This blog exists to support liberatory collectivist activism that seeks to uproot patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. It also acts to center the experiences, theories, and agendas of radical and feminist women of color.
Women don't have to give up Islam for rights, argue Randa Abdel-Fattah and Susan Carland.
Orientalists writing on Islam and Muslims have tended to represent Muslim women as infantilised and oppressed, victims in need of rescue by the enlightened West. This is a classic example of the tyranny of self-projection, where the ''rescuer'' assumes a position of superiority so the belief systems, values and norms of Muslim women are judged against the Western experience.
The work of Muslim human rights and social justice advocates is discredited and ignored. It is as if liberation and freedom are the monopoly of secular feminists. Muslim women are apparently too downtrodden to care to make a difference.
If they do insist on fighting for equality and justice within an Islamic perspective, their efforts are dismissed, assuming freedom and Islam are mutually exclusive, or, worse, that Muslim women are brainwashed, suffering from a form of religious Stockholm syndrome.
This patronising discourse arrogantly assumes the way to overcome patriarchy is to abandon Islam and adopt ''Western values''. How can a constructive effort to improve the situation of women begin when the conversation is so unsophisticated, demeaning and primitive?
Muslim women have engaged in the quest for dignity, democracy and human rights, for full participation in political and social affairs, since the time of Prophet Mohammed. As Amina Wadud, the American-Islamic feminist scholar, said: ''By going back to primary sources and interpreting them afresh, women scholars are endeavouring to remove the fetters imposed by centuries of patriarchal interpretation and practice.''
And although you may not hear much about them, Muslim women and men are doing much to improve the plight of women, from grassroots projects to legal activism and religious leadership training. They see Islam not as a stumbling block to progress, but as a platform for change.
In Jordan, there is a strong push, spearheaded by journalist Rana Husseini, to fight honour killings. Husseini's team has publicised each crime despite death threats. She has led the charge for law reform and mobilised protest rallies, which even princes from the Jordanian royal family have attended. Far from fighting Islam to achieve this, Husseini tells the murderers during interviews that their acts contradict the teachings of Islam and are punishable by God. Most of them concede this.
In Malaysia, groups such as Sisters in Islam offer free legal clinics to teach women their rights under Sharia and civil law, run campaigns to stop domestic violence and hold education programs for women with a goal of "justice and equality within the family".
In the United Arab Emirates, Ahmed al Haddad, the head of the Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department, has started a program to train women to become muftis. Previously, women religious advisers were only allowed to speak on "women's issues".
The training will enable them to work as equals to men in issuing religious rulings in all areas. There is nothing new in this. Islamic history is "rich in examples of highly learned women acting as muftis and issuing decrees on all matters", al Haddad said.
The Shura Council of the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity, an advisory council comprising of Muslim women scholars, activists and specialists from around the world, aims to "critically engage with dominant Islamic interpretations of social issues and practices and promote religiously grounded arguments that enable women to make dignified choices based on their own religious tradition".
There is a long way to go for women in many Muslim societies, just as there is for women everywhere. But if we are interested in change, it is time to let go of outdated Orientalist arguments and ill-informed generalisations that see Islam as ''The Problem''.
It is time to respect the fact that Muslim women are fighting for their rights and doing so without giving up their allegiance and commitment to Islam. Their quest does not stem from imported Western values but is integral to the Islamic tradition. Demonising their convictions is unhelpful - and a repudiation of the feminist ideal of the right for women to autonomy and freedom of choice.
Randa Abdel-Fattah is a lawyer and author, and Susan Carland is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.
Cross post from Gender Across Borders Blog.The poster and information is from *here*.
Blog for International Women’s Day
Gender Across Borders presents…..
Blog for International Women’s Day!
International Women’s Day [IWD] is on Monday, March 8, 2010. As set by the United Nations, this year’s theme is“Equal rights, equal opportunity: Progress for all.” While we here at GAB believe that equal rights for women should be celebrated every day, this particular event is a day for people to come together and blog about the progress of rights and opportunity for women worldwide.
This is the first year that we’re asking you (yes, YOU) to blog for IWD on March 8, 2010. Please take a moment to sign up using the form here and you can also download a Blog for IWD graphic to let readers know you’re participating. We ask bloggers to think about any of the following questions in regards to the U.N.’s theme for IWD:
What does “equal rights for all” mean to you?
