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Women Didn’t Do It. That’s the Point. July 22, 2013

Posted by FCM in books!, feminisms, gender roles, meta.
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ive been so happy to see the idea going around that it hasnt been women “forcing” manly behaviors, values and thought processes on men, if indeed men have been or need to be “forced” into these things at all.  radical feminists point this whole time has been that womens sex role as fuckholes, breeders and slaves has been forced on us by men, and that this role is wholly unnatural to us.  our point has never been, until very recently that is, that the same force-thing is happening *somehow* to men.  and in fact it makes very little sense if you think about it a bit.  if anyone were forcing men to do anything, who would have the power, resources and inclination to do this?  oh yes.  men!  not women, men.

not only that, but where did this stuff come from in the first place?  who thought it would be a good idea (for example) to rape women and impregnate us against our wills, knowing how painful and dangerous childbirth is to us (and not to men)?  who thought it would be a good idea to force women to do anything, to starve torture and kill us and everyone and everything else?  think: global overpopulation and environmental abuse.  did women first suggest this, and did women take it further at every step with creativity, leaps of thought and constant envelope-pushing?  or did someone else?

here we are faced with a potentially uncomfortable truth, “we” being those of us who still hold out any hope whatsoever for men, that they will change, that this has all been a huge mistake etc.  included here are those who think meaningful legal change will be forthcoming BTW, seeing as how the law is the codification and normalization of male behavior, values and thought-processes selectively enforced to support male power at womens expense.  to those women and everyone, kindly note (if you havent already) that at the intersection of “who came up with this shit” and “who would be able to enforce it anyway” there are men.  men and only men.  no women anywhere.  if male behaviors, values and thought processes were a gum, it would be men-tyne.  if it were a museum, it would be the men-tropolitan museum of art.

not that i personally believe for a second that these things are forced/enforced on men — the evidence actually suggests they enjoy it and even revel in decidedly male interests/pursuits like torture and necrophilia, but lets not dwell on that insignificant detail (or fact, whatever).  the point is that i know other women believe its forced, or they assume it without ever really having thought about it, so seeing it as an intersection of maleness (which it obviously is) might be useful to them.  is it?

whats compelling to me about this recognition is that it implicates men as a sexual class and takes that concept and discussion further.  in this case, we see that we can and indeed must take males as a whole as our “class,” meaning males throughout time and place, not just whoever happens to be alive now, and not just those special snowflakes who came up with something noteworthy/super gross or whatever at some point (i.e. helped move male behavior, values and thought-processes forward through creativity and innovation, like whoever came up with this).  in other words, when analyzing how and indeed whether what is known as “masculinity” is forced on men, if we add a fourth-dimension to the class-model, which is time, we see that men have always done this.  that there was never a time (that we know about) that they didnt.  and importantly, there was never a time when we (females) did.

get it?  women had nothing to do with this — men came up with this sickening abuse and necrophilia on their own and it is in fact a closed-circuit of maleness in which we see abusive and sexually and reproductively abusive (i.e. male) behaviors, values and thought processes working and evolving across time.  there is no female “input” there are only female victims, and perhaps female collaborators and individual collaborators at that — as a class, women have been wholly excluded.  its closed, you see.  thats how a closed-circuit works, and this very obviously is one.

if there were *ever* a more perfect example of a closed-circuit, well, it might be one without collaborators (or without equality rhetoric, history-erasure or a fourth-dimension!) because that might make it easier to see it for what it is.  but even so, this isnt rocket-science (or is it?)  the concept of the closed-circuit does, however, implicate electricity, and therefore electronics, plugging-in, technology, and industry, and probably other things.  even time-travel seems implicated here, or all “times” existing at once — non-linear time.  we discussed that here, in the context of sonia johnson’s work including “the metaphysics of liberation.”

if that complicates the discussion, disregard.  its (i think?) unnecessary to the point, which is that male behaviors, values and thought processes — and patriarchy — is a closed-system of maleness to which women have never (substantively, ideologically) “inputted” and we never will.  thats the point.  everything you see, hear, feel, smell, taste and intuit around you thats abusive and sick, including men and what they do and what they are, and regardless of whether its “forced” on them (meaning, same result whether it is or isnt) — thats men mkay.  its men, its men, its men.

