I follow a lot of truly terrible people on Twitter — Manosphere bloggers, white supremacists, Fidelbogen — so it took me a moment to realize that this dopey, backwards tweet didn’t come from some obscure reactionary bigot but from none other than antifeminist celebrity academic Christina Hoff Sommers, inventor of “equity feminism” and the author of the bestselling The War Against Boys.
If "bossy" has to go because it is sexist, then shouldn't we stop using male-vilifying terms like "mansplaining" & "rape culture"? @banbossy
— Christina Hoff Sommers (@CHSommers) March 12, 2014
Oy.
Also, I think she meant to end that with #BanBossy, not @BanBossy.
Interesting that she doesn’t seem to understand hashtags any more than she understands rape culture.
Katha Pollitt (fantastic author, BTW) had a pretty good response to Roiphe’s nonsense (not verbatim): maybe the reason you think none of your friends have been raped is that the ones who may have been raped don’t disclose such things to you in particular.
Yep. And it holds true for men, too – if you think you don’t know any women who’ve been raped or sexually abused, the truth is that you actually don’t know any women who trust you.
Welp, if there are people who can unhypocritically criticize you for that, I am not one of them.
Who else is tired of seeing ignorant facebook friends bring this up as an attempt at ACTUAL censorship rather than seeing it as an attempt to discuss a sexist line of thought and put an end to it? Either that or people saying things like, “Instead of banning bossy they should be banning words like r****d,” as if we’re living in a world where people can really only exclude one word from their vocabulary at a time. I just so happened to see both in the same post! Ughh!!
This. Except generally for a man to be “deserving” of rape, he has to do something heinous like rape someone else. All a woman has to do is not act “ladylike.”
And the “misogyny blowing up in men’s faces” aspect of rape culture is that, in order to justify raping, abusing, and harassing women, we must characterize all men as if they have no control over their sexual urges, because, by their very nature, they are insatiable sex addicts. In doing this we set men up for being raped by women who believe that just because he has a dick he must want to use it on them. He should be thankful, most men have to BEG for sex. And other such horrific thoughts that are reinforced by misogynistic thinking.
Not in the eyes of the most staunch mra’s and anti-feminists who seem to believe that feminism is responsible for all acts of women raping men, that they’re doing it as sexual liberation and/or to “punish potential rapists,” and that feminists stand behind all female rapists (tw: sexual assault, torture)
@Lili Fugit you worded the bit about rape culture perfectly. It’s not JUST men perpetuating it. It’s a system in which many women are the victims and perpetrators, who are often doing so as a means of self-preservation. So to act as though rape culture is specific to men is and absurd misrepresentation of the concept.
And I so want to be part of the feminist borg but I’m not sure if my writing is professional enough (I write like I talk in a blog-type way). I’m trying to start a podcast at some point. Feminist Borg podcast?
LOL I totally left out the important part of that second block quote
Oh, it’s not a super professional blog – no need to worry about that. I suggest you talk to Argenti whenever ze comes around here again and ask if you can become a FemBorg writer. I’m sure ze would be happy to add you as a writer, as the blog hasn’t been active enough these days.
Yes, talk to Argenti, but as long as you don’t pepper your posts with goofy emoticons and “YOLO,” you’re probably professional enough. Got something history-related to talk about? If so, you can jump right in for March.
But that’s the case for so many things involving other people.
I keep flashing back to one of my friends, who once went on, at length, about how women don’t tell him what they want and he has to guess it and women are all unreliable and coy and demure and yatta yatta yatta… because whenever they actually told him what they actually wanted, his general response was to laugh, be sarcastic or be demeaning, since No One Was As Smart As Him Or As Well Read.
“Rape doesn’t exist, because none of my female friends have ever complained to ME about being raped! So you’re just a lying liar!”
“So, wait – you’re telling me that whenever someone mentions they suffer sexaul abuse your response is to claim they lie?”
“… Yeah, because it never happens, so they must be lying”
“Uh. huh”
Sigh.
@ Fibinachi
Yep. The dynamic is extra obvious when it’s a member of a more privileged group hand-waving away the experiences of a member of a less privileged group, but Roiphe is living proof that it can happen even between peers if the person doing the hand-waving is selfish enough.
@Marci, sorry your daughter is exoeriencing this and that you are having to deal with it. Which idea do you favour – ban or reclaim the word “bossy”?
Sadly, there’s always someone ready to throw everyone else under the bus for the sake of a cookie. Ms Sommers is going to align herself with the privileged in her selfish determination to share some of that privilege, however much they despise her.
I think that maybe people are taking the word ban a bit to literally. I took this media campaign to be saying that we should pay attention to how we use the word, not ban it like a fascist regime or something. I think parents, educators and others in charge of kids should simply think and talk about the way we use words like this and how it impacts the kids. That was the message I got from it anyway. I generally think that this it what it means when people talk about banning a word.
But the reactionaries always tend to act like we are planning to pepper spray anyone who says it ever again. They know that the reality is that once the general populous decides that they don’t like certain language, this means that they won’t be able to go around spouting their bullshit without some push back. It’s not that they are going to be jailed or something (and they damn well know this), it’s that other people with some common decency will correct them and humiliate them.
