What Logistical Problem? January 9, 2013
Posted by FCM in pop culture, rape, thats mean.Tags: ohio, prison, rape, steubenville, women's culture
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imagine with me. whenever a woman is raped, every man within 20 miles of where the rape occurred is presumed to be a rapist, an accomplice, an egger-onner, an enabler, or completely disinterested (in protecting women from rape). they are all rounded up and jailed.
because it would be stressful for all women involved if there were any uncertainty regarding whether the men would be released or not — if the men were “coming home” or if they would ever again be “walking the streets to rape again” — to relieve womens stress, the answer would be NO, none of them will be released, ever. all the women would go on with their lives and never look back. there wouldnt be any prison-visits either. (feel the relief wash over you like a warm bath?)
if there was a problem of prison overcrowding (can you imagine the logistical problems we would encounter if we actually started punishing men for rape?) well thats easy — let all the newbies i mean “new fish” sleep in the recreational areas until a spot opens up. start a “communication initiative” whereby all prisoners would be given a new mont blanc pen and a letter opener and instructed to write letters to other prisoners around the country, like a pen-pal kind of thing. watch them all kill each other with the pens and letter openers. overcrowding? no longer an issue.
keep doing this for a few months, a few years. what is “society” like now? how many men would there be left in free society — im thinking a negligible amount if any. so under these new circumstances, what happens when we go out at night (or stay in?) what happens to us if we dont know how to run the factories, or universities, or the coal mines (because we were never taught, or not enough of us were)? what happens if we *do* know?
in this new, free society, what would we throw away? what would we keep? what would we invent, or implement, or revive? understanding of course that we could learn *any* of mens values, systems and machines (if not their machinations) if we were willing to put the time and effort into it — if men did it, it cant be that hard. i mean really. but we dont *have* to — thats my point. we would start anew.
if we actually punished men for raping girls and women, without regard for fairness to men, and *only* caring about fairness to women and relieving womens stress, and centering womens survival as a sexual class, including the complete eradication of rapey males and rape culture, female separatism would no longer present the logistical problem it once did — “mens culture” would become prison culture. it already is, you see. under conditions of zero tolerance for men raping women, we would have “womens culture” and female separatism by default. it probably wouldnt take but a year at most for (nearly?) every single man to be rounded up and imprisoned for raping or contributing to the rape of a woman, if we actually punished men for rape, and contributing to rape.
thats literally all it would take to create female separatism: justice. thats all.
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femonade 
“Justice” is a male shell game. (Like money). We do well not to get sucked into it. Not to make an intellectual or emotional investment in it.
true. i was illustrating what it would look like mary, if we ever had it. we will never get justice, because justice for women would mean that all or nearly all men were in prison for rape. anything short of that is not justice. so we might as well stop pretending otherwise shouldnt we?
there are probably other routes to female separatism too. its interesting to me that all roads lead there. whether we focus on male-defined “justice” for women (by punishing or deterring the wrongs done to us, but doing it FOR REAL unlike the way its done now) or if we choose to focus only on women, which i think means we dont bother punishing or reacting to men at all for anything (bc they just get off on it anyway, plus it doesnt work and its a huge drain on our energy) the only *logical* endpoint is female separatism isnt it? anything else is a compromise, or *not* a logical endpoint, or not an endpoint at all.
but i do think that separatism-by-default — which is what would happen if we actually punished men for raping women — would be better than anything we have now, and that the thought of leaving the men behind (bars) forever would be a relief.
also i think a thought-exercise like this is likely to be repulsive to many women, and that we need to examine why that is. recognizing that we are deeply and even primarily concerned with whats “fair” for men, rather than being primarily concerned with ensuring our own survival — and then parsing that thoroughly is probably indicated. what do we do when men and women have competing interests? why, we cater to mens interests while denying that they are oppositional to our own of course! and we actually *force* ourselves to believe this is fair or sex-neutral (equality rhetoric). mental gymnastics, all of it.
you didnt think i was all of a sudden extremely supportive of legal reforms for rape did you? if so, that mustve been quite jarring, considering what ive been saying for the past year or so. 🙂
An exquisite excercise. Thank you for this one.
you didnt think i was all of a sudden extremely supportive of legal reforms for rape did you?
No, I didn’t think so. 🙂 I figured that it was a thought-exercise. Another radfem rubik’s cube.
HIlarious!!
Can I just make a point about coal mines though 🙂 It was women who were sent down the mines on the most dangerous contraptions, such as the windlass, and who were taught how to mine that way (because women’s lives were more expendable.)
interesting! were they the only ones who did that? either way, what would we choose to do with the knowledge we had? thats part of the thought experiment too. some of us, i am certain, would “forget” what we knew if it was destructive or poor practice, and decidedly wouldnt continue doing it if we didnt have to. like all the token women in destructive male power-positions, or women builders and engineers who “know” that theres extra $$$ in it if you can build with the cheapest materials and as close to the sea as possible, tsunamis be damned, because thats the way we learned it from men — we just wouldnt do it anymore.
Also, any man participating in any pr0n (production, selling, consumption) could be jailed. Maybe any men within 20 miles of pr0n. Porn would disappear. Relief again.
