What do you think of the new look???

 [image of question marks in different fonts is from here]

I welcome feedback on this new template I'm using. My goal is for the blog's appearance and layout to be clearer, easier to read, gentler on the eyes, and overall more welcoming.

Let me know if this design does any or all of that, or other things that you do or don't like! I've jokingly tagged this post with "whiteness" and "When White isn't Right" because the old format was beginning to seem a little too white to me--not enough color. There's enough of that aesthetic in the my world already!! ;)

I've also added to the "About Me" blurb on the right side, somewhere down there.

Love to all of my allies and friends in the thick of the struggle, including all the regular commenters and all the sporadic commenters, and those who regularly visit in support but don't post comments at all. Thanks for staying with me through this part of the bumpy ride called actively resisting and challenging oppressive power. Please wear seatbelts and helmets for extra safety. But don't let those helmets mess up your hair!

Julian xoxoxoxo [kisses and hugs]

Celebrating what would have been Judy Garland's 88th birthday. For my Lesbian and Gay Pride month, I'm going to try and "Get Happy"

Happy 88th, Judy!!

From the movie, Summer Stock. You gotta love a bevy of white men surrounding the female star, ending up on their knees. What a powerhouse she was. And she was under five feet tall, out of heels!

The Wealth Gap Between U.S. Whites and African Americans, with an explanation for it

All that follows is from *here* @ Sociological Images.

The Growing Wealth Gap Between Blacks and Whites
by lisa, 2 days ago at 11:13 am

In addition to differences in income, there is a persistent wealth gap between black and white families in the U.S. The term “wealth” refers to all of your assets (the home you own, money in savings and investments, etc) minus your debt. According to a new research and policy brief by Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Laura Sullivan, the wealth gap has increased from $20,000 in 1984 to $95,000 in 2007.



The authors explain the growth in the gap this way:

The [increase in the] racial wealth gap… reflects public policies, such as tax cuts on investment income and inheritances which benefit the wealthiest, and redistribute wealth and opportunities. Tax deductions for home mortgages, retirement accounts, and college savings all disproportionately benefit higher income families.

There are also much variety in how much wealth is held by people within any given race. The figure below, shows that the gap between high-income and middle-income whites has tripled since 1984. Both groups, however, have seen an increase in the amount of wealth they hold.

In contrast, the wealth of middle-income black families has stagnated and the wealth of high-income black families has recently dropped, flattening differences in wealth among middle- and high-income blacks, but dramatically increasing the wealth gap between blacks and whites.




So why don’t we see an increase in the wealth gap among blacks? The authors point to “…the powerful role of persistent discrimination in housing, credit, and labor markets.”

For example, African-Americans and Hispanics were at least twice as likely to receive high-cost home mortgages as whites with similar incomes. These reckless high-cost loans unnecessarily impeded wealth building in minority communities and triggered the foreclosure crisis that is wiping out the largest source of wealth for minorities.

The authors conclude:

Public policies have and continue to play a major role in creating and sustaining the racial wealth gap, and they must play a role in closing it.

Irish Fathers' WRONGS and the Politics of Defending Not-Poor Men. At least some Irish men get it that these patriarchs don't deserve defending and that feminism isn't to blame for daddy's dilemmas

 [image is from here]

[10 June 2010ECD NOTE: This post has been revised and clarified since reading Andrea's comment after the post. Thanks Andrea!]

The following CRAP-loaded statement du jour is quoted in an Irish Times article below is this:

“Systematic suppression of the facts about injustices against men in family courts has been effected by a generation of feminist-conditioned journalists.” -- John Waters

When will privileged white fathers start noting how RACIST PATRIARCHY impacts their parenting choices, and the ease with which they can blame feminists of all colors for their own personal failures?


I have had occasion, very recently, to discover that men who are fathers don't really see themselves as parents. Husband and wife wake up to a crying baby. He decides to sleep in. She is the default parent who gets up and changes THEIR baby. (He needs his sleep, you see. She? Well, he's not so concerned about that. He's the center of his world. Her baby is the center of her world because she has an infant who must be attended to, around the clock. He COULD make this infant, HIS infant, the center of his world. There is no feminist outcry that he not do so. She's fine with him stepping it up.)

HE is as stay-at-home as she is, but HE goes out to the gym, leaving HER with the baby, even though HER work is at home, at a computer (SHE is the primary wage earner). She is sitting at her computer, WAGE-WORKING when he decides to go to the gym, because, well, the baby is asleep. Never mind that the baby might wake up and need his attention. He doesn't have to worry about the baby... she's there.

He and so many het fathers who are home with their female spouses and children, view taking care of their own children as a favor they might occasionally do for their dearly beloved spouse, not a moral and social obligation because, you know, they had children. 


