Introducing your new Divo — by Josiah

Hi, folks. It's Josiah, Maoist Orange Cake's first Divo here. (As I said to the Graces who run this place when I accepted their kind offer to join, I'm happy to be a Diva, a Divo or even Devo.) Yes, I'm a straight man, and yes, I'm a feminist and strong supporter of LGBT rights. That combination is, alas, far more rare than it ought to be.

I recently learned that one early male feminist was L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. (I'm thinking about Oz a lot lately, because I'm playing the Scarecrow in a production of The Wizard of Oz which goes up in September.) Baum's feminism might not be immediately apparent if your only familiarity with his work is the 1939 MGM film, but the original Dorothy is rather more forthright and active than the tearful damsel-in-distress Judy Garland played. From the second Oz book on, the Land of Oz is ruled by Princess Ozma, who spent most of her childhood as a boy named Tip. There's a good argument to be made that Ozma is an early transsexual heroine — she's certainly queer.

Baum learned his feminism from his wife, Maud Gage. Maud was the daughter of the abolitionist and suffragist Matilda Jocelyn Gage, and seems to have been a strong influence on L. Frank Baum. Before finding success as a children's author, Baum tried his hand at many lines of work, including a stint as a newspaper editor. In one editorial supporting women's suffrage Baum wrote that a man who does not support the rights of women is "selfish, opinionated, conceited or unjust — and perhaps all four combined," adding that "the tender husband, the considerate father, the loving brother, will be found invariably championing the cause of women.'' I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment.

Of course, women don't need men to champion their cause. That's something that's difficult for a lot of men to accept. I thought that I had accepted it, but recently I found myself being "chivalrous" in a situation which really didn't warrant it, which made me wonder how much I've internalized the feminist lessons I thought I'd learned.

My wife Erin is a medical student. About a month ago, we went with a group of medical students to see Sicko, as part of a protest supporting universal health care. The plan was that the medical students would attend the screening, all wearing their white coats, and afterwards would pass out flyers with information. We had printed out the flyers in advance. We were a few minutes late, but arrived as the trailers were beginning, and happily joined the throng of white-coated viewers. The film was of course moving — Michael Moore is such a great propagandist — and after it was over, Erin chatted with her colleagues and I stepped back a bit. This was her show; I was there to support. However, I soon noticed that nobody was handing out flyers. I thought that perhaps the other medical students, unaccustomed to activism, were being shy about confronting strangers — even strangers who, having seen the film, were presumably sympathetic to the cause at hand. I spoke to Erin and encouraged her to give out the flyers we had printed. She's an introvert by nature, but feels strongly about the issue, so she stepped up readily and started handing out the flyers — not just to the folks who were filing out of Sicko, but to other filmgoers as well.

One of her friends started chatting to me, and I was distracted; when I looked up, I saw a tall man in a blue Oxford-cloth shirt saying something to Erin in a brusque manner. I didn't hear his remark, but went up to her and asked what he had said. She told me that he had said, "Get away from me, you damn socialist." Now, if someone had spoken like that to me, I would have shrugged it off, or perhaps tried to engage them in conversation on the subject ("what's so bad about socialism?"). But when I heard what this man had said to Erin, for some reason I saw red. I stood for a moment fuming, while one of Erin's colleagues spoke to her quickly. I looked over at the man in the blue shirt, and saw him talking to the movie theater's security guards. I started striding towards him determinedly. My intentions were not violent; I merely wanted to speak to him. My words would have been forceful but civil. But Erin pulled me back, saying that he wasn't worth it. And here I made my mistake. Instead of listening to her, I shook her off and said loudly, "I just want to talk to him." The security guards saw me and stepped quickly between me and the man in the blue shirt. "I just want to talk to him," I repeated. "That's not going to happen, sir," replied the security guard, intoning the word "sir" in that particular manner of voice that means "I have no respect for you at all". At this point, the man in the blue shirt started yelling at me from behind the security guard's back: "You hate America!" (Can you believe it?) I yelled right back, "I love America!" — which is actually true. I love this country, even if I hate its current rulers. At this point, the security guard asked me to leave the building. After a moment of huffing, I complied, yelling on my way out that if someone was going to curse at my wife I wanted to be able to speak to him. (There was a smattering of applause from someone standing in line, but I'm not sure if they were applauding my sentiment or the fact that I was being thrown out of the building.)

