Twisting a twitt to prove sexism

I was having a short discussion the other day on Twitter about sexism and it seems that Natasha Chart over at MyDD, that bastion of feminism, has taken it out of context to make a point about sexism.

Lovely.

This is the comment I left :

So let me get this straight : You take a comment that was part of a whole conversation about how our culture imposes the tyranny of homogeneity instead of respecting difference and looking at diversity as an asset and you twist it to prove a point about sexism?

that conversation was about how aggressiveness and violence are not necessarily nature. that as a mother of two boys and someone who has taken care of many of my friends girls, i can see how their energies can by nature, be vastly different.

the issue is of holding male energy as the standard of what is good and by assertion, female energy being bad or weak. just as how whiteness is held up as the standard and everything that is not "white" then becomes diminished, poor, disadvantaged, underdeveloped, or plain old not good enough.

but you took that one quote and you built a whole post about how everything about this campaign was sexist attacks that cost Clinton the nomination.

we've had this conversation before online and am going to say it again, it's not the reason why. there's 100 reasons, none having to do with sexism, that cost Hillary Clinton the nomination.

get over it.

and, by the way, this link was sent to me. if you're going to quote me, have the tact next time of emailing me the link.

i take cause with how you present my words here.

there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING wrong not wanting to [be] like men and finding power in that.

I had to use Summize to go back on the twitts of yesterday and find the conversations I was having. I can identify 6 different conversations all revolving around different discussions of sexism.

One of them was with Shannon McKarney of EcoChic, who had this to say :

I wrote that piece last year+believe it more strongly now. Women have to become more "male" to be successful

That's where the whole discussion of homogeneity vs. difference started. That's where I ssaid that I strongly disagree with women needing to be like men to be successful just as I strongly believe this to be one of those sticking points for a lot of feminists of color.

The whole discussion of women vs. men pits oppressed people in many communities of color against each other. Yes, colored men can be sexist and even ruthlessly misogynistic but is that the root of our problems or is it a symptom of a larger structure of violence and exploitation that women and men of color need to unite against?

That's the reason why male vs. female at least from this radical woman of color is bullshit.

It's is also one of the reasons why, after being pregnant with two boys, bringing them to the world and raising them, I've come to accept and respect male and female difference --natural or otherwise-- as necessary to the fabric of humanity.

One of the points I was making was that American culture is about creating the fantasy of homogeneity and it's the reason why it becomes tyrannical against difference and diversity.

So for example, boys and girls are treated as if they were inadequate versions of each other. We as a culture do not have a concept of Ying and Yang and so we don't respect female and male energies for what they are. So when girls are pushed to be boys, what they tap most of the time is negative energy ---much in the same way, by the way, boys also go negative when they are pushed to be more female.

Maybe it's an issue with language and we need to speak of it differently. Exactly because contrary to Morgainne's comment, we've come to look at difference as opposite where the only relationship is e "either/or". Whereas in Taoism difference or Ying and Yang is actually about doing away with either/or and accepting life as a current, a flow with no beginning or end but with vast resources and ecologies within it.

So that's why when I said :

girls in trying to have the same kind of intensity and manic energy of boys become aggressive and sometimes violent.

This part of the conversation was augmented by my exchange with Rjt12 in the following exchange :

Rjt12: @blogdiva when girls behave aggressively it is called aggression, when boys behave thus it is called 'intense'. gender is culture.
about 21 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet

blogdiva: @Rjt12 totally agree with that comment
29 minutes later · Reply · View Tweet

Rjt12: @blogdiva but how do you agree while saying girl/boy "energies" are different?
14 minutes later · Reply · View Tweet

blogdiva: @Rjt12 i think they're different but [that doesn't] mean there's a judgement to that difference. the issue is that in our society different = bad
14 minutes later · Reply · View Tweet

I wasn't pointing to female energy as less than male. I was pointing to it as different and in trying to make it as male, that's where negativity comes into play and that's why sometimes, as far as my observations of girls and boys, they become violent --because when we tell them they need more of this or that, we're rejecting them as less than what they are.

And quite frankly, nobody has a monopoly on extroversion, aggressiveness or even violence.

For one, I do think that girls are more outgoing and aggressive in getting what they want and need from a very early age and are taught, especially in schools, that it is wrong. Boys are often thought of aggressive and violent and that's another meme I don't believe in.

Testosterone is very real and anybody who has lived in a house full of men will know that those spurts of testosterone can sometimes be manic. But it's not always manic in a violent way. It's actually very rare to see a boy who is actually violent to the point of hitting people with the purpose of hurting them.

And this brings me to a study about chimpanzees I read some time ago.

I read a few articles years ago on how female chimpanzees will join the males in war raids. In gory detail one of the studies described how females will focus on killing the opposition's babies and females, especially the pregnant ones.

The reason?

Well, obviously, so that the males of their tribes can rape them and claim genetic dominance. Yet the most important reason is purely political for them. There is such a thing as an "Alpha Female" and she will do anything and everything to destroy her competition to retain her power. And since the her coterie have resolved themselves to stay put as second bananas, they will help the "queen" do whatever it takes so they can retain their access to power.

For political or social reasons hominids will do whatever it takes to retain power. Nowhere in the study, by the way, was there any discussion about loss of resources or land or any identification of the reasons for these raids and this outright hunting for infants and pregnant females.

Yet it proves my point that violence is inherent to humans. It's not an either/or based on gender or sex. And it's the reason why I believe that when we force our kids to be a certain way, especially when we're basically telling them that they're not good enough as they are and for who they are, then we'll see push backs and we'll see them do so in a negative and sometimes violent manner.

Girls ought not be taught to be more like boys because what we're telling them is that female power is not good, it's weak, it's worthless.

That's where this conversation was going and that's why I closed it by saying, "i love myself as a woman because i am powerful as a woman.".

It's an assertion I haven't come to easily exactly because for years I thought I needed to be like a guy to be successful. Yet once I discovered how degrading that version of "female empowerent" is, I stopped using it. It's been truly liberating for me to say "I'm a woman, so fucking what".

That and turning 40 two years ago this Tuesday helped immensely --after 40 you really don't give a damn

Yet, to go back to the issue of sexism : It's a frame for explaining the Clinton loss that I totally reject. As said, there are 100 reasons why she lost that have nothing to do with sexism.

Even better : I do believe this country is ready for a woman president. The problem is that that woman is not today's Hillary Clinton.

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