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Modesty Objectifies Women Says Nude Egyptian
Posed in nothing but sheer black polkadot stockings, red patent leather shoes and a red hair clip, Egyptian blogger, Aliaa Mahdy struck a blow to the objectification of women.
Strange. We usually hear that nudity objectifies.
Nudity and modesty don’t mean anything in themselves. The question is: what are they creating in any particular situation?
And Mahdy believes that strict modesty expectations in Egypt help to create “a society where women are nothing but sex objects harassed on a daily basis by men who know nothing about sex or the importance of a woman.”
But how could modesty objectify? Consider the most extreme example:
Women who live in Taliban-controlled provinces of Afghanistan are expected to cover themselves head to toe with mesh across their eyes. There, a woman’s ankle is thought incredibly sexual, as are her arms and face and eyes and hair. Every part of her body becomes sexualized through extreme modesty.
But the entire body needn’t be covered for this surprising effect to arise. One young Christian woman found that less radical modesty objectified her, too:
Modesty taught me that what I looked like was what mattered most of all. Not what I thought. Not how I felt. Not what I was capable of doing.
Modesty made me objectify myself. I was so aware of my own potential desirability at all times that I lost all other ways of defining myself.
Supposedly women should be modest to protect themselves from rape or sexual harassment. Yet “immodest dress” does not force men to rape. And sexual-harassment runs rampant in places where women are fully covered.
Rebecca Chiao tracks sexual harassment and assault in Egypt where she says both are ubiquitous, “Every time you walk out of the house, you are under attack – physically and verbally,” she says. “The reports we get are graphic and angry.”
And as reported in The Guardian:
In a 2008 survey, 83% of women reported having been sexually harassed. Almost three-quarters of Egyptian women who said they had been harassed were veiled and 98% of foreigners said they had been intimidated or groped.
Sexual harassment is a huge problem in Afghanistan too, a place where women couldn’t be more covered. Last July Afghan women marched against the widespread harassment women face there. Noorjahan Akbar, who organized the protest said:
Every woman I know, whether she wears a burqa or simply dresses conservatively, has told me stories of being harassed in Afghanistan. The harassment ranges from comments on appearance to groping and pushing. Even my mother, who is a 40-plus teacher always dressed in her school uniform, arrives home upset almost every day because of the disgusting comments she receives.
These women are sexually harassed despite modesty. But then, the puritanical focus seems to actually define women primarily as sexual beings.
Meanwhile, when women work to broaden themselves, punishment may be administered via a convenient – and hypocritical – appeal to the honor of virginity which modesty supposedly guards.
At one point Egypt’s military sought to suppress women’s voices and power by stripping activists of their clothing and performing “virginity tests” by which two fingers were inserted into their vaginas. Sexual assault parading as a test of “honor”! Yet this brutality was really a tactic to humiliate and silence, observed Mona Eltahawy of The Guardian.
Women journalists are clear models of empowerment so it’s no surprise that they are under attack. So much so that Reporters Sans Frontieres recommended media stop sending female journalists to cover Egypt after two high profile sexual assaults.
No wonder nudity and sexuality arise as political protest in this atmosphere. Eltahawy of The Guardian continues:
When a woman is the sum total of her headscarf and hymen – that is, what’s on her head and what is between her legs – then nakedness and sex become weapons of political resistance.
Modesty isn’t itself a problem. Many women choose modesty for reasons they find meaningful and significant. Modesty becomes a problem when an obsessive focus on women as sex lies behind it.
Reposted on Daily Kos (Spotlight)
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Past life
by Joy Farber @ littletreefarber
The scene though far removed remains vivid in my mind.
Images pulse in front of me like morse code.
A little girl– afraid– watches mute as acts that will shape her identity, and behavior for much of her life are committed.
The blue, glossy lockers are fixed to the walls outside the classrooms behind, and to the left. A few trees are scattered, and caged– not more than overgrown household plants on the cement to her right– creating the illusion of nature on the dilapidated school campus.
Two older boys– familiar to her only through her few “popular” attractive friends come running up behind her, laughing. At first she doesn’t see their faces– but eleven years later they are clear– burned into her mind.
She had switched from the skimpy tank tops and tight pants– her dress code of the year before– to a more comfortable outfit of oversized sweatshirts, and baggy men’s pants.
Before there was time to react– the sweatshirt was being pulled over her head. He stopped it at her face so she couldn’t see her assailants– looping his arms through hers, he held her there– her flailing no match for his strength.
