On Doodbros And Neovags, And Becoming More Rad By The Day February 28, 2010
Posted by FCM in feminisms, health, international, kids, liberal dickwads, meta, PIV, pop culture, porn, rape, trans.Tags: PIV, radical feminism, rape
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my perspective has changed, drastically, in the last few months. everything is different now, and i wanted to share it here because its happened largely within, and because of, these posts, links, and discussions. reading over this material, including the comments and disussions with my readers, i can see it happening. its documented, and thats very interesting to me. i figured it might be to you, too. i also mention it here because these shifts in consciousness are rare. which makes them precious. if this sounds dramatic, it is. and, its not. “precious” about covers it, in the most banal of ways. it just doesnt happen that often.
in a nutshell, i have gone from a “recovering fun-fem” to a straight, radical feminist. heres whats different:
when i am out and about during the day, i think i am *seeing* women, for the first time. i am seeing them and i know that they have vaginas, and uterii, and ovaries, and fallopian tubes, and that these things have profoundly influenced the way they have been treated, since the day they were born. for what i think is the first time in my life, i realize that women arent fucktoys, for men. i dont think i ever really got that before, as difficult as that is for me to believe, or to say. i never really got that vaginas arent just “holes.” i get it now. and i have to say, its changed everything.
now, when i am out and about, i look at men differently. i see them as a group, and not as individuals anymore. because i know that their shared experience as males makes them members of a bizarre club, and that their realities arent real. and i know that most men i see on a daily basis, all of them over age 13 or so, have probably been having PIV-sex with girls and women. and it fucking makes me sick. it really does. to know that these little bastards are putting women and girls at risk for STDs and pregnancy, without giving it a moments thought as to how vaginal intercourse is problematic for us, but not for them is pretty much my limit, as far as these things go. now that i know that mens concept of “consent” is so fucked up as to include most acts of rape too, i cant un-know it. now that i am seeing it for what it really is, i have to tune some of it out. its literally too much information.
when i was in high school, one of my friends was *in love* with this guy. in typical high school fashion, she talked about that, and about him, with his friends (and hers) more than she spoke about it with him. this guy was a total player. his guyfriends told her that this was no big deal, because “the guy needs to get his dick wet once in a awhile.” at the time, i didnt really get the implications of that, but now i do. men think that having PIV-sex with women is literally no more than getting their dicks wet. that there arent any consequences to it, at all. that womens vaginas are just a warm washcloth, and that by definition, women arent really people. because, you know, human beings are made of tissue and organs, not cotton.
and of course, knowing all this makes me very aware that i will no longer have anything to do with men, if i can help it. that means that the relationship i am in now will be the last one i ever have, with a man. which is oddly freeing. because women are really in a dill of a pickle, once they realize they are radical feminists. that fun-feminism is for the fucking birds strictly about accommodating men, and about normalizing mens misogyny, and their vested interest in, and commodification of, rape, and thats all it is. when straight feminists realize, finally, that men as a group are fucked up beyond repair, and that men have a vested interest in rape culture that isnt going away, and wont in my lifetime, there is no more fun-feminism. and there are no more men. theres no more “what man would put up with my radical views?” because even the so-called lefty progressive men would never tolerate it. even if they wanted to understand it (and most of them dont).
after one denounces fun-feminism, there is only “i no longer desire to please, or to be pleasing to, men.” thats what is left, when a straight feminist becomes radical.
thank you.
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femonade 
Welcome to the world of Awakened Women.
Those are hard truths to learn, hard because they are heartbreaking and totally opposite to what we are taught to believe. Feminism is the only rebellion where the rebels are expected to sleep with the enemy — and to not apply what they’ve learned to the man in their life. He’s different, don’t you know, which completely ignores the reality that he too was raised in an extremist male culture built on the hatred and denigration of women.
No matter how hard an individual male tries, he cannot undo all of the subtle nuances he’s been taught since birth — and neither can we. I’ve been a hardcore feminist for forty years and am still uncovering those almost unconscious, imperceptible reactions against women in myself. They are so deeply ingrained, it is almost impossible to even realize they are there let alone get them out. Some stains just don’t wash out.
Although this epiphany is hard to endure– it certainly is not a realization we want to be real — it also sets you free, as you have noted. You’ve stepped into an alternate universe where interactions are simpler because you’ve stepped outside the enmeshed dysfunction of the culture. It is the same freedom that Germaine Greer found in growing older. Older women become invisible, therefore they are freer to do and say what they please. They no longer have to play the role in order to gain allegiance from the misogynist, hostile culture we’re all born into.
Everything you read and hear will be interpreted with a new eye, again as you noted. However, there is another step to take: to stop thinking of anything from within the parameters of patriarchy. That which we resist we make stronger. Women need to ignore those parameters and create their own frame of reference. This too is a hard new path because we are pioneers in unexperienced territory. We are the trailblazers that will leave a marked path for others to follow.
Because you’ve arrived at this splendid crossroads, we need to celebrate. This is your graduation. New vistas are before you. Pop the cork. Enjoy the champagne. Dance with the moon. You’re gonna love it here.
Welcome, FCM! 😉 Amen, Loretta Kemsley!
*ditto* – nothing more to add – but *thank you*
(I was in a down-dumps mood)
If you prefer logic and reality to wishful thinking and sucking up to men, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll become a radical feminist if you’re spending any time at all thinking about these things.
