In Which I Make a Fantastical Leap May 8, 2013
Posted by FCM in books!, gender roles, international, liberal dickwads, MRAs, trans.Tags: jaws, male violence, silencing, steven spielberg, waterboarding
comments closed
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.
Finally, A Use For These Graphics! January 15, 2013
Posted by FCM in books!, meta, radical concepts, rape, trans.Tags: going out of our minds, sonia johnson, the sisterwitch conspiracy, wildfire
comments closed
i recently read 3 books by sonia johnson completely out of order like i always do — last summer i read her most recent “sisterwitch conspiracy” and just now i read “going out of our minds: the metaphysics of liberation” and then “wildfire”. and i still havent read her first and most well-known “from housewife to heretic” — heres another bloggers post on that.
i have reported elsewhere that i found “sisterwitch” to be exceedingly silly *and* that it changed my thinking forever. specifically, her use of animal imagery and visions, and describing women talking to each other in the kitchen encouraging dialog by repeating “right on!” a lot — along with being self-published in a very large font made it seem too easy. or something? the silliness was evident immediately, and the drastic and yet *easy* changes came later. i dont know her, but i suspect she might think my rather, uh, conflicted response to her book was funny. 
and indeed it is.
from “sisterwitch” came the very simple (!!!) idea that i have been riffing off for months, that women do not equal men and men do not equal women. and indeed they do not.
the other two…well i would say they are both exceedingly silly as well, and also extremely timely. like cutting edge, up to the second timely — more on that below. which is also funny considering that they are old (1980s! dinosaurs!) and i read them out of order and she implicates literal time more than once — its part of the plot, you see. time.
in both “going out of our minds” and “wildfire”, she talks about her involvement in what americans were calling “feminism” in the 1980s — among other things, trying to get the equal rights amendment (ERA) passed. she notes that, despite a hearty response from many women, it was bizarrely difficult to get most or all women involved in much of this politicking — it was almost as if most women knew it was pointless. instead of assuming that womens overworkedness or paralysis or lack of gas money or whatever explained their flat refusal to drop whatever they were doing and get onboard, she trusted women, and wondered to herself if there was something wrong with the actions themselves. in the end, she decided there was something fundamentally wrong with the actions — male-centric politicking is worse than useless for women, and will never liberate women from male dominance.
oh, and P.S. roe v wade essentially shored up patriarchy in the US, and singlehandedly defeated the womens liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. wha?! in “wildfire” she explains her take on it, which is that the deal to legalize abortion was a sedative to womens righteous anger and (therefore) a poison that killed feminism. men are laughing at us to this day for taking this deal, in fact. we have shown them that we can be bought. and prostitution — and womens pain and unspeakable suffering — is terribly funny innit? this answers some recent questions i had about how women involved back then couldve “felt” that revolution was afoot, but in the end it turned out not to have been a revolution at all. (well it answers that for american feminists anyway — whats the rest of the worlds excuse?)
i also suspect that it was women hanging out in women-only safe space while discussing these reforms that made the possibility of a real revolution seem so real — it was real, so long as they were in the room, get it? as soon as they left, and went back to talk with the men or bargain with the men or negotiate, debate and literally plead (their case) to men, it was all over — as with all deals, when one is dealing with the devil, the “deal” of legalized abortion was a dead-end. it was the (dead) end of the women-only organizing that was taking place around it, and it was a political deadend too — men could take away this alleged “gain” at any time and they all knew it, and just thinking about it got the men even harder and even rapier than they were before.
to sedate womens rage and kill feminism — and to get men even harder and even rapier — was the plan, of course, and women were the only ones who didnt know it at the time. because men lie. and they will never do anything that undermines patriarchy or lessens male power, or that actually increases womens power, ever.
indeed, instead of taking this deal, american feminists wouldve been better off staying mad and staying focused on womens liberation, and telling men to go fuck themselves (or implying it) while we taught each other how to perform abortions on each other. wouldnt we? if we had done that, and conserved our energy and kept on in the direction in which we were headed we mightve been well on our way to being liberated by now. but we didnt. live and learn? or…lather, rinse, repeat endlessly? she suggests the former: that we thank the women who came before us for showing us that reformist politicking and deal-making are incompatible with womens liberation, and that we move on.
on the subject of this being very timely, besides the fact that all radical feminism is always timely because it addresses the ways that women are oppressed as women across time and place, it doesnt take much to see the ways that liberal politicking continues to not-work today, as least as much as it didnt-work back then. for all the alleged “gains” we have made over the last 200 years, today, like earlier this week (and every minute of every day since) women are being censored and silenced, and im not talking about the goddamned first amendment mkay — i am talking about patriarchy, and men as a sexual class silencing women as a sexual class, including women who say or do anything that legitimately challenges patriarchy and mens entitlement to abuse and penetrate and harass and lord-over women.
i think this “silencing” includes mens raping and murdering us too, including the recent gang-rapes — mens constant rape and death threats against women who do speak up (or, you know, go out) kind of give that one away. and i think that the medias treatment of these recent gang rapes is meant to silence us too. so i have to ask dont i, what progress? what the hell progress have we even made, and what evidence is there that things have even stayed the same, or have definitely *not* gotten worse? this is a serious question. i think things have gotten worse, and that this is obvious and demonstrable. if someone disagrees, prove it.
