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On Gay Transmen July 8, 2012

Posted by FCM in feminisms, gender roles, health, PIV, pop culture, trans.
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anti-feminists frequently demand that radical feminists address the problem of transmen when we are addressing transgender — as if transmanism and transwomanism have very much to do with each other, even though they really dont.  unsurprisingly, the transman “problem” — that is to say the concept of transmanism as well as the different problems that transgender is supposed to solve for individual FAABs — falls directly in line with addressing the problems of females as a sexual class, around the world.  ie. we do address them, all the time.  transmen’s problems line up with womens problems and would be solved if feminism succeeded — there would be no remaining problem that transitioning would solve.  that means that for women, transitioning is a proposed solution for patriarchal problems only.

whereas transwomen’s “problems” would not be solved if feminism succeeded — that means transwomens problems are male problems, and do not implicate male power or womens oppression by men, which are the kinds of problems feminists are interested in solving.  post-patriarchy, transwomen would definitely not be let into female-only space, for example.  and insofar as transwomen depend on global female oppression to define and maintain their identities, and depend on subjugated females on which to model their feminine behaviors, and insofar as born-women not coddling transwomen is a “problem” for transwomen, transwomens problems will actually be made worse when and if patriarchy falls, because they would not be able to express their gender properly, the entire concept — or the parts of which are dependent on female oppression — having been abolished.  and because NO ONE would put up with their shit.

honestly, how many women post-patriarchy would agree to nurse mewling, howling manbabies under any circumstance, particularly trying to do so while juggling six cans of mace and genuflecting before the mighty phallus?  its exhausting, and not even the fun-fems, i daresay, would put one second or one ounce of their time or energy into that endeavor, suddenly finding themselves free to spend their time as they wished, and without the fear of male violence.  i myself have already decided that if patriarchy falls, i plan to turn cartwheels down the street until my hands bleed, then sleep on the beach for a week while i decompress, and contemplate how im going to spend my days from that point forward.  but i digress.

anyway, my initial point is that if your problems would be made worse — rather than solved — if patriarchy fell, you are a man.

moving on, to address the very pressing problem of “gay transmen” may i offer the following: PIV criticism.  yes thats right, gay transmen — heterosexual fucking is, indeed, problematic for women — you are right about that.  you absolutely arent imagining it.

just for fun — and everyone likes fun!  — try this on, gay transmen, and see if any of it fits.

you hate how straight men fuck, but you still want to fuck men.  right?  welcome to female heterosexuality.

you hate how straight men use sex to terrorize their female-bodied partners by giving us pregnancy scares and having a deliberately contrarian libido which never, ever matches ours.  perhaps, you resent how your mother and everyone always told you that “all men want is sex” but then once you started having it yourself, you realized that men really dont want to fuck that often — just enough to make you afraid you are pregnant every month, but never enough to give you any real pleasure.  yes?  welcome to female heterosexuality.  thats pretty much the definition of it.

or, perhaps you, gay transmen, dont really want to fuck that often, but your male partner wants it all the time?  welcome to female heterosexuality.  (if not having intercourse that often is something that “gay transmen” even want, which i doubt — is it homophobic (or misandric) of me to observe thats not how gay male culture generally works, especially the part about trolling gay bars?  oh well).  seriously, im thinking these women want frequent intercourse, and they find heterosexual fucking seriously lacking in that regard, but what do i know, having been there and done that myself?  its just a hunch.

at any rate, you want to fuck men, but you dont want all the baggage that comes with straight fucking, for females.  i get it.  but looking at the big picture (aka. context) reveals that thing you want is what all women want — to have our sexuality include sexual pleasure and to exclude reproductive pain.  if you noticed that heterosexual fucking doesnt work like that, well, you arent alone.  it doesnt make you a gay male though, sorry.

also, having intercourse for pleasures sake — considering the harm it does to female-bodied persons — is anti-feminist, and that cannot be remedied.

anyway, criticism of heterosexual fucking and the problems it presents for female-bodied persons is not new.  radical feminists have been addressing this for decades, but the trans horde does not want transmen or anyone to know about that.  in fact, transgender activism specifically demands that PIV-critical radical feminists be silenced, and their work erased from the face of the earth.  it would behoove transmen — and all women — to consider why that is.

