How much slut-shaming can we fit into a day -- Guest post

Slut-shaming is the act of shaming someone for being -- or even just appearing to be -- sexual. It is used to control the behavior of women and girls by criticizing or demeaning them any time they don't conform to the rigid expectations of our sexist society. Some incidents are pretty straightforward. If someone yells "slut" to me from their car as I walk down the street in a short skirt, almost anyone would agree that I was just slut-shamed. However, sex-negativity and misogyny are so ingrained in our culture, that more subtle acts of slut-shaming occur every day (sometimes all day long) without anyone even realizing. A lot of people might not notice (or care) when this kind of slut-shaming takes place right in front of their own eyes.

I consider myself a sex-positive feminist, so I might be slightly more tuned in to slut-shaming than the average person -- I did run a blog called "Evil Slutopia" for seven years -- but I never really thought about exactly how often I experienced (or witnessed) slut-shaming on a daily basis. So I decided to do an experiment and document every incident that I experienced or witnessed, no matter how subtle, within a 48-hour period of time.

This is what happened...

Day 1

-- I start my day by flipping through radio stations. I almost immediately hear a conversation about women who cheat. The term "nymphomaniacs" is used.

-- I post a photo of myself in a Facebook group for fashion critique. One woman describes my outfit as “very street walker.”

-- As I scroll through the other submissions, I notice more than one woman asking the same kind of question: "Too much boobs?" "Are my boobs too big for this?" "Is this too low cut?" "Do I need to wear a cami under this top?" Most of the responses are encouraging, but it still makes me wonder why this question keeps coming up.

-- As if she psychically knows I am reading about low-cut tops, my mother refers to the shirt I'm currently wearing as being too revealing. Cleavage is my favorite accessory.

-- While listening to Paramore, "Misery Business" comes on and I catch the line "once a whore you’re nothing more, I’m sorry that’ll never change." Boo.

-- Chatting with a guy friend online, the conversation turns to dating and he says, "you’re not that picky. Well… you’re not picky with who you hook up with. Maybe you are with who you date."

-- My daughter tells me about a lesson from her English class this week. The teacher gave everyone a list of twelve people with descriptions and said they can only fit seven in a life boat... who do you take? (Context: They’re reading Lord of the Flies.) One of the people that was dismissed by her group was a 23-year-old cocktail waitress who had worked as a prostitute in the past. My daughter says the conversation went something like this...

Classmate: We don’t want her.
Daughter: Why not?
Classmate: She’s a prostitute.
Daughter: Who cares? We need some women so they can reproduce.
Classmate: She only has a ninth grade education.
Daughter: We only have a ninth grade education.
Classmate: Yeah but we're not prostitutes.
Daughter: <Eye roll>

-- Scrolling through Facebook, I see that one of my friends has posted something about "Hookers for the Handicapped," a program in the Netherlands that provides citizens with disabilities with money from the government to pay for sexual services. I’m not sure if this is a real thing, but the first comment on his post is "I hope they don’t get herpes."

-- I read a blog post about RealDolls (anatomically-correct, rubber women). The author mocks the people who buy them and says, "I fear only what this says of our humanity." Wow. A little heavy-handed for sex dolls, don't you think?

-- I go to a party with friends and the topic of sex comes up, as it usually does. I am especially vocal on the topic, as I usually am. While I'm talking, I catch a glimpse of an eye roll in my direction from another party guest who has overheard our conversation (although I can’t prove it was necessarily aimed at what I was saying).

-- I flirt with a cute guy friend at the party and someone mistakenly refers to us as a "couple." We both correct him that we're not a couple, but later when he catches us kissing he suggests we were lying when we said we weren't a couple. He seems confused by the idea that you can casually make out with someone without trying to date them.

Day 2

-- I make a conscious effort to hide a hickey from the night before and then wonder if I’ve actually just slut-shamed myself.

-- A guy I sort of know shares a photo on Facebook from an anti-feminist page. It is of women at a Slut Walk protest screaming at a man who exposed his penis to them. The caption is “Feminism. Because street harassment should be illegal.” Sigh.

-- My daughter tells me that her father said earlier that he didn't approve of the outfit she wore today. He said she needed to button her shirt farther up. (She's wearing a button down with a tank top under it that isn't even that low cut.)

-- I feel like watching some bad TV on Demand, so I turn on Two Broke Girls (CBS). The character Max makes a comment about her boobs. My mother, passing through, says "this role is beneath her." I ask, "why, because she said boobs?" but she doesn't elaborate. Max makes a ton of sexual comments and aggressive advances towards a cute waiter, while Caroline slut-shames her repeatedly. I don't get to see how it ends because I have to turn it off when they make a "Precious" fat joke.

-- I switch to Your Family or Mine (TBS), a new show that is about... I don't know... a family? "Only strippers should dress like strippers." Pass.

-- I consider trying reality TV instead, so I put on Little Family (Lifetime), a spin-off of Little Women LA. Pregnant Terra and her boyfriend Joe are looking at baby clothes, when she shows him a baby bikini. He questions why she's trying to make the baby "sexy." Ugh. Before I can even grab the remote, he says, "I don't know what Terra was thinking. A baby has nothing to do with a bikini and she'll be wearing turtlenecks 'til she's 18."

-- I decide I'm not going to stop looking until I find at least one show that doesn't slut-shame. I try Finding Carter (MTV), a show that I sometimes watch with my daughter. Fraternal twins Carter and Taylor are shopping for dresses for a party...

Taylor: Carter thinks that I should slut it up.
Dad: Carter’s wrong. Very wrong.

-- I figure Last Man on Earth (Fox) is probably safe because there are almost no characters on the show at all to slut-shame. I was wrong...

Carol: Why would there be any hard feelings? All you did was make a series of quick slut-based decisions about sharing your body with a man you hardly knew.
Gail: Carol, you know we would never have done that stuff if we’d known Phil was married.
Carol: Of course. I don’t hold it against you. You had no idea. And you’re not even from here. In this country we tend to do a little bit of research before inviting a man into the land down under.

-- I finally turn on Mom (CBS). The character Bonnie is going through withdrawal as she gets sober again and imagines both a "Good Bonnie" and a "Bad Bonnie" arguing over her.

Good Bonnie: I’m the reason she reconciled with her daughter.
Bad Bonnie: I’m the reason she had a daughter.
Good Bonnie: At age 17.
Bad Bonnie: Oh yeah here comes the slut-shaming.
Good Bonnie: I’ve asked you not to use that kind of language around me.
Bad Bonnie: Slut.

They earn points for acknowledging that slut-shaming is, you know, a thing, but points deducted for the voice of reason on the subject coming from the imaginary persona that is advocating for drug use. I decide to give up on television for the day.

-- I read an article about revenge porn. The author suggests that anti-revenge porn laws might do more harm than good, but fails to give any evidence of this actually being true. (Laws against posting all nude photos are referenced, but that's not exactly the same thing.)