Congratulations on your radical awakening. 🙂
it just takes some thought, doesnt it? i mean, critical thought. thought in the academic sense (although academia has completely been taken over by the trans and fun-fems too) as opposed to “whatever i think about it is as valid as what anyone else thinks about it.” as in RUTHLESSLY, FEARLESSLY applying theory to facts, no matter the outcome. i really think thats key. i know that being attached to an outcome (not dying alone) kept me in the dark, for many years.
these idiotic empowerfulized morons really dont get the difference. i was always a decent thinker, and i can tell you that “gender” and this trans-nonsense hadnt caused nearly the problems for critical thinkers 10 years ago as it does now. back then, even baby-fems who thought that radfems were “essentialist” knew what essentialism meant, and knew that it was bad. now, we have transpersons and transactivists telling us its possible to be “born into the wrong body.” that identifying as someone of the female gender ALSO MEANS you are female-sexed. back then, we all laughed at freud who thought that women were merely “castrated males.” now the trans and fun-fems are telling the rest of us that a man who cuts off his dick is a woman.
but i have to admit that even i didnt get that vaginas arent just holes. somehow, living in a female body for 30-something years, living as a feminist, and becoming an educated person, didnt help. i didnt get it. right up until the “neo-vagina monologues” post i hadnt really begun to put it together. when i started to gather my thoughts on that post, is when it became clear. women have organs. you know, like people. a vagina is an organ. its like our hearts, and lungs. its not a fuckhole, for men. no matter how badly the transwomen, MRAs and rapists want to believe the opposite. i had always seen women as just castrated men, even though i “knew” they werent. i always thought of a vagina as a fuckhole. even when i “knew” it wasnt. theres such a disconnect there, even for ardent feminists, between what we “know” and what we really, truly GET. its some truly effective brainwashing that causes us not to see whats right and real, and to see something else, instead.
what really gets me is that i know there will be readers here who think that identifying vaginas as organs, and assigning significance to that is “essentialist.” perhaps i cannot tell you, unless you already know, how much its NOT. its not essentialist to call attention to how we have been lied to, about our bodies. how our bodies have determined how we have been treated, since day one. thats the whole fucking point, and it becomes clear when we start thinking of women as a sexual class, around the world. rather than as internet-addicted, western-privileged women and whether or not we are personally skeeved out by any particular misogynist thing.
i think you’re amazing!
Waking up from “the Matrix” that world-wide, historic patriarchy has steeped us all in is a rough, rough re-entry. It’s very disillusioning. On the other hand, dropping illusions and seeing things the way they are is amazing, if you can keep the oppressors from killing you while you’re doing it. Be safe and careful, fcm.
There’s a part of me that rebels against the common narrative of new radfems denouncing third wave women because it seems reactionary, as if other women are what caused the shift from liberal to radical instead of the behaviors of men.
However, I read/hear stories from new radicals who on the surface identify third-wave feminism as what they are leaving behind, but mostly what I see (and what your essay captured well) is that they are seeing men’s aggregate behavior in clear focus for the first time and adjusting their feminism in response.
Rejecting the validation of male approval played a much larger role in my evolving politics than rejecting third wave feminism, but liberal men have been overjoyed to let liberal women gather modern misogyny into a political ideology while committing their daily acts of modern sexism without new labels. With fun-fems supporting “sex worker rights”, liberal men don’t need to waste wanking time forming “johns rights” groups or otherwise justifying their entitlement to unlimited sex on demand with unlimited numbers of women.
Those of us against prostitution take swings at the nebulous, protected group of men who abuse women only to find other women have put their faces between our well-aimed fists and their intended targets. That doesn’t mean other women are the problem, it means our genuine opponents – men who hurt women – are intentionally left out of the debate so that a catfight between women can ensue. Kinda like how Phyllis Schlafly’s name is all anyone can think of for the ERA not passing when actually it was thousands of male politicians, journalists, clergy and businessmen who obstructed the ERA.
sam, i remember that when i first started blogging, i was dropping links and posting over at feministe and the curvature, and it was absolutely the idiocy of what was being said there that made me very sure i wasnt one of them. in general, the cis-garbage was a dead giveaway. but more specifically, over at feministe, it was an article by some twenty-something CHILD wherein she argued that hitchhiking is F-U-N-! and its not dangerous because you dont know the men, and the stats say BLAH BLAH BLAH. my response was not well received. similarly, i tried explaining the concept of consent to cara at the curvature for several days. it didnt work. it was what these fun-fems were saying, and more specifically the fact that it wasnt reality-based and didnt address what i knew to be true about mens aggregate behaviors that made me reject it. the incongruity of it was so blatant. and the brainwashing and silencing aspect of it was frankly both frightening and disgusting, regarding the trans-stuff. but again, you are right that it was mens behaviors that caused me to adjust my feminism to (a radical) one that was reality-based, and acknowledged men and mens behaviors for what they are. the fun-fems seemed to be LYING, to me. and its something that still bothers me: the dishonesty of it. the trans-stuff is a huge part of the intellectual dishonesty. it really feels like lies, and silencing. there is no truth there, only an agenda. and i have never been interested in agendas.
discovering feminism, for me, was the first time i experienced intellectual honesty. thats why i loved it so much then, and why i am still here now.
Another Sam here, I’ve posted here before as Sam but to save confusion I think I needed to add something extra to it!
That aside, this post is just spot on, and something I have found hard to articulate myself. I often think that life would be a hell of a lot easier if my entire world view wasn’t filtered through my feminist analysis (although obviously I’m glad that I can now see shit for what it is), because reaching this revelation is a recipe for feeling constantly enraged and losing sleep at night. As women, we’ve been desensitised to how the world and men view us for so long, and most of us will stay that way forever. But now I know, I can’t un-know, not ever. So the only way forward, I think (and echoing what yourself, Loretta Kemsley and others have already said so eloquently here), is to embrace the fact that even though we will always have to live in this world as women under a patriarchy, we no longer have to give ourselves up as slaves to it anymore. I can now go through life without wasting any more of my energy than absolutely necessary on men, and instead I can use it to try and further the interests of women.
Like today, I was reading a historical debate of sorts today in the comments section on the website of a newspaper that I would normally read, and although I could see the words, what I was actually getting from the exchange was “blah blah blah know it all white men with no interest in anything other than stroking their own egos”, and I had to stop, stop myself wasting any more time and thought on what know-nothing men think about the world, stop being engaged by their nonsense, stop allowing myself to be frustrated by them. They don’t need me wasting my time on them when they have the rest of the world and his wife already pandering to them. And when they argue and debate, they don’t really give a fuck, it’s just about “winning”, it lacks all the honesty and force of discussion among femnists, because it is only their egos and not their very *selves* at stake, if that makes sense. And realising that, *is* freeing.