I’m thinking of other media, too. To further this thought experiment, think of all the media that objectifies women, that belittles women, that glorifies heterosexism, that tries to sell women useless products, etc. That could all go. Women could replace it (or just enjoy nature). It would be nice not to have to constantly block out the nagging stuff. Clear vision, clear breath.
yes i was thinking the same thing about prostitution — wherever a man uses a prostituted woman, the same rules apply as if it were a rape, because it is one. and yes, same with porn innit, certainly in the making of it? how about coercive PIV too? sounds good to me. this might not even take a full year. a couple of minutes tops, and it would be almost instant female-separatism-by-default.
Lions only put up with males because they enroll them to drive out /other/ males. So they feed them, breed them, give them comfort, in exchange for this service. I wonder if there are any lioness separatists. Haha.
Women and children were delegated the worst work in the coal mines, because of their expendability.Women and children at first worked alongside men in the coal mines, although there were differences in jobs they did. Before 1842, there were no protection laws, nor limits for the age of child labor.
In the Welsh mines, teams of women were employed to use a windlass to lift coal and workers. Men refused to do such work.
Some testimonies:
““Six year old girl:
“I have been down six weeks and make 10 to 14 rakes a day; I carry a full 56 lbs. of coal in a wooden bucket. I work with sister Jesse and mother. It is dark the time we go.”
Jane Peacock Watson.
“I have wrought in the bowels of the earth 33 years. I have been married 23 years and had nine children, six are alive and three died of typhus a few years since. Have had two dead born. Horse-work ruins the women; it crushes their haunches, bends their ankles and makes them old women at 40. “
http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/coalMine.html
Women were cheaper than horses, basically, so men used to drive the women, sometimes their own wives.
Oh yeah, and horses could only get into certain parts of the mines, so they brought in the women for the parts the horses couldn’t manage.
driving women like horses! omg.
also, i keep reading how between the steubenville rape and the india rape (eh, rapes) people believe this is a “wake up call” to the world, and people are saying “this is huge” and seem hopeful that things are going to change now. BASED ON WHAT, may i ask, does anyone think men raping women globally is going to change? i keep reading how the india rape victim was “raped and fatally beaten” but its not commonly said (if its said at all?) that she was RAPED TO DEATH or even that its possible and even common to die from rape, which it is. literally everyone is saying these assaults are SEXUAL but since when is any of this sexual — how can “sex” be something that is unilaterally desired by one party while the other one dies from it, or is being horribly violated or traumatized for life? AT BEST, in my estimation, the outrage generated by these latest rapes including the media coverage of it is functioning as a pressure valve, and there is steam blowing out of it right now but guess whats going to happen when the pressure is let out? the hot bubbling shit we know as culture (male culture, rape culture, aka patriarchy) and everyone swimming in it is going to stay in the pot, thats what. this is a scam, people. nothing is going to change at all from this. its fucking insanity to think otherwise.
Well I haven’t heard about the India victim because I don’t read the news anymore. ( I highly recommend it BTW), but as I read your comment from my Radfem bubble, my first thought was, “What, specifically, about this victim is more horrifying than all the other women out there who have been raped to death?”
I mean, have you read about the Americans in Vietnam? Or about the Japanese in Nanking? Or the British.. just about everywhere? Men have always raped women to death. So WHY is the media pretending this is a new thing that’s just recently been brought to light.
Very disingenuous. I smell a rat. Or, as you say, a SCAM.
yes thats the question isnt it? what makes THESE rapes so special as to warrant all this attention? since the same shit happens daily all over the world, and we dont even know about almost all of it, i would have to say nothing is special about them at all but there is something else going on. in the case of the india rape, the rapists also injured a man (her traveling companion). could this have something to do with it? is the fact that he was there with her the reason that she was even alive when they dumped her off the bus, and both victims were able to make a statement, whereas normally the victim is just killed outright and we never even hear about it? i also keep hearing conflicting reports about the damage that was done to her. i heard that her intestines were brought out of her body. then i hear that her “intestines were destroyed.” there are some snippets of info that you hear about right away, but then its covered up or obfuscated later — again, what is the political intent and effect of the media coverage, including how they treat the details? i am reminded of the coverage of 9/11 in all of this — i recall clearly for example that one news source reported one account that was absolutely devastating to the infamous “let’s roll” mythology. according to this source, what was said was actually “let’s roll it” and the context was that the passengers were planning to roll the beverage cart into the cockpit doors to try to break into the cockpit. they NEVER said with macho swagger “let’s roll” even though that is whats been reported by every single news outlet since then and has taken over our collective recollection of that event. it might never have even happened. and when i search for the “let’s roll it” version of it, i find NOTHING. its been scrubbed from the internet as far as i can tell.
and wrt to the steubenville rape, why is this so interesting to everyone? clearly its the hacktivist dweebs wanting to take the macho footballers down a notch. is that all it is? frankly, i suspect it is. one rape culture clashing with another. there is friction and overlap there, but its not really anti-rape now is it? and we never wouldve even known about this if anonymous wasnt so interested in elongating their own dicks by bringing down the football team. this has nothing to do with women, or womens interests or with stopping rape at all. it enrages me that people are acting like it does.
and i would like to note that i am not a 9/11 “truther” and i generally dont care that much about it, my only point is that the media coverage — and then covering-up — of the events struck me at the time, and that was even before i was as media-critical as i am now. the fact that i seem to be the only one that remembers the “let’s roll it” referring to the beverage cart (!!!) and the fact that i cant find a single reference to this anywhere now, leaves me wondering if i dreamt it, but how likely is that? i dont think ive dreamt about 9/11 a single time. its like this report and this information never existed, and no matter how many individuals might remember the beverage cart thing, its *just* a memory that cant be proven or corroborated. i would love to know if ANYONE remembers this. its completely orwellian.