This is my experience: only when het men are so abusive to women that women take action to protect themselves, and any children, do fathers want rights of access. When the men are just "good guys" they take fatherhood for granted, are never as involved as are women in the raising of children, and go about their lives opting in and opting out of being a parent, depending on mood and whim, determined largely by privileges and entitlements not afforded mothers.

The men in my family, for example, can see themselves however they wish: as dedicated dads or as deadbeat dads or anything in between. They play the parts, always blaming women for their woes--she may be blamed for wanting too primary a relationship with their children, so he pouts and withdraws. She may be blamed for not attending enough to them and be portrayed by him as a neglectful parent. 

Especially fathers and other men love to blame feminists for "all that's gone wrong in heterosexual relationships, particularly with regard to something called "Father's Rights". (We may note how they don't form groups called "Father's Responsibilities".) And so too do some women blame feminists, who also think fathers are an disempowered political group. Let's keep in mind it was largely fathers who crafted all the laws they balk against when women demand scumbag abusive men not have access to their children. Let's not forget patriarchal societies determine what women will and won't do with children; how they will and won't be stigmatised, if they do have children; if they terminate a pregnancy; if they put children up for adoption; if they refuse sex; if they have too much sex... The double standards are endless and never work to secure for women the human rights and civil liberties men enjoy relative to women within most WHM supremacist-impacted cultural and ethnic groups.

What follows is an article by Sarah Carey, who makes it clear she sides with the poor beleagered fathers. Following that, I've copied and pasted some of the comments from the original site, which you can link back to by clicking on the title below. The very last comment is the one I wrote to appear in the comments list at that Irish Times website.

The Irish Times - Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Media baulks at pursuing fathers' rights

Views have evolved but an instinctive suspicion of men as uninterested impregnators is hard to shift, writes SARAH CAREY

JOHN WATERS has a point. Last Friday he complained that although his column of the previous week had gained international attention, it was largely ignored in Ireland. In fairness, “Man fathers child with his sister” should have sparked some interest.

Apart from the Irish edition of The Daily Mail, no Irish media outlet followed up on the appalling story of a man who fell in love and had a child with a woman who turned out to be his half-sister. The disaster had occurred because his mother had lied to him about the identity of his real father, and because the courts had endorsed that lie by denying the father access to his son. Worse, though no one doubted the true paternity of the boy, his birth certificate incorrectly identified another man as the father. A clearly fraudulent document couldn’t be corrected without the consent of the mother, the perpetrator of the original lie.

If the media champions itself as a tool with which the country’s dirty little secrets might be revealed, why does it fail to pursue the issue of fathers’ rights with the same diligence with which it goes after the church or the travel expenses of peripatetic Senators?

Part of the problem, as Waters acknowledges, is that he’s writing the story. When he writes about fathers, we throw our eyes to heaven, because there he goes banging on about that issue again. Also, those other fathers who air their grievances in the media are angry, and that makes them look a bit mad. This makes us suspect there’s more to their case than they’re telling us.

The other problem is that Waters argues that the “systematic suppression of the facts about injustices against men in family courts has been effected by a generation of feminist-conditioned journalists”. When men are victims, scandals are ignored. If women are victims, their plight is well-advertised. His explanation requires his colleagues to acknowledge that they are “feminist-conditioned”. I suspect that most would either deny that this is the case, or see feminism as being so self-evidently correct that they wouldn’t accept such conditioning serves to blind them to injustice.

I don’t see myself as being implicitly conditioned by feminist ideology. I am a feminist. Not that many women are willing to admit to such a thing these days. The label conjures up Andrea Dworkin – a fat, dungaree-wearing, unwaxed lesbian who argued that all sex was rape. But to those who disown feminism, I ask: what would you give back? The vote? Equal pay? Maternity leave? The Family Home Protection Act? The pill? Feminism didn’t corrupt me. It liberated me, and frankly, I like it. I think my reaction to John’s campaign is probably common enough – I’m sympathetic, but instinctively baulk when he blames a movement that most educated people see as having a positive influence on their lives.

Having said that, I’m not yet 40, but have had enough sobering moments to realise that the Law of Unintended Consequences applies, and criticisms of the movement are valid.

It wasn’t until I felt it necessary to apologise for the fact that I liked staying at home to mind my babies that I realised how feminism had undermined motherhood. And I’m not sure when I began to feel ashamed about the time I advised a pregnant teenage friend not to name the father of her baby on the birth cert. Having a baby was bad enough. Being lumbered with the unsavoury creep who impregnated her in a stupid drunken moment would only compound the error. Fair enough, I was a teenager myself. But how did I come to believe that her child would be as well off not knowing its father?

