Heads Men Win, Tails Women Lose. Bring In the Dancing Lobsters March 10, 2013
Posted by FCM in feminisms, kids, logic, rape, thats mean.Tags: amanda bynes, judge trudy, rape, reformism
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many of us know by now that if you play mens games (voluntarily or involuntarily) you are bound to lose, if you are a female-bodied person. this might seem “unfair” or discriminatory or even like blatant insanity, and indeed some of us have been acting like this has all been just one big misunderstanding this whole time. that if we could only articulate the unfairness (or insanity) it would be magically remedied. as if the point of the game was equity, and the whole point was definitely NOT to benefit men at womens expense. interestingly, the “accidental unfairness” principle seems to be both the premise and the conclusion of equality activating. in other words, we work from the assumption that its all just a big mistake, and then no matter what evidence is forthcoming (including evidence that its all very deliberate indeed) we conclude that it mustve been an accident.
note that there is no room here for evidence, or reality, or changing course or anything except heading in the same direction forever. a notably circular direction. judge trudy — a skit from a childrens television program — illustrates the concept of bias and circular reasoning (and victim blaming!) perfectly. the premise of judge trudy is that the judge always sides with the children no matter what. the premise of the grown-up (patriarchal) legal system is not that different. get it?
so i was thinking about the alleged “logistical problem” we have in our prison system where there simply is not enough room for all the men who commit crimes. often times, violent offenders are released because there isnt enough room to house them all — one proposed remedy to this problem of overcrowding (of mens prisons by criminal men) has been to legalize drugs. okay, thats not a bad idea — if men dont have legal remedies backing up their property rights to their drugs, they resort to violence. give them ownership rights over their drugs and they might not kill each other over disputes of ownership, creating additional violent offenders “we” dont have room for. and, like, the fact that using drugs is a “victimless crime” or whatever, so users wouldnt go to jail just for using or buying drugs. but im more interested in the property ownership aspects of it at the moment.
we are all the time working with the understanding that men will kill each other and everyone if they are given even the slightest impetus to do so. no one ever says this directly, but this is the reality of it, isnt it? we wonder why men dont take rape seriously, and feminists speculate that its because a great number of men rape, and that they all benefit from it which is clearly true. but you know what else is probably true? the people who work in (patriarchal) law enforcement and the judicial system know for a fact that if he *only* raped you, you got off fucking easy. you are lucky he didnt kill you on top of it because thats what men do. and we dont have room for all the men who murder, attempt murder, or viciously assault, let alone those who “merely” rape, which is almost all of them depending on the definition you use (including the “legal” one, not incidentally). there isnt enough room for all of them. if men were punished for rape almost all of them would be in jail and practically none of them would be free and thats just no way to run a “society” is it? (or is it?)
but what would happen if there was no more property ownership at all? what if no one owned anything anymore, including drugs? there would be more violent offenders, as men took it upon themselves to protect something that doesnt legally exist — ownership rights over property. honestly, this outcome is quite terrifying, the upside being that suddenly there wouldnt be any more property offenses either. so presumably we would have all that extra space in our prisons currently being taken up by the perpetrators of property crimes, including the only crime besides being prostituted that women commit more frequently than men — shoplifting. we would finally have room for all the violent men who commit crimes of violence against actual people. one might initially assume that this would include violent offenses men commit against women, but not so fast.
rape is still a property crime, see. rape is not defined or discussed as other violent offenses are, as something harmful or reasonably likely to result in serious harm or death — it is defined and discussed in terms of “consent” which is the language of trespass, not violence. as in trespassing, on someones property, get it? we have discussed this before. if we did away with property crimes, opening up all that extra space in jail for violent offenders, the number of violent offenders would skyrocket as they killed each other over property disputes (because men are more or less inherently violent and there is no way to stop this or change it — ask anyone except a reformist-oriented feminist!) but notably, rape wouldnt be a crime anymore at all. men would kill each other for raping each others women so the murderers would be in jail but the rapists would be dead.
see what i did there? it is suspiciously as if men cannot be jailed for committing rape under any circumstances, using any reasoning. this quirk of reality could theoretically be “reformed” if it was an accident, but i dont think it is — if left to “chance” the statistical probability of any outcome (out of two) is about 50/50 but what we see is that men win all the time and women always lose, perhaps particularly in the area of criminalizing rape, and providing meaningful punishments/deterrents to men raping women. so can you reform a system that is actually working perfectly, and exactly as it was intended?
perhaps more importantly, why would anyone want to? dont you ever get sick of trying to teach men how to be good people (and then taking the blame when you almost inevitably fail)? the fact appears to be that men want things more or less the way they are — if they didnt, they would change it themselves. men, as a class, are violent, nasty and they oppress women voluntarily because they like oppressing women. they oppress us no matter what — if there is such a thing as “meaningful brain difference” they will oppress us based on that. if there is no evidence (or no accepted or “scientific” evidence) to be found (by themselves usually, as they are the ones in the position to look) of meaningful sex-based brain difference (or of whatever) they will oppress us anyway. somehow they will find a way to do it.
this rather notable “quirk” — that men oppress women no matter what — doesnt seem to mean much to reformist feminists, but it ought to. doing this work because you are scared to death of what men will continue to do (and what they will come up with next) if you dont is a bit short-sighted, and reactive at best. and its definitely no reason to conclude that theres any hope for men. honestly, i dont know where we come up with some of this stuff. feminists using bad reasoning and then maintaining perpetual support for their reformist position using coercive tactics including thought-termination is what it looks like to me. see the discussion here for more on that.
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femonade 
srsly, my head is spinning after this one! sorry bout that! i still think its right though.
“the people who work in (patriarchal) law enforcement and the judicial system know for a fact that if he *only* raped you, you got off fucking easy. you are lucky he didn’t kill you on top of it because thats what men do. ”
Bingo, that’s exactly what they think. You see it all the time. Not only in the news, local stories are rife with it. Also entertainment. I just watched a movie (Miss Marple) where a woman had been raped a long time ago. It was treated as a hushed up family scandal, not a crime. It came to light when the murder was investigated. The crime in this case were some murders. The rapist just left at the end. He was a nasty person with a “nagging” wife and they just went home. I guess the nagging wife was his just desserts. Wow, major fail! If you nag, I guess you get to go share your bed with a known rapist. Go home with a rapist.
