“Intercourse” House Party (Part 1)

“Intercourse” House Party (Part 1) May 2, 2010

Posted by FCM in authors picks, books!, entertainment, feminisms, health, PIV, pop culture, porn, rape, thats mean, trans.
Tags: dworkin, intercourse, PIV, thought exercise
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i finally read dworkin’s “intercourse” all the way through, and have been processing it for about a week now. because i really like hearing myself talk and everything, but why constantly reinvent the wheel, when smart and learned feminists have been dissecting and discussing this material for decades? i mean really. this all started to seem very pointless a few weeks ago, particularly considering the roll i am currently on: bashing PIV, because its problematic for women but not for men. its not even sex. no, its not. and i am not the first person to think this way. there is very little new under the sun afterall.

so i bought a book, and read it. on this issue, i went to the source, dworkin, and her infamously radical notion: penis-in-vagina is a problem. oh yes it is. and this is going to be one of a several-part post. well, at least 2 parts. one just isnt going to cut it. because i have heard many women say that they didnt “get” dworkin, that they tried to read her and couldnt. and i have had some commenters here that advanced individualist arguments, when it came to PIV. “i like it, so i am going to continue to do it.” and thats a tough nut to crack. i mean really. i “like it” too, under the right circumstances. i never said i didnt.

so i propose that we start here, when trying to discuss it: stop thinking about the female body as synonymous with penetration. stop thinking about vaginas as “holes” to be filled with, or penetrated by stuff. because they arent.

since most readers here have their own vagina, this can be approached as a thought exercise. imagine that your vagina isnt a hole. because its not. a vagina is an organ, and most hours of most days, its a solid structure: its muscular walls touch each other. theres no room in there, at all. its not the hollow, upside-down carrot that we see in anatomy books. ffs. even the fucking anatomists get it wrong. its pathetic, and infuriating. but its true.

then, imagine that women are not just castrated men. its difficult, i know. i just came to this conclusion literally the other day. i mean, i always knew that freud was a misogynist asshole for even saying it, but i never really got it. how is this possible? i mean really. its some extremely effective brainwashing, that, to have women believing about themselves that we are defective, castrated something-else. instead of whole, functioning humans, who have vulvas, vaginae, and uterii *instead of* dicks. not that we have nothing, where a dick should be. (i know: it is TRANSPHOBIC!!! to suggest that women are not merely castrated men. oh well. get over it, because its true).

now. imagine that you know something about human beings for a second. because, you are one. imagine that humans do not enjoy being colonized. because they dont. having other people come into your neighborhood, and setting up shop in YOUR SPACE is not something that human beings enjoy, and they have never enjoyed, and they will never enjoy. people need their own physical space. its part of having an identity, as a person, and as a people. take this as a fact, because its true. and for those with an incurable individualist streak, consider this: even extremely tolerant people who want to share their space with others, get rightly pissed off when the visitors come in and start messing the place up. do they not?

thats it for now. as you can tell, this is kind of an experiemental post. see what you think, and decide if you want to play along. i would love to be able to discuss dworkin here, but i think theres some groundwork that must be laid, as it were. and i think this is it.

part 2 is here.

Comments

1. polly - May 2, 2010: On the ‘castrated male’ front, I’m going to requote that (lesbophobic) pile o’shite I quoted at Miska’s

Plus I don’t think sexuality, including monosexuality, is all about being attracted to what’s in people’s undies, despite what the Internet Radfems (TM) tell us. Because actually, you don’t know for sure what’s in someone’s underwear – and attraction usually happens before you get someone’s knickers off. Attracted mainly or exclusively to people of one particular gender identity? I get that. Not wanting to shag someone because you don’t like how bits of them (which may or may not be their genitals) look when they’re naked? I get that. (I once, very politely, turned a boy down for sex because he was so hairy with his clothes off I no longer wanted to sleep with him. I didn’t tell him the reason, by the way, just that I was too tired and drunk). But if you’re purely attracted to genitals? Well, to each their own but if you’re basing your sexual identity on that, do go have a read of this and this.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eRhh8XhOAN0J:leftofthepleiades.blogspot.com/2010/02/day-i-decided-to-stop-being-straight_01.html+site:leftofthepleiades.blogspot.com+look+left+of+the+pleiades&cd=84&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

The original piece links by the way to some even bigger pile o’shite saying penises are female (sorry not wanting to create too much of a diversion and troll invasion).

Now of course that commenter has got it wrong. Internet radfems (or at the very least this one) are not saying we are attracted solely to people’s genitals – I am not attracted to every single female person on the planet you eejit. What we are saying is – sexually some genitals are kind of a deal breaker for some of us. And that’s WITHOUT the socialisation of people with those genitals even being factored in.

But there is no way fun fems can accept this. Because they can’t accept that women AREN’T just castrated males. It’s like people who say to women who are attracted to butch women – well why aren’t you attracted to men. Because female genitals are different from male genitals you fool. It’s not just what they LOOK LIKE, it’s what they DO.

In the 70’s they did consciousness raising in which groups of women examined their own cervixes with a specuulum. Now everyone goes – oh that’s just mad hippies for you. But I don’t think it’s a bad idea.
factcheckme - May 2, 2010: polly, you are right. the fun-fems cannot accept that women arent merely castrated men. thats where all this trans-nonsense started. and now that its TRANSPHOBIC to say that men who cut off thier dicks ARENT WOMEN…well they arent going to ever be able to accept it. and that bothers me more than i can say.

now, as far as being attracted to peoples genitals…well i DONT like people who have been socialized male. and yet i am not sexually attracted to women. so much for nobody “really” caring whats in other peoples underpants. if i had any sense at all, i would be a lesbian.
2. polly - May 2, 2010: Well apparently I AM allowed to say I don’t like penises, (but only because I don’t like how they look, mind you) but I can’t say a surgically constructed ‘vagina’ is different from an actual vagina. Despite the fact it is, as in it can’t lubricate, it doesnt’ have a muscle structure surrounding it, It doesn’t have different textures within, it doesn’t have a g spot etc etc.

Because you know there’s nothing UNIQUE to females at all.
factcheckme - May 2, 2010: well, if you think of a “vagina” as merely a fuckhole for men, then its exactly the same as a neovagina. nothing else matters. but when you refuse to see vaginas as fuckholes for men, and you refuse to see women as life support systems for vaginas, you start noticing things about vaginas, and about women, that you never noticed before. and i have been a feminist for a long time, and a female human for longer. and i am JUST NOW GETTING IT. its not a surprise to me that dworkins work is so difficult to understand, and that its been reduced to “all sex is rape.” because thats the context portion of the book, and its the easiest part of it to understand (altough its still not easy, and many people dont get the context part either). but “intercourse” 201 absolutely requires a different way of seeing women. and we arent going to get anywhere, until we get there.
factcheckme - May 2, 2010: also, it might be difficult to imagine your vagina as being a closed space, if you keep sticking things into it. so, maybe try not sticking anything into it for a few days, or weeks, and see if that changes anything. its just a suggestion, and its not required, i dont think. and no, i am not advocating that anyone go without sex, for any period of time. if this sounds like a contradictory statement, its not.

its really a different way of looking at things, to not think of your labia as a landing strip, and of external stimulation as “foreplay”. everything changes, when you can get your head around this. or rather, everything changed for me, when i stopped thinking of womens genitals as a void. it really did. and it was much easier to understand dworkin, after i was there.
3. SheilaG - May 2, 2010: To me, the very act of penetration of women is simply the rape of women. I am a sexual absolutist in this department. The vagina is closed to all but me, and I think even biologically, I live in a very different world.

Dworkin is trying to get at what it is about the world that so degrades and controls women. And if all women out there don’t have the option of having no PIV, and having this accepted as perfectly normal woman sexuality stuff… where all the sex women desire is about the female body, well, women are colonized and coerced, it’s as simple as that.

Where patriarchy gets away with murder, is always in its colonization of the private… men beating wives, men with their PIV = Sex control of the home, all home abuse of women, economic exploitation in the home (unpaid labor is slave labor)… that sort of thing.

Biology textbooks don’t describe the female body accurately (very good point FCM). Diagrams do not really reveal the power of the vagina or how it is constructed. So Dworkin got at the most basic aspect of female subjugation… males forcing PIV on women all the time, and what this could mean for the heterosexual female sense of self in the world.

I don’t get why Dworkin is that hard to understand; the women who say this I think aren’t really working very hard. Feminism is hard to do, complex, and requires concentration and seriousness, like geometry.

This is very fine writing FCM. It makes me honor more fully my instinctive sexual choices in the world. For I can’t imagine thinking of women as their sexual organs. I honestly don’t believe that is why I love women so deeply in the first place, which is why even a lot of lesbians don’t really get me most of the time either.

To me, the female form and mind is about the liberation of the soul; it is about communicating on the deepest level with another being who will understand you. Men don’t understand women, don’t love them, don’t honor our minds and souls. They see women as sexual objects, and even if they say they don’t, they do.

It’s why the transwomen are so clueless in how they see female form, why they don’t know a thing, and don’t care to learn, because men have the power not to care and not to learn.

So if we want true liberation of women, and to honor fully female sexuality, I think the combination of straight women’s insight into how men are not the ideal companions is a good start. And also, not all women are sexually attracted to women, but more are than I would ever have imagined. The very proof is in how lesbian nation has grown worldwide over the past 40 years, when the consciousness was created for the full love of women.

Straight women get in some inherent way, the true need for female only space. Ironically, the purest female only spaces I come upon now are straight women’s spaces. They are safe, no transwomen even know about them, but sadly very few lesbians are in these spaces besides me.

