Social Justice Warrior

It’s a Monday morning late 2007.  An ex-Nigel and I are driving me to the office and he explains how race is nothing but a social construct. How there’s nothing innate about race, but how we create meaning from skin pigment. My jaw. It fell.

I protested because isn’t it so damn obvious he’s talking bullshit! We argued over it until he dropped me off at the office. I didn’t really believe him because whatever. Because it made no sense whatsoever.

I later learnt gender and sex are also social constructs. The latter two were easier to believe after the big shock of learning about race. And that’s what I argued in Facebook groups, blog comments and also occasionally In Real Life.

But the people against whom I argued race’s social constructivism laughed at me instead of merely rebutting my arguments. I even tried it out on my own situation by claiming to be black one day, and coloured the next day. I told people it’s because the coloured category’s too constricting. That the black category feels more welcoming. That the coloured category’s an Apartheid creation. Well, another now ex-Nigel told me no, the category of coloured existed even before the Apartheid government’s racial classification programme. So I stuck to the constrictedness of being coloured.

The people who argue race, gender and, occasionally sex, are social constructs, tend to do so when talking about social justice. So their arguments generally follow this pattern: ”Race is a social construct; ergo, black people aren’t less intelligent than white people”. Or ”gender is a social construct, much like the government and taxes. So it isn’t natural for women to be all passive and wear high heels. She learnt how to wear high heels from a culture that hates women.”

And it’s a persuasive argument. But incorrect.

Now see, I don’t have much of a problem in persuading people that something is problematic. But I do have a problem when the arguments we use are sub-standard. And the naturalness vs social constructivist argument strikes me as such an argument.

I’m tempted to say it’s a divisive and time-wasting argument. Because it can be: various Facebook groups spent a lot of time discussing whether male-on-female violence is innate or constructed. And it’s such a huge time suck when instead, we could’ve been doing something that’s more enriching. Whatever it is.

But the reason why I scoff at the argument is that ”naturalness” isn’t a moral position. Poison Ivy is natural and to think all things natural are good, is just plain wrong.

So what does this mean for social justice warriors? Who have persuading to do? And who can no longer use the crutch of social constructivism?

Well, the best arguments are always logical. They might not convince enough people right now, right here, but at least we’ll know we’re not using manipulation and unsound logic. We can ask ourselves a couple of questions to decide whether, eg gender is A-OK and whether we may perform it.

1) Why are we doing this again?

2) No seriously, why are we doing this? On what basis?

3) Does it unfairly disadvantage a group of people? Time-wise, financially or emotionally or in any other way?

There may be more questions I’m not thinking of, but these three should be OK for the majority of issues. Let’s start judging issue x on its effect on us. Not on how ”natural” it is. Carbon emissions are natural but we don’t like ‘em, you know?

P.S I no longer believe we construct race and gender. Fodder for another post on another day.

There’s a lot of talk about how long it takes things to decompose. And this is good because it makes us aware of the impact our actions have on the environment. That leather shoe you’re chucking will, under good conditions, take 20 years to decompose. And the plastic bag you chucked might stay in the environment for 200 years according to the graphic.

But we know plastic breaks down into smaller particles. We know this because we’re finding plastic pellets in animals’ stomachs. So the really important question, to me at least, is not ”how long does it take to decompose?”; the important question is ”what does it turn into when it decomposes?”. And how does the new particle affect life?

Organic items stand a far better chance of decomposing into something that will support the ”cycle of life”. Inorganic matter might decompose into something that’ll work against this ”cycle of life”.

And surely we need to consider that a toxic material will break down into toxic components. There’s no getting away from this because matter never disappears. It just changes form.

This is one of the reasons I’m appalled whenever I read about how trees soak up carbon emmissions. Or when I read about how bacteria can clean up toxic spills. These organisms will eventually die and decompose. And then what? Then they might, under the right conditions, release the toxins they’ve absorbed. So we’re really just delaying things by getting plants and bacteria to clean up our mess. Because there’s a chance it’ll eventually come back to haunt future generations. Who’ll then curse us for what we’re doing to the environment, and ultimately to our own.

Let’s do a thought experiment, OK? Let’s imagine all of womankind is one woman. And all of mankind is one man. Let’s now think of a normal woman and a normal man to contrast this to. And let’s call them Jane and Joe. They meet, fall in love, and life happily ever after. Until he starts abusing her. He abuses her emotionally, physically, financially. He threatens her with future abuse. This Joe’s an arsehole.