His partner ran to the front, and reached out his hands. She felt a clumsy, uncomfortable grabbing at her chest. There wasn’t much to hold onto, but he tried his best– as if his failure to find developed breasts encouraged him to dig deeper.
She stood there, frozen as their laughter, and footsteps faded into the distance, and the remainder of the day was spent in silent waiting. How long would it be until people were talking– and what would they say?
The attention filled her with shame, and embarrassment. There was nowhere to escape. An older friend walked her home, stopping half way to kiss her. She had never kissed a boy she liked– just the ones that wanted her– and never asked permission.
Whether or not she attended school the next few days wasn’t important. When she did return, her pants were bigger, her hair was shorter, the sunglasses she wore in the morning didn’t come off, and the people she had associated with the previous week were replaced by the two “outcasts” a grade above her. Together they built a life– it was new, unfamiliar, but it felt safe. Her response now would be a simple “sorry, I’m gay.”
The words became reality for her, and with them she felt protected.
She had assumed that telling all the boys in school when they gathered the courage to make their advances that she was gay would be a deterrent.
For the first little while, she succeeded in deflecting the attention that had made her hate them all. Those stupid, evil people who were only out for themselves, with no regard for the lives they may damage. Rage welled up inside, insulating her– the hot blinding flashes of anger somehow made it all hurt a little less.
To her horror, and dismay she realized soon after, however that this new identity would not do what she wished it would. While the physical attacks had stopped– the words still cut, sharper than knives right through her.
That one who had walked her home, unwilling to admit defeat appeared on the football field. No one else was there. They locked eyes, and there was nowhere to run. “So what if you’re a lesbian. Pretend my dick is a tittie, and suck it” he whispered into her ear. She could feel the heat, and moisture on his breath so close to her face.
She had no choice after trying, and failing time and time again– but to remove herself completely. She changed names, changed schools, and dove further into the new life she made for herself.
Love would fix all her problems, would cure the feeling of self loathing that inhabited her daily, would make her whole. And for two years she proved this. She met Elena at an amusement park. The place full of other people, lost and looking for love. The black boots, and white tube socks were the first things she saw. Walking slowly, slightly drunk through the crowd– the next thing she saw were those eyes. Golden, with a small ring of green around her pupils. They spoke of the pain that she knew all too well, and of the longing for love that they shared.
They were happy in their secret life together for a while– content in knowing that all they needed was each other. When Elena died– all hope for happiness was lost completely. Drugs, booze, one night stands with both women, and men, but nothing would make her feel whole again.
She ran from the truth, and continued to live the life that she had adopted years before. Thinking somehow that it would still fix her, that men would hurt her more than women could. She clung tight to it.
One day she met a man that saw right through her. She loved him, but there was nothing to like. The harshness of his tone, and unwillingness to let her be herself was painful– but he loved her, and that was all she needed.
He saw her for who she was. She felt exposed. It was uncomfortable, and in secret she still claimed her old identity, but from him she had to hide it. He didn’t like it, so she adapted. She made herself in to what he wanted.
Sex was always the interesting part.
She had read about it, listened in on conversations with her friends, seen it on TV, but when it happened in her life– it was much different. She felt the chill of the moist grass on her lower back. She leaned up against the tree, and pulled down her stockings. They were covered, and protected by the darkness around them. Her partner looked at her, but not for too long, and never in the eyes– she had her own reasons for that– and slid her face down between her thighs.
When it was all said and done, she didn’t feel much different. Perhaps she felt more confident, more like a woman– but these feelings didn’t last. It was more out of obligation than anything else. She was in a relationship, and when you’re in a relationship you have sex. That is that.
Years later when she had her first experience with a man it wasn’t much different. The light was dim through the brown floral pattern curtains. There were other people in the house, just outside the door, drinking rum in plastic cups in the kitchen. They all lived there, but the house didn’t belong to them. The sheets were pulled up– it was daytime, and she felt awkward, vulnerable, exposed. She was six feet tall, and way past slender. These two things combined had always made her feel she wasn’t nearly feminine enough– and the situation she had found herself in only made it worse. If he was the man– she was supposed to be the woman, but she didn’t feel like a woman at all. Maybe a scared little girl– but her body resembled that of a pre–pubescent twelve year old boy.
Nothing felt different afterwards, the nervousness she felt before they had sex hadn’t faded at all. She felt strange to lay in bed looking at a man. It was new. It was uncomfortable. But she didn’t say anything. She kept seeing him– but when she was out with her friends, and the liquor had taken hold of her, she would sneak upstairs with attractive women– always the one in power. She was the one in control. Still seeking this life that no longer made sense. Neither of them did, really. Neither one felt authentic, but what else was there to do? Life had become about drinking, and sex. There were worse lives to live, she figured.
