does anyone notice a difference when female vocalists cover this song, as compared to the original version where a man-band performs the exact same thing? heres the original manly version:
maybe its just me, but im pretty sure that the women are actually talking about rocking. this town. and that the man isnt, and therefore — since its his song — this song isnt a song about rocking. this town. its a song about something else entirely.
we have text, and subtext, you see. text, and context. text, and pretext. the women are saying the words, but it just doesnt mean the same thing when they say it, because women arent rapey bastards swinging their male privilege — to rape and impregnate females — around and making rape culture and calling it culture. women are something else entirely.
being that this is the case — and it is — i am just not going to get that excited about a woman who stumps for right-wing men by “covering” mens anti-abortion platform. in fact, i am willing to give right-wing women the benefit of the doubt that when they say it, even when they parrot mens words exactly, the womens meaning is somewhat different. i am willing to believe that unlike right-wing men, anti-abortion right-wing women really are talking about babies, and normalizing womens reproductive function rather than pathologizing it, and generally take into consideration a female perspective, including what it takes to reduce the harm to women of misogynistic and male-centric policies and practices under patriarchy.
the fact that it will not be womens intent, meaning, or interpretation of the words that carries the day and informs the political policy and practice — it will be mens — is not womens fault. when men say “rock this town” it is mens meaning and interpretation that will carry the day, and impact the culture, even if that meaning is so misogynistic and offensive that most women would never even conceive of it. and it often is. which is the danger to women of covering male bands, and stumping for male-centric politics too.
ps. sandra fluke is a handmaiden too, for stumping for leftist politics and for not telling the world exactly *why* women as a class so desperately need birth control. and im not that excited about that, either, although the inconsistent policy and logic-fail of calling out palin but not fluke (or any number of left-wing dickpleasers like oh say gloria steinem) is a bit obvious. that is all.
the importance of thinking and writing to any political movement goes without saying, and applies to all political movements except radical feminists activating towards the end of male supremacy. when we do it, our most profound thinking and writing are dismissed as bitch-sessions, coffee-clatches, or even (mere) consciousness-raising, and the political potential of our work is dismissed out of hand.
now, regarding consciousness-raising, apparently, early radical feminists coined the term themselves, and they defined what they meant by that and the point for doing it: first, because of male supremacy and misogyny, all accepted knowledge including “scientific” studies of women are fundamentally flawed, so to understand women and our plight, we must study the original sources — us — ourselves. for their part, early radical feminist activists decided to do both private “consciousness-raising sessions” and public consciousness-raising actions. being experienced politickers themselves, they knew at the time that it was actually politically effective to do this, and that other (past, male) revolutions had done this too:
The purpose of consciousness-raising was to get to the most radical truths about the situation of women in order to take radical action; but the call for “action” can sometimes be a way of preventing understanding — and preventing radical action. Action comes when our experience is finally verified and clarified. There is tremendous energy in consciousness-raising, an enthusiasm generated for getting to the truth of things, finding out what’s really going on. Learning the truth can lead to all kinds of action and this action will lead to further truths.[...] In the end the group decided to raise its consciousness by studying women’s lives by topics like childhood, jobs, motherhood, etc. We’d do any outside reading we wanted to and thought was important. But our starting point for discussion, as well as our test of the accuracy of what any of the books said, would be the actual experience we had in these areas. One of the questions…we would bring at all times to our studies would be — who and what has an interest in maintaining the oppression in our lives.
The kind of actions the groups should engage in, at this point, we decided…would be consciousness-raising actions — actions brought to the public for the specific purpose of challenging old ideas and raising new ones, the very same issues of feminism we were studying ourselves. Our role was not to be a “service organization,” … nor a large “membership organization.” What we were talking about being was, in effect…a “zap” action, political agitation and education group something like what the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C.) had been. We would be the first to dare to say and do the undareable, what women really felt and wanted.
a zap-action, or political agitation and education group. i like the sound of that, dont you? heres what old diki has to say about the tried-and-true zap-action:
Zaps typically included sudden onset against vulnerable targets, noisiness, verbal assaults and media attention. Tactics included sit-ins, disruptive actions and street confrontations. [Quoting gay journalist and activist Arthur Bell] “Gays who have as yet no sense of gay pride see a zap on television or read about it in the press. First they are vaguely disturbed at the demonstrators for “rocking the boat”; eventually, when they see how the straight establishment responds, they feel anger. This anger gradually focuses on the heterosexual oppressors, and the gays develop a sense of class-consciousness. And the no-longer-closeted gays realize that assimilation into the heterosexual mainstream is no answer: gays must unite among themselves, organize their common resources for collective action, and resist.”
isnt that interesting. rocking the boat, leads to attracting negative attention from the oppressor class, leads to righteous anger and a sense of class-consciousness among the oppressed, leads to political organization and resistance, and change. how political! how profound! you know, when men do it.
