December 5th, 2006
by
Ide Cyan
Once more taking up a topic to expand on a comment I made…
How many times have you seen an author’s sexism, racism, and so forth, excused on the grounds that he was “a man of his time” and as such, couldn’t help but be more backwards than us?
Yes, things are so much better now, aren’t they?
But of course, it’s not fair to judge the past by today’s standards, so we shouldn’t do it.
Those were the bad old times. Those times were sexist, and aren’t we glad to be rid of them.
He’s just a product of his society, using the sexist assumptions of the times. They were doing the best they could in a flawed system.
Just like right now.
Why is right now so bad?
If we wait, will it get better?
Not if you keep looking at things that way, it won’t. Because those excuses are based on rotten premises. They’re distractions.
Because they assign the blame to apolitical abstractions rather than to human organisation.
Time isn’t sexist. People are.
Flawed systems aren’t the cause of oppression. What’s a flaw? Something that means the system doesn’t work? Oh, but for whom?
If you’re in a patriarchal system, and you’re in the dominant class, you’ll get benefits from the oppression of others. The system sucks for the oppressed, but for the oppressors, that bug is not a bug. It’s a feature.
It’s not in your interest to get rid of the system’s best features, for your definition of what’s best.
Things don’t get better because of time, they get better because people change them, mostly. (It’s like the expression that says time heals your wounds. Of course, it doesn’t: that the body’s job, making scar tissue, getting rid of deal cells and converting the calcium in your food into bones and protein into muscles, and so forth. We need time, but times never acts for us.)
Say, how come all those sexist, racist, good-for-nothing “men of their times” get to be so backwards?
Who brought about all that change that makes today so much better?
Perhaps it was aliens!
Aliens who exist outside of Time, and influence us mere mortals — no. Fuck no.
People did that. People changed things. But what people?
Now, I have to pause for a brief linguistic refresher:
A synecdoche is a figure of speech that refers to something by the name of one of its parts, or the name of one of the things that it is a part of. It’s similar to metonymy, except that in metonymy, the words are related in some way, but not subsets of one another.
And I want to talk about a synecdoche. Or a metonymy, depending on how you phrase things.
When you say that sexist men were sexist because they were “men of their times”, or that someone shared “the sexist assumptions of the time”, you’re using a really big, abstract thing — time — to refer to a much smaller thing that was happening inside it or in relation to it.
The oppression of women is in men’s interests. The oppression of slaves is in their owner’s interests. The sexism, the racism that derives from this oppression is an attitude, a set of ideas that comes from the class dynamics of oppression. Oppressors use this to keep oppressing. Oppressed people learn it because they are oppressed.
So where does time come into it?
Well, it’s handy. You talk about things in relation to a time period to situate them, just as you would describe things in relation to their location in space. When you say someone belonged to a particular era, you differentiate them from other people who lived at other times.
But, really, time is never responsible for someone’s politics.
Politics are all about people existing in relation to other people.
Sexism, racism, “backwards” beliefs, etc., do not denote a relationship to time, but a relationship to people.
If you talk about the the sexist attitudes of a time, you’re really not talking about time. Time doesn’t have any agency. Time doesn’t have attitude. People do.
And so, when you talk about the sexist attitudes of a time, what you mean are the sexist attitudes of people who lived in that time.
You’re taking a big thing — time — to talk about a thing inside, or related to it — people.
But not just all people. Some people. It’s important to remember that there are interests at stake in politics. That people who oppress others do it because they get something out of it.
“They were sexist because they were men of their times” — you can remove “of their time”. It’s not relevent. They were sexist because they were men in the business of exploiting, of oppressing women.
Because it benefits men to be sexist. And, really, it still does.
Now take those statements and change them around a bit:
She was a feminist because she was a woman of her time.
Does time oppress women? No, people, that is, men do.
Put things in their proper context, and it stops being an excuse and it becomes an explanation. It stops being a mystification, it stops being trickery, and it becomes a revelation.
She’s a feminist because she’s a woman oppressed by men. She’s a feminist because sexism makes her suffer.
He’s sexist because it never occurs to him that the system is “flawed”. He’s sexist because it’s comfortable for him.
