Single-cause Analysis in the Age of the Three-Headed Monster

King Ghidorah is a kaiju film creature, also known as the Three-Headed Monster.
The image is from here.

I grew up with an understanding that 'radical' meant 'root' and so 'radical feminism' is the feminism that seeks to expose the root cause of women's oppression. And to uproot it, eradicate it. What I grew up learning was that eliminating patriarchy is what it will take to liberate women.

I accept that as true, but only if that root is understood in its complexity. Because in the world the women I know live in, "patriarchy" isn't only "male supremacy" and "men's violence against women". Most women--if not all women--are harmed and subordinated by those forces. But so too are most women harmed and subordinated by white supremacy and capitalism and other economic systems that require poverty and other gross economic injustice.

I also grew up seeing the limits of Marxist analysis--how it traditionally holds no deep understanding of what causes the oppression of women by men. Also, analysis of white supremacy and racism too often ignores how it is entwined with male supremacy or capitalism.

If I consider any centuries-old atrocity that causes mass destruction to girls and women, it is tied directly to patriarchy (male and hetero supremacy), colonialism (white, Anglo, and Western supremacy), and capitalism (and wealth supremacy).

Trafficking disproportionately exploits and kills girls and women of color, globally. The globalised enslavement and rape of female human beings for profit for pimps and slavers, for the pleasure and dominance of men. All three heads of the beast are implicated.

Seeing patriarchy as a force that operates separately from colonialism and capitalism is an abstraction. But it isn't just abstract: it denies what is happening and to whom it is most happening.

When women and girls of color are centered, it is impossible to ignore how colonialism/white supremacy, capitalism/wealth supremacy, and patriarchy/male supremacy are always operating against the efforts of girls and women to be free.

This blog will not ignore those forces or pretend only one form of supremacy is deadly. Radically supporting the liberation of marginalised girls and women around the world necessitates naming each head of the monster.

John Stoltenberg's and Cristan Williams' The Conversations Project: Some Final Thoughts

graphic is from here

Note: When I heard Prince died earlier on Thursday, what I recalled was how much Andrea Dworkin loved his work.

The message in the above graphic was never anything 

The Conversations Project endeavored to do. 

Yet they insisted they were a radical feminist group.

I may be writing more about this, but just wanted to update you that after four months of very engaged involvement, I've been purged without notice from The Conversations Project Facebook group started by John Stoltenberg and Cristan Williams, although John was largely absent.

Here are a few concluding thoughts:

1. The group was steadfastly anti-radical feminist, but couched this as
anti-T--F, as if those radical feminists who are against the liberalism and male supremacy in trans politics should and can be separated out from those who are or were not.

2. There was consistent refusal to admit that they were misusing and misunderstanding the early work of Andrea Dworkin while ignoring all of Dworkin's later work (like, at least 11/12ths of what Andrea wrote). The only passages of hers they ever referred to (a lot) were Dworkin's most liberal points in Woman Hating about multisexuality and androgyny. They refused to acknowledge Andrea's mid-70s discussion of androgyny was something that wasn't specific to her, and something that was of political interest during that decade, but never thereafter. (As was the case for so many white feminists in that period: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, and Marge Piercy, for example.) They refused to consider why Andrea later rejected the last section of Woman Hating as politically and intellectually problematic. They clung to a few early ideas because dealing with anything else--such as pornography, prostitution, male privilege, male power, white and male supremacy, the process of subordinating female bodies such as through intercourse, battery, and rape--would have implicated some of their own politics as more overtly pro-patriarchal and white supremacist. The only snippets of Catharine MacKinnon's work they paid any attention to were from a grossly overly-steered interview Cristan did with Catharine. As if that's what MacKinnon's thirty plus years of radical feminist activism should be reduced to.

3. There were less than five pro-radical/pro-feminist people in the group. One person, a white transsexual (not transgender) woman, left the group only after about a week being there due to the incessant liberalism, anti-radicalism, and anti-feminism. Now there are no radical feminists in the group, although one member, Margo, who identifies as a white lesbian feminist, has consistently advocated for feminist values and sisterly approaches to dealing with the Turf War, and I respect her very much for that. And one man there has been consistently affirmative of radical feminist perspectives on gender and sex. When Margo posted things that called for respect and regard for all feminists, few to no members "liked" her comments. Cristan and John never "liked" them.

4. The group was so white (how white was it?) that the only posts made about women of color, or even more generally, people of color, were exploitive: John and one other member, early on, posted links to Navajo understandings of gender, not because he ever discussed or linked to how to end white colonialist-patriarchal genocide, but, disturbingly, just because such ideas might be useful to or of interest to whites.