Hope I’m not wandering too much off topic FCM, but I really like all the effort you’re putting into Dworkin… taking all of us to a higher level.
factcheckme - May 2, 2010: thanks sheila. this is all on topic as far as i am concerned. female-only space and PIV, female-only space and transwomen, when we see mens colonization of women and female spaces and female bodies for what it is, its all connected. thats why the men and transwomen fight so hard to silence it. and the fun-fem sex-positiveness becomes extremely problematic, when all this is considered. jessica valenti’s “yes means yes” makes me want to fucking puke, in this context. christina aguilera saying that shes “more sexual” since having her baby (and losing all her baby weight–obvs) makes me ill, when i think about what she is saying. and i *know* what they are saying, and what they are talking about, when they talk about sex, and sexuality. they are talking about PIV, but PIV isnt fucking sex. its not. PIV is PIV, and its a problem, for women and girls around the world.
factcheckme - May 2, 2010: oh, and as for dworkin being hard to understand, its all but impossible to understand it, if you believe that PIV = “sex.” because, and this is sneak preview of what will be in part 2, dworkin explains that PIV is not inherently erotic, for women. because as i said, and i am paraphrasing dworkins words here, humans as a whole hate being colonized, and they always have. oppressed people who have been treated this way throughout history, havent liked it, at all. and being poked and prodded physically, and “violated” physically is not inherently erotic either. to the extent that we enjoy PIV, its largely because we have eroticized something thats not inherently erotic, because we had to.

in other words…it sounds sex-negative to say “sex is problematic” and it sounds redundant to say that “women have eroticized sex”. and thats what almost everyone hears, when they hear PIV is problematic, and women have eroticized PIV, because they believe that PIV is sex. but PIV isnt sex. PIV is PIV. unless you take that first step, none of it is going to make sense, at all.

i guess i can see how a lesbian would think this was the most obvious thing in the world. but for most people, its not obvious, at all.
4. Rebecca - May 2, 2010: I’ve been following your blog posts and the discussions with great interest, factcheckme. Sincerely, THANK YOU for writing. You don’t hear about this stuff anywhere else that I know of, but the world desperately needs to hear about it.

This post reminds me of how I, like all other girls, was fooled into believing that PIV was the thing that was going to give me amazing orgasms. I have never felt a thing from prodding around inside the vagina, only discomfort and pain. It was and is the outside parts of the vulva that gives me pleasure. So, I thought something was wrong with me. (Freud and his theory of clitorical orgasms being the sign of an immature woman still lives on!) Anyhow, your posts validates my experiences and that of many other female people, I’d wager. I’m thankful.
5. SheilaG - May 2, 2010: Yes, for a lesbian, this really is a piece of cake to understand this.
It is obvious… want freedom, why would you want a man colonizing your body, life and mind? Makes no sense at all to me. So I just shrug my shoulders, read Dworkin, agree with her, and it’s pretty easy stuff to understand. Radical feminism is pretty basic for any woman who truly wants to access it. The alternative is accepting male colonialism, and I’m the rebel army in the jungle always looking for a chance to metaphorically pick them off with my sniper bullets… men walk by unarmed, too bad, metaphorically I kill them ever day in my war on male colonialism.

Straight women, don’t get it, never will. It’s ok, we all do as best we can. Most women I meet have no idea that men are the enemy, they are the problem, and they collaborate in this. It’s ok, there is no women’s country to move to unfortunately, we don’t have a crack army, we don’t threaten men with massive death because we own the weapons of male destruction, so it would be a great challenge for women to overthrow patriarchy.

All I know is, I can open up a little space for this. Be brave, beat the heck out of men who harass women now and then. Have that satisfaction at least. Lead by example, try to have compassion for young straight women who are conned by these penis monsters, and that’s about all the power I possess.
6. delphyne - May 2, 2010: “I AM allowed to say I don’t like penises, (but only because I don’t like how they look, mind you) I can’t say a surgically constructed ‘vagina’ is different from an actual vagina. Despite the fact it is, as in it can’t lubricate, it doesnt’ have a muscle structure surrounding it, It doesn’t have different textures within, it doesn’t have a g spot etc etc.”

Well we could always call it what it really is – an inside-out penis. It’s not a vagina in any way shape or form, it’s an inverted dick. Transwomen keep their penises inside them. Maybe that’s something worth remembering.

It’s been a few years since I last read Intercourse, but from what I remember one of the main points that Dworkin made was that men know what they are doing to us when they stick their penises into us – they know it’s about colonisation and annihilation. All their language and stories about sex make it clear what they are doing. For some reason most women choose to ignore it, and when radical feminists point out what is actually going on we’re called the sex haters, when for men the whole point of sex is to express their hatred of women and they actually tell us this all the time.
7. SheilaG - May 3, 2010: Yes, men use sex as a method of hating women. They brag openly about this all the time on talk radio, on porn sites, in the malestream media. They buy prostitutes, pretend to be good fathers and husbands, it’s all an act. As far as I can see, straight women seem to be in massive denial about this reality, and maybe they have to be.
To be sexually attracted to these monsters would be too much for me to bear.

Radical feminists just see this as obvious; it’s why radical feminism came into being, because a lot of us just observed men from the get go, and found them horrifying. Point this out to a group of straight women and they are going to freak out and try to change the subject.
They get very nervous around lesbians who just can’t take the denial and obfuscation sometimes. Other times, I say, let the clueless continue in this delusion. I wish I had the power to warn women not to sleep with dozens of men before they finally understand this, but they are not going to listen to me.

Just talk to men who are divorced and see their seething hatred and resentment over even paying child support– it’s a fascinating view on how when the object is no longer in the home to control, they’d let their own kids starve. It’s about ownership and conquest, and their juvenile incompetance. I really believe we are dealing with a profound genetic mistake that has stayed on earth way beyond its time.

Painful to have always known this. Just painful and frustrating beyond belief.
8. polly - May 3, 2010: I think there are a lot of straight women though, who are under no illusions about men. They’re just straight.

But straight/bisexual women (and this doesn’t include ALL straight or bisexual women, by any means) have no right to impose their views about men, and the actual physical presence of males, on women who want to be separate from men, for whatever reason. Do what you want. But leave me out of it.
factcheckme - May 3, 2010: Well, the language surrounding and describing piv is definitely a problem. And its hard to imagine that men don’t hear themselves, and that they don’t mean it on some level, or every level, when they debase women and use violent imagery when they talk about having “sex” with us. It’s fucking horrifying really. As far as even the “good guys” just putting on an act, well that’s something to think about too, esp when they are putting their female partners in harms way through piv. Sheila is right about having divorced men being a kind of test, to see how good they really are, after the woman is no longer there to control. Many, if not most of them would absolutely let their own kids starve, if they had their way, and only took care of them in the first place to foster their partners dependance, and compliance. obvs.
9. polly - May 3, 2010: Oh BTW Delphyne the rapist apologiser from the F word just posted these gems on her twitter:

The main argument being used against my comments on rape is that I haven’t been raped. Really should only survivors be allowed to speak?

And the patronisers keep on. I am now being told to embark on ‘a journey of understanding’ i.e. one that will end in my agreeing with them.

Oh dear. I had the worst day yesterday of internet trolls : radical feminist ones no less!

Maybe she should change her user name to ‘don’t realise the internet is public’ girl.

http://twitter.com/quietriot_girl
10. polly - May 3, 2010: Sorry formatting went astray there – lines 4 – 6 are also her pearls of wisdom.
11. Level Best - May 3, 2010: It has been a long, long time since I read Intercourse, and this post and comments are a good reminder to me of its basic concepts. All of my life that I can remember, I’ve thought what a weird and scary phenomenon it is that male people who don’t even know/like me want to literally invade the inner regions of my body. And even in the case of some male persons I knew and liked (and knew they liked me as a person), it was still a huge buzz kill and threat to me knowing that if I pursued the relationships, they invariably would mean penetration that I didn’t want. Whether they love you or hate you, the end result will be the same, and I didn’t want penetration, children, or being in the position of having to get an abortion. I sort of built my life around avoidance of PIV, and I felt ashamed of not being “normal” (HA! back in the seventies there were sex manuals and other popular etc. that declared “The only perversion is abstinance.”), but now that I’m old (I’m older than YOU, SheilaG) I am so glad I stuck to my guns. I’m never had an STD, or cervical cancer, or a pregnancy, thanks be! I’m post-menopausal now, so even if I were raped, there wouldn’t be a pregnancy–and there is an odd feeling of relief and even power about that.
12. Undercover Punk - May 3, 2010: Yo, HOUSE PARTY!!! 🙂

@ Polly:

In the 70′s they did consciousness raising in which groups of women examined their own cervixes with a specuulum. Now everyone goes – oh that’s just mad hippies for you. But I don’t think it’s a bad idea.

Whole-heartedly AGREED! Thank you!! FABs’ relationships to their female anatomy is still a huge problem. I feel like we’ve hardly progressed past being able to look at it our vaginas without freaking out! I think I might post pages from the still-radical Cunt Coloring Book over on my blog just to “illustrate” how uncomfortable and unusual it is to confront our own anatomy. All the while, society is OBSESSED with regulating it!

FCM, thank you for articulating the conceptual difficulties that are created by laying male-centric language and frameworks over FABs’ vaginas.
13. mscitrus - May 3, 2010: What you said, FCM, about the walls touching and it not being a hole is sooo true, but no one ever says that! I felt like a freak when I was just hitting puberty because I NEVER penetrated myself, it scared me that stuff could really be *inside* me. Still don’t ever put anything in me. I could never stand tampons either (to leave something in there?! still kinda grosses me out.) I have to wonder whether they would have been invented without the idea that vaginas = holes.

I used to feel so vulnerable because I thought I was walking around with a giant hole in my crotch. But now I really look at my body differently, tho it still scares the shit out of me that people still see it as a hole. Once you said that, I also realized that most of the time stuff comes OUT of it rather than in it-discharge, lubrication, blood, etc. So seeing it as a “sheath” and a hole to be filled is total BS, but unsurprising that males will make what they can do the defining feature of vaginas, instead of the other stuff it actually does on its own. Dudes are fucking clueless about anatomy anyhow.

If I ever adopt a kid I’m seriously gonna give them Intercourse for part of sex ed. I don’t think it’s possible to having willing PIV without a full knowledge and acceptance of how its viewed in society, by males and all the risks that come from it.
14. Level Best - May 3, 2010: “I felt like a freak when I was just hitting puberty because I NEVER penetrated myself, it scared me that stuff could really be *inside* me.”–mscitrus

You and me, both, mscitrus. And when I HAD to put stuff up there for yeast infections (back in the days when what was inserted were hard, pointy, and not-tiny pills!!), I was not happy. It was painful.