note that the “tactics” of the zap-action can and do differ, and that sit-ins and street confrontations (for example) might work more or less well depending on the political and physical realities of the oppressed. in 1968, it was decided that picketing the miss america pageant would be a good use of one feminist groups time, so they did this. what was the effect in the short or long term of that particular action? i dont know, but the image of “bra-burning” harpies is forever etched in the collective consciousness, for better or worse. im sure it had more effects than that, and anyone who knows what those are is free to elucidate in the comments…
for our purposes, it should be noted that writing and naming the agent — in publicly-accessible forums — seems to fulfill the requirements of the zap-action nicely, and the response of the oppressor class would seem to be the proof of that one (isnt it?). indeed, any and all women having the audacity to exist in online (public) spaces are attracting the ire of their male oppressors — this needs to be contextualized, and the political implications seen and known. for women, speaking publically is “rocking the boat.” mens response to it *is* the response of the oppressor class.
for radical feminist writers, perhaps particularly today, we dont even need to leave our homes to accomplish what is obviously an effective political action — this a good thing, considering what men the world over would love to do to us, should they ever get their hands on us. and considering that they would do much of this violence to us in private, and no one would ever see or know about it, so there would be no political effect of their response at all. we would just be silenced (or dead) like so many uppity women before us.
to clarify, sitting in your living room (or on facebook) privately, with other women, is consciousness-raising and is important, but actually writing stuff for public consumption is exactly the kind of radical action that is known to be politically effective, inciting actual change. what we are doing here might feel like bitching in someones living room, and there are indeed some similarities, and there is indeed an individual or local-feeling consciousness-raising effect to writing radical feminist material and presenting it for public consumption. but that is not all it is.
anyone who knows more about the import of political writing is invited to discuss this in the comments. thank you.
there is a special place in hell for writers who utilize the false equivalence when writing about radical feminists versus misogynists. you writers know who you are — dont you? for readers who need examples, try here and here.
its not just the intellectual laziness or even outright lying of the false equivalence generally that sticks in my craw, although those things are like sandpaper on my brain because they are, well, intellectually lazy. and lies. for real writers and thinkers, these things are the scene of a crime. coming across one or the other while reading someone elses (or even your own — oops!) work is like stumbling upon a crime scene. its a crime against writing and thinking. i cannot overstate how violently criminal this is, like mens poetry which uses letters and words to obscure various truths, and to contort and obfuscate information rather than convey it.
in fact, men should not be allowed to be poets. male poetry is obfuscating on its face. there should not be any demand for this, being that the entire world is saturated with it — with males using words to obfuscate information rather than convey it — already. and yet it still has value. why? plus, male poetry and all mens writing is almost always trite. actually, if trite and obfuscating were negative criteria, men wouldnt be allowed to write anymore at all.
clearly, men using words to obfuscate information rather than convey it serves a purpose and thats where its value lies — its not that its in short supply, its that there can literally never be enough because of the size of the demand and the purpose it serves. in the case of the false equivalence, when used against radical feminists, the purpose appears to be to wipe radical feminist work — and womens history, and the truths about what men do to us — from the face of the earth.
note the recent use of the obliterating false equivalence where moderators of an online forum — because they put an equals-sign in between a woman protesting rapey death threats from a misogynist, and that misogynist himself — deleted cathy brennan’s tumblr account. yes, a woman protesting disgusting, misogynistic and likely psychotic and even criminal behaviors from a misogynistic male was said to be engaging in behavior that was equally violative of the terms of service as the rapey perv who threatened rape, and who dumpster-dives surveils, trespasses, loiters and stalks women and minor children to gain access to their discarded trash so he can perv on it, and writes about his exploits on tumblr.
these things are equal.
but obviously, the thing about putting an equals-sign after anything men do is that men do criminal things, violent things, in their global campaign to increase their own power at womens expense. these criminal behaviors have misogynistic foundations and flavors, but they are criminal, and violative of the terms of service in many public and private places because of that. because they are anti-social, and criminal.
so, when anyone says that womens response to what men are doing to us, is not only “just as bad” as what we are responding to but equal in every way — ie. not a response at all, but an ideology — and when the mens actions are criminal and violative of terms of service, the womens behavior suddenly becomes criminal and violative too. radical feminism becomes a “hateful ideology” too. and as we saw in what was probably a perfect example of this dynamic playing out in real life, in the case of cathy brennan versus the rapey perv, the mods at tumblr deleted both accounts. rapey perv’s account was (later) deleted too. because equivalence.