--Another article about yet another pharmacy that refused to sell a woman birth control pills because of their "morals." I can't even bring myself to read it.

-- Just before bed, I get a notification from an online dating app. It's someone way out of my age range, so I politely decline. He responds by calling me a whore. Thanks and goodnight.

So what did I learn? Nothing I didn't already know: Slut-shaming is all around us, all the time.

Now to be fair, not all of these incidents were blatant examples of intentional slut-shaming. Some of it cannot be mistaken (like being outright called a "whore"), but some may not have been slut-shaming at all (like the eye roll during my conversation) and others were, but only indirectly so. A lot of the slut-shaming we experience (or inflict) every day is probably unintentional, but it still does damage. For example, mocking someone for buying a sex doll may not be textbook slut-shaming, but criticizing someone's sexual behavior sends the message that there is such a thing as "too much" or "too weird" when it comes to sexuality. It perpetuates the idea that some kinds of sexuality need to be policed or controlled, and when that belief exists, it is usually women that end up bearing the brunt of it.

Slut-shaming contributes to low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts in girls and women. It also reinforces rape culture, through misogyny, victim-blaming and rape apologism (e.g., "you can't rape a slut"). One little comment on a stupid television show might not make or break a person, but when it's the eleventh or so experience of the day... who knows how deeply ingrained these "anti-slut" messages can really get? I'm not saying that someone is a bad person if he or she accidentally slips up now and then, but we can all be more conscious of it.



...

Abby Rose Dalto is a freelance writer, editor and social media consultant. She is also a single mother and a sex-positive feminist. Abby was Co-Founder of ESC Forever Media and Co-Founder/Executive Editor of the blog Evil Slutopia, where she wrote under the pseudonym "Lilith." She is the author of two books, Create Your Own Sand Mandala: For Meditation, Healing and Prayer and Create Your Own Power Jewelry, as well as numerous articles on a variety of subjects. She holds a B.A. in Women's Studies with concentration in Creative Writing and Literature. Visit her online at www.abbyrosedalto.com.

It's not men keeping women back in the workforce

When women speak up in the workplace, they are viewed in a negative light, that is, when they're not interrupted by men first, according to a new piece in the New York Times. Women who contribute new ideas and expand upon business management information are viewed as aggressive and suspicious, whereas men doing the same thing are considered driven and 'take charge'.

Women are considered incompetent until they prove otherwise, which they do by working 2.5 times as hard as men, while men are considered competent until proven otherwise. This is the way of the world, and more and more studies on leadership and business are backing it up.

I posted this piece on my Facebook the other day, and immediately a nice guy (a real nice guy, not a Nice Guy) I went to high school with started hemming and hawwing about semantics and scientific methods and research. All in the name of 'finding the root of the problem.'

That root, for so long, has been considered to be a problem with women themselves. They're not as committed as men. They're forced to make life choices that don't suit the business world (have a family), they can't be as available as men, etc. Or, sometimes, it's blamed on the system. The glass ceiling, the relatively new phenomenon of women in management needing to rid itself of the training wheels, certain overtly sexist individuals throwing up barriers to woman success, and etc.

In each of these scenarios, there is an implication that it is mostly men who are concerned with holding women back, whether consciously or not. That we are on one team, and men are on the other. That men can support us or not, but that all women wish for and are fighting for the right to be viewed as just as competent as men in their field, should they deserve it.

Because of this misconception, we get men from all walks of life rallying up in defense of their kind, either partaking in one of the two scenarios above: ("if you look at it on an individual level, there are hundreds, nay, thousands of women, who can't commit to the job, who choose to raise families in lieu of their careers; this is not men's faults!") or ("I fight for women in my work place! I know their value and try to help whenever I can. These messages are no longer valid. So many men have come around! We're fighting with you! Stop stabbing us in the back!")

My friend summed it up nicely with his comment on the article

: "What struck me is how often the phrase "...and women" comes up. It seems men and women alike are guilty of the same thing. I wonder if there's any industry where this is less of a problem? I doubt there's any place it isn't... But why is this becoming 'worse' of a problem? Is it a particular generation of manager that is the problem? Is this a problem in other similar countries? IE: is it just America?"

Here's the thing that nearly everyone forgets: Women can be and often are guilty of sexism and misogyny. Because they hate other women? No. Just like most men don't engage in sexism because they hate women.

Feminism is frequently attacked because men feel defensive, as if by wanting equal rights, we are somehow implying that they personally are stopping that from happening. Women will defend men who feel this way, too, and the whole thing goes off the rails because suddenly we're not even talking about feminism. We're talking about a section of society getting their feelings hurt over something they're not guilty of, over something feminists never said they were guilty of.

So if it's not men, and it's not women, and it's not the newness of the system, then, my friend rightly wonders, what the heck is it? Why do both women and men view an ambitious, talkative, creative woman as a threat, where they view the same kind of man as a boon to their organization?

This intensely interesting piece, which shines light on the change of treatment due to gender in transgender people, shows clearly that throughout life, throughout careers, throughout industries, this different framing thrives. Men are simply treated better. By everyone.

Why?

Because we are not fighting the conscious thoughts and desires of men determined to keep women off their turf. Those days are gone, and most feminists know that. We don't need to defend the fact that "not all men" treat women as less-than in the workforce.

We are fighting a finely tuned and deeply ingrained notion of gender roles and gender traits in society. We are up against an institutionalized problem of unconscious or subconscious ideas about what women should be and what women are. We have ingested since birth the tenets that women are more scatterbrained than men, that they don't have forward-thinking ideas, that they are catty and vindictive, that they simply don't do the same caliber work.

No one thinks this. I know you don't think this.

It doesn't matter. You've eaten the pie. You had no choice. I had no choice.

It's not us against them. It's not women versus men. It's not men holding women back in the work place. It's not women holding themselves back. It's not managers holding them back.

It is the patriarchy. And the patriarchy, I repeat, is not men. It's not you. The patriarchy is the basest organizational structure our society and cultural has depended on for centuries that has etched a pattern in our brains as to how things should be, so powerful that our conscious and acute efforts to counteract that pattern only skim the surface.

Women are held back in the work place because we haven't yet broken out of the mental pattern that tells us that's how it should be. Writings like this aren't meant as complaints, or whining, or to pit one gender against another, or blame any one sect of people for our problems. Writings like this are meant to shift the conversation from the surface of the issue to the deeply ingrained underbelly where the problem really sits. It's a call to action, not because we are guilty of sexism, but because we have control over how this dialogue continues, and we can work together, men and women, managers and employees, to make it better over the generations.

It's not our fault we are where we are, but it is our duty to do better.

Equal Pay Day Controversy

So, Tuesday was equal pay day. For those of you who somehow don't know about this, it represents the day women have to work up to before they've made as much as men made the previous year.

At 77 cents to the dollar, we have to work an extra 98 days.

Anyway, if you want more information about how this came about or what it actually measures, click on the link above, because what I'm doing in this post is taking on these two bullshit questions from this post over here.