The murderer was a different person who went off in the police car. Agatha Christie wrote lesbians into at least one of her scripts that I’ve seen, just as a normal couple in the small village. Unusual for a story written a long time ago. These stories have things to recommend them, but they still follow expected patriarchal “rules”. If you look closely you wonder if you are being entertained or brainwashed.
remember what started the whole “slutwalk” fiasco? some cop had the audacity to tell women not to dress like “sluts” if they dont want to be raped by men. granted this is an idiotic statement, since all women are raped by men regardless of how they “present” including butches and housewives. but look what law enforcement has to deal with every single minute of every day — the reality of male violence. this cop was probably telling young women what he told his own daughters at home, which is that based on his own experience (as both a man himself, and a cop who deals with male violence every day) dont dangle raw meat in front of the wolves. and definitely never make it easy for a man to mistake you for a prostitute because men do vicious things to prostituted women all the time. besides the women themselves its the cops know better than anyone else that this happens. in the A&E documentary of the long island serial killer it was the cops that told everyone that the babies that were found amongst the dead were probably the babies of the prostituted women who take their kids on “calls” with them as a matter of course. notably, the cop never said that the johns often rape the babies, but i knew that bc dworkin has written about that in her work. and i know the cops know that particular truth too. they have to.
are we going to put 2 and 2 together, or just keep believing the unbelievable about men — that they are good “on the inside” or that they will ever change? considering all the evidence at this point — including 100 years of feminist reformist activating which has failed its larger purpose and has been unsuccessful at liberating women from male dominance — it is insanity to continue down this road. insanity.
OT, the menz on reddit have been scouring my archives lately — today this post is getting loads of traffic. its one of my faves, particularly the comments.
Wouldn’t you know it. I’ve just picked up Sonia Johnson’s Going Out of Our Minds again (put it down after some snotty male nurse said something stupid about it while I was in the ER last Fall – jesus) and I discover that I was in the middle of the chapter entitled: Women Against Women, wherein she remembers that the group of women who were into civil disobedience were more or less shut down by NOW in the year leading up to the ERA vote because – power hierarchy.
So, yes, the greater *movement* has failed in its most important goal which was to free women from male oppression. To continue to go the reformist route (to believe that males will somehow realize the error of their ways!) is just giving them all the MORE gynergy to feast upon.
yes. 🙂 sonia johnsons books are pretty eye opening arent they? repeating/not repeating history and all that. her insights/observations about the reformist activating around the ERA and how feminism was basically killed when “we” won roe v wade stopped me in my tracks. its no coincidence that all her books are self-published now, and that her most recent “the sisterwitch conspiracy” was only EVER self-published. she insisted that this be the case, and she retrieved all the rights to her earlier books bc she thought her work should speak for itself without the “authoritah” of any big publishing house behind her (and other reasons and feminist reasoning). and if she didnt self publish, its likely that if she said what she really thought her books wouldnt be published by anyone. these things you simply DO NOT say outloud.
“and its definitely no reason to conclude that theres any hope for men. honestly, i dont know where we come up with some of this stuff.”
We can look at the evidence we have, or the evidence we don’t have. Do we have statistics about violence and males? Violence and females? Do we have anthropological accounts from other cultures? Just given this evidence we need to seriously consider this question. it seems to me.
Is the malesystem destroying the planet? Themselves included. Is this highly irrational behavior? But still, there is this territoriality you refer to. Wars are the extension of that. Wars for land, for oil, for stupid things like many homes and boats. There’s a video out on youtube about this in the U.S. How the top 1% has 40% of the wealth. Violence is about that. owning everything they can.
They have built a house of cards. It is tumbling down. Their answer to the stress this creates is to become even more abusive. Watch the rape, DV, etc rise as the economy goes south. As other things go wrong. Not problem-solving. Just blind striking out.
it *is* all about ownership isnt it? our discussions about “womens land” and the many reasons its failed over the years has made this clear to me. we cant even relate to other women outside this ownership framework and the power issues it creates — someone has to own the land for example. and if someone owns it, they have the power, even if its never exercised, to throw other women out, or control the terms of use or whatever. this will create problems in our relationships. and not many of us own anything anyway. its been suggested that women will only ever be able to live together after mens economy and the money system fails, including the idea of property ownership which is based on violence — the violence necessary to enforce rights of ownership. i can see how that might just be the truth of it.
the idea of ownership, specifically what would happen instantly if the concept were abolished is very revealing. we know that men would explode in violence to secure and maintain possession (if not legal ownership) of things, land and of course women. so we have legal property rights, including marriage and prohibitions against rape BTW based on the same reasoning, even though men violate other mens rights all the time and these offenders are taking up room in our prisons too. and then there are others who just pay restitution or whatever, and even more who are deterred from stealing just because there are rules against it — i guess?
but looking deeper we see that legal ownership functions to placate mens drive to commit violence and to stop them from annihilating themselves and everyone over issues of possession. this drive everyone KNOWS exists. we are all the damn time tiptoeing around the real issue and building policy and practice around trying to placate men and keep them calm. what we see now — extreme violence still — is better than the likely alternative outcome if men were allowed to act out their NATURAL (or whatever) relationship to material things. this constant placating is terrifying and does nothing to support any kind of positive feeling for or estimation of men and their ability to be nonviolent, or that nonviolent is how they “really” are. oh, okay! then why do we need these rules at all? why do we instinctively KNOW what would happen if we abolished the concept of ownership? (EXPLOSIVE AND ALL-PERVASIVE MALE VIOLENCE. INSTANTLY). its not misandry baby. its reality, and everyone knows it.
whereas sonia johnson suggests that women would more or less “naturally” adopt a gift-economy if left to our own devices. this is where everyone does what they are moved to do, within their own skill set or whatever, and that women do this anyway — we know our work is done when everyone has what they need. men take advantage of our “gifting” constantly, and we arent “gifted” in return which is why we are left so damaged in our relationships with men, including paid employment where we are known to do much more work than what we are actually paid for. it is possible that in OUR own economy women would gift each other and that this would work, but ONLY if no men were there.
Yes, when European (men) came to the Americas they exploited the fact that tribes did not own land. Hunters and gatherers do not own land, nomads who live off the land do not own land. They took the land through force or deception. These groups sometimes had gift economies and some were even matriarchies. The land was seen properly, as a living system, a spiritual system. Not a thing to be owned. Now you can see what has happened in the U.S. with that video I mentioned. Here it is http://youtu.be/GjVko-DMeF4 This does not mention any difference between women and men, only between rich and poor. It would be revealing to see the same vid but with women and men accounted for. Perhaps overlapping graphs. Many, many more women at the lower end of the chart, because even middle class women who divorce don’t stay middle class.
I think that the ownership issue is huge. It’s an interesting take on it, that it is a sop to keep men from being even more violent. Treaties and all that, to stop the slaughter. Interesting how the violence is more evident in men who are poorer. I think that’s because it is kept private by men at the higher income levels, they have lots of lawyers and all. but you hear of the scandals with all these famous rich people anyway. Also, institutionalized violence in 3rd world countries by rich guys running the corporations. The violence comes in many forms, but I don’t see it coming from women. When it does come from an individual woman she gets much more than equal time in the media. And often when women commit violence, it is in conjunction with a man or men. If you take those cases out, it’s even rarer. Like true mental illness or something. So, a woman who commits this kind of an act is mentally ill. For men, we expect it.
also, thanks for working through this post — its kind of a doozy! theres also some thought-termination going on around this issue, as ive said. its like moving through mental molasses, but it is *movement* i think. so thanks!
oh, and talking about mens justice system, their definitions and reasons for stuff and the way they run their prisons is also boring as hell. so theres that too. really, besides being a great excuse to use these judge trudy clips, this is my final farewell to reformist activating, and a summary of the conclusions i made as a result of the discussion on my previous post. it also feels like a parting of ways between myself and almost everyone who has been reading and commenting here over the past 3.5 years. i mean really. women are thought-terminating and coercing other women into reformist activating. WTF? surely many will “disagree” with my assessment, meaning they wont like it, or me for saying it, but i think its inarguable at this point. i am so sick of the lies, and the obviousness of it. ALL of it. get it?
note i said this is (probably) a goodbye to *almost* everyone who has been around this whole time. and i notice some new voices around lately too. funny how that happens. 🙂
What I keep seeing on this blog is a lot of intelligent and well thought out writing, and sharing of experiences that mirror my own. Reading about the idea of a gifting economy and how this would not work if there were men involved, and how many women are damaged by being generous to male takers, really got to me. Been there, done that.