so now, but for screenshots which were smartly collected beforehand, there is no evidence of what this rapey perv actually did. that history is erased, along with the response of the victim, as well as multiple other radical and pro-radical voices on tumblr and elsewhere who were calling attention to what this man and men as a class were and are doing and saying. its all gone. importantly, any posts that were made about this and other rapey misogynists (not just him!) which contained links to cathy brennans tumblr as evidence that any of it ever happened now contain only dead links. our archivists will now have to go back and painfully recreate this history, with screenshots and links to screenshots if these posts are to maintain their integrity/credibility and historical significance, at all. note to self: screenshots and links to uploaded screenshots — rather than links to original sources — from now on. fine.
of course, if the internet itself eventually goes *poof* and it well might, all of this history — the history of what men do to us, and the ways we respond — will be lost forever. it will be like none of it never happened. in the meantime, tumblr, and all mainstream internet forums and publications are doing what mainstream forums and publications always do, which is to write and rewrite history, and to erase mens misogyny and criminality and womens response to it now, in real time.
the obliterating false equivalence and putting an equals-sign in between radical feminism and misogyny and misogynistic violence is probably the best tool in the shed to use towards that specific ends, and anyone using it — and i do mean anyone — is guilty of the crime of propagandizing and falsifying history, and erasing womens history and womens work from the face of the earth. you are in excellent company, arent you, with government censors, witchburners, and all manners of rapists and colonizers generally. if thats not what you want, check yourself, and stop doing it. if thats exactly what you want, then by all means. continue.
full text of the declaration of independence below. its still relevant! celebrated, even! because men’s work isnt expected to change and evolve constantly, to accept the trends of the day or put on a pretty face, whatever that means, in whatever time or place. men’s foundational documents (declarations and yes — manifestos) are not denied, shunned, wrongly paraphrased, endlessly parsed or not parsed at all — even when they should be — watered down and ground up and obliterated to the point that they are ethereal nothingness, losing the plot. men’s foundational documents dont even have to recognize that women exist, and they are still valid, you see. it was an accident of language, it wasnt deliberate — even when it was.
when men build patriarchal foundations, the foundations are allowed to stand, and if anything, its the house that gets tinkered with and not the foundation (you know, like recognizing the existence of women — at the insistence of women). indeed, womens responses to men’s patriarchal foundations — when we are even allowed a response — is the window dressing and the furniture and the dishes and the towels. we decorate men’s patriarchal houses, literally and more literally. we attempt to make ourselves comfortable there. they allow us to do this somewhat.
when women build feminist foundations, like the works of sheila jeffreys, mary daly, and catharine mackinnon, men drop bombs on them and reduce our foundations to bombed-out, smoking craters. at least, they try to do this. some of us are resisting, but when our work has been thoroughly debunked by the people who get to determine such things, what does that mean for us? our foundations are destroyed, reduced to holes and rubble. we sit along side of them and weep, but that is not all we do. we decide that architecture itself is patriarchal, it must be. holding that truth to be self-evident, we work from there.
first, a question: has the great cotton ceilingdebacle of 2012 affected you wrt your feelings towards trans politics and/or liberal “fun feminism” and if so, how? if not, why not? and is there a point at which it will become more than obvious what fun-feminism really is, including who it benefits, and why? will the truth out? does it ever? if so, why? if not, why not?
while all women are socialized to be compliant dick-pleasers, and frequently acquiesce or avoid confrontations with men due to the threats of violence and actual violence backing up mens demands, including their demand that we see the entire world through mens eyes, womens socialization to be pleasing to dicks (and penises!) cannot be the variable here, where some women are buying this trans politics/fun-fem shit and others are not.
most arent, in fact. most women, i dare say, both globally and locally, simply are not on board with trans politics. the oft-repeated claims by trans and fun-ems that trans are a political minority, and are often oppressed by women, is evidence that this is true. so while the fun-fems are definitely being dick-pleasing and compliant in their acceptance of what is very obviously an anti-feminist mens rights (trans) agenda, conservative grandmas really arent, or if they are, they arent talking about it. soccer moms arent. wilting southern flowers arent. even women who are compliant or even hesitant dick-pleasers in every other way, arent necessarily buying this one. so whats the variable here?
it seems to me that the variable is sex-positivism, and liberal anti-woman sexual politics. sex-positivism requires, absolutely requires that women see the world through mens eyes, where removing “sex” — including intercourse and its attendant reproductive consequences — from its anti-woman, patriarchy-supportive historical and political context is a good thing, because men have been in the wrong for millenia and it benefits them to ignore that.
and sex-positivism, and the idea that “sex” and intercourse with men is a good thing, and that it could and should be liberatory for women, at this time and place, is the most egregious mansplanation — aka. example of forced-male-perspective — that i have literally ever heard. because in order for women or anyone to see sex with men as beneficial for women, even conditionally, but often as unconditionally beneficial, to us, we must agree that mens perspective on 4 critical points is correct and adopt their perspective as our own:
1) the political class-based oppression of women by men which is based on biological sex is a good thing and should continue; and 2) men deliberately systematically, institutionally and interpersonally harming women as a sexual class, via intercourse, is a good thing and should continue; and 3) the female-specific harms of the penis are particularly beneficial and should therefore be centered as much as possible; and 4) it further benefits us and supports our (male) power to publically deny 1-3.