I was reared in the relative isolation of rural Ireland in two-channel land, and knew nothing about feminism until I was in my 20s. I hadn’t been corrupted by anything but a folk fear of unfortunate girls who were locked up in those laundries, disappeared temporarily down the country to mother-and-baby homes, having lost any chance of advancement in the world while the men blithely carried on with their lives. We were reared on tales of the farmer or solicitor who couldn’t keep his hands off the domestics. Or women arriving “foal at foot” into marriages whereupon children were reared with entire communities conspiring to cover up their true parentage, and thanks to adulterous relationships in pre-divorce Ireland, muttering about there being blood between certain couples.

Subsequently, my experiences veered between bitterly discovering my gender was a handicap in my corporate career, and listening with dismay and sympathy to the stories of male friends cut out of their children’s lives. Yet, however my views evolved over time, that instinctive suspicion of men as uninterested impregnators and unwilling fathers is hard to shift.

So, even if Waters is correct that feminism conditioned us to see fathers as dispensable, I think that such conditioning succeeded because the narrative lay so neatly on top of the pre-existing reality. We already believed that fathers didn’t necessarily want to know, didn’t need to knowand perhaps were better off not knowing.

Of course, regardless of where we’ve come from, the rest of the media shouldn’t be afraid of admitting that where we are now is a place of terrible injustice. At the very least, if other people started to write about it, then Waters could stop, and for that, I’m sure he’d be grateful.

 

Joe
John Waters carries around a vision of Ireland in his head, that only exists in one place - John Waters's head. 

He believes that in Ireland there's a vast conspiracy of liberal intellectuals chiselling away behind the scenes, attacking the church and fomenting radical feminism.

This is not the case.

Ireland is not an intellectual country, it's an intuitive one.

John's feminist narrative is completely off. Because there just isn't the feminists. John needs his intellectual devil to blame, when the roots of the injustices are deeply ingrained in Irish culture. The fathers cut out of their children's lives, are the victims of moral relativism. But not a moral relativism that originates from an ideological text. It's a moral relativism based on social instinct. And John won't level his guns on this target because it's his beloved illiberal conservative Ireland.



shellshock
the legal system is what determines fathers rights. How many women/feminists have had input into the development and evolution of the legal system. Unmarried fathers have no rights because their illegitimate children have no call on their asset/name/familial ties etc. This is the reality that Waters refuses to acknowledge.

To blame feminism, and feminised men for this state of affairs is an insult to all women and men who believe in childrens rights, and equality before the law for all. It is a frightened response to the rapid changes that Ireland is going through. The cry of a man being left behind in an Ireland he can't relate too. Fair enough, but to blame 'the feminists' for his inablility to see beyond his nose is his problem, not any one else's.


Edward Stevenson
Sarah,

I refer to your mention of the "Law of Unintended Consequences" and offer the following observations.

The Irish family law system, for those who are unfortunately familiar with it, relies upon an ethos that is teeming with intended and contemptible consequences. That ethos is sustained by practices which are flawed on many counts. Consequently, in far too many instances due process is knowingly discarded. Obviously, this ethos and the practices that protect it are manipulated by SOME legal professionals and witnessed by members of the judiciary.

As far back as 1996, experts were calling the system a parody of justice.

Moreover, I propose that chronic dysfunction in Irish child protection practices should be regarded as intrinsically related.

Children in this jurisdiction are regarded as chattel. Their fathers are members, first and foremost, of an economy.
Repute? an ironic spasm of consonants and vowels.

As to the valid functions of the media?

I fear, Sarah, that elites in media and law have an incestuous relationship. The in-camera rule poses less a barrier to discerning factually the injustices in the family law system, but editorial policy appears to have filled the gap. The spurious oversight of rogue legal practices generally has been and remains on the long finger under very similar circumstances.

In the spirit of the Leaving Cert I ask this: when an ethos and its systems resist more than 2 decades of heavy criticism can one logically refer to the consequences as unintended?


Julian Real submitted this comment:
"All sex is rape", "All heterosexual intercourse is rape" are mantras of misogynist men and the women who want misogynist men to love them. One of the ways many women appeal to men is by attempting to prove to them that "I'm not like THOSE feminists!" And THOSE feminists are usually lesbian and radical. So lesbians and radical thinking women get routinely tossed under the bus of patriarchal political correctness because solidarity with a few jerk men is made to seem more necessary for survival and pleasure than solidarity with the bravest thinkers of our time.


In my view, feminism isn't powerful enough, relative to the heterosexist, racist, and patriarchal forces inside the society in which feminism rises up, to be blamed for making women feel guilty about anything. Patriarchal forces, including those embedded in dominant cultural media, religion, education, insist women feel nothing but guilt about parenting... however they do it. Women are to feel guilty because, unlike fathers, mothers can never be good enough. But fathers only have to show up, not be drunks, and not rape their daughters to be considered "good fathers". A double standard? Yes, indeed. Fathers can even beat up their children's mums and still be given custody, after all. How messed up is that? 

