Do you know what Twisty? Bite Me.
I dunno, maybe it’s just something odd about me, but lesbians and what appears to be asexual victims of patriarchal abuse telling me how to have hetereosexual sex just chaffs my wedge somewhat, you know?
I know I know, I was as shocked as anyone else to find out that lesbians find fellatio and penises disgusting, and while some idiot who never got over am incident of abusive sex they experienced once and has decided that, due to the wonderful combination of being frightfully dull and being too shit scared to risk being hurt again, that all sex with guys is Teh Icky and anyone who has sex with guys is trying to cozy up to the patriarchy etc…etc… *yawn*, those of us with two brain cells to rub together and an ability to actually connect in a sexually intimate way with other human beings of a male persuasion tend to be able to find ways to invite men into our beds without turning it into a threesome with the patriarchy.
But god forbid we should throw away the rape culture’s bullshit power games and heirarchies! Oh no we have to recreate them to suite our goals, so that the self appointed “high ranking” feminists (dipshit lesbians and their false conciousness prone bi/het acolytes) can dump on those “below” them for not raping men hard enough or something (because if the guy involved is enjoy it, then obviously it’s patriarchal), no doubt with “ex-straight” camps to help free us from the “false conciousness” that is making us abuse ourselves, because of teh “retching” and teh “gagging”, (Because Porn is Real, it’s like a documentary and shit) and OMGWTFBBQ!!!!11!!ELEVEN!! What about the pleasuring of men, how patriarchal is THAT!?
Of course I hope no one is surprised that, wonders of wonders, this sort of stupid ass outlook works to further stop heterosexual women from having sex, “oh you can’t do it like that!” “Oh no, that’s patriarchal!” Explain to me again why both this bullshit anti-sex “feminism” of yours and The Patriarchy you talk about despising so much, both involve me, a woman, becoming abstinent? Why is everyone afraid of the horrors I may commit with my vagina or mouth if just left alone to challenge the patriarchy one cock at a time?
Being Anti-Sex is being Pro-Patriarchy you fools! Patriarchy wants to control our sexuality and make us beileve that all sex is about dominance, and you’ve bought it you nincompoops! I hate the rape culture because of crap like this, where pleasure is subject interminably to who’s in control and who’s ontop of whom.
We all know that in a patriarchy, (and by ‘patriarchy’ I mean a social order in which all women are subject, by universal agreement, to all men), on accounta the power differential, all relationships with men are inherently inequitable.
Now I forget the precise term for this sort of logical fallacy (Quick, turn on the Beyerstein signal, we need a philosopher, stat!), when someone posits that because A is equal to B, and C is equal to B, all C must therefore be equal to A, but it’s bullshit, all relationships with men are inherently inequitable, yes, unless you choose to make it otherwise by stepping outside the constraints of patriarchal scripts and behavior. The patriarchy is like a vampire, it can only come into your bed if you first invite it in. But what do I know about heterosexuality huh?
And yes yes, I know that the heteronormative society does shove heterosexual sex down homosexuals’ throats (pun no intended), but not to the point where you know what you’re talking about vis a vis blowjobs unless you’ve actually taken a shit load of time out to study heterosexual sexual activities down to their minutest detail.
Which start to make you look a teensy bit like those homobigots who obsess about homosexuals to the point of dressing up in leather and going to special bars for men who like other men dressed up in leather. If a lesbian knew what they hell were talking about on this subject, then they’re probably not really lesbians.
So what you have here is a lesbian who has gotten all her information about fellatio from the patriarchy itself, including her asshole boyfriend of once-upon-a-time and who therefore has a strangely conspicuous lack of comprehension regarding how subversive fellatio can be to both social heteronormitivity and the patriarchy itself if one puts some thought into the act and does it correctly.
And when I say “subversive”, I speak not of teeth, or being able to make most of the muscles (it’s erectile tissue, like nipples, not a muscle) in a guy go completely limp with just your tongue, no.
Look to the Heavens, Oh Yeh Of Little Faith, for anything that should, always, requires you sticking a digit or thumb up the guys butthole and stimulating his prostate for it be maximally pleasurable for the guy, is not supportive of the patriarchy. Unless Twisty knows of another prothesis-less act in which women penetrate men rather than are penetrated by men. No? Well please, kindly, STFU.
The middle finger is the fellatio finger, never forget that, and we sex-positive, feminist, heterosexuals display it to show that we know it’s proper use: To challenge all oppressive sex obsessed social systems that stand between us and liberation.
(ETA: clarified a shit load of stuff, and fix a few typos)
Hey, that’s cool. I’m a fraud, not a feminist, don’t care about Class Woman, and only am interested in making Teh Mens happy.
(no, that wasn’t Twisty or anything; some other little sparrowfart of a self-ID’d radical feminist)
[...] Inevitably, whenever one of us takes issue with something about the Democratic Party, or argues with another leftie blogger, or splits hairs over a definitional argument, somebody drops the “can’t we all just get along?” bomb. Twisty’s blow job blow up is just the latest in a long line of issues over which various liberal bloggers (including our own superstar) and commenters engaged in a heated exchange over what we do and how we act. [...]
Two things that are driving me nuts in this discussion:
1. I do not believe that radical feminists are radical. Radical means going to the root of the problem. If gender is not the root of all our social problems, then treating gender as the root of all our social problems is not a radical approach. The alliances with Christian conservatives in the 80s, the arguments for “political lesbianism,” the hostility towards transgendered people, and the sectarianism are not aberrations, but direct consequences of a political theory that rejects progressive approaches to the problem of sexism.
2. “Patriarchy” is the key word in the radical feminist lexicon. It refers to “patriarchy theory,” the idea that men as a class oppress women as a class, and all other forms of oppression are secondary. I’ve been seeing the word “patriarchy” used with increasing frequency on feminist blogs, to mean simply “sexism” or “women’s oppression,” by people who are not radical feminists, or occasionally “the elevation of ‘male’ values over ‘female’ values” — the last of which at least makes some sense. But in general, the usage of “patriarchy” by people who strongly object to “patriarchy theory” and who are not radical feminists is quite confusing.