Moron Owen Lloyd. Or, What ‘Depoliticization’ Actually Means July 9, 2013

Posted by FCM in feminisms, gender roles, rape, self-identified feminist men.
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nope, not done with owen lloyd yet!  somethings been bothering me about that rape-article he wrote, and its the title.  Steven Pinker and the Depoliticization of Rape.  the depoliticization of rape.  depoliticization of rape.  depoliticization.  of.  hmm.  has steven pinker attempted to or succeeded in depoliticizing rape?  having not read steven pinker and only having owen lloyds cherry-picked quotes as evidence of whether he did or didnt, i have to wonder if owen lloyd even knows what “depoliticization” means.  (according to google, it means “To remove the political aspect from; remove from political influence or control.”)

query: if there is a natural/innateness component to men raping girls and women across time and place, is *that* in itself enough to depoliticize it?  or, if women started responding to men as a class as if men as a class were rapists, which they are, would womens response be apolitical?

lets discuss.  first, rape is a politicized act, its true.  there are political aspects and consequences to men raping girls and women across time and place, and yes there is a war on (woron?) in case anyone didnt get the memo.  but the political aspects of rape do not start and end there.  rape causes unwanted pregnancy in women, and men have set it up so that the big-3 of their patriarchal institutions — medicine, religion, and law — all attach to womens bodies and lives at the moment of conception.  and make no mistake — these are political consequences mkay, where political means

1. Of, relating to, or dealing with the structure or affairs of government, politics, or the state.
2. Relating to, involving, or characteristic of politics or politicians: “Calling a meeting is a political act in itself” (Daniel Goleman).
3. Relating to or involving acts regarded as damaging to a government or state: political crimes.
4. Interested or active in politics: I’m not a very political person.
5. Having or influenced by partisan interests: The court should never become a political institution.
6. Based on or motivated by partisan or self-serving objectives.

check out numbers 1 and 6 in particular.  1 is obvious, but 6 is interesting.  self-serving objectives.  it serves men as a class that (patriarchal) medicine, religion and law all attach to womens bodies and womens lives at the moment of conception — thats why.  they.  did.  it.  it does not have to be this way, but men have made it this way to benefit themselves; they have granted themselves the power to open the door to formal, institutional and state control of women by impregnating us.

so, if there were a biological/innateness component to men raping us, would that remove these consequences?  no, it would not.  men have created these consequences out of whole cloth and they intend to keep them in place forever, where men have also granted themselves the sole power to remove them or not.  get it?  politics.  in fact, in order to depoliticize rape in this way, men would also have to agree to depoliticize intercourse at the same time.  because medicine, religion and law attach to womens bodies and womens lives at the moment of conception regardless of whether we are impregnated through consensual intercourse or rape.

put another way, if the men who had the power to do this were to say “we hereby remove all mechanisms by which male institutions control pregnancy and pregnant women” and then did it, this would at least partially depoliticize rape.  of course, it would also depoliticize intercourse, and we would all be forced to see (or willfully ignore, albeit a bit more obviously at that point) how the political intent and effect of intercourse and rape have actually been the same this whole time — to control women — and that men made it this way.  politics.

and what if women started avoiding men like the plague they (historically and currently) are?  owen lloyd says steven pinker advocates women doing this, although frankly i dont trust owen lloyd to accurately summarize anyones writing or their intent.  owen lloyd also suggests that *if* women did this, it would not and indeed could not be a political move on our part — it would be us apolitically “adapting” to rape culture which we shouldnt do because victim-blaming and not only that, black (male) civil rights movement.  hmm.