5. The white members of the group (the great majority) refused to center women of color. They refused to center an examination of how their race, sex, and class privileges shaped their views, their values, and their agendas. Doing so was considered 'off topic'. Supporting white, class-privileged transwomen was always on topic. No one white and trans in the group ever made it a point to name how they had white privilege.

6. The dominant membership always positioned some radical feminists as THE enemy. They did not critique or focus on white men (as a structurally positioned enemy class). When white men were critiqued, it was without the same disdain and derision as they demonstrated for some white radical and lesbian feminists. (I call that blatant misogyny, anti-lesbianism, and anti-feminism.) They never, ever considered what trans-critical feminists were arguing against or for. It was always only viewed as "hatred" and "wanting us dead". As if white and male privilege and power--including theirs--doesn't result in the deaths of women across many differences.

7. The group was never committed, even vaguely, to an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, or anti-colonialist agenda. Never. Ever. Ever. In this sense and others, the group was willfully and determinedly liberal yet being called liberal was considered an insult, for reasons which remain unclear. If it is so blatantly what you are and is all you want to be, own it and be proud of it, for god's sake. I conclude they valued the term "radical" because it allowed them to discuss the rare liberal points of Dworkin and MacKinnon as if those were radical. I think it gave them a kind of cache to make it seem as if they were distinguishable from their more honest liberal comrades. When I linked to useful ways to understand historical radicalism (as an actual political stance against institutionalised oppression), they rejected or ignored them. Sadly and outrageously, there was nothing about their perspective that was radical. Nothing. And their name revealed this from the start: no group that is seriously radical (that I've ever been aware of) makes a point of cramming the term into their title twice.

8. The group never considered what it is that causes the mass deaths of marginalised women of color. It was beyond their vision, their call to action, to do so. All they could come up with is transphobia. As if.

9. It became crystal clear to me that Cristan, and more surprisingly John, did not understood the traditional political meaning of "radical" when it comes to radical feminism. Again, John was largely absent as an active member, although he read a lot of the comments. But what became distressingly clear was that he could not articulate what Andrea's radical feminism meant or was. He was and is only concerned with prioritising the points of view of white and/or male-privileged people, over and against lesbian feminists. He refuses to see that Andrea never divorced 'woman' (the patriarchal construction) from what actually happens, oppressively, violatingly, demeaningly, to almost all female people from birth to death. Instead, he believes that what Andrea said about "multisexuality" in 1974, or this, from 1975, "it is not true that there are two sexes that are discrete and opposite, which are polar...", were in fact radical things to say. They were radical things to read--for him, a white man. What the group seemed to mean by 'radical' was allegedly post-modernly complex or intellectually ground-breaking. 'Radical', for him, only addressed acts of speech or ideas in writing, not political campaigns or efforts at social change. (For some discussion about Andrea's later abandonment of such 'radical ideas', please see the notes in a book called Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky.) I repeatedly pointed out, if these are such 'essential' points of Andrea's, why do they never again appear in her work, over the next twenty years? Crickets chirped. This was a stubbornly anti-activist group. The only allegedly 'radical' action John engaged in was introducing young people to a liberal idea of multisexuality. Campaigns to end violence against women? Nope. How to organise against heteropatriarchy? Nope. Talking to college students about being colors in a color wheel: that's where it's at for John.

10. Also, members had no interest in supporting or working towards a truce between some white radical lesbian feminists and some white liberal trans activists. Only Margo, and the transsexual woman who left in disgust, explicitly welcomed this as a goal. The rest were intent on demonising some feminists (not just some of their views, but their personhood), while ignoring how their own political perspective was misogynistic, racist, and, yes, anti-trans.

The Conversations Project: The Radical Inclusivity of Radical Feminism should be titled:

"John and Cristan's Project: Radically Ignoring Radical Feminism".

Sad. And predictable. There's this old expression, 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them.' Yup. Everything I first experienced in that group in January proved to remain the case in April. Lesson learned.

Hugo Schwyzer and Miley Cyrus: which person deserves their bad press?

HUGO SCHWYZER:

image is from here

This is, unfortunately, another in a series of posts about Mr. Hugo Schwyzer. (For some additional history and analysis, you may also read my August 14th and Sept. 8th posts.) Only Miley Cyrus seems to be getting more bad press lately. His, however, is fully deserved. (I won't go into the Miley Cyrus media controversy other than to say that it is clear female performers are held to a very different standard than are male performers. Her racist misogyny in some performances should be called out. And to say that Sinead O'Connor is a long-time shero of mine.)

Yesterday, journalist Lauren Gold of the Pasadena Star-News reported the following news which is excerpted from her article which may be read in full *here*:

"Attorneys for Pasadena City College have sent a letter to porn professor Hugo Schwyzer, asking him to resign.

The letter came one day after Schwyzer admitted he was arrested in connection with a drunken driving accident that left a woman injured.

