Friday, March 5, 2010

Let's call this: When Men Cry Unrape, or "The Men Commandments", or Why Zed has No Cred

 
[image of the Decalogue parchment by Jekuthial Sofer, 1768 ECD is from here

In Egypt, the Jews--who were never white--were slaves, and then they got away. Some time post-slavery, they wrote stuff. One of the things they wrote, in Hebrew, was what has come to be termed "The Ten Commandments" and most USers believe that Charlton Heston was the person who received the Word of G-d, which was not chiseled by human hand, but rather by the power of G-d's breath.

Different religions since then have appropriated, contorted, distorted, and retorted these commandments, each denomination believing "we got it right". How odd it is to me that Christians make this claim most vehemently. Hey Christian doods: you weren't fucking there, okay? You didn't exist yet. So please get that.

Never mind: Various groups of men, in various eras and regions, have been the most authoritative authorities on all things authored. Currently, that status, that power, belongs to economically privileged and "educated" white het men. The rest of us, apparently, are prone to lie through our teeth, "falsely" accusing said men of all manner of atrocities: genocide, rape, incest, child molestation, sexual slavery, battery, illegal warfare, wage slavery, corporate corruption and crime, financial distress, poverty, unsustainable societies, and ecocide, to name a few. White men have admitted as much. You need only read the work of John Perkins to know how much from that list is done for the benefit of white men as a political group that refuses to be identified as such unless the doods are White Nationalists. Other than the neo-Nazis and KKKlans-men, most white doods claim they are "just individuals", nothing more. Uh-huh.

These ten commandments are actually derived from different sections of the Old (pssst: Jewish) Testament. Testament and Testicle have the same root. But the root means "three" or "a witness", as in needing a third party present to serve as a witness. It is said that a man's testicles are a witness to his masculinity. As if they are eyes.

Patriarchal religions have tried to curb the worst of socialised male supremacist behavior--that feminists claim is not natural at all--against all the protest by men that men cant' help what we do: our DNA, our hormones, our ancestry, our evolution, our divine right, our nature is to rape women, among other atrocious things. Men believe this, not feminists who write about rape.

Religion has worked for some men in this regard. I know one or two white het guys who used to think of and treat women as things, but having found a named Male G-d, they now think it is wrong to do so. See, men will only listen to men. So the god has to be a dood because "Doods have authority". Doods rule, but not in an awesome way.

Women write, and men lie about what women write. When men do this, the boys false claims becomes The Truth. Before exemplifying this process, let's consider the Men Commandments: patriarchal rules by which all men are supposed to abide. Men abide men. Men don't abide women, and if they do, there is a chorus of men at the ready to call her "a castrating b*tch", and him "p*ssy-whipped".

Men are instructed by pimping pornographers to use their penises as whips in pornography, to smack women's faces in order to humiliate then, prior to the humiliation of men cumming on women's faces. Some men make this material for many men to consume. Please remember this. That more and more women are also consuming this material only means the pimps are good at marketing, the way Coca Cola is good at selling a beverage that no one needs but many desire.

In Western pseudo-secular, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-religous society, men proclaim their rules in pornography and in practices outside of that multi-billion dollar a year industry--which makes a few white male pimps and CEOs very rich, at the expense of all the women who must wipe the cum off their faces, and hopefully heal from the pummeling of men's penises into their orifices. In society and in pornography, these patriarchal rules might be listed as follows.

"The Men Commandments"

1. 'You shall have no other gods before Men' (other than men) : if you disobey him, he may beat you mercilessly.

2. 'Women shall have no other gods other than men and mythic male gods': if a woman makes a non-male G-d her authority, not a human man, she may be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

3. 'Men shall not worship an idol, American or otherwise': if men worship humans over a male G-d, there will be hell to pay. Supposedly. But men do worship men, and gods composed in their image. Men claim to worship women, often in the contrition phase of battering and terrorising them.