…
There’s another, linked, and equally perverse effect of the “men of their time” excuse. It’s in the phrasing. In the possessive.
Their time. Time that belongs to them.
Time belongs to them, and they are sexist, so time is sexist like them.
Sexist men belong in that time.
Oh, those times were sexist. Those times made people sexist. And so forth.
If you’re not sexist, or, rather, if you’re not one of the oppressors, one of the owners, the patriarchs, that time doesn’t belong to you. You don’t belong to that time.
So, for instance, JRR Tolkien, born in 1892, gets to be a man of his time, and that excuses his patriarchal ideas, whereas Rebecca West, born the same year, was what, an alien?
It’s as if you reversed the synecdoche:
Men, a subset of the people who lived in a particular time, are of their time. So you define the times in terms of them.
And you reject anything that’s different because it doesn’t fit.
Man has possessed time. And dispossessed woman.
Imperialists have disinfranchised colonies. Slave owners have erased the point of view of their slaves.
The part has become the whole.
It’s very, very convenient. It’s very, very easy. And it means the oppressed vanish in a puff of rhetoric.
So you only perpetuate the position of the powerful. We lose a lot of past revolutionaries that way, and there goes your myth of chronological progress.
Now, if you’re the powerful, you can enjoy the hell out of that feature.
But doesn’t it bug you when you’re the one who’s invisible all of a sudden?
***
I shall conclude with a comparison.
They were smelly because they were parts of their body.
You think that body is smelly in general. It’s dark, and hot stinky air comes out of it. Or just plain old crap.
Look around, and if you find anything that’s clean, or has a different sort of output, you’re not going to make the connection.
But this is how you get assholes to stand for the whole of humanity, even though there were hands working to bring that body food, and feet to carry it, and mouths to speak poetry, and eyes to see what the asshole could never ever see from its perspective.
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Filed under Criticism & Scholarship, politics, vulgarisation | Comments (15)
Oh wow. Ide that is very well said – Thank you.
I love a clear polemical statement!
And this is how women who “did things” that made them more than subservient, ineffectual, property of sexist men, “disappear” when we look back at the sexists’ version of their history. The sexist view of history must be continuously revised to avoid having to explain how so many women could have been people for millenia. So pre-patriarchal times “disappear” and it becomes fringe and “controversial” to talk about matriachal pre-history. Sexists just refuse to accept that women could have ever been people before 5 minutes ago when we suddenly got “too many” rights.
Oh, consternation… just had a reminder of the corollary to the use of “of their time” as an excuse for men’s ideas: using those same words to discredit women’s.
And where? Here.
Quote: “Joanna Russ – Very much of her time, but The Female Man damn near blew my head off when I was a teen.”
Consistently and persistently, the two sections of the Harlan Ellison page on wikipedia that other editors keep trying to revise or modify our make less explicit, are the section that covers Ellison’s self-incriminating account of an assault he committed in 1962 (which account he was telling as a very good joke at the same time as he was making a very big deal about supporting the ERA), and the section entitled “Assault on Connie Willis”. Both sections are well-sourced and notable: but there are editors (my impression is, mostly male, but I’ve done no methodical survey) that believe the assault on Willis should be redefined as an “incident”, and that the assault Ellison says he committed in 1962 and bragged about years later should just be gone – redefined as “kinky sex”.
I guess these editors are also “of their time”…
They must certainly own a lot of it.
You’re getting wrapped around the axle thinking about time, but all that I have ever taken that expression to mean is that someone was raised in a society that had certain beliefs, so it’s not surprising that they did not question those beliefs.
It’s not unreasonable to say that until relatively recently, most people grew up in societies where sexism and racism were the norm, and it’s likewise not unreasonable to note that most people do not question the beliefs foisted upon them by their parents and teachers.
You’re right in saying that nothing prevents a person of any type of society from evaluating what they have been taught, so no one should be completely excused from being an asshole just because that’s what they were taught to be, but I think you should attribute the persistence of sexism more to a lack of empathy (which is still with many Americans today, e.g. the xenophobia directed at Muslims) than to any grand scheme of patriarchical continuation.
It’s true that more progressive attitudes come about from individual persons, not time, but only from those people that are willing and able to question authority, and to challenge conventional beliefs.