and one detail about the steuby rape that i keep seeing deleted is part of the videotape of the dood making jokes about it afterwards, including joking about the fact that the girl looked dead in the pics he saw and mightve actually been dead for all he knew — he wasnt there right? right? right? when someone in the background says “how is this not rape?” the dood says well how can it be rape if we dont know if she wanted it or not? she mightve wanted it. it mightve been her final wish.
the last part of his statement about the rape of a possibly dead girl — that “it mightve been her final wish” — is taken out of the reports at least as often as its left in, as far as i can tell. interestingly, to me, thats the most telling and chilling part of the whole exchange. to me, it shows that this dood is an irreparable misogynist, a clear and present danger to women and a violent dangerous psychopath. he has probably already hurt women, and if he hasnt, he most surely will in time. to me, that last part gives insight into the psyche of males as a sexual class, and do you know why that is? because ive heard almost the exact same thing before, where men joke and laugh about a dead woman they are sexually violating and *that* instance wasnt reported in the mainstream media at all AFAIK — it was a statement made under oath in a criminal trial, which i stumbled on when i was doing research on violent crime. there *is* such a thing as a “male mind” (if not a male brain) and this is the kind of thing they think, and it is very common, and it is so striking as to be a potential ah-ha moment for everyone if they could just hear it and process it for what it is. i think that people who deal with these men on a daily basis know what i now know, and what we would all know about men if this information wasnt kept from us (and where we are being fed something else instead). “necrophilia” doesnt even come close to describing what lurks in the male mind and body, informing everything they think and everything they know and everything they do, including all interactions they have with women. and just how common it is that men sexually violate womens corpses, including where men rape women to death and continue to sexually violate her corpse after shes died AND LAUGH ABOUT DOING SO. fascinating that the media is playing loosey-goosey with that detail in particular in the steuby case, and acting like its an optional detail or gratuitous to the plot. it *is* the plot.
brownmillers “against our will” also includes some of these chilling quotes from men which you will NEVER see reported in the mainstream media. the truth about men raping women and womens corpses (including how common it is, and a commonality of thought and action across time and place that we are not supposed to know about) is out there, but you arent going to see it on the news.
“A man’s mind is a jungle of horror.” (Howard Jacobson).
I am very embarrassed to watch it. Women just won’t accept that men are preditors EVEN THOUGH they admit it themselves!
Leslie Cannold even blames feminism because of Jacobson’s words even though he is not interested in feminism. Isn’t this hillarious? I guess that she just can’t confront a man. If a woman said what Jacobson has said, Cannold would have acted differently.
omg! im afraid to watch that, but thanks for the link. maybe i will watch it later. anyone who reads male authors (including the classics of course! jeffreys takes them all down in anti-climax) KNOWS the horrors that lurk in mens minds. we are supposed to believe that they are actually anti- all the stuff they write about with such positive affirmation and glee, but there is no evidence that they are against any of it, and plenty of evidence that they support it and unabashedly LOOOOOVE it. as jeffreys notes, we are supposed to admire them for putting themselves through the “therapy” of writing it all down so that their souls need be tormented no longer, but if this is “therapy” for them its not working is it? the same authors write the same shit again and again. males as a sexual class write the same shit again and again. lets put 2 and 2 together please!
ok i watched it! yes, god forbid any discussion about the horrors in mens minds ay? abort transmission. and im sorry but did you see gail dines say that BECAUSE SHE HAS A SON she cannot accept or even consider that theres an innateness to mens sexual predation? that conclusion is completely illogical. sorry gail, cause she does good work and everything (pornland! hello!) but thats just putting your head in the sand, and after all she has seen too. how disappointing — and does nothing to diminish the point ive been droning on about which is that having boy children truncates or is likely to truncate womens thought about men and what they do and why they might do it. we dont listen to women either do we? she JUST SAID its true. duh. i wish people would stop truncating this discussion, or derailing it, i really do. it *is* embarrassing. jesus.
1. I remember “let’s roll it” – and a ton of other things over the years that have been scrubbed from the *record*. And I’m not just talking about 9/11…
2. Yesterday I had my first appointment with a new GP doctor – I’ve never been in the position to need a GP before – wherein I found myself having to explain what coercive rape is. She’s a woman in her early 60s I reckon and she was completely surprised by the idea of such a thing but I could tell that she’d be thinking about THAT for a while 🙂
3. No matter how much we might wish it otherwise: our children ARE human beings. They WILL BE what they will be and frankly, in the long run, nothing we have done or not done as female parents (especially) will matter one whit – they will only take what’s useful for them at any given time and dump the rest. Yay patriarchy!!
4. “I have wrought in the bowels of the earth”. Being of Welsh blood, this is strangely comforting to me. Women are the earth.
hi s4! we mustve had the same 9/11 dream then! haha
also, reddit has found this post! and teh poor (and apparently epistemologically challenged) redditors think this post is “sexist.” they dont care, i suppose, that the mainstream discourse about rape is misogynistic and patriarchal nor that it is on those grounds that we object to it and challenge it, and seek to replace it with our own. sexist! ha! who cares?
Yes FCM, I did see it.
It is also telling that everyone was laughing about the truth except for the two feminists. May I rant? The common ground in both cases is the belief in the goodness of men. Thus I’m not a feminist 😉
Quote:
A 15-YEAR-old girl was put in a Brazilian jail cell with more than 20 men, and for a month was raped relentlessly and forced to have sex for food, human rights groups say.