Jane’s friend aren’t happy with this relationship. Her family’s also not happy. Her older brother (there’s always an over-protective older brother in these stories) is threatening to go bust Joe’s kneecaps. Jane’s mother wants to call the police on Joe but she especially wants to ”allow” her son to bust Joe’s kneecaps. Jane’s father is telling her she needs to GTFO of the relationship.

Everyone’s supporting her and they’re all waiting on her to do the right thing — to leave. She really wants to. And she has the support of many people. She has this support because everyone can see how toxic the relationship is.

She does eventually leave. She goes back to her parents’ home and moves into her old room. The story doesn’t end here because stories never end; writers just stop writing.

Now let’s go back to womankind and mankind. Let’s call womankind Hope and let’s call mankind Peter. Hope doesn’t have a protective family nor does she have friends. There’s no-one who can support her in separating from Peter. There’s no-one who can threaten to bust Peter’s kneecaps.

But would it not be very clear to Hope’s non-existent family that she needs to GTFO of her relationship with Peter? That it’s a toxic one? That she needs to separate from him?

And that, even if there’s hope for Peter to turn into a normal human being, her life is in danger right now? And he’d need to go see a psychologist at the very least before Hope can even consider seeing him again?

Is it not very clear to you now that man is endangering woman? If you think of all of womankind as a single woman instead? And that, for our own protection, we need to separate from them? Because yes, they are human, afaik, but how long are we willing to wait to do something? How many more dead women will it take before we do something?

”We cannot afford to wait and do not need to wait for the revolution. We have not waited to become assertive, to begin to analyze and change the politics of childcare and housework, and to organize women’s groups to challenge and end pornography, battery, and rape.” — Wendy Stock in Toward a feminist praxis of sexuality

A man is raping a woman right now. Some other man somewhere is putting together an all-male list of speakers for their event. One of his friends is telling his buddies what a ‘bitch’ his ex-girlfriend is. And not too far from these men is one who’s trying to find a way of killing a woman.

These men know not to do these things. They know not to harm but they do it regardless.

We have no time to change their minds and educate them that women, too, are human. We might have a better chance at success with the next generation, but not with the ones I described above. They, and we, live in a society that says to effect change, we need to change people’s minds about oppression. That, until then, we have absolutely no right to ‘intrude’ into people’s personal lives. Because – freedom of expression FTW!

It is this same freedom of expression and the cult of the individual that allow people to think pornography is art. That what happens between two “consenting adults” is sacred. And that teaches women to chant ”my body, my choice”.

I forget who said it, but whoever said it needs a whisky. She said, and I am paraphrasing wildly, that we can’t pin our salvation on changing men’s minds by teaching them not to kill or rape us. We’ve been doing it for a very long time and they’re still not listening. So we as women are done talking, pleading, begging, hoping.

Even the liberals who’re happy to recreate society, only want to focus on a narrow section. The rest they want to leave as is because it’s absolutely inconceivable that anyone’d want to tamper with the way we’ve been doing things.

This is something Shulamith Firestone wrote about in her book The Dialectic of Sex (pdf of full book):

But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child – ‘That? Why you can’t change that! You must be out of your mind!’ – is the closest to the truth. We are talking about something every bit as deep as that.”

It’s these things that supposedly are so deep, that have the potential to hurt the most. And that people feel most defensive about.

We need to move into defensive mode because, if we don’t, yet another man will rape a girl in the next 10 minutes, hours, days. Yet another man will kill the woman to whom he promised he’ll love and protect her until ”death do [them] part”. Yet another man will sideline a woman for promotion.

I want a future world in which we can prevent these harms from reaching women. Because then, women can focus on just being. No fear from the future possibility of a man raping or killing them. No more need for the #hollaback campaign. For Slut Walk. For testifying against her rapist at the rape trial.

So what’s stopping us? The people who’re against our intervening are supposedly against ”legislating morality”. Is it not moral to legislate against killing and raping? Is it not immoral to wait until men learn somehow to see women as human? Is it not immoral to continue with business as normal while the male of the species treats us worse than they treat animals?

Consciousness-raising is a fine method, I agree. But it can’t work in isolation. It needs other things to work in conjunction. Things like enforced vasectomies, for example. Because then no man can impregnate a woman willy nilly. We do need more, of course. Sperm washing would help to prevent the spread of diseases such as HIV. Because women’s bodies are at a disadvantage – our plumbing means we catch diseases far more easily than men.

We also need to get rid of men’s aggression. A Clockwork Orange-type indoctrination sounds like a good idea. And daily chanting together with other methods that religions, the media and governments have used to mould people’s minds. I’m not joking, no.

These methods are ”natural” because the environment we are in affects our brains. Everything affects our brains. And we can mould it to our desire to a certain degree. So we needn’t even castrate boys and men; we can neuter them through their environment.