Schwyzer said he has no plans to resign before his disability retirement benefits from CalSTRS kick in on Jan. 1 because he needs the health insurance coverage for his children."

If he were truly concerned about health insurance for his children, he ought to have chosen not to be a sexual predator and flagrant abuser of rules and regulations at his place of employment. What he has insured is that his behavior has threatened the mental health and general welfare of his children and spouse by giving his employers no other reasonable choice but to ask him to resign or fire him.

He reminds me of the procurers of women in systems of prostitution who argue their names ought not be revealed to the public because publishing them will negatively effect their private and professional lives. The perps complain that the press is doing them harm. Hugo argues the actions of an academic institution and their attorneys, not his own, will cause his children harm.

“[M]y entire career is not defined by a few affairs with students. I was also a successful professor and what I’m asking from the college is that they forestall termination until Dec. 31. ... I think after 20 years of teaching that’s not an unreasonable request.”

It's not only an unreasonable request. It's an unethical and unconscionable one. Hugo's career is appropriately now defined by his serial sexual exploitation of young women. He's made sure that's the case by systematically abusing his position, privileges, and power, and also by publishing accounts of those abuses. His termination as "a successful professor" is something he brought about, not anyone else.

In an Oct. 1 letter to Schwyzer, attorney Mary Dowell told Schwyzer his admissions and conduct are sufficient grounds for termination. The letter encouraged Schwyzer to resign.

“The District views both your recent conduct and the past conduct which you have revealed in your recent public statements and writings as grounds for termination. ... The disciplinary process will begin well before January 1, 2014,” Dowell wrote. “However, the District has asked me to advise you that you can avoid discipline if you unequivocally and irrevocably resign from your employment.”*

I am considering the annals of allegedly pro-feminist men's history. (There aren't that many records; this doesn't take long.) Comparing the professional and political life of Hugo Schwyzer to the others, could there be a more glaring example of a chronic misuse of power, as a "pro-feminist", in defense of one's abusive behavior? Could there be a more offensive attempt to claim mental illness as a cause, an excuse, for doing what white men have done for centuries without fear of arrest, incarceration, or demotion in status, position, entitlements, and power?

How can someone so practiced at teaching sexual politics be so completely self-centered, arrogant, and in denial about the blatant political nature of one's harmful acts against children, women, and society? That's the wrong question, perhaps. Maybe the question ought to be: What kind of power has to be institutionalised and systematised in order for U.S. white men to get away with flagrantly abusive activity for so long? Or to do so while pleading ignorance or illness? Or to do so while preaching what one doesn't practice? The answer is colonial patriarchal power and entitlement infused into every sphere of social life.

Hugo's actions are causally and effectively political. His actions are appropriately and adequately described by the feminist activists he refuses to be accountable to. The complex of self-serving attitudes and harmful behaviors he has displayed consistently over many years cannot be appropriately explained or adequately understood by mental health professionals. Nor by the attorneys who use such professionals to protect their clients from legal consequences any adult sex offender should face.

The comprehension of Hugo's behavior ought not lead one to conclude he is suffering from mental illness or unfair persecution by people around him. One ought to conclude he benefits from the white colonial male privileges he consciously exercises, so far, with impunity.

To Hugo:
Stop manipulating everyone around you with claims of mistreatment and start accepting full responsibility. Stop pretending the college you've worked for doesn't have the legal and ethical right to fire your ass without you and your lawyer retaliating. Stop pretending a college can take away protections for your children when you, yourself, have done so. Seriously. Stop being such a white prick. Once and for all.

*If interested, you may click on the predator's name for many more stories on Hugo Schwyzer, PCC’s Porn Professor at pasadenastarnews.com.

And one more time, Andrea Dworkin never said "All Sex is Rape"... but how many times does that have to be said for anti-feminists to believe it?

image is from here

Java man has a question. It's not new and it's not original but it is anti-feminist and fueled by misogyny. Anti-feminism and misogyny isn't new or original either. With thanks, again, to Toto, what follows is from Yahoo Answers. (You may click *here* to see the rest of the answers, most of which are dripping with contempt for feminists and for Andrea in particular.)

Java man

What did Andrea Dworkin mean when she said "All men are rapists"

Also: "Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." Why do feminists idolize this man hater so much?

Toto 

I will answer your question fully below, but a better question is this:

Why do so many people--usually anti-feminist men--keep claiming that radical feminists said those things, when it's been demonstrated again and again that they never did? Proof that what you claim she said is a lie is below.

I notice you and the others promoting these misquotes as truths don't ever quote the next two--and I will be happy to let you know where the quotes come from:

"I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds."  -- Andrea Dworkin (Modern Times Interview of Andrea Dworkin With Larry Josephson, on "Modern Times", American Public Radio, 1992, as accessed on Sep. 5, 2010.)