Feminism has given me the freedom to say “fuck them” and really mean it… a freedom which is well worth all the rage and frustration of having a feminist awakening.
Oh, and I also clearly remember the Feministe hitch=hiking post. WTF. That place always made me feel like I wanted to throw something. Since learning more about radical feminism, I now know why. Urgh.
I hear you FCM and all. There is no escape door, is there.
FCM wrote:
What you are reacting to and what they don’t see is that being female is more than having a vagina inserted. That simplistic event does not endow the body with all the other systems that are created before birth: a female brain, ovaries, uterus, and even the heart.
Medical school and research are just now beginning to realize and cope with the fact that women’s physiology is far, far different than men’s. More women die from heart disease and stroke because, prior to the mid 1990s, almost all research was done on men. Women’s symptoms and their responses to treatment are different than men so women weren’t being properly diagnosed or treated. So even though we both have hearts and brains, our hearts and brains are significantly different than men’s.
This observation by Jake Sully fits the ecosystems of our bodies as well as it does the ecosystems of the forest
Even beyond that, women’s emotional and spiritual composition is different than men’s. Part of that is no doubt due to culture, but a lot of it is not. Women’s brains have more neural interlinks between hemispheres. While scientists are not sure exactly how that affects our thinking and responses, it must have an effect.
UCLA researchers found that the classic “fight or flight” syndrome does not fit women. Women react with “tend and befriend.” Those who have been raised with male brains and still retain male brains would react as the former, decidedly sexist adage implies. They would not respond as if they had a female brain because they do not own a female brain.
Berkley researchers just released a study that show Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” is flawed. Their research shows that empathy, caring and compassion count more toward the survival of our species. Can you guess which is the natural reaction of the female brain and which is the natural reaction of the male brain?
Other studies show that grandmothers were the original clan leaders and that clans would not exist at all if it were not for ancient grandmothers. The very survival of the clan/famiily depended upon grandmothers organizing her children and grandchildren, supervising the care of the ill, the children and heavily pregnant women. This allowed the non-pregnant women and men to find needed resources for the clan. At that point in time, fatherhood wasn’t even recognized because they did not know that sex created babies. The men in the clan were the children of the mother and maternal uncles.
It was women’s empathy and creativity that inspired the invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals. The handprints found in association with cave paintings are women’s hands as often as they are men’s (determined by szie) Women’s graves have been found with weapons. More and more goddess figures are now being identified and recognized among previous archeological finds and correctly identified with newer finds. Even as this is proving true, there is a stiff resistance to that reality. One figure called “Thinking Man” is on display in New York. Women immediately notice the obvious: “Thinking Man” has breasts. Wonder why male archaeologists didn’t realize what they were?
Tran-sexual men think they can become women by mutilating their body. We know being a woman is so much more that no mere mutilation can change a male into a woman and that they are disrespecting us by trying. They are like the archeologists who cannot recognize breasts on a thinking figure. They cannot and will not see what they do not wish to see.
Men can never understand the experience of being woman because they have no concept of woman as human to begin with. She is an object to be used. She cannot have breasts and think. She cannot have a complete physiology that does not exist in the male. She cannot experience life on a separate plane than men. Because men are the only legitimate humans per the patriarchal culture. Here’s another quote to ponder. Although it speaks of archaeology and deity, it applies to ourselves as women too:
loretta, as long as we are aware that theres no way to prove that these differences are innate (rather than caused by our environment and our reactions to our environment) i dont mind discussing the alleged “differences” between women and men. for example, the difference in heart health thats only recently been realized could easily be due to 40 years of womens being exposed to female hormones, or even due to particularly female stresses that release cortisol and adrenaline (also hormones) into the body, such as our hyper-vigilance and the constant fear of being raped. and theres even more attenuation between physiology and *behavior*. “do differences in the brain cause differences in behavior?” is a question that should be asked, rather than assumed. but its always just assumed, by people who have an agenda that would be served if this were true. but that alone doesnt make it true. the transactivists initially tried to push that agenda here, and they were disappointed when it didnt fly. they wanted us to buy their “studies” that allegedly showed that men who had taken female hormones for decades had brains similar to female brains when they were autopsied, and to buy that even if that were true that it “proved” that transwomen were “female brained” from birth! and, you know, that it also explained why they want to wear high heels and makeup. because women have been wearing high-heels and makeup for thousands of years, in every culture. fucking idiots. i swear to god they think women and feminists are stupid. we would have to be, to buy what the transwomen are selling.
for the record, i would love it if you (loretta) as an old-school radfem could explain how your statements about female bodies arent “essentialist.” i am just starting to get (within the last year or so) that even mary daly wasnt as essentialist as everyone thought, so i am sure you arent, either. but references to female bodies can be confusing. for my part, my realization that vaginas are organs is not supportive of a “women are different!” argument, but rather, supports the conclusion that women are HUMAN. that women have organs, you know, like people. that womens vaginas arent just a warm washcloth to moisten mens dicks (god, i wish i cold get that image out of my mind. that little bastard who said that to my friend when we were all in high school has no idea what he has started here, 20 years later. i cant even believe i remembered it).
FCM,
Remember to stop thinking within the boundaries of patriarchy. As long as you continue to use their rules and limitations, you will lose the battle because patriarchy is designed to force women into being considered lesser than.
What you resist, you make stronger. Think of tug of war. If you continue to pull and fight to keep out of the mud, your opponent becomes stronger because they are working those muscles. If you just turn loose, your opponent falls on his butt and you can just walk away. But as long as you keep playing their game, you will not have the time and energy to play your own.
As to radfem and essentialism, don’t bother with that argument. I do not think of myself as a radical let alone a subcategory within that category. Wearing their labels helps us how? Isn’t it much wiser to follow our innate wisdom without considering their reactions? Labels are used to limit us. That is their only purpose.