Reading the blog author’s questioning of why we care whether all the men kill each other got to me too. I don’t want to hate men. I’d like to think that it’s possible for them to be dealt with in a different kind of culture, that did not enable their aggressiveness, or insisted they take it out on each other.
I’m not a radical feminist separatist. I’m a hermit. I live in a conservative small town. I get periodically advised to make friends.
With whom? The male bullies or the female collaborators? I’m surrounded by crazy people, it’s not a good idea to hang around with crazy people, it rubs off.
I like this blog. I look forward to the author’s posts. They are reliably edgy, and I like edgy. Edgy gets me thinking.
Okay, so there are smart women around who are working out the proposition that men are hopeless. Why get angry? It’s a good discussion topic. Try to disprove it.
What’s really important about interacting with controversial writers is addressing whether they can be refuted. The Femonade author makes a lot of excellent, well-reasoned points. This gets her branded in varying ways by people who are too lazy or feel too threatened, to try to refute her.
This is similar to what happens to people who insist on arguing that this culture is hopelessly sick and has to go, computers and all.
I like these discussions. They cut close to the core of the problems we face. They are honest. I like honesty.
thanks miep. im not a separatist either though — im a pro-separatist. i think if i had access to this kind of information and thought when i was younger and making these decisions, i mightve ended up in a much different place. for example, if i had known about the parasitic nature (or whatever — the parasitic REALITY) of men, i wouldve recognized when it was happening to me, and known that it was likely to happen again and keep happening if i continued partnering with or having anything to do with men. i literally verbalized this to my first real boyfriend when i told him i felt like he was sucking the life out of me. he OF COURSE would never admit that this was exactly what he was doing, and i didnt know that this was a real thing with a name. i still have hope that these discussions are reaching the young uns, and that its helping them make sense of whats happening to them, and those who are in a position to choose another way. this is different than other “choosy-choice” stuff i think. like the decision to have male children, some decisions are not “lifestyle” choices but have revolutionary (or disasterous, oppressive) potential. separatism and contextualizing what men do to women globally and making decisions from a place of knowledge of that specifically is one of those things, i think. for some of us, its too late to make those very early, basic decisions but the knowledge is helpful anyway.
and frankly, i think that western women enabling western men is probably worse than nonwestern women enabling nonwestern men because of the destructive power western (mostly white) men have over the rest of the world. (enabling is not the right word for “being lifesucked by” but “being lifesucked by men” is what i mean — men couldnt do what they do without women pouring our gynergy into them and/or men stealing it). and nonwestern women are coming to their own conclusions about what men are about too, and how to deal with that locally and regionally. they are questioning the practice of having male children, as a matter of fact. they are the ones who introduced me to the idea, and i have seen it espoused more than once.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/08/world/africa/south-africa-gang-rape/index.html?iref=allsearch
to clarify, i am interested in talking about things that make sense, and making sense of things. not rationalizing the things any of us do under patriarchy or making them seem like they make logical sense or are feminist when they arent. or calling other women “hypocrites” for knowing one thing but doing another (or accepting that label for myself, or believing that withdrawing energy from men and trying to do this effectively within the limitations of my own life is the same as not doing it at all, or not separating at all — get it?). and knowing what we know, sep and pro-sep are the only things that make rational sense. and reformist activating doesnt.
honestly i think there are women who know this is the truth of it, and they do reformist activating anyway, but that these conversations happen largely in private out of reach of many women who are lead to falsely believe reformism actually works, or that its the only way. thought termination by the academics (and others!) seals the deal, and is therefore unfair. get it? thought-terminating and unfair. not hypocritical. kindly note the distinction.
I agree that reformist activating is not the answer to ending male violence. Refusing to birth any new male children seems like a much more sensible start. Overpopulation and the resource scarcity that goes along with overpopulation beget more violence, not less, no matter how much reformist activating takes place. I therefore think that population reduction, and specifically a reduction in new male births, is a better path forward.
If every woman on earth refused to birth any new men from this point forward, male violence would actually completely end within 100 years. Can any type of reformist activating hope to be as effective within the same time period? I bet the suffragettes didn’t predict an outcome of mainstream gonzo porn for all of their efforts.
just knowing how likely it is for males born at this time in history to be on the autism spectrum and what that means for female caretakers (mothers) is enough reason not to have any, i think. jesus fucking christ. what is it now — 1 in 150 or some outrageous probability that you will end up caring for a disabled male probably forever? and a “badly behaved” (!!!) one at that! omg. no thanks. and yes, i think this is only getting worse over time, and that 100 years ago things were very different than they are today. we didnt and couldnt know then what things would be like for girls and women who are forced to share a planet with 3.5 billion males, but we know now. the question is what do we do with that information? “bury it” is an option, but im not sure its the best one. its definitely not the honest one.
of course, the topic of male children is explosive, terrifying — and troll bait. so i will ask that *especially* new users who show up out of the blue to comment on that topic specifically add something pretty awesome to the discussion, or just dont say anything. its better for everyone, trust me. thanks.
note that its the “and what that means for female caretakers” that is of some importance too, not just the “having male children” or even male autistics. men have created social controls on mothers and women that make all of this much, much worse on women than it might ordinarily be. this is what they do, and how female biology is exploited for maximum male gain — they knock us up and then THEY make all the rules and give social meaning (create reality) to all of it. we do not control what happens to us once we are impregnated or birth children. men do. for example, what if it were an option to have all the babies you wanted, then give the boys away to male caretakers in a separate male community WAY far away upon reaching a certain age (i would suggest somewhere between 3 and 10). the social meaning and reality of birthing males would be very different than it is now, where we are forced to care for male relatives from cradle to grave, and we subject other women to our men and what our men do, including their violence, when we bring males into our communities. this isnt just about abortion or googling tips on how NOT to conceive a male, or that kind of stuff. although unsurprisingly, the men want it to be all about violence, and to paint a picture as bloody and gruesome as possible while simultaneously erasing mens agency in creating this patriarchal reality and MALE violence that women have to somehow deal with. and erasing how men use infanticide against females GLOBALLY and everyone knows this by now — lets reverse reality and pretend its women doing this to males instead, or that men think infanticide is bad or something. they obviously dont.
this is their fault, but WE arent allowed to discuss what any of this means for us, including how to change or stop it. THEY get to frame this discourse as “violent” when its not, and when THEY obviously are. we dont have to frame it that way though, or get sucked into their lies. men LIE about women all the time, and this is just more of the same.