Describe a particular organization, person, or moment in history that helped to mobilize a meaningful change in equal rights for all.
Once you sign up, a link to your blog’s URL will appear on the Blog for IWD blog directory page. Also remember to tag your posts as “Blog for IWD” or “Blog for International Women’s Day” so that we can identify your posts!
Here at GAB we will live-blog throughout the day, highlighting some of your posts and what you have to say about “equal rights for all.”
For those who forget, we will also send out a reminder email about Blog for International Women’s Day a few days before March 8, 2010 when you check the box on the sign up form. By participating in this event, you are taking action in equal rights for all. So, what are you waiting for?
Thanks in advance for signing up. Please feel free to tell your blogger friends about Blog for International Women’s Day!
This is a cross post from *here*. Following the interview are links to other posts at The Electric Intifada.
Pushing the boundaries of identity: an interview with Jennifer Jajeh Uda Olabarria Walker, The Electronic Intifada, 5 March 2010
Jennifer Jajeh (photo by Joseph Sief)
Jennifer Jajeh's critically acclaimed one-woman show, I Heart Hamas and Other Things I am Afraid to Tell You, pulls no punches. From a Ramallah Convention in San Francisco in the 1980s, to casting lines in contemporary Los Angeles, to the front lines of the Israeli occupation and back, Jajeh navigates the complicated and often conflicted terrain of Palestinian identity. Despite the complexity, her journey is anchored by her sole quest to find her own sense of self amidst the noise. This quest supersedes the politics, the expectations and the backlash that a Palestinian identity can carry and becomes universal. The Electronic Intifada contributor Uda Olabarria Walker interviewed Jajeh before she opened her show in Minneapolis in late February 2010.
Uda Olabarria Walker: When you gave the show the title I Heart Hamas and Other Things I am Afraid to Tell You and then launched at the NY Fringe festival in 2008 what were you expecting would happen?
Jennifer Jajeh: First, I was worried no one would come to the show. I also anticipated that there would be some people who would be offended or upset by the title and that there would be some resistance and backlash. Most people understood that title was a provocative, tongue-in-cheek statement and that there was complexity to the show beyond the title, however. In the end, I got pretty good audience and press responses in New York and a fantastic response here in San Francisco one year later.
UOW: The show traces the awakening of your identity, as it becomes, as you have said, "Palestinianized, politicized and radicalized." Can you expand on this?
JJ: I grew up with a split life, half Palestinian and half American --where the two identities were very separate -- to becoming an adult and combining the two. It wasn't until I went to Palestine that I really figured out what it meant for me to be Palestinian on a personal level and what part of that identity felt vital for me. As far as becoming radicalized, it first had to do with pure anger at what I experienced on the ground in Palestine, but now it's about challenging the status quo both externally and within the Palestinian community about what it means to be Palestinian and raising the difficult questions. It was also really important for me to claim my space as a Palestinian woman and look into what it means to be a woman in my community and what the role of women is in the struggle inside and outside that space. So, part of becoming radicalized was also about being a Palestinian woman who openly challenges my own community's ideas about women's roles, sexual mores and religious affiliations and divides. This has been really liberating.
UOW: You share an honest and vulnerable perspective on Palestinian identity. Can you talk a little about the vulnerability of doing something so personal on stage?
JJ: The show has been seriously transformative and it is very scary to put your own life experiences on stage. Each night you relive those experiences and while some are funny, many are very painful. The show is also very honest. You think that because it's your own show, you can say whatever you want about yourself so why not make yourself look good, right? The reality is that the show forces me to be accountable. If I'm dishonest or misrepresent in any way people will not be drawn into the story and take the ride with me. Since the show is my personal, emotional and political journey I share all aspects of it: that includes the shallow, ugly and not very politically correct emotions that I never particularly wanted to share, but are very real. I also talk very honestly about having feelings of anger and desire for retribution for what's happening. I felt very vulnerable going publicly to those deep, dark places but I realized that it was at these precise moments in the show that most people in the audience understood and they were right there with me.
UOW: You have commented before that early on you had some unexpected backlash to the show. Where did this come from?