What bothers me about your comment is that I know you are probably MUCH younger than I am, and that society still makes young women who don’t want penetration feel like freaks. We have NOT come very far in regard to mandatory hetersexuality expectations, although I am hoping, hoping that the asexuality blogs I’ve recently been introduced to may eventually be a help in the cases in which the non-desire for penetration is asexuality.

There are, of course, at least a million and five good reasons for women to not want PIV even if they are heterosexual and WANTING real sex and orgasms. I am glad FCM and a few others are tossing it out there that SEX does not equal PIV. It needs to be said and re-said.
15. SheilaG - May 3, 2010: It is 40 some years since the birth of second wave feminism, and still, we have a sexual ideology that is brutally and menacingly male.
Women are still treated as objects for PIV, and men still think it is ok to commit rape. Rape being demanding sex acts that women don’t want.

As I said before, men dominate and humiliate women the most in private, and this is where patriarchy flourishes.

Lesbians didn’t like this state of affairs, and believed that keeping men out of rooms, places and movements was essential to female freedom. Not all lesbians mind you, we knew men were rapists, aggressors and idiots, we could see that straight women would tolerate this stuff, and that we had to create space away from the animals in the zoo.

When women can determine their sexual expression, and when men no longer have any say in this matter, because it is women who pay the price, we’ll have a feminist revolution. STDs are the creation of men, men think they define sex, and yet they know nothing about the female bodies they seemingly obsess about like lecherous louts.

It would take a massive change in consciousness on the part of straight women to turn the Titanic around, so to speak. I can’t even stand the words of men in public spaces, they make me sick, or provoke rage, so I can’t imagine how women would allow the sexual monsters and penis brains into a home. I just can’t imagine what the attraction is, other than men lying to get women to have sex. I don’t believe I have ever met a man capable of telling any truth at all vis-a-vis women. All they do is lie, they prey upon young women, and it’s why they are always after new victims that they can dominate and control. It’s why I mentioned the attitude men have toward their own children after a divorce. Men don’t want to pay for anything, unless they control it, and this includes their very own children. Take the wife out of the home, the kids away from the father, and they feel entitled to have no obligation whatsoever.

Men can’t conceive that child care is even work. They resent spousal support more than child support. Divorced men foolishly tell me this stuff thinking I would be sympathetic to their hatred of this “unfair” situation. They give me looks of utter incomprehension when I tell them that they are morally obligated to provide for the family they helped create. “You don’t have an option to starve your children, either you feed them or you are a monster,” is what I sometimes say to them. “It’s not about the ownership of women, it is about YOUR family obligations.” They don’t like this at all, but this is who men are.

I keep waiting for women to truly get this on a massive worldwide level, and I never know for sure if straight women do know this, or if they are in denial, or if they are not up to the revolutionary challenge.
Maybe all straight people seem odd to me, out of it, closed to their own selves. It’s a mystery that’s for sure.

If the sex act is so repugnant to actual straight women, and if fun feminism seems so awful in retrospect… well I’ll never get this mess ever.
16. delphyne - May 3, 2010: And her latest one is this Polly:

“If you manage to piss off everyone, from the radical feminists to the Christian Conservatives, you are probably doing something right.”

Just another attention seeking (BDSM) prat.

Speaking of penetration, tampons are awful. Once I finally got back in touch with my body in my thirties, the tampons had to go. Another tool to make women feel like it is normal to stick things inside us.
factcheckme - May 3, 2010: Many, many straight women find piv repugnant, but there are no words for it. Oh how I wish there were accurate numbers on this. Many, many, many, many women, both now and in the past, both here and in other places, regard piv that way, but they don’t count, and they aren’t counted.
factcheckme - May 3, 2010: And there are at least a handful of us who can and do enjoy it under the right circumstances, but find it problematic nonetheless. There are no words for that either. Big fat man hating lesbian is about as close as we will probably ever get.
17. SheilaG - May 3, 2010: So it seems like the word must go out — the horror or distaste of straight women for PIV, developing a vocabulary to describe this, counting and detailing the numbers of women nationwide or worldwide who have had it with this male enhancing sexual practice.

That would be a very good place to start for straight women — you’d need a whole new group to put this message out there, to describe honestly about how this isn’t something appropriate for most women, and that it can be ok under proper circumstances, but women need to have the space to avoid it completely, to have this be a common discussion, just the way birth control and abortion and child birth is for women.

Getting out the word about how female bodies are constructed, and that most of female sexuality has nothing to do with reproduction. Let’s start by eliminating the phrase “reproductive organs” from all medical science. My organs are not reproductive, I do not give birth, I do not have sex with men, I have nothing to do with children, don’t like them, get bored with them… join organizations where I don’t ever have to deal with them. Reproduction and sex acts have nothing in common for women, and we should say this.

STDs are male crimes against women, cancer of the cervix may well be a male penile crime against women, for example.
18. rhondda - May 3, 2010: I have not been with a man for years, but I still have a laugh about my first time, way back in the 70’s. We had gone out and had fun together and he was always after me to do it. I thought about it you know and felt well why not. My mother was such a prude of the 50’s and I had been so brainwashed about my ‘reputation’. I decided to do it. He freaked, left me and then came back. I was lying there and it hurt a little bit and I thought ‘this is it?’ He said to me ‘you could move’. I wonder now if he was a virgin too. Not sure. But when I started to move I liked the feeling. I tell you then I knew nothing about sex except it was bad for you because no one would marry you then.
The funny thing is he started to cheat on me. The woman he approached called me. Wow hey! We decided to get him. I went to her dorm room and we both got into bed together and when he came in, he totally freaked out and ran away. I love her for that. We laughed and laughed. My only regret is that I lost touch with her. Him, well thanks pal. Now I know. In those days if you did it, you got the look. Now a days, if you don’t do it, you get the look. “You aren’t sexually active?” ” Well, no, my body, my decision, and well the pickings are not too appealing.”
Mary Daly writes in Pure Lust about the difference between Lust and patriarchal lust which is lechery. Lust with the capital “L” is Lust for living. Patriarchal lust is about domination. It is not so much about choice as about discernment and knowing yourself.
If I reject the idea that a man has the right to dominate me, I also reject the idea that another woman has that right.
I have been pushed by ‘political lesbians’ to be one and I am sorry, but I leave that open and will not be told by anyone who I can love and who they can love. As for born lesbians, bless you. I intend to spin my own freedom for the rest of my life. I would offer Jane Caputi’s ‘The age of sex crimes’ for an analysis of the subliminal fear
media and myths try to embed in women. Purge them.
factcheckme - May 3, 2010: rhondda, your first time story made me lol. and you are right about the pickings being extremely slim. and yet we are expected to be “active” regardless. its such a conspiracy against women, to ensure that even the most unappealing men get laid. speaking of conspiracies, raise your hand if you think the myth of motherhood is ALL about PIV, and nothing about children, at all. i mean really. as soon as the woman leaves, there are all kinds of accusations made about her abilities to parent. and we all know that many women are not meant to be mothers, at all. but we are ALL “meant” to have PIV.

ergo, “women are natural mothers,” “women love children” etc. the interesting thing is that many MEN actually hate thier children, and as sheila mentions would have them starve, if they had their way. once the woman leaves, and he cant control her, and she is no longer submitting to PIV, he no longer cares.

i personally hate children. they absolutely disgust me on a deep level. i might write about that some day.
19. rhondda - May 4, 2010: OH FCM, tell me about children. I have two. I believed the myth that the man would protect me. Well, shit. I was pregnant and he hid behind me. I had thought when one is most vulnerable — one’s body was doing all these things that one had no control over that he would be there protecting me. Well, sorry no. What a twit and a sorry excuse for a man. It took me a while to realize that. I was so shocked that he was actually jealous of any attention I gave his sons. I realized that then and there I had to protect them from him. I felt like a grizzly bear mom. When I finally realized that he was not going to grow up and take responsibility for his own kids, I got rid of him. The mind games were incredible.
So, I had to take total responsibility for them . Who the fuck else was going to do it? My only consolation is that they have now seen what I did and I have told them if they know that they had better treat their girlfriends with consideration. Don’t know if that will happen as they live in the male privilege world. I I hate Mother’s day and have told them not to recognize it. My birthday is my day. I am a person and not a role.
20. mscitrus - May 4, 2010: “What bothers me about your comment is that I know you are probably MUCH younger than I am, and that society still makes young women who don’t want penetration feel like freaks.”

Yup, I am hella young (18). I’m not sure if this is new to my generation, but expectations aren’t limited to vaginal penetration in my experience. (thanks porn!) Women (and me) are considered prudes if we don’t want to do anal, don’t like it or find it gross. To be a good girlfriend, we have to be at least “open-minded” enough to “try it” if nigel wants to.

The problems with intercourse are apparent not just with straight men either. In gay culture (from what I understand, but at least in the slash/yaoi fanfiction community) top = penetrating partner, and bottom = penetrated partner. Besides just the top/bottom words in themselves being problematic, it’s also slang for who’s dominating/submitting in BDSM. Pretty telling, eh?
factcheckme - May 4, 2010: Yay anal!!!11!1 I am all for shoving things up men’s butts. I’m so glad to hear that the young uns have discovered it, and that young women are encouraged to be open minded to shoving things up their bfs butts. You know, if the Nigel wants to!

Jk.
21. dirt - May 4, 2010: Dworkin couldnt get past her own fucked up psychology, Intercourse is a clear indication of this, along with the life she led, the sexuality she co-opted (lesbianism) while simultaneously adhering to patriarchy’s compulsory heterosexualism (marrying a fag).

Dworkin pre-dates the “stone-femmes” currently haunting, colonizing Femme/Butch spaces, utilizing Butch women’s shame for their own “queer” needs, urging Butch women to trannify because “stone femmes” are “queer” NOT lesbian and cannot get past Butch WOMENS bodies.

A raped vagina isnt a happy vagina but an unhappy vagina doesnt make you a lesbian.
22. rhondda - May 4, 2010: Dirt, there is alot in what Dworkin says I have found helpful in my own journey. However, I do agree with you that she was an abused woman and that she could not get past that. Perhaps it is in part because alot of abused women could relate to what she said. However, I thought after reading intercourse that she was so alienated from her own being that she tried to make it universal. The beginning of the book where she talks about Tolstoy and his wife and his lack of affection and her longing for it made me wonder is this about alienation? All her literary selections are on that same theme.
You are absolutely right about an unhappy vagina doesn’t make you a lesbian. Not sure about a happy clit though. Ha ha, that is a joke.
(no offense intended)
23. veganprimate - May 4, 2010: Great comments by everyone.

