mattered whether you offended people, even if there was no intention to give offense. If using lame to describe a terrible movie offended people who were unable to walk, then you were giving offense, and you shouldn’t do it. Now, there was a lot of nonsense tied up in this, and if I haven’t ranted about the history of PC I should probably do it, but the point is this: if you care about giving offense, it is the person who takes offense that is important, not you. If, in fact, there are a lot of women who feel demeaned by my actions, then my actions are demeaning, even if I didn’t notice. My instinct is to defend myself, but who the fuck cares what my instinct is?
Is it fair? Is it fair that I can’t use perfectly reasonable words—like lame or chick or boy or Hispanic or janitor or pussy—when I mean no offense, no offense in the world? Why does it matter if it’s fair? Is it fair that I can’t express a perfectly reasonable political preference for one candidate over another, or express a perfectly reasonable distaste for one candidates conduct of her campaign, without either taking tremendous care or risking hurting the feelings of the members of set A? Is it fair that the members of set A have to risk feeling that way?
And, um, as long as we’re chatting, isn’t there another group, set B let’s call them, who are African-Americans who support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, but feel that white supporters of the New York Senator often express themselves in a way that demeans not only the Illinois Senator but the members of set B. That can’t be a null set, can it?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
Well, one factor here is that if you want to say something hostile about another person, it is all too easy to end up using sexist or racist language because that type of speech was invented for the purpose of expressing hostile and derogatory feelings efficiently and effectively. It may require considerable self-control and rhetorical skill for a person to express hostile and derogatory feelings without resorting to sexist, racist, or otherwise prejudicial language. Thinking back to attacks on Bill Clinton, quite a bit of the hostile language directed against him made use of terminology derogatory to working-class Southern whites.
Given that a lot of Senator Obama’s supporters (and friends of the Democratic party) are hopping mad at Senator Clinton at present, it is not surprising that they are saying offensive things. Those who are saying offensive things would do well to remember that they are saying things that are likely to be offensive to many listeners, for good reason, and show more consideration. Those who hear these offensive things would do well to remember that the speakers are being pretty seriously provoked. Insofar as the Clinton campaign can use sexist remarks by supporters of their opponent to rhetorical advantage, those who are provoked might be said to be “rising to the bait.” I imagine that Senator Obama’s extraordinary cool is infuriating to Senator Clinton. . .
Politics is a very rough game, and the appeal of the Democratic presidential candidates has drawn in a lot of people who are unfamiliar with that fact. I think that’s going to lead to a lot of new offended people who might not be offended if they were used to participating in or feeling invested in the political process.
An additional factor leading to greater offense being taken is that our media has elevated offense in a great number of ways — rewarding radio and television hosts and guests who deliberately try to cause offense, focusing on statements that could give offense to the exclusion of discussing questions of fact and policy, etc.
> if you care about giving offense, it is the person who takes offense that is important, not you.
This is true, but there’s an important “if” clause there, and it may in fact be reasonable and fair not to care about giving offense sometimes. If you’re offended by my use of the word “offense”, because you played defense on your football team and those dicks on the offensive squad used to bully you, maybe I will be sensitive and not use the word around you because you’re my friend and I like you, but I’m somewhat unlikely to drop the word from my vocabulary entirely even if you tell me that it’s fundamentally demeaning to cornerbacks… I’m more likely to think that you’re being an idiot, and decide that I don’t care about offending you after all.
Whether you think this is an acceptable/reasonable/fair/whatever response probably varies based on the situation.
Sure, and I used to emphasize that people do not have some inherent right to go through life without ever hearing anything that offends them. On the other hand, your example does bother me a bit… in your example, my demand is idiosyncratic and bizarre, and you use your judgment to reject it, and that’s fine. If, however, I demand that you not use kike around me, that’s obviously a very reasonable request, and you use your judgment to accept it, and you don’t think I’m being an idiot in making that demand, and that’s fine, too.
In high school I regularly used gay as a derogatory epithet (that assembly was so gay), and nobody complained because the social pressure was such that anyone who complained would be assumed to be not only an idiot but gay, and thus asking for offense both verbal and violent. My own judgment was not sufficient to tell me right from wrong. It was only my later experience, including not only meeting homosexual friends but also the PC movement (which also made room for those friends to feel they could safely come out to me, so there’s a feedback situation there), that made me capable of correctly deciding that I should care about offending gay people.
My point is just that people should be wary of using their own judgment, sometimes. It’s all you have, sure, but so often it isn’t enough.
Thanks,
-V.
Hey, would you rant about PC sometime. My sense is that we are more or less the same age (thirty-glob), but I don’t have much of a sense of PC as being anything other than a way for conservatives to turn liberalism into unmannishness.
peace
Matt