I had the same idea eons ago, except that I thought about giving the boys away to male caretakers on their first birthdays. I also thought of an extremely controversial idea to try and prevent adult males from being larger and stronger than adult females, based on something I read about the nutrition of the first year of a child’s life being determinative of whether or not that child would reach maximum size and strength. Based on that, I thought of reducing the total caloric intake of the male child (and increasing that of the female) during year one, to much outrage, so I panned the idea. My idea was that we could reduce or eliminate the physical discrepancy between adult males and females and at the same time reduce the level of women’s attachment to their male offspring by a) their realization of the necessity of the caloric reduction and b) the early relinquishment of the boys, at age 1.
well thats interesting isnt it — dont starve them, just dont let them reach their full potential. watch this be framed as violence against men, even though everyone does the exact same thing to girls and women every day, and not just with food. AND we do it with food too — in times of scarcity its boys and men who are fed, and females get the leftovers, if there are any. even western women are on starvation diets. “stunting” womens development in various ways isnt even considered abusive — its just normal. even starving (not merely stunting) females in every way possible is completely normalized isnt it? but even suggest stunting (not starving) males as a political response to male dominance and suddenly just talking about it (not even doing it!) becomes not just abuse but MURDER!!!!!1!!1235 right?
and now that i think about it, age 1 might be better in terms of gynergy-output. why waste 10 years of gynergy on raising a male, only to give him over to a male community, especially considering that he will likely be killed there? this is a serious question. maybe between 1 and 3 then — my idea was to keep them while they are still sweet (more like girls) and get rid of them before they start to be a problem, and definitely before they reach puberty and can reproductively harm females. at least theres some payout there, and it might be joyful for the women expending the gynergy to have very young males around. but put too much in, and they might not want to give them away at all in order to protect their (gynergy) investment. its very complicated, isnt it.
Demographics have *proven* that whenever the population of young men reaches 30% of a nation’s population, there will ALWAYS be social chaos and carnage Bosnia, Rwanda, etc. In nations like India, China and Pakistan, women are coerced to abort female fetuses and female infanticide is practiced since sons are preferred by MEN who run these nations.
What would the world be like if women aborted MALE fetuses?
In a post above, FCM quotes a women commenting on a brutal rape-murder in South Africa:
“I don’t know what we must do, but we must do something,” said Sophia Europa, from Bredasdorp, fighting off tears. “Otherwise, there is no use giving birth to a baby boy if men treat women lower than animals.”. .”
“Booyson’s injuries were so severe that her family asked authorities not to give details, said Faiza Steyn, a Western Cape Health Department spokeswoman.”
In the movie Rain Without Thunder (out in DVD) a character in the movie, an elder feminist said that MEN DREAD THEIR ANNIHILATION AT THE HANDS OF WOMEN which is the sole reason for MEN”S anti choice politics. They dread women’s power to erase men. Men want the freedom to abort female fetuses but NEVER let women have the power to abort MALES.
Hence, women must learn and teach Menstrual Extraction http://www.sisterzeus.com Google menstrual extraction for more info.
So I’ve just come from wasting part of my morning reading some guy insisting that boys/men can not be taught to NOT rape (I agree with him) because rapists are sociopaths (agree!!) OR drunk guys with no “impulse control”. IOW *they* are either hideous criminals with no humanity OR just dumb drunk guys who make bad decisions – have the cake and eat it too, bro. Meanwhile, even the more enlightened feminists there are assuring him that ’boys can too be taught not to rape! I’m not a man hater! I have more faith in men than you do!!’
Now assume that I had the slightest inclination to engage in this (age old/hackneyed/circular/Gynergy suck) conversation to say that indeed, rapists are sociopaths and should be removed from *society* I would be verbally drawn and quartered mostly by anti-prison industrial complex folks. What if I went the logical step further to say that in order to make women more safe from rape by male sociopaths in the future, and since they can not be educated, that women should not birth male children (or to be impregnated at all!) for the good of humanity I would be accused of literally advocating MURDER and threatened with anything and everything up to and including… rape. And all for agreeing with this dude’s basic premise.
ah yes, the rape-threats. in a conversation about population control (and the “goodness” of men. LOL!) OF COURSE they would get them out in that context specifically — and you are right, why bother? its really perfect isnt it?
also re menstrual extraction. i think its gross and dangerous, BUT that putting abortion back into the hands of women and midwives is a good idea. if for no other reason than that we become instinctively and rightly terrified of discussing this very issue BECAUSE we know men will use it as an excuse to take legal abortion away from us. we are being coerced, in other words. obviously.
“remember what started the whole “slutwalk” fiasco?”
It’s really important you’ve said this and what follows. I have been for some time saying that, and by the majority (not my mateys) dismissed as an old know nothing, not quite good enough feminist. Blaming the sisters.
Every time. Until they get it, every time.
I think shaming has a role too. From older women with a lifetimes experience to younger women. Pay attention. Even wild animals shame the animals that do something that threatens the pack.
By the way, you’ve now come full circle to the thinking of some rad fems who do not post here anymore, or rarely. Maybe they’ll show up again.
(Back to reading, but sincerely, thank you. And, I prefer this venue to RFH. I still want to read the writers).
well its a matter of female survival versus bullshit politicking isnt it? the two are not compatible. we thought they were once, but we were wrong, or there is plenty of EVIDENCE, now, that we were wrong about that. it was only ever about survival, not equality anyway — we just saw that men were surviving and thriving and we wanted to, too. but this has nothing at all to do with equality. it has to do with women not being killed, maimed and stunted by men.
and its telling that there are women having these convos away from the public eye, and away from the feminist and even the radfem blogs. it really is. there is so much bullshit out here right now we are all drowning in it!
and interesting about the (legitimate) role of “shaming” versus the way its perceived/spun by the progressives and liberal feminists. i have also heard it articulated that “taboos” against PIV are very functional bc PIV leads to pregnancy, and in certain times and places throughout history unwanted pregnancies would be disasterous for the women and the entire tribe or community. historically functional “taboos” are now interpreted as “shaming” or value judgements that have a basis in morality (or religion) and not based in reality or materiality. the conservative agenda has complicated matters, but its not that hard to see that PIV is harmful, and that men are too. i mean really.
and its the half-truths that are the most damaging IMO. like, everyone tells their daughters not to dress like “sluts” but they never say why, or not the real, full reason — the reason is that men are very dangerous and its best not to draw their attention at all if you can help it. no one can really tell the truth about that bc everyone wants their daughters to eventually partner with a man, to be straight, and to produce grandchildren, or to be provided for or whatever. there is no context to the warnings so it seems like arbitrary value judgements. but its not. very experienced people know the context all too well, and that includes older women and yes the police. we deal in reality, not value judgements.
“to much outrage”
Forbid that we even try to contemplate alternatives!