4. 'Men shall not take the name of the Lord [not Audre Lorde] thy God in vain', except when stubbing one's toe. Or whenever one feels like it.

5. 'Remember the Sabbath [not Black Sabbath] and keep it holy': and by "holy" we mean drinking beer, watching football, and ordering in of pizza. (Note: Thou shalt tip well.)

6. 'Honor thy father and thy mother.' Well, honoring the father is sufficient, even though he did some really fucked up shit while you were growing up, like raping you, your sister, or your mom.

7. 'Men shall not murder'. This applies to any man not murdering a more statused man. If "thou" is a poor white guy, thou shall not murder a rich white guy. (If thou is a woman, thou shall not murder any man.) Men can murder anyone who have less social privileges and status than they do. Female and trans prostitutes, for example, may be murdered without concern for negative consequences. White men can kill Black men and Black women.You can murder anyone who is structurally beneath you without much concern. That'll be called "necessary collateral damage". But if you murder up the hierarchies, you're in big trouble. That'll be called terrorism.

8. 'Men shall not commit adultery' so often as to grab media attention or pass an STD on to their female spouse. Wait. Men can do the latter. Wait, men can do the former too. It's all good. Men can fuck over women in their lives however they wish, and get away with it.

9. 'Men shall not steal'. There are many exceptions, if the men are white, including the land of Indigenous people; "natural resources" from anywhere in the world; the cultural artifacts of societies and nations living or dead; the sexuality of children; the sense that the home is a safe place. Men can take all of those without asking, and more.

10. 'Men shall not bear false witness against his neighbor; Men shall not covet his neighbor's wife; Men shall not covet anything that belongs to his neighbor'. The assumption, of course, is that his neighbor is also a het dood who possesses a woman. And women have been and to some degrees in various places still are the property of the man or the neighbor, the father or the husband. Het men can covet things that do not belong to het men, such as gay men. Het men can fuck gay men when pretend-drunk enough to claim they have no memory of it the next day. And men can lie about what we do, through our teeth, while our lips move.

So, what about this matter of crying unrape?

This is a form of bearing false witness. Men claim women bear false witness against men when calling a man a rapist, as if calling a man a rapist has ever had a socially status-giving effect on any woman. As if men don't have plenty of ugly names for women who dare to name the man who raped them, or their sister, daughter, mother, lover, or best friend. Women who speak truth about men who rape are called liars by men who wish to rape with impunity.

Men rape in many ways. Sometimes they put their dicks in women's mouths. Men are obsessed with sticking things in women's mouths, among other places. And one of the things they most like to put in women's mouths is their own speech, men's speech. Pornographers script stoopid movies in which women are made to say what pimps believe about women. Feminists don't believe it. Men do. Men believe it when a woman in pornography says "hurt me; I like it", "rape me; that's what I'm for". Men believe this because they want to. Men believe this because it makes the dood's conscience lighter, when raping, to believe the raped woman wants it to happen, even against all evidence to the contrary. Or to believe she doesn't really matter. Or to believe she isn't human. Men believe many ridiculous things about women. And all of what men believe about men and about women is what other men say, write, and act out. Not feminists.

Men's lies about what one feminist (or ten) has said (about men that is unpleasant) are regarded as factual and truthful statements. If a dood says "she said it about us", dood is always right. Supposedly.

When an antifeminist guy states it as fact it is carved into stone and it sits there, with a foul odor of deceit and derision that even Fabreeze cannot hide. There are many websites that repeat the same quotes that are not actual or factual quotes.

I'm going to give two quotes that men love passing around like an STD in a sexist slavery ring. A man named Zed is one of these lie-promoters. (The truth is always so inconvenient for these stoopid doods. For some of Zed's stoopidity, see this piece of shit writing, from which the following quotes were culled.)

Quote 1:
“In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent,” -Catherine MacKinnon in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies, p. 129.

