Some more thoughts on the radio show -- UPDATED

It's noon, and I am finally ready to blog.  I tried going for a run on one of my favorite trails this morning -- but, alas, it was closed due to mudslides.  The torrential rains of the past month have left my favorite fire roads and single-track trails impassable in many places.  I think I may have to bite the bullet, as it were, and go back to doing serious training on asphalt.  I might even do a paved marathon this spring for the first time in two years.  I hope my knees hold up -- they do love dirt so!  Of course, in the aftermath of all of the havoc that bad weather and natural disasters have wreaked upon our earth this past month, the last thing I need to do is complain about the fact that my favorite running spots are blocked off.

I just downloaded the MP3 of last night's Glenn Sacks show.  (It's available, if you follow that link, in MP3 and streaming Real formats.  You can also spring $7 for a CD).  I've only listened to bits and pieces of it so far.  Like most folks, I recoil at the sound of my own voice; "God", I think, "is that what I really sound like?"  Perhaps I'll sit through more of it later.  (By the way, if you listened live last night, there's now some "extra" stuff, about seven minutes worth, tacked on at the end of the show that wasn't originally broadcast.)

First off, I'd like to say that it was a very pleasant experience.  My fiancee and I arrived early, and Glenn and his producer gave us a tour of their Glendale studios.  I've never been to a radio studio before, and so I was very interested to see how a show gets put together.  Glenn was very kind, answering all of my questions about the various screens and dials and microphones that he and his assistants operate.  It was very educational.

The show itself may have been the quickest hour of my life!  As a teacher, I'm used to adapting my lectures to the available time -- 50 minutes, an hour, 75 minutes.  I'm accustomed to slowly building an argument in stages.  I'm not used to the speed at which radio happens!  One doesn't have time to construct an argument -- one only has time for quick, pointed soundbites.  As a result, I felt that what I was saying was incomplete, partial, and in the sense of contributing to a truly lofty dialogue, totally inadequate.  Still, I was able to get a few of my points across, and I felt better about my performance in the second half of the program.

There were times when I felt as if Glenn was baiting me, but I understand that's his job as a radio host.  After all, programs like his are "info-tainment" --  and the teasing directed my way (describing me, sarcastically, as "more evolved" and "enlightened", things I've never said and don't believe) is part of creating a lively atmosphere.  But I am also aware that my ability to take that in stride is, yes, a function of male privilege.  Had I been a woman saying the same things that I do on this blog and in the classroom, I'm not sure I would have ended up on the Sacks show in the first place.  And second of all, I suspect there might well have been more of an edge to Glenn's words to me.  The very fact that I can laugh off the teasing, and say, "Aw, I disagree with Glenn, but he's a heckuva good guy" is pure male privilege.   The men's rights advocates simply don't have the vocabulary to attack a heterosexual pro-feminist man with words that really wound.  That's not their failing -- it's that our language is filled with far more hateful words for feminists than for the men who support them. 

But here's what's really on my mind today:

Male privilege functioned for me in other ways yesterday.  After the show, I laughed and joked with Glenn and his producers.  There was hand-shaking and back-slapping and plenty of mutual affirmation along the lines of "Dude, you did great."  Because I am a man, I can distance myself a bit from the issues I care so passionately about.  You see, male privilege gives me the freedom not to take anything Glenn or his callers said personally, because I know their real "enemy", if you will, is not me!  It's the people whose causes I choose to defend.  But as a straight man, I have the unearned luxury of being able to walk away from pro-feminist positions any time I like.  I can change my mind in an instant, and it won't cost me a damned thing.  If I were a woman who had come to the feminist movement out of my own intimate experiences of oppression and brutalization, there is no way in hell I could have bantered so freely and so warmly with a man who held such radically different views from my own.  That's not to say that women in the movement can't laugh, or be civil -- they can indeed -- but the firsthand experience of oppression surely makes it a lot harder.

In any event, we weren't able to get to many of the issues that I had hoped we would touch on.  I would have been happy to spend an hour exposing the myth of gender symmetry in domestic violence cases, or taking on Glenn's association with Choice for Men, a project of men's rights advocates that I find particularly odious.  (I was so ready! I had notes!)   Above all, I wish I could have been clearer and more detailed about the fact that the profeminist men's movement is not hostile to individual men, but to the patriarchal structures that shape their lives.   In any event, I'd love to be invited back to debate many more specific issues that were simply glossed over in the light and heat of a single hour.