It has always been politically (patriarchally) correct to distance oneself from militant front line feminists. (Indeed, is there any other way to be on the front line? Are militant patriarchs seen as not okay because of their militancy? Yet another double standard rears its ugly head.) Radical feminist women who gave and give all humanity a whole lot to be grateful for are not likely to be appreciated in or after their time.

One might, at least, hope for this: when referencing "those" feminists, please at least quote them in context or refer accurately to what they said and did. Please, Sarah, try not to be so disparaging against fat people and so not-so-covertly anti-lesbian in your remarks. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, for example, deserve our gratitude for raising consciousness, with well-researched work, about the endemic problems of rape, battery, sexual harassment, and other forms of violence against women by men. It's sad to see some women to appeal to the men who hate radical feminists, as those men, when the proverbial push does become the aggressive shove, also have little to no respect for any women who stand up for themselves against the needs, wishes, fantasies, and demands of men.

See the following link for the truth behind the "all sex is rape" lie, that just won't die. I'm asking you to please not add to the chorus of those who seek to make some feminists out to be "the bad guys". There really are still too many men who are "bad guys", after all, who, as yet, remain fully unaccountable to the atrocities they perpetrate. Atrocities, in fact, that radical feminists never committed while alive, nor since being dead.
 
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp

This Pro-Gay McDonalds Commercial from France Wouldn't Translate Well in the U.S.

This is such as sweet ad! Too bad it's from a company that has contributed to the spread of cardiovascular disease and obesity for millions of people served. We can hope, at some point, that "gay" won't always be depicted as "white" and "middle class", but I expect nothing more from dominant cultural media, although, I have to say, McDonalds in the U.S. is notorious for pitching its slogans and food at urban African Americans--and not to the Black lesbian and gay community, either.

This commercial will show up with English subtitles on U.S. television three days after hell freezes over. Maybe four. Check this out.

The Patriarchal Pity Party: MRA Trolls and their list of "Misandrist" quotes

 This is an antifeminist troll. It may be doodlebugjim. Not sure.
[The image is from here]

The world of misogynist men's rights activist online trolls isn't as huge as one might think. The question posed to Yahoo Answers below is made by a guy named Nifty. He is the Yahoo friend of Doodlebugjim in his current incarnation. If you don't recall who Doodlebugjim is from a previous post (a mention in comments, actually), I'll update you below. And then we'll move right along to Nifty's question and a rebuttal response. The point here is to show how this trolling works, and what to look for, and that placing a reply like the one offered below, wherever you see that tired old list of "misandrist" quotes may, over time, demonstrate how small and easily challenged and rebutted these trolly woman-haters' posts are.

Virulent antifeminist Doodlebugjim keeps getting thrown off of websites and discussion boards and signs back on changing the letters at the end. Currently, he's known as "Doodlebugjimv12" and you can see his Yahoo page here: http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=AsU4s63cp_8giFxoAgQKpr3sy6IX;_ylv=3?show=Jq56xXQEaa

Here's a quote by him:
"Those who want feminism don't really want equality, and those who want equality really don't want feminism"

Sadly, or pathetically, Yahoo Answers considers him to be a "Top Contributor". According to Yahoo Answers, "a Top Contributor is someone who is knowledgeable in a particular category." The category he is considered to be knowledgeable about is: "Gender & Women's Studies". I would maintain he is likely more knowledgeable about life forms on the other side of our galaxy than he is about women and feminism. You can read Doodlebugjim's answer to the question about feminism, *here* or below.

When asked by some guy "why aren't feminists offended by The Vagina Monologues?" Doodlebugjim responds:
"I have no idea why feminists accept this sort of sick and weird junk as entertainment."

Maybe it's just me, but I don't consider that a very knowledgeable response.

Curiously, he is listed as female, here at bebo.com. Anyone who wants to learn more about him can start with this google page. And this dude isn't trans or intersex, believe me. He shows about as much sensitivity to issues of gender variance as he does toward feminism.

Meanwhile, his pal Nifty wants to know at Yahoo Answers:

WOMEN? what do u say about these feminist quotes?

[Note: what follows are the same old batch of misquotes, quotes from fiction work not indentified as such, very selective quoting out of context, a few choice and astute observations about male supremacist men who deserve it, and misspellings of feminists' names. This list, or variations or parts of it,  is being passed around and around online. Scroll through it if you wish, for the rebuttal. Or see what it is that convinces stupid male readers that women hate men, and that feminists are "misandrists". I'll try never to write that term outside of quotation marks again, as it must always be said in a sarcastic tone of voice, or typing in a sarcastic way of writing. Ironically, this list begins with someone who is not at all feminist.]

