Moron Owen Lloyd. Or, What ‘Depoliticization’ Actually Means July 9, 2013
Posted by FCM in feminisms, gender roles, rape, self-identified feminist men.Tags: Deep Green Resistance News Service, DGR, Owen Lloyd
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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.
The Manketplace of Broideas! February 18, 2013
Posted by FCM in international, liberal dickwads, MRAs, politics, porn, prostitution, radical concepts, self-identified feminist men.Tags: conference, london, radfem 2013
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i think we have all seen recently (and forever) that mens alleged “marketplace of ideas” really isnt. men wax idiotic about their beloved “marketplace” which is interesting terminology in itself — if there is no “market” for it, it has no place. and obviously they mean this literally — if men cant make money (or some other benefit) from it, its worthless. they like to think this isnt true, and cite as evidence their made-up assertion that but but but their marketplace includes anti-capitalist dood-volutionary type material too!
in reality, mens “marketplace” includes allegedly subversive material, as long as its porny enough, and exploits women. hello. orwell himself once marveled about his own career as a writer that he had “somehow” convinced capitalism (or like, the establishment, or something) for a short time to pay him for work that was directly oppositional to its own interests. a close reading of “1984” of course reveals that, whatever else it mightve been, orwells doodvolutionary work was also valuable PIV-positive, woman-hating propaganda. mystery solved.
we have seen rampant censorship of womens ideas recently — funny that, since women have only recently been granted a voice in public, and been allowed to read and write for that matter. the lucky ones of us anyway. and despite a global policy and practice of silencing women, often via rape and threats of rape, we see men waxing asshole about “free speech” and how it doesnt count as censorship if its hate speech! or, its not really silencing unless the government does it. it doesnt count, when its done to us, by men, because this that and the other. but specifically women dont need the government to silence us if we are shut down immediately by your average, male-privileged joe via domestic terrorism, including terroristic rape and death threats and men stalking us and promising to harm our children. or if we manage to speak for a couple of months anyway, and later, when a major blogging platform shuts us down for alleged TOS violations (while leaving up all manners of woman hatred, including porn AND RAPE AND DEATH THREATS).
this isnt technically censorship they say, quite ironically, since they are saying it with the deliberate intention of shutting us down and preventing us from developing a theory about whats really going on — we are specifically prevented from conceding ok, this is not technically censorship AND YET we are being effectively silenced anyway, and then speculating on why and how that is.
so the average joe shuts us down, because it *is* in fact (largely) the average joe that oppresses women globally, every day, because patriarchy. they do this with their dicks, and with the express and implied threat of using their dicks against us. and, you know, their vicious murderous violence and threats of violence. it works. and they go right on believing (or pretending to believe) that their “marketplace of ideas” really includes a diversity of human thought, or that it should, and even that it could. their idiotic assertions are laughable, making one question the veracity of certain “common knowledge” regarding what men really fear — legend has it, men fear women laughing at them more than they fear anything else in the world. but they dont bother hiding their ludicrous hypocrisy, which tends to invoke a hiccup and half-concealed snort at least. so while i believe that men hate (not fear) women laughing at them, their solution is to silence womens laughter. notably, they dont try to not be funny. SILENCE.
with this in mind, i would like to acknowledge that the program and registration materials for radfem 2013 have been posted. here, there and elsewhere, women are bringing *our* ideas to the marketplace. men arent proving to like it, but mens response certainly does not detract from or negate the value of those ideas, or speak (in any direct way) to the value of our ideas to and for women, as a sexual class, around the world. in reality, radical feminism is the only idea and the only policy and practice that has any value at all. its the only honest, rigorous discourse on the planet at this time, because its the only one that centers or even acknowledges the lives and the reality of 3.5 billion oppressed people globally — women.
for thinking, intellectually honest women, for women who acknowledge our own humanity and who want to be fully free, radical feminism — including female separatism, and organizing and gathering in female-only space — is all there is. because women are a sex class, the rapeable class, sexual politics is the only political platform that holds any promise to free us, including liberating our female bodies and our minds from male dominance, and that is why we continue to do it. historically, it seems that human beings want to be, and activate towards being free, and if it surprises (or enrages) men that we persevere in the face of their threatened and actualized violence, its only because they do not think we are human at all — but they are wrong about that. in reality, everything men do and everything men think is wrong.