Peak Fun March 26, 2012

Posted by FCM in authors picks, feminisms, gender roles, liberal dickwads, PIV, politics, pop culture, trans.
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first, a question: has the great cotton ceiling debacle of 2012 affected you wrt your feelings towards trans politics and/or liberal “fun feminism” and if so, how?  if not, why not?  and is there a point at which it will become more than obvious what fun-feminism really is, including who it benefits, and why?  will the truth out?  does it ever?  if so, why?  if not, why not?

while all women are socialized to be compliant dick-pleasers, and frequently acquiesce or avoid confrontations with men due to the threats of violence and actual violence backing up mens demands, including their demand that we see the entire world through mens eyes, womens socialization to be pleasing to dicks (and penises!) cannot be the variable here, where some women are buying this trans politics/fun-fem shit and others are not.

most arent, in fact.  most women, i dare say, both globally and locally, simply are not on board with trans politics.  the oft-repeated claims by trans and fun-ems that trans are a political minority, and are often oppressed by women, is evidence that this is true.  so while the fun-fems are definitely being dick-pleasing and compliant in their acceptance of what is very obviously an anti-feminist mens rights (trans) agenda, conservative grandmas really arent, or if they are, they arent talking about it.  soccer moms arent.  wilting southern flowers arent.  even women who are compliant or even hesitant dick-pleasers in every other way, arent necessarily buying this one.  so whats the variable here?

it seems to me that the variable is sex-positivism, and liberal anti-woman sexual politics.  sex-positivism requires, absolutely requires that women see the world through mens eyes, where removing “sex” — including intercourse and its attendant reproductive consequences — from its anti-woman, patriarchy-supportive historical and political context is a good thing, because men have been in the wrong for millenia and it benefits them to ignore that.

and sex-positivism, and the idea that “sex” and intercourse with men is a good thing, and that it could and should be liberatory for women, at this time and place, is the most egregious mansplanation — aka. example of forced-male-perspective — that i have literally ever heard.  because in order for women or anyone to see sex with men as beneficial for women, even conditionally, but often as unconditionally beneficial, to us, we must agree that mens perspective on 4 critical points is correct and adopt their perspective as our own:

1) the political class-based oppression of women by men which is based on biological sex is a good thing and should continue; and 2) men deliberately systematically, institutionally and interpersonally harming women as a sexual class, via intercourse, is a good thing and should continue; and 3) the female-specific harms of the penis are particularly beneficial and should therefore be centered as much as possible; and 4) it further benefits us and supports our (male) power to publically deny 1-3.

viola!  sex is apolitical!  no more sex-based differences, no more male bodies, no more female bodies.  because we said so.  just potentially orgasmic bodies, just apolitical, ahistorical blobs of meat, catching friction on each other, for fun.  just like men pretend to be, when they are actually deliberately harming women with their dicks, to support male power.

now, let me just say a little bit about my utter disdain for sex-positivism, and how much of an atrocious fucking lie it is.

if women are really to be made whole again after literally millenia of systemic, institutional and interpersonal sexual abuse at mens hands — a history that no one can credibly deny, and when i say sexual abuse i mean abuses that are directed at our female genitals, and which often have intended reproductive consequences — it would not be too much to ask for a couple of millenia, or even a century, or a decade or even a year or a day, for that matter, of respite from that, so that women as a class could recover from our collective and individual histories of sexual abuse at mens hands and to heal.  and yet, to date, we have not been allowed to have even one day to heal from this.  we are not even allowed to acknowledge it happened, or that it never stopped.  even if the oppression had stopped years ago, (and it hasnt!) and even if sex with men wasnt inherently oppressive, (and i think it is inherent, or at least that PIV for pleasures sake is inherently oppressive to women) we would still deserve a chance to breathe in an environment that was substantially different from the oppressive one.  but what we have is men in womens pussies 24/7 like they have always been.  this is simply not a substantial, or substantial enough, change.

and to attempt to erase or deny history, including human rights violations in other contexts is a political and moral no-no, while attempting to reverse the course of oppressive histories on a dime is flatly impossible.  and sex-positivism attempts to do both.  when it comes to any other type of oppression, has either the oppressive or the oppressed class ever tried to reverse the course of that oppressive history on a dime, or expected it to work, or have they said “look it worked” when it obviously didnt, and had people believe them?  has anyone ever taken the site/source of a group’s political oppression and claimed it was now, magically, the site/source of their power, and had that be true?  its ridiculous.  there are lingering, ongoing effects of systemic political and physical oppression, we know this.  and this is true even when the oppressive institution is formally abolished, and ours hasnt been.