Is it such a crime (thought or otherwise) that some of us aren’t terribly interested in spending our time activating/reforming over the same ground endlessly?
“I think shaming has a role too.”
I think that “shaming” has been one of the most destructive devices invented by men to pit women against one another and further their agenda.
Sharing the wisdom of experience in a supportive way is infinitely more effective in my experience both as one who has received and given it.
its being spun though, thats the point i think. radfems are doing exactly what you suggest s4 — sharing the wisdom of experience in a supportive way. and yet the fun fems interpret/spin this as slut-shaming.
i do think its a problem that so many cops are misogynists and conservatives though. and men. what they are doing is different than what radfems are doing when they tell women the (half) truth about men, but its still reality-based. they are assholes, but if a cop tells you to stay the hell away from men, or not to hang out in bars or go to frat parties or whatever, he knows what hes talking about.
We’d have to discuss what we mean by shaming. I think I just mean, not backing what they are doing and yes, FCM, even that is called shaming by them. Looking askance, not joining, speaking out against it, that’s what I mean. Some other refinements, but I think it never means shunning for example.
oh, and doctors! i had a doctor tell me once that i should dump my bf (at the time) because he gave me an STD. i was all like “omg dont judge me/him!” i didnt say that of course, bc i still had to kiss *his* ass if i wanted treatment, but doctors know the truth about men too, and about what men to do women. doctors and other medical professionals know what men do to babies, to animals, and to each other very well too. men rape babies a lot.
srsly, the WHOLE TRUTH in that instance wouldve been “your bf has already given you an STD and often, relatively minor STDs are comorbid with more serious ones, including HIV/AIDS. this guy is likely to give you something way worse down the line, so you would be well advised to find a different partner, or better yet to not partner with men at all.” but he didnt, see? so it came off as a value judgement, and i was offended. but i KNOW this doc knew the truth of it, and now i do too. what was really weird is that he said something at all. most of them wont, in my experience — they just ask you if you are “sexually active” so they know what diseases/conditions to look for, (they mean PIV when they say that obvs) and tell you to pick up some free condoms on your way out.
Of course I am not misunderstanding the general idea.
YES men do tell the truth quite often especially those in specialized fields (ha – one emergency visit to a gyn-not-my-usual resulted in him telling me to tell my *boyfriend* that I had an STD even though I clearly told him several times that I had not *had sex* with a man for over 15 years!) and YES men “shame” because it’s one of their best tools to cover their own culpability.
I was specifically addressing this from doublevez: “I think shaming has a role too. From older women with a lifetimes experience to younger women.”
So maybe it could better defined what “shaming” is in a radical feminist sense.
so you mean how do we improve on making merely reality-based statements (like the cops or shaming grannies do) to taking radical feminist action, including making reality-based statements/statements of position as well as being kind/supportive to girls and women at the same time, especially when the subject matter or circumstances are likely to be traumatizing. yes?
being nice is hard. 🙂 and so is avoiding half-truths. seriously, try it! unless you are willing to tell the WHOLE TRUTH about men, there is really no supportive way to say these things to women bc without the WHOLE truth it doesnt put the blame where it belongs. women assume they are to blame unless its expressly stated that they arent, and then on some level we also demand demonstration of WELL WHO IS THEN???? bc they are SURE it must be them, you know…and no one is willing to DEMONSTRATE our blamelessness by completely and obviously describing and then blaming men for what men do, individually and collectively, locally and globally. this is very difficult in practice. everyone needs their girl children to be straight, or at least to not walk around terrified all the time.
what would you suggest?
You sure do know how to ask a giant question there Fact! 🙂
What do I suggest? All I can offer is what I (and Chonk/we – which by extension includes the radfem community) do with The Kid, which is to tell the truth – all of it to the best of *our* ability.
My mom spoke the truth about men, but not all the way (actually very much like doctors, cops, lawyers) and my dad skirted around the issue of the… evil… men do but never, ever said it straight up (shit, I thought we were friends – and we were but only to a point obviously) and I just can’t NOT tell the truth to the girl who I care so much about. To do that would make me the worst parent imaginable the way I look at it. She needs to have every bit of knowledge about what boys/men do on her side if she has a hope to live a less stressful, more healthful and fulfilling life.
And, you know, I don’t delude myself into thinking that just because *we* tell her these things that she will escape to greater gravitational pull of the power that is, but without a doubt the knowledge base of TRUTH will serve her no matter what comes.
Ack! not “to the greater” but FROM!!
i knew what you meant. 🙂 also, even when we do everything right, women hear “shame, shame” regardless. the fun fems do anyway, but maybe they are just being disingenuous about that. i dont really trust them to not spin everything against specifically radfems and to not bullshit, but maybe thats just me.
how is the kid taking it?
Maybe I’m just a Pollyanna but it seems to me that the fun fems are the product of families sort of like the one I was raised in except that they didn’t have the benefit of having a (more mature, age-wise) mom who was activating during the second wave when so much of the radical element was vocal and present. Also she activated mostly with lesbian women which adds a big ’ol spin to the way I *turned out*. So, 70s lesbian feminism coupled with the quintessential hetero-nuclear family left me with mixed messages to say the least.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the only reference to radical feminist politicking that fun fems have is what men have offered them – and there you have it. I mean, jeez, the spin that’s been put on the RF is just nuts – “neoliberal”, liberal radical feminists are all the same thing now or so I see. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the dis-information machine must run on some kind of super secret (women’s souls) renewable energy.
The Kid? She’s been hearing it all of her life and I have absolutely no idea 🙂 Check back in 5 year intervals and we’ll see…
also, i think everyone knows by now that i dont think its that important to play nicey-nice with each other, at least not all the time. that can be reconciled with what i said before about “radical feminist action” including being kind/supportive particularly in certain circumstances (and not so much in others). savvy? we are all just talking here. talking to girl children about rape (for example) would require a bit more finesse, i imagine. or something. thank god i will probably never have to do it!
also, i will take woman-centric and honest over NICE any fucking day of the week. its the male-centrism of everything thats so traumatizing anyway. its so rapey and necrophilic.
I remember those half-messages, including the shaming ones. Not just in my extended family but in the families of everyone. Comments on various teenage girls. If a girl wore eyeshadow, some mother would refer to her as a slut. But there’s another element here. Women “needed” to remain marriageable. Sex only after marriage was the trump card. Back then, a woman’s best chance to avoid poverty and less danger overall was to marry a man who was a good provider. Assuming he wasn’t a wife-beater. Just like the right-wing women Dworkin wrote about.
My own mom did not give me shaming messages about these things. (The rest of the culture did that anyway). But what she said quite often was “You can love a rich man just as easily as a poor one.” My mom was not materialistic. She still is not. At all. But she wanted me to avoid poverty. Because women in poverty are more at risk. And most of the males in the community were poor and headed to jail rather than college.
And these women complained about men, too. It’s just that they never told the whole truth. Just hints. Don’t do this. . this ….and this… etc. never told why, but it felt like some heavy lurking unknowable danger. Naming it in all its crappiness (and way beyond just crappy of course) is a relief. Seeing reality. A good thing.