Quote 2:
“The fact is that the process of killing – both rape and battery are steps in that process- is the prime sexual act for men in reality and/or in imagination,” -Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone

You can tell they are quotes because they have quotation marks around them. But did these women say them? And, if said, what did the women mean?

In the first instance, no. Catharine A. MacKinnon, the feminist constitutional law professor, author, and human rights attorney and activist never wrote or said that. Or anything like it. And the proof is that it is not quoted from one of her own books--the citation does not exist on the web, anywhere, as existing between the front and back covers of any one of MacKinnon's books.

I don't know how to break this to Zed, but sometimes quotes are wrong. I'm sorry Zed, I should have warned you to sit down first before delivering this bad news. But I'm afraid it's true. Sometimes tabloids print things that are also untrue. I know--this is hard for you. Take it in piecemeal and remember to breathe.

First, Zed, when you see someone's name misspelled ("Catherine"), next to a quote that they allegedly said, you might want to double check to make sure the quote is accurate. You might want to see if the quote is actually written by this author in the texts she wrote. Alas, the book cited was not written by MacKinnon, at all. It was written by two other people: Daphne Pataiand Noretta Koertge. These women misquoted MacKinnon in order to make MacKinnon seem irrationally extreme in her views. These women misquoted her in that one book. But the myth pre-exists that book. And it post-exists that book because stoopid white het men like you keep copying and pasting his misquote. Stoopid white het men do this all over the web, pretending, like gentile children wanting to believe in Santa Claus, that it must be true. It must.

Well, it's not. For some evidence, we have this, from the very reputable Snopes.com:
MacKinnon never made the statement which has been attributed to her. (The quote she never gave has been variously rendered as "All sex is rape," "All men are rapists," and "All sex is sexual harassment.")

Critics of MacKinnon's work argue she implies all men are rapists, but the quote given here was created by MacKinnon's opponents, not MacKinnon herself.

MacKinnon claims the first reference to her alleged belief that all sex is hostile surfaced in the October 1986 issue of Playboy. According to MacKinnon, the statement (which had previously been attached to feminist Andrea Dworkin) was made up by the pornography industry in an attempt to undermine her credibility. It became inextricably linked with MacKinnon's name after she began working with Dworkin in the early 1980s to write model anti-pornography laws.

MacKinnon was further tied to the quote she did not utter by a March 1999 article by conservative commentator Cal Thomas in which he incorrectly identified her as the author of Professing Feminism and quoted her as saying: "In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent." Not only is the quote misattributed, but the putative source, Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales From the Strange World of Women's Studies, is a book criticizing the work of MacKinnon and other feminists, written by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge.
For more evidence, we have Catharine MacKinnon's actual writings, in print, in various languages. Hey Zed, they are actually available to be read by men who wish to read books by authors they quote! I realise that white het dick-whipped het men who love to cry unrape do not care to do, in case they find out they are wrong.

She didn't say it. Period.

Now, on to quote # 2, by Andrea Dworkin. Let's review it, shall we?

Quote 2:
“The fact is that the process of killing – both rape and battery are steps in that process- is the prime sexual act for men in reality and/or in imagination,” -Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone

Dick-whipped doods like Zed, who cry unrape, want us to believe that the words above reflect a belief that Dworkin carried and shared with us, her readers, in her book Letters from a War Zone. Alas, again, not true. Sorry, Zed. You've got no cred.

Did she write those words? Yes. Did she write them as her own belief? Let's put that quote into it's paragraph and see what happens. (I tell you, Zed, it's amazing what can happen when you don't take stuff out of context! You might try it some time, unless you're too dick-whipped to do so. Or too busy crying unrape.)