It was years before she had her first satisfying sexual experience. Laying in bed afterward, held in his large arms she heard herself say (as if she was watching from outside her body) how anyone could think that sex with a woman measured up to that was insane. She didn’t have to test it anymore– she felt real for the first time. She felt like herself– though to be honest she had never quite known herself. She continued to keep the old part, the false face alive. It had been with her so long, she was afraid to let it go. But with each relationship after that– it faded into the distance and became a shadow, a ghost of the past, as if it were never there at all.
She sat in class– a class she had never imagined taking. If there was one thing she had learned in her life, it was that she didn’t like women. They were all the same. She was bored with their cattiness, their petty jealousies, their cruel behavior– but here she sat.
It may have been reading, it may have been listening, it may have just been a day dream– but she was hit in the gut all of a sudden with a memory so old, and so painful she could barely breathe.
This is where it all made sense. All the running, all the fighting, all the labels, all the language, this way of living she had been going in and out of for years. She thought of the two boys in the hallway at school, when she was much younger. She clenched her jaw when she heard those words in her head, the ones she had fought so hard to forget. She looked at the women in her class– and she thought of the man she had been spending time with the past few weeks. It was all so clear to her then. However necessary she felt it was, this had all been a lie. A lie so intricate that she herself had believed it for years.
There is beauty, and freedom in the pain of breaking down, and being exposed.
The words have changed. “I’m straight.”
These four pieces were originally posted by Joy Farber @ littletreefarber
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Should Organized Religion Have More Rights Than Women?
Right now Catholic Bishops, charities, schools and universities are demanding exemptions from new rules requiring that insurance plans cover contraception for women, free of charge.
And President Obama is listening, even as Congressional Democrats object.
The demand for exemptions is based on moral and religious grounds. Religious rights, it’s claimed. But about women’s religious rights? When women’s moral and religious beliefs conflict with the Catholic Church, why should the church win out?
Free contraception leads to healthier babies, too. The Institutes of Medicine recommended free birth control due to compelling evidence that it leads to healthier women and babies.
Women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to receive delayed or no prenatal care and to smoke, consume alcohol and be depressed during pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy also increases the risk of babies being born preterm or at a low birth weight, both of which raise their chances of health and developmental problems.
And when birth control is free, abortion rates drop too.
Then there’s the whole matter of financial survival. Poor women might want to avoid the poverty that can come from extra mouths to feed. And those who are better off might want to have only the number of children that they can afford.
Looking at the country’s finances, free contraception is a good deal, as well. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned, and one factor is the high cost of birth control. And unplanned pregnancies cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion a year. Because of this, every dollar spent on birth control by California’s Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment program resulted in approximately $4 savings.
But returning to the question of religion, aren’t we supposed to sacrifice for our own religious beliefs, rather than asking everyone else to sacrifice for our religion?
So I ask again:
Why should organized religion have more rights than women?
Reposted on the Ms. Magazine Blog, Daily Kos, The AlterNet, Democratic Underground and Political Mosaic.
Also republished on Daily Kos by Feminism, Pro-Feminism, Womanism: Feminist Issues, Ideas, & Activism and Street Prophets .
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Why Are Men Surprised by Breakups?
Over the years I’ve dated men who’ve ogled other women. Actually, only four men behaved that way, most weren’t so rude. When I told them their behavior bothered me, it had no effect. One responded, “Someday you’ll have a breakthrough and get over it.”
Instead of breakthroughs, I broke up with each of them. They were all shocked.
Sometimes the surprise happens differently, as when men “hear” me say that I like what I don’t.
When I was in college at BYU some of the students believed that although Mormons no longer practice polygamy (only “Mormon Fundamentalists” do) polygamy was the way of Heaven. (A religious instructor said this wasn’t the case. I haven’t been to church in years and don’t know what the common view is now.)
Still, I heard men say they couldn’t wait to have many wives up in Heaven. Put off, I asked men how they felt about polygamy. I told one man that it pissed me off. But projecting his own interest onto me, he was certain that I was as intrigued by the idea of heavenly threesomes as he was. Perhaps he got his sex ed from porn? I was mystified. He was surprised when I broke off our relationship.
Breakups can be harder on men than on women. Partly because men are more likely to be surprised.