Amanda: Thanks, you clarified a lot for me. I enjoy your blog and comments. But interpret radfem theory some more for me: why is attacking men a waste of time? Wouldn’t that be the main action to tear power from them? And obviously, by attacking men, I mean their structures of power (in shorthand).
This is my take on it, which again, I don’t agree with radicals. Attacking men=demanding that they are the ones to change. That won’t work. They’ll say, “Fuck that I like the way things are.” Only women have the incentive to change the power structure in this viewpoint.
I disagree with this, for what it’s worth. I think men can be enticed to join up the cause both because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s in their own self-interest.
As for Mildred’s complaint, if you don’t want to be talked down to, don’t read Twisty’s blog!
It’s a great blog, and twisty is a great writer, and eveyrone should read twisty now and again because it’s worth it, and because twisty’s Gray Area post is one of those firmly written posts that makes you want ot vomit copiously at the sickness of humanity.
‘I’m not saying I’m a scientist myself, but there are simple facts about nature that you can’t ignore.’
No seriously this is pop biology not real biology. Early experiments reaching this conclusion,ones about fruitflies, had systematic errors. A single sperm is easy to make, but it takes several rounds of entire good quality ejaculate to equal one egg ion terms of ensuring max probability of impregnation. Therefore one can’t say if sperm is cheap or eggs expensive, both require a complicated anergy imvestment with is differen for all animals. Reproductive stratgeies like male choice and female feamle competition and ployandry were not even THOUGHT of before, but now that people think they can exist they find them quite a bit. Old biology was unfortunatley intimately bound up in Victorian social ideals like eugenics and traditional sex roles. This was not disinterested science. it was systematicaly stacked. What you read in Time about biology is the same level of drivel as ‘the opt out revolution’ is an to actual economic occourence.
I’m rather fond of “Biological Exuberance,” myself.
http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1999/03/cov_15featurea.html
>
…Some homosexual animals have one-night stands and some have long marriages. Gay and lesbian geese stay together year after year. Bottlenose dolphins don’t form male-female couples, but males often form lifelong pairs with other males. Some are interested only in males, but others are bisexual and happily indulge in beak-genital propulsion and more with male or female alike.
Male black swans court and form stable pairs. With two males, they are able to defend huge territories from other swan couples, which sounds like a double-income-no-kids situation except that they often manage to wangle some eggs from somewhere — all right, they steal them — and become model parents, twice as successful as straight parents.
…Bagemihl formulates the charmingly named theory of biological exuberance, of which homosexuality is one manifestation. He wants to unlink biological analysis from the idea that reproduction — and hence, heterosexuality — is all. Biology must accept the apparent purposelessness of sexualities, he argues. Sexual pleasure is “inherently valuable” and “requires no further ‘justification.’”
In support of this view, Bagemihl cites celibate animals, animals that exhibit shocking indifference to reproduction and species where sex is rare and difficult. He all but proves reproductive sex doesn’t happen.
But of course reproduction does take place and must take place for natural selection to occur. (If creatures lived forever, they wouldn’t need to reproduce, nor would they evolve.) The riddle is how a process driven by reproduction produces nonreproductive creatures, but it’s not a very hard riddle, and indeed abundance, flexibility and exuberance are part of it.
Evolution is history. The forces of evolution operating in the past may have produced a creature that is fast, fierce or able to do calculus, but those forces don’t direct a creature once it is born. Penguins who mated with other penguins of the opposite sex are the ones who left descendants, and every penguin is descended from penguins who committed at least one heterosexual act, but that doesn’t mean this penguin, here and now, will commit only heterosexual acts. The capacity for pleasure that encouraged its ancestors to reproduce is available wherever the penguin chooses to direct it.
Successful life forms are characterized by diversity, so changing environments don’t wipe them out. That diversity often extends to sexuality. Thus bisexuality and homosexuality are characteristics not of twisted nature, but of generous nature.”
Foolish Owl wrote:
I figger: in the context of the leftist politics of the day, they appropriated the word and said, “it’s ours, fuck y’all.”
And, if you are fair to them, they have an argument as to why they are radical.
1. the root of women’s oppression as a class by men who operate as a class is that men dominate and control women through their sex: sexual and reproductive sex.
2. The lynchpin of that control is prostitution, pornography, and rape.
3. Getting to the root is getting at those three things. Once you undo those, you will undo the Gordian Knot that is all other forms of oppression.
Here, the base is pornstitution/rape and the superstructure is race, class, and things like women’s systematic occupational segregation. In fact, from that base we can explain things like greed, humliation, caste, bigotry, sadism, deception, manipulation, etc.
I can see that radical feminists like Echols and others have astake in the name. They have an argument as to why it no longer means what they believed it meant. They feel their early formulations were materialist and the current ones are not.
But others? Like me? A socialist feminist? I dunno. I don’t think I want to run around insisting they need to change their name. Plus, it just feels like calling them hypocrites. I don’t think that’s an approach we should take. [1]
Oh, this rather did tie my bloomers once.
i can see it being picked up b/c it’s easier to type perhaps?
it’s possible, but very unlikely that they are socialist feminists like Heidi Hartman that tried to theorize capitalism patriarchy as two sep. systems that couldn’t be reduced to the other. But Hartman and others were unable to demonstrate how patriarchy operated in the fashion that capitalism does: e.g.,, Marxism accounts for the demise of capitalism as the result of events internal to the logic of capitalism itself.
No one was able to find a similar logic to patriarchy without reverting to claims of biological determination for men. So, they largely abandoned such theorizing and went in two directions, leaving behind the concept of patriarchy.
That’s because Gayle Rubin came up with an alternative, the sex/gender system and thus people started speaking of various systems of oppression, among which were racial, class, gender, ability oppression.
Again, if you read Radically Speaking they cannot stand the use of the word gender. They argue that feminists who do so are only doing it because they don’t want to make men unhappy.
