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.
A Personal Statement February 28, 2013
Posted by FCM in books!, feminisms, health, meta, politics, WTF?.Tags: dave thomas, field of dreams, radfem 2013, radfem hub, reformism, university sponsored feminism
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please bother me for the password so you can read my super sikkrit thoughts. j/k. (this is not a password protected post. read on.)
i have experienced a blogging crisis recently. is this a first-world problem? oh dear. actually, its a speech problem, a silencing problem. women around the world experience this, and i experience it too. this is why i am a radical feminist, afterall. because i share class: female with 3.5 billion women globally who are rountinely, systematically and very easily silenced, by men, and by male technology, and you know, rape, and threats of rape. when we do get a word in edgewise, its precariously positioned indeed. we are no-platformed globally, and we speak from atop the head of a pin, standing on one foot, juggling knives. the lucky ones have a getaway-car waiting at the base of the mountain. sometimes the driver has been shot. me, i have a bicycle.
a bicycle? the head of a pin? is this supposed to be symbolic or something? no — its just words, meant to convey an image, a feeling and above all, an un-obscured message. the message might be a feeling, of course. did it work?
but its not symbolic — i dont do symbolism. i dont have time, and i was never good at it anyway. i tried, when i was young and first thought i wanted to write — a play, as i recall. with symbolism! hester prynne’s illegitimate (foreign, irritating, secret, precious) daughter was named pearl — get it? and as i was getting my characters in order, i realized okay, this is going to be a hell of a lot of work. this is going to take so much research, and there are some things that i — as a 16-year old (and girl) — simply could not know. like, i wanted one of my characters to be an adult man from new york city (i think?) how was i supposed to write that? that project went nowhere, once i realized that. i had written some notes in a small, extremely cheaply made journal covered in black chinese polyester silk. i never used the journal for anything after that. what a waste.
oh, and i just remembered! my very first big writing project was going to be a book! i started it when i was 10, over summer vacation. the only line i recall: a wave of excitement splashed over her body as she…did something. i know she — a high school aged girl — was going to a dance at school, so she was either entering the school or the gym. at 3:00 in the afternoon. because thats what time the dances were, when i was in 4th grade. somehow i knew i was being naive though, and that high-school dances worked differently, but how? i never finished the book. i remember sitting at the table in the air conditioning in a wet bathing suit, typing on an old typewriter with a couple missing keys that poked into my fingers. like, really bad. it was almost useless as a typewriter. my sister and our friend made “tea cakes” for us to eat, in our wet bathing suits in the air conditioning — “cakes” which consisted of the inner parts of whitebread slices balled up in our hands, which we drank with…something. maybe tea, but probably not. iced tea maybe. the swirls in the “tea cakes” (bread-balls) that looked kinda like cinnamon were actually dirty-hand dirt.
i had thought exclusively positive things about all of this — it was fun! — until one of the mothers asked us what “tea cakes” were, and then what the swirls were. she also asked me what i was writing, and when i replied that i was writing a book, she seemed skeptical! it hadnt occurred to me to be embarrassed about literally every single thing i was doing there at that table, eating dirty hand-balled whitebread, typing words that would never be a book ever, because there is no possible way. then, im sure i went swimming. in a dirty lake. with fish. in case anyone was wondering.
anyway, what was i saying? oh, symbolism. i dont do it. what i do is write things, for people to read, and then i converse with them about it. generally speaking, i speak literally (not metaphorically) and i invoke feeling, as well as convey information. in every post i write, i include an insight, because otherwise i bore myself to death and see very little point. these insights come from different places and i dont take credit for most of them — i just work here. i show up to work here. luckily, i am frequently inspired.
as a part of this writing-thing, i sustain direct and indirect hits, because for whatever reason, people are actually reading what i am saying. they are paying attention to it and responding to it in various ways. i *dont* like attention, but i do like writing things, for people to read, and then discussing it with them. so i keep doing it. sometimes i think about ending it so that i dont have to deal with the shitty parts of it anymore, and the shitty part is really fucking shitty. like, i feel like i am eating some amount of shit every fucking day, or most days. it feels toxic and alienating.
what i started doing when i feel toxic and alienated — because when i get like this i feel like i have nothing else to read, even though thats not exactly true, but thats how it feels when there is so (relatively) little radical work out there and i just want to feel inspired again, and i am feeling quite alone and frustrated by this point, and the thought of picking up a 30-year old book isnt doing it for me, and i dont want to have to search for anything, wahhhh, poor me — i read my own archives. okay? i do. i read the posts and i read the comments — seriously, i highly highly recommend the comments. it takes about an hour to read 2 or 3 posts and the conversations that follow, and every time i do this, i think — this is some of the best if not THE BEST writing on the internet. or something. you literally cannot get this anywhere else. okay? i think this about the posts, and i think this about the comments. its not the writing as much as the ideas of course, but damn those are some nice words, strung together in a coherent way, intended to make sense to other people. which is different than being a “good writer” not incidentally. get it?