Why are they so often surprised?
The male role seems to be in play. Men are less likely to monitor their relationships and they often learn that they’re not supposed to listen to women. Plus, taught to constrain their emotions, men are less able to read the emotions of others.
Women are commonly objectified, too. When men see women as objects, sex toys that exist for their pleasure, men lack empathy and can’t feel women’s pain.
Additionally, men often have more power in society and in relationships. How could this hurt them?
The Wall Street Journal reported studies showing that power decreases empathy.
People moving up the ladder of success are typically considerate, outgoing, agreeable and extroverted. Nice “guys” do finish first.
But once in power, things change.
One researcher compared the effect to brain damage, saying that people who hold a lot of authority can behave like neurological patients with damaged orbitofrontal lobes, an area of the brain that’s crucial for empathy.
I’m not saying all men behave this way, but it’s an interesting observation and something to consider since men typically have more power in relationships, and in society, generally.
So it’s interesting that even limited experiments, like asking people to describe a time when they felt powerful, could make them more egocentric.
Power keeps people from hearing points of view that differ from their own. So when a woman says she’s unhappy, and her partner feels she shouldn’t be, he may not sense her suffering even as she tells him about it.
Power diminishes empathy. Lacking empathy, some misread their partner’s feelings.
Then its surprise! Bye, bye baby.
Women, if you’re having issues, perhaps this will help you to understand what’s going on. Maybe you can have a conversation (if he’ll make an effort to listen to you.)
Men, if you want to keep your relationships strong, recognize women as full partners. Be attuned and listen to them. And be empathetic and alert to your partner’s emotions.
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Miss Representation: Girls are Pretty, Boys Are Powerful
Powerful Man Pretty Woman
Girls get the message that what’s important is how they look. And boys get the message that what’s important about girls is how they look. That’s one of the observations made in the film, Miss Representation.
Girls and boys both buy into this belief system. And then boys become men, step into power, and perpetuate a social order that favors them. Most CEOs are male, most of Congress is male, most publishers and editors are male, and we’ve never had a female President of the United States. Girls become women and go with the flow, too. Yes, there are many exceptions. But these large patterns remain.
Our world incessantly whispers – or shouts: women are more body than brain. Women are emotion, not rationality and action. Women are sex.
And sex sells, they say. Sex sells products. Sex sells the message that women are all about sex.
Now add demeaning and violent images.
The message: men are powerful, and better than women.
And when women try to move out of the box to gain power?
Well look what happens on conservative networks like Fox, where men dress conservatively while female anchors wear plunging necklines, short skirts, and say things like, “Hillary Clinton looked so haggard and, like what? 92 years old?!” Or Greta Van Susteren asks VP candidate, Sara Palin, whether she has gotten breast implants. When women aren’t co-conspiring, Rush Limbaugh complains that no one wants to see a woman age in office.
Even when women do become powerful a headline runs, “Condi Rice, Dominatrix.”
Condi Rice, dominatrix
Perhaps alongside an ad for a nutcracker shaped as Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton nutcracker
Any wonder 51% of Americans are women, but only 17% of Congress members are?
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Miss Representation’s writer-director says this is unfortunate since research shows that:
The more diversity and more women you have in leadership, both in government and business, the greater the productivity, the creativity and the bottom line.
And:
There’s this new transformative leadership that’s embracing empathy, collaboration, empowerment… those are more feminine qualities and those are now more associated with success in the global landscape than the traditional sort of command-and-control male leadership traits. So I think we’re going to start to see a shift.
Let’s stop misrepresenting women and their potential. We all lose out when the talents and vision of half our population are stifled. Women and girls are not less important than men and boys.
Newsom urges us to empower both young women and young men to create an equitable society together, making sure that girls are mentored and have a plenty of good role models.
And as Miss Representation points out:
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
— Alice Walker
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Being Sexual vs Looking Sexual
Is “beauty” really sex? Does a woman’s sexuality correspond to what she looks like? Does she have the right to sexual pleasure and self-esteem because she’s a person, or must she earn that right through “beauty”?
– Naomi Wolf
A lot of women and men confuse looking sexual with being sexual. We look at an attractive woman and think, oh, she’s really sexual. Then we see a not-so-pretty woman and suppose she’s not.
But “pretty” and “sexuality” are actually two different things. Sex is all about feeling, not the surface experience of just existing, however beautifully.
But as Naomi Wolf points out in The Beauty Myth, too many women don’t enjoy sex because they think they don’t look sexy enough. And since a lot of women think they don’t look sexy because of their body type, age, or low self-esteem, a lot of women miss out on great sex.