JJ: In the beginning, some of the Arab community and Arab arts organizations were wary about publicly promoting or endorsing a show with such a controversial title even though privately they were in support. Of course this fear makes sense. Almost 10 years after [the attacks on] 11 September we still feel the weight of heightened anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia. Organizations were fearful of losing funding or alienating their constituencies. This has created a climate where Palestinian and Arab artists are still only supported on a large scale when we represent ourselves as nonviolent and nonthreatening. More surprisingly though was the censorship from the Palestinian artist community. The idea of the show being at all cheeky, button-pushing and irreverent was threatening to people. Some actually said I was being irresponsible by airing internal Palestinian issues, using Hamas in the title, or making light of Palestinian identity. People actually told me to limit what I talked about and to have more digestible content! This is absurd!
UOW: It also seems that people have come to the show with certain expectations. I know some activists left thinking the show wasn't politicized enough or wanted you to make a political statement. What's your response to them?
JJ: They should write their own show. I didn't write this show as a mission statement for any organization or political perspective. The point of the show to explore my identity and the triggers, pressures and complexity this identity holds for one Palestinian in particular, me. The second half of the show is about me coming to terms with the political part of my identity when I go back to Ramallah at the beginning of the second [Palestinian] intifada. But still, the politics are not the only thing that defines me as a Palestinian. There are a variety of Palestinian experiences and if I can get people to sit down and listen to just one of them for an hour and a half, I see it as a major accomplishment. If I have been able to create the space for people to explore the complexity of identity, I have also done well. This is what I'm trying to do with the show; explore identity and raise questions, not push a political agenda.
UOW: I read a comment online from someone who saw the show and said "There is nothing particularly Palestinian about her, except that she tells us she is." What's your reaction to this?
JJ: Well, it's hilarious that someone didn't like the way that I represented my own identity but it's also pretty insulting that someone who would challenge my Palestinian identity and argue that I wasn't Palestinian enough. I don't know if this person expected me to belly dance, smoke an argilah or wear a kuffiyeh throughout the show, or what.
I state very clearly in the show's opening voiceover that "I am not presenting the views or feeling of the average Palestinian, nor do I have any idea what that even means." I felt it was important to put forth very clearly this notion: that there is no prototypical Palestinian. And, that identity is a hell of a lot more complex and individual, and that this story is being told through the lens of a very specific, individual experience. The first part of the show talks about me carrying the weight of other people's expectations around my Palestinian identity, feeling squeezed from all sides by these expectations and dealing with people's often negative, stereotypically racist and completely hilarious reactions to how I actually do express that identity. The [person] who wrote that comment must have missed that.
UOW: The beauty of the show for me is the surprisingly emotional impact it has had on the audience around the issue of identity in general.
JJ: Yes. I wasn't anticipating this response. There were a lot of people from all walks of life who took away something powerful from the show or keyed into some very personal aspects of the issues of identity that the show brings up. From young Latina women to gay Filipino men, I had tons of people sending me emails and messages about how the show really touched on their own struggles of fitting in, being ashamed of their backgrounds and where they came from, or just the craziness of having a big, loud foreign family to contend with. Many people were surprised at how my Palestinian-American experience was so similar to their own experiences of being an outsider. Through this connection, I was then able to take people on the journey to Palestine in such a way that they could hear that story as well.
UOW: You have had some people coming to the show more than once.
JJ: I have had many people come four or five times and bring their friends. I got to the point where I told them they couldn't come anymore or at least had to let me comp their tickets! But I'm happy they felt the work is important, entertaining and relevant enough that they wanted to experience it again with their friends.
UOW: This was your first foray into the medium of the one-woman show. Looking forward, what do you think the role of your art is or should be?
JJ: The role of my art is to push boundaries and to talk about things people are afraid to talk about. I'm hugely interested in people's emotional experiences and psychological processes and how they relate to each other and define themselves. I want to get people to think more deeply, have more empathy, compassion and understanding for the next person. I also want them to push their own boundaries around how they move through the world within their identities.
Uda Olabarria Walker is a San Francisco-based Palestine solidarity organizer.
CARNIVAL is a monthly dance party featuring show stopping performances for all the beautiful and colorful divas, muscle men, b-boys, 2-spirits, amazons and our str8 kin. Tonight's event will be hosted by the one and only MIZZ JUNE and will feature LOOKING AT A WOMAN, a digital retrospective of the work by acclaimed photojournalist ANGELA JIMENEZ. Plus dance and performance by SPECIMEN, hot gogo dancer COSMIC and the SEXY GOGO BOYZ from Transliscious Entertainment with special musical guest and... (more) 2009 OUTmusic Award Nominee BARON. Presented by BRAN FENNER, JULIENNE 'JUNE' BROWN, KAOS BLAC, LINDSEY CHARLES, NIKNAZ TAVAKOLIAN, SAUL SILVA, ZAVE MARTOHARDJONO and IMANI HENRY, in conjunction with UBIQUITA WORLDWIDE.
