Politics of Identity

Politics of Identity

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  Kelly Nash Politics ofIdentity Barlas Misogyny With A Side of Breadsticks My name is Kelly. That’s what most people have called me for the past twenty years, and that’s exactly what I prefer to be called. I’ve gone from infant to girl to woman, and I continue re-brand myself and re-define who I am as I figure that out more and more. What I never thought I’d be called in place of my name at any point of my life are things like “bitch”, “slut”, and “whore”. These are things I never identify myself with and words that I try my hardest not to identity other women with either. I walk down the street at night and these things are shouted at me no matter how I’m dressed or what I’m doing. These words are slung around in casual conversation like they have no meaning or offense. I see women using these words to describe women just as frequently as men do, and the usage just seems to be growing. And it’s not just words that are hurting. I find that women around me see themselves as lesser than men, as less capable, less strong, less intelligent, and so on. There are obvious limitations regarding gender within our society which have been alive since it began. This ingrained prejudice is thriving and is visible as ever. As we have seen from sections of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, even the most intelligent, thoughtful men can have these misogynistic tendencies. The author, Laymon, says “…and the thousands of confused brothers out there who think
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  “misogyny” is thenewest Italian dish at Olive Garden, I have intimately fucked up women’s lives while congratulating myself for not being Kanye West, HaLester Myers, Stevie J, Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, or the brothers who like that misogyny with a few breadsticks.” (Laymon 94) This concept is one of the most truthful things I’ve ever heard, something we can usually expect from Laymon. The fact is, us women limit ourselves sometimes, think lesser of ourselves, and put each other down quite a lot, but there is, like most things, reasons behind that. Misogyny is such a frequented standpoint theses days it might as well be a cultural norm in America, truly ingrained in our past, present, and probably future. Perhaps the less though of, but most bewildering thing about it is that men who share this view of women don’t recognize it in themselves. It is something so casual, a main course with a side of breadsticks as Laymon refers to it. I want to dive deeper into this concept, digging through some of the struggles in Laymon’s book of essays, as well as some themes from Sugar in the Blood, to better understand this casual misogynistic attitude that runs through America’s veins as deeply as racism. An initial issue that comes to mind, and one frustration I know very well as a woman, is the false respect given to us when it seems most appropriate or necessary. It’s like when white people watch what they say and how they act when in the presence of people of color, but turn around and say blatantly racist things to their white friends and family. Sure, men might act decent around the women in their lives, but do they act the same when they're with their male friends? Do they secretly hold sexist thoughts but put up a front to cover them? Even Laymon admittedly exemplifies this behavior, saying, “I couldn’t wait to tell some men—but only in the presence of women—how sexism, like racism and that annoying American inclination to cling to
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  innocence, was aspresent in our blood as oxygen.” (Laymon 95) That inclination runs deep and like blood, goes unnoticed and unthought of for most of us. Laymon, someone who continuously self-deprecates, realizes this innate trait of not-so-profound innocence among Americans, and in this context, specifically male Americans. We cling to this idea of irreproachability and find the excuses to back up that kind of thinking. Part of the issue surrounding this, and one which Laymon brings to our attention, is the fear but necessity of “knocking each other’s hustle” more often. He describes this as something he has discovered to be a way to show love from one black man to another. He realizes that by telling it how it is, and perhaps giving out some constructive criticism, that in turn, that would be a symbol of love for one another, promoting personal growth and learning. So what would happen if we took this concept out of black men loving other black men, and instead put it in the context of respecting women and escaping a misogynistic mind-set? Probably ridicule. This seems to be hugely because of the influences and role-models in present day American life that dictate exactly how we act and feel. Girls are bred to feel ashamed of their bodies, sexualize themselves for the sake of men, conform to certain duties and tasks assigned to them by gender, demote themselves, and in doing all this, demote other women around them based on the gender norms they have learned to abide by. And this thinking is nowhere near new. We can look at Sugar in the Blood and see where it all started. Women, slaves, all taken for granted, raped, abused, and given little respect. We can see their limited role in society, and the reason we have become so obsessive about marriage and settling down, because it was once the only way to have success in society. Mary Burke, for example, knew that “for a respectable woman, marriage was
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  the gateway toeverything: it opened the door to the role of being a wife, the status of being married and the opportunity to become a mother.” (Stuart 151) It’s kind of comical though, how the ‘opportunities’ for women through marriage were to be a wife and a mother. Perhaps this was the only thing men saw them as useful for, and therefore the highest success in life in a women’s eyes. Today doesn't seem to differ all that much in relation. There are numbers of girls that simply see their futures as that of being a wife and mother, with no second thought on the matter. Of course, having those goals are fine to have, but to have a sort of tunnel vision, seeing only that as means to success is where the limitations start to emerge. Men who take for granted women, also seeing them as wives and mothers above anything else, if anything else make up a lot of this country. So to inch closer to misogyny and all it touches, we have to talk about men. Just as we can look back on the roles of women and how they have shaped their viewpoints of their gender, we can trace a man’s too. Back to colonization, it was true as stated in Sugar in the Blood, that “whatever her fantasies and misconceptions, the reality was that the options for a well-born Creole woman were extremely limited. Only men had agency in this society and at this time in history; only they were able to vote, hold public office, or exert any formal power.” (Stuart 150) Again, this power they held in their environment, over their slaves, and above women gave them ultimate decision-making ability over everyone-a power which just further built up the idea of being manly and taking ownership and control of everything in their lives. Again, we see the exact same thing in today’s society, in men thinking they own the world around them, that women are submissive, and that any sign of femininity within themselves must be demolished.