“She was raped from day one” at the jail in Para state, a Children and Adolescent Defence Centre (Cedeca) spokeswoman said.
“Nobody really knows what she was charged with. She was a suspect in a robbery but police were unable to tell us which robbery. There was no formal charge,” Ms Cohen said.
Media reports of the case have sparked outrage across Brazil, especially since it closely followed an earlier incident of a 23-year-old woman who was also jailed in Para state for one month together with 70 men.
A month is not an accident. A flimsy excuse without proof or evidence to lock a 15 year old girl up with 20 men for a month is premeditated sex slavery and torture. A second victim, while not technically enough to constitue a pattern, at least indicates the general attitude toward women and sexualized violence, given that necessity requires the willful complicity of many layers of deliberate blindness, especially in a government run facility, for it to have happend at all. Who really knows for sure how many other women were simply murdered after the men had their fun, or too afraid to talk? Does it matter?
[end quote]
They all do deserve imprisonment. I really wonder how many men would be left if rapists and those responsible for rape were jailed.
love that link from ms andreas, thanks! i wonder why she doesnt comment but so rarely anymore….i miss her.
An oldie (lol!) but goodie 🙂
I miss her too.
heres another!
from the comments on that one:
LOVE. yes.
“A man’s mind is a jungle of horror.” (Howard Jacobson).
Men say this all the time about themselves. I have often heard men tell me that “men are pigs.” That is men describing men. Now why don’t women pay attention to this? When men write these novels, they are writing about the reality of womanhating, and for some male authors, they were wife beaters, and attempted killers — Norman Mailer comes to mind.
It is as if a lot of women can’t conceive of men as not really human in some basic way, or really really horrifying for the world they have created going on thousands of years now.
We should see what rape really is about, it is about being a terrorist state to subjugate women. It is the system men use to keep women in line and brutalized. It is the training ground to groom girls so that they will become prostitutes. And I have noticed that as internet porn has taken over, being in groups of men feels toxic to me. I don’t even want to be in rooms with them at business conferences, because their minds have literally become toxic waste dumps or radioactive in porn induced woman hating.
This is who men really are. Now why do women have to deny this, or to say their son is not like this, when we all know that it begins with little boys terrorizing little girls. And until the toxic waste dumps known as men are challenged from a radical feminist movement, they will continue in this behavior.
Very brilliant posts and commentary and thought problem— it is important for women to imagine what measures to take against men, against rape terrorist culture, and in saying quite plainly that men’s minds really do hate women, and that they are thinking this all the time. Porn is simply the newest indicator of who men really are.
its really too bad that so many radfem blogs went *poof* in 07-08 and so much of these discussions were lost….however in reading the comments at ms. andreas it seems as if SHE was one of the few to tackle this subject and felt confined to do so on her own blog bc the other radfems didnt like it LOL so perhaps nothing was lost at all? but for the same old equality bullshit, the same old man-lovin denial? ah perhaps im being too harsh, but then again perhaps not. ms. a was having this discussion 5 years ago and servin it up hot, and answering critics to boot! including the extremely tired “but if men are INHERENTLY boogers, doesnt it render feminism useless?” and the ever popular “but even if it were true, it wouldnt matter/change anything.”
come again? seriously WHAT THE FUCK?? what bizarre conclusions, and yet so common it hurts. NO, NO, and NO mkay? if its true, then its true. and radical feminists accept the truth no matter what it is. and if the truth isnt informing your theory and your practice/actions then what is? this is a serious question. and we cannot hope to fix anything (as ms. a says) without naming the problem — seriously, radfems know better. but there is still this willful ignorance, and YES thats exactly what it is when any of us says that IT DOESNT MATTER IF ITS TRUE. my ass it doesnt.
and feurwerferin, your observation that “everyone was laughing at the truth except the feminists” just sunk in just now. so true. everyone knows that mens minds are a jungle of horrors, literally everyone. and like the fun-fems are literally the ONLY women on earth at any point in recorded history to deny the harms of the penis, so are radfems (and funfems! yay!) the only PEOPLE anywhere, at any time, it seems, to deny the horrors that comprise mens minds and mens psyches, *and* that this is JUST THE WAY IT IS. everyone knows this mkay. time to wake up and start admitting or even just exploring the truth, so we can know and WORK FROM the truth. isnt it?
“but if men are INHERENTLY boogers, doesnt it render feminism useless…”
Every movement for freedom must educate the enslaved within its ranks that it doesn’t ever have to tolerate the status quo. It is why men work tooth and nail to prevent women gathering on our own to advocate for revolution… and what saddens me is how hard it is for women to see the blunt truth, the dreadful truth that men speak every day… men tell the truth about how much they despise women… they do it in war, in rape, in porn,
in their attacks on women and children. Men know this, men laugh as they rape-kill and gang rape. This is fun for them. It is fun for them to spew b.s. about how much they “love” women.
They love it when women make these arguments about how boys can be trained not to be rapist toxic destroyers of girl’s and women’s souls.
It is not men who try to cover up their evil, it is women who choose not to look hard at the evidense, except some women choose to go into that heart of darkness as Mary Daly did, as Gail Dines has done…. but even Dines can’t really go as far as Daly did. And there is a reason for this difference I think.
“Porn is simply the newest indicator of who men really are.”
