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.
ive been doing this awhile now, and i can report that i have been a target from day one or thereabouts, when the fun fems and sex-pozzers first tried to silence me. this was even before i received my first rape or death threat — it was the women that nearly did me in! granted, half these “women” were probably men, but not all of them.
in the beginning — notably, before i had even found my voice or gone anywhere near the ends of my thoughts — in order to amass currency and credibility, i was invited to “check my privilege” to the point of nearly (even clearly) identifying myself publicly. (i declined that invitation.) in the same vein, accusations were lobbed at me of various “privileges” (and continue to this day) inviting me to reveal details of my life as a “rebuttal” lest i encounter negative outcomes (like losing currency and credibility, due to all the privilege). or to, you know, ignore it.
this is no accident BTW. this “privilege checking” business mirrors doxing and outing exactly. the outcome at least is identical, where the result is to make radical feminist bloggers more vulnerable to violent men in real life, in order to silence us, or cause us to self-censor out of fear. this outcome — womens identities and personal information being revealed in order to silence radical women or original, female-centered thought — is what men want, and this is what men get. handed to them on a silver fucking platter. by us, via “privilege checking.”
luckily, even way back then, although this was my first blog, it was not my first rodeo — i continued. at some point my focus changed, and i came to realize that what i was doing was qualitatively (and quantitatively) different than what anyone else was doing at this time and place (online, now). very recently, and very painfully, and painstakingly, and like REALLY SLOWLY, as if i had some kind of mental block against realizing this particular truth as a matter of fact, i realized that reformist-oriented radical feminists have taken over the movement, and are trying very hard to silence dissent. here is what i mean by that.
i mean that there are radical feminists who are without a doubt radical — they recognize the importance of getting to the root of womens oppression by men. that is not a small thing. in order to fulfill that most basic requirement, one must first believe in women and men — in todays pomo, queerified environs, almost everyone who identifies as “feminist” fails. reformist-oriented radical feminists believe in women and men as sexual classes, and they want to get at the root, and notably, they have chosen to utilize legal and social reform as a tool to dismantle what they consider the root, which is usually identified as dom/sub. the ugly part of this is not that they are utilizing a specific strategy towards ending male dominance — to each her own. the ugly part, as it always is, is the disingenuous part, the silencing part.
to wit, and these are but 2 examples, men and trannies have been really pissed off about mary daly and her very existence for a long time — they see her as an “evil” woman (HA!) and resent her audacity in every way. they have identified her “sexism” against men and her female-centered vision as offensive to themselves and thus they want activate towards complete erasure of daly and her genius and her exceedingly excellent work and legacy from the face of the earth. indeed, if mary daly were alive today, her work likely wouldnt even be published, and her physical safety would be in serious danger because of the escalating threats and violence of men against women and the attempted and successful silencing of specifically radical feminist ideology.
so within this political and material context, where men vehemently wish activate towards mary daly and her work being wiped from the face of the earth, what does one (relatively) well-known reformist-oriented radical feminist do, in a public letter to the UN (subject: trannie politicking) but throw “essentialists” like mary daly and all feminists who think like mary daly under the bus — we are erased from feminism. mary daly! not a feminist! because she noted that men are unlikely to be changed, and that its likely biological. thats rich. no, the real feminists are the social determinists, like gloria steinem — and steinem herself seems especially quotable when she herself is quoting a man. srsly, read the UN letter if you havent already. now thats good erasure i mean reformist politicking.
next, and of personal and political significance to myself (and others) men and trannies set their sights on the radfem HUB early on. they wanted it GONE. erased. they activated towards that end mercilessly; notably, they failed. and yet, be that as it may…has anyone seen the HUB lately? gee, where did it go, who was involved, and what lead up to it — even more to the point, what has been so distracting, stressful and time consuming of late (erasure complete) for 2 of the most prolific radfem bloggers out there, 2 radfem bloggers who are decidedly against reformist politicking and have been calling shit on both reformism and the tendency of reformist feminists to hold out hope for men against all evidence — and why oh why arent they (they, specifically) writing anything?