Regarding men hating their kids…yup. My coworker is recently divorced, and her son needed to get to Montana for a job. His mother told him to ask his father, since they share custody. He should foot part of the bill, was her thinking. So, when the kid approaches his dad, he hands him a 20 dollar bill, and says, “Tell you mother to go fuck herself.”

I don’t dislike kids as much as I used to, but one reason I advocate for women not to have them is b/c they are the easiest and best conduit for men to fuck women over big time. When you have a kid with a man, it’s like giving him a loaded gun and drawing a bullseye between your eyes. And since men don’t care about their children, they’ll use them anyway they can to get back at women, even going so far as to kill them sometimes.

Regarding mscitrus’ comment about the sexual atmosphere that she faces as an 18 year old, I think external circumstances and the political/sexual climate during one’s formative years are really important. I grew up during the time when it was almost a requirement for men to give women cunnilingus. Oh, did I ever reap the benefits of that, lemme tell ya! When I was growing up, anal sex was something only perverts did, and if they did it, they certainly didn’t talk about it. I’ve had so much good sex that I wouldn’t put up with bad sex from anyone. But I feel so bad for girls growing up in this environment b/c it’s so horrid. Just so horrid. Thankfully, masturbation has always been around. I don’t know what the current climate is towards masturbation, but when I was growing up, it was something that you didn’t talk about, but then around college-age, I’d bring it up in conversation and discovered that other women did it, too. My parents (mainly my dad) were really great about not making me feel bad about it. My mom walked in on me once, b/c I stupidly forgot to lock the door. I remember distinctly that I was watching The Muppet Show, and lying on my bean bag chair with my pants down around my ankles. My mom opened the door, said, “What are you doing?”, and I followed with, “Nothing.” I stayed in my room quite a long time before venturing into the rest of the house, and all my mom said to me was, “Make sure you lock your door so your sister doesn’t ever walk in on you.” I guess when my dad was growing up, he was taught that it was a sin (he was a preacher’s kid), and so he specifically had a talk with me about how it’s not wrong and it’s perfectly natural to do. In fact, one time he got pissed off at me for slamming my bedroom door whenever I got mad (teenage angst, ya know), and he took it off the hinges. I said, “How am I going to masturbate?” Guess what? He put it right back up! I love my dad!
24. polly - May 4, 2010: What you say about anal is true MsCitrus. And it’s massively risky in terms of HIV transmission (not to mention deeply unpleasant as women don’t have a prostate gland and aren’t stimulated by it the way men are).

Delphyne – funny somebody else just emailed me saying EXACTLY the same thing. Is the trainwreck thread still going on?
factcheckme - May 4, 2010: there was definitely something weird going on with dworkin and her partner on the “gender blender” front. although strangely enough, it wasnt weird enough, apparently, for the fun-fems to embrace anything she ever said. her partner (the fag dirt mentions) wrote a book called “refusing to be a man” that i absolutely refuse to read. but that said, who of us *can* get over our own fucked up psychologies? i mean really. and as rhondda mentions, many women are fucked up in the first place because of what men have done to us. (dirt has commented here that she thinks straight women deserve to be raped and abused by men, for sleeping with the enemy…but the fact remains that we are raped and abused by them). and i am not being flip when i say this, but i would really like to know what a woman-identified butch lesbian who fucks her exclusively femme partners with a strap-on cock, thinks of “intercourse” and colonizing female bodies. clearly, its not the same when a woman does it, because it doesnt lead to STDs or pregnancy, and there are no nerve endings in a strap-on cock. BUT as dworkin mentions, theres nothing inherently erotic about being poked and prodded physically. women have eroticised this, because we had to, to garner love and affection from men in a world where they are going to get PIV from us, whether we like it or not.
25. delphyne - May 4, 2010: What a horrible misogynistic comment about Dworkin, reducing her to being a raped vagina and her political work to some kind of rape trauma.

Why should she get past what was done to her? She understood that it was political and systemic. It’s like asking Jews to get past the holocaust or black Americans to get past slavery. Rape isn’t just some side issue for women to “get over”, it is the number one tool in the male supremacists arsenal to oppress women, suppress us and keep us separated from ourselves.

You might be right about Dworkin co-opting lesbianism, dirt (although from the talk of butches and femmes it sounds like some lesbians have gone and co-opted absolutely the worst of patriarchal roles) but if you can make that accusation without the woman-hating that would be great.

Dworkin noted very clearly the stigma attached to women because of sex we have had with men, I think you’ve just given us a clear example of that.

(Polly, they’ve finally closed the comments. I got in the last word to Ely though 🙂 )
factcheckme - May 4, 2010: Thanks Delphyne. Also, I should have said that its not the same when women do it, first and foremost, because women aren’t men. Duh. But I still have to wonder whether butch lesbians who get their jollies through penetrating other women don’t have men to thank for that really, for conditioning women so thoroughly on the yay penetration!!!!1!1 I mean really. Do you also enjoy sticking your finger up your partners nose? If not, why not?
26. Level Best - May 4, 2010: delphyne, I agree with you 100% about Dworkin. I think she was brilliant as well as profoundly hurt and that the hurt and brilliance allowed her to make the universal connections between her oppression and the oppression of women worldwide. I saw her in person once at a university, and waves of love were flowing between her and the excited college-age women who packed into the auditorium to hear her speak. I wish people who out of hand condemn her could know about how profoundly she could connect with other women. She wasn’t all theory.
27. Undercover Punk - May 4, 2010: Hmmm, I’ve been having a very heated discussion about the use of dildos with butch lesbians on another blog. I think analysis about the distinction between dildos and penises is really important to explore and deconstruct in the context of heteropatriarchy. As expected, the inconvenient parallels between “butch cock” and penises make most people too uncomfortable to participate in reasonable discussion.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with the use of dildos as a penetrative tool. Anything that penetrates a woman will necessarily be more or less “phallic” shaped. It’s unavoidable, as far as I can conceptualize. I do NOT think that penetration should be the *primary form* of sexual exchange, but penetration in and of itself is not, IMHO, the problem. I’ve known Gold Star Lesbians (never had het sex) who enjoy penetration much, much more than I do.

The problem, I think, is the idea that masculine people are the penetratORS, while feminine people should always enjoy penetratION. And further, that penetration is REAL SEX. It gets muddy when woman-on-woman sexual engagements involve, more than anything else, penetrative acts utilizing phallic shaped tools (as opposed to organic body parts such as fingers, hands, and tongues), particularly when the roles are relatively static between penetrator/penetratee. Another complicating element is the use of the strap-on harness–specifically placing the dildo OVER the wearer’s vagina and penetrating another in a manner resembling het PIV. Alternatives include the use of a double dildo and using one’s hand to negotiate the penetrative tool.

I have no comment regarding Gender Fetishes.
28. delphyne - May 4, 2010: That’s a wonderful story Level Best.

I wouldn’t call her theory at all actually. She was/is a truth-teller. That’s why she threatens so many people, including some women unfortunately.
29. veganprimate - May 4, 2010: I was under the impression that Dworkin’s marriage was of convenience only. The dude married her in order to provide her with health insurance. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I heard.
factcheckme - May 4, 2010: According to the foreward of intercourse, 20th ann ed, she was partnered with a man who self identified as gay for some 30 years. And she self identified as a lesbian at times, but none of her friends can confirm that she was ever partnered with a woman, ever. Noone even knew they were married until after she died, so number one, they were both apparently experts at keeping secrets. And yes, her health was poor and there is speculation that they were married so she could use his health insurance.

I think that’s where I read it anyway. I don’t have the book in front of me at the moment. I will check later.
30. JenniferRuth - May 4, 2010: I read Intercourse for the first time a few months back. I felt that Dworkin gave information, reasoning, situations, analysis and so much truth in her writing. What she didn’t offer was a conclusion. She left the reader to make their own conclusion.

Intercourse is not a lecture but an opportunity. Dworkin is asking you to think for yourself about the act of intercourse, to take all information aboard (yes, even the nasty stuff you don’t want to hear) and imagine different possibilities.

Underlying all the anger is a pleading, a passion for what the physical intimacy of intercourse has the *potential* to be and a sadness for how often it falls short (probably 100% of the time). If anything, the book is pro-sex. It’s just anti-violence, -oppression and -bitterness.

I thought it was brilliant. I can understand why it has such a bad-rep though – anyone with a closed-mind and invested interest in the status-quo (men) would find this book terrifying.

(When I say bitterness I am talking about men and their inability to accept the fact they can’t give birth. When I say pro-sex I am not talking about intercourse specifically)
31. delphyne - May 4, 2010: Maybe they just didn’t feel like their private lives should be public property.

Dworkin’s life got ripped to pieces by people who hated her. That might make you good at keeping secrets. I certainly don’t feel like I have a right to know who she fucked or didn’t fuck.
factcheckme - May 4, 2010: Again, there was some gender bending type stuff going on with them, and her partner is now partnered with another man. And his gender bendy shit makes me sick, just like when any man does it. But I wonder if being partnered with a gay man took any of the pressure off, for piv. It’s just a thought. I agree that its really nobodys business, but the interesting thing to me is that the fun fems don’t accept her, or respect anything she said. For them, its clearly all about sex-positive ideology, although they like to pretend they are so cool with the gender bending. What a bunch of deludinoids.
factcheckme - May 4, 2010: Up, the differences between a penis and a dildo cannot be overstated, its true. Because a dildo isn’t going to knock you up, and the person using it isn’t necessarily an entitled prick. Bbl.
32. mscitrus - May 4, 2010: I think radfems can never really “get over” rape. I know I can’t get over mine. I know it’s likely it’ll happen to me again and again, and even if it doesn’t I know other women are being raped. Our culture ensures that we never forget about it. There’s nothing wrong with being hurt forever, and there’s nothing wrong with being a victim.