welp.  how about this, owen lloyd.  since you (or was it pinker?) suggested it, what if women did start avoiding men and we do this both individually (because its the only way we can) and collectively (a happy coincidence of the former) until men remove the political consequences to women of men raping us.  would this be political enough a response for you?  in practice this would mean until you remove religious, legal and medical mandates, controls and standards of care from the pregnant, laboring, lactating (and childrearing — as long as we’re at it) female body.  of course this means turning over all control of these things to women, as we discussed here.

when and if you do this, we might come back.  not that you ever (ever, ever, ever) would, which makes this useful primarily as a thought exercise, but if you did remove the political implications of rape to girls and women, perhaps then we could address the gnatty little issue of whether rape is *only* political, or traditionally political, or whether it would still exist if it werent so politically invasive, controlling and damaging to us.  in other words if rape were just (!!!) “forced sex” (meaning forced intercourse and impregnation) and stopped being “the violent enforcement by men of womens sex role as fuckholes and breeders.”  (yes, perhaps *then* we could discuss it — if thats okay with you?  jeebus.)

this is what the partial* depoliticization of rape looks like owen lloyd, so you know what it looks like if and when you see it.  considering that you will likely never see it of course, and certainly never from another male, including steven pinker BTW, from your perspective its probably a largely useless tool.  and i shall end on that note because thats just funny.

*i say “partial” because we havent even addressed yet whether traditional political controls are the end-all be-all of the politicization of rape, where men rape women to serve themselves, and where men demonstrate daily that orgasm (and necrophilia) is largely its own reward.

I See What You Did There. Or, “Witchcraze” Pt. 4? June 13, 2013

Posted by FCM in feminisms, gender roles, international, meta, politics.
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so radfem13 went off without a hitch.  mostly.  the event took place and the organizers have issued a postgame statement focusing on the legal issues involved in organizing and meeting as women, in women-only space exclusive of men and trannies.  the title of the piece is “protecting female-only space in the UK.”  an “interim legal statement” was previously published here.  the organizers are quoted extensively in an article on “counterpunch” which you can read here (via gendertrender).

relatedly, melinda tankard reist has been reporting on the saga of young feminist talitha stone taking on a misogynist rapper — i will expound on how this is related below.  the latest installment of this series is here.

theres a lot going on here, and its hard to know where to start.  so lets start at the beginning, which is probably “what are we doing here in the first place” or the point of radical feminism.  and lets be brief about it and come to the analysis quickly.  radical feminism is about locating, exposing and understanding the root of womens oppression by men, so that we can be liberated from male dominance.  so what is the root?  radical feminists understand that the logical endpoint to radical feminist thought is that the root of womens oppression by men is mens sexual and reproductive abuse of women.  this is what it means and what it looks like to be oppressed as women by men as men — men dominate and enslave women based on our reproductive biology and mens demonstrated ability and interest in exploiting it.

this means “othering” and pathologizing womens biology by eroticizing intercourse and separating or falsely separating “sex” from reproduction, where there has been no 100% reliable contraceptive invented and there is unlikely to be one ever.  and by gaslighting women when we experience reasonable anxiety and aversion to penis-centered “sex” and when we become “unintentionally” knocked up, as if there was any other reasonable outcome to eroticized and normalized PIV considering our female biology and how it works.

it means that men grant themselves the power to open the door to formal, institutional and state control of women by doing the one thing that only men do to only women and which we cannot do to anyone — by impregnating us.  note how the big-3 of the patriarchal institutions — medicine, religion and law — all attach to womens bodies and womens lives at the moment of conception, and that this does not happen to men at the moment of conception or ever.  its literally a trap, baited and set by men and producing an outcome intended by men that benefits men — control of women, and control of reproduction, including the terms and conditions of intercourse, pregnancy, birth, and childrearing.

this is what our oppression consists of and what it is.  men get to name it (sex, fucking, knocked up, mother, father) men get to execute it (intercourse, impregnation) and men get to enforce it (rape, heteronormativity, marriage, and legal remedies and lack thereof for sexual and reproductive offenses).  note that i am considering rape to be the violent enforcement by men of womens sex role as fuckholes and breeders.