Question 1:

Do women go into lower-paying sectors because they prefer them, or because employers discriminate against them? 

I don't know about you, but I don't know too many people in general who look at themselves and think, you know what I'm worth? Very little money.

There are more women in teaching and administrative work than men, and you know what, when asking many of them, they'd say they do enjoy the work. They are where they want to be. Great! Let's pay them more.

The women workforce also has a lot more part-time workers, which apparently messes up the average? They're working part time usually because they have a family at home, right? And daycare is incredibly expensive...more expensive than college.

And having families is something that people do, don't you know. And our society is still set up in such a way where the responsibility usually falls on the woman to care for the child, and if alternate care is used, the woman actually has to be making some money. However, since she only makes 77 cents to a man's dollar, she often saves money by not going to work.

Not to mention that we are constantly saying we need more women in science, yet to be in science you need a PhD and to get a PhD plus some experience, you need to not have kids until about your mid-30s.

In fact Freeman Dyson, the world-renowned mathematical physicist who helped found quantum electrodynamics thinks academia is bunk:

"I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all."

Question 2:

Do women stay home with the kids because of cultural norms, or because of the way parental leave policies are set up?
I don't understand this question. I mean, both? First of all, don't kid yourself, we don't have any  parental leave in this country so there is no "way it is set up" because it does not exist. Secondly, yeah, there are definitely cultural norms still in place that need to go away because they are annoying and they make people feel bad. Not to mention that they perpetuate stereotypes that women cannot hold positions of power because "they won't give as much to the company" or women "choose not to make as much" because they "chose to have children."

Okay, well, since we're the only ones who can have children, how about you help us out and not put us through those shitty choices.

The long and short of it is that women are still struggling to be seen as a serious force in the workplace because of outmoded ideas of family, cost of childcare, and doucheheads who think if a woman chose to birth a child, she decided she didn't want to work for a lot of money so she should shut up.

We need future people, right? And to get them to the adult stage, we need to feed them. And if we're going to feed them and teach them healthy things about the world, we deserve a livable wage for doing something we have been trained in.

And if a woman works as hard as a man in her profession, she should make as much money as he does. Period.

As my friend on Facebook said:


" If you are too much of a goddamn pithy simple-minded asshole to see the structural problem with putting a tax on working women of as much as $1000/month per child, there's nothing anyone can say to talk you to a place of reason.

I never want another person coming at me about the "personal choice" of mothers to take low-paying jobs who doesn't have a solution to this nightmare of a decision-making process we put women through."

Pay equity. Because we're effing worth it. And so are our kids.

 

Real Men of Feminism

After the "most notorious American male feminist" stepped down the other day (and then didn't, but definitely did after that) there's been a lot of talk about men feminists (like there ever isn't, am I right?). I'd like to take this moment, however, to turn the spotlight away from the preachy, narcissistic men of the feminist writing spaces and celebrate the real men of feminism. Oh, they're there. They're right here, in fact.

That is Billy Joe Cain, standing with his 14-year-old daughter who wins the award for best sign ever in the history of signs.

Before we move on, let's all get the meaning of this sign clear.

Jesus is not a dick (meaning, cleverly in this case, jerk, douche, asshole, ballseam, term du jour, and also penis).

So keep him out of my vagina (meaning religion has no place dictating a woman's rights to her and continuing beautifully with the little metaphor).

Got it? Okay.

As the pro-lifers came out in droves to attack this young girl, her father stood resolutely by her side. He did not once lose his cool with these monsters who called his daughter a whore, called him a pimp, called her a slut...well, here, read yourself. (And PS - these all came from this post, which you should all read immediately)

This was just one of dozens of calls to physically assault this child for her impertinent sign-holding. And throughout all of these awful, horrible, disgusting threats, her father was able to not end the twitter users' lives. How, I'll never know.

Billy Joe Cain makes the excellent point that holding a sign that says Jesus isn't a dick so keep him out of my vagina is not equal to holding a sign saying I'm having sex at 14 years old.

These two things are not the same.

He doesn't come out swinging, like, how dare you insinuate my sweet pea is having sex with people! He doesn't scramble to re-explain their actions in a this sign has nothing to do with my daughter; she's not having sex! manner. He does not put pressure on her one way or the other. He does not insert his feelings as a man, or as a father into her fight. He does not weigh in on her sexual activity except to ask others not to in a completely benign and calm way.

He stands with her, not for her, and patiently points out the obvious. Even after people too dumb to type words call her a gardening tool.

He gives no air-time to the utterly insulting ridiculousness aimed at both him and a 14-year-old child. He rightly knows that these people will never get the point. He instead spends his energy building up his daughter and her beliefs, protecting her rights and her body.

I mean, seriously, I would be flipping tables in rage right now. Billy Joe Cain? Rides it out. There is no hope for these people. Fanning their flames would only bring hardship on his daughter. They gave their message. They're allowing "discourse". They take their (awesome) sign and go home, leaving the world a better place.

Again, he is simple and directly to the point, cutting through all the garbage. I also do not understand why they are calling his daughter a whore.

Billy Joe Cain goes on to say briefly that his daughter had every right to hold that sign as 14 year olds can and do get pregnant and need to know they have a choice about their own bodies.

And then, you know what? He marches on. He doesn't dwell on his daughter. More importantly, he does not dwell on himself and the good he is doing for the feminist movement.

Instead, he continues to quietly fight the fight. This is his twitter, as of the writing of this post:

This is a man women can call their ally. This is a true male feminist. There's nothing about him anywhere on his feed. There's nothing there showing women how to do feminism correctly. There's no talk of feminism at all.

There is simply a man fighting for the rights of his daughter and her female friends and women at large through education and the works of others.

Billy Joe Cain. A true male feminist.

...

And for another truly wonderful take on this story from the Christian / religious perspective, head over to Corn Dog Mama. She's brilliant, as always with her latest post, "Vaginas, Jesus and Slut Shaming."


 

Ladies: Hugo Schwyzer's Life Is Not Your Fault

Have you heard about Hugo Schwyzer taking a break from the feminist internet? If you're anyone who has eyes, you've read about it. He made sure of it. He posted on his own blog about it, gave an interview immediately with New York Magazine about it, and his pals over at The Atlantic did a nice little tribute, too.

Hugo Schwyzer is not one to go gentle into that good night.

He's leaving, and he wants you all to know that it's because you're such meanie heads. Yes, you. Posting your snarky tweets about his freelance gigs, commenting your agitated words underneath his writing. Can't a man speak for women and just be left alone?

He also mentions his fragile mental health and his marital problems, most likely stemming from his recent affair (with someone super important in feminist circles, guys. But, shh! Don't be interested in that. But if you hear about who he banged, don't be surprised. Tee hee.) as reasons for his departure.

I'd like to take these issues one by one, and explain to you that Hugo Schwyzer's life is not your fault, regardless of what he implies.