The reality is that being female, cherishing being female and defining for myself what being female means is not radical. It is normal. It is the state all women should live amid.
It is not up to us to accept the bizarre statements that men who take female hormones are the same as us. Why even consider it? Why waste our time and energy on their game? We know it is not true and do not need to “prove” it or argue with those who want to pretend we are wrong.
Review your arguments about the female brain being different or not. You frame everything as a defense to what others might say or do. They might us it against us. That is seige mentality. It comes from having to fight every single day of our lives. But we don’t need to indulge it and shouldn’t. How can we create a new paradigm if we’re constantly fighting the old one?
Back in the 1970s, women had to adapt to the male corporate climate in order to rise within the ranks. They took it to such an extreme that they even dressed like men. Today’s business woman does not have to dress male nor does she have to act male. Just as children are not tiny adults, women are not men. We aren’t male clones. We should not aspire to be men. Look at the world and realize the male culture has ruined it for every species, including ourselves. What is in that paradigm that we should cling to, even by fighting against it?
Studies have shown that businesses owned by women are structured different than traditional male business models. There is more inclusiveness. The power structure is different. The bottom line is more profitable. Employees are happier. This was accomplished because women walked away from the male paradigm and did things their own way without regard to what men thought or their reactions.
That’s true in our personal lives too. Our way of living is different — and better — then men’s. Why does it matter if it is genetic or learned? As long as you fight that fight, you are fighting within patriarchal rules.
Here’s one definite behavioral difference in our brains: we hear different. That’s why we wake with small noises and they don’t. That’s why women are the people up feeding the baby in the middle of the night while he snoozes. The fact that we hear different must have other behavioral differences too, right? But why does it matter? Because we need to compare ourselves to men? Why?
We are an ecosystem within ourselves. That is real. It does not matter why or how. Making minor changes to the male ecosystem by cutting off the penis does not transform the entire male ecosystem into a complete new female ecosystem anymore than cutting down a forest changes that area into a complete and viable new ecosystem. All it does is destroy the old one. Nothing new is created except wasteland.
Putting chemicals (hormones) into the wasteland only poisons its further. It does not heal it.
So let’s define whose problem transgenderism is. It isn’t ours. It belongs to them. Instead of mutilating their bodies, they should work on mutilating and destroying the male culture they’re rebelling against. That is not our fight, and we should not involve ourselves.
To liberate yourself, you have to first liberate your thinking. Think of it like moving from where you live. As long as you refuse to pack up, you won’t move. You first have to decide to move and only then will you actually move. Until that point, all you are doing is talking about moving. That’s a good first step, but it won’t get you to a new place to live until you pack up and turn over the keys to the old place.
I know that reading through your arguments and thoughts on rad fem topics has started me thinking. And trying to figure out exactly what I do believe. When I first learned about feminism as a movement I wanted to just learn about everything. And when I’m in learning mode, I tend to accept everything and do very little questioning. I have to get all the information before I can start asking questions, an issue that causes problems when I’m, say, learning a task for the first time. The person teaching me will ask if I have any questions and I say no, only because I haven’t learned enough to know what questions I could possibly ask. Alot like how when I went to college I suddenly realized that, now that I was away from home and the beliefs and ideas that I’d be raised with my whole life, that there were different ideas and I suddenly had so many questions.
But now I’ve come to the questions phase when it comes to feminism. And unfortunately there are so few spaces to ask questions about things like the trans movement and sex positive feminism. At a time when I need to ask questions and get ideas out it often feels like there are so many walls and people wanting to silence my questioning. And it’s definitely an interesting process, going from sex pos to a more radical feminism. And it’s nice to have this blog to talk about stuff like this. Stuff that often gets banned and shunned from other feminist blogs. And going through your arguments and thought processes has helped me a great deal in sorting out what I believe and think. 🙂
i absolutely agree that it doesnt matter whether these things are learned, or innate. that was a big step forward for me actually, because i saw that where the radfems were interpreted as being “essentialist” i could just replace “natural difference” with “actual difference” and their point would be made, really even better than it was made before (plus i think its more true to thier intended meaning, as most radfems arent really essentialists). any feminism thats going to be useful and practical (and honest) is going to be reality-based. that means focusing on what is real, and what exists. not bullshit wishful thinking or waxing poetic about things that are impossible to prove (mansplaining, ev psych etc).
and i also absolutely agree that when men discuss these things, all thats at stake it their egos. loretta and i went around and around with these asshats over on newsvine for about a year, and that was what was so striking. they just wanted to win. one of them admitted that he would never “concede” anything in a “debate” with one of us; he would stick to his position no matter what, and “maybe change his position later” based on what was said. rather than, you know, trying to fucking learn something, or listen to what was being said. trying to get it, instead of trying to dominate the discussion, define the parameters and control the other participants. the irony was lost on them, that they were white men trying to tell women whats up with rape, misogyny, sexual harassment, porn etc. and that they were demonstrating aggressive and entitled behaviors, while discussing rape.
Thought you might be interested in this. I don’t know much about the woman interviewed: Lierre Keith
http://www.inthewake.org/keith1.html
FCM wrote:
Now take the additional step of going to your center and not letting anyone jerk you out of it. When you are well-centered within your Self, you’ll always know what is right for you from your perspective.
Everyone who tries to jerk you off-balance from your center is practicing dominance and abuse. Presenting an argument to be considered and then leaving you to consider it is far different than verbally battering you into submission. Anyone who does the latter is your enemy whether they want to think so or not.
That includes people who batter you in dicussions just because winning it more important than learning or sharing ideas.
for the record, i would love it if you (loretta) as an old-school radfem could explain how your statements about female bodies arent “essentialist.” i am just starting to get (within the last year or so) that even mary daly wasnt as essentialist as everyone thought, so i am sure you arent, either. but references to female bodies can be confusing. for my part,
My blog (raisinger.wordpress.com) recently did a long series of posts on the radfem biology thing. (you may have to scroll down to the bottom page posts, to start at the beginning)
The posts grew out of a 1990’s essay I wrote called “But Just *Whose* ‘Biology-is-Destiny’ Around Here Anyway?”