And yes to everything you said FCM, about women penetrating women. My ftm ex raped me with a strap on and got off on me giving him “blowjobs.” At least with intercourse, there’s the possibility of the clit of the penetration getting some friction/pressure from the strapon. With blowjobs, though, not so much. I always wondered WHY he enjoyed it, since there’s nothing there…but then again, men also rape with their fingers and objects.

And while there isn’t the STD/pregnancy risk, with a fake dick you can still tear or hurt a woman. (which is seen as part of intercourse, as saying “you’re tearing me”/”it’s too big” etc etc is something commonly used in porn, especially the written shit.) Sorry if this is TMI, but that same ex tore my perineum and (I think) permanently damaged my anus, so that it often bleeds/tears if I have to use the restroom. Strap ons are fucking dangerous too. Even if they weren’t, penetration would still evoke the domination/submission paradigm, whatever the sex of the people involved.
33. polly - May 4, 2010: Anything that penetrates a woman will necessarily be more or less “phallic” shaped.

Well unless it’s a hand UP. It’s possible to have vaginal stimulation that is nothing to do with fucking.
34. SheilaG - May 4, 2010: I don’t think Dirt is being very fair to Dworkin. To me, she is a feminist visionary, and most of the time, when I read her books, I actually knew nothing about her personal life. She had a great literary mind, a brilliant mind, and I loved her because she loved literature.
She also named the enemy in men, and was so threatening that she stired up real hatred and fear among all hetero-men and enslaved “liberal” women.

We should admire the feminists most attacked, because the vicious never ending attacks mean these women are closest to freedom, or have discovered the profound path to freedom for women. Men fear Dworkin’s truth, they don’t fear Ellen or Suze Orman.

As for dildos etc., I find them ridiculous. I would never consider making love to a woman by shoving some strap on thing into her. What a ridiculous idea, and besides, why would women ever need to buy any “product” to truly make love to women?

I horribly object Dirt that you think straight women deserve what they get for sleeping with the enemy. No woman ever deserved to be raped, no matter what. I am pained that straight women are stuck with these monsters, colonizers, rapists, porn dogs and demons to be sure, pained at the life I see of women out in the world… I suffer to see them overloaded with children, poor, with some tatooed idiot of a man around. I am profoundly lucky, I always was a lesbian, never engaged in penetrative anything ever, solidly gold star, have saved a couple of women from being raped, show outword contempt for men, and threaten the hell out of them.

Got an education, bored with children and even knew that when I was one. So I had a very easy life in so many ways. Had an indifference to social conformity, become more hard line as I get older, but I would never wish rape or patriarchy on straight women. I don’t understand straight women or their worlds, haven’t a clue. All I see is their outside lives, or read the pain on their faces, see them age beyond their years so quickly, watch as they’ve lost their youth to jack-ass husbands who dump them for younger women. Watch in pain as the younger women have affairs with the older men…

I don’t know what to do. I defend and protect straight women, making sure their husbands do things in the best interest of the women and children. A subtle and persuasive person, I make it happen, even as the straight women don’t realize what economic danger they’re in. I defend the honor of straight women if I see men picking on them, I have a murderous brutal rage, and it is nothing for me to bash men with words or fists. Men are less than human in my book, I see them as dirt, literally. (Sorry Dirt not you). It is easy for me to hate and bash men, I hate what they do to women.

My greatest suffering sometimes is not a homophobic world, or the dehumanization straight women subject me to. Hey, I’m free, they are penetrated and colonized and economically owned. They are trapped in heterosexuality, I am a rarity in nature. My species is miniscule, my world tiny. I live in a straight dominated world, and there is not one city lesbians like me own and control, not one police force we have, not one army we possess. We have nothing and are nothing, but at least we never had sex with the enemy, never were owned or beaten by them. At least we had the satisfaction of bashing the oppressor’s heads in now and then, to delight in the fear men have shown us, to rejoice in their ssive death and suffering. Hey small compensation. But it’s something.
35. polly - May 4, 2010: Ms Citrus, they now make a strap on which (allegedly) allows the wearer to ‘feel’ someone giving them a blow job.

No I don’t know why either. Well I do, I’m lying, but I don’t think it’s anything to do with sexual pleasure. If you really want to get that with a dildo you can, as UP said, use a double ended one.
36. Undercover Punk - May 4, 2010: Polly, more or less, I said. And I realize that hands themselves are not “phallic” shaped, but fingers are. And in some ways, so is the shape a hand makes for “fisting.”
FCM - May 4, 2010: actually you can put anything in there you really want to, because it wont get lost inside. unlike in your ass, where you actually can lose stuff (public service announcement…and no, that hasnt happend to me personally). one of my stripper friends went to a harley event and performed in some kind of “my wife is a bigger ho than yours is” contest for the crowd, and put a string of pearls inside her, and pulled them out slowly. and licked them. she won. same idea with anal beads. without the licking hopefully.

and msc, if you have an anal or perineal fissure, it might heal with time. tell your gyn about it, if you havent already. i had something similar at one point, and i can tell you that they make you more sucseptible to STDs, so be careful. but mine went away eventually.

i wanted to say to the “butch lesbians who get their jollies by penetrating other women” that i am sorry, because that didnt come out quite right. i am still pissed off at dirt for her comment, and maybe even for her strap-on cock fetish. but for the rest of the women this might have applied to, i just meant that our rape/PIV culture has very likely greased the wheels, so to speak, of your female partners interest in being penetrated, and your own desire to penetrate. its something we have to consider. but clearly, the consequences (and intent much of the time) are very different, and much less problematic, when women are penetrating other women. i sincerely hope that its not a requirement though, as UP mentions. if for no other reason than its very difficult to think of your body as inpenetrable, and your genitals as NOT a void, if you keep sticking things in there. women are whole beings, and their bodies are not synonymous with penetration. period.
factcheckme - May 4, 2010: BTW, this “intercourse” post is getting a ton of hits, which is weird because its barely transphobic at all. and the traffic isnt coming from anywhere in particular, mostly from people searching “femonade.” so i suspect that someone has twittered it or something but they dont want to give me the traffic, or dont want me to know where its coming from, so they refuse to link directly. cowards.
37. SheilaG - May 5, 2010: Hey, any serious radical feminist discussion of Dworkin is going to put the enemies at bay. No men want women uniting and figuring out ways to end PIV– where women have 100% control over what is done to their bodies… that is radical and Dworkin is one of the few who went there with the practical analysis as well as the theory.

Dworkin actually thought men could be enlightened if they were educated. I am under no illusion.
38. mscitrus - May 5, 2010: Ugh, why the hell would anyone want a strap on that does that? There’s this thing called cunninglingus, hellooooo people. I know it’s not about the sex or the feeling, it’s about the power, but the part of me that loves feeling of actually being touched goes WTF every damn time.

Tho I’m not a lesbian so it doesn’t really effect me much, I see strap ons as hugely problematic. Some of this might come from my past, but I think that just gives more evidence that being the penetrator makes a man a “man.” I remember having my first crush after puberty hit, and since she was a girl, the only sex my imagination could come up with had strap ons. I couldn’t think sex of *without* penetration, not even lesbian sex. Talk about fucked up. Dicks are so overrated. And as you were saying, UP, the fact that the penetrator is seen as masculine (and therefore dominant) is very problematic.

I also totally get what you’re saying about fingers specifically being phallic. God knows dudely assholes like fingering women to contorl them. I know when I’m having sex via fingering tho, my lover uses his whole hand for it-not like in fisting, but so that there’s sort of a rocking motion that presses the rest of the hand against the clit and the other fingers on the labia. The finger part is still technically phallic but overall it’s more shell-shaped or like a cupping gesture. Dunno how to describe it, but I’d say it’s a pretty nice non-penetration obsessed act. If this is intrusive, I’m sorry, but I’m kinda curious as to whether lesbians do this commonly? Cause I enjoy this a fuckton more then plain ol’ fingering and lesbians are more likely to actually consider their partners pleasure.

It’s interesting how the comparisons between body parts work. We say a finger is kinda like a dick, not that i dick is kinda like a finger. Maybe that’s just because dicks aren’t flexible/jointed? (and men don’t have 10 of them…)
39. SheilaG - May 5, 2010: Of course lesbians are more concerned with their partner’s pleasure.
Men don’t know what women’s bodies are other than to own, control or objectify them. I’m convinced that men don’t even know what love is. I am beginning to believe that men aren’t even human anymore, they are some alien colonizing group, perpetually in ignorance.

Sex with men is the most serious addiction straight women face. I can’t even imagine thinking that a dildo = sex, or that a penis = sex, even when I was a very young lesbian, even before the time there was much information about lesbians in malestream society, or an aggressive in your face separatist movement. So your comments mscitrus struck me as rather odd. This was almost 40 years ago, and even then, I had no thought that anything heterosexual had anything at all to do with my life and ideals. Straight women must be so colonized, that even their sexual imagination is taken over at a very eary age.

I was contemptuous of the sexual ideology out in the world, wondering how women could tolerate this from men, or why they even loved men. No clue what the attraction was at all.

This dildo obsession is about how lesbian culture is being degraded, and even lesbians don’t seem to realize this. But then again, there are seemingly two distinct branches of lesbian life… political lesbians and sex lesbians. By political, we mean lesbians who are driven to overthrow or undermine patriarchy, and are not obsessed with sex, strap ons, porn… etc. Sex lesbians seem to be into the “mechanics” but clueless as to the love. The reason you would love a woman, is because you want to be with your equal. Men, by nature are the colonizers, they aren’t fully human in my mind. You can’t love men, but you can truly love women.

See women alive in the world, and you see beauty. All men are capable of is a kind of disinterested objectification of women, a kind of self absorbed idiocy.

The purpose of lesbian existence is to be free of that, to hold equality as the height of human knowledge and sophistication. We all should know by now, that men have no idea that women are human beings, largely I think because they are not human themselves. How could they be expected to understand such an advanced concept?
40. mscitrus - May 5, 2010: Well, I think the problem with my generation at least is we don’t just get the obsession with heterosex by society. Most of the women I knew watched porn pretty regularly from middle school up. And porn fucks up your sexuality majorly even if you don’t masturbate to it, and I think it’s the reason I never conceived of non-penetrative sex. Considering I was scared shitless of penetration, it’s amazing that I was so fucking colonized I never even conceived of someone going down on *me.* I still have trouble thinking about that, actually, and am still trying to heal all the other damage damage it and men did. I never came into contact with the idea of separatism till just a few months ago. Since people my age think feminist = man hating hairy prudish dyke (as if that’s a bad thing!) and hate ’em even if they’re just advocating for equal pay, so lesbian separatists were just made invisible. They prove women are better without men in their lives, and that’s really fucking dangerous, moreso than liberal feminism.

