Posted by FCM in feminisms, gender roles, international, meta, politics.
Tags: london, radfem 2013, reformism
so radfem13 went off without a hitch. mostly. the event took place and the organizers have issued a postgame statement focusing on the legal issues involved in organizing and meeting as women, in women-only space exclusive of men and trannies. the title of the piece is “protecting female-only space in the UK.” an “interim legal statement” was previously published here. the organizers are quoted extensively in an article on “counterpunch” which you can read here (via gendertrender).
relatedly, melinda tankard reist has been reporting on the saga of young feminist talitha stone taking on a misogynist rapper — i will expound on how this is related below. the latest installment of this series is here.
theres a lot going on here, and its hard to know where to start. so lets start at the beginning, which is probably “what are we doing here in the first place” or the point of radical feminism. and lets be brief about it and come to the analysis quickly. radical feminism is about locating, exposing and understanding the root of womens oppression by men, so that we can be liberated from male dominance. so what is the root? radical feminists understand that the logical endpoint to radical feminist thought is that the root of womens oppression by men is mens sexual and reproductive abuse of women. this is what it means and what it looks like to be oppressed as women by men as men — men dominate and enslave women based on our reproductive biology and mens demonstrated ability and interest in exploiting it.
this means “othering” and pathologizing womens biology by eroticizing intercourse and separating or falsely separating “sex” from reproduction, where there has been no 100% reliable contraceptive invented and there is unlikely to be one ever. and by gaslighting women when we experience reasonable anxiety and aversion to penis-centered “sex” and when we become “unintentionally” knocked up, as if there was any other reasonable outcome to eroticized and normalized PIV considering our female biology and how it works.
it means that men grant themselves the power to open the door to formal, institutional and state control of women by doing the one thing that only men do to only women and which we cannot do to anyone — by impregnating us. note how the big-3 of the patriarchal institutions — medicine, religion and law — all attach to womens bodies and womens lives at the moment of conception, and that this does not happen to men at the moment of conception or ever. its literally a trap, baited and set by men and producing an outcome intended by men that benefits men — control of women, and control of reproduction, including the terms and conditions of intercourse, pregnancy, birth, and childrearing.
this is what our oppression consists of and what it is. men get to name it (sex, fucking, knocked up, mother, father) men get to execute it (intercourse, impregnation) and men get to enforce it (rape, heteronormativity, marriage, and legal remedies and lack thereof for sexual and reproductive offenses). note that i am considering rape to be the violent enforcement by men of womens sex role as fuckholes and breeders.
and there is no legal solution to rape — men rape us, period. then when we are inevitably impregnated, we are caught in their trap and cannot escape — pregnancy triggers the system of overlapping controls on women (via reproduction) including medicalizing/legislating/moralizing abortion; the medical and other standards of care that apply to pregnant, laboring and lactating women; and laws and customs that allow surveillance and control of caretakers, primarily women, and defining parenthood itself so that men are included, tethering women to the men who impregnate them for life. all of this is made-up by men and follows no natural (inevitable) law, and is all by patriarchal design.
now, it is important to note that both rape and legal remedies for sexual and reproductive offenses are used by men to enforce their sexual and reproductive control of women. arent they? thus, womens relationship to the law specifically regarding issues of sex and reproduction — and therefore the terms and conditions of both our oppression and our liberation — is not merely complicated but demonstrably conflicted where men obviously use rape and then not-punishing rape, as well as restrictive (legal) controls on pregnant, birthing and mothering women, in order to dominate and enslave us.
so. regarding radfem13, we have organizers statements indicating that “protecting female-only spaces in the UK” is paramount. whether or not this is the case is a question for the community. so i present the question this way: does protecting female-only spaces in the UK cease or even affect mens sexual and reproductive abuse of women? in order to know whether it does or doesnt, or whether radfem13 was radical at all, we must understand what the organizers themselves intend and mean when they say it. and to figure out what they mean, it helps to read what they have said in their own words about what they were trying to accomplish and why. they tell us what they mean where they say that they wish to evoke the Equality Act to preserve their right to legally assemble sans men; and they explain that the reason they need to do this is because gender, meaning stereotypes which emanate from a persons born-sex but which arent endemic to either sex. and that the artificiality and unfairness of “gender” (meaning sex-based stereotypes) apply to both women and men.