‘If you want to get something said in the politics tell a man. If you want to get something done in the politics tell a woman’ -- Margaret Thacher

"Feminism is built on believing women's accounts of sexual use and abuse by men." -- Catharine MacKinnon

"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman." Catherine MacKinnon

"All men are rapists and that's all they are" -- Marilyn French Author, "The Women's Room" (quoted again in People Magazine) "All men are rapists and that's all they are ..." --Feminist Marilyn French, People Magazine (Percent of reported rape or near-rape incidents = .07% [The FBI's Uniform Crime Report lists for the year 1996])

"[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which ALL MEN KEEP ALL WOMEN IN A STATE OF FEAR" [emphasis added] -- Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will p. 6)

"Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership." -- Andrea Dworkin.

"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." -- Andrea Dworkin

"Romance is rape embellished with meaningful looks." Andrea Dworkin in the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 1995..

"Under patriarchy, no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother children. Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's daughter is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman," Andrea Dworkin, Liberty, p.58..

"One can know everything and still be unable to accept the fact that sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibly of the other is unthinkable and impossible." Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 21..

"In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them."--Gloria Steinem

"And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual [male], it may be mainly a quantitative difference." -- Susan Griffin "Rape: The All-American Crime"
(p. 86)

"When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression..." -- Sheila Jeffrys

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan, "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" in "Going to Far," 1974.

"Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck - and if you get in my way I'll run you down." -- Letter to the Editor: "Women's Turn to Dominate" -- Signed: Liberated Women, Boronia -- Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia - 9 February 1996

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Catharine A. MacKinnon, 1989, First Harvard University Press (paperback in 1991) [a legal treatise comparing and contrasting feminism with COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM]

"It is not only men convicted of rape who believe that the only thing they did that was different from what men do all the time is get caught."

"If sexuality is central to women's definition and forced sex is central to sexuality, rape is indigenous, not exceptional, to women's social condition."

"Under law, rape is a sex crime that is not regarded as a crime when it looks like sex. The law, speaking generally, defines rape as intercourse with force or coercion and without consent., Like sexuality under male supremacy, this definition assumes the sadomasochistic definition of sex: intercourse with force or coercion can be or become consensual."

"Compare victims' reports of rape with women's reports of sex. They look a lot alike....[T]he major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it." Catherine MacKinnon, quoted in Christina Hoff Sommers, "Hard-Line Feminists Guilty of Ms.-Representation," Wall Street Journal, November 7, 1991.

"The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist" -- Ti-Grace Atkinson "Amazon Odyssey" (p. 86)

"In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a gr

[Nifty's posted question was cut off at the original site.]

 

A Reply to Nifty (and to doodlebugjimv12, who is never far behind or ahead of him)

The men who are posting and reposting, copying and pasting the above list or similar lists of quotes from feminists don't go so far as to let us know which of the quotes are fiction and which are not and which are taken out of context and which are not. The men who post this list all over the place also don't know how to spell feminists' names, which shows a glaring level of intellectual laziness on their part.

The list above also demonstrates that the men who copy and paste it are comfortable with a willful level of ignorance on the whole matter of what feminism is (many things) and what feminists seek to accomplish (achieving full human rights and civil rights for women, and much more as well, as most womanists and feminists I know don't have one political aim, but rather a cluster of concerns that warrant different approaches and forms of resistance at different times). There is so much wrong with this list being passed around by men who hate women and men who especially hate feminists that it's difficult to know where to begin. But begin I will. First, there are many quotes that questioners such as Nifty or doodlebugjim (v1 through v12), could collect and present for review and discussion. Here are some of the quotes that antifeminist men don't want you to see, because it will spoil their patriarchal pity party:

"The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself." -- radical feminist Audre Lorde

"People can find eroticism in relations with people whom they respect and whom they see as equals." -- radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon

One of the most quoted lines by Marilyn French is one from her novel, The Women's Room. It reads, "all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their codes."

What is next was quoted from her in 2007 and is NOT from her fictional characters:

"Most men are on our side. They like their lives better than their fathers' lives. They like being involved with their children. They like having a better relationship with their women." -- radical feminist Marilyn French

"I believe that all human beings are equal. I believe that no one has the right to authority over anyone else." -- radical feminist Marilyn French

"For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?" -- radical feminist bell hooks

"No one deserves brutality because of what they are, there condition of birth." -- radical feminist Andrea Dworkin

"Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more--also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth." -- radical feminist Andrea Dworkin

"Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust." -- radical feminist bell hooks (Communion: The Female Search for Love)

"As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media." -- radical feminist bell hooks

Why don't these antifeminist trolls also quote or cite radical lesbian feminist Audre Lorde's essay on her love and hopes for her son (in Sister Outsider), or radical feminist Alice Walker's deeply compassionate open letter to Tiger Woods from her blog? Why don't they quote bell hooks from her book on love between men and women? Instead the misogynists and antifeminists pick and choose quotes, again, some from fiction, to arrive at this over-copied and re-pasted list.