I'll have more to say soon.

UPDATE:  One thing I'll say about the Stand Your Ground fellas.  They are an industrious lot.  One of them is busy transcribing yesterday's show -- a snippet is here.  It's always dangerous to take off-the-cuff remarks out of context, but I'll stand by what I said.  For what it's worth, the language I chose around manipulation and domination is inspired by a well-known confession of sin in Anglican churches:

we have used our power to dominate and our weakness to manipulate;
we have evaded responsibility and failed to confront evil...

If there is a prayer that all of us working for justice could agree on, it might be that one.

I ought to cite my sources, but I don't think referring to prayer books would have been helpful last night.

Comments

[Lawrence Krubner]

zuzu, you're right about the mob violence leading to widespread violence in some situations. I think India is a good example of that.

[Redistribution]

The only one best positioned to 'redistribute the resources' is the one who earns them. The left and right politcal constructs are mere sugar coating. They all do the same thing. l do not recognise a so called need that puts a lead weight around my neck or takes the fruit off my trees.

The 'system' is only as strong as its weakest link. Once we denigrate individuals as mere cogs in the machine for some alleged social good (who decides that anyway?) we undermine the essential freedom that is central to our lives. All the 'isms' do exactly the same thing... they dress their competing self interest up in sanctimonious bodies of politic. Herd to sheeple behind it and claim a mandate. Stop trying to steal from me and l want try to steal it back from you.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"Once we denigrate individuals as mere cogs in the machine for some alleged social good (who decides that anyway?) we undermine the essential freedom that is central to our lives."

Still, we live, work and play in societies, and we have to pool enough resources to keep those societies functioning. We need police to protect property and basic rights, and we need basic infrastructure (ports, roads) for transit and for economic activity. These are social needs. Some resources need to be pooled to take care of those social needs. As to your question about who should decide how those resources are gathered and then spent, there are several options, but the one that's been increasingly popular in the West since the 1700s has been a liberal political order where the legitimacy of those in power is regularly tested at the polls, with majority will deciding the direction of a country while a semi-protected judiciary enforces protection for human rights, those rights given by one's Creator (pace Locke) which no one gave up during the transition from "state of nature" to the "state of law", rights so inalienable that a person can not even give them away if they wanted to (no one can sell themselves into slavery because their Creator did not want them to live as slaves). George W. Bush refers to elections as "accountability moments", which I think is a good phrase.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"Stop trying to steal from me and l want try to steal it back from you."

You've touched upon one of the central themes of liberalism, which is how to get people to stop living in a state of nature and start living in a state of law. The flip side of your question is simply "Why shouldn't I kill you and take all your money?" Hobbes's described the state of nature as a state of "war of all against all." In such a state, life is "nasty, brutish, and short." We must ask ourselves then how to get out of a state of nature and come to live in a state of law. Jefferson, when writing the Declaration of Independence, gave these questions, and the answers, a lovely turn of phrase, in what is probably the most concise summary of liberal thought ever put down on paper: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

[Nature or Nurture]

l disagree that life is brutal. It can be difficult but l dont buy into the negative view of eat or be eaten and that life and society are zero sum games. l think there's much more good than bad in the world. Its just thatthe bad gets constantly run in the media and the good gets reduces to a 30 sec cat stuck in a tree outro on the 6 o'clock news.

Most people are co-operative and competitie. A few power mongrels subvert. This is the problem l have with popularity contests as a way of electing the leaders. The politicians are largely the same beast, they just wear different colours and con us into believing they represent us. Democracy might be the best of a bad bunch, but the concept that 100m + 1 gets to push around 100m people doesnt sit well in my mind.

Its all well and good to put words on paper above a wax seal and a bunch of signatures. However it is the exercise of state power that dictates our headspace. That something is self evident yet needs to be written and codified strikes me as ironic.

Society is made up of individuals and therefore is the individual. We are just a bunch of people trying to rationalise our self interests and wrapping it up in some nebulous notion of 'the needs of society.' That just helps soften the blow and is a great lever of political manipulation.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"Its just thatthe bad gets constantly run in the media and the good gets reduces to a 30 sec cat stuck in a tree outro on the 6 o'clock news."

Are you saying that Hobbes was a dupe of the media? Are you saying he got too much of his information from the television? Are you saying that his actual experience during the civil war was of secondary importance to him?