so firstly, we have an appeal for legal reform/protections in one country to meet in women-only space; being generous we can assume they mean that they wish to have mens laws interpreted and applied fairly to women generally and globally, although they do not say this. previously, the organizers released this statement which indicates their intention to fight for our right to meet as females; and another statement here concerning the legal issues and difficulties involved in meeting in female-only space in the UK. again, no mention is made of why this is necessary; nowhere in these statements is there an acknowledgement of or an appeal to end womens sexual and reproductive abuse by men, or why its important, or how they wish to achieve this. and (therefore) no mention of anything of any importance to radical feminists or radical feminism as a matter of fact.
from an outsiders perspective (i did not attend) and assuming that it served some legitimate purpose, it seems as if the intent and effect of radfem13 was meta — the purpose of meeting in the UK in women-only space was to prove that they could. one wonders whether this was fair to women who traveled long distances to attend a radical feminist conference, rather than a reformist one, or one centering the legal situation in the UK which does not affect all or even most women globally.
but still, is it possible that, once attendees gathered inside, this conference became radical, or less reformist? sadly, organizers statements made elsewhere indicate that it probably didnt. while all radical feminists must agree that “sex matters” and that trans and queer politickers misuse “gender” essentially as a euphemism for sex, albeit “brain sex” (or as voluntary “performance”) the obviously reformist-oriented radical feminists we see organizing radfem13 and elsewhere misuse both “sex” and “gender” to mean essentially sex-based stereotypes. “stereotypes” which, according to them, are oppressive to both men and women, or at least reflective of the biology or essence of neither, even as we see male violence — and mens sexual and reproductive control of women enforced with male violence — as a global phenomenon that transcends social conditioning, and men across time and place embracing it and manifesting it in various ways. even the “good guys” and men in less violent and “less patriarchal” cultures do this in their own way and we fucking well know it.
and even as we see women, globally and throughout time, dissonating with, negotiating within and around, and ultimately rejecting our sex (not gender) role as mens fuckholes and slaves. equating women with men — against all evidence — is a false equivalence and simply is not rigorous, logical analysis or honest intellectual labor. and conflating “sex” with “sex-based stereotypes” does nothing to locate the root of womens oppression by men — our sexual and reproductive abuse as women, by men as men — in order to liberate women from male dominance.
and finally, i bring up melinda tankard reist’s recent reporting of the young feminist who is single-handedly taking on a notoriously misogynistic american rapper because this is yet another manifestation of reformist-oriented politicking, what it consists of and where it leads. on her blog, reist says,
One of the great rewards of this work is seeing a growing wave of young women go into battle against violence against women in all its brutal manifestations, calling out and naming this violence as unacceptable. One such woman is 24-year-old Talitha Stone. [...] Talitha’s passion and gutsy activism gives me hope that things can change.
okay. here, we have reist, a well-known, seasoned radical feminist who makes money on radical feminism as a speaker and writer, applauding and encouraging individual women who dont make money on it and who in fact may have little or nothing to gain from it, to engage in “gutsy activism” (and everything that entails including the very real danger of physical and emotional violence by men) by taking on a misogynistic industry and all misogynists everywhere — in this case by protesting rap lyrics that describe the sexual abuse of women by men. how and indeed whether this instance or this kind of activism is likely to liberate women from male dominance is never made clear. and frankly, giving well-known seasoned radical feminists who make money from radical feminism hope that things can change, in the complete absence of evidence that this is true, or even that radical feminism informs this activism, how, and why, is not a good enough reason for anyone to do it or to expect anyone to do it, or to applaud those who do it at great cost to themselves.
indeed, if a woman throwing herself on the pyre in this manner inspires hope, and i think this is an apt metaphor, one might wonder “hope for what, exactly?” hope that the next generation of women will fall into the same reformist traps, creating paying “radical feminist” jobs and opportunities for MOAR ACTIVISM, and more meta — the continuance of reformism itself, in other words, as opposed to identifying the root of and liberating women from male dominance — is what it sounds like to me.