meanwhile, the part that liberal/progressive, anti-woman sexual politics plays in trans discourse is obvious: just go on the fucking pill already, and shut the fuck up.  that way, you (women, and especially liberal women) can be more easily resemble an apolitical, ahistorical, potentially-orgasmic meatbag, catching friction off of other people, for fun.  it furthers the illusion that this is true for either women or men, when of course it isnt.

and while we are pretending, lets *also* pretend that contraceptives actually do that for women, when in order for them to do that they would have to be 1) 100% effective, and 2) cause no side-effects themselves.  and clearly, neither applies.  women arent even effectively changed into pretend male-like meatbags, they just have to pretend they are!  but whats a little more pretending when you are already living in an alternate male-centric reality thats based on lies about men but also wasnt built for you?  note to women: if you have to take a pill to live in mens reality, a pill that men do not have to take, it indicates that 1) there is such a thing as male reality thats different from female reality and that these differences are biologically-based and 2) men are forcing women to fit male reality.  and oh what the hell, 3) there is probably a reason for that, ie. it benefits men to do this.  because everything men do benefits men, because patriarchy.  duh.

anyway, my point is this.  while other male-centric politics are decidedly woman-hating and thrive off of mens sexually abusing women too, liberal politics in particular seems to be the one thats heavily invested in turning both male and female bodies into apolitical, ahistorical, potentially-orgasmic meatbags that catch friction off of each other for fun.  where all women are collectively owned by all men, and women’s male-centric sexual activity and sexual slavery are prized over our virginity and reproductive slavery.  (contrast that to conservative sexual politics.  conservative and liberal men disagree with each other somewhat, on some points, regarding how to treat women, aka. liberal and conservative mens sexual, domestic and reproductive slaves).  and sex-positivism is the ideology that tells women this is *not* just a slimy political deal struck with sleazebag liberal men who demanded it: its really an acontextual (apolitical, ahistorical) choice.  women could not embrace trans politics without both of these things, i dont think.

and thats just (i think?) the fun-fem acceptance of the physical aspects of trans. ie. sex is a social construct, there are no meaningful physical differences between women and men.  acceptance of the gender part also requires internalized misogyny, homophobia and lesbophobia, ie. a woman who likes other women or can change her own oil or doesnt want to be a disempowered, feminized rape-object for a man, even when having intercourse with men, (gay transmen!) is really a man herself, so long as she says she is.  nope, no problem there.

are we having fun yet?  or, is this what peak-fun feminism looks like?  stay tuned…

Bad Sense February 24, 2012

Posted by FCM in authors picks, feminisms, logic, news you can use, PIV.
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like the dishwasher dilemma, which is the source of endless and unresolvable conflict in the het partnership, the “sex” fight is one that can happen every day, all day without ever being resolved.  because its a clash of 2 realities, where women are saying that from their perspective, things look, sound, feel, taste and smell like shit, they dont like it, and they want it to change; and men disagree that anything should ever change, when the current arrangement is so obviously beneficial to men and supports male power.  thats what the sex fight is about: women dont like living in mens reality, where men make the rules to benefit themselves, at womens expense.  and men do like it, and they never, ever want it to change, and they will never do anything to change or disturb the current order, and they will do everything in their power to support it and perpetuate it forever.

and the sex-fight comes in 2 flavors, doesnt it?  we are all familiar with the one where women are sick and fucking tired of being pronged by men, where they have had enough of submitting to unwanted intercourse that is boring, painful, degrading, risky, dangerous, or terrifying.  otherwise known as the “frigid woman problem“.  you know, from mens perspective.  where NOT engaging in painful, terrifying or degrading intercourse is known as abstinence, because intercourse, no matter how terrible it is, is what sex is, and going without it is the same thing as abstinence.  according to language.

but theres also the problem of women wanting PIV too much, or more than their partners do.  theres a very clinical and very nasty-sounding name for women who actually desire all that PIV thats being done to them, and would be done to them anyway, whether they liked or wanted it or not: nymphomaniacs.  because men know that theres something very wrong with women who actually want intercourse.  you know, considering how dangerous it is for women, and how much it is clearly against womens best interests.  men know this, and they are naming their reality constantly: women would have to be literally insane to want PIV.  of course, since no women are free to opt-out of PIV completely, this also implies, doesnt it, that engaging in unwanted intercourse (as opposed to intercourse thats wanted) is actually the sane thing to do, and is what passes as sanity for women.  rape and rapeability as sanity, and evidence of good mental health, for women.  omg.  but i digress.