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  Now in presentday, there is such a huge influence coming from the music industry in ways we don’t even realize a lot of times. Laymon gave us two whole chapters on musical artists he has been influenced by. It is obvious that for him, and many other black men specifically, rap and hip hop were a part of the culture. It was somewhat of a right of passage to listen to it, to create it on your own, to be a part of something bigger within it. This still reigns true for the youth of today, race aside, that music is a right of passage, a social connector. Musical artists like Kanye West are people you look up to, worship, and use to get through the day-to-day of life. Laymon talks a lot about Kanye and his conflicting stance on his art. When describing this conflicting he says “he has proven himself good enough, brave enough, conceptually genius enough, compassionate enough, and now rich enough to use his voice to explore, with prickly honesty and dramatic irony, what black women deserve— as well as the ways he is encouraged to obsessively dismember, soulfully mutilate, and straight dis the fuck out of women in order to move units and feel like a manlier man.” (Laymon 92) This genius he talks about it so real. Kanye creates more than just music, more than sound. He is a multidisciplinary artist who encompasses an array of political and social issues within his persona, and a creator of eye- opening, though-provoking work that only few can come close to. All this can be said, but still, here’s another man who might order his misogyny with a side of breadsticks. Though he is a lyrical god of sorts when it comes to racism, he really does “straight dis the fuck out of women” with songs strung together with highly offensive lines and totally sexist themes. And like Laymon said, this might be all to feel like a manlier man, something many men feel like they need to do. That concept is a whole plethora of other cultural stereotypes and limitations. But
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  who cares whenyou’re Kanye, right? He has such an empire, a following of millions, that it doesn't really matter what he says because men and women alike will continue to praise him. This kind of influence doesn't just apply to him, it applies to a large number of musical artists today that make use of similar themes and lines. This, in turn, leads us back to that so-called American innocence we all go after. People will chant these lines and belt out the raps without a second thought to the words they are saying and the offense they might have. These artists “…constantly [remind] us that the correct pronunciation of the words “woman” and/or “girl” is “bitch”” (Laymon 93). Through the constant overload of words like these, men are learning younger and younger that it is acceptable to use these terms. They learn that they are above women and can hold that power against them. Of course, some might say it’s a stretch to say that men act the way they do based solely on the music they listen to. Laymon addresses this as well saying, “so yeah, that’s what we were taught, but at what point does listening to artists obsessively encourage manipulative relationships, sociopathic deception, and irresponsible sex with women doubling as accessorized pussy become not just destructive, but really, really boring? If Kanye West won’t, or maybe even can’t, explore the meat of that question, isn’t he still too great to exploit it? (Laymon 93) I mean, if we are still too blind on the matter to recognize what’s even going on, can we really begin to assess the damage sexually crude music might have? And as I write this very sentence, I am sitting by my boyfriend and his two friends, all people of color, discussing Kanye’s meeting with Donald Trump at the Trump Tower this afternoon. Does this meeting with Trump show an even further degradation of his character or perhaps an act of trying to make a change for black lives in America? He has been very open
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  about voting forTrump, god knows why, but if he does really support him, does this also show a further disregard for what Trump stands for in terms of women? Is he as blind about the matter in real life as he coveys in his lyrics? It is very interesting to ponder. As is seems, we could assess musics effect on sexism in America much more deeply, but music is truly just one small part of the influence on sexism and misogyny in today’s world. As previously mentioned, being a manlier man is a very deeply rooted ideal in the United States, and a much greater pressure on men that music could create. Boys are taught that they can’t cry, that showing emotion is a bad thing, and that being feminine at all is detrimental to their success and likability. Obviously this is a difficult pressure to have to take on, but what is just as bad, is the negative impression it creates surrounding women. If men are taught from a young age to reject femininity, how can they grow up learning to respect that of women and further, accept it within themselves? In conclusion, I have come to realize while writing this, that, as Finnegan described in Cold New World in regards to Terry’s situation, that misogyny within America “is not an illness in need of diagnoses.” (Finnegan 54) The issue, like racism, is a deeply rooted, incredibly complicated issue that will take more than a diagnoses. It is something boys are brought up to believe, and girls are taught to conform to. Since colonization, these sexist ideals have thrived. I think the ‘opportunity’ the white men went to Barbados for was the opportunity to have power, and they used every inhumane tactic they could think of to achieve that power, taking it away, stripping it from everyone else. Today, I feel like we are still fighting to have even some of that power back, not only for people of color, but for women as well. In addition to this power
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  struggle, is misogyny,perhaps a byproduct of this fight for utmost power. Whether it is wrong or right to put the blame on what has happened historically, it is clear that white males have shaped society in a certain way, one which benefits them most and limits everyone else. Something that Kai Green said in his letter in one of Laymon’s essays was that “sometimes we don’t get what we deserve because we don’t know our own value.” (Laymon 81) Women have been trained to be the lesser so we are the lesser. Men have been trained to think of women as the lesser, and so they see themselves as more powerful. Of course, that’s an over-simplified, easy to understand ‘diagnoses’ for the problem, but it’s one that seems to have a lot of truth and back up to it.