And like Loretta speaks of, it also makes an attempt to get away from the male conceptual mind-set and language traps. Its hard to stop thinking about politicisation of female biology, without using men’s words to describe it.
for the record, i would love it if you (loretta) as an old-school radfem could explain how your statements about female bodies arent “essentialist.” i am just starting to get (within the last year or so) that even mary daly wasnt as essentialist as everyone thought, so i am sure you arent, either. but references to female bodies can be confusing….
The confusion comes from looking through the ‘male gaze’. Males cannot ever experience female bodied experience, any more than the rest of us can truly, genuinely experience life as a bird. We can approximate, speculate and imagine but never truly experience it.
But males made the language we all use, they have defined the parameters of whats human and what isn’t, and based it on the only thing they can ever know or experience – ie based on their own male-bodied experience of life, the universe and everything.
As Loretta mentions, every time you try to argue with them you are still using their language, their definitions, male rules of engagement,
As for biology, everything we learn from being taught to see the world through the ‘male gaze’, teaches us to dissociate from our own femaleness.
pmsrhino, what i think you are describing is “intellectual honesty” and you are right that its really lacking in other places. fucking feministe has guest-bloggers on that dont even self-identify as feminists, and they also entertain male bloggers who are no doubt getting off on preaching to a female audience and getting thier support. but even the self-identified feminists over there are fucking liars and spin-doctors. same with kate harding. same with the curvature. the same goes double (at least) for feministing. it makes me so angry. when women are banned, shunned or silenced for questioning how trans-issues and sex-poz is even feminist, there is clearly an agenda there. silencing honest questioning by people who are engaged with the material and have everything to lose (ie. WOMEN) is unforgivable. i will post a video in a few days where a well-known old school feminist talks about the new wave and how the third-wavers and baby fems will make thier own mistakes, and hopefully learn from them. this trans-business is, i think, something that will stick out in the end as one of those blunders. they are fucking up, badly.
Yes, fcm, there is a new orthodoxy that almost all of the self-identified feminist blogs enforce, and it’s not for the benefit of female human beings. I’m not a mean person; I’m almost foolishly big-hearted, and when it comes down to meeting people as they are, I’m very accepting. I’ve had a trans*mtf friend/coworker, and I abjor prejeduice against trans* people, support laws to protect them, BUT I cannot believe hormones and/or surgery changes anyone from one sex to the opposite sex. I’m almost afraid to type that HERE, which should tell you something. I am for females first and always. Throughout history and throughout the world today girls and women are incredibly abused and limited. That’s my focus of concern.
And the dialogue here is superb. I can’t wait to see the upcoming video and to read Loretta Kemsley’s blog!
the new vids are up, levelbest (and everyone). enjoy!
Loretta, thanks for quoting Lierre Keith. She’s a friend of mine and quite possibly the coolest woman ever. Now back to lurking…
i read the article loretta linked to. the entire thing. it was well worth the read, particularly regarding “educating” and how the libs think that patriarchy and misogyny is, you know, just a big misunderstanding! that if we just educate people, they will see that its wrong, and change it. what a bunch of shit. its deliberate, and its time we start responding to it for what it is. there are such a thing as “teachable moments” but come on. and telling people that all it takes to change their realities is to “feel empowered!” any woman who feels empowered in this climate is, quite literally, delusional. as in, she is perceiving something that isnt there.
Rachel,
Glad to know Lierre’s as great in person as she sounds in the interview. Wonder if she’d be interested in hanging out here sometime.
FCM wrote:
Her writing came to mind because of your past comments on “progressive men” and how resistant they are to listening to women or admitting the root cause of misogyny is patriarchy (or possibly vice versa). I thought of them the first time I read her interview. They’re working hard to pretend everything is individualistic while we know for a fact it is group power. That works for them because they can keep denying they are part of the group that is oppressing women. That way, they don’t have to admit they are part of the problem and can still enjoy their male privileges while pretending to be our allies.
I did not have a clear idea why that was happening until I read Leirre. She hit the nail right on the head as to that dynamic. However, her definitions of liberal as idealists/individualists and radicals as seeing the group pattern doesn’t exactly fit for me because I am an idealist/individualist while also fitting her description of radical. That’s what I dislike about labels. They are too simplistic and once one is pinned on you, you’re supposed to act/react in a certain predictable way.
One adage that has really impacted my life is: “You are never truly free until you are free to go to the end of your thoughts.” I read that on a poster in college. It stunned me to realize how much I was self-censoring for no particularly good reason. It was then I began to question the use of labels to define ourselves. I’ve only kept a few since then and only because I decided they fit me: horse lover, feminist and spiritual quester. Others have tried to hang a slew of labels on me, but none have managed to corral me with them.
I remember one man trying to pin me down on what system of belief I was talking about when I was talking about the sacred feminine and the concept of eternal life. I told him I didn’t have a name for what I believed, that it came from a lifetime of studying many systems of belief and taking the best from each of them. That didn’t satisfy him. He demanded that I provide a source for my beliefs. I replied that I don’t need a “source” because I don’t need permission from dogma to believe as I believe. I’m free to believe as I do even if I am the only person who believes as I do and I am also free to let my beliefs evolve (which is what we are supposed to do). He then declared me untrustworthy because my beliefs could change tomorrow.
I had to laugh. Since he couldn’t hang a label of Catholic or Buddhist or Hindu or whatever on me, he had to take comfort in labeling me “untrustworthy” so he could continue trusting his own beliefs. Talk about being “other” oriented. Why should what I believe matter to him at all if he’s secure in what he believes?
Thinking we must have permission to be who we are and believe what we believe is what hangs up most women. They want the reassurance found in group think. That is what is crippling the feminist movement more than anything. When the second wave began, the women were free thinkers because there were few paths to follow. We invented as we went along. The third wave wanted to be followers. The free thinkers scared them so they fell back into group think, resulting in readopting so much of patriarchy’s tenets. It’s foolishness of the worst scale but they can’t see it because they’ve been conned into the idealist/individualist camp with little thought of where that leads.
