No You're Racist, and Sexist and I'm AWESOME

You may have noticed a cute new webpage floating around the internets called "I Write Like" (not linking). It's a page with a text box where you have to copy and paste (or compose on the spot) a few paragraphs, press a button and you'll get a something you can paste on your blog or Facebook to let everyone know which famous writer you write like. (In case anyone was wondering, I got Margaret Atwood - YAY! - and Dan Brown - kill me now.)

If you've heard of the website, you may also have caught wind of the kerfuffle around the fact that when it first launched, there weren't any female writers in the database of writers you could resemble. A week or so later, there are now 3 female writers (to 37 male writers) all of whom are lily-white. Now I understand that this is just a silly-for-fun website for people to feel briefly thrilled that their name can be used in the same sentence as a famous (or infamous) author (sorta Nicholas Sparks vis-a-vis Cormac McCarthy style), but representation matters, even in trivial things.

Representation matters because our actions are shaped by our environment. Our environment primes us on levels so far below our consciousness that even if we are asked about our motivations, we come up with narratives that, while consistent with how we view ourselves, have nothing to do with reality. A website that uses only white, initially all-male writers to represent how the internet writes, well, the implicit message isn't even all that subtle there.

So people start to comment. Some people cut and paste female writers' texts into the boxes and lol-sob at the male writers they are called instead. Eventually tea berry-blue wrote to the guy who runs "I Write Like". She describes the disheartening and miss-the-point exchange well, but what I want to talk about specifically is this:

Tea,

Thanks for your reply. I’ve added more writers into the database
recently. But I *absolutely* will not add people into the database due
to their race or gender. I will not search for lists of white, black,
Asian, Hispanic, or any other types of people that you _took care to
differentiate_. All people are equal to me, and equality means not
looking at skin color or different types of chromosomes.

I think the question is closed.

–
Dmitry Chestnykh
I Write Like

In other words, it's the I don't think people are different...and since you seem to, YOU'RE SEXIST and also racist.

Honestly, if everyone was so damn equal, why did you only have one kind of person represented? If everyone was all the same to you, then your sample should have approximated what the sampling of writers out there was really like. Include writers like Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Candace Bushnell, George Eliot, A. S. Byatt, Zadie Smith, Helen Fielding, Monica Ali, Stephenie-frikking-Meyer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Miriam Toews, Tamora Pierce, Holly Black...I could go on. That's just off the top of my head and includes a nice sampling of award winning authors, classics, pop fiction, all women, some of colour. NOT THAT HARD. If gender and race were non-issues for this person, then why the glaring omissions?!

It's because it does matter. And I want to make it very clear that I'm not blaming Dmitry Chestnykh for it in the least. Like the rest of us, he grew up in the same damn world we all did. A world in which whiter is better and where men are main characters. I was talking about priming earlier yeah? Well, we've been primed our whole damn lives to not notice that despite the actual diversity of the world around us, the white male is always the assumed default (Tasha Fierce breaks down the assumed default even in activist circles here). A world in which the only people who don't notice race or gender are the only ones who are the default, and therefore are privileged enough not to. It is also, ironically, a world where we are taught that racism and sexism are bad and that you are a bad person if you're racist or sexist. So people are scared to talk about race or gender. First because any time a light is shone on privilege it does get pretty damn uncomfortable. Secondly because it's as though noticing that people are different qualifies you as some sort of reprobate.

But of course everyone notices race. It starts when we're children, mainly because our parents don't talk about it. It's the same for gender too. Noticing it and talking about it and discussing the deleterious effects of it is how we can fight this shit. It's the opposite of being racist or sexist.

Let's recap. We're not all bad people just because we've grown up drinking the Kool Aid. We're not bad people for noticing differences and diversity. It's not racist or sexist or any-other-ist to make an effort not to under-represent entire populations of people. People that exist in this amazingly diverse and challenging world of ours. The same people whose lives are made worse because we are assumed to be uninterested because we're not talking about it. And while it can be awful to get called out, particularly if you already make efforts to not be racist or sexist, listen because we all have something to learn. Don't just fling it back and start name-calling.

Update: Shakesville's SKM Biblio-vore whose blog can be found here did a quick experiment on "I Write Like", plugging authors' actual works into the engine and seeing what comes out. Interesting and insightful!