I notice you and the others promoting this nonsense don't quote her saying this:

"I came here today because I don't believe that rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we are not just in armed combat against you? It's not because there's a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence." -- Andrea Dworkin

The answer to your question is easy:

She never said "All men are rapists" and neither did any other published feminist such as Marilyn Frye or Catharine A. MacKinnon, which is why you and others can't cite the quote from any of their books. (Putting quotes around the words with Dworkin's name in the same sentence doesn't mean she said it.)

Now, if she actually said and wrote it, wouldn't you think you (or anyone else) would be able to tell us in which book or article or speech it appears?

They never said "All sex is rape" either and the proof is linked to here and below:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp

This is the truth:
John Berger once called Dworkin "the most misrepresented writer in the western world". She has always been seen as the woman who said that all men are rapists, and that all sex is rape. In fact, she said neither of these things. Here's what she told me in 1997: "If you believe that what people call normal sex is an act of dominance, where a man desires a woman so much that he will use force against her to express his desire, if you believe that's romantic, that's the truth about sexual desire, then if someone denounces force in sex it sounds like they're denouncing sex. If conquest is your mode of understanding sexuality, and the man is supposed to be a predator, and then feminists come along and say, no, sorry, that's using force, that's rape - a lot of male writers have drawn the conclusion that I'm saying all sex is rape." In other words, it's not that all sex involves force, but that all sex which does involve force is rape. [Source for this paragraph is here and below: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/apr/12/gender.highereducation]

For more on why so many people describe Andrea Dworkin, a human rights activist, as a man-hater or as someone who said the nonsense you are spreading here, see this excellent article:

http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/jenson.html

As for the other quote, you take it out of context. It's not a statement of fact. It's an observation based on evidence which is part of a larger discussion on the reality--a fact--that so many men hate and abuse women in and out of bed (which is the serious social and global issue, not what feminists think of men):

"But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the f---ing. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography." -- Andrea Dworkin [Source is here and below: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseII.html]

I hope the readers here appreciate the difference in meaning. It's quite significant.

 Sources for the above:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/apr/12/gender.highereducation

http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/jenson.html

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/dworkintribute.htm

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseII.html

Woman-hating is often mistaken for man-hating by anti-feminist men and other male supremacists

image of book cover is from here

 

Toto has the stamina to take on the silly misogynists on websites like Yahoo Answers. Please note the answers given to the question (click *here* to do so), loaded up with misinformation, that Andrea Dworkin hated people. Someone named Sara asks this:

Open Question

Why was andrea dworkin filled with hatred?

was she abused? and why did she looked like that? im all for equality but you have to take a shower once in a while....was her writings more a projection of her insecurities and pen!s envy?

 

Here is Toto's reply:

While the truth sometimes blows fiction out of the water--much to the disdain of those who believe fiction more than truthful facts--we must face these truthful facts: Andrea Dworkin was abused as a child, by molestation, and later in her early adulthood, as she survived rape and battery. She also did not hate men. There's so much evidence of her not hating men that one wonders where the rumor came from that she did.

She lived with a man she very much loved, after all, for the last thirty years of her life. She was close with and felt great love for her father, her brother, and her nephew--she has written about each of them. You can read all about it in her memoir, Heartbreak. She spoke to hundreds of men at a men's conference, not about how much she hated men, but about how men have to be responsible and ethical. (See the link to that speech below.) Where's the "hatred of men" in any of that? The truth also shows that even here, at this website, many years after her death, people still want to say hateful and dishonest things about her and other feminists, not about men.

The harsh truth is that men and many other people hate feminists--and women generally. The lie, perpetuated by anti-feminists and misogynists, is that feminists hate men. But then those that want to make their own hatred invisible often do so by pretending "They hate ME!" It's a sad reality when truth cannot be faced, even with evidence. Men's millennia-old rape of women, men procuring women and girls, men trafficking women and girls, men enslaving women and girls, men battering women to the point of hospitalization and death: these are global social problems. Not women doing such things to men or boys.

Source(s):

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/…
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/…

Woggy on Answerbag is at it again: this time with the myth of man-hating among white feminists

image is from here

I've written a great deal about the myth of man-hating, including about the allegedly anti-man quotes, that misogynists and other anti-feminists promote and peddle online as "truth". Here's the latest incarnation of it, presented as a seemingly innocuous question:

by woggy on January 15th, 2012

Did Andrea Dworkin hate men?
How about Susan Brownmiller?
Catherine MacKinnon?

An answer, by JulianReal

Andrea Dworkin didn't hate men and the proof of it is in her work and her life. She was very close with and respectful of her father, brother, nephew, and life-partner, who was a man. People who accuse her and other white feminists, like Susan Brownmiller and Catharine MacKinnon, of hating men just don't appreciate it when women of any color name and challenge the myriad ways men hate women in law, custom, and daily personal life. Not respecting or catering to men's misogyny (in the form of rape, battery, trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual and economic discrimination by men against women) as God-given or natural-and-inevitable isn't an example of women being "hateful" to men; it's a simple declaration of respect and love for women.

Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, and Catharine A. MacKinnon spoke out eloquently and intelligently about patriarchal abuses, male supremacy, and misogyny perpetrated and perpetuated by men. What's hateful to anyone about doing that?

The more relevant question, imo, is why do so many men hate women, discriminate against women, harass women, batter women, rape girls and women, traffic and enslave girls and women, and insult and degrade women for entertainment and economic profit?

Read more: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2652040#ans11727702

Someone on Answerbag.com asks a really misogynist question about feminists

image is from here

Just another of a billion examples of how the Internet makes promoting and perpetrating misogyny all too easy. All that follows is on Answerbag.com. The link to the site is below.

Question

Help answer this question below.

Did the existence of Andrea Dworkin prove that Neanderthal women were feminists?

response to the above question is by JulianReal

 

Your question is obnoxious and insulting.

Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was a very important US white feminist philosopher and political activist. She was also a brilliant writer. She worked for justice and human rights for and with women across race and class.

Her work including fighting to establish for all women the right to be free of ridiculous and misogynist attitudes like the one glaringly displayed in your question. Your remark proves we haven't come nearly far enough in the struggle to attain justice and human rights (or, even, basic respect) for women, including feminists.

People, like you, who promote the insulting mischaracterisation of women, including of feminists, are contributing to the overall oppressive condition of women being publicly and privately disrespected and assaulted--verbally and otherwise--by men.

Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.
-- Andrea Dworkin

Read more: http://www.answerbag.com/category/life-and-society_32

Why isn't the Misogyny and Anti-Radical/Anti-Feminism in and beyond Queer communities being seen as just as important to challenge and uproot as Anti-Trans practice?

image of book cover is from here

As I see it and experience it, gender is force more than it is choice; it is dominance more than it is difference. As I see it, contemporary white, academically privileged Queer Theorists are increasingly rejecting that reality for one that is far more abstract and also far more supportive and protective of white het male supremacy.

I'm hearing from Lesbian and Queer women who are not transgender that misogyny is running rampant in Queer and Queer-friendly spaces, often in the form of anti-Lesbianism, as well as anti-Radical Feminism. In communities that often proclaim feminist values and politics, privileging the experience, views, theories, and politics of a few privileged trans activists and theorists has become the norm in spaces and places that are already anti-Lesbian, anti-Radical, anti-Feminist. Turns out the feminism that is being embraced is liberal at best and anti-feminist at worst. And radical feminism is being distorted, misrepresented, and/or homogenised into something it has never been.

Of particular concern to me, as someone who has attempted to find a home in Queer spaces as a radical activist and a pro-feminist, is the level of unqualified and unmodified misogynistic anti-Lesbian politics, views, attitudes, behaviors, and political practice, including the practice of theory-making, that attempts to shame or marginalise women who are not trans, who wish to acknowledge that they are women with no prefix.

I also have great concerns over the ways in which women who organise around various health and medical/social/cultural/environmental issues, like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions, illnesses, and challenges that face girls and women in various ways (and in varying proportions depending on age, ethnicity, ability to get health care, and so on) are being shamed, ridiculed, or otherwise scorned with terms like "essentialist" by academically privileged (if not also race-, region-, and class-privileged) individuals who want us to believe "woman" is an identity more than it is the group of people targeted for violence, subordination, and many forms of discrimination, marginalisation, and ostractism due to not being men.

I have learned recently of a woman who has been treated medically/surgically for a form of cancer originating in one of her reproductive organs. There appears to me to be newly acquired post-traumatic stress associated with medical offices, doctor visits, and phone calls. Her body has been compromised by cancer but also by the misogyny and anti-woman's body practices which pretend either that women are only their bodies or, more recently, that female bodies aren't necessarily part of being a woman at all. I am a male person who has seen how the medical-surgical industrial complex hates on girls and women, and expresses this hate against girls' and women's bodies directly, and against female and intersex bodies when those bodies are socially treated as not boys and not men's. Some of the ways this has been done historically is by forcibly removing from women their reproductive organs or ability to conceive, by poisoning girls' and women's bodies, by interpersonally and intimately violating and doing violence to girls' and women's bodies, by equating sexual well-being with being heterosexual, and by medically neglecting women, particularly and especially girls and women without class, region, and race privileges.

I reject (as harmful to girls and women) a political theory of gender which would posit as inconsequential the bodies we have from birth in understanding the gender we are forcibly made to have.