and furthermore, thanks to equality-activating, we cant organize in women-only space anymore either. or, we cannot legally do this in some places, and are unable to “ethically” do it anywhere else. because poor men. that we continue to do this anyway goes to womens spirit, womens soul, and our intuition, or something, and at any rate our seemingly unassailable desire and commitment to meeting with each other in women-only space. we *know* how important this is and we keep activating for this. *all* women around the world (except fun-fems apparently) know how important women-only space is, if women are to survive patriarchy. survive in it, and survive despite it, and survive it — we plan to outlive (Out/Live?) it. for this, we go to each other dont we?
call it “strategizing” or consciousness-raising or coordinating your upcoming congressional testimony, whatever. what if what *felt* so revolutionary about the feminism of the past — from the perspective of the women who were there, and who felt they were on the cusp of a real revolution (sonia johnson felt it too) — was that they were in women-only space or nearly women-only space, talking about and imagining being free? what if they had actually achieved what they were looking for…and the only mistake they made was that they left the room to resume talking and dealing with men — and stayed out?
for my part, i am starting to believe that damn near anything is possible.
On Gay Transmen July 8, 2012
Posted by FCM in feminisms, gender roles, health, PIV, pop culture, trans.Tags: gay transmen, trans
comments closed
anti-feminists frequently demand that radical feminists address the problem of transmen when we are addressing transgender — as if transmanism and transwomanism have very much to do with each other, even though they really dont. unsurprisingly, the transman “problem” — that is to say the concept of transmanism as well as the different problems that transgender is supposed to solve for individual FAABs — falls directly in line with addressing the problems of females as a sexual class, around the world. ie. we do address them, all the time. transmen’s problems line up with womens problems and would be solved if feminism succeeded — there would be no remaining problem that transitioning would solve. that means that for women, transitioning is a proposed solution for patriarchal problems only.
whereas transwomen’s “problems” would not be solved if feminism succeeded — that means transwomens problems are male problems, and do not implicate male power or womens oppression by men, which are the kinds of problems feminists are interested in solving. post-patriarchy, transwomen would definitely not be let into female-only space, for example. and insofar as transwomen depend on global female oppression to define and maintain their identities, and depend on subjugated females on which to model their feminine behaviors, and insofar as born-women not coddling transwomen is a “problem” for transwomen, transwomens problems will actually be made worse when and if patriarchy falls, because they would not be able to express their gender properly, the entire concept — or the parts of which are dependent on female oppression — having been abolished. and because NO ONE would put up with their shit.
honestly, how many women post-patriarchy would agree to nurse mewling, howling manbabies under any circumstance, particularly trying to do so while juggling six cans of mace and genuflecting before the mighty phallus? its exhausting, and not even the fun-fems, i daresay, would put one second or one ounce of their time or energy into that endeavor, suddenly finding themselves free to spend their time as they wished, and without the fear of male violence. i myself have already decided that if patriarchy falls, i plan to turn cartwheels down the street until my hands bleed, then sleep on the beach for a week while i decompress, and contemplate how im going to spend my days from that point forward. but i digress.
anyway, my initial point is that if your problems would be made worse — rather than solved — if patriarchy fell, you are a man.
moving on, to address the very pressing problem of “gay transmen” may i offer the following: PIV criticism. yes thats right, gay transmen — heterosexual fucking is, indeed, problematic for women — you are right about that. you absolutely arent imagining it.
just for fun — and everyone likes fun! — try this on, gay transmen, and see if any of it fits.
you hate how straight men fuck, but you still want to fuck men. right? welcome to female heterosexuality.
you hate how straight men use sex to terrorize their female-bodied partners by giving us pregnancy scares and having a deliberately contrarian libido which never, ever matches ours. perhaps, you resent how your mother and everyone always told you that “all men want is sex” but then once you started having it yourself, you realized that men really dont want to fuck that often — just enough to make you afraid you are pregnant every month, but never enough to give you any real pleasure. yes? welcome to female heterosexuality. thats pretty much the definition of it.
or, perhaps you, gay transmen, dont really want to fuck that often, but your male partner wants it all the time? welcome to female heterosexuality. (if not having intercourse that often is something that “gay transmen” even want, which i doubt — is it homophobic (or misandric) of me to observe thats not how gay male culture generally works, especially the part about trolling gay bars? oh well). seriously, im thinking these women want frequent intercourse, and they find heterosexual fucking seriously lacking in that regard, but what do i know, having been there and done that myself? its just a hunch.
at any rate, you want to fuck men, but you dont want all the baggage that comes with straight fucking, for females. i get it. but looking at the big picture (aka. context) reveals that thing you want is what all women want — to have our sexuality include sexual pleasure and to exclude reproductive pain. if you noticed that heterosexual fucking doesnt work like that, well, you arent alone. it doesnt make you a gay male though, sorry.
also, having intercourse for pleasures sake — considering the harm it does to female-bodied persons — is anti-feminist, and that cannot be remedied.
anyway, criticism of heterosexual fucking and the problems it presents for female-bodied persons is not new. radical feminists have been addressing this for decades, but the trans horde does not want transmen or anyone to know about that. in fact, transgender activism specifically demands that PIV-critical radical feminists be silenced, and their work erased from the face of the earth. it would behoove transmen — and all women — to consider why that is.