my point is that women wanting more PIV than their partners — and the frigid woman problem — are really manifestations of the same thing.  radical feminists are always bombarded with stomach-turning porntastic proclamations by both women and men, whenever we criticize PIV, where despite what we know about womens shared experience with PIV and how devastating it has proven to be to girls and women around the world, there are apparently some women who like it.  looooove it, even.  and i am sick of hearing about it, but its not because i dont understand it, and its not because it challenges my position and i dont like being challenged.  its because i dont like being bombarded by fucking porn, for one thing.  and its also because it doesnt challenge anything at all, and its actually completely consistent with a radfem analysis of dueling realities, and PIV.  and the stupid — combined with the porn — just really fucking burns, yannow?  it really does.

so lets put this one to bed.  some women want lots and lots of PIV because if they are going to engage in it at all, and take on the extreme risk of engaging in PIV at all, it makes perfect, nauseating sense that they would also want to do it a lot.

because once you have engaged in intercourse one time, there is no way of knowing for sure that you havent become impregnated against your will: you wont know that until you get your next period.  and this is terrifying.  youve jumped off a bridge, and theres no going back.  so doing it 10 more times really doesnt make anything better, but it doesnt really make it worse, either.  not really.  the first time is the worst, because it introduces terror into the equation for the first time.  and going from no-terror to some terror is more of a change, than going from one degree of terror to another.  or at least, going from none to some is objectively measurable, where going from one degree of terror to another is subjective at best, and dependant on many variables, like where you are in your cycle, birth-control failures, and the like.

this is what sexual “empowerment” looks like for women, under the PIV-as-sex paradigm.  taking an area of subjectivity and manipulating it the best they can, so that their interests are at least somewhat represented.  otherwise, they wouldnt be.  at all.

*i* was this woman once, and i was rendered absolutely mute when it came to articulating this, because there are no words for it.  i fought with nigel constantly about our “sex life” which consisted of infrequent PIV, just frequent enough to leave me wondering every (or every-other) month whether i was pregnant, and thats it.  the absolute most risk with the absolute least payout (for me).  it became just another repetitive bicker-fest and was never resolved, partly because in order to articulate this one, so that it can be addressed, you first need to understand the concept of reproductive harm, and that concept does not exist under patriarchy.  it is literally unutterable.  not that most men would be interested in addressing this one properly, even if most women could articulate it.  but that goes without saying, and demonstrates why this is actually a HUGE problem, and probably cannot be remedied.  because men dont want it remedied.  no, they like it the way it is.  now why might that be?

so anyway, assuming you have engaged in PIV that critical first time, you have already jumped off the bridge, and the “sexually empowered” woman wants to enjoy the fall, as much as she can.  note that the entire process *more or less* resets itself after you start your period: you start back at zero, with 100% confidence that you arent pregnant.  but even thats not really true, now is it?  in reality, youre never really sure.  but lets pretend we dont know that.

i believe this can be expressed in a simple graphic.  the first graph represents female confidence, and how that is diminished after the first fuck.  the second graph shows how, for the woman who likes PIV, both terror and pleasure are introduced into the equation at the same time — the time of the first fuck.  a womans net-pleasure can be manipulated in subsequent encounters (but not really in the first):

watch that first step -- its a doozy!

(click on image for full-size)

well, maybe its not *simple* but it is a graphic.  after the first fuck, the terror relating to risk of unwanted pregnancy appears.  and female net-pleasure can be manipulated after that first fuck, by increasing pleasure, or decreasing terror, based on many variables.  what you can never do though, is remove the terror once its there.  that stays, no matter what.  you can play with the levers a bit, thats all.  thats where women find their pleasure from PIV (the ones who get any from it, and many dont).  and that is just so completely fucked up, it makes me furious.

now, if you wanted to be really conspiratorial about it, you might think about whether the black areas, while indicating female terror, might *also* indicate male pleasure.  consider that they might be the same thing.  if they were, it would explain, wouldnt it, why men are so fond of fucking virgins, and having one-night stands.  because in both graphs, the woman’s terror arises after the first fuck, but doesnt really increase that much thereafter, or not in any way thats completely predictable, and in control of the man.  and whats in it for men, if they cant increase female terror/male pleasure any more than it already is, and control women in predictable ways?

anyway, i get that some women loooove PIV, and want a lot of it.  it doesnt make what radical feminists say about PIV wrong, or even challenge it at all.  not by a long shot.