More specifically, I blame LESBIAN PORN. I want to write a post on this, but basically my theory is that men can’t STAND (like the trans lobby) the idea of uncolonized space, so they ensure via propaganda women will be harassed just as much, if not more, when they form bonds with women. When I said I was a lesbian in middle school, dudes pretty much took that as a COME ON and would start hitting on me AFTER that. Till then I was seen as “one of the guys” (as much as any woman can be). One ex-friend who groped me blamed ME for his crossdressing fetish, because he wouldn’t have wanted to be a girl if I hadn ‘t been a lesbian. (wtf?!) They can’t stand to have one goddamn woman out of their control, let alone fucking alliance between women.

I know exactly what you mean by “sex lesbians” as opposed to the political ones. I see a lot of objectification of women by sex lesbians and bi/bi-curious-for-the-male-gaze women. It’s all about trying xyz toy or technique. A lot of them, I think, are simply mimicking hetero men’s sexuality. I think I did that in a way, only I wanted to be the “woman” who was dominated by the more “manly” one. Which obviously is NEVER a good thing. The way you separate them is brilliant, thank you for putting that into words, I could never explain it so well.

Most of lesbians I’ve met around my age are that type, I think. I’ve never met a political one. It really frightens me to think that they might become “extinct,” because they’re naturally going to be the most truthful, radical, and the least brainwashed of women. Straight women and women partnered with dudes are pretty much doomed without y’all.

I want you to know I really enjoy and appreciate all your comments, even tho my lover is a man. Since heterosex and relationships with men are considered mandatory and we’re brainwashed into having them, I don’t think you can ever say you’re *willingly* with a dude unless you know separatism is a viable and safer option. Everything you say about men not being able to love rings true, but like any straight woman I hope it’s not true in *all* cases. I’m not naive enough to say I *know* my nigel loves me or that he can love; but I try to follow my gut, keep my skepticism and do what I think will make me happiest.

God I am overly verbose. I worry so much that I am/come off as totally self-absorbed. But that might just be the feminine conditioning talking.
41. Level Best - May 5, 2010: No, mscitrus, don’t feel like you’re talking too much! Some of us need a window into the world of young women–to know what is going on with them in this, pfeh!, so-called culture. It’s a rape culture, is what it is.

SheilaG, I’m a little older than you, and I accept your division of lesbians into the two basic groups. I remember my shock in the 80’s when I was at a large newstand and got my copy of OOB (Off Our Backs, feminist co-op newsletter; it’s lesbian members were political lesbians) and then saw a glossy magazine called On Our Backs, purportedly by women for women–and it was BDSM lesbian porn. It wasn’t a fake lesbian porn mag, either, by men for titilation, it really was by women for women. I felt sick. And from what you (SheilaG) have said, I gather the “sex lesbians” how gone further and further this way.
42. Level Best - May 5, 2010: Err, please forgive my previous comment’s typo’s and grammar-o’s.
43. veganprimate - May 5, 2010: Oh, Level Best, I remember coming across an issue of “On Our Backs,” as well. I, too, was sickened. The fact that most people’s initial reaction to this stuff is disgust, it just shows that people who are into it have been brainwashed, and somehow groomed through a series of manipulations to enjoy it.

I think a lot of it is internalized misogyny and internalize lesbophobia. Why else would a woman do those things to another woman? It’s sickening.
44. whir - May 5, 2010: I don’t mean to derail, but can I ask what the term nigel means?
45. tigerpetals - May 6, 2010: It refers to a man. It’s part of phrase, “not my Nigel,” as in “my Nigel” isn’t bad, he can love, he treats women great, he’s the exception. It can refer to a husband or male lover, although I think it can also refer to another male a woman has connections to and wants to establish as better than the norm.
46. SheilaG - May 6, 2010: Mscitrus– this part of your letter made me smile. You can now safely say that you have met a political lesbian in me. And I too was shocked around 1981 or so to get a copy of “On Our Backs” in the mail. We had been doing exchanges with feminist and lesbian magazines all over the world, and when I looked at that magazine I was stunned. It is the only lesbian publication I have ever riped up in pure shocked rage, and I never forgot that moment. Now sex lesbians have taken over everywhere, they bore me largely, they’re vulgar, uncultured and tiresome. They inject BDSM into lesbian discussion groups, are obsessed with sex acts, and seem mostly mentally ill to me. So no, I don’t like sex obsession invading our pure lesbian male free culture.

I’ve always been a political lesbian, going back to around 1978 or so. And as the years have gone by, I have stuck to my belief that I want a women’s country, I want a women’s army to execute rapists worldwide, and I want a curfew so that men are off the streets by 9 PM at all major universities in America, among other things.

Men to me = rape. It is who they are, and I am prepared to kill them should they attempt this. I often drive women home from clubs where they got drunk… I often intervene when men are picking on women and girls.
” I’ve never met a political one. It really frightens me to think that they might become “extinct,” because they’re naturally going to be the most truthful, radical, and the least brainwashed of women. Straight women and women partnered with dudes are pretty much doomed without y’all.”

I suspect we are becoming extinct, but somehow, oh well. Sex lesbians have pretty much ruined public lesbian culture in most large American cities, so we just form other groups in private homes. I won’t with their moral garbage, just have no patience for women who won’t read, don’t have a clue, and who embarrass me with their vulgar displays.

Fortunately, I don’t think I came across sex pozzie straight women… must have been way after my time in university where they didn’t exist back in the day. Radical separatists got a huge amount of political work done, opened many rape crisis centers, served in abortion undergrounds before this became legal in England and the U.S. We’ve supported women in prisons, built land cooperatives, raised untold dollars for feminist projects, wrote boat loads of theory, poetry, music… we created Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

Mostly now, we have gone underground, we just don’t participate in events loaded with voyeuristic sex poz straight women, bi women, transwomen, sex lesbians… we don’t belong anymore. I kind of shrug my shoulders and say “oh well.” Just didn’t get respected for all our hard work over perhaps a 30 to 40 year period. One of our greatest heroines, Mary Daly, died in January of this year. We had a huge memorial service for her in Cambridge. Hey, mscitrus, read her books, apply the theory. You’ll have our radical lesbian gift of power handed to you.

To tell you the truth, I actually can’t fathom what happened to women. We could have overthrown those patriarchs, made make up a thing of the past, banished men to outer darkness. We had the tactics, the theory, the passion and the commitment. Third wave came along… said… so this old dinosaur is going to trot off into the sunset, read my Mary Daly, cook for my few soldiers of the revolution; we’re ready to retire.
47. Undercover Punk - May 6, 2010: @ mscitrus #38
Yes, lesbians have sex that way. Speaking personally, I think I enjoy pleasuring my partner almost as much as she enjoys receiving that pleasure. It’s a 2 way street, my sisters.

And I just *knew* this was going to come up:

It’s interesting how the comparisons between body parts work. We say a finger is kinda like a dick, not that a dick is kinda like a finger.

Yeah, that’s why I put phallic in quotation marks. You’re absolutely right that the DEFAULT tool of penetration is the penis, therefore anything shaped even remotely like it is likened TO it.

@All: I must respectfully protest the presumed contrast between “political lesbians” and “sex lesbians.” I am BOTH. I actually don’t think you can BE a proper “political lesbian” without loving to have SEX/sexual relations with other women (of which there are many, many ways! yay!).
48. Undercover Punk - May 6, 2010: Oh and, I don’t feel the need to qualify the kind of lesbian sex I’m referring to as being non-oppressive and woman-focused because, to me, that goes without saying and is implicit in my meaning. Thank you.

(which is also to say that I understand this thread is associating “Sex Lesbians” with On Our Backs and other BDSM-embracing, sex-poz bullshit. That’s NOT my jam, but I still love to Love womyn.)
49. polly - May 6, 2010: Yeah I’m with UP, most of the lesbians I know are political, in one way or another, but they’re not political lesbians. To me *political lesbian* means woman who is only a lesbian for political reasons. Not because she’s attracted to women.

Just because a woman is sexually attracted to women (which is the one and only reason the lesbians I know are lesbians) doesn’t mean she acts like a man.

I know the groups Sheila is talking about, but I suspect they would mostly define as ‘queer’ not lesbian at all. A lot of their original advocates (like Patrick Califia) have gone onto transition. Yeah I know a FEW women like that over here (mostly into BDSM) but it’s not the majority of bog standard dykes.
50. SheilaG - May 6, 2010: Yes, UP, your clarification is in order. By sex lesbian, I mean the On Our Backs /sex pozzie, BDSM nonsense. Of course, political lesbians also have sexual relationships with women, that goes without saying.
It’s just that I don’t believe that violent sex acts, sex pozzie On Our Backs lesbians are politically very interesting, and they certainly just derail serious political work. They tend to be self centered, into shocking for the sake of shock, and I find a lot of them pretty weird to be around. No thanks.

The political lesbian has a strong desire for the liberation of all women, knows that sexual relationships with men are a huge part of women’s oppression, and believes the message and power of freedom is in part due to our radical lesbian feminist analysis. Mary Daly didn’t waste her time on that pomo nonsense, she worked night and day for women’s liberation, and even she though “lesbian community” was a deadening term, a softening of the message of liberation.