Therefore, I think there is no dissonance required to excuse a person’s sexism as a product of their times, as long as you understand that such an excuse is simultaneously a recognition of that person’s inability or unwillingness to step outside of their present situation. Realizing that, we can chart a course for curing society of such ills, because we no longer attribute any fault to the practicers of sexism or racism except the fault of ignorance. I believe that if we can educate people to the point that they know how to question authority, whatever empathy they are capable of will induce them to make changes in their own lives, and those changes will necessarily propagate through their sphere of influence.
until relatively recently, most people grew up in societies where sexism and racism were the norm
You mean they’re not the norm anymore? SHUT THE FUCK UP.
any grand scheme of patriarchical continuation.
Oh, here comes the bloody slippery-slope defense. If you suggest there’s any type of political interest at work in patriarchy, then you must automatically believe in a giant conspiracy, which is ridiculous, ergo, nobody profits from the oppression of women. Stop wasting my time, you twit.
because we no longer attribute any fault to the practicers of sexism or racism except the fault of ignorance.
And we’re certainly *not* practicers of sexism or racism, are we, since that was abolished oh-so-recently! And with our miraculous and oh-so-pure authority, we’ll educate people to question authority. And, meanwhile, they can wash our dirty socks to pay for this benevolent education.
You disgust me. You really do. If you post in reply to my entries again with bullshit like this, I will delete your comments and report them as spam.
Ide, I would strongly prefer that you not yell at people on the blog like this. I think it is inappropriate.
People are allowed to come on and disagree. That is part of the point of the blog. I would like to see discussion.
Zach, personally I have no problem with your engaging in the discussion.
My arguments against what you say are that
- for me, there IS dissonance, because
—- In my reading of history I do see many people speaking out against sexism and racism
—- I was also raised in sexist and racist society and conditions
——- yet I made decisions to behave otherwise
———-because I have a brain and free will and the ability to think about ethics.
————- As people at any time did and do.
Conditions may be such as to make it easier or harder to speak out or act against racist, classist patriarchy…. or to put it more simply to act against injustice whenever you come across it… but I don’t think it has ever been easy.
Also, consequences for different people are quite different, clearly… So for example when I speak up against sexism, now, as a middle class white woman in the US where it is not illegal for me to do that, I face different (still difficult) consequences and much less personal risk to me and my family than women who aren’t in my situation. I don’t feel that makes me “of a time” and it does not mean that my “time” ie now, is easier than other times.
I disagree with you that we can’t attribute blame. There are defintite crimes that individual people commit. I hold people responsible for their actions. For example, I would never excuse a torturer on the grounds that they were just doing something normal for their time and situation. This for me is a very important and emotional political issue – should there be reparations for slavery? For … lord knows no one suggests it… sexism?? Arrest and trial for people in the military for their role in torture and other illegal, unethical actions? Or do we excuse those things and move forward somehow?
I agree with you that individual questioning of authority is important.
But I disagree that that questioning will naturally propagate through a society! I think that Ide’s reaction might be in part sparked by the thought that we don’t need to do anything politically; we just sort of wait and things will get better.
One of my long-standing interests has been the process of radicalization — why some people, from some environments (time, place, family, class, religious upbringing, access to knowledge, experiences) become radicalized, and others from similar circumstances, don’t. … This is personal, because I think about these questions in part to understand why I became who I am, a person quite different from my family and most people I knew growing up; and why I did not become that person sooner than I did. To understand my own journey, without blame.
Inevitably, I think, this has affected how I judge the actions of others. We are all, each, products of our environment. What responsibility do we have to overcome it? What guilt do we bear for not overcoming it? Cluelessness about one’s ability and skills and power and the world is okay for a time, but at what point does it become what I judge to be the criminal cluelessness of George W. Bush? (If we credit the W-is-stupid-and-shelted theory.) I’m a big believer in personal responsibility — W is responsible for his actions; and if he is being lied to, he is responsible, ultimately, for not knowing himself well enough to avoid being put in a situation where he would be lied to and would cause such enormous damage. While that may seem far down the chain, to me, he is as morally culpable as if he knew what he was doing.