They do not recognize that accepting any belief where they are perpetually “the other” is going to lead them back into degradation, devaluation and oppression. As Rainsinger said, they’re caught in “the male conceptual mind-set and language traps.”
I think part of the reason this is happening is because they want someone else to tell them how to think. They go to a women’s studies class or two where they can get surface knowledge and then think they’ve learned it all.
I used to teach people how to show horses. This type was a plague. They were everywhere. They didn’t really want to learn how their horse thinks and how to communicate with them. All they wanted was the outer trappings like ribbons to hang on their walls. If they had to depend on their horse in a bad situation or vice versa, someone would be injured or dead. They know this, so they never leave the arena all the while proclaiming what experts they are.
Sadly, this same intellectual laziness is also going to harm a lot of women because too many don’t want to really know the depths of feminist issues. They want to pretend they already know all there is to know.
Factcheckme,
Your awakening gives me hope for women. Being someone who was able to see what maleness is from very early childhood, I fortunately never had to pass through fun feminism. I did, however, have to reject the good man myth which I did at the age when most women are seeking marriage.
But I do tend to think that if you spend your life as male supremacists like nearly all women do, it is an incurable condition.
The extreme examples I can think of from the media are that group of 4 or 5 older women who were intentionally infected with HIV by their younger lover, each of whom then promptly sought and found the next relationship. Did not pause. Did not pass go. Another example are the women who stay with men who molest their children. I have never really understood this behavior. It’s like the misogyny is completely invisible to women.
So your enlightenment gives me great hope for the sisterhood. Welcome to clarity and what a great blog!
heres the link to the feministe hitchhiking article. my comments are still there. surprisingly. and it still makes me fucking sick to see all these fun-fems cheering her on for being so “brave” and challenging peoples assumptions…that men are dangerous. i say, if she was really brave, she would try to live for one fucking hour in a homeless womans shoes. sleep under a bridge with some homeless men, instead of inside her gortex tent with her fellow privileged travellers, having F-U-N ignoring reality, and then writing about it. oh, goody! just what we all need. follow the link at your peril.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/09/18/women-on-the-road/
Hey. Happy International Women’s Day. and Brava, Sister. Rad Feminism is WAY more fun than “funfeminism”. better songs. more intimacy. and within sight of the glorious revolution. Glad we’re here together. this is beautiful writing you do, thank you.
thanks, easilyriled. BTW, i had wondered if the comments function was working, because it went dead silent over here once i posted the naomi and germaine vids! haha maybe that post was a thinker? i know wordpress was down for a bit too, glad to see that everythings working. thanks for reading, and for reminding us about “international womens day.” these holidays are extremely dubious arent they? as if we all dont already know what the rest of the 364 days of the year are for.
wait, you’ve over thought yourself into celibacy? as a woman i cannot comprehend your constant marginalization of a woman’s role in a patriarchal society. where you see women as constant victims to the sexual entitlement of men, i see strength in common ground between the sexes. your critical thinking has done nothing but back you into a corner where you are too fearful to trust your own instincts to guide you to good people of the sex you are attracted to. to banish yourself to a sexless life that will narrow your options of romantic partners seems like you are waving the white flag. the human experience is more complex than the boxes you check off to categorize yourself. you blog doesn’t empower women but is a vulgar constant reminder of our struggle to find equality. instead of encouraging your readers to find their own voice in a male dominated world, you instead set the example to abandon female sexual urges, and personally challenge your own human attraction to the opposite sex. this is not a feminist movement, this a personal sadness.
oh goody, a fun-fem troll! yay! i will defer to my readers to take a crack at this, if they are so inclined. anyone? i will be back later. have fun.
Dalorah wrote:
Aren’t women already marginalized in a patriarchal society? Isn’t that the definition of patriarchy? Is that the “woman’s role” you like — being fucked over by men except when servicing men? Not for me.
So its a choice between penile penetration and celibacy? I know a few lesbians who would disagree with that. Straight women too. Women have many ways of enjoying sex — whether solo or with a lover — that do not involve penile penetration.
Should women with Vulvar Vestibulitis should just fade into the background and live alone in their misery because they cannot tolerate penetration? Fortunately, they don’t have to if they’re with a man who cares more about them than about his “right” to ejaculate into her vagina.
Of course, you’re not alone in thinking that the penis defines sex.A recent study showed 95% of all people think PVI defines sex, but some of them thought it didn’t unless he ejaculated. So how does the woman define having PVI if he doesn’t ejaculate? Her experience didn’t seem to matter. The researchers didn’t even ask if female orgasm was required for PVI to be considered the definition of sex.
Yeah, standing up for women’s right to define and control her own sexuality creates “sadness” because everyone knows that job belongs to men.
BTW, it was my understanding for a “movement” to exist, it needs more than one person to be involved, so please explain to me how FCM constitutes a movement all by herself?
Yeah, that’s what we need: for women to settle for finding their “voice” in a male-dominated world. We shouldn’t go for women’s voices being heard equally in an egalitarian world. Does it occur to you that women’s “voices” aren’t ever going to be respected as long a men are dominant or that women raising their voices and demanding equality is the only reason you enjoy the rights that you enjoy? No feminist would ever decry women’s voices whether they agreed with them or not. They certainly wouldn’t advocate for women to settle for having a teeny, tiny voice in a patriarchy.
As to women “abandoning” their sexual urges, we’re back to your lack of imagination. Sex isn’t defined by the penis. Women can enjoy sex without ever seeing or touching a penis. I thought all women knew that. Apparently I was wrong.