Enthusiastic Dissent February 6, 2012

Posted by FCM in health, PIV, rape.
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i recently had a woman in my life ask me for advice.  she said that even though she told her husband she no longer wishes to have PIV, that he keeps bothering her about it, and even though her main reason for removing PIV from the table is menopause-related, in that PIV now causes her extreme pain and recurrent infections, he is getting increasingly and explicitly coercive.  she specifically asked for a list of arguments she might be able to use when he comes after her again, and she plans to stockpile them, essentially, like ammo.  if that doesnt give just the perfect mental picture, then i dont know what does.

so, heres what i said.  keeping in mind that i know some of the details of her situation, and that this is a custom-tailored list, heres what i came up with:

you could tell him that you arent a blowup doll and suggest that he get one.  or tell him you give him permission to get a girlfriend, and that you are sure there are plenty of young women that would love to have intercourse with him.  NOT.  or that no PIV is NOT a grounds for divorce in your state, so whats his point?  he is not asserting a real right here, just an imagined one.  [link to divorce law site]

as for his assertion that its your “right” as a woman to enthusiastically engage in PIV until you are 90, [HAHA!!  HE ACTUALLY SAID THAT TO HER] tell him ok fine, its your RIGHT and you are choosing not to assert your right in this instance.  ask him if “women” (women generally, including you) also have the right to refuse PIV, whether they are old or young?  if so, why?  if not, why not?  do his daughters have this right?  does his mother?

as for his being unable to get his head around “never having PIV again” tell him you dont control that, only he controls that.  all you are saying is that hes never going to have PIV with YOU again, and thats bc you arent ever going to have PIV again with anyone and that part of your life is over, and you are ok with that.

insist that YOU have the right to anally penetrate him with a dildo of whatever size YOU choose, and you dont care if it hurts him bc its your (MADE UP) right to do so and you are asserting it.  or, tell him that its your right to be married to a rich man and you are asserting that right, so he better start looking for a second job right away.  tell him you are a gold digger and you are tired of GOING WITHOUT.

tell him that intercourse is a scam that only very young women buy into because they dont know any better, and you arent young anymore and neither is your vagina.  tell him that yes, there are documented physical changes that occur with menopause.

heres a link:  http://www.medicinenet.com/vaginal_dryness_and_vaginal_atrophy/article.htm

that article says that the PIV-related symptoms can be minor or severe.  for minor symptoms, IF A WOMAN WANTS TO (which you dont) she can use a lube.  but if they are severe, the only treatment is hormone replacement therapy that has side effects and potential complications, up to and including death.  tell him that yours is severe, and you arent willing to take the risk OF DEATH in order to engage in PIV with him.  if he is willing to die from it, suggest that he take his blowup doll onto the freeway and take his chances.

then after thinking about it for another hour, i sent this one, because her partner prides himself in being a terrific family man who loves his children more than anything in the entire world, allegedly including his daughters:

next time he brings this up, stop the conversation immediately, and tell him to call his daughters RIGHT NOW and tell them that they do not have the right to refuse intercourse with men.  tell him to call his daughters RIGHT NOW and tell them that if a man does something to them that hurts, that they dont have the right to stop him, and tell them that if a man hurts them that they just need to let him keep hurting them.  tell them they will probably get used to it over time. [THATS WHAT HE SAID TO HER, THAT THE REASON IT ‘HURTS’ HER IS BC THEY DONT DO IT ENOUGH, THEREFORE TO ALLEVIATE THE PAIN THEY SHOULD DO IT MORE].

if he says that its different bc you are married, then tell him that you are going to call his daughters and tell them that they should never get married and tell them why.  then, tell him that the “right” to intercourse wasnt in your marriage vows.  just like you having the “right” to be married to a millionaire wasnt in your vows, and perhaps you shouldve both considered that before you got married.

