[lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Sun Feb 27 06:26:02 PST 2011


Here, I'll practice being a scold - bad idea, but there you go. Slash/'splain/dismiss away

The thing that staggers me is that its as if Joseph hasn't ever read a word of feminism or have any sense of the historical equation of women with nature (milk production with milk production) or any of the contradictions of collapsing the exploitation of human beings - historically stratified, differentiated and exacerbated in pattern by sexism - with animals, resources and ecologies. And that he's fundamentally indifferent to the idea that perhaps that lack might have substantive meaning for women on the left (meanings different from the distaste women in the center and right might feel about this issue.)

Then Jordan comes along and, as both Joanna and Wren point out, refuses to engage any of the substance of Joanna's concern by condescendingly insisting on mansplaining in order to unpack and "understand" the "real" argument because the little lady's being unclear. It's clearly not about price for Joanna, its clearly tied to specific conditions associated with class, consumption, movements, experience and justice but none of that was worth taking on... at least until Jordan, someday, decides to end the careful oh-so masculine objective analysis and actually communicate his position.

And you don't have to be Catherine MacKinnon to be floored by Dennis's and Fernando's lack of gender/political reflexivity when it comes to the completely healthy contestation around the vile history of male gaze (and, here, I'm not sure Joanna's attempt at humor helped).

Beyond Chuck, it appears none of the boys have any experience with breastfeeding, its history and contradictions in the US. My mom and wife breast fed extensively. It was brutal for my mom, given social norms in the 60s and early 70s, no La Leche league or even any such discourse in Oregon in 61/62, in St Louis in 67/68 or suburban Jersey in 71/72 despite my mom's familial commitment - even among the minority in the medical community -to breast feeding over formula. The experience my wife and I had here in mid-Michigan was that the only women who breastfed in significant numbers were lower income immigrants and upper income professionals. While my wife was "blessed" to have a closet and time made available to her to pump after she returned to work at three months, the whole structure of employment militates against these things... especially for poor working women. It isn't about pay, is about the co-/over-determination of structural inequality by sexism and classism (and, Carrol, if you read this, I know this is weak shorthand, let it go).

Lord knows what Jordan actually thinks or knows but the willingness of all three - as leftists - to refuse to engage any of the things raised by Joanna or to think about all sorts of things they surely know or have no excuse given the history of gender politics on the left not to know before they posted.

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 1:28 AM, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Dissenting Wren
> <dissentingwren at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
> I can't decide whether the mansplaining that's been going on in this thread
> > is
> > offensive or creepy. Probably both. Jordan - offensive. Joseph -
> creepy.
>
>
> (Shrugs.) I've been called worse, by better, before breakfast.
>
>



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