In Which I Make a Fantastical Leap May 8, 2013

stuff like this is why the organizers/PR machine for radfem13 publish stuff like this:  as an example of the MRA/tranny anti-radfem propaganda campaign, the radfem13 organizers state that MRAs and others are guilty of

Singling out individual women who call themselves radical feminist and claiming that they represent radical feminism or all radical feminist views (In fact, the movement is diverse and many claim to be radical feminist but, of course, as a movement for social change, we’d wish to discuss those differences internally)

lol.  see what they did there?  more denial and erasure of non-social determinist radical feminists by social determinist/reformist radical feminists.  of course, like a lot of good PR, this is partly true — non-social determinist radfems are indeed all the time being attacked by MRAs.  we are teh evol, you see, and apparently, reformist radfems and MRAs/trannies are mostly in agreement on that point.  d’oh!

also, we are so busy calling ourselves radical feminists, making buttons, banners and the like (i myself have a tattoo) that there is no time to do any actual work demonstrating a motivation and ability to get to the root of womens oppression by men, in order to liberate us from male dominance.  we just “call ourselves” various random things all the time even though they arent true at all.  on my days off — from falsely identifying as a radical feminist — i identify as a pickle.  i produce no actual work demonstrating that im one of those either.  i mean, what could i even do to show that i was a pickle?  my various random identifications are all equally ludicrous, and completely subjective.  but i digress.

really, i wanted to stop by briefly and make a fantastical leap so that the last remaining shred of my radfem credibility reformist political capital can be washed away forever.     to wit, i recently learned that actress sarah jessica parkers ancestor, one esther elwell, was accused of witchcraft during the salem witch trials of 1692.  there was a warrant out for her arrest and she narrowly escaped trial on a technicality — “trial” in this context being a euphemism for days and weeks of torture, sexualized violence and crazy-making by men against women under the guise of legal process.  i can only imagine that this was terrifying for esther, as it was for all women who were alive during the burning times.  but lets look more closely at what this means.

i am currently reading anne llewellyn barstow’s “witchcraze” for anyone who wants to follow along.  in her study of the european witch hunts (to which her writing is limited — it doesnt specifically include the american witch trials) she elucidates and enumerates what women who were accused of witchcraft had in common, and it was often that they were “doting, scolds, mad, divelish; … so firme and steadfast in their opinions, as whoever shall onlie have respect to the constancie of their words uttered, would easilie beleeve they were true indeed.”  barstow summarizes this as meaning “uppity women — women given to speaking out, to a bold tongue and independent spirit…quarrelsomeness, a refusal to be put down.  they talked back to their neighbors, their ministers, even to their judges and executioners.”  (p. 27)

i would also add, although i am not exactly fluent in ye olde english, that this seems to say that these women were not only outspoken, they actually made sense.  as in, if you actually listened to them, you could tell that they were telling the truth, or making sense of things that were previously confusing or deliberately obscured.  kinda like what radical feminists do, when it comes to exposing the truth about men and what they do to us, and getting to the root of womens oppression by men.  get it?

notably, female heretics often received the same treatment — and defying or denying biblical dictates about womens natures counted as heresy, where the bible dictated that womens nature was to be fuckholes and slaves for men.  women often did this anyway, at their peril.  get it?  publicly (or privately) protesting mens lies about womens “natures” could get you brutally tortured and killed.  incredibly, women have been criticizing the bible anyway for 1000 years by now.  both before and after the burning times.  although we do see a divergence from that history in newer feminist thought which protests “stereotypes” of male behavior too.  men arent naturally really the way they appear, you see, even though men created the patriarchal world and all its brutality in their own image because they like it this way.  because equality.  again, i digress.

a close, personal experience/association with the burning times, a time of unparalleled misogyny and widespread sexualized violence — a global terror campaign by men against women — is this womans legacy.  isnt it?  a legacy we now know was inherited by sarah jessica parker through her ancestral relation to esther elwell.  parker reveals that she wasnt aware of this history, but heres where i make my leap:  interestingly, sarah jessica parker doesnt complain.  about anything, apparently.  and im suggesting that her compliance/non-complaining *might be* related to her connection to the burning times, either through her lineage or collectively, as a member of the female sex class.

you see, around the same time that we learned of her ancestry and her association with the burning times, we also learned that SJP has been permanently hobbled due to years of wearing disabling footwear as a part of her job.  she wore high heels on the set of “sex and the city” for 18-hours a day “and didnt complain.”  this not-complaining is considered a favorable trait in women and definitely (if not particularly) in actresses, isnt it?

on that note, see the transcript from “jaws: the inside story” here, starting at 45:49 where steven spielberg is described as having poured water down the throat of a female actress while she screamed.  to make it sound like the watery female screams spielberg heard in his head, and obviously enjoyed enough to want to share with the entire world.  see hollywood dickwad richard dreyfuss conclude laughingly that this practice is “now” known as waterboarding, and that spielberg is therefore guilty of a war crime.  but not really!!!!11!!1234  because reasons!  (honestly, this could be its own post, and if i had known that the transcript was available i surely wouldve written that post by now.  its not on youtube, likely because copyright violation.  they obviously didnt have a problem broadcasting it on television where all the men involved were making tons of money on the advertising and whatnot, and its almost (!) as if they arent ashamed of this at all, or even trying to hide or obfuscate what this might say about themselves *as men* or even as people.  hmm.)

of course, the thing about associations with the burning times is that they are passed down through families as all legacies are, but in this case, its also womens collective history — a collective history of a global terror campaign by men against women, and its no joke.  its also ongoing.  and while barstow concludes that women “kept a low profile” for literally centuries after the period of the “official” burning times, i would suggest to anyone who assumes or believes that this silencing effect ended at some point that we are probably still too close to it to see the whole picture.  and that we consider the evidence that women are still laying low, and that we still have very good reason to.

and to those who would counter with well, thats not fair because everything any woman has done in the past 300 years, or will do into an indeterminate date in the future, she does “after the burning times” therefore causation problem…i would agree with the assertion, if not the implicit point.  there *is* a causation problem, yes indeed.  but the implicit point is twofold: therefore none of this matters, and we cant or at least shouldnt discuss it.  anywhere.  even on feminist blogs.  this is what radical feminism (and radical feminists) have been reduced to, apparently?  sheesh.  and i just made all those buttons and everything.