Yes, Gayle Rubin the lesbian is a male ID’d patriarchy fucker. Alrighty.
IOW, we don’t have a theoretical disagreement, we are male ID’d patriarchy fuckers.
And, of course, this is a dishonest charge that poisons the wells of discourse and makes it impossible to have a discussion.
The radfem approach to political practice is that it much start _first_ with changing women’s consciousness. It becomes imperative, on this view, to smack down every instance of what looks like resistance to recognizing the operations of patriarchy in every manifestation of our lives.
Political practice begins with an internal inventory of your own personal life to find where patriarchy lives.
You are familiar with Marxist theory, yes? Well, whereas class consciousness emerges from two process: the internal contradiction of captalism itself and then on the basis of political practice, in radfem theory, women’s consciousness as a class begins with this important task: rooting out the man that lives in your head.
You see? It’s only natural that radfems believe that part of blaming the patriarchy is blaming one’s self and anyone who appears to be a useless idiot or tool of patriarchy.
—-
[1] I just finished a crack at Alice Echols works, Daring to Be Bad She’s an early radfem and she thinks the movement went wrong with Morgan, Dworkin, Mackinnon, and others. She traces the split to Joreen and Solanis (I have an autobiographical account from Joreen up at my blog. It’s quite fascinating.)
Echols thinks they should be called cultural feminists be/c of the degree to which they emphasized that women’s shared oppression forms a special women’s culture which they believed should be valorized over male culture.
Amanda, you wrote:
The reason is that it’s important to start from the consciousness _of_ women. Honest. This is the crucial aspect of radfem theory. It’s not that men won’t listen, but that, at the time, consciousness raising was crucial because women didn’t even know how to name the problem. When they couldn’t have orgasms, their doctors told them to take a pill or learn to live with or find the source in their childhood.
When they got together in CR groups, they started jabbering to realize: Oh my! We have orgasms by stimulating our clitoris and this vaginal orgasm is a myth. Those meetings sent one woman off to write a paper on it.
The CR group was designed to say, “What so called personal problems are you having and how can we understand them as _political_ because, say, of the way men have controlled knowledge abt women’s bodies.
As this grew, radfems came to see how radically transformative such enlightenment was for women. It changed their lives and made them very passionate about the cause. They sought to continue that by a focus by insisting that, to change the world, women must begin by examining their own lives and understanding how patriarchy shaped every single manifestation of it.
Each woman’s consciousness thus needed to be transformed. Political practice starts there, in rooting around looking for the Man in Your Head and evicting him.
The partner to that was to revalue women’s identity. Where men defined us as, say, passive we would learn to revalue that as peaceful.
By establishing a huge, broad based unity of women across the glbe we would create a strong culture of women who recognize themselves as a class of women oppressed by men as a class.
Important here was building alt. intstitutions for women: alt healthcare, rape crisis centers, women run businesses, community centers, arts centers, etc.
then, was to come direct confrontation with patriarchal domination wherever it was encountered.
And that’s where the strike part comes in and why conformity is important: whereas a marxist argues that it is through political practice itself that a worker comes to understand the nature of her oppression, it is through self analysis in consciousness raising group that a woman comes to see the nature of her oppression.
In order to get everyone to strike in the context of a theory deeply suspicious of anything like an organized union (and for good reason at the time, the leftist men were fuckers), then you need to get women to tow the line. How? Here, speeches, art, poetry, rhetoric, essays, etc because utterly central. IOW, agit prop, propaganda, etc. are the crucial tools through which to take those raised consciousnesses and lead them to the Great Refusal in the Sky. (I do not use agit prop, propaganda pejoratively. They’re important tools.) [1]
The only answer has been separatism. Either full bore separatism or a modified version of creating women’s spaces where men are not allowed. Few people advocate that these days. They believed it failed.
In the absence of political agitation, organizing, creating alternative institutions all this seems to be is a lot of navel gazing which turns into beating any one up who steps out of line.
And I’m arguing that this isn’t a mistake: it’s an inevitable result of an unreconstructed framework.
Which is fine. It’s just that they need to remember that there are alternatives to their view and, by dismissing everyone who disagrees as falsely conscious, they are simply disrespecting anyone who has an alternative view as tools of the patriarchy.
that isn’t encouraging discussion. it isn’t encouraging critical respect between us.
not surprisingly, when Twisty’s audience isn’t on board for the whole program, they’ve been castigated as Male IDd rather than actually listened to.
[1] Carol Hanisch, in her new intro to the essay,’The Personal is Political,’ describes the split as emanating from debates over how to protest the Miss American Pageant. One group want to humiliate the contestants themselves. Hanisch and others argued that they needed to humiliate the profiteers and promoters who established it in the first place.
bravo belldame. wide variation and adaptability is the key to avoiding extinction. sexual selection doesn’t need to be completely tossed aside but it doesn’t need to be predicated on old assed nonsense either.
This topic is on like 10 other posts now. Did the BDSM crap spread around like this? Next lets do cunnilingus, I need something o cancel that horrible Snitchens blowjob post.
Thanks for that, Bitch. And yeah, it all makes sense. And the CR thing I think is a linchpin issue—a lot of women are full well aware of how and why they get a raw deal but the truth is that they stick with the system because it’s personally more beneficial than fighting. I’ve had a lot of women tell me they’re settling for marriages to men who they know will happily and stupidly oppress them because it’s better than the alternative, whatever that might be. Educating people isn’t changing their behavior.
And of course, you know I’m resistant in every way to the idea that men can’t or shouldn’t be included, which is weird since I then end up arguing with male allies who I want to just call “feminist” and they prefer the term “pro-feminist”.
twisty is a great writer, and eveyrone[sic] should read twisty now and again because it’s worth it
Well, duh [which is why I've been reading Twisty every day for, like, over a year]. What I’m getting at, though, is that Twisty’s posts are not often pleasant. She exposes patriarchy where we had suspected none before. You don’t go to Twisty’s blog to giggle and feel good about yourself. You go there to find out how fucked up and wrong every aspect of life is, your own included. And if you’re prepared to closely examine the fucked up aspects of your own life, you shouldn’t ever go to blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com
I feel like a hopeless wreck of a person from reading Twisty as obsessively as I do, but at least I know why I’m a hopeless wreck of a person. And I’m okay with that.