We are told by PoMo academics to understand women's bodies as being "text" or "textual" primarily--bodies upon which men write misogynist myths and lies. I don't hear from women in my life that their primary complaint or experience with men is that they are being "read" and "rewritten" upon. The chief complaint is one of being subordinated--not necessarily using that term. "Put down", "insulted", "degraded", "raped", beaten, and violated in innumerable ways are major complaints I hear about and support being brought to the powers that be, to end. "Being read incorrectly" is one way to discuss the issue of violence against women without naming the violence done to women by men. I find that an anti-woman/pro-male supremacist practice.

As someone who has identified as intergender, who has understood myself as being under the umbrella with people who are transgender, I stand with radical lesbian feminists who refuse to not name misogyny and anti-Lesbian practices where and when they occur, including in Queer spaces.

For more discussion of some of these issues, please read the following:

Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide

Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch:Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation

They're at it again over to Yahoo Answers: balking about White Radical Feminism (as if Patriarchs and Masculinists were timid little innocents doing nothing at all except being abused)

image is from here

There's some strange discussion at that place. It doesn't get too much stranger than what men say about feminists, radical feminism, and women generally. But despite what some dood says, the real question is:

Why do men hate women so much, despise femininity, and put down anyone who, in their view, displays anything "feminine" at all? And why do men so systematically express contempt for anyone who is a woman, feminine or not?

But, if we're going to pretend the social world isn't misogynistic, and instead is only about threatening men, we end up with stupidity like this from "Athlete". Please click on the question below to link back to the source site.

Athlete

Resolved Question

Why do feminists dislike masculinity, and men in general ?

It seems that feminists have a strong disliking for all men (except for the few cowardly ones that succumb to feminism and become "male feminists") - there have been multiple quotes by the famous feminists that have shaped feminism, such as from Andrea Dworkin (and many other feminists) who has stated that even consensual sex is an act of violence and is simply rape. She has also stated things such as marriage being derived from rape

" 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

"Intercourse as an act often expresses the power men have over women." - Andrea Dworkin

"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


Now, my question is, WHY do these feminists dislike men so much ? To condemn such an intimate act of love between a man and a woman (sexual intercourse) as "rape" is unfathomable to me. Have they been hurt, at one point in their lives, by a man so much that they developed a hatred for them all ? If this is true, then perhaps misogynists have had the same thing happen to them, only in their case, they have been hurt by a woman.

• 4 days ago
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@Sam - The fact that you agree that marriage is the same as kidnapping and raping someone shows that a feminist's mind is blurred and clouded by hate.

4 days ago

@Sammy - Since I'm 16, and not technically a man, you love me don't you ? <3

4 days ago

@Sam - Marriage was never about "abduction" - if you do research you will find that it's purpose has always been pure (to create a bond between two loving men and women), however, the misuse of marriage sometimes led to people marrying to gain land. Marrying to obtain land is NOT EQUAL to abduction. Feminists such as you and Andrea Dworkin simply feel the need to be victimized (when in fact there is nothing making you a victim) and so you create these ideas of something as pure as marriage being "derived from abduction." Open your eyes.

4 days ago

@Sam - Ah but that's the thing right there, it's not a fact you're stating, it's not even an opinion. It's a delusional lie created to fullfill your need to be victimized, and whatever action you try to take against the situation you make up in your "fact" is your attempt at satisfying your inferiority complex.

4 days ago

@Sam - Indeed they are creating the lies for you, but not just for you, they are creating them to instill the idea in ALL people's minds that Women = Helpless Victims, and Men = Brutal Savage Predators.

What Andrea Dworkin DIDN'T say: "All sex is rape", "All men are rapists", "All heterosexual sex is rape", and similar shit

Please click on the title below to link back to the source page:

Movie Review: The Spiritually Ugly 30 Minutes or Less

• 8/12/11 at 3:00 PM
• 9Comments

Photo: Sony Pictures

The R-rated comedy 30 Minutes or Less has the careless, amoral vibe of a seventies drive-in chase movie awash in drugs, nudity, and shooting, and without any pesky, PG-13, momentum-killing anxiety about “social consequences.” The makers don’t go as far as they might have — kids, for example, aren’t killed (only traumatized for life). But in spirit, this movie couldn’t be much more ugly. I enjoyed it. It suits the national mood.

The director, Ruben Fleischer, was behind the mysteriously successful Zombieland and is now, having wrung cheap laughs out of the end of civilization, essentially self-lobotomized. This film is better. It has a clever, mean, relentlessly vulgar script by Michael Dilberti. The central relationships are bracingly grotesque, the laughs, such as they are, are proportional to the degree of the characters’ avarice, murderousness, stupidity, and indifference to devastation. Early on, best buddies Jesse Eisenberg, a pizza deliveryman, and Aziz Ansari, an elementary-school teacher, beat each other up and vow never to speak again. Eisenberg turns out to have deflowered Ansari’s sister (Dilshad Vadsaria) while Ansari admits he divulged a secret that ended Eisenberg’s parents’ marriage. Adding to the unpleasantness is that Ansari, an amusing comedian, has no idea how to modulate his performance and shouts all his lines, while Eisenberg, finally freed by last year’s The Social Network from his stammering-sweetie persona, makes a point of staying brusque and irritable.