and there is no legal solution to rape — men rape us, period.  then when we are inevitably impregnated, we are caught in their trap and cannot escape — pregnancy triggers the system of overlapping controls on women (via reproduction) including medicalizing/legislating/moralizing abortion; the medical and other standards of care that apply to pregnant, laboring and lactating women; and laws and customs that allow surveillance and control of caretakers, primarily women, and defining parenthood itself so that men are included, tethering women to the men who impregnate them for life.  all of this is made-up by men and follows no natural (inevitable) law, and is all by patriarchal design.

now, it is important to note that both rape and legal remedies for sexual and reproductive offenses are used by men to enforce their sexual and reproductive control of women.  arent they?  thus, womens relationship to the law specifically regarding issues of sex and reproduction — and therefore the terms and conditions of both our oppression and our liberation — is not merely complicated but demonstrably conflicted where men obviously use rape and then not-punishing rape, as well as restrictive (legal) controls on pregnant, birthing and mothering women, in order to dominate and enslave us.

so.  regarding radfem13, we have organizers statements indicating that “protecting female-only spaces in the UK” is paramount.  whether or not this is the case is a question for the community.  so i present the question this way: does protecting female-only spaces in the UK cease or even affect mens sexual and reproductive abuse of women?  in order to know whether it does or doesnt, or whether radfem13 was radical at all, we must understand what the organizers themselves intend and mean when they say it.  and to figure out what they mean, it helps to read what they have said in their own words about what they were trying to accomplish and why.  they tell us what they mean where they say that they wish to evoke the Equality Act to preserve their right to legally assemble sans men; and they explain that the reason they need to do this is because gender, meaning stereotypes which emanate from a persons born-sex but which arent endemic to either sex.  and that the artificiality and unfairness of “gender” (meaning sex-based stereotypes) apply to both women and men.

so firstly, we have an appeal for legal reform/protections in one country to meet in women-only space; being generous we can assume they mean that they wish to have mens laws interpreted and applied fairly to women generally and globally, although they do not say this.  previously, the organizers released this statement which indicates their intention to fight for our right to meet as females; and another statement here concerning the legal issues and difficulties involved in meeting in female-only space in the UK.  again, no mention is made of why this is necessary; nowhere in these statements is there an acknowledgement of or an appeal to end womens sexual and reproductive abuse by men, or why its important, or how they wish to achieve this.  and (therefore) no mention of anything of any importance to radical feminists or radical feminism as a matter of fact.

from an outsiders perspective (i did not attend) and assuming that it served some legitimate purpose, it seems as if the intent and effect of radfem13 was meta — the purpose of meeting in the UK in women-only space was to prove that they could.  one wonders whether this was fair to women who traveled long distances to attend a radical feminist conference, rather than a reformist one, or one centering the legal situation in the UK which does not affect all or even most women globally.

but still, is it possible that, once attendees gathered inside, this conference became radical, or less reformist?  sadly, organizers statements made elsewhere indicate that it probably didnt.  while all radical feminists must agree that “sex matters” and that trans and queer politickers misuse “gender” essentially as a euphemism for sex, albeit “brain sex” (or as voluntary “performance”) the obviously reformist-oriented radical feminists we see organizing radfem13 and elsewhere misuse both “sex” and “gender” to mean essentially sex-based stereotypes.  “stereotypes” which, according to them, are oppressive to both men and women, or at least reflective of the biology or essence of neither, even as we see male violence — and mens sexual and reproductive control of women enforced with male violence — as a global phenomenon that transcends social conditioning, and men across time and place embracing it and manifesting it in various ways.  even the “good guys” and men in less violent and “less patriarchal” cultures do this in their own way and we fucking well know it.

and even as we see women, globally and throughout time, dissonating with, negotiating within and around, and ultimately rejecting our sex (not gender) role as mens fuckholes and slaves.  equating women with men — against all evidence — is a false equivalence and simply is not rigorous, logical analysis or honest intellectual labor.  and conflating “sex” with “sex-based stereotypes” does nothing to locate the root of womens oppression by men — our sexual and reproductive abuse as women, by men as men — in order to liberate women from male dominance.