The true sadness is that you can’t imagine a full and satisfying sex life without it being defined by the penile experience. You need to read some of the great feminist thoughts on this. You’ll end up much happier in the long run — and it’ll be on your terms.
since you assumed i am hetero it is worth mentioning that i am a lesbian. i believe i read that the author of this blog was hetero. therefore i phrased my comment to allude to heterosexuality as the sexual urge of choice. my sexual urges have been reconciled. her plan seems to be more about restricting her own physical sexual desires for intellectual intercourse instead.
and since you clearly have a knack for the catty.
you know who else was celibate? carrie’s mom. i pray you don’t have a daughter to convince her of men’s evilness, rob her of sexual pleasure and force her to sit in a closet to pray to jesus all day. theres enough of you psycho, guilt ridden and frankly scary people in the world.
ps. i know its fiction.
pss. i still think… your loss.
oh and psssssss
fun fem’s are women too. maybe they like having a vagina that gives them pleasure without all that guilt. don’t push your diluted virgin mary holier than thou bullshit on women who haven’t banished themselves into a life without sex with their preferred sex. they’re not less than you because you think you’re smarter than them. so male privilege of you… i mean seriously.
sorry, but you have just made it 100% clear that you are a transwoman. it couldnt be more clear, in fact.
ROTFLOL. Wow, what a limited idea of women you have. Madonna or whore, anyobng? If a woman doesn’t worship the penis as the only important thing about sex, then she’s a warped version of Mother Mary. Got news. Mother Mary was not a virgin. That’s a myth added in a couple of hundred years after her death. She had several kids and was married to a man who was obligated to give her intense sexual pleasure every Sabbath Eve. Read up on Shekinah and see for yourself.
I notice you didn’t address the issues I brought up, like Vulvar Vestibulitis or women’s right to define and control their own sexuality.
BTW, how does a “lesbian” end up so focused on the penis as the only source of pleasure for the heterosexual woman or the inaccurate leap to the position that heterosexual women who don’t worship the power of the penis have to be celibate?
As I said before, you need read some of the feminists who’ve written about this. It’s not as if you’re the first person to come along and hate feminists. All of your arguments so far have been preceded by thousands of misogynists before you.
Dalorah,
Do you honestly think that straight women all have an “urge” to have PIV? I’m sure some do. I don’t. Most women I’ve talked to don’t. We have urges for touch and sexual contact with men and for orgasms, but let’s face it: PIV doesn’t satisfy the urge for orgasm. It’s more like something that’s expected of us and something we’ve been taught to use to measure our self-worth. We’ve been taught that our worth lies in pleasing cock, so we’re eager to prove we can.
A straight woman’s sexual urges can be far better satisfied in other ways. It is only men’s fantasies that insist that women’s sexuality is all about PIV.
loretta and desert harpy, dalorah is a transwoman. i am absolutely certain of it. there are so many red flags in what she posted, and its the same shit with many of their posts, which makes perfect sense: their shared experience of being born and growing up male gives them a shared perspective on many issues, particularly ones on women, “gender”, and sex. and its exactly as you both say: this OBSESSIVE focus on the penis (duh, they are penis-people) and thinking that vaginas are just fuckholes, for men. again, DUH, because they are misogynists, who by definition dont “see” women. and many desire fake fuckholes for themselves, thinking that having a “sheath” between ones legs makes one a woman, rather than our oppressive female gender role based on the REPRODUCTIVE CAPACITIES of our FUNCTIONING ORGANS. which is EXACTLY why PIV- is so problematic for us. as i have repeatedly said here over numerous posts and probably hundreds of comments by now. but of course they dont really read, they just POST. and POST. and POST. hello!
i might use her reply here as fodder for a future post, in fact, because its so textbook as to what many transwomen believe, or they wouldnt have attempted to trans-ition, in the first place. and again, its why i am not buying what sex-positive transwomen are selling, at all (my most infamous article on this blog. check it out in the sidebar, if you havent already, its where the transwomen first showed up, en masse, to “defend” themselves against teh evol!).
I”m sure you’re right. There is no concept in her posts of how a woman experiences sexual pleasure. No born lesbian would make the assumption that hetero women focus on the penis or PVI exclusively. She would know better. Of course, it’s also possible that “she” is a hetero man who is shocked that his phallus is not worshipped by women.
I was also struck by the immature response to my post in that “she” could only relate to a fictional woman and teen (Carrie and her mother) to compare a real woman to, a mythological mother to represent women who don’t worship the penis, and the giant leap that if a woman doesn’t worship the penis then she is celeibate.
There is no layered or complex thoughts about women in any of “her” posts. That means “she” has never experienced what most women experience and is viewing from the outside as “the other.” Women are so objectified in “her” posts that they exist only as flat, cardboard cutouts to drape in this or that outfit but who can never replicate life as a living, breathing woman who has experienced life in all the facets that comprise the depth of “Woman.”
you only think i got a penis because the name Dalorah is super made up. which it is. i should of known better to pick out such a drag queen name when addressing someone as trans-phobic as you. lets see. new fake name… how bout Sara? Dalorah just sounds like STRONG WOMAN LEADER- but now it just seems like “AND ON THE MAIN STAGE, THE FABULOUS DALORAH!”
in all honesty, i have your blog in my google reader and check in from time to time. your take on feminism is super refreshing even if i do not completely agree with you always. i think you’re confidence is unflappable which is super awesome, but you’ve got the candor of a neo conservative nazi. the choice to not have sex is completely yours and anyone else’s. hey have at it, its just my opinion that its a manifestation of some other fear/guilt/psuedo-intellectualism that is controlling your choices. i get that you are well read, its why i read your blog, but the decision still seems unauthentic. if you think you will have a better life by making that decision, go at it. its why trans people get surgery afterall. to make themselves happier.
but whether i believe its a healthy decision for you to deny yourself sex with whoever you prefer- if that’s what you have wanted in the past, much like you do not believe that gender re-assignment surgery is a great decision (and ironically, i am not sure i do either! part of what originally brought me to your blog was your radicial opinion about it) you are totally, perfectly within your right to make that decision and have it supported by people who you trust. as a complete outside opinion- i figured i’d just weigh in and say it seemed like a fail, not a win. just don’t promise yourself that you will not one day change your mind- i mean you may never… but getting laid… its a good thing. maybe thats me. maybe its easier for me to say that since i like (LOVE) vagina.