First, though, let's get through the most important point: This is not about whether or not men can be feminist leaders, or outspoken in feminist spaces.

This is not about whether or not men can be feminist leaders, or outspoken in feminist spaces.

It's not about that.

Don't get confused. Everyone seems to get confused. For the purpose of this piece, I am fully on the side of men being able to speak out on feminist issues if they so choose. I do not want to debate the intricacies of men leading women in their own movement right now. Because it's not about that.

This is about personal responsibility and accountability, and honestly, about personality, full stop.

Don't cloud the issue or make it more important than it is by including the overarching theme of men in women's spaces. This is about Hugo Schwyzer in women's spaces, and whether or not he personally should be looked at as a leading male voice in the feminist movement. It doesn't have to do with what he is (a man). It has to do with what he does.

Okay, let's start with his personal goodbye letter, shall we?

His first sentence casts blame on the online world for his departure. "The toxicity of take-down culture is exhausting and dispiriting. The cheapest and easiest tweets and articles to compose are snarky and clever dismantlings of what someone else has worked hard to create. The defenders of this culture of fierceness call it intellectual honesty, but it is an honesty too often edged in cruelty."

You know what the problem is? It's that the snarky tweeters aren't thinking about what happens on the other end of their writing. Much like Schwyzer didn't think about the consequences of his essay coming out as a character in a murder-suicide plot to those who were working with him at the time. Funding was lost, reputations out the window, as these people who spent long, hard hours erecting safe spaces for women (like Scarlateen, for example) became aware of a violent past that had been previously and deviously hidden from them standing by them, holding their hands. That's what honesty edged in cruelty looks like.

However, in his NY Mag interview, Schwyzer has apparently forgotten the comfort he called for, saying, "There is this false notion in feminism that the Internet is supposed to be a safe space. There's this confusion of the therapeutic and the public space. Is the Internet a safe space? No."

Bingo. This is not your safe space. When you write something publicly, you open yourself up to criticism. Period. I expect to be criticized for this piece. I'm not going to whine about it, though. Because I understand that the internet is not a safe space. Not like, say, my therapist's office or my local women's center (thanks, by the way, for helping me find my woman safe spaces, Hugo.)

Here's another issue with that: While the internet itself is not a safe space, there are safe spaces within the internet. There are women who band together in more private groupings to discuss issues pertinent to them without expecting to be attacked or exposed. We need to keep those distinctions drawn.

And since the interview for NY Mag is definitely not a safe space, let's take a look at this gem:

"If you look at the men who are writing about feminism, they toe the line very carefully. It's almost like they take their cues from the women around them."

Huzzah! This is exactly as it should be, as the oppressed group is probably the group that knows what's going on. But, please, continue.

"Men are afraid of women's anger. It's very hard for men to stand up to women's anger."

And this is where I officially lost it. Do I even exist in the same universe as Hugo Schwyzer? In what realm of reality is that even close to a true statement? Honestly, I can't, because reasons, so I won't. But wow. For someone who has marked a prolific and successful career in women's studies and feminism, this unveils a huge problem in feminism today. When even the most entrenched of advocates go the "you women are too angry" route, it blatantly emphasizes how very easy it is to miss the point.

The point being twofold. 1) Women have very good reason to be angry, if they even are. 2) It's not about you, dude. Feminism is not about Hugo Schwyzer. It just isn't. And had he backed away in a respectable manner, having realized that maybe it wasn't his words on the matter or his position in the space that was the issue but instead his insatiable need to self-aggrandize, well, then, I wouldn't be writing this piece. But instead, he chose the most vocal of ways to exit the stage. And I take issue with that.

This is not a movie in which Hugo Schwyzer is the leading actor. Everything about this man is showy. Who is paying attention to him? Who is tweeting about him? Who is publishing him (or not)?

What happened to the content of the writing? That's what's important here, the messages being sent, not the producer of those messages.

And it's important to note that I like Schwyzer's writing. But no matter how many times people confuse the two, his talents are not himself.

You can be a man in feminism. You can be a man who slept with his students in feminism. You can be a man who cheated on his wife in feminism. You can be a man who was addicted to drugs and alcohol and be in feminism. You can be a man who once tried to murder his girlfriend and be in feminism. You can be a man who uses all of these experiences as freelance fodder and be in feminism.

I firmly believe in all of those statements.

But you cannot be a man who slept with his students, cheated on his wife, was addicted to drugs and alcohol, tried to murder his girlfriend, and used all those things as freelance fodder, who also cannot extrapolate himself from the feminist messages, which, by virtue of their nature call for the spotlight to be on women and their issues, not on Hugo Schwyzer.

There is nothing meek here, nothing apologetic, and nothing learned. The educational value of writing through "the lens of his experiences" is tarnished by his self-centered ambition.

When you use a message to further your own self, and your own ambitions, regardless of whom it hurts (those people usually being women), you are not a feminist leader. When you further come at your critics by muddying the issues and making their reasonable dissent about you being a man, and not your actions as that man, you are not even an advocate anymore.

Schwyzer is "sad and hurt by a culture in which what we say online is policed by clever cynicism masquerading as progressive outrage."

I am sad and hurt that my clever cynicism is looked at as something that is not deserved. I'm sad and hurt that women cannot be outraged at actions without being told they're too angry and they should take it to their local women's shelters. I'm sad and hurt that in an age where we need to be talking about the feminist movement in terms of where we go from here, and when we especially need to make the new battles of women known (such as rape-culture, slut-shaming, etc. -- see, I also took Feminism 101, HS) we're stuck writing essays about men who are leaving the feminist space because we're all too mean. I'm sad and hurt that yet again it comes back to the men.

But I didn't spend my whole post on that. Because feminism is not about me. And it's certainly not about Hugo Schwyzer.


**If you'd like to know more about why you just had to read all that, click here.
 

Six Outrageous Things about Texas That Have Nothing to Do With Women's Rights

Recently, Texas has done some unbelievable things--changed the space-time continuum, made rape kits into abortions, got out of voting fraud (but wasn't so lenient on these poor senior citizens), and managed to turn tampons into feces and urine...all before stripping the state of the majority of their abortion clinics, prompting the lovely Erick Erickson to encourage ladies to use coat hangers instead.

And with all this hullabaloo surrounding SB5 and then SB1,  people continually seem surprised that these over-the-top political maneuvers and backward logical stretches could happen in real life. To which we have to say, well, guys, it's Texas.

Let's not forget all of the other completely sane and rational moves the state has made.

1) They tried to secede.

And unlike the other states' little, laughable petitions, they got more than 100,000 signatures and sent that shit off to the White House.

But Obama told them "no".

Shame, really.

2) Creationism

No, seriously. Texas is solely responsible for almost half of America believing that the Earth is 10,000 years old. (Well, the Bible helps a little, but, honestly, even half of the people reading the Bible as, well, gospel, believe in a mix of Creationism and evolution.)