and i used to do this with the HUB too. every time we were under attack or experiencing some crisis or sustaining repeated blows, from within and without, sometimes at the same time, i would pry one hand out of my hair and go a-browsing. in its early days, i would browse HUB’s front page — it went on forever, and had so much fresh content, it was glorious — and i would think “this is really good work. i am really happy about this. excellent.” or something. and you know what else i would think about? as much as i hate to admit it to all you amazing women who might be able to go entire minutes without an old white man popping into your head, i (would and do) think about dave thomas, the creator of the wendy’s hamburger franchise.
okay? i think about dave freaking thomas and his freaking fast-food restaurants. because i once saw a biography about him, and he spake into the camera thusly:
every time i feel down, and like this cant possibly succeed (he was competing with the biggies mcdonalds and burger king, dont forget) i go into one of my restaurants, and i have a burger and a frosty and i think “this is really good food.” and that makes me feel better, and i start to believe this might actually work.
thats a paraphrase, and its rather like “if i build it, they will come” — but with pickles and onions. get it? if i build it, they will come. another dumb 80s reference that has stuck with me all this time, for some reason. the young ‘uns can google it.
so look. deep down, im just a hick who remembers stuff, and i find inspiration where i find it. i involuntarily recall this interview of dave thomas i accidentally saw once, when im feeling down about radical feminist blogging, or when the biggies are about to crush me. because the biggies are about to crush me, always, and therefore, i sustain blow after blow, from within and without, i end up thinking about hamburgers a lot. not all the time, but more than i normally would, for sure. i am thinking about them right now. and now you are too. 
so, is there an actual point to be located anywhere in this post? yes. did it come through? you tell me. i feel like hammered shit right now, and im thinking about crusty, greasy hamburgers i cant even eat. because of food allergies, mind you. my appetite is completely fine.
The Manketplace of Broideas! February 18, 2013
Posted by FCM in international, liberal dickwads, MRAs, politics, porn, prostitution, radical concepts, self-identified feminist men.Tags: conference, london, radfem 2013
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i think we have all seen recently (and forever) that mens alleged “marketplace of ideas” really isnt. men wax idiotic about their beloved “marketplace” which is interesting terminology in itself — if there is no “market” for it, it has no place. and obviously they mean this literally — if men cant make money (or some other benefit) from it, its worthless. they like to think this isnt true, and cite as evidence their made-up assertion that but but but their marketplace includes anti-capitalist dood-volutionary type material too!
in reality, mens “marketplace” includes allegedly subversive material, as long as its porny enough, and exploits women. hello. orwell himself once marveled about his own career as a writer that he had “somehow” convinced capitalism (or like, the establishment, or something) for a short time to pay him for work that was directly oppositional to its own interests. a close reading of “1984″ of course reveals that, whatever else it mightve been, orwells doodvolutionary work was also valuable PIV-positive, woman-hating propaganda. mystery solved.
we have seen rampant censorship of womens ideas recently — funny that, since women have only recently been granted a voice in public, and been allowed to read and write for that matter. the lucky ones of us anyway. and despite a global policy and practice of silencing women, often via rape and threats of rape, we see men waxing asshole about “free speech” and how it doesnt count as censorship if its hate speech! or, its not really silencing unless the government does it. it doesnt count, when its done to us, by men, because this that and the other. but specifically women dont need the government to silence us if we are shut down immediately by your average, male-privileged joe via domestic terrorism, including terroristic rape and death threats and men stalking us and promising to harm our children. or if we manage to speak for a couple of months anyway, and later, when a major blogging platform shuts us down for alleged TOS violations (while leaving up all manners of woman hatred, including porn AND RAPE AND DEATH THREATS).
this isnt technically censorship they say, quite ironically, since they are saying it with the deliberate intention of shutting us down and preventing us from developing a theory about whats really going on — we are specifically prevented from conceding ok, this is not technically censorship AND YET we are being effectively silenced anyway, and then speculating on why and how that is.
so the average joe shuts us down, because it *is* in fact (largely) the average joe that oppresses women globally, every day, because patriarchy. they do this with their dicks, and with the express and implied threat of using their dicks against us. and, you know, their vicious murderous violence and threats of violence. it works. and they go right on believing (or pretending to believe) that their “marketplace of ideas” really includes a diversity of human thought, or that it should, and even that it could. their idiotic assertions are laughable, making one question the veracity of certain “common knowledge” regarding what men really fear — legend has it, men fear women laughing at them more than they fear anything else in the world. but they dont bother hiding their ludicrous hypocrisy, which tends to invoke a hiccup and half-concealed snort at least. so while i believe that men hate (not fear) women laughing at them, their solution is to silence womens laughter. notably, they dont try to not be funny. SILENCE.