and finally, i bring up melinda tankard reist’s recent reporting of the young feminist who is single-handedly taking on a notoriously misogynistic american rapper because this is yet another manifestation of reformist-oriented politicking, what it consists of and where it leads.  on her blog, reist says,

One of the great rewards of this work is seeing a growing wave of young women go into battle against violence against women in all its brutal manifestations, calling out and naming this violence as unacceptable. One such woman is 24-year-old Talitha Stone. […]  Talitha’s passion and gutsy activism gives me hope that things can change.

okay.  here, we have reist, a well-known, seasoned radical feminist who makes money on radical feminism as a speaker and writer, applauding and encouraging individual women who dont make money on it and who in fact may have little or nothing to gain from it, to engage in “gutsy activism” (and everything that entails including the very real danger of physical and emotional violence by men) by taking on a misogynistic industry and all misogynists everywhere — in this case by protesting rap lyrics that describe the sexual abuse of women by men.  how and indeed whether this instance or this kind of activism is likely to liberate women from male dominance is never made clear.  and frankly, giving well-known seasoned radical feminists who make money from radical feminism hope that things can change, in the complete absence of evidence that this is true, or even that radical feminism informs this activism, how, and why, is not a good enough reason for anyone to do it or to expect anyone to do it, or to applaud those who do it at great cost to themselves.

indeed, if a woman throwing herself on the pyre in this manner inspires hope, and i think this is an apt metaphor, one might wonder “hope for what, exactly?”  hope that the next generation of women will fall into the same reformist traps, creating paying “radical feminist” jobs and opportunities for MOAR ACTIVISM, and more meta — the continuance of reformism itself, in other words, as opposed to identifying the root of and liberating women from male dominance — is what it sounds like to me.

In Which I Make a Fantastical Leap May 8, 2013

Posted by FCM in books!, gender roles, international, liberal dickwads, MRAs, trans.
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stuff like this is why the organizers/PR machine for radfem13 publish stuff like this:  as an example of the MRA/tranny anti-radfem propaganda campaign, the radfem13 organizers state that MRAs and others are guilty of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1000 Years of This. 40 Years of That. April 25, 2013

Posted by FCM in books!, gender roles, international.
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i just finished reading gerda lerners “the creation of feminist consciousness” which is part 2 of her 2-part series.  part one, “the creation of patriarchy” was previously discussed here.  this series is an excellent history lesson and one i appreciated very much, although i admit skipping/skimming many of the details and getting straight to the conclusions/insights which is what i read feminist works for afterall.  the big picture.  when i see something that fascinates me, such as the material and social conditions that make slavery possible, i go back and try to grok the details the best i can.

in this case, i went back and tried to grok the details of 1000 years of feminist bible criticism, by which lerner demonstrates feminists tendency to reinvent the wheel when it comes to feminist reasoning and conclusions, and why this is.  she concludes that womens history is lost to us via silencing and erasing feminists and feminist work, which stunts and thwarts the development of a global feminist consciousness over time.  and that this erasure of history is one reason women have remained oppressed for so much longer than any other oppressed group on earth.  she notes that despite starting from scratch every time, women have long struggled to be free of male oppression and have resisted it, and have tried to think and reason their way out of it even when they thought they were the first and only ones to do it and at great cost to themselves in terms of mental labor and personal risk, up to and including death.  this is striking, yes.

but what particularly struck me was the substance of womens 1000-year history of criticizing the bible, where women specifically protested its prescriptions/proscriptions about womens natures, including womens roles in a patriarchal culture (thats redundant of course.  patriarchy *is* culture).  remember that institutionalized patriarchy, where legal and religious texts merely codified preexisting patriarchal relations that had already existed for a long time, is not the beginning-point of womens oppression by men.  institutionalized patriarchy appeared about 5000 years ago, but male dominance over women, including mens control of womens reproduction and mens self-granted right to define womens role has been around much, much longer.  (this is discussed in part one).  so in reality, women were protesting something that had been around for perhaps 10,000 years or longer: womens role as fuckholes and slaves for men.  and each woman who did this thought that she was the first to do it.  women rarely built on previous womens work because they didnt know about it.