After we left the theatre, Erin told me that before we had arrived, the protest organizers had told the other medical students that the theater management had had a change of heart, and that they weren't going to allow us to hand out flyers. We had missed this announcement, and so were technically in the wrong. The security guard started to follow us to our car, to make sure that we weren't going to go back inside; then Erin told me to stay put while she explained to the security guard exactly what had happened. She asked him how he would feel if it was his wife that the man had cursed at. He said, "I'd be pretty mad too," and when we headed towards our car he didn't follow us any further. As we drove out of the parking lot, I saw him speaking to the man in the blue shirt, who was also in the parking lot. Was he reporting that he had dealt with the troublemaker, or telling the blue-shirt off for his part in the altercation? I don't know.

On the drive home, Erin was furious. She told me that by not listening to her when she asked me to let it go, I had shown disrespect for her and her autonomy. And she was right — I had. I was treating her like a prized possession that needed protecting, not an agent of her own. In that moment, I was just another testosterone-drunk male, butting heads with the rival who threatened my mate. All my feminist beliefs, all my civilized veneer, fell away, and I was a caveman posturing for alpha position in the pack and the right of access to the females. Or, at the very least I was a gentleman of the old South, "defending his lady's honor" against the crudity of a rascal — which, when you think about it, amounts to about the same thing.

I was raised in the South, in a prominent family. My father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all served as mayor of the small city in which I grew up. My father-in-law once said that my family has been in Virginia so long we stole it from the Indians, and he was right. My father was dedicated to the family business, and spent almost all his waking hours at work. His absence meant that I was raised almost exclusively by my mother, a real "steel magnolia" of the old Southern aristocracy. I also have three older sisters, so the house I grew up in was very female-dominated.

My oldest sister was (and is) a feminist, and ensured that I grew up listening to Free to Be You and Me, Marlo Thomas's wonderful feminist kids' album. I soaked it up, along with a degree of old-school chivalry taught by my mother. This breed of "chivalry" was largely beneficent: standing up when a woman enters a room, holding doors for women and anyone older than you, and the like. Then I went away to an all-male boarding school, and saw the underbelly of this Southern chivalry. Many of my schoolmates were clearly of the opinion that the only purposes women could serve were laundry and sex. Anyone who didn't plaster his dorm walls with posters of pneumatic blondes wearing as little as the dorm masters would permit was instantly accused of being a fag, and beaten up for it. (Yes, I was gay-bashed for preferring Doctor Who actresses to Pamela Anderson.) I had never seen this side of the South, and it disgusted me.

I had yet more whiplash when I went from this reactionary high school to Yale, bastion of Northern liberalism. There, I had a serious relationship with a bisexual woman who was very active in "Yalesbians" and had founded a subchapter, "Biways Biwomen". I used to accompany her as she'd put up Woman Power posters and chalk the sidewalks with slogans like "My boyfriend knows I'm a dyke." (She later spent several years as the head of NOW's New York City chapter, defended a case before the Florida Supreme Court as a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights, and now heads up the reproductive rights project at the NYCLU. Incidentally, it was she who introduced me to Dykes to Watch Out For, and generally taught me that LGBT rights are as important as women's rights — indeed, she taught me that if one really believes in women's rights, one must also believe in LGBT rights.)

By the time I got married, I thought that I was a pretty well trained feminist. I offered to change my surname to Erin's. (She demurred and ended up taking mine, but if her novel is published it will be under her birth name.) I support lots of feminist and LGBT rights organizations. And yet when I was confronted with another male threatening "my" woman, I reverted to chauvinistic type.

I apologized for my behavior that night, and Erin forgave me, eventually directing her anger at the theater's management and the security guards who assumed that those lefty troublemakers must be at fault. And yet, I still feel uncomfortable thinking about my behavior. Am I the prisoner of my biology, or of the social structures which still say that women need protecting by men? If a supposedly enlightened, feminist man like me still behaves like this, what hope is there for the unreconstructed masses? What place is there for men in the feminist world?

That's why I was so delighted to be invited to be a Diva, or a Divo, or Devo. If there is any hope for feminism, it's in engagement and thoughtful discussion, of the sort this blog specializes in. So thanks for admitting this straight male into your midst.