It’s a bit uneasy, to say that people bear different amounts of responsibility for the same action. but we bear the responsibility for our background and environment and circumstances.
this is a bit of a departure. sorry for the meanderings.
Liz Henry:
Also, consequences for different people are quite different, clearly. So for
example when I speak up against sexism, now, as a middle class white woman in
the US where it is not illegal for me to do that, I face different (still
difficult) consequences and much less personal risk to me and my family than
women who aren’t in my situation. I don’t feel that makes me “of a time” and
it does not mean that my “time” ie now, is easier than other times.
What difficult consequences would you face? I think outside of the most
backwards town in the heart of some red state, you’d be treated much the same
as you would if you spent your time doing anything else. Maybe I have not
seen the same things as you, because I don’t believe that the sexism in this
country would cause you hardly any personal risk, even if you were to became
the most famous feminist author in the country. On a smaller scale, imagine
the difference in the calm with which you can read and post to this blog,
compared with the likely feelings of an Iranian woman, whose own government
observes all the country’s internet traffic so that it can arrest people
trafficking in information it doesn’t like.
I disagree with you that we can’t attribute blame. There are defintite crimes
that individual people commit. I hold people responsible for their
actions.
Of course I agree with you on this. But just as we hold people accountable
for criminal acts, we explicity recognize that sometimes people are not
completely in control of their actions, or unintentionally commit a crime, and
we modify the sentence (I believe according to the estimated responsibility)
accordingly.
That leads to intentionality, which is an important point. I think it’s
useless to get mad at someone’s actions unless you can attribute some
intention to their act. What I was saying in my first post is that until I
know someone has been exposed to feminist thought, I can’t hold them
responsible for acting according to the thoughts they have been exposed to
(within reason, of course). If someone has had the chance to learn how to be
more compassionate toward their fellow creatures, and they choose not to be, I
would absolutely say they deserve judgment, anger, and sanction.
But I disagree that that questioning will naturally propagate through a
society! I think that Ide’s reaction might be in part sparked by the thought
that we don’t need to do anything politically; we just sort of wait and things
will get better.
I did not say that there would be any results without action. The action I
proposed is education. A blog like this is an example of education, as it is
completely conceivable that a person who would not otherwise be exposed to
feminist thought might stumble onto this site and start reading.
“imagine the difference in the calm with which you can read and post to this blog,
compared with the likely feelings of an Iranian woman, whose own government
observes all the country’s internet traffic so that it can arrest people
trafficking in information it doesn’t like.”
Acutally, that’s what I was imagining as “someone not in my situation”. Well, no… I was imagining the women in Zimbabwe who can’t get tampons or pads and are being arrested and tortured for trying to organize about that issue.
For me, there are still risks and consequences. It took me many years to say this sort of thing, or anything much at all, under my real name, on the internet or any other public forum. People still regularly ask me if I am not afraid that:
- I’m going to be stalked and attacked and raped
- I’m going to warp the mind or future life of my child by talking about feminism or sexuality in a public, lasting forum
- I’m going to hurt my child merely by having a “strong personality”
- I’m putting my job and career prospects at risk
- I will embarrass my other family members by my public feminism and being “out”
I get these questions from people who are *friendly*.
If some man hates you on the Internet it probably does not occur to you that he could trace you down and attack you. But I would bet it has occurred to many women who have a public web presence, and in fact, this “culture of fear” is something that was heavily discussed at the first BlogHer conference. I reject that culture of fear, but that doesn’t mean I’m not aware of it.
Oh, and I agree with you about action and education — it’s a very nice thought and one I try to live by.
Another thought on the meta-level, to explain why some people (not just Ide by any means) might become angry or be suspicious of the intent of some commenters. The complexity of anti-feminist trolling is very well laid out here:
Managing Trolling in a Feminist Forum
Especially in the example given of the commenter “Kent” and his rhetorical tactics of asking for proof, claiming to be open to debate, etc.
I understand this and yet I want to give everyone on this blog the benefit of the doubt. I do highly recommend that we all read the Trolling article, though, to help in detecting patterns exhibited over time.
If we ever get to the point of having dozens and dozens of comments, as on blogs like Pandagon or Feministe, then we might have to readdress this.
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