There are easily one thousand times that many quotes by men saying vehemently disgusting and vile, violent, and completely disrespectful things about "all women". Why don't these MRAs quote from those works of fiction and state the views of misogynist men? Because that wouldn't make this pack of distortions work out so well for their biased agenda.

Let's visit a few of the quotes by men, throughout history. These are just a tiny sampling demonstrating that men's hatred of women is centuries old and exists across many societies. I will post the source of these quotes later in this response. And keep in mind, these men occupied positions of significant political leadership and social influence with actual power to control institutions and societies that radical feminists, as yet, have never had.

[20 February 2011 update: The following quotes were found at the website of Gaia Charis, here:  http://www.gaiacharis.com/site/index.php/dangerous-children/88-chapter-6misogyny, which is also linked to below in the "Source(s)" section. Thank you, Gaia Charis, for all of your wonderful work!!]

Jack Holland details the ways in which both the Greeks and Hesiod viewed the figure of Pandora.

 ‘The Greek phrase used to describe her, kalon kakon, means ‘the beautiful evil’.’

In Hesiod’s words...
 ‘From her comes all the race of womankind
 The deadly female race and tribe of wives
 Who live with mortal men and do them harm.’

Tertullion, one of the founding fathers of the Catholic Church, famously harangued the archetypal feminine thus...
‘And do you know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway, it was you who first violated the forbidden tree and broke God’s law. You coaxed your way around man whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: man!’

 ‘Woman is a stupid vessel over whom man must always hold power, for the man is higher and better than she is.’   Martin Luther, Protestant Reformationist. (NOT Martin Luther King!)

 ‘A man with a hundred tongues who lived for a century would still not be able to complete the task of describing the vices and defects of a woman.’  Mahabharata, Hindu.

Georg Hegel, wrote in his ‘Philosophy of Right’...
 ‘Women are certainly capable of learning, but they are not made for the higher forms of science, such as philosophy...Women acquire learning – we know not how – almost as if by breathing ideas, more by living really than by actually taking hold of knowledge.’

Friedrich Nietzsche said that...
‘When a woman inclines to learning, there is usually something wrong with her sex apparatus.’

And it lurches into the twentieth century with the words of Otto Weininger on the absolute nothingness of women...

‘Women have no existence and no essence, they are not, they are nothing, Mankind occurs as male or female, as something or nothing...the meaning of woman is to be meaningless. She represents negation, the opposite pole from the Godhead, the other possibility of humanity....A woman cannot grasp that one must act from principle; as she has no continuity she does not experience the necessity for logical support of her mental processes...she may be regarded as ‘logically insane’.    From ‘Sex and Character’, 1906.

Dr. Max Baff, Professor of Psychology, in 1910:
‘All women are fundamentally savage, and the suffragist movement is simply an outbreak of emotional insanity.’

‘Women who say no do not always mean no. It is not just a question of saying no, it is a question of how she says it, how she shows and makes it clear. If she doesn’t want it she only has to keep her legs shut and she would not get it without force.’  Judge David Wild, 1982.

And here's another bit of "brilliance" by Martin Luther:
‘Men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and accordingly they possess intelligence. Women have narrow shoulders and broad hips. Women ought to stay at home; the way they were created indicates this, for they have broad hips and a wide fundament to sit upon, keep house and bed and raise children.’

‘The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain – whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of senses and hands...’  Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man.

I haven't even tapped the vast body of "great" literature, exposing all the quotes from such famous misogynists as Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway. I haven't even shown images of woman-hating mass produced by men like Larry Flynt of Hustler and Bob Guccione of Penthouse. I haven't gone near all the rapes women offline that men film and put online for men's entertainment. I haven't begun to quote what all those men have to say about women and especially feminists that is disgustingly pro-rape and virulently woman-hating.

Why do men who post and repost the list above completely ignore the much longer list of misogynist quotes from famous and infamous men? Because it wouldn't have the effect they are looking for: to get you to believe something without having to think beyond reading a few quotes.

This is the antifeminist misogynists' aim: to get people to believe their lies rather than believe what radical feminists actually do in their activist work. You won't hear much from these MRA trolls about what feminists actually have done to make the world a better, more sane and humane place. They'll only reveal a few quotes by a handful of women with far more reason to be pissed off for men's gross mistreatment of women for millennia. Men's disdain or disrespect for women has no such explanation.

What men who post these quotes can do is post a pack of misinformation quotes, with all manner of typos and distortions. What they cannot do is engage intelligently with the writings of feminists--whole essays and whole books. (Hell, even whole paragraphs!) Sad, but true. The last link, below, is a discussion between an MRA character and a profeminist man, addressing the flawed and distorted thinking and biases of men who don't understand what or why feminists are working for women's human and civil rights. The next to last link is a discussion about the myth of man-hating and the truth about woman-hating.