viola! sex is apolitical! no more sex-based differences, no more male bodies, no more female bodies. because we said so. just potentially orgasmic bodies, just apolitical, ahistorical blobs of meat, catching friction on each other, for fun. just like men pretend to be, when they are actually deliberately harming women with their dicks, to support male power.
now, let me just say a little bit about my utter disdain for sex-positivism, and how much of an atrocious fucking lie it is.
if women are really to be made whole again after literally millenia of systemic, institutional and interpersonal sexual abuse at mens hands — a history that no one can credibly deny, and when i say sexual abuse i mean abuses that are directed at our female genitals, and which often have intended reproductive consequences — it would not be too much to ask for a couple of millenia, or even a century, or a decade or even a year or a day, for that matter, of respite from that, so that women as a class could recover from our collective and individual histories of sexual abuse at mens hands and to heal. and yet, to date, we have not been allowed to have even one day to heal from this. we are not even allowed to acknowledge it happened, or that it never stopped. even if the oppression had stopped years ago, (and it hasnt!) and even if sex with men wasnt inherently oppressive, (and i think it is inherent, or at least that PIV for pleasures sake is inherently oppressive to women) we would still deserve a chance to breathe in an environment that was substantially different from the oppressive one. but what we have is men in womens pussies 24/7 like they have always been. this is simply not a substantial, or substantial enough, change.
and to attempt to erase or deny history, including human rights violations in other contexts is a political and moral no-no, while attempting to reverse the course of oppressive histories on a dime is flatly impossible. and sex-positivism attempts to do both. when it comes to any other type of oppression, has either the oppressive or the oppressed class ever tried to reverse the course of that oppressive history on a dime, or expected it to work, or have they said “look it worked” when it obviously didnt, and had people believe them? has anyone ever taken the site/source of a group’s political oppression and claimed it was now, magically, the site/source of their power, and had that be true? its ridiculous. there are lingering, ongoing effects of systemic political and physical oppression, we know this. and this is true even when the oppressive institution is formally abolished, and ours hasnt been.
meanwhile, the part that liberal/progressive, anti-woman sexual politics plays in trans discourse is obvious: just go on the fucking pill already, and shut the fuck up. that way, you (women, and especially liberal women) can be more easily resemble an apolitical, ahistorical, potentially-orgasmic meatbag, catching friction off of other people, for fun. it furthers the illusion that this is true for either women or men, when of course it isnt.
and while we are pretending, lets *also* pretend that contraceptives actually do that for women, when in order for them to do that they would have to be 1) 100% effective, and 2) cause no side-effects themselves. and clearly, neither applies. women arent even effectively changed into pretend male-like meatbags, they just have to pretend they are! but whats a little more pretending when you are already living in an alternate male-centric reality thats based on lies about men but also wasnt built for you? note to women: if you have to take a pill to live in mens reality, a pill that men do not have to take, it indicates that 1) there is such a thing as male reality thats different from female reality and that these differences are biologically-based and 2) men are forcing women to fit male reality. and oh what the hell, 3) there is probably a reason for that, ie. it benefits men to do this. because everything men do benefits men, because patriarchy. duh.
anyway, my point is this. while other male-centric politics are decidedly woman-hating and thrive off of mens sexually abusing women too, liberal politics in particular seems to be the one thats heavily invested in turning both male and female bodies into apolitical, ahistorical, potentially-orgasmic meatbags that catch friction off of each other for fun. where all women are collectively owned by all men, and women’s male-centric sexual activity and sexual slavery are prized over our virginity and reproductive slavery. (contrast that to conservative sexual politics. conservative and liberal men disagree with each other somewhat, on some points, regarding how to treat women, aka. liberal and conservative mens sexual, domestic and reproductive slaves). and sex-positivism is the ideology that tells women this is *not* just a slimy political deal struck with sleazebag liberal men who demanded it: its really an acontextual (apolitical, ahistorical) choice. women could not embrace trans politics without both of these things, i dont think.
and thats just (i think?) the fun-fem acceptance of the physical aspects of trans. ie. sex is a social construct, there are no meaningful physical differences between women and men. acceptance of the gender part also requires internalized misogyny, homophobia and lesbophobia, ie. a woman who likes other women or can change her own oil or doesnt want to be a disempowered, feminized rape-object for a man, even when having intercourse with men, (gay transmen!) is really a man herself, so long as she says she is. nope, no problem there.
are we having fun yet? or, is this what peak-fun feminism looks like? stay tuned…