Posted by FCM in logic, pop culture, porn, radical concepts, rape, trans.
Tags: male violence, men's search terms, porn
one week into it, i can report that the new mens search terms blog has been eye opening. specifically, in preparing the first hundred or so posts to go live, having a lot of data to review at the same time made it very easy to categorize mens search terms into their general themes, and to realize that there are indeed parameters within which men seem to be operating when they go online. mens depravity is not random, in other words, and its not individualized, despite what everyone else seems think or at least say. there are patterns and constants, and as creative as men are when it comes to envisioning and perpetrating violence and abuse, its all very much the same if you can just get your head around it.
their deviance doesnt deviate. get it? which means that we arent dealing in deviant behavior (or thought) at all, but rather we are observing males operating within male norms. from what i can tell from the data i have, the norms are as follows, and these are the “categories” of the search terms on the new blog:
autogynephilia; bestiality; castration/SRS; excrement; holocaust; inanimate objects; incoherent (but within sexual or violent contexts or both); men hate trannies; men will stick their dicks into anything; necrophilia; pedophilia; porn actress injuries; rape; sexualized racism; terrorism; things that don’t exist; torture; trafficking/slavery.
thats 18 general categories of “porny” search terms, and these 18 represent the gist of very nearly all the porny search terms we came across. the ones we left out as not falling into any of the 18 categories were very generic such as “fucking porn” or “violent porn” for example which had no relevance to this project, where all the search terms were pornographic and/or referred to sexualized violence (male violence against women, specifically womens breasts and genitals).
and some of these do overlap such as “rape” which can and does constitute “torture”. this overlap is especially obvious if it includes torture directed at female genitals above and beyond “mere” unwanted penetration (which is also torture). for example, when men rape girl children and babies, this counts as both rape and torture due to the extreme size differential and the problem of putting a large object into an especially small opening/organ. and filming a rape or other sexual offense would also constitute terrorism, as it is meant to terrorize women as a sexual class as well as producing a terrorizing effect on the victim who can never escape the predatory men who will use the images of her rape/torture forever, and even search for or recognize her in real life.
anyway, this is how the categories are being used, but what one also notices when viewing the extreme depravity of these search terms — and when considering the 18 categories and the ways they overlap — is that necrophilia seems to be the common denominator, or the one category that encompasses most if not all the rest.
for example, extreme violence is not compatible with life; therefore extreme violence could be said to be necrophilic. references to disembodied body parts, including sexualized body parts such as vaginas and anuses, are references to necrophilia because living beings cannot be separated from their parts without it killing them, or without being placed at extreme risk of death. raping babies — pedophilia — is incompatible with the babies life, and indeed often kills them. castration and “nullification” of genitals is incompatible with life, or at least it is incompatible with creating life.
and on that note, i actually dont have much of a problem with men who castrate themselves — more of them probably should — but one cannot escape the fact that castration has necrophilic connotations. thats the point really. castration can also constitute torture, or medical torture, and torture is incompatible with life. and infertile/castrated (or simply unable to gestate) males taking the place of females — nullification of class female, in other words — is obviously incompatible with life, womens lives and indeed all life everywhere. we end up there, no matter how we look at it.
and in reality, what is the “porn” context itself if not a necrophilic context? porn itself is not compatible with life, or more specifically with female life. we see this incompatibility play out where the average “life” of a female porn actor is months only, before she is forced to leave the industry forever. and thats assuming she survives at all.
