Heh. Well, my point is that this is *why* rhetoric matters. People *will* be reduced to an agitated and defensive posture when provoked in unwise ways, so it’s unproductive to do so. Provocation is good; Bidisha, I feel, has gone about it in all the wrong ways. I’m not willing to write that off, and I think that too many people do.

My basic stance is: wars get started over words. Words are crucial, they’re weapons, and should be used wisely and well. Speaking of which, I loved your own post on this, just haven’t had time to compose a coherent reply.

David- I’m all for stridency. I think it’s a good and needful thing, applied properly. I also think that the two quotes I pulled are hugely problematic because one of them amounts to an untruth, and the other — to name-calling.

I’m not saying be polite. I’m saying don’t be a nutter. Saying that every man who lives in a traditional arrangement with his partner is a woman-hater is both untrue and lacks any nuance. Same with the false consciousness bit and nuance.

So yeah, by all means, socio-political commentators should take bold positions. I do often enough, on my little soap box, and wouldn’t dream of trying to prevent anyone else from doing so. But the guy yelling at me on a street corner to accept Jesus or go to hell is probably doing more harm than good to the cause of spreading his religion. Likewise, it is my opinion that Bidisha is doing a disservice to the quest (that I’m also on) to fix some of the problems with gender inequalities.

As for donning a thick skin, I’ve found that tricky to do without deadening my other senses. From what I’ve seen, it seems that to take a bold position on a civil rights issue and be strident about it requires quite a bit of passion, which implies opening oneself up to a world that will turn around and exploit one’s vulnerabilities. Maybe it’s possible to do both, I just haven’t seen it much. Not sure what to do about that, either. Maybe it’s a human condition thing.

It just gives me pause a little bit when I see someone accusing a feminist of being too strident (which is at least part of how I read you here), because I seem to recall a number of quotes from older feminists talking in great detail about why they felt it was important to damn well be strident.

But, you know, because “what actually does work?” is an open question, it seems to me it *could* be the case that today, the balance of power has changed from those older days of feminist struggle enough that now, polite moral suasion really *is* the bigger win. It could be the case. It would be an interesting case to make. I’d be interested to see what you think about it, at least if you buy even for the sake of argument into the earlier premises. :) As I say, I go back and forth.

There are two related side issues I’m not really sure what to do with. One is that the world of commentary may be better suited to staking out bold positions than moderate ones. Not just because it gets more hits on your blog, but because it gets more people talking about what they *really* think, which is probably the social value of blogs and political commentary anyway… and when they do talk, it gives those people firm poles to push against, well-marked icons between which they can measure where the truth really lies.

To take that as a positive good, one may have to adopt the position of not taking anything a blogger or political commentator says too seriously; to don a thick skin and assume they’re exaggerating for effect. I think there have been times in the past when this was assumed of a lot of writers (“gonzo journalism”), but I’m not sure it’s as common now. And of course, this isn’t the way I usually take things my *friends* say. And anything pithy that shows up online is likely to become a quote thrown about by friends with abandon. So I’m not sure the best position.

The other thing I’m not sure what to do with is the political echo chamber. Much as you say, to me it really can be annoying to see everyone I’d naturally ally with busily writing lists of shibboleths that one must mouth before every statement in order to be regarded as a person whose views are worth hearing. But that might just be because showing serious consideration of a broader range of opinions than those in close agreement with one’s own is one of *my* shibboleths. ;)

I completely agree with what you’re saying about rhetoric, which I see that I didn’t make clear. I completely agree that Allen and Terry’s choices are completely valid and reasoned, too. I know that this is complex – believe me, I know.

This is what I’m trying to say: please, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. These really are vitally important conversations, and I feel incredibly frustrated to see so many people reduced to an agitated and defensive posture simply because of someone’s poor choice of words.

I have more to say, but somewhat ironically, I need to wait until a childfree moment to string the words together. Hah!

(Not that I don’t feel slightly guilty for using the phrase “go shove it” in a comment to a post about discourse standards. ;)

Totally agreed.

I…find it disorienting that so many of my egalitarian, educated friends, making informed choices, end up with the man working full-time outside the home, and the woman staying home with the kids. That does bespeak, to me, structural elements making our choices not entirely free. (And I mean “our” quite literally; I’m home with the kid right now while my husband works.) But I still think anyone patronizing enough to tell me that it represents false consciousness on my part, just because my choices don’t agree with her politics, can go shove it.

More-enlightened-and-liberated-than-thou is an easy and satisfying game. If you are a man and your female partner does most of the housework, you’re an Oppressor with a capital O. If you’re a woman and you do take that gig, you’re participating in your own oppression. It doesn’t matter if you did it because you didn’t think twice about it, you are trying to rehabilitate your partner from the effects of his upbringing (been there, done that, achieved moderate success along with profound annoyance), or you carefully thought it through and discussed it and chose it. You are making choices dictated by the patriarchy and that’s Bad.

Well, it is bad. But anybody who thinks their choices are NOT constrained by the sexist (racist, homophobic, you name it) society around them is fooling themselves. I’ve made some pretty radical choices in my life, and I can tell you that all too often the more you choose to go against the grain in some ways, the more your choices in other areas get constricted. The illusion of infinite self-determination is in my opinion a form of privilege…you have to have been reared with enough social class or other power to believe that you can just up and decide how your life is going to be without trade-offs.

Shaming people for the trade-offs they choose doesn’t help anyone. It *is* sometimes useful to say that the options may be different than what people believe they are, and it’s definitely useful to be the social support that alternate choices need. (A whole period of my life would have been a lot easier if the social circles we were running in had been more supportive of my attempt at educating my SO about how it was not actually ok to assume that our son was primarily my responsibility. Unfortunately, the opposite was true.)

I agree with you, for the article in question we’re mostly the choir, particularly in the context of our social circle. The majority of the people we choose to interact with have at least some belief in social and sexual equality (or enough sense to hide it well if they don’t.) That’s not saying we’re in any way perfect, but at least most of us are aware of that fact. From the writer’s perspective however, it’s vastly easier and more exciting to say “Anyone who chooses to live under the described conditions is a misogynist” than to say “There are too many people who live under unfair conditions and don’t have the option of negotiating their respective responsibilities with their partner as equals.” The latter is true and worthy of discussion; the former is sloppy writing. The standard response when that’s pointed out is “Sometimes it’s not about you.” Fair enough but that doesn’t make it any less sloppy.

I don’t have the academic background to support my impressions, but I’ve noticed a lot of theoretically smart people drifting back toward a less collaborative, more inflammatory style of dialogue around race and gender. Given the nature of current politics, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the “My opposite is the enemy” school that frames everything in terms of polarization would be making inroads but it’s still disappointing.

What I find most interesting about articles like this is they bring home just how rarefied our social environment is, to the point where some people can’t conceive that the situation they enjoy isn’t such a given for the rest of the world. There’s some personal merit involved, but in the end, luck has much more to do with it than many of us would like to consider.