And then there’s no need to wait for the revolution. Because we’re meeting the consciousness-raising revolution halfway.

Companies are misleading you. The so-called ”healthy” food you see all around you often contain preservatives, colourants and might be GMO-intensive. And then we’re not even discussing modified atmosphere packaging or pasteurisation. Of bread! Add marketing language to the mix, stir vigorously for a couple of minutes, and you have an explosive situation.

We can heal this explosive situation, though. We just need an idea of what we don’t want, a plan of action, and a plan of how we want to live our life. And we need to find a way of holding companies accountable. Because their labels often do not help us. What does ”no artificial preservatives” mean? It means the manufacturer used ”natural” preservatives.

This, according to the companies, is a good thing. But what’s a leading cause of heart disease? Salt. It’s a preservative, folks. Humans learnt early that salt preserves meat and we learnt how to make biltong and other cured meats. And this would’ve been OK if we didn’t decide to start eating as much processed foods as we’re eating now. Bread contain salt. So do nuts, I found out to my dismay when I saw my favourite packet of RAW nuts contain 18g of salt per 100g. So can you imagine the salt content of roasted nuts? I can’t, either.

I see the solution as two-fold. We need to let companies know this shit isn’t good for us, and we need to lobby our governments to hold companies accountable. That’s one solution. Yes, it might mean the closure of plenty of processed food companies. Tough.

And the second solution is to return to the basics because we’re going to die out otherwise. We need to make drastic changes to the way we think, the way we do business, and also what we eat. It’s time for the government to start governing all, not only a select few. And for us to grow food, not lawns. Start a community garden and stop buying processed shit.

But most of all, it’s time to put the critical thinking cap on. ”No artificial preservatives’!1!1!1!’ means they didn’t use some horrible synthetic preservative. No, they used natural preservatives that can still contribute to heart disease and Lorde knows what else. Not exactly good for us, you know? Take back control.

In the abortion debate, most feminists insist on the right to choose. In the current debate over the Indianapolis statute, some feminists would deny that right to those who choose pornography. – Alan Dershowitz

While the women’s movement had criticized the line between public and private and had identified the private as a primary sphere of the subordination of women, Roe v. Wade2 had decriminalized access to abortion as a privacy right. A movement that knew that the private was a cover for our public condition was suddenly being told—and saying—that the abortion right was our right tothat same privacy. – Catharine MacKinnon

Talk about these quotations with feminists and they might tell you there’s a substantial difference between the two issues. The difference, they might tell you, is that a pregnant women decides about her own body and pornography affects another woman’s body.

But when did feminism become about the individual ”choice”? And should it be about our ”right to privacy”? Our efforts have never been ”for the individual solution – otherwise known as a piece of the pie as currently and poisonously baked, (b) for pornography and prostitution as faux sexual liberation”. Nor have our foresisters suffered so we can forget the interconnectedness of all.

The ”My body my choice” movement seems to forget that and it’s arguing for a woman’s right to privacy. This is the same type of argument we hear from pornographers and pimps. They, too, want privacy. For Johns. This type of privacy is the same one that harms women because ”domestic violence” is between a ”man and his wife”. And they can sort it out so outsiders need not intervene.

I understand many think abortion is – sometimes – a necessary evil. And I understand the real need for abortion to remain legal for the women who might need it. Until we can find a way of preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Our arguments around abortion needs refining. Radical feminists can’t use the same liberal arguments that manarchists and other liberal d00ds use. This isn’t because the arguments from the opposition is automatically wrong. No, it’s because liberal arguments contradict everything radical feminism works for.

I say this because radical feminism’s based on the material tradition. This tradition  acknowledges that every little thing I do has an affect on someone else. It is this that concerns me when I discuss abortion. We have laws against suicide and euthanasia. We do not believe someone can ”consent to cannibalism”. This shows we do not condone 100% bodily autonomy. We put restrictions on certain behaviours because we realise they’re not healthy.

Some radical feminists speak out against bodily modification, which once again underscores this claim. Our bodies are our own, but only up to a certain point.

I’m reminded of Tipping Point, a book by Malcolm Gladwell in which he discusses the spreading of ideas. Richard Dawkins, of course, first introduced the concept of ‘memes’. These memes can spread goodness or evil. And we, by our actions, are the carriers. Malcolm talks about how teenage suicide spread through the South Pacific islands of Micronesia . Was it because suicide became normalised in a ”monkey see, monkey do” fashion?

