VIDEO about PovertyPolice/PrisonsIndigenousGender posted on February 8, 2011 by mzoghi
If it was a White Woman on the West Side...
Mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers gathered outside the Court House on Thursday February 3rd, demanding the continued incarceration of an alleged multiple sex offender named Martin Tremblay, who has a history of targeting their loved ones, the majority of whom have been Aboriginal women.
It is shocking that the justice system refuses to be colour (class, gender, sexuality, etc) blind well into the 21st century and as someone put it ever so eloquently "I can't believe we're still protesting this crap," but here it is for your viewing pleasure.
One might ask why it is that the Aboriginal people in this land get trampled upon more than any other group, and one answer that comes to mind is that the dominant Anglo-French mindset is incapable of cherishing the feminine side of life (which is not exactly the same thing as the female side); that the non-assertive and the non-aggressive is not deemed worthy of attention; that if you want your rights respected, you need to scream and break something.
The patriarchal mindset has an uncanny way of continuing to exist despite a multitude of declarations and proclamations, as heart-felt as those might be. It is not enough to SAY that one is in solidarity with the Aboriginal people: one needs to reach in there and comprehend the full depth of their philosophy (or at least as much of it as is possible). The feminine should not have to demand its rights: it is the masculine's responsibility to yield to the feminine, not as an act of altruism, but for the simple reason that the feminine carries more wisdom with it and is therefore deserving of respect and deference.
Then again, maybe this is too radical a proposition for this time and this place.
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Comments
Freakin' amazing!
The story continues........ "The tables are tilted and the game is rigged". Down with patriarchy!
Enough of the racism in this stolen land!
Keep them coming peeps!
Thank you Masrour and Sandra!
Tami Starlight - VMC Editorial Collective
Thank you for this. This is
Thank you for this. This is great coverage.
I say the following
I say the following respectfully, and with intent to open up a conversation, instead of to denounce:
I know plenty of people who inhabit 'the feminine' who don't carry 'more wisdom'.
It seems like you're ignoring feminine judges who play a central role in the colonial prison-industrial complex, feminine cops who are responsible for safeguarding our violent society-system, feminine technocrat Members of Parliament who participate in controlling all of our lives, feminine members of white supremacist groups or those who level racist judgments on all Indigenous peoples, feminine members of the capitalist ruling class who exploit us, feminine supporters of imperialism who justify racist wars to 'save' the feminine people overseas from, for instance, 'patriarchal Islamic fundamentalism', feminine developers who ravage the earth for their bank accounts at the expense of us all, feminine adult abusers of children, feminine rapists, feminine abusers of each other through insults or violence, feminine abusers of people who are differently-abled, feminine homophobes, or feminine people who are scared of trans people - people who don't fit into patriarchal, dualistic categories of 'feminine'/'masculine'?
I support what you are trying to say in terms of eradicating patriarchy, and that those who inhabit 'the masculine' must drastically increase their respect for 'the feminine'. I agree with that 100%. However, as I've tried to show above, just because someone is 'feminine' doesn't mean that they automatically have more wisdom - people who are 'feminine' can also be oppressive. By saying that all 'feminine' people must be respected due to their 'greater wisdom' mytifies this reality.
Again, I say this not to disrespect to those who voiced their disgust with Tremblay. I am behind them 100%. But this disgust, and calls to end patriarchy in all of its violence, can be expressed without setting up new gendered hierarchies (of wisdom) that erase the complexity of violence already present in the world.
My guess
I didn't write the text, so I can't speak for Masrour, but I would hazard a guess that you actually agree. Perhaps it wasn't made clear as to what differences he may or may not be making between "women" "female" and "feminine"...
My *assumption* is that he uses "feminine" as a counter-point to "patriarchal" and not as a synonym for female or woman, but that's just my assumption, probably based on my own views.
As Sandra said, ...
... it's an issue of definitions: to me, those female judges, cops and MPs represent the masculine (not all of them, but many of them). I don't think there is anything feminine about Bev Oda.
I use the terms male and female to refer to the hormonal phenomenon that goes on in the person's body and at most in their brainstem. Now these hormones affect how the other parts of the brain operate (I mean specifically the cortex, but the details don't matter): there are indeed MRI studies that show that men and women are "wired" differently, but those differences are much more nuanced and multi-faceted, and they are the physical manifestation of what people refer to gender for which I use the terms feminine and masculine (as opposed to sex, which is the hormonal phenomenon, and for which I use female and male). Because gender is so much more complicated, it is much easier for people to go across the boundaries: in fact, there really is no boundary at all. You can't really say that someone is feminine or masculine, but that someone is in some ways more feminine or more masculine than someone else.
On the issue of wisdom, no one really knows what characterizes a feminine mind anatomically, by which I mean that if you cut the brain out of a corpse and give it to a neuro-anatomist, they wouldn't be able to tell you how masculine or feminine the person was, but the outward manifestations of the feminine mind that come to mind include a holistic view of life and a willingness to look at things from more than one angle, which is why women tend to be the backbone of every community (not because they produce off-springs).
So, I encourage you to look at all those women and see if they're any more feminine than their male counterpart. If they are and they managed to get where they are in this patriarchal system without forfeiting their femininity, then they have all my admiration, but many women get ahead in this hierarchical system by becoming more like men (so more cold and narrow-minded and "logical," aka pig-headed).
I don't know if this clarifies what I was talking about over there: I most certainly wasn't saying that ALL women are wiser than ALL men.
P.S. I'm a straight man myself, so I'm not an angry femalist saying all this stuff out of pure hatred for men, although I am an angry feminist: hopefully the difference between those two terms is clear at this point.