Here's how it works. Texas is the nation's largest textbook distributor. Come on, we all remember Texas McGraw Hill, right? So, once every ten years, the Texas Board of Education revises its standards for teaching and textbooks. This board is crazy politicized and is made up of only 15 people. In fact, the chairman, Don McLeroy, served for only a short time on his local board before moving up to the big stuff. He is an unapologetic Young Earth Creationist. Awesome.

For all you people mired in reality and science out there, Young Earth Creationists believe the following (according to their website):

"The book of Genesis should be taken as a literal account of the pre- and early history of the earth. The creation week is taken at face value: consecutive 24-hour periods adding up to six calendar days. Allowing for gaps in Old Testament genealogies, this means that universe was created between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. YECs also hold that geological data, including the fossil record, should be understood in light of the worldwide flood depicted in the account of Noah and the ark."

And this is important enough to repeat: Texas only revises its curriculum once a decade. So, basically, it has control over entire generations of American learners. How is this possible, you ask?

"Texas is one of the nation's largest textbook markets because it is one of the few where the state decides what books schools can buy rather than leaving it up to local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. Further, publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the requirements of the biggest buyers. As a result, the Texas board has the power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come." -- PBS

So, yeah, Texas, fighting science in the school systems around the nation.

For Teresa

3) They kill people.

Despite their intense love for life--be it right after conception, or during the embryonic stage, or perhaps as it grows into a fetus (but rarely, of course, after it leaves the womb)--they've just executed their 500th person.

52-year-old Kimberly LaGayle McCarthy died by lethal injection in January 2013 after being convicted of killing her neighbor in 1997.

4) They shoot animals with laser guns...while jogging.

Thank goodness Governor Rick Perry carries his trusty handgun with laser accessory attached when he goes out for a run. Otherwise, how would he be able to shoot coyotes out there in the Texas wilderness?

You see? Right there. A shining example of how very necessary our second-amendment rights are. 

But that is a cute puppy, though, right?

5) They totally ignore their poverty rate.

While Gov. Rick Perry brags about the falling unemployment numbers and the new job creations, he unfailingly forgets to mention that 18 percent of Texans are living in poverty. Actually, it's more like he's just ignoring it, as there has been little-to-no legislation aimed at dealing with the problem.

With all the money and jobs coming into the state, how can so many suffer poverty?

"The two biggest predictors of poverty are poor education and chronic health problems. Only about 80 percent of Texans have a high school diploma, the second lowest in the country, and Texas has the highest number of uninsured citizens," states KXAN.

I'd make a creationism joke here, but I just can't find poverty and lack of reliable education and opportunities funny.

6) They force their own legislators out of the state.

Years before Sen. Wendy Davis stood for more than 11 hours in a one-woman filibuster to stop the most over-arching abortion regulations the nation has seen in decades, Texas was running its democrats out on a rail, almost literally.

In 2003, 50 state representatives fled to Oklahoma and chilled there for as long as it took to block a redistricting bill that would have lost them at least five seats in Congress.

"Political observers say the redistricting plan before the House could mean a shift of up to five seats to the Republicans, giving them a 20-12 edge over Democrats in the Texas congressional delegation and better odds of keeping control of Congress." --CNN 

You tricky Texas republicans, you. Bet you didn't count on the amazing, vanishing democrats!

So, as you can see, women's rights take up just a small percentage of the shenanigans Texas is capable of.

Remember the Alamo, right, guys?

Bully for You - A Critique of Feminism, Part II

In a movement where the main thrust is equality, you wouldn't think that bullying would be a problem. But it is. As feminism fights the dominant ideology, those within the movement sometimes forget to put down their dukes when they turn around and face each other.

This isn't new. Jo Freeman wrote about it in great detail for Ms. Magazine all the way back in 1976. She calls it "trashing."

"Trashing is a particularly vicious form of character assassination which amounts to psychological rape. It is manipulative, dishonest, and excessive. It is occasionally disguised as rhetoric of honest conflict, or covered up by denying that any disapproval exists at all. But it is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy."

But this is not as straightforward as it sounds.

Both sides of the conflict surrounding the Equality for Women Page run by Charles Clymer, for instance, feel as if they are being "trashed." Neither feel as if they are "trashing."

What's clear, though, inside this vacuum and outside of it (I can't tell you how many times I've been told I'm a detriment to the feminist cause because I'm a housewife / stay at home mom. And I witnessed a friend of mine get dressed down because she dared get married. Which apparently oppresses women. Except she's one of the most vehement feminists I know.) is that feminism is confused. What constitutes an attack, and what constitutes defense? Is retribution ever okay? Can we move forward if we're busy sticking our swords into each other? And more importantly, why are we doing this?

Jill Filipovic argues that we do it because feminists are fighting for crumbs on the larger stage. That the movement itself is so confined and so marginalized that we compete with each other to get our one true version of feminism out there.

She rightly says:

"It's time we learned lessons that are now decades old, and have been faced by many other political movements. Feminism must be more genuinely egalitarian and representative. We need to understand that womanhood means very different things to the billions of different women on this planet. We must work against perpetuating the same inequalities we fight against.

And we need to do that not in competition with each other, but with the shared goal of improving the movement and world. We need to do it with the recognition that no perspective or solution will be universal, and no single woman will be anywhere near a perfect feminist."

The question is, how?

How do we take a movement that is so personal in its very definition and make it a coherent front? How do we take what we need from a solid movement pushing for equal rights while also championing individual choice (one of those rights)? We're at a crossroads, and no one quite knows which way to turn.

In my research, I've seen two large issues. 1) No one knows which battles are important and which are frivolous. 2) In choosing which of those battles to fight, most individual players end up fighting each other to defend their choices as opposed to fighting the establishment currently oppressing them. As an outcropping of these issues, people get personal, people get mean, and people get scared. And suddenly feminism goes from a lofty goal toward which we are all working to a he-said, she-said, smear campaign full of internet drama and unimportant fluff. The egos, as it were, inflate, until any outsiders looking at the points that were trying to be made have to put the stuff down for fear of losing their eyes in the back of their heads. Let me provide for you an example.

When I was researching my original piece on men as feminist leaders and whether or not the policy of banning people and deleting their comments off a personal page meant to forward the feminist movement was censorship, I came across many pitchforks, many witch hunts, and many vendettas.

Everyone, it seemed, had something to say.

I had no fewer than half a dozen women, and maybe closer to a dozen, try to tell me that Charles Clymer was a sexual predator.

Spoiler alert: He's not. Let me say that again so you don't miss it. I have researched and interviewed this man and those close to him for months now. He is not a sexual predator.

What's interesting about this is when I told the women that I would not be labeling him as such, they were outraged. What about the overwhelming evidence, they asked. What about such and such screenshot. These feminists threw everything they could at me to attack Clymer. The truth was there were two women who had actual screen shots of conversations that were completely consensual and in which these women were enthusiastic participants. The other complaints were either fabricated, hearsay or blind anger. They were looking for a vehicle to effectively express their rage.