of course, we also know that PIV itself is necrophilic the way men do it. it is incompatible with life — incompatible with womens lives, childrens lives, and indeed the entire world has been polluted and violated to its breaking point by men, sticking their dicks into women, and “creating” literally billions of unwanted or ambivalent children across time and place. pro-creation is actually destructive when men are allowed to do it the way *they* want it done, and when control over reproduction is taken out of womens hands and placed into mens. men use absolutely everything (including procreation) towards one ends — to destroy.
and in case anyone thinks this sounds familiar (“i cant do anything right!”) it does, doesnt it? (poor men — i can see how this could hurt their feelings. we cut off our dicks — necrophilia! if we keep our dicks (and use them) its necrophilia too!) but the fact of the matter is, yes, everything men do is necrophilic. literally. everything. perhaps especially when what they are doing is porn, or within a pornographic context, including PIV, rape, pedophilia, castration, bestiality, torture, terrorism, trafficking/slavery etc.
tangentially, the revelation of one partners “inability to do right” is often what happens at the end of a relationship, isnt it? im just saying.
Posted by FCM in meta, porn, WTF?.
Tags: men's search terms, pornography
from the “about” page:
Men’s search terms is a catalog of offensive search terms that real men have typed into their search engines, obviously hoping to find pornographic photos and videos of these things happening in real life.
In case anyone was in any way unclear about what lurks in men’s minds and psyches, or what their precious Nigels think about and hope other men are really doing to women and children (and animals, inanimate objects and even other men) so they can find it online and wank to it…we present the proof, in the men’s own words.
These search terms have been compiled by female bloggers, and represent search terms they found in the stats on their own blogs. Trigger warning: men, and what they think about.
categories include:
this project is anticipated to last one month, and will be accepting submissions from known radfem bloggers. click on the image above to visit men’s search terms.
Posted by FCM in books!, logic, meta, politics, pop culture.
Tags: andrea dworkin, anne llewellyn barstow, mary daly, publishing, witchcraze
ive been seriously wondering for years how certain radical feminist writers managed to get published. actual, real published in the sense of actual, real publishing houses, with editorial controls, factchecking (where the official “facts” are either baldfaced lies or spin, or where the real truth is unknowable) bank checks to be written and cashed and various patriarchal gatekeepers throughout the process. how did daly, dworkin or anyone manage to get their work out there despite all the obstacles specifically designed to quash and erase womens work in general and radical feminist work in particular? i wondered this from the first time i read dworkin and the question has lingered. lingered!
welp. reading and finishing anne llewellyn barstows ‘witchcraze’ has been eye-opening in more ways than one. i mentioned earlier that barstow concludes that women as a class — having been relentlessly hunted, raped, tortured and murdered in a stunning period of global gendercide against women — understandably “kept a lower profile for several centuries” following the official period of the burning times, meaning after the period of 1560-1760 (or after 1800 depending on the source). (p. 29) bawdy women, women who talked back to men, were “scolds” or prominent members of the community for any reason (perhaps especially midwives and healers) having been put in their place by 2 centuries of unbridled misogyny and woman-murder, carried out by men and male institutions, all women understandably laid low after that. for several centuries. several. centuries.
doing the math, and understanding that “several” generally means three or more, we see that the period of “laying low” wouldve ended by about 2060 or so. its still happening, in other words. but she doesnt say it. and she uses the past-tense — women kept a lower profile — which reverses what she actually means. she doesnt mean to say that this ever ended, but she does say it. or more accurately, she says both, but the effect is to communicate that it ended at some point when that cannot be concluded from her own research or her own words. a mindfuck effect. later, she concludes that, as a result of the burning times,
[w]omen began to protest less in general. From having, at the end of the Middle Ages, a reputation for being scolds and shrews, bawdy and aggressive, women began to change into the passive, submissive type that symbolized them by the mid-nineteenth century.