* I’m missing a negation there. If you’re not prepared to . . . .
Slutever, you get the point.
I hope.
B|lab, that was pretty amazing. Thank you. I pretty much agree with all of that. I am a Marxist, by the way.
With regard to radical feminists not being radical: yes, of course, they regard themselves as radical, so it’s not their choice of name for themselves that I object to. What really concerned me is that people who are not radical feminists, particularly Amanda and Arwen in this discussion, accept that radical feminism is radical, and describe some of the shortcomings of radical feminism as a result of their radicalism. I think those shortcomings are a result of a flawed theory that leads to flawed practice, including sectarianism: the tendency to condemn others for not simply accepting your politics immediately.
Somewhere in this discussion, I said that Twisty’s redeeming quality is her inconsistency: she isn’t a consistent radical feminist. In particular, she usually pulls back from sectarianism, and allows that her friends and allies may have valid reasons for their beliefs and practices, so she leaves some room to live and let live. I think part of the reason for this long discussion is that in this case, she remained consistent to radical feminist ideas, so there wasn’t the usual way out to avoid a confrontation with those ideas.
My sense is that the word “patriarchy” had become increasingly used on the circuit of feminist blogs I frequent over the last year or so, particularly in the last two or three months. Maybe it is because it’s easier to type, but I think the main reason is that Twisty’s blog has become increasing popular and influential.
Oops: grammatical error that may lead to confusion.
“and describe some of the shortcomings of radical feminism as a result of their radicalism”
Should be “ITS radicalism” rather than “THEIR radicalism.”
Amanda
heh. I had a similarly strong reaction to Chris Clarke’s insistance that he wasn’t a feminist. I can sorta understand, seeing as how my entrace into feminism was not at all normal. I didn’t identify with a word of until I read black feminist thought. That made sense. But I can hardly call myself a black feminist. And, I also agree with piny about just willy nilly saying, “i’m an ally” as if I’m the one who gets to say, “I’m an ally because I say so.” Uh. Yeah. So, I can sorta see the ‘hedge’ there as useful. Maybe. sorta. I haven’t figured it out because some days, I read Hugo and I just want to say “Woah. Modify the word feminism with “Hugo” mmkay?” LOL
I thought your posts at Alas a couple of years ago were just a remarkably and beautifully written explanation of your view on this topic.
I think my favorite person on rad fem theory is Alison Jagger. While she’s a socialist, her argument is that rad fem pretty much was the ground from which all other variants of feminist thought emerged — save for Liberal feminism, but even they’ve drawn on the important groundwork.
So, looking at commonalities would be instructive. That’s why Twisty’s so right in so much of what she says and says it with such style and wit. It’s why she resonates with so many feminists.
You can agree with a boatload, particularly on the descriptive analysis of what’s going on. But, for me, since I’m not one to think that it’s one system, Patriarchy, then that slight change in how I _explain_ the problem is going to shape how I think about how to address the problem: political practice.
I read you at Pandagon, so I picked up on the fact that you were either a Marxist or a heavy user of Marx. And thanks for tolerating the rant, an outgrowth of my immersion in this book I think.
This is an interesting point about inconsistency. I hadn’t grokked to that at all. And my rant was kind of focused more on published writings of radfems since I feel I’m safe ground: I can back up what I say with quotes.
Plus, Twisty’s an essayist, an agitator, and a charismatic leader. She doesn’t do theory per se, she applies it in the way she analyzes events and shows others how to do so.
Do you think that maybe it’s that radfems compromise on much but can’t compromise on the pornsitution/rape (and thus sexuality) angle since, that’s the lynchpin?
And yah, I suppose people are using the word without necessarily agreeing with or knowing the specifics of the theory and what P really means. I think that’s part of why I’ve been hashing this out elsewhere — because I happen to find analyzing the whys of this sectarianism fascinating.
But, do you suppose it matters if people use the word?
I ask because I had felt like that early on: confused. WTF? 10 years ago, I didn’t know a soul who used the word. It had been so widely critiqued as a failed theory even on its own terms, no one would use it. It implies that, just as twisty said, that patriarchy was established long ago, hijacking and warping human sexuality. I mean: that’s classic stuff to talk about it in terms of something that was established and thus, we can look to a world before patriarchy. If we know one existed before, then we have an inkling that it might exist again.
There’s a reason for that, I think. With Marxism, not very many people look to the past, to primitive communism, hoping that we can retrieve from that world a guide to how to build the new one. There is a theory of social change in its thought and it analyzed how those changes happened in the past.
But with radfem, the reason is because the system is _so_ structuralist there’s no escape. You need the evidence of a time prior to patriarchy to both show that it’s malleable but also show that it’s utterly entrenched since “time immemorial.”
There is no theory about how the system changes — progresses — through its own internal logic. (Hartman set out to find that, but it never went anywhere). Mostly, what I read is that if there are contradictions, they are, for example, the simultaneity of ‘raunch culture’ alongside a Victorian repressed sexuality. Which is interpreted as a sign of Patriarchy wrapping us clutches around us ever more tightly. No escape. No fissures or cracks we can grab and widen to open up spaces for radical change.
I was thinking about what you said about alliances with conservatives. Funny thing is, I ws just reading an interview with Dworkin where she says, basically, Women have always known that the enemy is rightwing. The real problem is leftwing men. And this will be of interest given that this interview was in 1990:
I’d been reading along, laughing, thinking she’d presciently described what some of us have found with the Democratic party.
Was slightly annoyed by the bit about left/liberal men, but know there’s a kernel of truth.
