Back, Kinda

So my discharge went through, and I’m home with my family, which is really, really good news. It gets better every day I’m home.

I really feel like I dodged a bullet, in spite of my ambivalence. While I bristle a bit about being offically labeled as nuttier than squirrel shit in the mental health department (I went nearly 30 years and never noticed, as I may have mentioned once already), watching world events and reading Heart’s post about Navy rapists, I can’t fight the feeling that had I managed to stay in the Navy I would have ended up just as bad as all of the people I wrote about in A Hall of Shame and/or slowly rotting in at the bottom of the sea at the start of the next world war. Fortunately, I’ll never know.

Being home again after all this time has a lot of challenges, like finding a Real Job(tm), re-integrating into civilian life, getting to know my family and my role in it from a new perspective, and so on and so forth. That’s made posting a bit more of a hassle than I’m ready to tackle on a regular basis. I’ve put up a couple of things, but nothing substantial.

I’ve got some ideas that are formulating, though, and I anticipate a couple good, meaty posts coming in the next week or two, after Aria and I get back from our backpacking/camping trip.

In the meantime, here are a few things I’ve been reading that I recommend:

Updates on the New Jersey 4 Dandrige and Hill have had their convictions overturned! Rejoice!

A discussion of women’s choices over at Feminist 101. I cannot for the life of me find it, but I’m reminded strongly of a post put up a very long time ago by one of the UK feminist bloggers (I think); she said she always believed it was her free choice to shave her legs until she did an experiment to prove it, and didn’t shave her legs, and after a couple weeks, her boyfriend had a complete fit and she realized that she had less freedom of that choice than she thought. I wish wish wish I could remember who posted it, and could find that post again. I think it was called “Pressure” or something similar. It was pretty eye-opening for me.

From Our Bodies, Our Blog, an analysis of Abstinance Only sex education when put up against Comprehensive sex education.

And now I’m off to help make homemade cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing. And I don’t even have to worry about making weight for any upcoming physical readiness tests! JOY!

A Crude Awakening

One hour and twenty-two minutes of streaming video garaunteed to scare the pants off of you. Great stuff, very well done, but very, very disturbing. Just give it half an hour to hook you.

Peak oil is here. Sky’s fallin’, yo.

A Crude Awakening

WTF is this??

So I sent an e-mail to my wife, and on the “Congratulations! We decided to work, this time!” page, there was this advertisement:

WTF is this all about??

I followed the link, and it just went to some generic MSN portal page, and it took me several minutes of head-scratching before I noticed that the portal was for MSN Arabia. Which is substantially more offensive than if it had been a link to a nudie mag or dating site or something, because now instead of catering to individual misogynists, it’s catering to a stereotype of embedded cultural misogyny and saying “Hey, arab dudes, we get ya! Leave the wife locked in the kitchen and come read the news!”

I’m incensed. Too incensed to do or think or say anything constructive. Refer to Fig. 3-7.

Hall of Shame updated

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve added five more entries to A Hall of Shame. I figured just adding to that one would be easier than making a whole new post for every batch of hatred.

-a birch tree

Kibbles and Bits

1) So they moved me out of my room in the barracks, because it’s been “condemned”. Actually, the entire building has been unofficially condemned, but they get to keep housing us here by calling only certain rooms condemned and shuffling us around to less-condemned rooms. Thus, why I am accessing the internet from the laundry room, rather than from at my comfy desk. The free internet doesn’t extend to my new side of the hallway. How laughable is that?

2) When moving out of my old room, I just found out I left my pool cue behind. I hope the construction guys who come in to empty it and make their evals have a nice time with it. Damn it.

3) I have my discharge date! Said date was greeted with both enthusiasm and disgruntle…uh…ment. Disgruntlement. The first, because I know when I get to go home to my family who I haven’t seen in six months, and go on with my life after having been jerked around for, like, ever by a system that couldn’t decide if it wanted me to stay or go. The second, because the Navy was pretty much the only job I ever had that could make me feel like I was successful. Like I was good at something. And now I feel like I’ve failed at it, somehow. How do you fail at a job where 80% of your performance is based on showing up on time in a squared-away uniform with a good attitude?