Charles says, "Making these unfounded accusations gave them a way to get back at me for banning them, after I called them out for not upholding feminist ideals in which they purportedly believed."

They were really mad. And I get that. He silenced them, many times for no discernible reason. (Clymer and I disagree about what constitutes an abusive comment. He knows this.)

But in their personal anger, they gave me screen shots lacking in context. Some 'forgot' to mention that it was consensual at the time, and, honestly, none of the stuff said, when put into the big picture, was harassment.

"These people, they're like a cult in a way," says Clymer. "They've kind of banded together and gone to any post I make or any time I'm mentioned, and they'll shove comments into the comments section. This isn't just me ranting about being bullied with something I did wrong. This is about my reputation being destroyed by accusations for which they refuse to provide proof. It's completely unfair that my banning them for saying things I didn't believe were feminist has resulted in a deliberate campaign to accuse me of sexual harassment. I will readily apologize for things that I've done wrong, but I will not apologize for things I didn't do."

I asked them to come forward with their name, but despite all the vitriol they had for this man, very few of them were willing to step forward to say they'd been involved in any way with him. As the skeletons fell out, and those on all sides realized they weren't, perhaps as virtuous or innocent as they had thought they were, many calling for a public thrashing suddenly pulled back. "Don't use my name, I take back what I said, I didn't realize you were going to use this part of the story." These were just some of the statements I heard.

Many claimed fear of bullying for their cold feet, which brings us back to the original point. They were sure Clymer would come after them with all of his followers frothing at the mouth, trying to defame and ruin them.

A legitimate concern, since Clymer has been known to make statements on EFW denouncing those who go against him in the heat of the moment.

But, on the other hand, isn't throwing stones from the shadows (and hefty ones at that: harassment? Embezzlement?) then scurrying away bullying? Isn't planting seeds of doubt without context and trying to unravel someone's work because you're mad at them and pretending it's about real issues bullying?

Charles Clymer did not embezzle donation funds, and he did not prey on women.

He did ask for donations, which does rankle some people, and he did flirt with some of the women. End.

The problem with Clymer is the same problem a lot of feminists have and the same problem a lot of internet users have: he's sensitive. Very sensitive. Too sensitive, in my opinion.

Let's address some micro issues in point form for those interested. For those not interested, take this information and apply it to specific scenarios in your own feminist circles; I bet you can find some that fit.

In March, EFW shut down operation. Clymer says his mod team banned more than 100 people, his mod teams says it was him. I can't find out for sure. No one has the records. So who banned and silenced those people?

The mod team disbanded, many upset at Clymer's leadership and ego at the time. Rightfully so. Some left with wounded pride. This team, which at first stood up for Clymer, and participated in shutting members with disagreements down, turned with vengeance on him because during discussions he'd played divide-and-conquer--and so would they. You see? It's all a bunch of inane miscommunication, manipulation and silliness. After their ire was mostly spent, and after they realized I wasn't going to come out and libel him, they backed off. Some have rejoined him, at least in private. Some now respectfully keep their distance. Almost none of them are willing to come forward with their previous complaints.

Former moderator Zoe Katherine now labels the ordeal as a "huge mistake" and says many involved are "sorry for the hurt they caused."

"I believe a lot of people genuinely thought they were speaking the truth at the time, so I am not willing to state that I or anyone else lied. I think that those who agree with me will say they no longer believe what they said to be true. They made a huge mistake and are sorry for the hurt it caused. It was not my intention to smear Charles or tarnish his reputation. I believed I was doing the right thing, and everything I said was in the public interest. I now accept that I maybe didn't think it through, but no one was thinking rationally. It was like a mass hysteria. I never deliberately lied. I never said anything I did not believe to be true at the time."

Now, this isn't to say it's all puppies and roses. There were two groups started after commenters got banned. EFW Blacklisted was headed by Eric Holodnak after he was banned by Clymer. Holodnak says he participated in the "I need feminism because..." picture series and his photo became popular. Clymer messaged him about it, and asked for advice about the page. After giving advice, Holodnak found himself banned. Clymer says the message about the picture was a pretext. He was actually putting out feelers to see if Holodnak was acting in an inappropriate manner with some of his mod team. Even though the mods, Clymer and Holodnak all agree that nothing overtly untoward went on, Holodnak was still banned. Someone on Team Holodnak was supposedly fired from their real-life job, though the name was not provided. EFW and EFW Blacklisted went back and forth trading insults, digging up personal information and posting it, and etc. Until they finally decided on a truce. EFW took down the posts and EFW Blacklisted dissolved.

I received this story from Holodnak on the record who later told me to disregard it, citing fear of Clymer backlash. I received this story from one of the mods on the record who later told me to disregard it. She feared retaliation from Clymer and from Holodnak. I received this story from Clymer who told me to use it. Are you starting to understand? I just do not have time for this. Either tell me or don't.

This is where bullying plays a large role in feminism. All this he-said-she-said, back-and-forth, and the point of the movement gets lost as former feminists wade around the murky waters of their own egos and trivial bickering. This happens on the internet, on the street and in academia too.

There was another group against Clymer, "People Banned by Charles Clymer (and their close friends)." It was started by Kathleen Ellis after a comment she left on EFW got her banned.

One of the mods posted about going out in a sexy dress, getting drunk, and still not being raped or harassed. Kathleen commented that perhaps she should be careful even so.

"I was attacked by Clymer and others," says Ellis, "accused of victim blaming and slut shaming. I proceeded to post that I believed any person should be aware and alert in their surroundings, and that suggesting that a person be aware of their own personal safety was not equal to victim blaming. I never inferred that anyone who acted as stated above 'deserved it' or any such thing. I never would."

It's a muddy bank there. Where does caution end and victim blaming begin? It's something a feminist page would perhaps do well to discuss. Still, with Clymer's delete-and-ban policy, she was gone. And not without private words between the two, during which they both became very heated.

Fans of Equality for Women ended up getting Ellis' group shut down as a hate group, which according to my research, it was not.

Even now, months later, tempers on both sides flare over this group and the banning policy. While some of the criticism is legitimate (from both ends), a lot of it is boring, ego-stroking mania. So many times I wanted to throw up my hands and say, "but, guys, really, who cares?"

I wrote about it not because of the specifics, but because of what they say about the greater picture. The bullies, the wounded, the sensitive, the blowhardy, the movement itself, they all get wound up in these very personal dumpings that are totally beside the point. And it's happening everywhere.

In the end, you've got a whole handful of no-one-cares, and two people supposedly on opposite sides of a battle calling for the same thing.

Clymer says:

"When people see feminists trying to tear each other down, or fight in public, that makes feminism look like shit. It makes it look like we are fighting for crumbs. And that’s not true. They’re trying to be honest, to be genuine, but what happens is they perpetuate the stereotypes and that’s not good."