In Which the Cat Reads Internet Comments (Episode 1)

I was reading a link about feminist children's books that I stumbled on as part of a linkfest from one of the blogs I read. I like children's books and I don't think they get enough credit as good literature (and before you levy the curmudgeon charge, I will say that this is not entirely the fault of best-selling 'Young Adult' swill that floods the public consciousness - but I suppose it is, largely).

I digress. What I meant to be getting at is I expected an entirely uncontroversial article in which a few book recommendations are made and the commenters (who were invited to add to the list) would indeed make their own recommendations, hopefully with some anecdotes about whether it was well-received by the children in their life(ves). A little naive, perhaps.

I should have known that the word "feminist" would bring out the angry, dismissive, reductive hordes, even if all we were discussing were books that somehow subverted the prevalent, pervasive and ultimately restrictive and repressive gender stereotypes.

What a stupid idea. Let kids be kids, and let them find their own way without overly protective parents inflicting PC bollocks on them.

The phrase "PC bollocks" is all you need to know about this poster. The resentment of the fact that his/her privilege is occasionally brought out into the light of day is oozing out of my screen and threatening to void the warranty on my computer. Honestly, this is a plea for allowing the status quo to stand uncontested and I have no patience for that. Anyone who is arguing for a world riddled with intersecting oppressions does not deserve this world (or discourse, really). Also, you know what happens when people "Let kids be kids, and let them find their own way" in this fucked up society of ours? This fucked up shit.

All of these books work on the premise that feminine instincts are bad and that the best thing is if all girls behave like boys. What rubbish. What's so wrong with being feminine? Why would we want to be violent & aggressive? There's a lot of strength in being gentle and kind. It would be best if we had books that showed that you can be whatever type of person that you want to be and that being gentle & kind is a very good thing.

Short response: Graarrgghhh! Piss off you nonce!

Long response: Congratulations! You win the Cat in the Cream's daily missing the point award! Not to mention, the conflation of "feminine instincts" (which is a way of guilting women into mistrusting science and reason as well as blaming them for missteps if I ever saw one) with behaviour qualifies you for the the bonus "Consistency Fail" medal! Feminists do not believe that males are "violent & aggressive". That would be gender stereotyping. Feminists do not do that. Books that emphasize the "strength in being gentle and kind" (and heaven knows there sure are enough of them out there that you hardly have to look at a very short list of books in a newspaper article to find them) do not "[show] that you can be whatever type of person that you want to be" BECAUSE THEY SHOW THAT YOU HAVE TO BE GENTLE AND KIND WHICH IS REALLY JUST ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING THAT YOU HAVE TO BE PASSIVE AND SUBMISSIVE AND PUT OTHERS ABOVE YOURSELF.

I'm pretty sure that's the default message we're giving girls, so I have to wonder why this person had to drop in to defend it at all. Oh wait, I do know. Idiot.

Why do these stories have to be "feminist" and what the hell is "gender studies" for a three year old anyway. Some of these stories just talk about girls doing stuff which don't involve being passive and waiting to be swept away by Prince Charming. That's not feminist that's just neutral.

Wha (sic) teach your daughter that you're already under a patriarchical (sic) yoke from year dot? Good grief, why does anyone want to teach their daughters that men are oppresing (sic) them especially when so many modern laws are so feminist in nature? I'd rather just teach that girls are free to choose to be something other than a princess.

Anyway, good list apart from "Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls" which sounds downright confusing for children rather than merely subversive.

Let's being with "That's not feminist, that's just neutral". I bet this person also says things like "we live in a post-feminist world" at parties while card-carrying members of the patriarchichy (heh) nod sagely. It is feminist because the dominant paradigm says otherwise. I'd also like a list of the laws which "are so feminist in nature" - I have a feeling that they actually only meet this person's definition of "neutral".