with this in mind, i would like to acknowledge that the program and registration materials for radfem 2013 have been posted. here, there and elsewhere, women are bringing *our* ideas to the marketplace. men arent proving to like it, but mens response certainly does not detract from or negate the value of those ideas, or speak (in any direct way) to the value of our ideas to and for women, as a sexual class, around the world. in reality, radical feminism is the only idea and the only policy and practice that has any value at all. its the only honest, rigorous discourse on the planet at this time, because its the only one that centers or even acknowledges the lives and the reality of 3.5 billion oppressed people globally — women.
for thinking, intellectually honest women, for women who acknowledge our own humanity and who want to be fully free, radical feminism — including female separatism, and organizing and gathering in female-only space — is all there is. because women are a sex class, the rapeable class, sexual politics is the only political platform that holds any promise to free us, including liberating our female bodies and our minds from male dominance, and that is why we continue to do it. historically, it seems that human beings want to be, and activate towards being free, and if it surprises (or enrages) men that we persevere in the face of their threatened and actualized violence, its only because they do not think we are human at all — but they are wrong about that. in reality, everything men do and everything men think is wrong.
More Separatism By Default. Happy Valentine’s Day! February 14, 2013
Posted by FCM in porn, rape, thats mean.Tags: happy valentines day, male violence
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love, me. <3
we talked previously about the idea of separatism-by-default — if there are logistical problems getting in the way of women separating from men in a direct, forthright way, there are other ways of getting there that are worth exploring. this isnt an “ends justifying the means” kind of post, no. this is a “take a deep breath” kind of post. this is a lets reconsider.
what kind of rapey shithole are we living in, afterall, if we would have separatism by default if men were (finally) punished with jailtime for raping and contributing to men raping women. i mean if all men who were guilty of the range of offenses between actual rape and not adequately protecting women in their own communities and proximities from rape, were actually sent to jail, including every man within a 20-mile radius (say) of any and all instances of a boy or a man raping a girl or a woman, within just a few minutes there would be no men left in many places in the world. justice for women, in other words, would create female separatism by default, where all male offenders were separated from us, and allowed to do their male-culture thing with each other and not allowed to do it to us anymore. we would be alone. because justice.
what kind of porny nightmare is this, where if any of us were able to divorce ourselves from a woman-hating perspective, say by refusing to engage with patriarchal media images anymore, by default, we would be left in a female-only space. no men and nothing any man ever thought, dreamed or created would be there. because no.
and what kind of violent hell is waiting just beyond the horizon, what is it, exactly, that we are actively preventing from happening with our female blood, sweat and tears, when women put their energies into placing and enforcing social controls on men and male behavior, including mens violence against other men? and, why do we bother doing this at all? this is a serious question.
(re)consider: how many men would just kill themselves voluntarily if left to their own devices? how many resources in the form of suicide hotlines, drug rehabs, DWI checkpoints and the like are being actively put towards preventing men from killing themselves, and is this really the best use of these resources? says who?
(re)consider: how many men would kill each other if they werent prevented from doing so, both actively and passively, and how much energy is dedicated to achieving that ends daily? weekly? annually? is it worth it? this is a serious question. what would happen if we just let men do to themselves and each other what they do, unabated? im not talking about *us* doing a fucking thing to hurt men at all. im just talking about not stopping them from harming — even eliminating — themselves. do we owe it to them or something to save them from themselves? really? because we are acting as if we do, but why? i dont think women owe men a fucking thing.
and sure, women have our own interests in preventing male violence against other men, but our interests here are complicated, and worth parsing. for starters, women and girls often get caught in mens crossfire, literally and more literally. when boys and men are killed, so is the gynergy of the mothers, grandmothers and others who spent their lives and their very selves in raising and nurturing them.
perhaps our greatest fear is that if men are allowed to do what they do, and if “culture” — otherwise known as patriarchy — were allowed to be as hellishly brutal, as bloody and awful as it would be if men were allowed to just be men, unmodified, that men will simply and finally go mad, unleashing an heretofore unimaginably lawless, vicious violence, raping and slaughtering us all. and this is a realistic fear, i think. but obviously it begs the question, doesnt it — why are they worth saving, again?
what if we just got out of their way and let nature (or whatever) take its course? im just asking. we likely wouldnt have to do it for very long — i think even *i* could stand the trials and tribulations of “womens land” and passing the communal nut butter (or whatever) for the five minutes (or 5 years) it would take for men to render themselves, well, dead. after that, we could all go our own ways if we wanted. or not! either way, aaaahhhhhhh. heaven.