Source(s):

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/01/26/13rd-of-women-in-us-military-raped/

http://www.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/maze-of-injustice/page.do?id=1021163

http://www.alicewalkerblog.com/2009/12/letter-to-tiger-woods-from-alice-walker.html

http://www.amazon.com/All-About-Love-New-Visions/dp/B0007WYFI4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275932918&sr=8-1

http://www.gaiacharis.com/site/index.php/dangerous-children/88-chapter-6misogyny

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/03/truth-behind-lie-did-catharine.html

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2008/11/woman-hating-misogyny-vs-man-hating.html

Read this to understand what is so incredibly self-serving about men's antifeminism:
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-if-few-dozen-men-wrote-some.html

A Conversation with my New White Friend about Social Change and Approaches to it

 [this image of "conversation" is from here]

What follows is the latest part of an exchange that has happened mostly online, here, but a bit offline as well. Here's the link to the earlier online part. The new friend is named "justme", here. It is not their actual name offline (I know. You're shocked.) I don't believe we'll (the A.R.P.ers,--you, I, we) will have problems with too many "justme"s showing up and so "justme" works just fine for me as the name for the person with whom I am engaging below in conversation about social change.

Hi justme,

I think your questions are terribly important, and I'll try and do justice in answering them.

I'm not disturbed by someone coming here and presenting a need to address something in greater depth, such as being intersex, intersexuality, and the problem of a hierarchically dual gender society that manufactures men to destroy women in various ways. I'm simply going to note, however, when someone white comes here and doesn't own the meaning and presence of their whiteness. I surely don't assume most whites and most men have much of a clue about what their whiteness and manhood actually means, but what I am refusing to do is to be "racism 101" and "sexism 101" perpetually. In part that's because there are other blogs that exist precisely to educate people about what being white and being a man means. I link to them. One is "stuff white people do" and the other is "Finally, a feminism 101 blog".

I don't think either adequately deal with women of color's experience and existence, practices and politics, and I am not surprised, but am deeply disappointed.

There's perhaps too fine a line between being forthright and harsh. I seek to be forthright, but not necessarily harsh. Unless I'm dealing with some silly prick. In which case all bets are off. ;)

But you are an ally, a new friend, and there's no wish or need on my part to be harsh to you.

And thank you for your very kind words about this blog. It and I appreciate them. :)

Re:
With that said, I do feel somehow that if the idea is to make real change, perhaps you should touch more on the issue of intent.

To me, and in the radical circles in which I swing, which are narrow and few and far between, we generally agree that there's far too much discussion about oppressors' intentions and far too little discussion on the effects.

This is to say, discussion of intention continuously makes the subject of discussion the oppressor. The wish and view of this blog is to make real the experiences of the oppressed, and to de-center the oppressor. To make him, usually a him, not the focus, not the subject to be continually addressed, as if he cares to change in ways radical enough to form a revolutionary movement.

I don't mean to be glum, but he doesn't wish to have a revolution. Or even anything too radical going on. The oppressors will not conduct the revolution. It will be, or ought to be, in my view, the oppressed who lead, who organise, who revolt, who reclaim, who take back land, who redefine humanity, and who redistribute wealth and resources.

It won't be whites or men, or especially white men, who do this because we--not you, but we as in, white men--don't have the knowledge, the experience, the skills, the survival strategies, and the means to achieve effective revolution, however it looks, however long it takes.

My blog exists to support women of color taking leadership and engaging in radical actions of every kind. I don't seek to convince whites and men of anything, in part because if whites and men wanted to "get it" they have so many ways and opportunities to do so that they don't avail themselves of that I am left with the distinct and repeated impression that whites and men are willfully ignorant, horrendously arrogant, and are militantly--while appearing to be casually passive in the process--holding onto the power that they believe is theirs.

I reject philosophies like liberalism and humanism as woefully ill-equipped to make visible the damage that white men do, and to empower those who most need support and help--when asked, not guidance, to lead us into a better world.

I don't seek to lead. I seek to support and lend that support when asked to by those I know can lead us out of this hell on Earth.

If whites and men want to know what we do that is oppressive, we need only pay attention, close, scrupulous, empathic attention, to what the effect is on those we impact daily and socially. We could learn most of what we need to know perhaps in a months' time, if we engage honestly with enough people, and put down our defenses of ego and institutions.

Re:
In other words, most white people (WHMs in particular) seem to be so averse to the notion of continuing racism, sexism, etc. because they don't feel as though they are "Racist" or "Sexist."

On the contrary, I believe most whites know they are racist and fully accept it, don't wish to change it, and only wish to present as if they are not so racist as to get into a whole heap of trouble for it. Same with men and sexism.

What whites and men can do and must do is call one another out on our evil ways of being and doing. The incredibly intricate, intimate, normal, socially honored ways we have of being oppressive jerks. And what we whites and men can do and must do, is be fully accountable to those we oppress. Which means we must build honest, trusting relationships with those we oppress, and I'll tell you right now, most whites will not do this. And many men will, to some degrees, with women, but not fully. Not completely. Because whiteness and manhood finds life in having control, in defining terms, in naming reality, and in managing power in ways that centralise him, the white him, and negate and deny her, especially the her who is of color.

