Rape Is Trivial, And Other Ways Women Are Non-News

Feministe – that bastion of feminism — didn’t cover the Custer County sheriff who was conducting mass-rapes in the county jail.

Even Wonkette covered that (of course, only to have about 80 commenters try to come up with witty and funny interpretations of rape).

Feministing didn’t cover it either — missed it in the same blog-roundup that included why calling Obama an elitist is racist. (Really, by the way? Are you saying black people can’t be part of the wealthy elite? Are you saying Obama is NOT part of the wealthy elite?)

So. Yeah. Someone mentioned it in the comments and nobody updated the round-up to include such a heinous and symbolically telling crime. Usually, this sort of thing gets its own post on Feministing. Perhaps Ann was too busy catching up on the latest internecine blogwar in the feminist world.

Sean Bell’s murderer’s acquittal = Feminist News.
Mass rapes and sex slavery of women prisoners by a figure of authority = Who cares?

I’ve been doing an exercise. I ask random women, “Are you a feminist?”

I have recently gotten the following answers:

Emphatic “Yes” — a 50 year old black woman I work with.

Funny look, “No” — a young white woman in Borders yesterday while we were both in the “Social Studies” section, which includes a small paltry corner for women’s studies. I didn’t ask for an explanation.

Mildly disgusted look, “No” = a young black former co-worker who said it was because, she’s “pro-family and likes men and wants to have babies and feminists are anti-family crazy ladies.”

Perplexed baffled troubled look, “Enhhh, it’s a difficult question. I mean, what does it mean to say you’re a feminist?” = a 30-something lawyer friend.

Feminism is widely misunderstood (thanks, conservatives!), widely reviled (I found this book in the Women’s Studies section in Borders) and almost universally considered irrelevant.

Most women are no longer proud of the label. At best, they’re ambivalent about it. That is, if they understand it at all. All the dilution has worked — people can’t put their finger on “women’s equality.”

A woman’s rape is no longer a woman’s issue in the wider society. It’s a criminal issue.

Race? Entirely different matter. You ask a random person on the street, “Is racism a problem in this country?” and they’ll look at you like you’re severely out of touch with reality. “OF COURSE it’s a problem!”

You don’t have to limit yourself to blacks either — ask anybody. Of course it’s a problem.

But women aren’t even seen to have issues that are separate and uniquely theirs (such as limits on reproductive rights).

Women’s issues aren’t serious.

Women’s issues aren’t covered with seriousness in the mainstream media (race is).

Women come last. Always. I’m used to that — I’m a daughter in a Pakistani family with an elder brother. You can bet I’m used to coming second, coming last, not coming at all (pun intended).

To point out that sexism is glossed over, not noticed, ignored by young women as an issue, while racism is not, is not “oppression Olympics.” I’m not saying race is less important. I’m saying sexism is not seen to be as important. I would think sexism is at least as important, wouldn’t you?

But women are taken to task — frequently by other women — for only being about women. We’re supposed to be about everyone else first.

As someone who has long volunteered with non-profits, I know that you focus on extraneous issues to the detriment of your cause.

I once worked for an organization which is fighting for marriage equality for LGBT folk. The rigorous messaging was uncompromisingly about their issues. Focus focus focus, always. You don’t want to confuse voters. You don’t want to go off on tangents. You don’t want to distract a voter’s attention from your cause for one second. This is important because catching people’s attention long enough to warn them about one upcoming bill is hard enough. Why ever would you compromise that by talking about anything else?

Now I’m affiliated with an organization that focuses (at least politically) on women’s reproductive freedom. There was a huge debate recently about whether or not we should sign a letter supporting the LGBT rights org I used to work for. No brainer, right? I mean, we are all pro-LGBT rights.

Well, no. There is a competition between different causes, even if all the causes support each other’s work, because they’re all fighting for the same limited resources (donations and awareness). The LGBT rights organization’s cause is undermined if they let their volunteers share information about upcoming bills that will limit access to abortion — because it takes attention away from what they want to focus on.

When there is a direct competition between different causes, someone loses. It shouldn’t be a zero-sum game and it isn’t for individuals — we can support multiple causes without our heads exploding. But for organizations and movements, it’s a different story — it is a zero sum game. They cannot focus on everything, or even two things. Someone loses if they do, and they can’t afford for it to be them.

I’m aware of a degree of collaboration between the LGBT rights org and my reproductive rights org. We got something from them before we gave something back. It was a strict exchange of resources, not a free gift from us to them of our goodwill.

Let’s be realistic. If we talk about police brutality against black men, or the American prison-industrial complex, or the drug war, or any number of serious social justice issues, can we honestly talk about disembodied women products and junior panties that say “Who needs a credit card?” without trivializing the latter?

Can we honesty complain that white women are making 70 cents on the dollar compared to men and not have that problem laughed out of court by blacks who can’t even get a job?

And yet I’m sure we all agree that the “trivial issues” of sexism and gender discrimination in the workplace are important to women and affect women’s lives and need to be talked about.

It’s very easy to say, “You can talk about the right of young women to be sluts while we are dying here!”

It’s very easy to trivialize discriminatory attitudes against women’s sexuality, because who cares about your right to screw around while people are dying!

You know, someone’s always dying. It’s not our job as feminists to make women feel bad for focusing on what matters to them and what makes it harder for them to live in this male-dominated world on a day to day basis. Anti-feminists are doing a terrific job on that without our help.

Black civil rights workers are not going to take a break from their earth-shakingly important work and tell us about sexist condom commercials and sexist media in general. They’re not going to point out all the videos out there that our young women’s male peers make about how screamingly funny rape is. But someone needs to.

We’re well-aware that our concerns always come last. It’s why women are self-conscious about calling themselves feminists. It’s very trivial to worry about your body and your safety while other people are dying. After all, you’re a privileged white woman. And black men get raped in prison too! Who cares what your concerns are, and never mind that you’re still a second class citizen even if higher on the totem pole than the people who are dying.

This is another sneaky technique to put women last. This is yet another way to confuse women about themselves, about their place in the world, about their importance.

Women, one half of the world’s population, are important enough to get a label that belongs firmly and only to them. We matter enough. We have issues enough. And nobody else is looking out for us, so we have to look out for ourselves.

Feminism IS meaningless if it’s not just about women. If it’s a social justice movement and does not specialize for women’s issues, it’s not feminism. It’s social justice. Generic. Not powerful. Not empowering. Not as effective.

If a young woman lands on Feministing and reads about Obama’s elitism, you’ve just made feminism a little more irrelevant than it already is considered. If “Feministing” means nothing more than a generic political blog, you’ve already betrayed women. You lose focus at your peril.

Don’t kill feminism. Don’t trivialize women. Don’t lose focus. We can’t afford to — the next generation of women are going to lose rights (they are losing rights) if we don’t take care. And you know who loses if feminism loses focus, right? That’s right – women.

P.S. Feministing does usually do a really great job on staying focused on women. But they’ve been catching a lot of flak for that recently and are beginning to include unrelated issues. And if someone is listening, a “Women of Color” category on Feministing is offensive to me.