and rounding out the picture nicely, including who wants/activates towards what ends for the HUB, and why, is this: “liberation collective” has just today republished a series originally published on the HUB — but “lib coll” doesnt mention the HUB at all, or mention that this is not the first time this series has been published, or where. its as if HUB never existed, but of course erasing the HUB is the entire reason lib coll exists — it was created a year after HUB was, and hosted exclusively republished/recycled content from the HUB but without acknowledging the HUB at all, or the fact that the posts were *not* first published at lib coll, but in fact were created previously and exclusively for/within a specific context, and were first published “somewhere else.” and what that “context” was and where that “somewhere else” might be was and is specifically omitted. get it? all of that has been erased. a very fine point has been added now that the HUB itself has been destroyed. from the inside.
now, anyone can investigate the connections here if they want to: are the organizers of lib coll and the organizers of radfem 2013 the same people? was the owner and dispositor of the HUB domain involved in any way in either lib coll or radfem 2013? if so, was it in a “public relations” capacity? im just asking.
and for those who plan to go, i hope you will report back as to whether the entire point (intent and effect) of radfem 2013 was to advance the agenda and numbers of reformist-oriented radical feminists, while simultaneously erasing and negating the fact that there is any other kind. and that we were very vocal, once.
this is what “erasure” looks like, on the ground, in real time. in case anyone has ever wondered. it looks like reformist activating, or at the very least, reformists and reformist activating routinely and demonstrably produce a very specific result — to erase radical feminism and radical feminists, including our radical feminist history and our work. do they not? we are absolutely swimming in the erasure of radical herstory right here, right now. remember this.
please bother me for the password so you can read my super sikkrit thoughts. j/k. (this is not a password protected post. read on.)
i have experienced a blogging crisis recently. is this a first-world problem? oh dear. actually, its a speech problem, a silencing problem. women around the world experience this, and i experience it too. this is why i am a radical feminist, afterall. because i share class: female with 3.5 billion women globally who are rountinely, systematically and very easily silenced, by men, and by male technology, and you know, rape, and threats of rape. when we do get a word in edgewise, its precariously positioned indeed. we are no-platformed globally, and we speak from atop the head of a pin, standing on one foot, juggling knives. the lucky ones have a getaway-car waiting at the base of the mountain. sometimes the driver has been shot. me, i have a bicycle.
a bicycle? the head of a pin? is this supposed to be symbolic or something? no — its just words, meant to convey an image, a feeling and above all, an un-obscured message. the message might be a feeling, of course. did it work?
but its not symbolic — i dont do symbolism. i dont have time, and i was never good at it anyway. i tried, when i was young and first thought i wanted to write — a play, as i recall. with symbolism! hester prynne’s illegitimate (foreign, irritating, secret, precious) daughter was named pearl — get it? and as i was getting my characters in order, i realized okay, this is going to be a hell of a lot of work. this is going to take so much research, and there are some things that i — as a 16-year old (and girl) — simply could not know. like, i wanted one of my characters to be an adult man from new york city (i think?) how was i supposed to write that? that project went nowhere, once i realized that. i had written some notes in a small, extremely cheaply made journal covered in black chinese polyester silk. i never used the journal for anything after that. what a waste.
oh, and i just remembered! my very first big writing project was going to be a book! i started it when i was 10, over summer vacation. the only line i recall: a wave of excitement splashed over her body as she…did something. i know she — a high school aged girl — was going to a dance at school, so she was either entering the school or the gym. at 3:00 in the afternoon. because thats what time the dances were, when i was in 4th grade. somehow i knew i was being naive though, and that high-school dances worked differently, but how? i never finished the book. i remember sitting at the table in the air conditioning in a wet bathing suit, typing on an old typewriter with a couple missing keys that poked into my fingers. like, really bad. it was almost useless as a typewriter. my sister and our friend made “tea cakes” for us to eat, in our wet bathing suits in the air conditioning — “cakes” which consisted of the inner parts of whitebread slices balled up in our hands, which we drank with…something. maybe tea, but probably not. iced tea maybe. the swirls in the “tea cakes” (bread-balls) that looked kinda like cinnamon were actually dirty-hand dirt.