Danny McBride is the film’s strongest presence, as he often is in comedies that up the macho creepiness quotient to the point where you wonder whether Andrea Dworkin weren’t right about all men being rapists. He plays the unemployed, druggie, relentlessly emasculated son of a retired military officer (Fred Ward) living off lottery winnings. On the advice of a stripper he thinks likes him, McBride decides to kill his father — or, rather, to pay someone to kill his father and force someone else to rob a bank to come up with the $100,000 hit man fee. If that sounds moronically convoluted, it should be said that McBride is the thinker in his social circle. His pal, played by Nick Swardson, is chiefly good at blowing things up and burning things down. Swardson does, however, create the bomb vest that locks onto the delivery guy who has the bad luck to answer the pair’s call for a pizza. And so Eisenberg is forced into robbing a bank to keep from being vaporized.

30 Minutes or Less is paced like a thriller, and it’s impressive how much suspense Fleischer and Dilberti are able to generate given that no one onscreen has any brains.

(Ansari suggests that Eisenberg remove the bomb vest by sawing off his arms, putting them in ice, and having them reattached at the hospital.) Halfway through, Michael Pena shows up as a weirdly effeminate hit man who makes you think better of McBride. But then McBride comes onscreen and you start hoping for Pena to waste him. Then Eisenberg and Ansari blunder into a bank and you think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they both got blown up. I think those debt-ceiling negotiations have really done a number on us.

By: David Edelstein Filed Under: movie review, 30 minutes or less, movies

In The Name of Feminism, Antifeminism?

image is from here

I just found a post online about a radical lesbian feminist. (I'm not linking to it.) The allegedly radical and lesbian and white feminist author of the post calls for the public humiliation of a radical lesbian feminist activist; she endorses all sorts of unnamed forms of retaliation against that activist because the two women disagree on the politics of food.

Wow.

Is this what radicalism and feminism currently means on the internet--on blogs especially? That we can all call for the public harassment and humiliation and physical violation of women?

I sure hope not.

Critique of someone's values and behavior is one thing. Calling for violence to be done to them is something else entirely, and the last time I checked it was called the "patriarchal abuse of women".

We all experience disappointment and betrayal. Sometimes we feel it when it hasn't happened; sometimes it has happened and we don't feel anything at the time. How our feelings get acted out publicly is and ought to be a concern for all radicals.

In the last five years especially, I've seen all manner of hurtfulness, insult, and verbal violence against women being passed off as "feminist" and "radical". From women being called "the b word", to some radical feminist women being structurally silenced, to invasions against Lesbians, to calls for some women to be publicly assaulted, I won't support any of that happening or be silent in the face of it.

A few concerns, for now: on sexual politics and political identities: Lesbian, Trans, Intergender, Woman

image is from here

I have been challenged lately by a white radical Lesbian colleague. I respect her many years of effort in maintaining Lesbian spaces as sites of anti-heteropatriarchal resistance and woman-centered loving.

In the last several months I have explored issues here related to the matter of trans identity and politics, particularly how and when it intersects with struggles for women's liberation from racist heteropatriarchal harm.

I have also begun to name myself as intergender, which really is just a word I'm using to describe my own history of experience in a particular cultural world where gender is narrowly, violently, and rigidly understood to be this or that: woman or man, girl or boy. Those of us who are intersex, for example, have to place our bodies--surgically traumatised or not--into one of those two political camps. Trans political perspectives mostly reinforce the hierarchy that is presented in liberal queer circles as a binary. "This or that" might appear to be a binary choice. But power is part of the process of determining who and what we are--how power is exercised, how it is understood, and what it is used to accomplish socially and sexually.

This white Lesbian colleague has challenged me to not use the term, or, rather, to take responsibility for how it perpetuates an idea of gender as a binary--men and women, but not as a hierarchy--men over and against women. She has a strong point. I am considering her challenge seriously.

I know I could go to many liberal college campuses and get all kinds of support for calling myself, well, whatever I want to. And, as a male, I have the privileges and entitlements to believe I have a right to do so. This too is a political challenge: to be responsible with my entitlements and privileges, and to not use them to perpetuate realities that harm women across sexuality, region, and race.

Several years ago, before I stumbled upon the term "intergender", I used a different term: ungendered. A Black queer radical feminist challenged me back then about the nonsensical nature of the term--how does anyone grow up in this US society and not become gendered--structurally, institutionally, and personally? Good point. I stopped using the term.