I didn’t want to leave the Navy. They diagnosed me with a mental condition that made staying in the Navy impossible. Maybe it explains some of my past, but shit, I lived 25+ years without knowing I was nuts, and my family didn’t know I was nuts, and my parents didn’t know I was nuts, and my friends all say “Man, that’s such a load of shit, you’re not nuts!”… but the doc knows best, right? Whatever. I bounce back and forth between being happy as a lark or grumpy as a snail in a salt mine. I guess I’m mostly just be happy to have it be over, finally, and go home to be with people who know me and whom I care about, and away from some of the nastiest, meanest people I’ve ever known. Should I really take pride in succeeding in such a misogynistic, violent environment? I don’t know.

4) I’ve been reading The Gift of Fear. It’s a pretty good read, and the premise of giving people (primarily women) a set of logical, empirical reasons behind why their intution works the way it does (and thereby giving them permission to heed their intuition without feeling silly or irrational) is great. I’ll probably be quoting lots of things from it as time goes by, especially about Nice Guys, violence against women, entitlement, priviledge, and lots of other cool topics. Unfortunately, it also rasies my hackles in a victim-blamey sort of way in many spots, although I guess that’s inevitable with any book that tries to give people tools to avoid becoming victims. It’s always going to open the door for people to say “See? This expert guy says there was something you could have done differently, why did you let this happen to you?”, and a book about how violent people can use their own intution about themselves and the reactions of people around them to suss out and curb their own violent tendancies probably wouldn’t sell very well. Still, it would have been a nice attempt.

5) Yes, you’re right, I did in fact edit the picture on top of “A Bit About Male Priviledge” a little bit. You weren’t just seeing things before, I promise.

6) I don’t really have anything else to say that wouldn’t take hours of research and typing and proofreading and editing while sitting in a stiflingly hot laundry room. So I’ll stop now.

-a birch tree

A Bit About Male Priviledge

A few days ago, my blog was mentioned over at Women’s Space, in a very kind way, but a way that made me uncomfortable. I posted in the comments, but thought maybe I should put my feelings down here as well, with some elaboration.

I would like to say, for the record, that I’m really uncomfortable being the subject of phrases like “men who actually get it”, and “men who have earned safe passage through Women’s Land”, because I don’t think I have. I really only get much attention at all, I believe, because I am male, and the bar for males is so low that all I have to do is write about some relatively elementary “Well, duh!” things I discover about myself and the world I live in as I walk down the road of becoming a halfway decent human being, and I can be a relative shining star in a sea of dirtbags.

The only reason I can write about what I do is because of all the women I’ve learned from, who have sacrificed their time and energy to perform a task I should have been doing for myself all along.

My wife, Aria, has put herself on the limb for me time and time again, not because it was something she enjoyed doing; she’s sacrificed emotionally and spiritually and has spent many sleepless nights because of my obstenance, entitlement, priviledge, and misogyny. She’s done it because she’s more or less stuck with me, and desperately wanted me to be safer for her to be around in every sense.

Feminist bloggers, like Heart, The Biting Beaver (of whom I was a great fan, and miss sorely), Twisty, Red State Feminist, Polly Styrene, Sparkle*matrix, and countless others, are the foundation upon which all my ideas and writing stand. Behind this halfway mediocre, sexist man stands a hundred amazing, intelligent, women. I stand upon the shoulders of giants, and that imagery is, I feel, very apt, in that standing on women’s shoulders to receive recognition is pretty much the definition of the Patriarchy. It is only my priviledge in this society that allows me to do so, and it is certainly my priviledge that would allow me to accept any sort of accolade whatsoever for ascending an inch or two above the bar of male expectation by riding on the coattails of great women.

I do strive to one day truly earn the praise I’ve been given, but I haven’t yet. I’m not that good of a feminist out in the real world. I have priviledge, and sexism, and misogyny, and entitlement suspended like cholesterol in my very blood; the part of me everyone sees on the internet is not the whole me. My past is a testament to Patriachy in action, and my present is rife with episodes of silent cowardice and resistance, silent and otherwise, against some very basic Feminist principles, and that I feel shamed by all of them is cold comfort to the women who must interact with me.