And in living color, too. 😦 It repulses me to even begin to imagine what might be (will be) next.
Related: this bit from the imfamous Dem undergound’s *men’s group* is a little something I happened upon today. Traci Lords (a woman I happen to have worked with IRL) is spotlighted on a liberal dude tv show as a woman calling out rape culture re steubenville.
Click with caution!, I always say 😉
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11146182
it is just stunning to me that someone like gail dines who wrote a book on porn ffs could be reluctant at all to admit that damn near anything is possible. perhaps in particular that its POSSIBLE that there is no bottom to mens depravity, and that its never going to stop, and that theres probably a really solid reason for that. this INCLUDES the possibility that its inherent, and there is frankly no conclusive proof that its not — that should be enough for us to at least discuss it, but strangely, it never is.
heres allecto writing about another book, “big porn inc” at the HUB — and triggered everyone and gave us all nightmares when she described JUST ONE EXAMPLE of the material in that book. surely dines uncovered some of the same kinds of things in her research, and yet…
also from the HUB:
I don’t find it stunning when women don’t get this or this. It is perfectly consonant with the effects of male violence on the psyche. It is the intended effect of patriarchal brainwashing and propaganda – so we don’t see what men do to us and don’t see that they do it intentionally to destroy and don’t see that we have to get the f*** away from men.
If we want to know why a woman can’t see xyz, all we need do is look into her life and see what kind of power men exert over her, how economically, physically and mentally autonomous she is from men or male thinking or not. Being emotionally dependent on men, under their control, married to them and deeply invested in relationships with them for example is one thing that impedes seeing further. Well, gail dines is married to a man, has a son, works for a male institution where she would likely be purged if she went too radical, and her current success depends on her not going too far, on being media-friendly. strong male-identification is a symptom of dissociation, strong male presence / spooking and control over your life (even in the absence of men, male presence might take the form of masculine violence executed by handmaidens, as in BDSM, or many other violence).
Especially when you work in big male institutions and are represented in the male media, it’s like a prison, it’s very deliberate, very difficult to get out once you’re in because it changes you and your way of thinking sometimes beyond repair, you are constantly afraid to say or do certain things, you censor yourself, you have to stand extremely violent responses by MRAs in front of you, and stand having discussions and “debates” with criminals such as in the video, etc. you end up tolerating, dissociating and negotiating around them instead of savign our neck and getting out of danger. I have experienced this at a small scale, working for the state, and would never go back because after I left it took me months to regain my thoughts again.
That so many find the resources to overcome the violence, survive it and see the truth despite ongoing genocide is stunning.
“perhaps in particular that its POSSIBLE that there is no bottom to mens depravity, and that its never going to stop, and that theres probably a really solid reason for that.”
I read exactly the same thing written by a pro feminist man in a book about male sexuality. 😀 Dear MRAs, do blame him. That book changed my mind.
Well, I used to say the same things as Gail Dines and I was against pr0n. Why? I was molested by a pediatrician as a child. I was 11 years old. I suppressed it thought. I really did not remember that incident until the age of 26 when I was in therapy and wrote a thesis about male violence. The symptoms were there and noone paid attention to me. When I could process the truth, it was a great relief. I suspect something like that as a reason for denial. But to have birthed a son maybe enough, too. I don’t have kids so I wouldn’t know. Or maybe this is just a sorry excuse.
this is why the womens movement shouldnt (and doesnt) have “leaders” and why all womens voices and perspectives are critical to maintaining the (forward) movement and the internal consistency and intellectual integrity of feminism. all women are called on to do the work if the work is to continue, and the result is that it is self-cleansing. 🙂 unfortunately it doesnt always work this way all the time, especially over the short term, and we have taboos and witchhunts too, but this is how its supposed to work and it is the only way it does work over the long haul isnt it? some of the things some of us are saying are truncated thoughts, thoughts that are not taken to their logical ends. this becomes obvious under rigorous or indeed ANY scrutiny. some are obviously male-pleasing and institution-pleasing or have an agenda that is antithetical to the truth — some of “radical feminism” is straight-up or perhaps a modified liberal politicking (reformist activating that is informed by radical feminism such as anti-pornsitution work activating for legal change). all of this needs to be discussed in order for radical feminism to continue to be reality based and truth-based, and radical — getting to the roots of womens global oppression by men, and truth-seeking, especially the truth about womens lives and what men do to us, and doing this more or less fearlessly. it is hard to be fearless though when there are threats lurking about, but can we do away with any of that? for example, women who “do” feminism for money and therefore have to please employers or editors and critics — can you retire, or retire earlier than you had planned? can you do *anything* that might free your mind and your work, or remove some of the threats? im just asking. “retirement” from paid employment for many of us will happen when we die. but can you change jobs (while still having time to write?) it wont be easy…
i am currently reading sonia johnsons “wildfire” and just finished with “going out of our minds: the metaphysics of liberation” where she details her involvement in the movement mostly in the 80s, after becoming a feminist rather late in the game after a lifetime of marriage, children, and mormonism. i read “sisterwitch conspiracy” last summer. she describes being thought-terminated, power tripped, slandered and run-out of the womens movement and her experience with organized feminism (in particular “NOW”) as well as coming to a kind of peace with her own thoughts which were incompatible with liberal reformism and even with traditional publishing (which requires hierarchies) — she retrieved the rights to her previous work and now only self-publishes, and eschews “endorsements” by famous feminists, believing that her work should stand on its own and speak for itself. and damned if its not completely unlike anything ive ever read. 🙂
honestly ive been waiting for catharine mackinnon to retire for some time, and hoping we will get to hear what she thinks about all of this, without the potential or actual restraints of the university or the legal profession binding her, including how her legal concept of “sexual harassment” has played out.
