The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive is on! If you haven’t already, support this blog by donating through the PayPal button below. Thanks!
Today’s amazing thing on the Internet: MRA Dilbert, a new Tumblr blog that mixes the art of Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic strips with Adams’ ludicrous, insufferable, and actually completely serious opinions on such subjects as women, women, and women.
It’s pretty awesome. I’m just jealous that I did’t think of it first.
@ kupo
Walter’s definitely a troll, but their tactics are quite weird. Almost reasonable stuff mixed with ignorant nonsense, and then moving on to talking about his personal penis fetish.
Yeah, I agree he’s trying to trick us into saying weird stuff, but we’re not biting.
People who aren’t very intelligent seem to think everyone is as ignorant as them, so anything based on this assumption doesn’t actually work.
EJ:
Oh, just Google the term “Misogynoir”, Feminism is for White Women, and Womanism.
Feminism as practiced by white women often doesn’t take into account that misogyny impacts WoC differently and takes different forms (like that slutwalk thing which, for black women, is linked to race respectability, for example.) Also this particular form of feminism doesn’t take poverty into account and is often practiced by white women of certain social and economic classes.
Womanism is a form of feminism specifically created to address issues that are a priority in communities of color along with trans -issues ,as well. In Womanism specific issues of misogyny practiced by MoC towards WoC are addressed.
Misogynoir is a special term created solely to express that specific intersection of race and misogyny towards brown skinned women.
http://www.gradientlair.com/post/60973580823/general-misogyny-versus-misogynoir
http://feministculture.com/index.php/2015/08/19/anti-black-misogyny/
http://everydayfeminism.com/
I’ve found the site Everyday Feminism to be very helpful with definitions and clearly stating issues of different forms of feminism. This site also practices intersectionality on issues that affect all types of women and is a safe space with no comment section.
@Lkeke35:
RE: Slutwalks – I remember a Slutwalk, years ago, ( I don’t remember the city) where a black woman requested that white women refrain from participating, in order to show solidarity with black women. I don’t recall her exact words, but the gist was that black women weren’t in any position to make light of the possibility of sexual assault.
Sad, sad.
@Teepee
I’m referring to when we discuss issues, such as feminist issues or even the narrative around our culture. For example, how often is the 75-80% of a man’s wage stat thrown around? That stat ignores people of color as if they don’t exist. What about the 54% of a white man’s wage that a Latina woman makes? What about black men, who make less than white women? I almost always see something along the lines of “women make 78% of men’s salaries” which erases POC entirely from the picture and speaks only of the dynamic between white men and white women. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882775.html
It happens because the majority of white people are unaware of the different struggles that POC face. I grew up in the 80s/90s and was taught that racism was something that happened back in the 50s and that everyone had a fair chance at success now. Now I know that’s a load of crock, but I had to seek out that knowledge *and* be open to it and open to recognizing my own racism. The majority don’t even do that much.
BTW, I would like to second the thanks to @Lkeke35 for sharing your perspective on here. It helps me learn. 🙂
Speaking of terminology, does anyone else remember “Women’s Lib(eration)”?
Was that just a UK thing?
So Kupo, you are speaking specifically of the US. US does not equal world. Also in your link notice that women of every racial group make less than men of their same racial group. If you were to aggregate the whole thing based only on gender you’d probably still see something close to women at 70-80% of men. It’s not accurate to say Hispanic women are “ignored” in discussions because they make less than 78% of what white men make. Can’t tell from the data you supplied but I’m betting you’ll find that Hispanic women make about 70-80% of what Hispanic men make. Oh now I’m curious, let me see if I can find the actual population numbers sourced in your link…
And it is TeeREE, not TeePEE, thank you very much.
I believe some people in the US called themselves “women’s libbers” but switched to “feminists” at least by the 70’s.
I’d like to give the Person of the Thread Award to Lkeke35, too. Your comments have really brought to the fore some worries that have been itching in the back of my head for a while now and made them crystal-clear. And new reading material for me, too! You are a treasure. Thank you.
@TeeRee
Apologies for not catching the autocorrect earlier.
I am referring to the US, which Walter also appears to be referring to. It’s pretty obvious that the majority of white people in the US are oblivious to the struggles of POC. That’s hardly controversial on an intersectional feminist blog. The 78% stat is specifically about white women as compared to white men and it’s used a lot of the time. I’m not sure why you’re so upset that I point that out.
@ History Nerd
Yeah, it was mainly a 70s thing here too. I quite like the term as it highlights that women are coming from a place of inequality; not that there’s anything wrong with ‘feminism’ of course. I’m probably just nostalgic about anything with ‘liberation’ in the title; it has a nice activist/”viva la revolution!” vibe about it.
Keep paying attention to the Holtzclaw case, ya’ll. He hasn’t been sentenced yet – that’s on January 21st, I think. The sentence talked about is just the jury recommendation, not the official sentence.