some of these are nuclear, all are eminently reasonable.  thing is that i know none of them are going to work, if by “work” you mean they are actually going to convince a man, and get him to really, really feel it, that he doesnt deserve unfettered sexual access to a woman, and that its not, in fact, his god-given right as a man to have PIV on demand.  dood actually told her that HE DESERVES BETTER.  when the truth of the matter is that if he got what he deserved, he would have less than nothing, because thats what he deserves.  and he sure as hell doesnt deserve her, and everything shes done for him over the years, and all the ways his life is better for being with her, because she takes excellent care of him and excellent care of everything.

if only men got what they deserved.  if only.  the world as we know it would be unrecognizable.  and facing that beautiful new world, i think i’d turn cartwheels down the street until my hands bled, and then i’d wash the gravel out, and then….well, i think i would take a pillow and a blanket to the beach and sleep there for a week and think about what i would do with my life, because my work would be done.  and i would be so happy about that.  oh.  my.  god.  the happy.

1984.3 (Viva la Manvolucion) January 23, 2012

Posted by FCM in books!, PIV, politics, pop culture, WTF?.
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part one of this series on orwell’s “1984” is here.  part 2 is here.

this part was so orwellian i thought it deserved its own post.  i actually wondered for a moment how smart orwell really was: was he so intelligent that he slipped this one by, leaving it up to his readers to notice (or not)?  or was he just a common arrogant stooge, waxing poetic about his fantastical manvolution (dood-volution?) to other doods, the one that included putting girls and women in harms way by fucking them, and unabashed woman-hating misogyny stinking up every other page?

here is some of the dialog pillow-talk from one of orwells revolutionary PIV sessions.  from chapter 2 part 7:

‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ he said, ‘that the best thing for us to do would be simply to walk out of here before it’s too late, and never see each other again?’

‘Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I’m not going to do it, all the same.’

‘We’ve been lucky,’ he said ‘but it can’t last much longer. You’re young. You look normal and innocent. If you keep clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty years.’

‘No. I’ve thought it all out. What you do, I’m going to do. And don’t be too downhearted. I’m rather good at staying alive.’

‘We may be together for another six months — a year — there’s no knowing. At the end we’re certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they’ll shoot you, and if I refuse to confess, they’ll shoot you just the same. Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us will even know whether the other is alive or dead. We shall be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that matters is that we shouldn’t betray one another, although even that can’t make the slightest difference.’

‘If you mean confessing,’ she said, ‘we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can’t help it. They torture you.’

‘I don’t mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you — that would be the real betrayal.’

She thought it over. ‘They can’t do that,’ she said finally. ‘It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything — anything — but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.’

‘No,’ he said a little more hopefully, ‘no; that’s quite true. They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.’

He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true when you were actually in their hands. One did not know what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning. Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.

impregnable?  really?  impregnability as in-vulnerablity.  impregnability as in-ability to be colonized, penetrated, taken by force.  and its used this way post-coitally, to boot.  one of them was surely still laying in a wet spot of sexual fluids, having had the revolutionary PIV, and this is how and where he uses this word.  ugh.

for men, the word “impregnable” can and does mean only one thing, and thats the way orwell used it: being impenetrable, and secure.  for women, it could mean *either* the thing orwell meant, *or* it could mean (essentially) the exact opposite.  for women reading orwell, we have to read what he wrote in context, then adjust our perspective so that we are seeing orwells world through mens eyes.  you know, the way it was intended.  this is true with the entire book of course, but his use of “impregnable” this way really hammers that one home.

after all the work the radfems have been doing on impregnability-as-vulnerability and what that means, i was actually struck dumb by orwells use of this one word.  i googled, having *my* perspective wrenched so violently from the one we have been cultivating here and across the radfem blogs this whole time.  i had actually forgotten that the word could be used that way.

im·preg·na·ble 1

adj.

1. Impossible to capture or enter by force: an impregnable fortress.
2. Difficult or impossible to attack, challenge, or refute with success: an impregnable argument.

im·preg·na·ble 2

adj.

Capable of being impregnated.

its nice that the female-only identified use of the word is the second definition too, which makes it kind of wrong for us to use it that way.  not wrong in the sense that its the wrong word, but we are *kind of* being tricky here, arent we, when we say it to mean one thing, when its most commonly used to mean the opposite.  seriously, my head still hurts.  im no language expert, and if im missing something here, im sure someone will tell me.

in the meantime, i plan to go back to reading the classics, and not wasting any more time on men, or male authors, even the allegedly “good” or revolutionary ones.  or maybe especially not them.

and now, back to our regularly scheduled programming!