Also, I find there’s a difference between guilt and shame. There is unearned guilt dumped on women all the time. But if we hurt someone, it is important to feel guilt, since it prevents us from doing it again. I don’t think men feel guilty much. Guilt and entitlement don’t go together very well. What they do try to avoid at all costs is shame. It “emasculates” them. I think that women learn very early not to shame men. It’s another harm-reduction strategy.
“woman-centric and honest”
And that’s it right there – that’s what *we* model for the kid. And honesty, when it comes to girl’s/women’s lives is certainly not Nice.
At all. 😦
also i wanted to respond to what doublevez said about my thinking “coming full circle.” thats funny to me bc i sometimes read my own archives (as i have said) and some of what i see *myself* saying and believing 2-3 years ago i dont say or believe anymore. its tempting to start deleting the bad stuff to purify the archives or something, so that it represents something consistent that wont confuse everyone or seem contradictory if they dont read it all in order and see the natural progression of it. but i dont. i want people to see the progression, if they want to see it, or if they happen on it by starting at the beginning and reading straight through. its all right there. and the progression is completely logical IMO, with leaps of thought made within the discussions which become part of subsequent posts, and on and on. there is no way i could continue with reformist activating or being pro-reformism, or being hopeful about men, knowing what i know, and after doing this for as long as ive done it. it would not be logical or rational to do or believe that anymore, and i think thats very clear.
did everyone watch the judge trudy clips? 🙂 hilarious. and hilariously/scarily true to life, if you just switch up the context a little bit.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Judge Trudy rocks!
(the Amanda Show is one of my all time faves. some fine comedy – satirized adult reality – writing there)
It’s still hard for me and I usually fail to reconcile what I’m thinking with what comes out.
I think your progression has been to what some who were here then, espouse. So the full circle refers to your progression to what ideological separatist rad fems think. I think.
Regarding shame: I just think it’s probably a natural human emotion, like guilt which it frequently partners with, a survival thing, and the ‘protest too much’ of the slut walkers is because they are trying to drown it out in themselves. Trying so hard to beat it down, to appeal to men who you’re right, feel no shame or guilt.
Another way to even out the physical size ratio between men and women would be to ensure the male babies born come from smaller stock, shorter and less muscular men’s sperm used in the fertilization process. Rather than starving them once born.
ok i get what you are saying doublevez, but as i recall the “ideological separatist radfems” from back then also ended up being the biggest reformists and pro-reformists out there. the ones i am thinking of are STILL “out there” doing the same reformist shit, and fighting with men and trannies, and screaming about how i have become so “essentialist” and am hurting the movement. as if.
also, the “ideological separatism” i recall they espoused was holier-than-thou bullshit that i objected to specifically bc it left almost all women out and would never be a global solution if it required “personal choice” (female resources and autonomy) to accomplish. thats the part that i was wrong about, but it mightve helped if they explained it better, or werent SIMULTANEOUSLY demonstrating their concurrent belief (by being reformists) that there was any hope for men, and that reformism would work. i mean really. do people remember what im talking about? you cant believe in both things at once. it doesnt make sense. the coercion and thought-termination around these issues, and refusing to get into the nitty gritty of it IN PUBLIC (for good reasons and bad, probably) make this all very difficult to grasp. i dont recall anyone saying “the last 100 years of feminist reformist activating has failed its larger purpose, and based on the evidence, we now know that if we stay on this path we are unlikely to succeed because men arent changing” for example. or like, anything that was coherent, unassailable and made any damn sense at all. its also possible that people were saying that, but i just wasnt ready to hear it. but i kinda dont think so, considering the source, and that many of these women are reformists and academics.
in other words, it was never clear to me before now that this is an issue of female SURVIVAL and that men are not going to stop. i get it now. but not all “separatists” are created equal, or on that ideology are they? for example, some are lesbians, and WANT to live with women out of desire for women and they dont think about men much at all. or they think of womens THRIVING and not just SURVIVING. not the same IMO.
Breeding for smaller men and larger women won’t work because ultimately there will be only small men available for breeding, in which case what you are doing is breeding for smaller people.
All this talk about separating male groups from female groups is hardly radical or unprecedented, it’s just good sense and it works. It’s old culture. I might suggest that boys be sent to live with the men post-weaning. There are some arguments for weaning to be done late, so one year might be too early.
“in other words, it was never clear to me before now that this is an issue of female SURVIVAL and that men are not going to stop. i get it now. but not all “separatists” are created equal, or on that ideology are they? for example, some are lesbians, and WANT to live with women out of desire for women and they dont think about men much at all. or they think of womens THRIVING and not just SURVIVING. not the same IMO.”
This is such an important distinction! How can women thrive? It is an individualistic perspective. It may have worked somewhat in times past. However, things are going downhill in the world for all. As they do the violence is increasing. Plus, with the increasing population, and the increased ratio of male to female, violence will additionally increase. All these factors are converging. Survival time.
I don’t know much of the history you are talking about and I am not aware of most of it. Though I see snippets here and there. But I see these other trends and they also point in that direction. Perhaps more women will come to see that it is an issue of survival. I hope so. We need to be clear-headed.
FCM, you are right about not judging women for failing to come totally out against their oppression. I stand corrected. It’s frustrating feeling so lacking in allies locally, but you make good points that I can easily expand upon. Primarily, that judging other women thusly just helps to enable the whole sick patriarchal mindset. It’s so insidious.
Thank you.
The boy children discussion is interesting in that there is a lot of taboo. Since cultures with an excess of men tend to become horrible, and since there are extant cultures that primarily abort female embryos, or primarily engage in female infanticide, this is a discussion worth having. What would happen if a culture decided to more selectively abort male children, or engage in selective male infanticide?
Well, the first thing that happens is that if women, wimmin, have the temerity to even discuss such a hypothetical, the men go crazy. We’ll note that they are overall disinclined to go crazy over female rape statistics, male physical violence statistics, female genital mutilation, female abortion rights, etc. ad nauseum.
But if we even *suggest* the possibility of turning the tables, we instantly become evil harpies who wish them all dead, even while they mostly casually ignore how their fellows kill us in so many ways, and often how they kill our souls, or try to.
First time posting here. I’m a lurker who has read from the beginning of the archives, including most comments, up to now. I have seen a coherent progression in your thinking and writing, FCM, and have appreciated your clear documentation of it.
I remain a liberal reformer or harm-reduction type feminist–tho not “sex-positive” or any other brand of fun-fem, largely because I’m afraid of taking that leap to pro-separatist or radical–for personal and professional reasons. I too wish I had known this stuff earlier to have been able to make other choices.
Reading this thread has put me in mind of Sheri Tepper’s fantasy books “Gate to Women’s Country” in which women have built a women-centered society among a decimated North American population and have instituted a very selective breeding program with just a few males to continue the species; and “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall” in which a hidden, female, advanced species puts the future of human reproduction–if it will happen and how–into the hands of five women who’ve been friends since college. I especially like that one because the question is unanswered, leading the reader to think long and hard about which option she would choose.