i had thought exclusively positive things about all of this — it was fun! — until one of the mothers asked us what “tea cakes” were, and then what the swirls were. she also asked me what i was writing, and when i replied that i was writing a book, she seemed skeptical! it hadnt occurred to me to be embarrassed about literally every single thing i was doing there at that table, eating dirty hand-balled whitebread, typing words that would never be a book ever, because there is no possible way. then, im sure i went swimming. in a dirty lake. with fish. in case anyone was wondering.
anyway, what was i saying? oh, symbolism. i dont do it. what i do is write things, for people to read, and then i converse with them about it. generally speaking, i speak literally (not metaphorically) and i invoke feeling, as well as convey information. in every post i write, i include an insight, because otherwise i bore myself to death and see very little point. these insights come from different places and i dont take credit for most of them — i just work here. i show up to work here. luckily, i am frequently inspired.
as a part of this writing-thing, i sustain direct and indirect hits, because for whatever reason, people are actually reading what i am saying. they are paying attention to it and responding to it in various ways. i *dont* like attention, but i do like writing things, for people to read, and then discussing it with them. so i keep doing it. sometimes i think about ending it so that i dont have to deal with the shitty parts of it anymore, and the shitty part is really fucking shitty. like, i feel like i am eating some amount of shit every fucking day, or most days. it feels toxic and alienating.
what i started doing when i feel toxic and alienated — because when i get like this i feel like i have nothing else to read, even though thats not exactly true, but thats how it feels when there is so (relatively) little radical work out there and i just want to feel inspired again, and i am feeling quite alone and frustrated by this point, and the thought of picking up a 30-year old book isnt doing it for me, and i dont want to have to search for anything, wahhhh, poor me — i read my own archives. okay? i do. i read the posts and i read the comments — seriously, i highly highly recommend the comments. it takes about an hour to read 2 or 3 posts and the conversations that follow, and every time i do this, i think — this is some of the best if not THE BEST writing on the internet. or something. you literally cannot get this anywhere else. okay? i think this about the posts, and i think this about the comments. its not the writing as much as the ideas of course, but damn those are some nice words, strung together in a coherent way, intended to make sense to other people. which is different than being a “good writer” not incidentally. get it?
and i used to do this with the HUB too. every time we were under attack or experiencing some crisis or sustaining repeated blows, from within and without, sometimes at the same time, i would pry one hand out of my hair and go a-browsing. in its early days, i would browse HUB’s front page — it went on forever, and had so much fresh content, it was glorious — and i would think “this is really good work. i am really happy about this. excellent.” or something. and you know what else i would think about? as much as i hate to admit it to all you amazing women who might be able to go entire minutes without an old white man popping into your head, i (would and do) think about dave thomas, the creator of the wendy’s hamburger franchise.
okay? i think about dave freaking thomas and his freaking fast-food restaurants. because i once saw a biography about him, and he spake into the camera thusly:
every time i feel down, and like this cant possibly succeed (he was competing with the biggies mcdonalds and burger king, dont forget) i go into one of my restaurants, and i have a burger and a frosty and i think “this is really good food.” and that makes me feel better, and i start to believe this might actually work.
thats a paraphrase, and its rather like “if i build it, they will come” — but with pickles and onions. get it? if i build it, they will come. another dumb 80s reference that has stuck with me all this time, for some reason. the young ‘uns can google it.
so look. deep down, im just a hick who remembers stuff, and i find inspiration where i find it. i involuntarily recall this interview of dave thomas i accidentally saw once, when im feeling down about radical feminist blogging, or when the biggies are about to crush me. because the biggies are about to crush me, always, and therefore, i sustain blow after blow, from within and without, i end up thinking about hamburgers a lot. not all the time, but more than i normally would, for sure. i am thinking about them right now. and now you are too. 🙂
so, is there an actual point to be located anywhere in this post? yes. did it come through? you tell me. i feel like hammered shit right now, and im thinking about crusty, greasy hamburgers i cant even eat. because of food allergies, mind you. my appetite is completely fine.
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.
femonade 