and i dont know exactly who and how many are involved in the latest dustup over “leadership” and who is and isnt a worthy leader (although i can see the dust from here — or is that smoke??) but if any (all) of these women were putting any amount of actual time and effort into doing actual work and advancing our knowledge, instead of wasting time and ripping each other apart, it would be a wonderful thing. its the work thats important, and our work and our voices and brains are all we have on our side, and those will be our tools for building our knowledge and furthering the work. FURTHERING, get it? as in moving forward. as in, movement. as in, THE movement. savvy? what does it take to read an actual book and write a post on it, for example? or to be inspired by a book or an idea and take another authors work further? or to write something totally mindblowing and original to inspire others? or to dissect a news story? or, or, or? we dont have very many women writing anymore, maybe 6 at most, and yet we have a dozen or more who will EFFORTLESSLY write 6000 words in one sitting or in the course of one convo, about how one of us (and its always one of us thats actually doing something innit?) is doing it wrong, or hurting the movement. and thats just what the WRITERS are (and arent) doing. the WRITERS! WRITING about how much other WRITERS suck while their own blogs havent been updated in weeks, months, or years, or have been shut down completely, or have gone private, because they dont have the time or energy or whatever to WRITE but thats not true is it, considering all the WORDS and SENTENCES and PUNCTUATION being used destructively. and the PARROTING! omg. but the ones who are doing stuff ARE the movement, and the ones who arent, arent. i dont know why anyone thinks differently. no actually, i do.
also i have it on good i mean extremely dubious authoritah that imagining refraining from trying in vain to prevent men from killing each other is the same thing as “a violent revenge fantasy.” LOL query: why arent prisoners allowed to have pens and letter openers? WHY GOD WHY? and if someone has honestly never considered this before, dont shoot the messenger mkay? also, is it a violent revenge fantasy to imagine refraining from trying in vain to prevent the sun coming up in the morning? really?
violence and revenge! haha! they just cant NOT frame everything is male-centric terms can they? its as if its IMPOSSIBLE for some people to even imagine centering and protecting women WHILE not giving a FUCK about whether this is fair to men or not. because being FAIR to MEN is the MOST IMPORTANT THING ALWAYS!
thank god i have TOTAL CONTROL over moderating this discussion.
I’ve been following your blog for a while and I often find it often takes me right out of the belief system based on male domination in society. It is very thought-provoking and I thank you for your courage, knowing you are surveilled and attempts made to intimidate you, but you speak freely anyway.
I’d like to comment on where this column takes me. I don’t go straight to the aftermath of this crime and the “rounding-up” of men, I mean, I’m not all that interested in the separatism that you hypothesize would follow. I’m interested in the at-first strange notion of rounding up men for 20 miles around and putting them in prison when one man rapes a woman. I apologize if these thoughts are pretty tentative.
If a woman is raped by a stranger (meaning the authorities can’t immediately get the criminal off the streets and can’t identify the criminal), it can be said, thinking outside the system, that a crime against the CLASS of women has been committed, not just a crime against an individual. This is because every woman and girl for 20 miles (to use your cutoff) is injured by the crime. All women are once again confined. They already live in a society where their freedom to exist outside their homes is always under attack. Women have been kept from public life, the street, public spaces, anywhere but the family-hole, from time immemorial, and fear of rape has been one of the most effective tools keeping them confined.
It needs to be emphasized that women raped by strangers are in most senses of the word, randomly selected. The rapist may simply find an opportunity, a moment alone with a girl walking down a street. He may have some fetish about black hair. He may not like women who wear red shirts. He may be angry at losing his job. It doesn’t matter. The crime has a random quality, looked at from a larger perspective.
So this rape affects a highly vulnerable population, puts them into renewed fear, and restricts their freedom. If the individual rapist is not caught, none of these women can feel safe. It is the equivalent of all women for 20 miles being rounded up and put in prison, is what I’m getting at. This is the true scope of the crime, and the true set of victims.
So just to embellish your thought-experiment a little, let us say that this is a society which is not male-supremacist – and which fully understands the that such a crime is a crime against a class. Let us say that the punishment must be commensurate with the crime. What should this punishment be?
If it is to be commensurate, it must also treat men as a class. I believe this is where some of your words lead. It’s a revolutionary thought.
In short, men for twenty miles around should suffer the same fear of rape, restrictions on their movements, and fear of being attacked at any moment. This could (logically, but only as a thought-exercise) be accomplished by putting them in literal prisons, not that different from the metaphorical prison women still live in.
But I see a way to make this punishment better-focused and more realistic than rounding up all the men. That is, the authorities should attempt to identify the perpetrator, and if they can’,t they should RANDOMLY arrest a single male in the area. The punishment is then exactly as awful as a the original crime. All men for twenty miles around are placed in fear of being confined and raped (in prison), not knowing which of them will become the scapegoat for their class.
Savage, isn’t it? As savage as the crime, and the effect of women in the area.
One of the problems with trying to step outside the beliefsystem is that there are no words for doing so. For instance, I can’t think of an analogy here to make these thoughts simple. I can say, rape is like burning a cross on a lawn, having the effect of injuring all local African-Americans. Or I could try to analogize tribal warfare, like the Tutsis and Hutus, or kulaks vs serfs, etc etc.