Her writing is problematic because she erases lesbians by describing lesbianism as a hormonal abberation. It’s also not the best writing out there, but she certainly thinks forbidden thoughts. She worked for Planned Parenthood in Colorado for most of her professional life, and I find her scenarios all the more compelling when I realize they are drawn in part from many years of seeing the harms of PIV to women through her work with PP.
i think “pro separatist” is a helpful concept too bc it makes it possible to think and conclude rationally that reformism does not work and men arent going to stop without having to completely separate yourself in real life which is frankly impossible, or be accused of hypocrisy for believing in separatism but then not doing it. i remember “back then” when there was talk of separatism it smacked of hypocrisy to me bc the “separatists” had patriarchal degrees on their walls, were financially independent (after working for the man for years) or on government benefits. this is not true separatism, by any stretch of the imagination. i cannot even imagine a true separatism would be possible at this point, and that pro-sep is the closest anyone can get even if they wanted to. another reason this talk left a bad taste in my mouth (and seemed disingenuous) was all the het-bashing by lesbian separatists who werent really separatists either (bc its IMPOSSIBLE) but they hated on straight women for not separating at all, or fully (which again is IMPOSSIBLE). and bc they brought lesbian values into the equation as a requirement that het women (or even introverts bc it was social and “community oriented” and not just male-free or female-centric) could never satisfy.
so no, this has NEVER been discussed on this blog in these terms before AFAIK. the way i am doing it now is the only way that makes sense to me, as a het introvert who has concluded that reformism has failed and that men arent going to stop. and i think this way is better bc its reasoned and accessible to anyone who concludes the same thing, and what the evidence clearly indicates, and allows for whatever degree of separatism is possible now, and for thinking and acting towards greater separatism and womens culture with all of this in mind.
i will leave comments open here as long as people are actively discussing it. thanks for participating.
heres another example of how mens legal system deals with women — complete and literal insanity masquerading as reason, designed for womens failure no matter what. note (of course) that the witch trials were real, really happened, and that women were executed for practicing “witchcraft” and that witchcraft does not exist. if something that does not exist could be said to have a value of “zero” than we could say that men executed literally hundreds of thousands (or millions depending on your source) of women for NOTHING. scarily, this “comedy skit” is also a documentary then isnt it? the reasoning during the witch persecutions was EXACTLY as bad as this. it would be impossible to make up reasoning that was any more insane than what really happened (considering that witchcraft does not exist), although monty python clearly tried to be as absurd as possible. they succeeded, AND YET it mirrors reality exactly. get it? insanity. masquerading as reason. this is reality for women under mens legal system. it exists to this day. and yes, women are still executed for being witches.
anyway, to my point. can this “system” be reformed? its not broken, get it? its working exactly as designed and intended. it works fine. these outcomes for women are THE ENTIRE POINT.
Thanks for this honest and hard discussio, which seems a continuation of the previous one here. We need to repeat the unspeakable many many times. That is how it becomes speakable for others, opens up into the world of discourse. So let me repeat the bit that is most important for me to keep saying: The situation for women and girls worldwide is intolerable. That puts me a little behind others who are ready to move forward into saying, here’s what we can do about it. It’s not, for me, a matter of pointing out the specifics, the ways it is intolerable; it’s pointing out the base fact that women are not considered fully human beings, and the animals that we are, valuable at various times in our lives and dispensable at others, are considered hard to control, requiring stringent measures and vigilant surveillance by our owners.
This attitude may be modified by law or somewhat hidden in developed countries, but it is universal and is part of the root problem, which is the human male attitude that living beings may (must?) be made into their property. I think we are considered to be one step above the valuable, fractious camel. Men resent constantly having to actively suppress our equal intelligences and strong wills. As a man named “Cockpuncher” on the men’s rights subreddit said yesterday, men do not need women for anything but their bodies.
Does everyone remember the video posted on radfem sites about a year ago of a women’s village in Africa, built after the “valueless” women were driven from their original village by their men owners? The women’s village thrived; the men in the old village declined so much they began camping outside the women’s village for handouts. When asked why the men beat the women in the old village, the old chief said with a shrug, “Because we don’t like them.”
A number of years ago I worked for the property tax department of a rural county in New York. My job was to scour the property tax records for every parcel of land in the county and find any property that might have slipped through the cracks and not have an owner listed, then find an owner anyway and figure out how much back tax was owed. It was enlightening to do this. I realized that every smidgeon of land, including seasonal islands in the middle of streams, was required by law to have an owner. No inch of land could be owned by no one. The State took ownership of any land not specifically attributed to an individual owner. This was an old county with records that went back four hundred years, and I was able to trace the way it was appropriated and passed from hand to hand like the living thing it is. Everything, everything in a human male-dominated world must be Owned.
Property ownership is the only relationship the human male seems to revere. The bridal ceremony, the moment when ownership of a woman is transferred from one man to another, is a reverent moment for men. It is enshrined in male religion, romanticized, surrounded with all the force of law. For a woman, it is supposed to be her one fine moment; she is valuable, her value is briefly displayed to the world in the finery she wears and the expense of the wedding dinner; and now she will slip into her future and not be heard from again in public, if she knows what’s good for her.
To me the unspeakable thing, the thing I keep having to remind myself about because it is constantly overlain by romanticizations and rationalizations, is that worldwide, women are property, things, objects, camels. One may seemingly escape that legal status in developed countries, hold a job, live alone; but socially, one is nothing but an escapee, a loose woman to be corralled or punished by talk and action. One can’t live obscurely enough to avoid the social opprobrium, the devaluation. No longer the sleek, owned, possession, one lives beyond the pale. All this must change and until it does, the situation is intolerable, an affront to the human spirit.
thanks for that karma. WE are the “artificial intelligence” men fear — the moment the “useful object” becomes self-aware is the moment of global war, and apocalypse. they tell us this all the time.
omg. ahahahahahahahaha!! “we trust them with our homes. we trust them with our children. we trust them with our lives. but can they be trusted?”
“robots cannot harm a human being. its the first rule of robotics.”
“its a can opener for christs sake.”
“the robots are going crazy.”
“somehow, ‘i told you so’ just doesnt quite say it.”
Great quotes about the robots above, fcm. Captures the consternation and indignation, the horror really, that is the first reaction of men whenever a woman begins acting fully human. Unfortunately, the reactions that follow are dangerous.
This is part of the extreme frustration that I have with the *failure* of women to wake the fuck up: men are constantly telling the TRUTH about how much they fear and despise us. All the time. Every day in every way 🙂 And still the myth prevails that somehow men are good or at least necessary.
(yes, I do get pissed at women sometimes)
men literally have nightmares about their useful objects becoming self aware and rebelling against them or beginning to serve their OWN interests. notably their objects “interests” are always directly oppositional to their own. i recall james cameron saying that the final scene of terminator 1 came to him in a nightmare, where HE was being chased by this robot and couldnt get away, and he couldnt kill it. you cant see it very well in this clip, but the nightmare scene that he brought to life was the blown-up robots torso continuing to come after him pulling itself by its arms. its lower body and legs were gone but the damn thing just kept coming at him and wouldnt die. cameron dreamt this. LOL put it in context and its pretty funny ay? i feel very sorry for his wife and all the female actors and all women who have had to come in contact with this prick.