Port au Prince, Haiti - MSF — One month after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti, the numbers are still difficult to digest: more than 200,000 deaths, 300,000 injured and hundreds of thousands made homeless. From day one, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams have been providing life-saving surgery and care. The needs are now evolving as delivering post-operative care and improving people’s living conditions emerge as the greatest priorities.
Dealing with the emergency On 12th January 2010, the existing MSF health structures in Port-au-Prince did not escape the wrath of the massive earthquake that hit Haiti. For several days afterward, in fact, many MSF staff members remained unaccounted for. We later learned that seven had died.
Within minutes of the catastrophe, however, people with severe injuries started arriving at the sites of MSF’s existing hospitals in Cité Soleil, Martissant, Trinité, Pacot and Carrefour. Emergency first aid was provided all evening and throughout the night, the medical teams illuminating their work with flashlights and the headlights of cars.
Only when the sun rose on the following morning was the scale of the disaster revealed. It quickly became clear that the volume of injured people would overwhelm what was left of the medical facilities and the resources the medical teams had on hand. The need for emergency care and surgery was immense. MSF teams treated as many people as they could—performing operations in makeshift facilities in the street, under plastic sheeting, and in converted shipping containers—while also seeking out new places in which they could set up operating theatres. Many of our Haitian staff worked through this very difficult period despite the fact that their homes and lives had been so damaged.
Today, MSF is working in more than 20 locations in and around Port-au-Prince and the nearby towns of Leogane and Jacmel, including running 10 operating theatres for major surgery and five for minor.. In the past month, MSF teams treated more than 18,000 patients and performed more than 2,000 surgical procedures. MSF now has more than 1,800 staff in Haiti, including 1,450 Haitian employees. Some 1,400 tonnes of medical equipment and relief items were delivered into the country, either directly or through the Dominican Republic, and an additional 350 tonnes of supplies are scheduled to arrive in the weeks ahead.
Post operative care and mental health
MSF is still performing surgery for people wounded during the earthquake; some of the most severe cases have required more than one operation. But following the first phase of round-the-clock life-saving interventions, the medical priorities are shifting to post-operative care, restoring primary care for routine medical problems and help for people with chronic conditions. MSF has already opened four sites specifically dedicated to post-operative care—in Delmas 30, site Lycee in the Champ de Mars area, in a former kindergarten known as Mickey, and at Promesse. One additional site for 150 patients will soon open in Sarthe.
MSF plans to increase its inpatient capacity in the coming weeks in order to ensure quality care for as many patients as possible, including people who were treated elsewhere, in facilities that cannot offer post-operative care. The problem is magnified by the departure of some of the emergency medical teams who had surgical facilities in the first phase. Additionally, MSF is scaling up its mental health activities in its various locations. Psychological support is extremely important for people who have suffered serious injury, especially those who required amputations, as well as their families. MSF includes mental health teams in its outreach programs and mobile clinics that the organization sends to work with the throngs of displaced people, who are living in ad hoc camps. These are people who are trying to cope with grief at the same time as they wonder where and how they are going to live in the future.
Improving living conditions
Now, four weeks after the quake, with the rainy season drawing nearer, there is widespread concern in Haiti about the crowded, unsanitary conditions in which so many have been forced to live. Many have not yet received tents and hygiene kits. Many do not have access to clean water and sanitation. “It’s hard to believe that four weeks after the quake, so many people still live under bed sheets in camps and on the street ”, says Christophe Fournier, MSF’s International President who recently returned from Haiti . “Where it can, MSF has been distributing tents as well as hygiene kits and cooking supplies, but it is mainly concentrating on providing medical care. One can only wonder how there could be such a huge gap between the promise of a massive financial influx into the country and the slow pace of distribution. MSF is concerned that with the onset of the rainy season, we’ll be facing new medical emergencies, when people who are living without shelter, come to us with diarrhoea or respiratory infections.”
Three days after the Earthquake, the plan was to keep
the first tented sites for basic first aid and care and use
the a new site for the many patients who need surgery.
Today MSF has over 1,450 Haitian employees
in addition to 350 MSF staff
[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.)
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?