Re:
Of course, anyone with an understanding of the sociocultural reality knows that they are, as we probably all are in some ways, but because of this disconnect, it seems that the rest of society can simply brush us off as fringe "crazies" who don't know what we're talking about.

That's why I welcome you here. The "crazies" have to validate and support one another as best we can.

Re:
As for the videos, I completely agree with you about the racial undertones. While I agree that being white is not being "just human," I do think that it's okay for individuals (who happen to be white) to come forward with their personal stories.

That any white person thinks their personal story doesn't include, to glaringly large degrees, the fact of their whiteness, is, to me, a glaring problem. This is the key point. I won't let it go.

Re:
As you mention, it probably is harder for people of color to come forward, and that is a shame (on a side note, Lynnell Stephani Long is the only person of color I have met/seen speaking out about intersex).

I am aware of one or two people of color who have spoken out about this. But the corporate mass media will not seek either of them out, nor any other intersexed person of color, as spokespeople for what it means to be intersexed, because the media will see them as needing to also discuss race, whereas the white person will be seen as not needing to discuss race, thereby allowing a single issue to be discusses as if it isn't connected to anything else. And this presentation of issues as disconnected, as you well note, is part of the problem.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with corporate mass media.

Re:
But if these people don't come forward, what should someone (in an idealist world of course) who does believe that only presenting white stories is insufficient do? Make someone up?

No. Not at all. Whites and men make up enough, are delusional enough, are in denial enough. What whites and men need to do is discuss how being white and being a man impacts everything we whites and men do, how we engage, how we express ourselves, what we think, what we believe we know, how we see the world, how we don't see most people in the world, and how we see ourselves as normal, or normative, or "just human" unproblematically raced white and inevitably gendered men.

So when we speak, we ought to speak honestly about how damned oppressive we are, so that those who are not white and who aren't men don't feel so isolated and invalidated socially. See, I'm not about doing it for the white man. At all. Fuck him. He's doing nothing at all to demonstrate willingness to be fully accountable. I know not only because I am one of them. I also know lots of "good" white men, who, when push comes to shove, duck out of their responsibilities to those they oppress and do exactly what they want to do, irresponsibly and oppressively.

Re:
Of course, I don't mean to suggest that your entire blog needs to coddle WHM-society or excuse it, but maybe you could acknowledge that just because there are huge problems with pretty much everything that is presented in White, Heterosexist society, doesn't mean that the individuals who present it necessarily have (consciously) malicious intentions.

For whom shall I make this clear? Because from what I hear, women and people of color, and especially women of color, know full well what the intentions are and are not of their oppressors. And what women of color tell me is this: "It doesn't matter what their intentions are. What matters is the effect their well-intentioned actions (or not-well-intentioned actions) has on us." And, again, this blog doesn't exist to serve whites and men. They are welcome to read and learn what they can, and to go to the blogs I link to, particularly those of women of color, and learn a whole lot more than I could ever teach them. But will they? Let's see.

Re:
While this doesn't change the facts which you present, perhaps it would make the admittedly radical (albeit correct) concepts more digestible for society.

I'm not particularly concerned about whites' and men's indigestion. I used to be consumed with concern about it. But I've learned where my energy is best placed, and it is in friendships with women, not men. And with people of color, not whites. If I scan the last ten years of my life, what has most dramatically changed is the whites and men who I've let go of hoping will become humane. I didn't let go because of my pessimism, but rather due to their stubbornness, their patent refusal to deal with their CRAP. And I've spoken quite politely, quite kindly, quite lovingly, even, with many white men. The tone doesn't matter, actually. As soon as they whites and men catch wind that I'm requesting they understand themselves as those they oppress experience them, they don't wish to continue the conversation. The police, nice conversation comes to an abrupt halt. Over and over and over again. So I'm not invested in them getting it. But I also can't afford to stop speaking to them. Because if I don't, I know who the burden will fall to.

So I do have to try various ways and means of communicating, and what I honestly hope is that other whites and other men will take what is useful from this blog and from all the other blogs of women of color, and white women, and men of color, and trans people, and intersex people, and grow their humanity and bring that growth to their own people, in ways I will not, because I have made a decision to not put my energies there any more.


Or maybe that's just my white, heterosexist upbringing talking. ;)

In any case, I will certainly continue to stop by!

I'm glad you'll be stopping by, justme. And the political effects of the values we've grown up with, you and me, is critical to understand. Because central to what we learned is that we are the most important people on Earth, and our needs must always be met and attended to, which makes us horribly self-centered beings and terribly ignorant about most of humanity.