But I stopped dead in my tracks to realize: liberal men suck sewage, but she’s asking us to dialogue with conservatives? HUH? Sure, there’s confrontation… But dialogue. HUH?
The rest is interesting in light of this conversation.
Foolish Owl — Forgot. I’d really love to see how you see it as flawed theory. Particularly as you see its relation to sectarianism. Weirdly enough, I have been hashing out this book in my head on this topic, though more broadly to look at identitarian social movements.
Sectarianism makes my head hurt. And watching it play itself irritates me, but not enough to make me want to rubberneck the ten car pile up that ineveitably results.
>Did the BDSM crap spread around like this? >
Not so much. that’s been going on for years and years now, though (I mean in the world, not in blogland, obviously)
>Next lets do cunnilingus, I need something o cancel that horrible Snitchens blowjob post.
I want to talk about fisting. Specifically, whether it is a tool of capitalism or in fact a form of subversive class rebellion. I mean,
“UP YOURS!”
yes, yes; but, who is providing the labor, the lube?
I’m not sure I had things quite straight, but yes, I’ll get back to you on that.
“Watersports. Responsible environmentalism? How much water do you actually need to drink in order to do a scene? Can piss-play be considered a form of recycling, or is it just silly?”
>rooting out the man that lives in your head.
“Don’t think about pink elephants. And whatever you do, *don’t blow them.*”
belledame
LOL
I just saw this post from a ‘mean feminist’ and had to laugh. It’s classic. According to her, everyone was writing about how it’s feminist to wax the carrot.
http://meanfeminism.blogspot.com/2006/06/you-all-can-blow-me-or-not.html
somedays, I think talking about sex just makes people’s brains shutdown.
foolish owl
cool. when you get time, i’d really love another take on it since I hadn’t really thought about internal failures of the theory itself.
[...] Read more: Twisty (and a follow-up) Piny Amanda (and a follow-up) R. Mildred [...]
[...] Oh yes, please tell us more about this “Teh Sex” you speak of, oh wise asexuals! [...]
[...] Oh yes, please tell us more about this “Teh Sex” you speak of, oh wise asexuals! [...]
McBoing
You have characterized my posts as sister blaming. That is certainly not my intent, nor do I think a correct reading of my posts.
I would appreciate an explanation.
{with respect to the host: if you will allow}
gargh. MF is saying the same damn thing all the other defenders of Twisty’s take is saying:
to wit, that the people who are “defending” blowjobs (yeah, most people do defend what they like to do in bed and/or what they like to do with their loved ones when they feel under attack; it’s just how life works) are saying that blowjobs (BDSM, makeup, whathtefuckever) is *inherently* feminist.
Please. Finally. Name *one* person who has said, in so many words, that (given act) is *inherently* feminist, of itself. One specific person. One specific quote.
Because I am starting to think there is some projection going on here.
Because, instead, what I keep seeing is something like this:
Radfem: Blahblah is icky and degrading and *bad for women*, and coincidentally I don’t happen to like it.
Notradfem: Well, I don’t find it to be so.
Radfem: Look, do whatever you want to do, okay; just don’t try to tell me blahblah is “feminist.” That’s all.
And, like, excuse me? Who’s telling whom what, here?
Well, I can only speak for myself. For the record:
*in my opinion*–
There is nothing *inherently* feminist about giving a blowjob, BDSM, putting on lipstick, wearing high heels, or anything of that nature.
There is *also* nothing inherently *not* feminist about giving a hummer, BDSM, putting on lipstick, wearing high heels, or anything of that nature.
Sorry. I’m going to make that one a catgorical. There just isn’t. Because
1) context fucking matters
2) it’s none of your goddam business what any other woman does or doesn’t do with her body, and yes, THAT sentiment IS feminist.
You know the whole “my body belongs to me?” Great. Study it well. It doesn’t, in fact, mean “my body, my choice; but *your* body and choices are subject to endless criticism and picking and headtripping from us, your supposed sisters.”
Got it? Good.
Now consider the phrase, “Fuck off.”
I had no idea there was any kind of blowjob “controversy” going on in the feminist movement. I really must get out more.
Blown away by the blowjob debate…
Just so you know, the political/sexual blogosphere is electrified by a wide-ranging debate about the role of fellatio in feminism. Everybody’s blaming Twisty of I blame the patriarchy for starting it. She certainly put a patented spin on the issue. Bu…
Bitch/Lab’s view of false consciousness conflicts with many other theorists, such as:
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/1999/mayo_body.asp
Belledame, I think the labor in fisting is shared. The top does the positioning and the lubing and the twisting and sweating, but the bottom does the concentrating and the relaxing, and it’s really a collaborative project; a shared performance. So in that sense, I suppose it builds a non-alienated connection to the product of labor that a Marxist would have to smile on. I’m no Marx maven, though.
I expect that watersports do not alter the net water usage, and certainly do not do so enough to be significant. Plus, the reconsumption does not involve repackaging.
***squick alert***
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Same thing for scat.
Ondreatwopointoh Jun 20th, 2006 at 3:46 am
Bitch/Lab’s view of false consciousness conflicts with many other theorists, such as:
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/1999/mayo_body.asp
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it’s not my view. i was talking about the radfem view. i imagine a search on radical feminism at the blog linked would provide a good bib to verify.
i’m not a radfem. i’m a socialist (commie pinko fag)
Ondreatwopointoh Jun 20th, 2006 at 3:46 am
i read the link where it mentions Wendy Brown. She did a really interesting analysis of the same sort I’ve been doing the last coupla weeks re: MacKinnon. Basically, she says that MacKinnon’s work is a symptomatic reading of pornography and the persuavive rhetoric is one that mimes the rhythms of porn.
Drucilla Cornell says that “MacKinnon fucks her readers.”
Politie academic ways of saying: “She’s obssesed with porn and provide a pornographic alternative for her followers who sublimate their desire for porn with desire for radfem theory.” Kinda rude when you think abt it!