"Democracy might be the best of a bad bunch, but the concept that 100m + 1 gets to push around 100m people doesnt sit well in my mind."

It didn't sit well with any of the major liberal thinkers, either, which is why the liberal view of democracy is "majority rule plus minority rights" rather than just majority rule. As John Stuart Mill said, tyranny of the majority is the worst kind of tyranny since it is the hardest to successfuly rebel against.

"Society is made up of individuals and therefore is the individual. We are just a bunch of people trying to rationalise our self interests and wrapping it up in some nebulous notion of 'the needs of society.'"

Or you could say we are a bunch of individuals trying to figure out how to get other individuals not to kill us. I don't want you to murder me and you probably don't want me to murder you. Each of us has an inalienable right to live in peace, unmolested by others. To defend that right, government is instituted among people.

[Talking in Circles]

Government kill more people than any individual ever has. The worst atrocities occur at the hand of government. Government is just a bunch of people aligned in common hegemonious self interest. l can defend my own rights.

[wohf]

Jeez Hugo, is everything really all about you?

[mythago]

Um, dude. It's a blog.

[Talking in Circles]

l thought the idea of a web log was to discuss issues of interest to the blooger and to elucidate ideas and awarness. Rather than get b(l)ogged down in self obsessed naval gazing.

[mythago]

Blogs, like all other forms of writing, run the gamut. It's kinda silly to berate somebody for being navel-gazing on an unpaid, self-published Internet work of their own devise.

[Talking in Circles]

It never silly to berate navel gazers.

[Lawrence Krubner]

It's stupid to be critical of personal reflection on a personal weblog. It's also stupid to be critical of someone for being personal when he's discussing his personal affiliation with a political movement whose best known slogan is "The personal is political."

[Lawrence Krubner]

"I can defend my own rights."

Then do so. Who's stopping you?

[Hugo Schwyzer]

Lawrence, your penultimate comment is absolutely perfect. Thank you, my friend.

[craichead]

Hey Lawrence-

I agree that much of that dialogue is doing nothing but detracting from some real good stuff going on here.

Anyway,

You mention "the personal is political." How do you feel about that -- for lack of a better term -- personally?

For me I think the path to a free society marked by peoples' self determination is to keep the personal and the political separate. Things like freedom of opinion and speech and the separation of church and state seem to be the most obvious statements of this view. In the end I think that the view of the personal as political is tremendously destructive.

What's your opinion?

[Tilking in Circles]

The political is the personal for those unable or unwilling to transcend the personal. Their egoes are far to large to step outside of themselves and challenge their own thinking. Their minds do not watch themselves.

[Lawrence Krubner]

If "political" means "What can Washington do?" then it's important to separate the personal from the political. If "political" means "What can I do?" then the personal is the starting point of all politics.

Personally, I'd like to see less of the former and more of the latter.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"There's still a whole lot of consciousness raising to do"

For sure, and on many issues. The incompleteness of our nation's commitment to equal rights for all is mirrowed inside of many of us, perhaps all of us. I was reminded of this yesterday when dealing with a 55 year old woman who considered herself a strong feminist and who had belonged to NOW and marched in protests 30 years ago, but who had never allowed her daughters to date blacks or Hispanics, and who was horrorified by the idea.

[lata]

Dear Sir,
Nice and surprising to write to you.You are an expert in gender studies.I'm a student of MA in English in East West University,Bangladesh.I want to prepare my dissertation on this fieid.Can you help me suggesting or guiding to prepare this?Actually,I want to find out a suitable research proposal on "in literature men's necessity determines women's fate".I can't understand which way I should follow.I've read 'Alcestis','A Farewell to Arms', 'A Doll's House' and some other texts. I am sorry to say that my depth of knowledge in this field is not sufficient.But my interest is there.Please give some ideas.I'll be really gratefull to you.Wishing you best of luck.Lata,Bangladesh.

[Hugo Schwyzer]

Lata, I am afraid literature is NOT my field -- history is. I wish you the best of luck.

[shakeela]

i visit ur website.God give me bless.
i want more about you.
pls ans soon wen u rec.thankyou.
takecare

[shakeela]

i visit ur website.
God give me bless.
pls u pray for me and mi sunday school class.
wen u rec pls short ans thanks.
salam in the name of jesus name.

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