And Kathleen says:

"My advice to those looking to forward the feminist cause is to step back and take a look and realize that we are all sisters and brothers. Although we may see things a little differently due to our personal background, ethics, age, etc., we do have a common goal. There is no 'one way' to accomplish equality for all. We need to stop being so quick to label people and instead listen to what others have to say. We don't all have to agree with each other. Feminism is not only a movement, it is a lifestyle. Do not accept abuse ever, but be careful to avoid falling into mob mentality and becoming an abuser yourself."

Good advice, both of you.

Just saying.

 

Clyming the Walls of Feminism - A Critical Look at the Feminist Problem Part I

Feminism needs a hero.

The third-wave, post-modernist conundrum of personal, individual choice (which is a right everyone, including women, should be allowed) versus presenting a unified front to the world of Patriarchal ideology is the cause of much debate and study.

Women deserve equality. That seems like a simple enough cause. Yet as more and more people join the feminism train (which is fantastic), throwing their support and their individuality behind this common theme, a hierarchy of problems emerges, and it goes so much deeper than "I'm a woman who enjoys demeaning beer ads, and as a woman I have the right to enjoy them."

Even as horrid Facebook memes scatter and spread throughout the internet, even as the hashtag #violenceagainstwomeniswrong gets more "But what about the menz?" comments than support, even though, as these examples show, the feminist cause is clearly not mainstream despite the year being 2013, the infighting between feminist groups and groupies takes center stage. And it's happening on all levels. Academically, Angela McRobbie fights Merri Lisa Johnson. In more accessible publications, Abigail Rind wonders if we should just give up the label of feminism altogether, while Jill Filipovic laments the lack of a "variety of feminism".

Clearly, we need to get our act together. Enter Charles Clymer.

Charles runs a rather successful feminist page on Facebook called Equality for Women. He's also a fairly prominent blogger in the area of feminist issues.

He's also a man.

Is this a problem? His supporters say no, and point the finger at the dissenters, calling them hindrances to the movement, saying equality, and thus feminism, applies to all people. And don't women need men on their side, male advocates, if you will? Isn't the point of feminism that men and women are equal, which would move away from the us-versus-them mentality?

Feminist writer and television producer Rain Stickland points out the importance of the male feminist voice, saying, "Realizing that a man could be a feminist has helped with my activism and my writing, and it has made me become a better feminist myself, helping to define what the word means to me."

Clymer explains his goal: "With Equality for Women, I want to provide a safe space for persons of all genders (who believe in women's rights) to encourage each other in their activism and get news and commentary on issues of inequality facing women."

Follower Sheila Holmes says he's doing a good job in that goal. "I have seen so many posts that lifted me up and helped me feel less alone in this world. The postings and conversations on the page often validate my feelings and discomfort at situations and give public voice to what I've been told so many times are insecurities--but they're not."

But when a man becomes a feminism advocate, and then a feminist leader, the lines become blurry.  And the mission statement is quite narrow, though that doesn't seem to be the case at first glance.

The page, which once boasted a team of several moderators, including Tasmyn Elizabeth, Zoe Katherine, Angela Boyle, Evee Vann and Jamie Maguill, now only has Charles as administrator. The self-proclaimed (and rightly so, it is his page, after all, though, of course, there was no vote) president wants his page to be a holiday of agreement and back pats, feminists, survivors, advocates and women all coming together to work toward female equality.

Sounds amazing, but in any group of people you are bound to come up against debate, questions, and commentary that you do not agree with. This is the part where individuals have the right to maintain their individuality and participate in a group effort (and this is where EFW mirrors the major problems in feminist culture today almost perfectly). And Clymer doesn't much like that.

"There are several much more prominent Facebook pages out there right now," Clymer says. "You go on the threads, and it's a complete pie fight. There are men who do nothing but troll these posts. And I don't want that on my page; I want it to be clean. I want people to be able to engage on my page intelligently."

To Clymer, deleting and banning people makes his page the idyllic world he is looking for, and helps it to provide the service he deems to offer. And it's his page; he can do what he wants with it.

"I feel like people seeing those (now deleted) comments get the wrong message," Clymer says. "And I want the page to be a safe space."

Unfortunately, many comments on Equality for Women that have been deleted are by women, and many of the people who have been banned are women. And this angered the women, as you can imagine, because now you have a man running a feminist page essentially silencing women he doesn't agree with. And the disenchantment begins. The litany of crimes against him from those who have been banned is long.

"He has zero interest in letting women be heard about issues that affect them," says Bree Casson, a former EFW follower. "He is only interested in the opinions of Charles Clymer and people who agree with them."

"It's a supposedly safe environment where discussion was supposed to be encouraged, yet any comment that did not support the party line was deleted," adds former member Angelique D'Arcy.

Kallie Whitby gives an informational account of her time on the page, stating, "I followed EFW and had comments deleted where I asked respectful and legitimate questions or voiced disagreement, and ultimately was banned when I challenged their deletion."

Charles says the remarks were out of line. "It wasn't that they disagreed with me, it's that their disagreements were aggressively anti-women, or that their disagreements were abusive. If you come at me like, 'I think it's wrong a man is leading a women's group, I'm going to ban you. I think it's an abusive remark."

After our interview, I convinced Charles to start a no-banning, no-deletion policy toward remarks that were made in a respectful manner. To his credit, he tried, making a post about it on the page and everything. It lasted for, well, a few minutes, really.

Kelly Solberg commented with a "yeah! It's about time!" and was immediately banned. Sandi Yu questioned the banning, as did various others, and many of those women were also banned. The entire post was deleted, but here is a snippet from it when it existed:

EFW: "Sandi, she was a member of a hate group that has worked tirelessly to hurt me. I couldn't ban her until she made a comment on here, but now she did, and I banned her."

Tyra Michelle Brown: "Banning someone for comments on another page is kind of ridiculous. She hasn't made any comments that are ban-worthy on this page, so banning her seems like spite more than anything."

Within that same discussion, Clymer says, "My point is if you're going to have an argument you'll need to have logic behind it. I do too much research and work and advocacy to have someone who glazed over Feminism 101 in college trump my argument with nothing more than 'well, you're not a woman, so you don't know."

And that's an excellent point because the "you're not a woman" argument shouldn't trump research and knowledge. However, the "tone argument" implies that most women of dissenting opinion took one course in feminism and therefore are illegitimate allies. Also, not necessarily a problem within itself, as debates can get heated, and people say things in that heat. We don't want to miss the point he made.

Where it all goes off the rails, though, is that this post and comment thread was completely deleted, ending all possible discourse. Clymer has the power to stop the discussion and he uses it. Several members of that discussion were banned. He has the power to get them off his page, and he uses it.

In Clymer's defense, it seems personal to him because it is.

There really was a group entitled "People Banned by Charles Clymer" on Facebook, and it really did take action against him.

"They sent messages to several of my feminist contacts that I had," he says, "and I had to spend a lot of time gaining back that trust."