@ belledame
you wrote:
But you know, WRT 2, there’s no agreement on that — the notion that it is none of anyone’s godamned business. Radfems see this as a false consciousness. They’re not impressed by this because the same argument might come from a man who, say, rapes his daughter and, b/c the daughter is afraid and confused, she says she likes it.
Or just a rejection of a patriarchal notion of freedom — on the radfem view.
so, the argument doesn’t generally wash with them at all. It might appeal to the larger public b/c it’s a dominant value, but with radfems such sentiments ignore the social structure of power relations that undergird these sentiments.
that is why freedom of speech arguments about porn don’t mean a thing. nor do claims that, with a free market of ideas, we can create egalitarian porn. they’re retort is: nuh huh. not under these conditions you won’t. dream on sisters.
an illustration might be hate crime laws. haven’t looked at the numbers in a while, but it turns out last i checked that more blacks were prosecuted for hate crimes against whites.
whereas the intent was, it would seem, to address violence against targeted groups that have been historically disavantaged, it’s turned out rather differently. Since the racist society didn’t go away and the law didn’t actually address the problem.
I think I love you.
Seriously, reading this made me so happy. The thread on Twisty’s blog was starting to depress the hell out of me. I can’t believe that we’re STILL having the same argument amongst feminists that’s been happening since the 70s.
Points to take away – if you are a person who is not and never has been in the habit of giving blow jobs then you should probably accept that your ability to make sweeping statements about what the experience of doing so is like for other people is somewhat limited. If you are a lesbian then the fact that the very idea of fellatio digusts you is not a huge surprise. That the act holds no appeal for you does not in any way indicate that it should be equally unnappealing to other women who happen to rather like penises.
I’m not sure why there is this pervasive sense of contempt from lesbian feminists towards feminists who are hetero, but frankly I’m getting more than a little tired of it.
Also, picking up a theme that came up over at IBTP (I’m not even going to raise the subject over there since I don’t feel like being accused of false conciousness or some other similar bullshit), why exactly would anyone refuse to accept the idea that fellatio really is pretty much the “dudely” equivalent of cunnilingus? Both are things that one partner does largely in order to give pleasure to the other, rather than to recieve pleasure themselves. Both involve some element of pleasure for the giver as well as the receiver, mostly of the power-tripping sort, but the main goal is to get the receiver off. I’m not seeing how anyone can assume that one act is A-OK while the other is something that all feminist should be deeply uncomfortable with.
Listen, I’m bi. I’ve gone down on both men and women, and the details may vary but the idea behind the act and the way it makes the giver feel, and feel about herself, are pretty much the same. The only real difference is in the arrangement of the plumbing. Why is this so difficult to grasp? Sure, fellatio can be unpleasant and exploitative, but so can just about any sexual act if it’s being done with the wrong person and for the wrong reasons. Within the right context it pretty much falls into the category of “things we do for fun with people we love”. What exactly is so inherantly horrifying about that?
The fact that I sleep with men does not mean that my life is a gonzo porn movie. If I didn’t like giving head I wouldn’t be doing it. It would be nice if a certain misguided minority of my lesbian feminist compadres would quit the sneering and acknowledge that the fact that I sleep with men does not mean that I’ve been lobotomized, or that I’m not completely capable of figuring out what I do and not enjoy doing without any patronising “advice”. Maybe then we could get on with tackling the actual problems that are out there, because there are certainly enough of them to keep us all busy for a long time.
B/L, the interesting thing about the argument that the patriarchy will turn all tools to its ends is that it creates a real problem for any radfem solutions. Some radical feminists argue that broad swaths of depiction of sex cannot be done in ways that do not further patriarchy; but why is it any more possible to get a legislature in patriarchy to create a law in the patriarchy that will be enforced by the patriarchy to dismantle or limit something that is a tool of the patriarchy? One thing that some radical feminists (and I’m talking here about people I agree a fair amount with — I’d do a little dance in Vivid Video imploded in a wave of tax evasion charges and all the principals went to jail; they’re no friends of mine) put forward is the Dworkin/MacKinnon private-right-of-action antiporn ordinances. Leave aside that these are explicitly targeted at BDSM. They focus on violence, and provide a private right of action; which pretty much offers a pass to the core of the porn industry, where women’s existence only as objects for male sexual gratification is completely intrinsic to the message. They provide a good attack only on the fringes of the industry; either the abusive edge of patriarchal monsters, or on the other hand, a collection of BDSMers making material only for their own community. But IME, as soon as I start speaking as a litigator about ways that the ordinance could be misused to suit the patriarchy, eyes glaze over and nobody wants to talk about it anymore. There’s no similar blindspot for how the patriarchy co-opts feminist attempts at change when I talk about alternative depictions of sex.
Hey BritGirl! Good to see you around again.
Thomas Jun 20th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Oh! I agree that this is interesting. HA. I won’t get into detaisl, but I think I’ve been ranting about this in one form or another for months now. Exploring radfem theory has been one aspect of this bigger project analyzing identity politics. I’m more interested in the “false consciousness” angle — and the link above glosses various feminist positions, arguing that the radfem approach is best at least on the issue of rape/sexuality.
My quick answer would be: because the only way to end patriarchy is to get at the root of the problem. Radical from radix meaning root. What is the root? The motor of patriarchy has three heavy duty belts:
1. rape – alternator belt
2. prostitution – timing belt
3. porn – water pulp belt (dont’ even know if that’s correct term)
Break those three belts off, motor no workee. Everything else is like attacking the motor by giving the car a new paint job or dumping the oil out. Things like encouraging the development of varieties of erotica and porn, to allow people to express sexual desires, that’s just giving the patriarchy a new belt.
I don’t know if anyone’s ever addressed the problem you raise from radfem perspective, but my guess? They’d say: It’s worth it to try it because women are being murdered, brutalized, and terrorized every single day. The reason why are those damn belts. And we think that, if you hack those belts to pieces, the basic violence will stop.