But crime in U.S. jurisprudence is still considered a crime of an individual – there is no legal concept I know of that addresses joint culpability as I try to talk about it here. Maybe others can think better than I can on this point. I suppose that what I’m suggesting, following along with your words, is that the idea of a “class” crime could enter jurisprudence, and used carefully to describe certain crimes by one class against another, with the punishment directed against the entire offending class. A very few violent felonies, such as rape, with its eternal history of use as a tool of social control of a class by another class, would be eligible for inclusion.
So there’s where your speculations take me, and thanks for the exercise. You mention by the way the “roll it” comment. See http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf at page 14. You are right.
” its as if its IMPOSSIBLE for some people to even imagine centering and protecting women WHILE not giving a FUCK about whether this is fair to men or not”
Exactly.
Every time I look at french “feminists” sites I want to scream. So much energy trying to defend men, to contradict the ones saying that men are (naturally) predators with endless posts about how saying that is bad and ESSENTIALIST!! Because see, there are society in which men rape less so this mean they are (naturally) non violent!!!
Yay for wishful thinking essentialism!!!!
I wish I was joking but the bar is really that low
Also I just love how separatism is always brushed off as unrealistic because women organising and/or living together without men is impossible, too difficult, complicated or just plain bad and of course UNFAIR!!! ( “Its true rape is epidemic and domestic violence and sexual harassment and porn and stuff but not all of them are bad!!!!!)
The saddest thing is that those women who sometimes have even read radical feminist works ( and agree with it, using it as a source for some of their posts ) just can’t imagine themselves without men. Ever. But at the same time they will refuse to admit that their hetero indoctrination is still that strong, that they are not the feminists they imagine, and that their primary concern is not women’s future, but women’s “future” WITH MEN.
Also about this “if men are predators then feminism is pointless.”
Their obsession to prove this wrong, forgetting to focus on women in the process shows very well that, in fact, they think EXACTLY like the men they pretend to fight.
When a dude say that men are predators, he is saying “See?? We won’t change. So What you do is pointless” but the “we won’t change ” and “so that’s pointless” are two distinct things. Those dudes are clever and know that the hidden implication will be understood by everyone, and understood as “an unescapable consequence”. But that’s patriarchal thinking, it’s just a mindfuck that is useful against most women due to our indoctrination.
If men are naturally violent then what we need is to change our strategy. Not stop the fight. but even “feminist” women refuse the idea to get away from them or at least, to put women first FOR REAL. In fact I don’t think this idea ever came close enough to their brain for them to reject it.
The indoctrination is that strong
( Sorry for the length and the mistakes, english is not my first language. I also would like to say that your blog was one of the first radical feminists blog I discovered .It gave me a lot to think about and a lot of things you say resonate with me.)
holy effing crap, i was right about the “lets roll it” thing? oh dear, oh dear….i hope this doesnt mean i might be right about other things too….
thanks for your comments, lots to think about here. i will respond shortly. 🙂
At NigelSwansong
http://www.feministes-radicales.org/
http://jeputrefielepatriarcat.wordpress.com/
tix, i read and re-read your comment several times, thanks for that! i see what you are saying about class, and its interesting to me that my words took you there — rape is absolutely the savaging of class:female by class: male, yes. and “savaging” men as a sexual class does illustrate the class aspect as well as the savagery against women known as rape — it is very unusual to see that illustrated so its effective and interesting. its not what *i* meant, but i think there are times when the author clarifying their intended meaning diminishes or truncates the process, and perhaps especially with an experimental or experiential post, what it evokes in the reader is at least as if not more important than what the original intent was — like who cares right? the spinning and spiraling is the fun part. 🙂 so maybe instead of clarifying up front, the first part of my response to you will be to describe what lead me to write this in the first place.
i imagined, wrote and edited this post until it felt “fair” to me, in a way that rape discourse is *never* fair to women and therefore in a way that i have never seen before. this is on primarily a feeling-level, and partially in response to how the media coverage of these recent rapes has left me “feeling” which is disgusted at mens porniness and the cruelty and the “gaming” aspect of the way men discuss rape including the reporters and the so-called analysts (bc for men it literally is about gaming the system — men either “win” or “lose” in court, but either way they are not the victims). i have also been left feeling bored and played-out and strung out, as if they were following a very boring and predictable script that is on an endless exhausting loop (which they are, and not *just* bc they are on tv, there is a social and legal script around rape that everyone in the mainstream follows — and it *is* on a loop because men ALWAYS rape women and therefore they *are* always talking about it). and i was also left feeling profoundly wronged. the reasons for that must be obvious.
so, in this post, i didnt talk about rape at all, so i wasnt disgusted. contrast this with the porny details at the center of mainstream discussions (to men, rape is sex, or sexual, but not to me). i didnt talk about the law at all, so i wasnt bored — no endless boring loop about consent, blood alcohol levels, blah blah. i also started out believing the woman, so i didnt feel wronged bc of womens lack of credibility in mens eyes. and i didnt worry about the details of enforcement — not my problem bc in a just system, enforcement of just rules would be a given. thats part of the JUSTICE, DUH. contrast that to the way things are now — we have plenty of laws on the books to punish rape but they are not enforced. this is not a just system.