Women waste so much damn time dating, looking for partners, hooking up, Internet nonsense, getting their energy used up male pleasing… that’s why I say I’m a political lesbian, because sex dominates and takes over everything in America, but women getting really down on political strength and the courage to be separatists etc., that has significant incandescent power. The non-oppressive appropriate way to love and treat women goes without saying. Get out a leather whip, into lesbian porn, hey, you’re not in my group, you’re part of the sick male promoted capitalistic sell sex toys group.
Porn, kink, no way.
factcheckme - May 6, 2010: I would like to report that this discussion is making my vagina sore. It really is. I will write more about that later, but its making me think about how the things we hear, and imagine, and focus on, end up being felt, in the body. And its not a surprise, is it, that women themselves see and feel like and think of themselves as fuckholes, for men. And of their vaginas as open spaces, ready to be penetrated. Considering what we are exposed to, 24/7. This is powerful imagery, and a literally constant meditation. Bbl.
factcheckme - May 6, 2010: also, i am now reading dworkins memoir, diary of a feminist militant. she reports that she began truth-telling at a young age, when she took her mothers admonition not to lie, literally. that made me lol. and her parents (and teachers and everyone else) paid the price after that, because she would never stop questioning them, and she learned that everyone lies, especially adults, and to listen to what WASNT being said, at all times. paying attention to the negative spaces became her way of observing and negotiating a world where people lie, and they never tell you what you need to know, especially if you are a girl.

genius. absolutely.
51. SheilaG - May 7, 2010: I am thinking … what if every woman who was raped, was able to summon an army of women who would go out and kill the rapist?
What if we could kill every man who ever violated a woman?
What if women becamse so strong and determined, that men feared even opening their mouths for fear of us shoving a gun into their teeth and blowing their woman hating heads off? If only women would rise up against these monsters, rapists, porn viewers and pimps… one can dream can’t one~!
factcheckme - May 7, 2010: honestly, i cannot fathom a world where men fear women, ever. and it seems like it would be a terrifying world to live in. which is ironic, at best, isnt it? fucking shit. women live in fear for their lives every single day, and yet my initial reaction to your “dream world” is “wow, that seems extreme and scary.” haha what about teh menzzzz? do i get my honorary penis now, or later?

speaking of women living in fear, dirt posted on her blog recently that when she uses the womens restroom, the women look at her with the fear of rape in their eyes, because she looks very much like a man at first glance. dirt recognizes this look, and empathizes with the women and is sorry for scaring them. men must get this look from women all the time, but they dont recognize it for what it is. one wonders what the fuck they think “the look of fear of rape” really is? do they think thats what we look like all the time? they must. we must look like deer in the fucking headlights to them, and they think we just naturally look that way. unbelievable.
52. Undercover Punk - May 7, 2010: @ Sheila #50:

Of course, political lesbians also have sexual relationships with women, that goes without saying.

Well I certainly hope it does! My only concern is that there are women who liken themselves to lesbians *because* they are political separatists and therefore their primary emotional and intellectual orientation is towards women. That’s great, but it doesn’t mean they are specifically LESBIAN. You know me, I insist that I-dentities have BOUNDARIES– and this is one of them! No woman is a lesbian in my book until she is ready, willing, and able to have sexual relations with other women.* “Lesbian” refers to a SEXUAL or EROTIC orientation.

(*I mean this in the current sense. OTOH, If we require hard proof of woman-to-woman sexual contact for the purpose of historical analysis, we’d have very little history at all. It’s a definitional paradox, but I’m still espousing it!)

@FCM

I will write more about that later, but its making me think about how the things we hear, and imagine, and focus on, end up being felt, in the body. And its not a surprise, is it, that women themselves see and feel like and think of themselves as fuckholes, for men. And of their vaginas as open spaces, ready to be penetrated.

My bold.
YES! I’ve been thinking about this too in the context of assertions that a dildo-wearer experiences it LIKE a penis– that it has sensation of it’s own (that’s the convo I’ve been having for the past week elsewhere, email me if you care to read the comments– it’s pretty interesting stuff). My whole POINT is that psychology plays a PRIMARY ROLE in the way that we “map” our bodies. I used to think penetration was awesome and necessary! (cuz I internalized that message); now I can take it or leave it– but I def won’t be satisfied by penetration ALONE. My mind changed and now my body craves different things.
53. SheilaG - May 7, 2010: Since I don’t believe men are capable of humanity, of course they have no idea how women are looking in fear at them. They don’t care. I most certainly don’t look in fear at men; I’ve beaten them up, I look at men out in the world with pure hatred, which is why I prefer separatist spaces. To me, if you terrorize men, you are finally fighting back, and ending the door mat existence women settle for every time they live with men.

The other day, some idiot straight woman actually said, “You’d like my husband if you met him.” And I replied, “I’d hate him instantly, and most certainly would NEVER want to meet him.” She actually argued back. How could I hate her husband sight unseen? I told she should learn not to bring rapists to the party with her.
factcheckme - May 7, 2010: Well I don’t look at them in fear all the time, but if I saw dirt in the ladies restroom I am sure I would give her the deer in the headlights look she reports getting so often. I can’t imagine your world Sheila if you really have no fear of men. Is this true? If so, then how did this happen? Seriously, how? Because lesbians get raped and murdered by men too, in case you haven’t heard. I am not being flip when I say that, because you have alluded to the world you live in being bubble like. Has the news reached you? Or does it just not affect you? This is a serious question.
factcheckme - May 7, 2010: Ps. I Love your reply to your ignorant straight friend, and I love that you beat up men. I really do. Just wanted to say that. When I think about doing physical combat with a man, I am not afraid to break a nail, or anything like that. I am afraid of breaking all 10 down to the quick, and losing teeth and hair, and getting my face bashed in. I do have places to go, and people to see afterall. How am I supposed to show up for work the next day, looking like that? This is a serious question. And thats not even considering serious physical injuries, or death, or the fact that if I lose, or am knocked unconscious, I will almost certainly be raped, by him and whomever else happens to be there. And having all my shit stolen. This is all part of the fear I feel. So where do I lose you?
54. SheilaG - May 8, 2010: Well it’s rather hard to answer your questions FCM, but I’ve studied martial arts, and I don’t fear men. I have decided in advance that I’m going to beat the heck out of any man who bothers me. I just have a brutal rage and a total contempt for men. Also, I really hardly spend any time with them, am in women only organizations. Women are either going to have to train to be at war with these monsters or nothing is ever going to change. I am aware that lesbians are raped and brutalized, but I also know that I have done battle with men, gotten a tooth knocked out, smashed them back, taken a baseball bat to attackers, shoved the football jock jerk down a flight of stairs for grabbing at a girls’ butt.

I just accept the fact that I’m an amazon, that my ancient traditions are warlike, and that I assume all men are enemies. I just don’t waste time with this. It amazes me that all women aren’t getting black belts in karate, and that women still mix in places with lots of creepy straight men. I’d rather go down fighting, I’d rather just brutalize the monsters. I have no mercy, no feeling for them, have been known to kick teenage boys in the head for calling girls bitches, I just don’t give a damn. Sure I’ve suffered injuries etc., but my hatred is so extreme, my contempt so completely total, that this fuels a rage very few men experience from women. I battle men constantly, shove them, grab them by the throat— remember I absolutely hate them with such passion that I delight in making their lives a living hell. So if women want freedom, women are going to have to declare war on the pigs and monsters, you’re going to have to kick them out of your houses, your lives, and you’re going to have to stop having male children. It’s really as simple as that, and if women can’t summon the rage to destroy these rapists, porn dogs and creeps, well, we’ll continue to have them rule our lives, terrorize our daughters and make cities unlivable.

Hatred tends to cast out fear. I just don’t have the deferential socialization that most straight women display day in and day out. I’ve been a radical separatist for so long, I can’t even imagine the worlds straight women live in. And I have to be very brutal with straight women — no baby pictures, no husbands, no boyfriends… with me, you don’t impose men on me. They are never welcome, never tolerated and that’s that.

When women really learn that they are at war, and that patriarchy must be overthrown like any other colonial power, we’ll get somewhere. You can’t negotiate with these monsters, they are inherently evil, that’s who men are. So if you believe this, you don’t fear them, you wish for their death, you celebrate every man killed in war, in car crashes and by women who have had enough.

I can’t explain this further, it just is my world. Most women are pretty freaked out by it, but again, they are male pleasers and door mats, they have no real desire for freedom, they believe they can placate pigs. And if women don’t rise up and realize what this is all really about, they will be raped and killed anyway. The real truth is that at least you have fought back. All women can find men who are weaker… some puny little idiot uses the word bitch… well, that’s easy, a fist to the face quickly, a swift and sharp kick to the ribs, and down they go. A boot on their face, well placed spit and pure hatred for any insult they level at women. Teenage boy, age 10, calls a woman a bitch, smack! I have no mercy, compassion or feeling for men and boys… just get them out of my way, and shut them up.

I’d even suggest penile implants, attempted rape will detonate the penis later and the man will bleed to death. That would end rape pretty fast if all men knew they’d die for it.
factcheckme - May 8, 2010: all i can say is, if more women did what you are doing, this would be a very different world. i dont know exactly what the consequences would be, but there would be some, and it would be extreme. womens prisons and mandatory psychotropic drugs sounds like a safe bet. our “free peach!” libertarian ideals would go out the window very quickly, if women as a group actually had something to say about men, and they were using more than words. that would be interesting to me, on the nonviolent side: in what ways would this affect other “free peach!” industries, porn and hollywood for example, if we started making laws (or new social rules) that would curb and punish womens “hate speech” about men? how would the new laws be written so that they punished us, but still let the pornographers and johns (and normal, everyday misogynists) roam free? because thats exactly where their interests would lie. that would be very interesting indeed.

not that i am not also extremely interested in what would happen in the violent revolution you are describing. although its interesting that there are no words for what you are talking about, because men have never attempted it, as far as i know: hand to hand combat against an oppressive group who fucking deserve everything they get, individually, or they wouldnt have gotten it. no weapons of any kind (except in self-defense). no unprovoked attacks, only deserved ones, and only hand-to-hand combat. i am quite sure that teh menz would regard this as a “violent revolution” but thats not exactly what it would be, is it? i mean, if we compare it to other “violent revolutions” in the past, where whomever had the most firepower/best guerilla tactics won, and women and children were raped and brutalized in its wake.

sheila, there are no words for what you are describing. and that makes it even more fascinating. because we are restrained by language, no doubt about it. and or language restricts our imaginations, much of the time. thats actually very much on-topic, to a discussion of “sex” and what that means, and doesnt mean. but even if it werent, it would be a welcome tangent. thanks.
factcheckme - May 8, 2010: it just occured to me that these comments are probably going to land this blog on some fucking “anti-terrorism” watchlist. if i go offline for any period of time, someone call catharine mackinnon. no, i am not kidding. thanks.
factcheckme - May 8, 2010: i would like to report that i recently purchased a used copy of “right wing women” and some fucking MRA underlined almost every passage and wrote copius MRA-tastic notes in the margins. no, i am not kidding. i am not even going to read it. i am going to throw it in the trash, and buy another copy. “very good” condition indeed. fucking assholes!
55. SheilaG - May 8, 2010: My first line of defense, of course, is to simply be in male free spaces, and to have as little contact as possible. I actually don’t know why women don’t get decent martial arts training, that would be a first step. We are at war, men are going to keep doing this to women unless we decide we have had enough. But, again, if women can’t even yell back at a short man who insults them, or go after a 75 year old man who has called them a bitch… it must be deep conditioning to placate and serve these monsters.