I don’t know how familiar you are with marxist theory, but for the fundamentalist there is the base and the superstructure. The base is the motor (the economy). Everything else is culture, politics, religion, ideology, etc. Wasting time worrying about the fundies doesn’t get at the problem. Waste of time.
That’s how rad fem see it, only the motor is pornstitution/rape. and those things _cause_ everything else: everything from capitalism to racism to envy to greed to scientific thinking to literature. The structure of our emotional life — why we are happy or sad — could theoretically be explained from the motor of pornstitution/rape.
Their eyes glaze over because they don’t buy it. Pornistitution/rape in any form is the problem. They don’t care that it’s the extremists and only effects a small amount. To them, ending the violence against any woman is worth the risks you worry about.
They simply don’t hold the same values with regard to personal liberty and freedom. It’s not that they have no concern for them, they just think that the current libertarian values placed on freedom of speech and freedom from government investigation without warrant etc. are simply not all they’re cracked up to be. They ARE tools of the patriarchy b/c they service pornstitution/rape. But, FBI? not so much. (that might be too flip a characterization, that last bit.)
Believe me,. I am currently being called a “kiddie porn advocate” by one radfem blogger because I’ve appealed to similar sentiments not really understanding this about their position. long story. and really, i seriously hope it’s harmless, because, with a background in cybercrime, i know the dangers. A colleague used to give a talk. At the beginning, he’d have everyone stand who answered to certain descriptions. By the time he got through the list of five (of the 15) characteristics, everyone was standing.
He informed them that they fit the FBI profile of a child porn fan/molester.
But, of course, you know how that would go over?
Oh see! Every man IS a child porn fan.
And my last statement, would be read as a sign that I’m callous since it indicates a little frustration with their sentiments. I try to understand. I just suck at it far too much.
Hey Thomas, how’s it going? I’ve been MIA since I got yelled at over at Twisty’s during the BSDM wars. Plus, my favourite band who I’ve never seen live are touring this summer, so I’m a bit distracted (thus speaks the music geek…ironically given the present discussion, as I had someone over at Twisty’s try to tell me that my taste in music is also inherantly antifeminist).
BritGirlSF
I’m not a radfem, but my guess as to why it was funny ha ha to say that cunninglingus was the dudely equivalent was to maybe forget that dudely can get off in at least three of your holes, not to mentiion breasts and hands i think that’s what ppl meant when they were saying that you are nuts to think you are any different from a cantalope warmed up and hollowed to simulate a pussy (‘cept the cantalope might irritate you. Look: there’s web site somewhere on how to make varies substitutes from vegetables and fruit, ok?
clitoral stimulation doesn’t much happen those ways. hetwomen get off on pussy licking and hand jobs. that’s it. (Ok, there are some other ways, some of us do have orgasms during P/v sex)
a little unbalanced from the git go. that might be how some folks see it.
but i think T’s point would be: it simply ain’t happening on an equal exchange. Inequalities, domination, violence, oppression, exploitation, etc. are going on all around you and you better open your eyes and see it. because it’s in your bedroom and it’s shaped you in ways you can’t even realize.
And, becasue that’s the case, there is no even-steven here. Ever. Women as a class have already suffered to give that guy you’re with all those advantages.
You see? In the parlance of Marxists, you’re a scab.
OK. WE understand, a radfem might say. Everyone wants to get off. S’okay.
BUT, maybe you’re forgetting this (and I have no CLUE if T would say this) but I think it seems like good radfem toughtlet.
RF: “Doll, you know what? patriarchy makes all those nice guys. Know why? Because those nice guys grease the engines of patriarchy. You don’t think they’d actually allow nice guys to exist without getting something out of it, do you? Well?
They keep some women believing in the myth of romantic love and the family and the glories of pleasures with men. Meanwhile, there are boatloads of women who aren’t having the time of their life. Here they are, right on this thread, telling you their stories of abuse, rape, victimization, brutalizing boyfriends, and callous husbands.
And all you folks do when you praise the glories of the hummer is fool women into believing theymight have some of that action too. They’ll keep on thinking something is wrong with them and they might stop blaming the patriarchy.
So, enjoy yourself. But do keep it to yourself, y’hear?
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Like I said, I’m not a radfem. Haven’t read loads and loads of their stuff. But that’s my guess from what I have read.
Discuss.
Good god. I think my inclination to try to be fair might just turn me into T’s useful idiot.
BritGirlSF, you’re alive! Huzzah!
And I think that the point that YOU are missing is that although everything you’re saying is true for society as a whole, some of us really are lucky/determined/damn stubborn enough to have created for ourselves a space in which we actually do have good and equitable sexual relationships with men, and when we tell you that and you reflexively smack us down or tell us that we’re just imagining the relationships in which we are actually participating it tends to piss us off. It’s condescending, it’s insulting to our intelligence that you assume that you know better than we do what’s going on in our bedrooms, and it’s no way for one feminist to talk to another, so cut it the hell out.
Clear enough?
And seriously, any woman who would say anything as demeaning to another as this “i think that’s what ppl meant when they were saying that you are nuts to think you are any different from a cantalope warmed up and hollowed to simulate a pussy” really needs to take a good long look at what she thinks “feminist” means. The fact that a woman is straight does not make her unworthy of either respect or basic courtesy.
Foolish Owl – Yep, still alive. (Waves)
Still trying to process the sheer nastiness of the post above yours. She pretty much illustrated my point about the way women who sleep with men tend to be talked down to as if they are mentally-challenged children by their fellow feminists.
Correction : by some of our fellow feminists, by no means all, and in reality very much a minority, just a very vocal minority with an apparent unwillingness to listen to anyone else’s opinions. It does happen often enough that you really can’t miss the pattern, though.
I think my point here is that there is this kind of pervasive implication coming from a small sector within the radfem community that women who sleep with men really are both deluded (which like I said is pretty condescending)and somehow intrinsically debased by the experience. Surely it’s not hard to see why that might cause some hurt feelings, or even anger? Sometimes listening to some of the things that people say (see the cantaloupe comment above) almost feels like listening to some of the nasty sexist shit you hear from men in it’s implication that sex is inherently demeaning to women, and if you think about it that’s a pretty crappy thing to be doing to another woman.