I write to catalogue a journey I should have embarked on long, long ago and should be much, much further along with; a journey I should have begun by myself rather than by being driven along from behind by women whose options were to either teach me or put up with me. I don’t feel that any of my ideas are new, or novel, and I only get what hits I do because of the very male priviledge I’m ashamed of using: a male who, even the tiniest bit, “gets it”, is to be esteemed regardless of how recycled his words are or how shallow his observations.

Part and parcel of that is the fact that I feel a pressing need to address the fact that I have not earned any praise. I am not a good man. I am not a decent man. I am, at best, a slightly-less-neolithic man, and I cringe at giving myself even that much credit.

The whole point is that no, I don’t “get it”. Not yet. I am very uncomfortable with that kind of description because it makes me feel like I’m setting out to fool people. When those words come up, I feel fraudulent. Here, on the internet, I put forth a persona that I strive to live up to in reality, not a snapshot of who I am in reality.

I will say things that offend. I will say things that are stupid. I will fail to grasp concepts that are elementary. Even though I can say that, and even though I can see them coming in a vague, misty sort of way over the horizon, I won’t see them in specific until they’re right on top of me, and I will fuck up. I do not ask for anyone’s slack, nor will you ever hear me say “I’m still learning!” as if the beginning point of my learning was a marker in the river of destiny that I could not have moved or avoided. I just don’t want anyone to have to choose between defending my fuckups, or eating crow and feeling cheated, and in both cases having their judgement questioned because of my actions. That’s the very definition of male priviledge; men do ignorant, shitty, apathetic, and/or outright malicious things which hurt women, and women have to bat cleanup for them.

There may be other male pro-feminist bloggers out there who use the women who read and usually like their blogs as shields against valid criticism from other women who were rightly offended. If such men exist, I want to avoid them like an old cliche.

Why the hell am I rambling on and on about this long beyond the point of redundancy? Because it’s really important to me that I get across that I am so totally not enlightened. I don’t want anyone to feel, at any time, like I’ve put out a false respresentation of myself for personal gain. As I’ve said before, I’ve done many of the things that were on the Rapist Checklist (thus, I’ve raped). Hell, I’ll call out the numbers for you, since just saying the above without getting specific naturally leads one to conclude that I would be referring to some of the “lesser” numbers, and make no mistake, in spite of the fact that rape is bad and all of those numbers are rape, many people, somehow, consider some of them to be “worse rape” or “more rape” than others, so just saying “I’ve done things on that list” could be pretty misleading. What are my numbers? They are 1, 3, 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 33, 34, 36, 37, 45, and 51.

I’m male. I’m part of dude nation. I benefit from Patriarchy and rape and porn and institutionalized sexism and every other nasty, horrible thing that goes on here. It doesn’t matter how much I write, or what I write about, I’m always going to benefit until the revolution comes. I can’t accept kind words from women while still benefitting from their pain.

So, yeah. I think I’ve run out of words. I haven’t run out of thoughts, but I’ve run out of words. I don’t know if anyone will even get what I’m trying to say here. If the “man who gets it” actually does exist, he’s, uh, yeah, like, not me.

I really, really appreciate the praise I’ve been given, and it makes me feel like I’m getting a few small things right, maybe. But I’m afraid I can’t accept that praise, and will have to respectfully return all that praise to the people who have given it, because I haven’t earned it, and I don’t think I ever will. To accept it and keep it would be to embrace the very priviledge I’m supposed to be taking a stand against.

-a birch tree

PS: For crying out loud…. I can’t figure out how to say what I’m thinking without coming across as emo and/or self-loathing and/or fatuous and/or like, what’s the word for being all falsely humble to get pity or attention? I can’t remember and google isn’t helping. Anyway, I guess I’ll just hit the “publish” button here and hope for the best.

Two Additions

I’m in a funk, still being given the runaround about my pay disparities and my discharge, still being given bullshit work assignments, still being put on watchbills I’m not supposed to be on, and still feeling dirty after writing out all the awful comments I’ve overheard without saying much of anything.