Exposing children to subverted stereotypes is not "[teaching] your daughter that you're already under a patriarchical (sic) yoke from year dot". The hopeless desperation this describes is a little heart-breaking (it seems to imply, to me at least, that the writer feels defeated by the patriarchy and the patriarchichy). I understand the need to shelter children from the uglier bits of the world, but is trapping them in restrictive categories that brutally punishes transgressions really the way to go about that? The confused query of the following mother says the answer is "no":

What do I do about my son's addiction to pink, and high heels? He's two. I'm assuming he'll grow out of it, but against my better judgement find myself pushing 'boy's' toys on him. He has no interest though, he just wants to read about Princess Poppy (there's a rubbish series of books if there ever was one)

I know I'm preaching to the choir (well, I hope so, at least) when I say that exposing children to examples of all genders going about their lives, doing fantastical things, and in various roles is unequivocally a good thing. It may not strictly be the case in reality, but this is one damn good way to go about changing it.

Maybe one of these days I'll even write about books written for the children's market that have characters who do not fall into gender stereotypes. For now, I'll leave you with this (hardly exhaustive) rant.

"Damn them all"

The final words from The Volcano Lover, a novel by Susan Sontag:

I will not allow that I was moved by justice rather than love, for justice is also a form of love.

I did know about power, I did see how this world was ruled, but I did not accept it. I wanted to set an example. I wanted not to disappoint myself. But I was afraid as well as angry, in ways I felt too powerless to admit. So I did not speak of my fears but rather of my hopes. I was afraid my anger would offend others, and they would destroy me. For all my certitude, I feared I would never be strong enough to understand what would allow me to protect myself. Sometimes I had to forget that I was a woman to accomplish the best of which I was capable.

Or I would lie to myself about how complicated it is to be a woman. Thus do all women, including the author of this book. But I cannot forgive those who did not care about more than their own glory and well-being. They thought they were civilized. They were despicable. Damn them all.

"A response to atrocity denied"

In her essay Women's Status, Men's States, Catharine MacKinnon writes about human rights as "a response to an atrocity denied".

She could very easily have been writing about discussions of marital rape in Singapore. I've Magically added bold bits. Watch out, it's a lot of text.

Before atrocities are recognized as such, they are authoritatively regarded as either too extraordinary to be believable or too ordinary to be atrocious. If the events are considered socially unusual, the fact that they happened is denied in specific instances; if they are regarded as usual, the fact that they are violating is denied: if it's happening, it's not so bad, and if it's really bad, it isn't happening. The given status of a certain people is seen as tautologous with, even justified by, the deprivations of their human rights. Law often collaborates by making an unusual or extreme form of a common violation illegal, so that what is illegal almost never happens, yet the law appears to stand against the violation. Victims are thereby ideologically rendered appropriate to their treatment, the unequal treatment serving to confirm their ontological status as lesser humans. When nothing is done, the treatment, and social status accordingly, confirm and create who one is. Legally, one is less than human when one's violations do not violate the human rights that are recognized. Acts common in human experience, such as rape in war and rape in peace, have been beneath serious notice because they are so familiar, while acts that are uncommon, like the Nazi's industrial murder and the Serbs' industrial rape, have been beyond belief. While disbelief and associated impunity reign, the violated are--systematically and effectively speaking--rendered not fully human legally or socially. When and where this denial is overcome the rights against the extreme and the normal are recognized, the treatment is defined as inhuman and the victims human. Women are in the midst of this process.

Did you catch all that? Familiar, isn't it? Many opponents of No To Rape argue:

All men regularly fuck their wives without consent (it's the only way sex could happen, with those selfish bitches), so it's no big deal - how dare the state intrude in the bedroom! ("if it's happening, it's not so bad")

Only rape with further accompanying violence counts as rape, and that is both vanishingly rare and already comprehensively dealt with; ("if it's really bad, it's not happening")

The law already acts against all those rapes where women employed telepathic powers and their infinite legal savvy to get a protection order prior to the rape happening. ("Law [...] collaborates by making an unusual or extreme form of a common violation illegal")

The reason why they make these arguments is that in their view there is no need for the law to treat the rape of women as the punishable violation of human beings. In their view, women are not fully human. Moreover, they make the arguments specifically in order to maintain a law which prevents women from obtaining fully human status in society.

This is why many of them bring up Geylang at every conceivable opportunity. Because that goes to the interest of an actual human being in the equation, i.e. a man. What's really important here, and needs protection, is the male right to ejaculate, whenever he chooses, into a vagina. That the vagina happens, typically, to be attached to a woman, with all sorts of troublesome notions about wishing to control her own body, is perceived by them as unfortunate and inconvenient. And they want the law to continue to agree.