From pages 21 and 22 in Letters From a War Zone:

The pornographers, modern and ancient, visual and literary, vulgar and aristocratic, put forth one consistent proposition: erotic pleasure for men is derived from and predicated on the savage destruction of women. As the world's most honored pornographer, the Marquis de Sade (called by many scholars "The Divine Marquis"), wrote in one of his more restrained and civil moments: "There's not a woman on earth who'd ever have had cause to complain of my services if I'd been sure of being able to kill her afterward." The eroticization of murder is the essence of pornography, as it is the essence of life. The torturer may be a policeman tearing the fingernails off a victim in a prison cell or a so-called normal man engaged in the project of attempting to fuck a woman to death. The fact is that the process of killing--and both rape and battery are steps in the process--is the prime sexual act for men in reality and/or in imagination. Women as a class must remain in bondage, subject to the sexual will of men, because the knowledge of an imperial right to kill, whether exercised to the fullest extent or just part way, is necessary to fuel sexual appetite and behavior. Without women as potential or actual victims, men are, in the current sanitized jargon, "sexually dysfunctional."
Note: Dworkin is describing a society, one that exists in reality, in which sadistic men are revered as free speech heroes, including incest perpetrators and sadists, like Larry Flynt and the Marquis de Sade, both of whom promoted ideas about men and women that eroticised men being violently degrading to women. Feminists didn't; "The Divine Marquis" did. Larry Flynt did. Feminists didn't secretly pay Flynt to produce the images he did. He produced them at a time feminists were achieving success in establishing civil rights and social equality. He did so in order to teach men that women, after all, are sexxx-things for fucking. And women who don't want to be fucked are fucked up. That's the message of Flynt, not Dworkin. Will het doods like Zed criticise Flynt? No. Does Zed take time to criticique de Sade, as a man who doesn't speak for Zed? No. Because Zed and his kkkin are dick-whipped into a kind of misogynistic white supremacist fervor that either secretly celebrates this sort of free speech, or are curiously silent when it comes to calling out misogynistic men. Zed can only unfairly critique and discredit feminists who reflect back to readers what men do to women for men's pleasure and profit, in reality, not in theory.
The most terrible thing about pornography is that it tells male truth. The most insidious thing about pornography is that it tells male truth as if it were universal truth. Those depictions of women in chains being tortured are supposed to represent our deepest erotic aspirations. And some of us believe it, don't we? The most important thing about pornography is that the values in it are the common values of men. This is the crucial fact that both the male Right and the male Left, in their differing but mutually reinforcing ways, want to keep hidden from women. The male Right wants to hide the pornography, and the male Left wants to hide its meaning. Both want access to pornography so that men can be encouraged and energized by it. The Right wants secret access; the Left wants public access. But whether we see the pornography or not, the values expressed in it are the values expressed in the acts of rape and wife-beating, in the legal system, in religion, in art and in literature, in systemic economic discrimination against women, in the moribund academies, and by the good and wise and kind and enlightened in all of these fields and areas. Pornography is not a genre of expression fully in harmony with any culture in which it flourishes. This is so whether it is legal or illegal. And, in either case, pornography functions to perpetuate male supremacy and crimes of violence against women because it conditions, trains, educates, and inspires men to despise women, to use women, to hurt women. Pornography exists because men despise women, and men despise women in part because pornography exists.
What is Dworkin saying here about men's nature? She's not speaking about men's nature, if by nature we mean "what men are born to do as male animals". She is speaking about men in a social and political environment, always. Some men are on the Right, some are on the Left, but all caught up in an ideology, a set of beliefs and practices that follow, that men learn to believe is inherent to who they are. And pornography is one of their teachers. And they want men to believe this ideology and its reinforcing practices are universal, are natural, are inevitable. If pimps have their way, rape will be part of our future. And if men who blame women, not pimps, not rapists, for making men look bad, rape will continue to be part of our future. And we can note how few men, relative to all men, give a shit about doing anything at all to stop rape, and who are intent on making feminists look ridiculous, by perpetuating lies.