(p. 158). what she doesnt do is make any statement at all about the “feminizing” effect of the global witchhunt by men against women carrying over into modern times or address how and indeed whether it still affects us at all. it does, of course. how could it not? and why would anyone assume or believe otherwise — that women found their voice at some point — and if anyone did think that, when exactly did this happen and how?
the mystery of how barstow got published has been answered to my satisfaction, and the answer appears to be that she didnt make any useful political connections or draw any relevant feminist conclusions from her own work. instead, she makes the historical point, and the math takes us well into the future but she doesnt explain how or indeed whether the patriarchal purpose (intent and effect) of the witchcraze is relevant now, or how or whether it will continue to be relevant into the future or perhaps forever. she leaves the reader to do that, and in fact no thinking person who was both paying attention and interested in the subject matter could reasonably conclude otherwise, based on her work and the information she provides. hmmm.
as for daly and dworkin, it seems as if the same principle applies, and obviously so, so dont shoot the messenger mkay. specifically, dworkin criticized PIV — intercourse — to within in inch of its life (as a patriarchal institution that benefits men at womens expense) but what she never said was that PIV-as-sex or for pleasure alone was inherently oppressive to women. and when asked to clarify, she did — as everyone knows, she said that it was her belief that intercourse-as-sex could and would survive equality. what she didnt do was explain how or why she thought that, or indeed how that conclusion reasonably followed from her own work. it doesnt, by the way.
and daly, as i recall, (as many radical feminists do) used “5000 years” as the age of patriarchy, concluding that patriarchy is therefore a social (read: not biological) phenomenon with a beginning, and that therefore it will have an end. but in reality, it seems as if institutionalized patriarchy began about 5000 years ago, and merely codified and formalized the previously informal patriarchal controls and structures that already existed everywhere anyway. daly (and others!) using the 5000-years tidbit didnt lie exactly, but did the actual, real (whole) truth no favors and made it harder in some ways to draw reasonable conclusions based on the evidence.
now, im not calling daly or dworkin liars, or handmaidens or disparaging their work at all, i dont think, by calling attention to what was very likely a calculated trick or strategy used in order to get published in the patriarchal press. in fact i appreciate both of them very much, including whatever strategies they mightve employed to think, write and publish because their work changed my life and my brain etc etc. i feel about both of them the way you probably do — with love, admiration, gratitude and awe. and probably other things. amiright?
but what i am saying is this. because published radical feminists (obviously) have to make concessions in order to be published at all, in order to get to the real, actual (whole) truth, other radical feminists have to read very closely, and not just *some* radical work but as much radical work as possible by a lot of different authors and make the connections ourselves. *we* still have to figure out what the hell is going on, and take these radical thoughts to their logical ends. this makes truth-seeking very difficult as its made both time consuming and frustrating. and as is always the case, these half-truths and thought-termination/truncation make it decidedly *unobvious* that there is, in fact, any further truth to be revealed at all, or any obfuscating strategies being applied at all.
in the case of radical feminist publications in particular, its entirely possible that, since men cannot truly understand radical feminism, male editors and publishers didnt and in fact couldnt take these thoughts to their ends and understand the implications of any of it, including where and how it went off the rails, or was inconsistent, incomplete or unclear. and being that men conflate “pleasing” with male-pleasing, they cant even identify that — male-pleasing as a political strategy (used to get published, despite being irrational or not reasonably following from the material) or as a “politic” at all. even though it obviously is one.
of course, since i believe that the radical feminists that came before were some of the most intelligent, ingenious and creative humans who ever lived, i can only assume that this was deliberate on their part, and if it was, that they counted on us to realize what was happening and to do what they likely couldnt — to use their published work as a springboard and to take this material and these thoughts further, deeper and wider than anyone has ever done before. to read between the lines and to use it in any and all ways to get to the actual, real (whole) truth about womens lives, and what men do to us, in order to liberate us from male dominance. they are asking us to do this, i think, but in any event we are clearly invited to do it. thats the point really. not only the (historically gatekept, written) medium but the nature of radical feminist work itself absolutely invites our freedom of thought. it just does.
Posted by FCM in books!, international.
