I’m probably not supposed to be expressing this. Lest by doing so I take away from solidarity and momentum on various issues and so on.
I am not an economic lefty (or righty for that matter), but when it comes to social politics I’m against racism and sexism and I do consider them to be problems that need addressing in our society; I’m a children’s libber, women’s libber, supporter of the general goals of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement, I’m a mental patients’ libber myself, I believe in equal rights and protections for gays, lesbians, transgendered, ungendered, unmarried but living together, bisexuals, group marriage participants, communal living participants, and support the right to incest between consenting adults. I want to see equal protection and inclusion for Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Witches, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Worshippers of Gitchimanituou, Baalists, Satanists, Cthulhu Worshippers, and Agnostics and Atheists.
Et Cetera.
So. The other day in a list in which I participate, an off-topic comment was made about women’s health care, an offhand reply was tossed out, and suddenly accusation of oppression are flying WTF??
Now, I didn’t start this thread to discuss the particulars of that conversation, but I’d like to use it as an example of what I do want to talk about, although you are free to disagree with the interpretations involved in saying it is an example of what I say it is an example of.
•_At some point in the mists of lefty-politics time, some authors or celebrity politicos wrote or spoke out about a tendency in the medical establishment to work from a male=norm model of health. In the process of doing so, they indicted the medical establishment as a legitimator of women’s marginal condition.
Now, not everyone subscribed to this list would necessarily have had reason to have read about what these people once said about the medical establishment with regards to being a bastion of patriarchy, because the list in question is neither specifically feminist nor specifically medical in focus. Nor, for that matter, did every left-leaning participant in women’s medical self-determination movements at the time necessarily agree with the assertions as stated. And, as stated, does it mean that legitimating women’s marginal condition is a hidden or additional function of the medical system, which nevertheless may be providing useful and necessary services to women in areas of practice where a male norm does not result in quality of care problems for women? Or does it mean that turning women’s experience into a series of medical diagnoses is what the medical profession does to women, period (no pun intended), or even that this is the sole social function of the medical system altogether?
So it would strike me that even among people who consider themselves attuned to and in agreement with these authors and movement leaders there is plenty of room for dialog and political theory discussion. But
• At some point, in a different patch of mist, some lefty theorists wrote and spoke about how one form of oppression is to negate or deny the experience of marginalized people, to correct them and say that what they claim happened to them did not in fact happen to them. Or, by extension, since you can’t relate what happened to you without some interpretation, that to correct them and say that their interpretation of events is not the proper way of interpreting them.
So. One person makes a comment quoting a newspaper article about the prostate and men’s health, saying that with women there is much more alienation from the body parts and much more tendency to portray them as troublesome and inherently “sick”. And someone says something about how it’s yet another example of how the medical system exists to perpetuate women’s marginality by turning the various aspects of femaleness into medical symptoms. And then someone says this tendency is not aimed at women per se, all of western medicine tends to alienate patients from their bodies and that medical insurance companies and hospital policies and their penny-pinching is to blame. Then the previous respondent cuts loos with “You are denying my experience and you are denying the important truth that the medical system objectifies and marginalizes women’s bodies as The Other, and when you do that you are collaborating in our oppression and I’m really upset about this and I expect better from this list and I come here to be with allies to fight against oppression not to experience further oppression and if the people of this list are going to tolerate this maybe I’d better leave, and if the person who said this doesn’t apologize I will still feel oppressed.”
God I hate this shit. It drives me fucking nuts…
Look. I’m a schizzy libber, and I know more about marginal conditions being turned into medical diagnoses and used as tools of oppression than you’ve ever had hints of in your worse nightmares. But I don’t demand an apology if someone comes in and describes themselves as a ‘feminist therapist’ just because Jeffrey Masson once said all therapy is inherently part of the problem. If I think it is, I will say that I think it is, but I’ll throw it out there as a perspective to be thought about, looked at and considered on its merits.
I’m not saying I want to reinvent every ideological political and conceptual wheel. If someone signs up for the list and then posts about how slavery or having sex with your own kids is perfectly legitimate behavior, I’ll join you in telling them to get the fuck out of here.
But do you want to go through life treating the entire world of political and social consciousness as a shrinkwrapped plastic bag full of Right Ideas that everyone is supposed to buy from the same Lefty K-Mart so we all Know the Right Way to Think of Things?
::shakes head in frustration::
) and has more to do with Certain Overreactive Hypersensitive Posters.