When Dworkin says "male truth" she is saying the truth that men reveal if and when they sexually abuse women, about who they think they are, and what they think women are for. Men do these things: commit rape in order to dominate and control and violate and humiliate women; het men commit battery as a form of domination and terrorism. Men do this. Not all men. And among the sadistic or selfish men who admit they do this and the dick-whipped men who say they don't, there appear to be no men at all who wish to explain why those who do it do so. If they reach for explanation, they come up with various silly things: depression, alcoholism, nature, tyrannical testimony from the testes, penile imperatives.

Het men, alarmingly often, don't understand why they do what is done, at times, many times; too often, too much; to women that terrifies and harms women as a class of people oppressed, in part, by the men around them. Het men don't understand it or adequately explain it, and when politically astute women do make attempts to do so, they are roundly criticised as man-haters, as if that's the issue. As if what men do to women that is harmful and disgusting, horrifying and degrading isn't the point. As if women writing analysis and theory is AS BAD or WORSE than what men actually do to women, systematically, and not at all theoretically.

This is partially because most het men don't experience what they do, with contempt or callousness, to women that men call "sex". Unless raped as adults themselves, they don't know what violation feels like, what humiliation through sexual contact feels like. What domination and subjugation through sex acts feels like. Sure, some economically affluent het men make a habit out of paying women-as-prostitutes to do "humiliating" and "degrading" things to men, but men have the control there, not women. Men pay the women and tell them what to do and, viola, the women do it. As Andrea Dworkin notes in a speech in a post I put up a few days ago, power in its most basic form means you can tell someone what to do and they have to do it. If the prostitute says "no", the pimp may beat her up for losing him some money. She is not free of male desire or male need of her to be used by him when and how he wishes for her to be used. If she likes doing this, fine. But if she doesn't, well, fuck her. She has to do it anyway. This is but one expression of the male power and male sexual desire, however it is constructed socially not naturally, that Andrea Dworkin addresses in her writings.

I conclude, ladies and gentlemen--and the rest of us, that Zed tells lies not truths, about rape and about feminists. He arrogantly claims the lies he spreads (like an STD) are truthful. But he either misquotes women overtly, or quotes women out of context so irresponsibly that what he claims a woman says as "her own beliefs" is in fact what a woman is telling the reader male pornographers say, not women, about men and men's sexuality.

When will het men get this straight? Not anytime soon, because they don't have to so to be believed. They just have to open their yaps; whatever stoopidity spills forth that is caught or scooped up and pressed between sheets or typed into cyberspace, is regarded more or less as a gift from a white male sky god. He speaks and we believe he is G-d. Because we've all been misled to think G-d has a dick, and people with dicks exist to dictate truths to us.

If only there were stone tablets and chisels at the ready, we'd have on-going commandments. Too bad one of them isn't about the sin of bearing false witness. Oh, wait. That is one of The Ten Commandments. Hmmm. Well, you know, everyone's either a fundamentalist or a secularist these days, and both claim to own the Truth about what a dicked god says, or the fact that there is no G-d to communicate with.

I'll leave you with a few closing questions:

Why can't Zed actually read Catharine A. MacKinnon's work, spell her name correctly, and respond responsibly to what she did say about rape and male supremacist sexuality? What would be so difficult about doing that? And, do you think women writing is more dangerous to people in society than rapists raping?

2 comments:

  1. Zed and his ilk are some remarkably fragile guys--every last thing any woman has ever said against rape or pornography is regarded as an actual assault to the sexual idenity of these highly insecure one-dimensional thinkers.

    The early 70's view that pornography is no more than a healthy outlet has been thoroughly smashed in the insuing years, with women and children more likely to be raped than they have ever been (rape statistics are up worldwide), but these delicate woman-fearers can't get enough of the stuff that makes them feel superior by comparison--with the saftey of society in general be damned.

    I don't doubt that there should be a men's movement--but it needs to get past the "men up/women down" mentality that just looks like an equally warped mirror image of the militant feminisim they're always railing about. And to resort to misquotations and things taken out of context to make your points--how unmanly.

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