Those of us with lots of entitlements and privileges are encouraged to flee into liberal fantasies about who we are, in my experience. Whites get to think we are unraced; hets get to think their sexuality is natural; men get to think their experience ought to be sufficiently synonymous with human experience, thereby forcing women's experience to be other than human. Those of us with lots of privilege and institutionalised power are encouraged to make things up and them make them real through coercive or terroristic force. When radical women, Lesbian or not, object to the use of coercion and force to maintain heteropatriarchy, liberals and conservatives often object, stating that it is a violation of their rights--their rights to name themselves as they see fit. I support this right for racially and otherwise oppressed people who don't use white, het, and male supremacist force against women, including against Lesbians.

Anyone who positions Radical Lesbians as a signifant enemy force is not living in the world I live in. Every Radical Lesbian I know is so marginalised that she's practically living in isolation. I never, ever see her views presented anywhere unless it is the Radical Lesbian herself who is presenting them; she has no institutional support, usually has no economic support, and is so ostracised by men, by hets, by liberals, by conservatives, and by spokespeople claiming to speak for all trans folks, that I really do wonder what facts or experiences are shaping the view that Radical Lesbians are even a significant force to be reckoned with.

I cannot find many trans-friendly spaces online that are even remotely friendly towards or appreciative of Radical Lesbians. This is presented by liberals, in my experience, as a chicken and the egg phenomenon: if it weren't for those radical lesbians, or radical feminists, or feminist lesbians--almost always white women--spewing anti-trans theories and beliefs about us, then we (trans people--almost always white) would have a much easier time of things.

I believe the privileges and entitlements, or lack thereof, of all concerned ought to be considered and regarded as we negotiate this newest conflict effecting both Lesbian people and trans people.

Here's one way I approach understanding the politics of experience and naming among humans: what are the people of one group doing to mitigate or eliminate horror and terror against oppressed people? What I see is a strongly self-concerned politic, or ethic, operating among the white trans people who are most vocally condemning radicals, lesbians, and feminists. And what I know about the white radical lesbian feminists who are opposed to trans political practice, is that their sphere of concern is decidedly broader and deeper than issues of "gender" and "sex". With Radical Lesbians I see self-concern also, but the analysis is one that brings forth calls to action that take on many if not all the systems of power that main and kill people. Not so with trans activism that is in my view.

This leads me to regard them as more seriously engaged in the business of ending oppression through activist means. I have yet to encounter many trans-identified people who are engaged in radical struggles to end oppression. With the exception of Dean Spade, I don't know any trans people doing this work. Unlike some of my white radical feminist and radical lesbian colleagues, I don't assume this is because they aren't doing that work. I assume it's because they don't have time to blog, to post comments on websites, and also because they don't speak English as a first language and so how the hell would I know what they are doing?

I know radical feminists across race, across region, and across class and sexuality are doing powerful resistance work to fight heterosexism, racism, and patriarchal abuses of women and girls.

I welcome hearing from trans activists who are doing work that is about ending male supremacy, het supremacy, and white supremacy. Who are doing pro-Indigenous work. Who are doing work to end men's violence against everyone and everything. You don't have anything to prove to me. That's not why I welcome knowing about your work. I want to know about it so I can mention it in future posts. Because from my experience thus far, being trans appears to carry with it the stigma of being liberal or conservative when it comes to gender politics. And if that's a deeply problematic association or a woefully erroneous assumption, I'd like to know about the actions you take up as trans activists--I mean not in addition to being trans, but actions you are led to do because you are trans.

Identities that require supporting systems of horror and humiliation are not ones I want to promote here. The identities I most support are those that are inextricable fused to radical liberation struggles as I see them (others will necessarily disagree with me about what constitutes a radical struggle and a liberation struggle).

I'll close with a link to a post about being a woman. It makes clear how one's body is a part of one's self, and how one's self is located in social space where political force is always present. I cannot find much good reason for supporting political viewpoints which want to render these connections faulty, when the fault isn't with the people enduring the connections that are aggressively imposed, not at all chosen.

With thanks to madperiodwoman:

http://madperiodwoman.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/on-being-madperiodwoman/

On with the revolutionary efforts to end white, capitalist, patriarchal, heterosexist, anti-Indigenist, ecocidal oppression.

This remains a pro-woman, pro-Lesbian, pro-Indigenous, anti-racist blog written by someone with lots of male, class, education, region, and white privileges. And if you think that means I hate trans people, well, there's probably not a whole lot I could say to change your mind.

I was welcomed by a colleague to explain a bit about what 'being intergender' means, and to understand how that term renders male supremacy that much more invisible--meaning, the violence of male supremacy becomes that much harder to identify as such. I take to heart that critique and the challenges that come with it.