Moron Issue Framing. Or, Why Male Violence Against Women and Children Survives a Cost-Benefit Analysis December 19, 2012
Posted by FCM in logic, politics, self-identified feminist men.Tags: connecticut, gun control, male violence, sandy hook elementary school
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the responses to recent calls for banning firearms in the wake of the sandy hook elementary school annihilation are stupefying. heres one now, from some allegedly pro-feminist dood equating male violence against other men with male violence against women and children. stupefying! or the even more stupefying “what about the pens!” argument: men will use any object as a weapon, (link within to a “school massacre” where the man used a hammer against children — and all the children survived their injuries, get it?) therefore we are obligated to make mens job of annihilating large numbers of women and children easier by giving them access to guns. what?
now, obviously, gun control is a harm-reduction strategy only. lets be clear about that: women generally are not so stupid as to ever believe that we can eliminate the problem of violent men, and reducing or eliminating mens access to guns will not cure or even reduce the problem of violent men. we have been in mens crosshairs since before there was such a thing as crosshairs mkay? we know guns arent really the problem, but to suggest a real solution (eliminating or reducing the number of men, or female separatism) garners us rape and death threats and worse. some of us do it anyway, because the problem of male violence against women is so ghastly and so penetrating and so real that it makes very little difference whether the threats against us are made more-overt. they are overt already.
and i am about as disinterested in harm-reduction strategies as anyone could possibly reasonably be: which means that i am very interested in them, and i do think about them, but i dont like to waste my time writing or talking about them. other people can and do perform that function better than i ever could, and i am happy to let them — i invest my time and talent elsewhere, because thats what *i* do best. mkay? but look. even *i* cannot stand by whilst people make the same idiotic remarks on this issue, making false equivalences, stinking the place up with equality-rhetoric and worse. this is maddening. maddening! so allow me to try to help, if i may.
the problem, i think, is that in mainstream and even “feminist” discussions of male violence, there are several issues being discussed as if they are one issue, or different issues being discussed as if they are the same. when they arent the same at all. firstly, male violence against women is a different animal than male violence against other men. mkay? because women do not equal men and men do not equal women. women are the oppressed class, men are the oppressors. women are impregnated while men impregnate. get it? different, not the same. we have to assume meaningful sex-based difference, i think, and work from there, lest we fall into obfuscating and male-centric equality-rhetoric accidentally. if there are no meaningful sex-based differences implicated, thats one thing, but there frequently are.
secondly, from womens perspective, male violence against other men is bad too, but our reasons for thinking so are not mens reasons, or they cannot be assumed to be the same or even similar. okay? because women are not men and men arent women. clearly, if the issue of male violence against either women or men was the same issue for us as it is for them, women and feminists would probably care about it as much as men seem to care about solving the problem of male violence, including the problem of male violence against other men, which is to say we wouldnt care about it much at all. except to use it to derail, obfuscate and negate womens calls to reduce or eliminate male violence against women perhaps, like old tremblay did there with his “what about the pens?” its pretty useful for that.
to wit, i think we need to realize and accept that everything man-made that currently exists, exists because it has been found by men to survive a cost-benefit analysis. male violence against other men survives a cost-benefit analysis, and male violence against women survives a cost benefit analysis. to men. if it didnt, they would stop doing it. can we agree on that much at least? if not, please detail any reasonable disagreements below. i dont think there are any.
and when analyzing both sides of the equation of male violence against both women and men — the cost-side and the benefits-side — things like hierarchies, and power, and misogyny, and sadism, or the political usefulness of paralyzing fear might be too abstract to plug into a mathematical equation. for the purposes of understanding the cost-benefit analysis men are obviously applying toward male violence, i keep coming back to the issue of “gynergy” which isnt abstract at all — where women consistently put their time, resources and literally our life-energies into the survival and growth of ourselves and our children, this can be measured. when men kill *anyone* they are killing womens gynergy, and each child and indeed every adult is the embodiment of a real womans gynergy: a 6 year old child represents 6 years (and 9 months) of its mothers time, resources and her very self. a 50-year old, for that matter, represents 18 years (ok who are we kidding — the full 50…plus 9 months) of its mothers — and other womens! — gynergy. when a man kills someone, to the killer and to all men, the victim may be no more valuable within mens value system than any other 200- (or 50-) pound meatbag, (whats even the most expensive meat worth? not much) but that is not the value of a human life to women, as a sexual class, around the world, now is it?
and thats just the beginning of the discussion, i think. and the conclusions we will be forced to draw, when we analyze mens value system and compare it to ours, including the reasons for obvious difference will likely be devastating. but we have to do it dont we? at the very least we should probably shut the hell up if we cant make a decent observation about male violence so we dont confuse everyone. but that is kind of the point of doing it, when you are a man. right, tremblay?
male violence against women, and male violence against men, consistently survives a cost-benefit analysis to men and male supremacy — if it didnt, men would stop doing it. its time we look at the equation they are using, to figure out how they keep getting the result they are getting. and why we get a different result when we do the math. and if it seems cold and calculated to think of it in these terms, blame men mkay? if they werent all the time killing people, and obviously finding a net-gain to themselves in doing so, we wouldnt have to examine why that is, and whats in it for them, or to examine anyones values or the nature of our investments so closely. but they are, so we do. that is all.
femonade 