(no subject)

[which_chick]

I generally like Sweet Honey in the Rock. They're interesting and have good lyrics and can sing. Generally, I like 'em.



In the song (Women Should Be) A Priority, lyrics go like this:

Women should be a priority
Respected and upheld in society
Given all the proper noteriety
Never used or abused by authority figures
...
Not taken seriously for who she needs to be

I have a problem, here. My problem is that the entire fucking thing is framed incorrectly. It's framed from the position that women have no power. It's like, when they wrote it, they were all thinking that women have to be given space and respect and power because... I guess because they can't get it for themselves.

Fuck that. I say unto you: Fuck that. Sing not to me this song of alleged female empowerment that, in its very fabric, sweeps my legs out from under me and denies me the right to empower my own damn self. Sing not to me this song.

Rather a lot of feminist thought is couched like that, using the all women need a hand up terms, and so very few women see it as an insult. ARGH. (That was me screaming.) I absolutely can't get behind any ideology that allows as how my gender needs a hand up because we're automatically (biologically?) at a disadvantage when competing with men. I am not at a disadvantage. I do not need *help*. I am not slower, weaker, dumber. I am not disadvantaged. I am NOT, damn it, and I don't want to be lumped in with people who think I am, even if they think that way en route to helping women. Ain't nobody helping me, thinking that way, no matter how nice a face they put on it.

Fuck that ideology. Fuck it.

I just can't hang with all the a hand up people. I can't. It makes my skin crawl. Maybe it's just me.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

"Do positive thing X for women" vs. "do not do negative thing X to women": discuss.

("be a priority = not be an unpriority", "given all the proper notoriety" = "not be denied deserved props", etc.)

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Gender stuff is a known issue with the software and I try not to beat people over the head with it all *that* frequently. I also have a great deal of difficulty with the notion that equality can be given by the people in power instead of seized by the downtrodden.

Besides, the whole thing is written with an unspecified agent.

Respected and upheld by whom?
Given all the proper noteriety by whom?
Taken seriously by whom?

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Well, I gather the usual answer is everybody, but of course addressing a command to everybody is very similar to addressing it to nobody.

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

Women are empowered. It's just that people don't perceive it that way. After all, we live in a society where it's more important for a man to be able to take us to war, than for a woman to keep us out.

Madeleine Albright is an intelligent, funny woman and a kajillion times the human that ... certain other leaders of our country are right now.

Who will be remembered though?

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

I find it ironic that you follow up a canard about women keeping us out of war with a paean to Albright, who had her very own pet war in the Kosovo intervention. Furthermore, Condi Rice is presumably one of those "certain other leaders" you are implicitly denouncing. The history of female political leaders with real power is a history of aggressive war. Elizabeth of Russia, Elizabeth I of England, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher - even Angela Merkel has been more hawkish than her predecessor, if only by default. But then, I'm a warmongering neocon. Especially in cases like Indira Gandhi's invasion and practical conquest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1971) of East Pakistan in 1971. War has its virtues, and the destruction of tyranny and the interruption of genocide are two cardinal exemplars thereof.

Jessica, I think what you're describing is the distinction between positive rights and negative rights. American political thought, taking its cue largely from the Scottish Enlightenment, usually casts political rights in negative terms - they exist, are intrinsic, and can only be infringed upon. European political thought takes its cue from the French Enlightenment, and usually conceives of political rights in positive terms - privileges granted by authority, and thus intrinsically revocable. One of the key problems with modern feminism is its increasing fascination with positive rights theory, with all of its mania for comprehensive, detailed lists of policies, goals and aspirations described en mass as "rights" to be enshrined.