This, again, mirrors feminism, the movement. People climb up only to be shot down, either because of mistakes they've made or because of their stations in life, or anything really. But at some point we all have to "man" (see what I did there?) up and accept responsibility for what is our fault and fight against what is not.

A while back, Clymer shut his page down and removed all the mods after intense infighting and confusion that is too muddy to go into here. That drama plays into why Clymer states he will never have a mod team again.

"This is my baby," he says. "I'm going to do it now. People can contribute things, and I'll post with credit, but I'm not going to open the page back up."

As someone who feels he is being relentlessly attacked, this makes sense. To those looking on, however, it looks like he's taking the feminist cause and making it his own.

Former moderator Zoe Katherine says of her time there, "I disagreed on him preaching feminism to women. He's completely unaware of his privilege. You can't tell us not to reclaim words, and you can't tell us to be thankful for our periods. If we disagreed publicly, he'd threaten to remove us as mods; if we did it privately we were guilt-tripped, or simply ignored."

Stephanie Kay related to me a story in which she posted a request that any male moderators on the page "remain aware of the fact that authority over women is a male privilege, and that male allies should be very careful about not turning themselves into the 'voice of feminism'." She says she made a point to explain how male authority in a female space can hurt women. Such as, "we are culturally conditioned to be more accepting of male leaders, we're less likely to voice disagreements in a male-dominated atmosphere, men's voices are considered more valid than ours even on issues directly affecting women." She continued, stating that "privileged allies of other oppressed groups will very often rush to take charge of equality movements, and by doing so, they effectively appropriate the voices of those who are actually being oppressed."

Are these legitimate concerns? Yes. And Clymer has addressed them before. The problem is he is no longer addressing them. What could have been an enlightening debate on privilege and male voices in a feminist world was shut down. And this time not just with deletion or banning.

Both Clymer and Kay forwarded me the entire Facebook exchange between themselves and the moderators from back in March when she voiced her concerns. Several of the women moderators at the time explained that they were just too busy to post, and that Equality for Women was run fairly. Since that time, many of the moderators have retracted their support.

Kay apologized for voicing her opinion in a way both Clymer and his mod team found offensive at the time.

"Basically, she was saying I'm sorry you took offense to what I said," says Clymer. "It was a false apology, and it really angered me because not only was she disrespecting me, she was now disrespecting the moderators."

He later wanted to extend an apology for what you're about to read: "Though I still stand completely by what I said to Stephanie Kay, the way I said it was completely abrasive and inappropriate, and if I had to do it again I'd change the tone. Although I completely believe in the concept and far-reaching harm of male privilege, I feel she only used it to attack myself and the women moderators, which is why I mocked her approach on that. However, that still did not give me the right to berate her. Maturity demands maturity. I'd like to extend my deepest regret and apologies to Stephanie for how I worded my response."

Here was his response at the time:

"Stephanie, I'm going to let you in on a little secret that, apparently, no one has had the guts to tell you up to this point in your life: having a vagina does not grant you magical powers of perception and nuance anymore than my penis magically blinds me from the horrors of the world. 

You have to earn respect for your opinion. I'm not going to hand it to you because you're a woman talking women's rights. Nuh-uh. It doesn't work that way. Because if it did work that way, I would have to hand over the reins of this group to any Phyllis Schlafly who comes in and claims to know more than I do about feminism or claims to have more passion. 

And yes, I am the leader of this page. These are my moderators, who I have selected for the page that I created and into which I  have poured money for advertising, and make no mistake: I do hold executive privilege (your favorite word, apparently), and I do have the final say on decisions. However, I trust my mods, and instead of being a dictator, we work as a team of equals. They let me know when something's off, and I listen to them and heed their advice.
I run this page, a feminist blog, write a column for another feminist blog (under a woman editor-in-chief who respects my writing and invited me to contribute articles), and on top of all that, I volunteer 30-40 hours a week at a feminist lobbying firm. 

Here's a good question: what the fuck have you done for women's rights, lately, other than troll the page I created? 

"I absolutely love your page..." 

That's how your comment began that started all this, and you know what? You should have just stopped typing right then. As long as we're doing our jobs (and, apparently, we are because this page keeps skyrocketing in growth), you need to mind your own fucking business.
You want to talk about privilege? Fine, we'll talk about privilege. What about your idiot privilege? It would seem you're so used to people not calling you out for being an absolute fucking moron that you've become blind to how your asshat actions affect others. 

So no, after us reaching out to you, you decided to insult me, and, more importantly, my moderators with your bullshit, half-hearted, tongue-in-cheek apology. 

Supposedly, you're an outstanding feminist but have no problem telling my women moderators how they're supposed to think and feel. 

Please accept my invitation of hide-and-go-fuck-yourself. 

And one more thing: If I ever see your name on my page again, I will report you for harassment and block you. 

Feel free to relay this message to the 1% of women feminists out there who foam at the mouth and put their bullshit on everyone else who disagrees with them. 

Charles"

These messages, of course, were responded to as an individual responding to a critic who questioned his belief in the cause. And Clymer gets a lot of those messages. He has everything from those carrying a very personal grudge to generalized men's rights activists on his back all the time. People simply have a hard time accepting men as women's rights advocates.

During our interview, Charles said, "To say that men can't be feminist leaders is eliminating half our potential talent in this movement but also losing an opportunity to attract more men into the fight for women's rights. Sadly, many men need to see other men in feminism to feel comfortable. But more than that, I think I do a pretty good job of standing with women, not in front of them. I am eager to hand them the microphone."

Perhaps best known for his "I need feminism because..." photo series, Charles also uses his male privilege to highlight the pervasive nature of rape culture in a way a woman really couldn't get across. When one flips a movement on its head, one can often reach ears that would have otherwise have been deaf to the cause.

His critics say he is taking the feminist movement and making it about him. And some are more adamant about it than others.

Raeven Zayas says, "He's using the oppression of women to gratify his ego."

Angelique D'Arcy adds that, "He is the head of a feminist movement, and he is manipulating the situation and the audience and the delivery of information in a Patriarchal way and actively silencing the very women he's supposedly trying to give voice to."

Clymer sees it differently. He says he's not trying to silence anyone, merely keep his page unified. As for making the feminism cause all about himself?

"They're partially right. I'm in it somewhat for my ego and personal gain. I'm looking at this as a career. I would love to become a leader in it. Part of it is ambition, and I do want to make a name for myself, but 80 percent of it is for the cause. I think there is a difference between people who exploit a cause for their own gain and people who want to be influential."

And that's where feminism as a general movement stands as well, along with any progressive movement. The leaders are looked upon with scrutiny, some justified, some not. Feminism is a personal business as much as it is a movement, and that means the attacks we all feel on our opinions and viewpoints hurt more, influence our own behavior, and change our course.

In the end, it's up to you to decide. Charles Clymer, feminist hero, villain, or just some guy on the internet? But when you do decide, think on the macro level. What do these in-fights say about feminism as a whole, and how does your decision on this microcosm play into your feelings about the movement on the whole?