It’s that rule whereby any article about feminism will, via the comments, demonstrate exactly why feminism is necessary again.
Tempting …
Hey there! Are we using “ze” as a non-gendered pronoun? I’ve been wondering for a while which was the way to do it.
My native language is Spanish, so we commonly use x to replace the final (gendered) vowel of the words (as in my nickname). It works for pronouns, nouns and adjectives, all gendered in Spanish.
So if this is it, I think I’ll stat using it right away 🙂
Wow. That’s not even an apples and oranges comparison. That’s more like an–oh, I dunno–apples and kangaroos comparison. I agree with the other commenters who have already masterfully taken it apart.
Re: the “bossy” discussion–I’m in favor of ditching the word from our vocabulary. I suspect that it is too far lodged into our cultural consciousness as a negative thing to really reverse. We already have positive words for people who act like a boss (e.g. “leader”, “go-getter”, “proactive”, “air of authority”, “commanding presence”, etc.), and I’d rather just insist on using those terms for capable women rather than trying to clarify which kind of bossy we mean.
Also, from a writer’s perspective, I’d be happy to ditch “bossy” even as it refers to negative behaviors. All “bossy” really indicates–at least as people generally use the term–is that the person being bossed around is annoyed at the person doing the bossing. If the boss is fine, and the speaker just has an attitude problem, then “bossy” is a pretty childish insult. If the boss is behaving poorly, then it’s far better to identify the real problem–e.g. micromanagement, overreaching one’s authority, impatience, unreasonable demands, etc.–than to simply say, “That person is bossy.”
So even in situations when “bossy” isn’t directly sexist, it’s still kind of a pathetic word. I’d be happy to see it go.
Maybe “bossy” doesn’t have the same connotations in Australia? I *remember* as a little girl ebbing called a “bossy boots” by my nana. But never in school. I don’t remember it being used at ALL as a negative… But then again, maybe I ignored all of the negative. I was a strange kid & never needed the validation of others to be happy/successful. Hmmm.
Being* not ebbing. Man I’m tired.
QFT
You’re right that it is a childish insult. That might be part of why it’s used. The way I usually hear it used is in the “overstepping authority” way, but in the sense of the person having no authority at all. Like when a kid tells an adult what to do, or a kid on the playground is ordering everyone around. I’m in Australia too hookergal, and I’m sure I got called a bossy boots as a kid too.
So, to direct it at a woman is saying she’s acting like a kid with delusions of authority. Calling an actual boss ‘bossy’ implies they shouldn’t have the authority they are wielding.
Everything Kim just said (except for the being in Australia part). I’ve used bossy a lot in my life, and thinking about it, it was always chiding somebody for overstepping their authority (kids I was minding, and peers who weren’t the boss of me).
I was called bossy a lot as a kid, by kids who resented the fact that I had leadership skills and wasn’t afraid to step up and use them. Lucy van Pelt was my role model.
The more recent phrase, “You’re not the boss of me,” doesn’t have the sexist connotation of “bossy,” which is pretty exclusively used on girls. I’d prefer to “challenge bossy” or “examine bossy” for its sexist usage, rather than “ban bossy,” which just gives fodder to the anti-PC crowd to claim that the PC Police are at it again.
@Luzbelitx
Oh, “ze/zir/zirs” are Argenti’s preferred pronouns – that’s why I used them. I don’t think there are any gender neutral pronouns here though that is accepted as the pronouns to use. So while it’s important to use the pronouns that people prefer for themselves, it’s okay to use the “x” pronouns for everyone else. I just woke up so hopefully I made some sense.
In regard to anti-feminist women and previous discussion. I’ve only felt comfortable telling a few people IRL, but luckily not come across many that didnt believe me about the sexual abuse I recieved when I was a small child. I don’t actually remember it, but was told later by my parents and suffered PTSD until my early twenties. The person who didn’t believe me was (is, in theory, but she unfortunately passed away) my best friend when I was a teenager. I don’t really understand her viewpoint, but her opinion was that as I didn’t remember it surely it didn’t happen (or if it did, why would it matter?). She wasn’t an unkind person, but unequipped to deal with things she was inexperienced with. I try and remember this when I read ‘she put herself in that position’ etc articles – their reaction comes from an inability to empathise with things out of their experience, and a belief that in the same situation they’d have got out of it unaffected. Ultimately, I’d rather have seen some darknesss in my life and developed that ability to feel something when I see someone else has been hurt. It’s was a heavy price, but worth it and a positive I can take away.
I delurked before once but hi again 🙂 I found the manosphere indirectly out of a desire to meet people who had had difficulty relating to the opposite sex such as I had when I was younger. Wow, what an eye opener. I didn’t really consider myself a feminist, although liberal, Im also quite traditional in the things I want out of life. I wondered why feminism was even needed anymore. But the rubbish spouted on such sites has made me see that it is still unfortunately needed. Thank you david, and regular posters, for bringing a bit of light to the internet!
Trust me, the PC Police Police is going to complain to anything that isn’t the unrestrained right of bigots to humiliate other people.
Pretty sure women can perpetuate rape culture as well. Like Phyllis Schlafly. Or Christina Hoff Sommers…