Tags: anne llewellyn barstow, male violence, torture, witchcraze
we have discussed creativity before here. this post is more on that subject, and its also about men. get it? moron. i always assume people get that, but maybe its just me. sometimes i just make myself laugh and thats good enough, but as vonnegut once wrote, maybe people would like art more if the artist explained it a little?
i am currently reading about the witchcraze and one thing ive noticed, indeed its rather difficult not to, is that men were very creative in the ways they treated witches. more to the point, they were creative torturers. men came up with shit that would blow your mind if you only knew about it, and it *is* mindblowing to read about this stuff. its mindblowing in the same way as reading the work and ideas of any creative genius is mindblowing as a matter of fact. its shit you could never come up with yourself in a thousand years. of course, the destructiveness of mens torture, when coupled with the creativity of it creates a mindfuck experience as well. we have no words for this, as “create” and “destroy” are supposed to be opposites. but they arent. not for men anyway.
you see, i think its very obvious by now that men are creative torturers and creative destroyers. in light of recent conversations about the innateness of mens destructiveness and violence, the idea of creativity hits the right note. a good thing, too, because im getting sick of going around and around on this one. because all of us, i think, are quite aware that some people are just naturally gifted in certain areas, and that this giftedness cannot be taught. although we do not fully understand where natural giftedness comes from, we accept and admit that it is real. we are perfectly comfortable saying people are naturally gifted in certain areas, music, sculpting, cooking, that kind of thing. arent we? naturally. gifted.
welp. men, as history and experience shows, are gifted at torture. they really are. and torture is violence taken to an artform, its violence imagined, designed and implemented with creativity. isnt it? if we are going to use other artforms or abilities as analogies, we could say that a naturally gifted person (like a painter or an athlete) can be coached or inspired, and that the gift can be developed and helped along. but what we know we cant do is teach it. okay? creativity, and true creative talent, cannot be taught. it is innate, and we fucking well know this.
and as men are creative in the area of violence, otherwise known as torture, we can see that men are in fact naturally violent. i think this is indisputable, and again, that the proof of innateness is that they are able to be creative about it. they are gifted. and the existence and pervasiveness of torture, perpetrated by men, globally, across time is absolute proof of this natural propensity and that men share this innate tendency because they are men.
now. this does open up areas for discussion, and even hope. because just as we know that creativity can be nurtured, we also know it can be stunted. we can take away opportunities instead of providing them. leisure time, money, and an understanding of what is possible based on what other people have done in the field, for example, are used to increase and encourage creative pursuits, and withholding these things can be used to stunt them. we have lost many geniuses and natural creative talents this way in fact, and i daresay most of these lost geniuses were women due to womens general lack of all conditions and materials known to foster and nurture creativity. we do this to female talent all the time. and we have evidence, dont we, that creative talent can be stifled, if not snuffed out completely.
and now that ive thought this through a bit, i can see mens propensity for creative torture, including their torture devices everywhere. its not just the political torturers and witchhunters, although they might be extreme — that is, different in degree but not kind. womens clothing and shoes for example — known torture devices. “restraining orders” that are naught but a piece of flimsy paper, creating a mindfuck. get it? and humiliation. tampons and “pads that feel like diapers.” as mundane as this kind of torture is, it is still creative.
of course, i could go on and on. we all could because we all know. ex-husbands paying child support late every month, in order to make women squirm. by “sexualizing” intercourse, the only thing *in life* that creates unwanted pregnancy. that kind of thing. and in general by turning womens bodies against them in the many ways men do. indeed, the “body being turned against the agent whose body it is” is the whole point of torture and this is accomplished through both pain and fear (in male terms). of course, male bodies cant be literally hijacked, but ours can — through unwanted or forced pregnancy. if anyone needs examples of the creative ways men torture other men, just google. trigger warning for extreme and graphic (and creative!) male violence.
but what im also thinking is not whether but how and how soon we can stunt mens natural propensity for violence? if we cant do this, or if we dont want to, at least we know that it is possible. and understanding and accepting, knowing, that men choose to nurture their gift for creative torture and violence instead of stunting it, when we all know they could, is evidence of something too. oh yes it is. maybe, maybe just talking about this will help.