now, i ask you.  where did this resistance and core-deep courage come from?  how could each woman, who believed that she was a cognitive minority of one (or some other very small number) gather the gumption and conviction to realize, believe and assert that womens nature was *not* to be fuckholes and slaves to men, but was something else entirely?

note that for 1000 years, while women were resisting what the bible patriarchy said about womens nature, these women were not saying that mens nature had been misrepresented at all.  although lerner concludes that early feminist thinkers articulated the difference between sex and gender, and that *both* mens and womens “gender roles” were arbitrary and socially-prescribed, i would note the complete absence of the assertion that men were not naturally violent, necrophilic and parasitic for example.  in my own estimation, these have nothing to do with the male gender, and everything to with the male sex.  i think early feminists knew that only too well, and that the ways this played out on womens bodies and lives (in the absence of relatively-reliable birth control for example) made the reality and unalterability of mens despicable natures more than obvious.

behold an early feminists articulation of gender.  in the context of arguing that women were fit for the ministry, she asserts:

…that intellect is not sexed; that strength of mind is not sexed; and that our views about the duties of men and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependent solely on the will and judgement of erring mortals.

this from a woman named sarah grimke who lived from 1792-1873.  she is talking about jobs, and roles.  she was notably not talking about mens demonstrated tendency to be violent necrophiles, sexual abusers and predators across time and place.  and frankly gerder presents *no* evidence in this history lesson that any early feminists disputed this at all, or conflated male behavior, specifically male violence, with culturally-determined gendered roles such as who can and should do what job.  get it?

in fact, grimke astutely notes that mens enslavement of women was deliberate, disgusting and dickish.  she notably does not suggest that men were acted upon by aliens, or were acting against mens own natures when they did this:

Men have not only degraded women, but have made them mere instruments for their own comfort.  They have enslaved women’s minds, deprived them of education, and finally robbed them of the knowledge of their equal humanity.

and “equal” here does not really seem to mean “equal” in any modern way.  for example, does grimke seem to suggest that women are attempting to gain political, social and interpersonal standing so that they can indulge “equally” in the enslavement, deprivation and robbery that all humans are prone to?  i dont see it.

hilariously, in the 1500s, a woman named jane anger (!) describes and documents mens parasitic, filthy natures when she asserts that men are “comforted by our means.  Without our care they lie in their beds as dogs in litter and go like lousy mackerel swimming in the heat of summer.”  without women, men would lie in their own shit and be completely uninterested or unable to perform self-care.  not because aliens, and not because “gender” either.

so whats my point?  i guess i have two.  feminist-thinking women have been asserting for over a millenia that womens nature is misrepresented by patriarchy (and via patriarchal institutions such as religion) and that this is a deliberate ploy on behalf of men who want to dominate and enslave us.  women know, somehow, that this is not our true nature and we resist this propaganda/terror campaign bravely, actively and passionately.  we can feel that this is true, and we know that men are lying about us.  and we notably have *never* as far as i can tell tried to convince anyone that mens true nature wasnt and isnt exactly what it appears to be, and what men demonstrate by their own behavior, institutions and dictates across time and place.

this rather significant addition to feminist thought appears to be new.  this is not our history, but a recent development that seems to have appeared with equality rhetoric, and certainly after the burning times, where women learned more and more (not less and less) what men were capable of, and what they did to women who said and did things men didnt like.  and following a global campaign to silence and erase feminist thought, including women who for 1000 years (or more) have been documenting what appears to be a universal model of male behavior that doesnt differ *at all* across time and place, including males *acting out* parasitism, necrophilia, violence and rape, regardless of what jobs they do, clothes they wear or anything else.  i think this needs to be discussed.  that is all.