It is so deeply ingrained for straight women to placate and serve, that I don’t think they even know what this looks like to radical lesbians like me. All I know is, I don’t want men bothering me, getting in my space or threatening me. I wanted to walk the streets free, and I wanted to learn all I could how to defend myself, and fight back, whether with words, fists, evasive tactics or simply a direct “NO I NEVER WANT TO MEET YOUR GODDAMN HUSBAND!” I use those words frequently with straight women who can’t seem to fathom that I regard men as enemies, and have no desire to meet them if I can help it.

When will women worldwide realize that men are brutal enemies, I don’t know FCM. But from what I see now, door mat behavior and failure to train for defense strikes me as ostrich in the sand behavior on a massive scale.

The best tactic for women is to mimimize interaction with the enemy, and to see men as an enemy in the first place. Withdrawal of energy, like pulling the plug on patriarchy is a very effective tactic as well.

I think women can create a unique revolution of complete non-cooperation, just walk out of the church as Mary Daly did. But to get women off their butts and walking out of things will take a massive effort. Women are going to go to churches, listen to womanhating sermons, they are going to insist on having male children, when at least in the U.S., they have a clear choice not to.

What will it take? Well, I think we need to seriously rethink everything.
Because we obviously are not getting very far now. Just the very existence of the sex poz fun feminists does strike me as supremely weird. I just can’t imagine ever feeling or thinking this way, so your descriptions of this FCM are kind of mind boggling to me.

Mind boggling, because when I was very young, there was no feminism, no active movement, heck, I didn’t even know any lesbians when I was a kid. And yet, from an early age, as early as I can recall, I had a supreme contempt for boys, and felt that some day they would cease to exist in my life. It was a gut feeling hard to name. There is no logical reason for how I felt, because I was surrounded by a degree of heteronormative non-feminist women throughout my childhood. It’s why I don’t put much stock in the “social conditioning” theory of girls.

Can women pull the plug on men? Well, if you want freedom, that is what it will take. Not all women are capable of doing battle with men, or kicking their heads in now and then or even yelling at them and punching them out. In fact, it amazes me how rarely women really stand up for themselves ever in public. Straight women’s tactics are simply manipulation, or avoidance or passive aggressive behavior, and they believe that this works. With the enemy, you have to be very blunt, and very determined, and you have to know with absolute certainty that all men are enemies without exception. And all men hate women, that’s who they are. Pornography I think reveals the true face of men, as does prostitution, all of which most women don’t see.

I am often surprised at how rarely women even talking about self-defense training on feminist blogs, hardly a mention of the term anymore. It is essential, that women defend themselves in every way possible. But again, what do I know, I’m a lesbian feminist dinosaur from another era, who cares what I think after 30 some years of activism and commitment to lesbian nation.
56. SheilaG - May 8, 2010: “Right Wing Women” would be an interesting book to revisit. I read it back in the 80s when it first came out. Women collaborate even more within right wing churches who completely steal their labor and brainwash them. I wonder what I would think about it now.
57. sonia - May 8, 2010: For het women, I think it takes a very long time to stop thinking about intercourse as something you “like.” I know I say this every time PIV comes up, but I really think it’s true. It takes a very, very short time for women to be brainwashed (starts about 11, full force, if you’re not molested) into thinking that intercourse is awesome and good for you. It takes a lot longer to undo the conditioning, especially because once you hit actual womanhood, you exist in this bizarre sex-class control bubble and it’s hard to even remember ever not being in it. PIV “affection” is one of the “best” things that happens to you. (Jeezus, that’s depressing.) There are NO voices questioning PIV as an institution-Dworkin being one of the very few exceptions (your excellent self, FCM, being another). It’s been almost two years I’ve been doing my self imposed lysistrata and I’ve only just begun to stop craving it. I’m talking after years of being one of those “I love it!” chicks. I think it takes a very, very long time for the consciousness-shift to come after the cravings begin to subside. Once it starts, things get easier and better and that background reality that Daly wrote about starts emerging. I doubt whether women can have that consciousness shift while they’re having constant PIV. There’s a reason even men use “fuck” to describe the worst thing that can happen to someone. Again, thanks FCM for being one of the only holdout voices gloriously bitching about this.
factcheckme - May 9, 2010: you are very welcome! hopefully, part 2 will be forthcoming.

on another note, as ~~promised~~ i indicated i might, i changed my FAQ to indicate the following:

4. are you fat, ugly, single, humorless, and bitter, with a lot of cats?
yes. therefore, everything i say is false.

for some reason, people are actually reading the FAQ lately. so it seemed like a good time to change it.
58. sonia - May 9, 2010: yeah, you know.. the amount of “satisfying” PIV and relationships with doods that it takes to become single, bitter, and humorless is never taken seriously. 😉 those are credentials to speak on men, not disqualifiers.
factcheckme - May 9, 2010: well, something polly said about the “glod majority foundation” video really hit home, and its that the fun-fems are saying, allegedly in defense of feminism: “feminists are fuckable too, we arent disgusting hairy dykes, cause they are nasty!!!” and she is exactly right. when the truth is, firstly, that feminism is NOT (repeat: NOT) about making women seem fuckable, or more fuckable, to men. and two, that the subtext is always “women arent worth listening to because they arent human, but we *might* fake it, if it means we get to fuck her.” if they can tell right away that theres no chance of that happening, nothing you say will ever matter. they try to make believe its because what you are saying is false, but the truth is that they dont care if its true *or* false. how else could they dismiss your perspective simply because you are ugly? or because your words are a “turnoff”? (“UGLY,” and over the internets at that! its an assumption of ugly, only. because they dont know, and cant know what you really look like.) seriously. this is a fascinatingly sick way of functioning in the world. not “a beautiful mind” fascinating, but its complicated, and the illusion is fairly complete.

also, thanks, sonia, for your reply about PIV. it is extremely depressing when you realize that PIV is the extent of the affection that many women receive from men. so many women complain that, first, they dont even like PIV to begin with, and second, that its the only way their partners connect with them, and they completely detach after its over. its really sick, and sad. and there are such dire consequences to women of the act itself, and the payoff is so pathetically inadequate. and it turns out badly so much of the time, regarding disease and unwanted pregnancy. not to mention staying with some asshole who doesnt even love you, because he tosses you some PIV every once in awhile. as if that were better than nothing. when in reality, its SO MUCH WORSE THAN NOTHING, in so many ways. i have never known an unwanted pregnancy to result from nothing, for example. fucking shit. this is a sick, sad state of affairs. it really is.
factcheckme - May 9, 2010: sorry about all the edits. i am a serial editor of my own posts and comments. i advise my readers to never read a word i have said, until at least a day has passed since i said it. currently, i have my head in “intercourse” and am working on what i want to say for part 2. apparently, i am a terrible multi tasker.
59. sonia - May 9, 2010: he he. you know, it would be so freaking ironic if comments put this blog on an anti-terrorism anything. radical feminists are the most compassionate people at heart and I believe that’s what makes us feel as we do. personally, it’s not that I don’t care about men’s welfare or whatever, it’s just that there is so little compassion for women in the world, how can one not put them first? the real terrorism is the fact that women walk around in fear every day of being raped. I’m sick to death of putting my cell phone inside my sports bra every time I run in case it will help me *after* I get raped to apprehend whatever sicko did it. All because they keep running these news stories about Cali rapists waiting off trails to rape women. I’m sick of thinking about the size of fucking cell phone to buy to see if it will fit in a sports bra. The way women live is no way to live. (god, I’m on one today.)

I agree about the affection sitch. Seriously women should touch each other more, in whatever context we can handle and dig. (UP is going to get on that comment, hee hee)…but seriously. maybe it would fix this sort of touch/affection deprivation that causes us to seek PIV, which never fills the void.
60. Rebecca - May 9, 2010: Yes to more touching among women! I say this as a straight woman. I believe that friendly physical contact is a basic need in humans. Just look at our closest relatives, the primates, and how they bond by grooming each other’s fur. Not saying that humans are exactly like apes, but I think we share this trait as social, group-living mammals. There is a taboo for men to touch each other, but they find ways to do it anyhow. Just look at them after soccer games! But for some reason, many of them have problems being intimate with women, in other ways than PIV. They regard other types of touches as “foreplay”, and often foreplay it self as an obstacle. (I want to pause here and say that I really hate that word. What is generally considered foreplay or heavy petting is what I consider to be sex.) I heard a gay man say that the difference he saw between gay and hetero men was that gay men will cuddle after sex but hetero men will roll over and fall asleep, thus ignoring their partner. What’s with this withdrawal of intimacy? Do they fear that if they connect with a woman, they will be the equal of a woman? And that is bad?!

SheilaG wrote about using violence against men who deserve it. The thing is, most women fear going against men in any way, because we are afraid of them getting violent towards us. There is a good reason for that fear. They are most of the time bigger, stronger, more used to fighting and with the law on their side. Men’s unprovoked violence against girls and women is epidemic, so just imagine what patriarchy would think we deserved if we actually got violent.
factcheckme - May 9, 2010: the law is absolutely on the side of men, at all times, when it comes to gendered violence, or violence against children (ie. if something happens to a child, its the mothers fault, always, even if the father or someone else actually harmed them). its terrifying to think about.

on that happy note, part 2 is up. its a downer. oh well. enjoy!

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