Also Kupo, there’s not a lot of data out there to account for type of work in determining gender/race wage gap. The average engineer of any race/gender combination makes a lot more than the average social worker or teacher of any race/gender combination. The average doctor makes a lot more than the average nurse. The average hotel assistant manager makes a lot more than the average hotel room cleaner. See where I’m going with this? Sure there are huge issues with equal access to the higher-paying professions and those issues are not the same for white women vs women of color vs men of color, but in direct comparisons across single professions how does it stack up? I used to work as an engineer for a large oil company and got to participate in hiring of new and experienced engineers as part of my job. There was a strict set formula for starting salaries for new hires out of college, based on specific degree (chemical vs petroleum vs mechanical vs civil engineering), degree attained (BS vs MS vs PhD), and number of months of work experience via internships. There was ZERO difference in starting salary due to race or gender. My husband and I hired on to the same company at the same time and he had a significantly higher starting salary because of his major. Interestingly, over the years I slowly caught up to him and actually ended up making more than he did right before I resigned. I don’t pretend that my experience was exactly the same as all other white women in the company, of course. That company was and remains largely composed of white men, with a fair amount of entrenched racism and sexism, but the culture is slowly becoming more inclusive. It is more challenging for a black female engineer to become an engineering manager (though MRAs will have you believe otherwise), but once she gets there she’s making just as much money as her white male counterparts. I believe the more important discussion is not the statistics you quoted, but how to go about improving access for women and POC to higher-paying professions and then to management positions within those professions. I don’t think the solutions are the same for white women vs women of color vs men of color, but I don’t think it’s very meaningful to look only at the table you quoted.
And no, if you look at the other tables just on gender they are NOT just white, they are ALL workers.
Almost half of black woman and Latina scientists have been mistaken for janitors or admin staff
http://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/sexism-racism-stem-0423432/
So yeah, there are specific kinds of misogyny faced by women of color.
Also, people with names that are perceived as black are far less likely to get a callback despite any company policy against racial discrimination.
http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
Yes WWTH, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Women of any color experience common things such as being more likely to be asked to make copies or get coffee while men lead the meetings, and POC tend to experience discrimination and challenges that white people do not. Still within each racial group women tend to have less access than men to higher paying positions.
On the subject of assumptions in business. I’ve just this minute received some draft board minutes from the other side in a commercial deal (essentially they’ve done the paperwork for us to agree to their proposal). The entire document is written with male pronouns (and it doesn’t even have the standard ‘male includes female’ boilerplate).
As it happens our MD who will also be the chair(man) of the meeting is a woman* so I guess we’re stymied.
[* That’s less to do with any smashing of gender stereotypes and more that she’s the only one of us who’s vaguely good at this sort of thing]
That specifically is not what the pay gap is about. That’s closer to 3% difference. The pay gap is a tool for looking at systemic issues, not discrimination against individuals. There are a number of reasons behind the pay gap, such as devaluation of work that is typically done by minorities and women, hiring bias, and huge problems with the US education system, including lower funding for “urban” schools. People of color and minorities being paid less for the same job is only part of the picture.
Scildfreja/RoscoeTCat: Thank you.
I wasn’t trying to start a teaching moment. (LOL) I don’t think of myself as a teacher, because I’m still learning about this stuff too.( I only just heard the term misogynoir, earlier this year.)
I’m still trying to get a global picture of women’s oppression and how these anti-feminine thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in different cultures.
I do wonder if there are Asian and Indian versions of the MRA. (See, now I’ve got something to Google, too.)
@lkeke
There is Masculinist India, a close friend of AVFM’s that somehow manages to be even more violent.
(Echoing the “You’re awesome and I love learning from your posts” sentiments, by the way!)
Kupo, this table is a much better illustrator of the pay gap:
http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/median-earnings-by-race.html
Look at the bolded “all women” and “all men” averages at the bottom. Average women’s salary was 78.2% of average men’s salary. Because math. When you ask the question “what is the pay gap between men and women” the answer, at least in 2013, is “women on average make 78% of what men do”. Anyone looking at that same table will also see that people of color average less than whites. So, please stop trying to school me on what the pay gap means until you have a better understanding of what the data is saying.
In the 70s in Canada, my mom called herself a feminist. People inclined to dismiss her feminism as the passing hobby of a bored young woman said she was “into women’s lib.”
(… What are Kupo and TeeRee supposed to be arguing about? I might’ve missed something – lack of paragraph breaks plus my nonexistent vision, hooray – but it seems to me that they agree?…)
The best teachers are the unintentional ones.
And misogynoir makes me think of a really, really sexist Dick Tracy. Like, more than the usual one. It’s a great word!
Kupo said that white people ignore the problems of POC, then used the often quoted “78%” pay gap number and claimed it was ONLY white women vs white men when in fact it is ALL women vs ALL men and also coincidentally white women vs white men. As if most white people have no idea that there is a racial pay gap as well as a gender one.
@ Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
I was thinking the exact same thought.
Kupo and TeeRee, what is the argument, may I ask, because it doesn’t seem clear.
Lkeke35
Fair enough. I’m sorry for misunderstanding you.
In terms of black MRAs, the only one I’m really familiar with is Tommy Sotomayor, and you’re right his rhetoric is very different from your standard MRA. He seems to be an extreme version of a misogynistic idea that I’ve heard a lot from some black men. The idea that black people need to “control our women.” Like if only we could control our women like the whites/Asians/Latinos control theirs, the ills of the black community would disappear. It’s a horrible idea, but one that has a lot of traction among some black men.
TeeRee
You don’t need to be a mind reader to see that white people aren’t concerned about non-white ethnic groups. White people don’t even want to see non-white people in movies, unless that PoC is acting like a stereotype or helping white people in some way. They aren’t concerned with the real life struggles of PoC.