Because a woman’s ability to enjoy sexuality can be so closely tied to how she looks, many cut their breasts to get implants just so that they can experience eroticism. Even when their partners don’t want them to. As Wolf put it, “In a diseased environment, they are doing this ‘for themselves.’”
And about one-third of women lose sensitivity in their nipples, post surgery, becoming less capable of enjoying the sensations of the breast.
And even then a lot of “hot” women spend their time thinking about how they look and not experiencing how they feel. So there you have pretty sex objects who don’t enjoy sex.
Women think they need to look a certain way because men are hardwired to be visual. Yet it’s not true. In tribal societies women walk around nearly nude, and no one cares. Those men aren’t visually attuned to the breast as erotic. In our culture men learn to be aroused by breasts through the strategic revealing and covering of them, creating the allure.
Wolf says beauty is not the same as sexuality. Instead:
Wherever we feel pleasure, all women have “good” bodies. We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need not believe we must somehow earn good erotic care; we always deserved it.
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Corporations Are People; Women Not So Much
Mississippi’s measure seeking to grant a fertilized egg the status of “person” was defeated at the ballot box last week. Unfortunately, personhood advocates still plan to put the matter up for vote in five more states. Perhaps the next step should be granting women personhood.
Because as it is, personhood advocates feel that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses should have more rights than women.
If a fetus threatens its mother’s health and she aborts (in self-defense) to save her life, she should be called “murderer”? But if the fetus is linked to her death, that’s okay? Why not prosecute fetuses, too?
Factories have excluded women from earning a living so that no harm will come to an embryo. But if a woman starves from lack of income, that’s all right?
And why are women prosecuted for poor nutritional choices if pregnancy ends in stillbirth, yet when actual women lack proper nourishment, many of the personhood advocates back cutting nutritional assistance?
Why must a woman be forced to undergo surgery for the sake of her fetus, and risk prosecution if she doesn’t, yet if she can’t afford surgery to save her own life, well, too bad?
When a fetus, embryo or a fertilized egg’s rights conflict with a woman’s, why does she lose?
A pal of mine who goes by the name, lineatus, recommended that women regain control by incorporating their uteruses. The Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people. Why not women?
Plus, “It would be easier to get insurance,” lineatus continued. “You could get a nice group rate for your corporation, rather than the extortionate individual plan.”
“True,” I interjected, “And if women were people like corporations, and were thought to require the same level of freedom that extreme right-wingers think markets do, then women could finally be free.”
If corporations are people, and if some are struggling to make fertilized eggs people, shouldn’t women be recognized as people, too?
Crossposted @ Daily Kos and republished by Feminism, Pro-Feminism, Womanism: Feminist Issues, Ideas, & Activism and Abortion
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Whipping a Daughter. Good Dad? Bad Dad?
By now you have probably seen or heard about the YouTube video showing Texas County Judge, William Adams, mercilessly whipping his 16-year-old daughter with a belt. Hillary Adams made the video public in reaction to her father’s history of abuse.
The punishment was meted out for pirating videos and music off the internet. But does the punishment fit the crime? Or is the crime an excuse for punishment?
It all reminds me of another man, a pastor, who beat his daughter for such infringements as falling grades. After deeming a paper unacceptable he’d command, “Bra and panties!” Meaning go upstairs to your bedroom and strip down so I can beat you. Why the lingerie garb was necessary is unclear—or maybe it is clear.
Interestingly, these men’s wives responded similarly to moms who fail to stop incest. They let things be. Typically, incest occurs when wives/mothers are powerless. They may be physically or mentally incapacitated, or they may be absent. But sometimes they disempower themselves, believing their husbands are the head of home and, really, King of the Castle. Their job is to obey. So they don’t step in.
Except on this video Hillary’s mom not only supported the beating, but joined in, taking a turn at bruising Hillary, herself. “Bend over and take it like a grown woman,” she ordered.
Makes you wonder if Mom had heard that phrase before. On “Today” she said she had left her husband, saying she had been “brainwashed” by a cycle of abuse and dysfunction.
After Mom took her turn whipping her daughter, Dad told Hillary to submit to him.
This notion that women should submit and accept beatings is troubling to say the least.
Just speculating, but when you add it all up the whole scene resembles a sadistic fantasy. You have to wonder if Mom took over from Dad hoping he’d exit for good and take his focus off “the other woman” — but then punished her daughter for “provoking” (in her mind) Dad’s prurient interest. Or did Mom get a sadistic thrill, too? Or was she just being a good parent? Ok, not the last one.