The “pro-separatist” position seems like the right way to go. I’m very excited about this!!!!!!!!!!!! It opens a range of possibilities.
For example, Mary Daly talks about living on the margins of society. If one considers herself pro-separatist then living on the margin of whatever society one is part of can be better understood. This looks different in different settings. She discusses different places to work, for example. If one works in a liberal setting, there are certain dangers and certain opportunities. If one works in a more conservative setting there are both dangers and opportunities, but different ones. It looks different in each case. For each woman. Trying to survive.
But there is a common goal or goals. First, to survive! This may mean to survive financially or physically, depending on the situation. But as a pro-separatist one is not “wedded” to the system as salvation, or to men as salvation. One sees clearly. it’s all broken and cannot be fixed. A woman might look for opportunities to help other women understand the system. It is not required that they are purists, just that they are moving toward clearer understanding. I find myself doing this in various settings. Just a word may help a woman begin to see this. Who knows how fast she will move.
This helps undermine the system. Ultimately undermining patriarchy is desirable. But if a system collapses all at once, does that help ensure the survival of women? it never has. It just allows the sociopathic memes of the malessytem to dominate.
So we can survive and can sometimes help other women see what they can. I think that this solves the trashing problem in many ways. It sees that it is a process of disentangling oneself from patriarchal thinking.
A plain separatist position has some built-in problems. It promotes some kind of purity that is not realizable in patriarchy. It creates cognitive dissonance. One feels guilty. And defensive sometimes, because of the guilt. It can become rigid, not allowing for degrees of consciousness being raised. I like your keeping all your posts up so people can see your progression. It’s a process.
Although men would see it as extremely noncharitable, I think we can afford to be charitable to other women given this position. I don’t mean wishy-washy about what we believe. Not allowing other women to abuse us in the name of patriarchy either. Just seeing that some women (our sisters, mothers, coworkers) have not yet figured this out. But I always see signs that they are on the road. Helping and supporting them in their quest for understanding is the kind of charity I mean. Perhaps they will leave their husbands suddenly, if they can still survive without them. Etc., etc.
Pro-separatist. A radfem idea whose time has come. thanks.
Hey, I was late to the discussion on the prior post. So happy the conversation is continuing here now!
I’d like to say something on the topic of getting away from men, separatism and how it is to be achieved. I just finished reading Sonia Johnson’s Going out of our minds. Sonia writes that maybe we ought not look outside ourselves for that place to go – away from men. Instead, what we as feminists can only do is change our own feelings about ourselves and each other, start acting from within ourselves, our souls, our own true inner voice. Then the outside will have to change to accommodate US and our changed behavior. For me this kind of ties together what Betty Mclellan says in the video about liberal feminists who want to change the system from within patriarchy as well as what Mary Daly says about radfems seeking to work from the margins of patriarchal institutions and processes. IMO, libfems probably mistake working within patriarchy with working from within our unadulterated female/feminist values. Or they think that they only need get inside the system and then they can use their own feminist values to change the system. Mary Daly instead argues (rightfully so) that only on the margins of patriarchy will we be free to genuinely act from within our selves. Because what libfems forget when they think they can transform the system from within is that women’s values are purposefully EXCLUDED from the system, meaning that women’s culture, our values, are treated as irrelevant (irrational, naïve). So even if women, even feminists, get into positions within a patriarchal institution it’s unlikely that they would be able to act out of feminist values and still be successful/keep their jobs. And in difference to men and their values system, our values/ethics don’t need to be handed to us on some piece of stone, but feminists know what is GOOD by listening to the inner voice, by becoming aware of our SPIRIT, and how our bodily feelings react to any prospect/action etc. To the patriarchal mind, this of course seems naïve and oversimplistic. I think women need to stop hoping for men to understand us and see our point and then they’ll change themselves because of insight. Few individual men might be inclined to do this, but men as a group? No.
No, we need to take our eyes off the guys, and concentrate on feeling our SELVES, and this CAN be done from within patriarchy. Disengage from their deadly games, stop buying any of their propaganda (=anything coming from any patriarchal institution), start only focusing on women and on changing women’s feelings about ourselves. So that we can enable ourselves and each other to act differently, to stop collaborating with patriarchy, with men, with their lies and their intimidations. Sonia writes that when women stop giving energy to patriarchy (a critical mass of women, I suspect), patriarchy will fully disintegrate on its own. The question however is, how much violence will men subject us to before they disintegrate. on the other hand, does it really matter? Since they are, as Sonia writes, killing us now even though we have our eyes on them. So why not try something new? (I realize that its fucked up for me to say “does it matter how many more of us men kill?”, when I am sitting safely in my living room and not being subjected to male violence in my daily life).
And I know this can be misunderstood as what the pomos tell us to do, ie. change our perceptions to be able to live within the patriarchy. What Mary Daly and Sonia Johnson are talking about is something else entirely though. It means changing our actions. Align them with the feminist principle that the means are the end. How we are now in this world is how we are in the future. So subjecting men to any kind of coerced/forced injections (to make them more malleable) is out of the question, really. We don’t want to become any more like THEM than what they have already accomplished of making us. Also of course, this would be using the master’s tools. It’s tricky.
Unless somebody’s figured out how to swap genetic material and reproduce without men being involved and I missed it, we can’t just get rid of men. And we can’t just keep a handful of them around for breeding purposes because that would result in a dangerously homogenous gene pool.
That doesn’t mean there can’t be more women than men. That would likely improve things quite a bit. The question is what to do with them that keeps them from inflicting themselves on us. Suggesting they all go kill each other selects for violence. We want to select for gentleness.
But somehow, we do need to take over the process of natural selection, because what we seem to be selecting for is violence. The more rape is tolerated the worse this gets.
Sorry I haven’t kept up, answering you re your progression: No. Not those feminists. There are radical feminists who have been pro-separatist saying there’s no rational in expecting men to reform. They’re still saying it. I’m not sure where I go with it because I still think it’s good to have children, and children need community and a family. It’s damn hard to be pro-separatist if you want children and I like knowing radical feminist Lesbians are having children, in fact think they might be the only humans who should so I don’t know where that leaves the idea of separatist.
About being charitable to women who haven’t come as far as some of us: I find just naming who did it is almost insurmountable with most women. I say, not “woman raped” or “woman murdered” but a man raped a woman, a man murdered a woman. I force the convo to say *why* we are afraid to walk here or there. Oh we might be assaulted or …. you know. By WHO I ask. Do you mean MEN? Who is it we are afraid of? Women just can barely say it and frequently I am angrily countered and it implied I am a man-hater. Just try it. It is astonishing.
honestly, the fun fems and anti feminists dont bother me as much as they once did. currently, i am wrestling with what i know about radical feminists, including how much gynergy is being wasted every single day on reformism and trashing other women. i am pretty disappointed right about now. maybe someday i will get over it.