The risk with anything that has potential side-effects is that it becomes normalised. Bungee-jumping’s one such thing. Transsexualism is another. Tongue splitting, genital piercings, tattoos, are others. And normalising these things mean other people reckon there’s no harm in also getting a ”sex change” or a tongue splitting. Or an abortion. Even though these things are potentially harmful.

I’m not convinced it’s moral to normalise harmful practises. I fail to see how it benefits young women to present abortion as an ”option”. Yes, her life continues and she can get the education, dream job, or bar-hopping lifestyle she’s dreamt of since she was a little girl. But at what cost to herself? And at what cost to the greater community she belongs to?

What would be moral, though, is to find a new way of talking about abortion. A way that acknowledges the deep interconnectedness of it all. And a way that’s consistent with our radical, community-based politics.

Because we need to ask deeper questions. Questions that get to the real root of the problems we’re facing. Questions such as why a woman needs an abortion, ie what’s the cause of unwanted pregnancies.

There’s a huge resistance to examining our personal life, and how The Rule Of Men influence our likes, dislikes, fears, aspirations. We think feminism is about the right to choose, which explains the popularity of third-wave feminism. We think that, as long as a woman ”chooses” to be a SAHM, everything’s A-OK. That we need not ask why she ”chose” to look after the children. Because, hey, it’s her choice, right?

Another problem is the resistance to group identity, and identifying with a group. We want to believe we’re free agents, who do things because we want to. Because we’re special snowflakes.

And hey, I, too, want to feel special. And I am, in certain ways: my mix of circumstances plus the things that have happened to me, are unique. But I share almost everything else with other people: race, nationality, education level, sex, gender, etc.

And there’s a reason why I’m sitting where I’m sitting right now: my curious mix of circumstances led me here. Including that yes, I heart coffee. Not because of fate or anything like that. But because nothing happens randomly, and I need to remember this when I talk about feminism. The ‘tribes’ I belong to influence my life in many ways: I want to ‘fit in’ with the ”cool kids”; I want to keep my job; and I want others to know I’m [insert adjective]. So my behaviour changes to raise my social status, or to prevent social penalties. And other people are the same. Everything I do influences someone else in some way. Something becomes ”normal” when many people do it. Something like bungee-jumping, tattoos, ”sex change” operations.

Think about it: why do I enjoy coffee? Why did I buy the cellphones I use? Why do I have three cellphones, when I really only use one?

I can extend the line of questioning towards the other things we do under The Rule Of Men: penis-in-vagina sex, wearing makeup, wearing high heels, getting pregnant, having heterosexual relationships, using birth control, etc. There are many influences on the everyday decisions we make. And we may not even know all the things that influence us

The feminism I advocate, shall analyse everything we do under The Rule Of Men. This type of feminism shall acknowledge that we do not operate in a vacuum – everything has a context. And analysing issue X does not mean we’re judging the women who do the things. This last one is the hardest to realise, especially when dealing with issues such as BDSM, prostitution, and other things we’d like to label as ”personal choice”.

This idea takes us right back to the second-wave slogan ”the personal is political”. The slogan contrasts with individualism, especially the hyper-individualism of third-wave feminism. The slogan owes its origin to the materialist tradition that gave us Marxism. The tradition that sees the community as the basic building block. Not the individual. Because if the individual were the basic building block, we wouldn’t have racism or sexism. We’d have one or two individuals who do shitty things. And the shitty things would not find their way into our law system, or our philosophical traditions, or medicine, or our marriage laws.

Women’s liberation needs an analytical approach. And critiquing the choices we make is not a judgement on the women who need to survive under The Rule Of Men. If anything, it’s a judgement on men, not women.

Let’s analyse, sisters. Let’s figure out where, how, why, things fell apart for women. Let’s figure out why so many of us seem to be attracted to ”tall, dark and handsome” men whose physiques make it so much easier for them to hurt us physically. Coincidence, much? Or what about the other ”choices” we make? To create ”feminist porn” or to dabble in ”hipster racism”, which is normally known as plain old racism? Do we ”like” penis-in-vagina sex because we want to please the peen? Or because they’ll call us ”frigid” or ”prudish” if we don’t put out? Do we really like it, and why?

No choice sprang out to us, free from any influence. This is a sad and a scary thought. I mean, think about it. Why do we forget to do something? It’s because of a mix of things that either happened or didn’t happen to us. This means we have no free will aka ”agency” in feminist work. We still have criminal responsibility and we can still change our behaviour, but everything’s dependent on the things that influence us.

It’s in our best interests to look at the source code of our society. We might discover the program’s buggy, after all, and that high heels, burlesque, porn, and femininity aren’t that much of a ”free choice” as it seemed. We need to challenge everything, even that which seems so integral to our humanity.