So I don’t have much to post, except two new comments I heard today that I did, in fact, respond to:

Situation one:
Dude A: “There has got to be a better way to get these creases into my dress uniforms.”
Dude B: “There is. Get married.”
Me: “Dude, do your own fucking laundry, you lazy ass.”
Dudes A&B: [nervous laughter. I put out my cigarette and leave.]

Situation two:
Dude X: “I heard they were talking about a pilot program to test out an all-female submarine crew.”
Dude Y: “The sub would have to come back right out of the docks, because they’d kill each other in three days.”
Me: “Actually, they’d probably get qual’d in half the time men do because they’re not doing stupid shit like ‘The Brain’ to each other or making the skips eat San#2 Sandwhiches and put their cocks on silver pipes.”
Dude Y: “…uh… I dunno. Did you see the Red Wings last night? Triple overtime!”

A Hall of Shame

[Updated 11Jun08]

From the “What Men Really Think About Women” files…

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a member of the United States Navy. I serve on a base that consists almost exclusively of men, with the exception of some female corpsmen (and don’t even get me started about the nomenclature of Navy jobs; corpsman, fire controlman, signalman, yeoman, and on and on and on…) and civilians who work at the NEX, among some varied and widely spaced others.

In such an environment, men feel quite free to express themselves at their truest; that is to say, with no one watching them who may be offended or angered by their prejudicial, racist, misogynist words and behaviors.

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been covertly collecting sexist phrases and conversations overheard in the smoke pits and elsewhere, as a bit of an experiment. You see, many people claim that sexism is limited to certain geographical regions, economic classes, occupations, age ranges, or a host of other factors which would cut the potential pool of sexists into a relatively small minority of men.

Of course, I’ve discovered that this is unequivicably false. I serve with men from California, Texas, New Hampshire, Vermont, Oklahoma, Oregon, and every state and region in between, and some further away like Puerto Rico and a small steel-making village in Russia that I can neither pronounce nor spell. I have served next to men who have been my senior by fifteen or twenty years and my junior by nearly a decade. Some of these men were high school students before joining the Navy, others were factory workers, farmers, college students, small business owners, or bankers. I know one man who came from the streets, and I know another whose family is so wealthy he drops a “small” bet of $4,000 on a horse race without batting an eyelid. These men are Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, and independants who wish to vote for McCain, Huckabee, Clinton, Obama, Perot, or not vote at all. I have served with atheists, Protestants, Catholics, Buddists, Wiccans, and agnostics.

The unifying factor among all of them are the nasty, horrible things they say about women (and, among the white men, minorities).

Now some might argue that the military calls for these people, in an attempt to deny that the hatred and derision for women is a trait drilled into all men of our culture from childhood, but to say such a thing is both wrong and offensive. All the people, women and men alike, who serve in the US Armed Forces are answering a calling that is personal to themselves, not some sinister desire to inflict their hatred onto others. Our training does not, and needs not, instill such a great hate into us as a matter of course, so the argument that the military turns men into these kinds of horrible people is also faulty.

Rather, the undeniable and terrifying fact is that the attitudes I have collected are a cross-section of America’s culture of misogyny, and I only put the Navy into it to show the vast differences among these men that are crossed by a single brow: hatred of women.

I am ashamed to say that all but one of these comments, I allowed to go unchallenged, although I did quickly remove myself from the conversation, I did not stick up for women until pressed beyond where I should have needed to be pressed. I often hold to the excuse that I am not especially quick-witted, and as often as I hear these things I am still stunned when they actually exit another man’s mouth, but they’re copouts and artificial barriers I set up to avoid having to change my behavior in the face of those whom I am otherwise safe to confront. I will alter my behavior in the future with regard to these kinds of statements.

Here are some I have collected since I arrived at this command. I will warn you that many of these are the foulest things I have ever heard escape a person’s mouth in my presence, and people who are more sensitive to the kind of language I am about to recount may be better off just taking my word for it.

The rest follows after the break.