also:
its fascinating how your readers can take one paragraph and then comment on assumptions, backed by facts to support their assumptions, and inevitably put words in the mouths of your opposition. its a brilliant strategy, i admit, but totally faulty. now who said that i feel like all straight women are craving penis in their vagina. i never once stated that or alluded to it- but there’s an entire chapter worth of reading up there based on a statement i never made.
trying to disseminate name calling – ie the virgin mary, also so unnecessary. its a name call. its like saying “you’re a total sizequeen.” you know, just being offensive to pick a scab- not a window into my opinion about the virgin mary.
dalorah, i never speculated as to whether you currently possessed a penis, but you outed yourself from the first time you spoke here. and i am not the only one who noticed. you were born male. its fucking obvious as day. MRAs have long attempted to appropriate the language of feminist discourse to acheive their own dubious ends, but its clear that they dont understand it. concepts like “unfair” and “sexist” go right over their heads, because they think that they are entitled to success: if it doesnt happen, its “unfair”. or that if a woman succeeds, and they dont, its “sexist.” but thats not how it works. if you dont have an equal opportunity to succeed, *thats* unfair, and its what feminists have always been talking about this whole time. but men dont get it.
just like you dont get concepts like “privilege.” you have said here that you believe that *i* am displaying male privilege.. which i have to tell you, just made me laugh out loud. i mean really. see, you use the words, but you dont know what they mean. you are merely utilizing buzzwords in order to elicit a specific response. its a deliberate and utter manipulation, on your part. heres you: “the feminists get mad when people display privilege; therefore when someone makes me mad, that person must be displaying privilege!” FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL. again, heres you: “the feminists support calling out male privilege, and i want the feminists to support *me* so i am going to start calling people out on their male privilege!” but you are getting it all wrong. you dont even know what male privilege *is* and if you did, you couldnt accuse me of displaying it.
thats how i know you were born male. and thats why you will continue to out yourself, because you cant *not* out yourself, when you reveal that this is your perspective. if this is something that truly scares you, as many transwomen claim, then stop fucking doing it. if you arent afraid, then keep doing it, but dont lie about being afraid of teh evol feminists “outing” you.
i have a new post up, if anyone is interested. have a great weekend! (feel free to comment, i will be checking in even though its a REALLY nice day here today, and i plan to have something to drink).
Yet another transwoman saying a vagina is just a hole (it’s about comment 60 so you’ll need to hit ‘go to all comments’. )
Oh…and thanks for the ever-so-picky suggestion that i won’t have a “vagina”. Would be interested in what else it might be called. I am very clear in my own mind that i will never have the “complete set” of “women’s bits”: there is no procedure for implanting a uterus or womb. But biologically speaking, a vagina is little more than an internal bodily canal. Etymologically, its a “sheath”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/21/normality-under-knife-surgery-genitalia?showallcomments=true#comment-51
Also way to appropriate the genital mutilation of intersex children and make it ALL ABOUT YOU dude.
Ms Jane Fae, author of the above insightful commentary on vaginas, also came out with this gem of a comment:
Arriving with Andrea at the hotel where we meet, Jane has chosen her clothes with care: a long, plum-coloured skirt, matching sweater and black suede knee-length boots. Her make-up is understated and her nails are painted pink. She has recently lost three stone because: ‘It’s OK being a fat middle-aged bloke, but not a fat middle-aged woman.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1252462/Andrea-Fletcher-devoted-fiancee-whos-sticking-man-John-Ozimek-despite-fact-wants-woman-named-Jane-Fae.html
You aren’t supposed to wear purple with black. Duh. Oh, and VAGINAS. AREN’T. HOLES. Ffs polly. Now I am pissed off, all over again.
polly, honestly, this makes me fucking furious. a SHEATH???!!!!?? FUCK. YOU. you know, bringing language into it, yes, “Etymologically, its a “sheath”. its true: the fucking bastard misogynists who made up the word “vagina” thought it was just a fuckhole too, just like the bastard fucking misogynists today, who think the same thing. just like the bastard fucking misogynists who sell fake fuckholes to bastard fucking misogynists who want fake fuckholes. aka. “transwomen” and their “doctors.”
its doesnt make it fucking true. a vagina is NOT A SHEATH. and vaginas are not for fucking. any more than a nose is for blowing. how ridiculous! yeah you can blow your nose, but most of the time, its doing other things. you know, like KEEPING YOU ALIVE. like all organs do. like all organs and tissues and structures that are part of organ-systems, do. they keep you ALIVE. they DO STUFF. they dont just sit there, waiting to be USED.
gah.
and that fucking guy looks like a fucking guy, in drag. sorry. and i dont care how much and how loudly the vexings of the interwebs deny it, most fucking transwomen think they are women because they “like to do the cleaning up” and they want to wear dresses. there is NOTHING more to it than that, as much as they desperately want to pump it up with teh skience, and stuff, and things. “feeling like” a woman has everything to do with wanting the female role, as we know it to be, in THIS culture, in THIS time, in THIS place. theres nothing universal about it, as much as they want to believe there is…and as much as they simultaneously dont believe they are being essentialist for believing that theres any such thing as “feeling like” a woman.
the only thing thats universal about being a woman is the one thing transwomen will never experience: being dominated by their male relatives until they are married off, and impregnated. that is, being a second-class citizen, because you were born with a babymaker, in a rape culture.
It amazes me, really amazes me that someone male born, (who wears purple with black) suddenly decides after ooh – a few months of ‘living as a woman’, that they are the world’s foremost authority on women and medicine (and intersex people assigned at birth as women and medicine) without even bothering to familiarise themselves with the MULTIPLE feminist criticisms of the etymology of the word vagina. Because I was familiar with them.
But as Ms Fae swiftly found, if you aren’t actually dissing women who want separate spaces, the MRA’s aren’t on your side. How predictable. Well I could have predicted it.
Yes it made me cross as well, but the trouble with those threads is I end up commenting on them multiply to correct each new bit of idiocy as it arises. I need to enter a twelve step programme probably.