It’s not yet 8:00AM, but I’ve already been up three hours. I felt well enough this morning to do some light lifting at the gym. I expect to be back to a regular training schedule tomorrow.
It’s a short week, so there are loads of things to do. I always cancel my classes the day before Thanksgiving; the one year I did teach on that Wednesday, fewer than a third of my students showed up. I’m mystified as to why it isn’t a holiday here at PCC; many of the local K-12 schools do give kids the extra day off. But a two-day week, as luxurious as it is, just means more work compressed into a very short time frame. Lots and lots of grading to do, and writing, and so on.
Two notes on the weekend: First, my Cal Golden Bears won the Big Game against Stanford for the fourth year in a row, a streak unseen since the second FDR administration. In my four years at Berkeley, we won only once. For those folks who remember the famous "play" in 1982 (where Cal scored in the final seconds by running through the Stanford band), that victory came at a high price. Over the next 19 games from 1983-2001, the Cardinal held a 14-4-1 edge over my Golden Bears. Those were hard years indeed!
Second, my wife and I went to see "Bee Season" last night. Starring Juliette Binoche and Richard Gere, the film has had generally positive reviews. My wife and I split on the film — I liked it very much, she didn’t. Kabbalah is one of the film’s themes, and that had piqued our initial interest. One thing I can say for Richard Gere — he may not be a great actor, but he’s become darned good lately at portraying self-satisfied, middle-aged narcissists who undergo a dramatic catharsis!
And I write this morning with considerable sympathy for, of all people, Michelle Malkin. (Hat tip: XRLQ). The right-wing syndicated columnist, blogger, and commentator is one of my least favorite mouthpieces for the conservative agenda. I don’t read her blog regularly, largely because I’m not one of those people who takes pleasure in being exasperated.
But Malkin is an Asian woman, married to a Jewish man. I’m sorry to say that far more than her white counterparts on the right, Malkin has apparently been subjected to extraordinary sexual and racial ugliness from those whose politics are close to my own. Last February, Malkin posted some of the criticism that regularly comes her way; most of it falls into the "yellow whore" camp of nastiness. This weekend, she posted about it again, as the issue of her race and her marriage resurfaced when she was a guest on a radio talk show. Malkin, the mother of a kindergartner, writes:
The racist and sexist "yellow woman doing a white man’s job" knock is a tiresome old attack from impotent liberals that I’ve tolerated a long time. It is pathetic that I have to sit here and tell you that my ideas, my politics, and my intellectual capital are mine and mine alone in response to cowardly attacks from misogynistic moonbats with Asian whore fixations. My IQ, free will, skin color, eye shape, productivity, sincerity, and integrity are routinely ridiculed or questioned because I happen to be a minority conservative woman. As a public figure, I am willing to take these insults, but I cannot tolerate the smearing of my loved ones. Because I have always been open and proud about his support for my career, my husband has taken endless, hate-filled abuse from my critics. His Jewish heritage, his decision to be a stay-at-home dad, and even his looks, are the subject of brutal mockery.
Enough.
If you have a problem with my work and what I stand for, go ahead and take me on. Keep calling me whatever four-letter-word makes you feel better when you can’t win your arguments. But leave my family alone.
Well, Michelle, I could have done without the "impotent liberals" bit, as it does knock you back off the moral high ground you’re rightfully occupying, at least on this issue! Still, I share Malkin’s outrage even as I abhor her political positions. As a pro-feminist progressive, I’m angered whenever a woman who chooses a public life is attacked with misogynistic rhetoric. (Heck, I’m happy that Malkin is willing to use the word "misogyny"; some of her colleagues on the right deny that visceral hatred of women still exists anymore in public life). As a man in a mixed-race marriage, I’m also angry when tired old stereotypes emerge around that issue, as they have in the case of the Malkins.
Though I am obviously not as public a figure as Michelle Malkin, in the past year, I’ve received several hundred "hate e-mails" and hundreds of nasty comments here on this blog. Because I’ve taken a pro-feminist position and attacked the men’s rights movement, I’ve regularly had my masculinity questioned. I’ve been called a "mangina" (man + vagina), "pussy-whipped", "a traitorous piece of shit", a "pathetic eunuch", and worse by dozens and dozens of readers. In a couple of instances, I’ve been threatened — anonymously — with physical violence. I very carefully don’t disclose my wife’s name or much about her identity, but even in relative anonymity she too has been attacked, at times with racial slurs directed at her mixed-race (African-Colombian-Croatian) heritage.
Above all, my critics use one charge more than any other: self-loathing. Because I’m so hard on my brothers, because I am so committed to pro-feminist principles, my critics have decided that I must be seething with nearly pathological hatred of my own masculinity. Over and over again, I’m told by my critics that if I really liked myself — as a man — I wouldn’t hold the views I do. What’s so tiresome about the charge of self-loathing, of course, is that it is impossible to refute. How do I prove to anyone — especially on a blog — that I am comfortable in my own male skin? I’ve given up trying, but that hasn’t stopped the critics.
Here’s where my real empathy for Malkin lies: as an Asian woman with right-wing, anti-feminist politics, she too is tarred with the charge of "self-loathing." She and I are both accused of actively betraying those who share our sex or our ethnicity. Her critics assume she’s desperately currying favor with white men, while my critics assume I am eager to be validated and affirmed by women, particularly feminists. In other words, because our views contradict cultural and social expectations, there can be no legitimate explanation for why we believe as we do. We are either dupes of our allies (white men or feminists), or we are filled with self-hatred (for our heritage or our sex), or we are simply crass opportunists, using novelty (a woman of color with right-wing views, a straight evangelical man with pro-feminist ones) to attract attention.
If there’s one thing I am clear on, it’s this: one’s skin color, one’s heritage, and one’s sex do not, in and of themselves, impose specific political obligations. Michelle Malkin, as a woman of color, is under no obligation to toe any party line. She can be an interesting and effective spokeswoman for her side without being a misguided dupe, a self-hating woman of color, or a shrill manipulator. I happen to believe that she’s wrong 95% of the time on virtually every major foreign policy, economic, and social issue of our day. But when she is attacked not for her politics but for her person, she has not only my empathy, she has my vigorous support.
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