and here, “justice” to me was not about punishing the men so much as (literally) removing them from the equation and ignoring them, in favor of centering female safety and decreasing womens worry and stress. this we NEVER see. the part about leaving all men behind no matter if they are innocent or guilty — and not even being able to visit them was in contrast to the current legal system which leaves women in stress and limbo for years and decades because of what men do. this is very stressful for the victims as well as the female relatives of the accused no matter how the trial turns out. the thought of leaving the men behind EVEN WHEN IT WASNT FAIR TO THE MAN was profoundly comforting to me on a feeling level — the thought of whether to leave and how to do this equitably, to always give men a chance, to give them the benefit of the doubt, to help and rehabilitate them, to reward them for every kindness, to “wait for” them or wait for them to change, to not leave them in a lurch, even when they dont deserve our consideration and kindness (which is always) and even when we have already given VASTLY more than we have ever gotten back, and even as we are dying due to the inequities and the brutalities of partnering with men in patriarchy is a daily torment. for mens victims AND mens female relatives and partners, the legal system exacerbates what is already very normal for women, which is to be trapped in a relational hell, completely focused on men. i remedied that torment with one paragraph — just Leave. Them. Behind. and i *felt* the relief, in the context of rape and in the context of “love” too. funny, that.
so thats the feeling part — i will clarify my actual intent and meaning tomorrow, (if anyone is still interested in discussing it!) but to sum up i wasnt talking about punishing men as a class because they are SYMBOLICALLY all responsible for rape, or where one could be a token. i mean to say that individual men are responsible for it, even when they arent the ones actively raping. and that they are all, actually, literally, either the rapist, the accomplice, the egger-onner, the enabler, or they didnt do a fucking thing (or “enough” whevs) to stop men raping women IN THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES (thus the 20-mile rule) — and therefore they are all guilty of rape or contributing to rape. and if this were a just system, they would all be punished for that, individually.
” i remedied that torment with one paragraph — just Leave. Them. Behind. and i *felt* the relief, in the context of rape and in the context of “love” too. funny, that.”
FCM, I felt that same relief when I read it, too.
I also laughed out loud when I read this gem:
“also i have it on good i mean extremely dubious authoritah that imagining refraining from trying in vain to prevent men from killing each other is the same thing as “a violent revenge fantasy.” LOL query: why arent prisoners allowed to have pens and letter openers? WHY GOD WHY? and if someone has honestly never considered this before, dont shoot the messenger mkay? also, is it a violent revenge fantasy to imagine refraining from trying in vain to prevent the sun coming up in the morning? really?
violence and revenge! haha! they just cant NOT frame everything is male-centric terms can they? its as if its IMPOSSIBLE for some people to even imagine centering and protecting women WHILE not giving a FUCK about whether this is fair to men or not. because being FAIR to MEN is the MOST IMPORTANT THING ALWAYS!
thank god i have TOTAL CONTROL over moderating this discussion.”
Your blog is brilliant and a balm to the soul! ❤
I remember a few years back, the women of Bogotá (largest city in Columbia) decided to try and do something about men’s rape and violence against women, which was fueled by men’s nightly visits to the pub. So the women of Bogotá slapped a curfew on men. Which was approved by the mayor. The women banded together in groups and patrolled the streets. Any man they found out after dark was attacked. No need for guns or knives, the women’s weapons of choice were eggs, bags of flour, brooms, etc. It worked. There was a substantial drop in rape and domestic violence.
What was interesting was the reaction to the curfew. Not by the men of Columbia, but by American men! American men were enraged by curfew. Why American men thought it was their business and felt so threatened by it is beyond me. But they were. They screamed bloody murder about how unfair it was to men. There it is again. Men pretending that we’re all individuals. Even tho men are one of the least individualistic creatures on this planet. They pack like dogs, work in teams, move in armies, wear the same damn uniforms with the same damn regulation haircuts, play the same games, practice the same rituals and share the same collective IQ. That isn’t individualism, boys. That’s the exact opposite of individualism. There is no “I” in team, remember? Now kindly stop pissing down my back and telling me it’s raining. Men do not act as individuals. They are one of the most conformist creatures on this planet.
Yes, all men are complicit in rape!!
When I was attacked by a medical professional, I knew there was no point going to court, or the police, or to anyone, because the first reaction would be, “You expect me to believe that a doc did that to you? Are you sure it’s not a fantasy you had? Are you SURE it happened the way you remember?”, and the most obvious one, “Why would he do that?”
The answer to “Why would he do that?” is: “BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE CAN GET AWAY WITH IT, and he knows that even women’s partners and husbands i.e teh nice guys, are probably going to believe HIS version of events over their mad wives and girlfriends.
Because what he did was just so fucking horrifying that NOBODY wants to believe it happened, not even me. THAT’S how they get away with it. Make the attack too horrifying for anybody to digest or contemplate, then you get away with it. Don’t do anything by halfs, is the ticket.
omg cherry — thats so chilling. and true isnt it? build up this fake good-guy image for men thats not reality-based at all, even on their best day, then use language as a tool to terminate thought by equating “extremely awful” with “unbelievable” then let nature take its course — hoards of men doing extremely awful things to girls and women all the time. REALITY becomes both “unbelievable” and “inconsistent with mens character” and throw in the fact that women are whores and liars (a reversal — actually, men are) and its the perfect set up isnt it? god that just chills me to the bone.
thanks for that lucky! flour and eggs — and privileged-white-dood MRA outrage. thats a recipe for hilarity.