When women are seen as mere things to satisfy urges — whether sexual, or a drive to dominate and belittle in hopes of feeling bigger, more powerful, or whatever…
The wrong person is being punished.
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Markets Must Be Free; Women Must Be Constrained
Right wingers adamantly proclaim that free markets are necessary for freedom. So why do so many of these liberty lovers insist that women be constrained?
The right has been relentlessly pushing laws that limit women’s autonomy. The most extreme measure is on the November ballot in Mississippi. There, voters may amend the state constitution to define a “person” as “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.”
If this law passes, a woman would not be able to get an abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or if her life were in danger. Miscarriage could become a police investigation. And at least some (possibly all) forms of contraception would become illegal.
Similar measures are being planned for future elections in Florida, Montana, Ohio and at least five other states.
Slate’s XX Factor reports on the consequences of such a law being passed in Mexico:
The main result has been a doubling down in the criminalization of women who have abortions, or even miscarriages… The penalties for a woman who has an abortion range from six months to four years.
XX Factor goes on to report that one woman got a 23 year sentence for what she says was a miscarriage. Now consider that about one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. (In the U.S. today women are prosecuted for stillbirths, even when prosecutors lack direct evidence linking poor health choices to the stillbirth.)
Personhood activist, Ed Hanks, says society isn’t comfortable yet with punishing women and their doctors for abortions, “because abortion has been ‘normalized.’” He hopefully adds, “As the Personhood message penetrates, then society will understand why women need to be punished just as surely as they understand why there can be no exceptions for rape/incest.”
When women aren’t being limited by penitentiary walls – or by their own deaths – another prison arises when contraception is banned – a goal pushed by plenty of conservatives. Some abusive men even destroy contraception hoping to trap wives or girlfriends into dependency by their need to care for children.
Last summer I wrote of despots who controlled women’s reproductive rights. But it bears repeating:
The 20th century’s most loathsome regimes focused on controlling women’s reproduction. The Nazis closed family planning centers and outlawed abortion, eventually making it a capital offense, says Steven Conn, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State. Stalin banned abortion. Ceausescu outlawed contraception and made miscarriage subject to criminal investigation. Today China forces abortion and sterilization. Conn observes:
The day after the evil Ceausescu had been executed, the National Salvation Front issued two decrees; it lifted the ban on the private ownership of typewriters, and it repealed the laws that policed pregnant women.
America’s right-wing extremists look eerily similar to these despots, lending an ironic twist to their claim of being all about freedom through free markets.
Markets must be free. But women must be controlled?
Reposted on Daily Kos November 7, 2011
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Chaz Bono, He’s Scary!
When Chaz Bono began Dancing With The Stars he got death threats and the show faced a boycott. Psychiatrist and Fox News commentator, Dr. Keith Ablow, told parents to bar kids from watching Chaz, as seeing him could cause youngsters to want a sex change. Girls might even want to cut their breasts off, he warned.
Despite all this – and not so snazzy dance moves — Chaz stayed popular for quite a while, being booted off the show only last week. No reports yet on how many girls have asked to sever their breasts.
Plenty of people think Chaz is pretty scary. He doesn’t frighten me. Why do some feel so menaced by the transgendered?
American Indians felt differently. Before European contact, if a biological female wanted to be a man, joining men in the hunt and war, that was fine. If a biological male wanted to take on a womanly role that was a-okay, too. Among the Indians, the transgendered were something special – having a foot in both gendered worlds – and so they presided over ceremonies of major life transitions: birth, marriage and death.
But those American Indians were egalitarian, whereas homophobia and trans-fear come out of patriarchy, suggesting a clue to the anxiety’s source.
Under patriarchy, men are deemed superior. So a lot of effort goes into proving manhood and worthiness for that exalted status. If a woman can so easily become a man, how superior are males, really?
How much call do men have to head homes? To take charge? To sit at the front of the B110 bus in Brooklyn? To enjoy male privilege? If women can become men, the patriarchy falls apart. And for many men, so does their self-worth.
If a man feels self-secure he won’t be threatened by women’s equality. And he won’t be so frightened by the likes of Chaz Bono.
And sure, in a culture where people rarely see the transgendered, they can feel anxious in their disorientation.
But by strutting his stuff for all the world to see, and by being proud of who he is, perhaps Chaz will help other transgendered people to feel more secure and accepted.
Love over hate and fear.
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