As I’ve written in “On Pain,” I’m struggling with some health issues and taking some time to finish large projects. I’m also trying to get some much-needed rest and understand how to adjust my work schedule to the constant and unpredictable bouts of pain, so I won’t be writing as many longer essays for a couple of months. However, I will be producing slightly bloggier works, where I quickly expand on a thought or an idea inspired by current events. This, in the week of (somewhat contested) events and claims of sexual assault at Cornell University, is one of them.
I see a lot of people, mostly women, talk about sexual assault and Cornell. I imagine that many on the so-called “left” think of such matters in terms of a left-right divide.
Allow me to take the time to remind you that the left is suffused with misogyny. It may not be the overtly rapey kind, maybe, but the attitudes of leftist men towards women are exactly what enable instances of assault. Some examples: lefty men posting pictures of a bikini-clad Salma Hayek to show their “pro-immigrant” cred, Ryan Grim, co-host of the “left” podcast Majority Report, insisting that Graham Platner’s alleged rape victim deserved what she got because, hey, she joked with him about needing a glutes massage, and what was she doing leaving her door unlocked? Did she, seconds later, when he said he was coming over, insist in no uncertain terms that she did NOT want him there? Of course. But that doesn’t matter — she led him on, says Grim, in essence.
And then there is the persistent attitude of lefty men towards women, which makes them treat us like secretaries of old or vessels into which to expend their precious masculine energy, or something. Some years ago, I asked a prominent New York male abolitionist to please stop just sending me articles to post as if I were his secretary, without so much as a word of hello or an introduction to himself or an ask.1 I am using “secretary” not to imply that it is an inherently subservient position, but to indicate male perceptions of such a worker. “Assistant” is often the preferred term these days, but the implications of what a “secretary” should do for her male boss still colours the job. He essentially responded that my critique of his sexism (which I called out) was harmful to the left. Consider the case of Cesar Chavez, whom I have written about here, and the fact that girls as young as 11 were regularly summoned to his office in broad daylight so that he could do what he wanted, all within view of the organisation. In all this, such men are aided by the women of the left. Ryan Grim’s female co-presenter Emma Vigeland on Majority Report mostly sighs and stays silent as they discuss the end of Platner’s campaign when she should actually be shoving his mike somewhere. And we’re not supposed to “blame women,” but I, for one, have a hard time, even now, excusing Dolores Huerta for her silence about her own abuse — which enabled Chavez’s abuse of generations of women. Huerta has said she was afraid that revealing that Chavez had raped her (twice) would disempower their movement. Her silence is understandable when we consider that this is the logic that most women on the left operate under, in all kinds of situations. I’ve had female partners of sexist men tell me that they, the men, needed understanding, not (well-founded) accusations. Over and over, we see instances of women on the left silently take on the roles of handmaidens to men in their groups and organisations.
There are also the overtly political issues: the left, including and especially Bernie Sanders, thinks that abortion is just a silly, girly, feminine issue, and not something that actually affects women’s livelihood, their very lives, and their existence as workers. As I’ve written, I want Bernie Sanders to get pregnant -— that seems to be the only way he’ll understand what it means to be a woman of any age who cannot access abortion and is fated to live out her life devoid of job and other opportunities because she has to raise a child she never wanted. (I also want to ask Sanders: Has your wife had an abortion? Have your daughters had abortions? I suspect so —more women have abortions than we can imagine. But, of course, if they did, it was easy for them because of their class status and access to abortion services.)
I could go on and on, but: if we are going to think about sexual assault, we can’t just look at the obvious factors like, oooh, ick, those gross men over there whom we imagine as right-wingers with no respect for women. We have to consider how leftist men routinely disempower and sexualise the women whom they don’t see as co-workers in the struggle, but, at best, as handmaidens and sexual vessels. Going after frat boys and culture is meaningless if the left does not examine the extent of its own misogyny.
Related:
Cesar Chavez and Why the Left Is a Pit of Misogyny
Yasmin Nair on the Left’s Recurring Blindspots
Graham Platner and the Left’s Masculinity Crisis
On Bernie Sanders and the Left’s Fantasy about Class
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