The other things that continues to bother me about all this is the implication that sexual relationships between men and women are so intrinsically tainted that there’s really no way to create one that isn’t exploitative, and that if a women thinks that she has actually done so she has clearly been smoking crack. Thing is, that line of thought leads to a dead end. If there really is no way to challenge the paradigm within our own relationships, then where do we go from there? What are we all supposed to do for intimacy and companionship in the meantime, until society is remade in a way that actually works for women? Most social scientists estimate that about 10% of the population of most societies at most is gay – what about everyone else? Is celibacy their only option? Because that seems like a pretty crappy solution to me, but it seems to be exactly what’s being implied as the only ethically valid option by some on the radfem side, and I don’t think that that’s a reasonable demand to make of one’s political allies.
Gah, getting sleepy, I hope at least some of this makes sense.
BritGirlSF, I think it would help if you took a look at B|Lab’s web site. I believe we’re on the same side here.
B|Lab, I sent you a rambling and incoherent email, to your contact address on your site. I thought it would do for a start, anyway.
One thing that jumped out at me in what you said above was that the way you were describing the relationship between base and superstructure didn’t sound right. The two have a dialectical relationship. For instance, a legal system is a superstructure on the base of class relations. Changing laws can have an effect on economic relations — tax laws will affect business decisions. There’s only so much you can do by attacking superstructures, but it’s not pointless. So, I could see radical feminists advocating laws to ban pornography as analogous to socialists advocating higher taxes on the rich.
(The thing that gets me about that is you’d think that radical feminists would consider that forging alliances with people who advocate literal patriarchy might be a mistake.)
BritGirlSF Jun 21st, 2006 at 12:39 am
And I think that the point that YOU are missing is that although everything you’re saying
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I think you missed the part where I said that I’m not a radfeminist. I answered your question as to why I think they thought it was funny ha ha.
isn’t there any room for at least understanding what they’re saying and then making arguments that actually _address_ their claim, rather than ignore them?
that’s what pissed me off in the first place. i don’t really care what she happens to think about smoked sausage and corn dogs. I _did_ fucking care about the way she completely mischaracterized the women who responded as a bunch of deluded patriarchy fuckers who failed to blame patriarchy properly — without ever ONCE aknowledging that every single one of those women did.
the _only_ one who didn’t asserted that non-vaginal sex was about “no possible pregnancy” sex and was, thus, a blow against the patriarchy.
which is not a half bad argument.
If all each side is ever going to do to one another is refuse to listen, then here were are spinning our wheels getting nowhere.
BritGirlSF Jun 21st, 2006 at 1:29 am
Correction :… Gah, getting sleepy, I hope at least some of this makes sense.
I’d love to discuss this more, but I think I’d like to wait to be sure you understand that I’m not a radical feminist before I bother. I’m not really interested in having an argument with somone i actually probably agree with but having to go round and round because you missed the first sentence where i said “I’m not a radfem”. Honest. I’ve pretty much done nothing but engage in criticisms with that worldview, mostly after wanting to learn more from reading Airel Levy’s Raunch Culture. The book was rather irritating and poorly argued, and gave a kind of modified version of the radfem argument. So I wanted to know where she was coming from.
Sorry, I did say I was sleepy…
I misunderstood you as actually supporting the “every last one of you who says you like giving head is a fembot” tone that was going on over at IBTP, and I do get a bit testy when I hear that, because I seem to be hearing it more and more often recently.
The frustrating thing is that I can agree with some of the radfem wordview,particularly when it comes to environmental issues, and can see how it’s making a valuable contribution, right up until we start talking about sex, and then I run into that same brick wall every time. Honestly, I think that the whole blow job (and did we have to pick such a childish term? makes me think of giggling high school kids) argument is kind of a red herring. What we’re really all dancing around here is the whole idea of “political lesbianism” and what that means for women who just aren’t attracted to other women. Which isn’t me, just to be clear – I’m bi, but I can see that the whole idea of political lesbianism as opposed to just plain old “I think women are gorgeous and generally awesome” lesbianism basically puts straight women in an untenable position in which they either agree to give up their sexuality entirely or end up feeling guilty all the time for wanting to fuck men, which I don’t think is fair (not to mention being a really crappy recruiting tool for the movement). No one can help who they’re attracted to.
The arguments about BSDM revolve around the same issues -to what extent is there or should there be an offical feminist position on what kinds of sex it’s OK to enjoy, who gets to make that call, and what to do about women whose desires don’t fall in with the party line? What I’ve been seeing a lot of recently is those women being told that they don’t really want what they think they want, that if they do want it then they’re bad feminists, and that in general they should STFU. I don’t think that’s OK, and I think it’s detrimental to the movement as a whole.
Also, the whole “penises are icky” thing strikes me as petty and childish. Everyone is entitled to be disgusted by whatever they happen to be disgusted by, but it pays to remember that not everyone else shares your tastes, and “ew, gross” is a pretty silly thing to base one’s political positions on.
Also, the whole “penises are icky” thing strikes me as petty and childish.
The thing is that “penises are icky” I pretty much a code word for “penises are [have been] oppressive”, as was pointed out by Bitch|Lab upthread, lesbians generally have some experience with giving blowjobs, but because they’re only giving head until they realise they’re lesbians the blowjob becomes for them an act of oppression that will always symbolise this lopsided pleasuring of men over women, which in turn can work as a wonderful short hand for patriarchy.
And because this is a shared experience of lesbians and abuse victims, it becomes a tribalistic code word, and allows “penises are icky” to be a valid thing to base a movement around, a movement who’s theory starts from the base analysis of blowjobs and penises being icky because of the patriarchal assurances to the contrary.
Of course they then pull a serious Hugo and don’t examine the underlying patriarchal double bluff that is making the penis a tool of oppression while at the same telling everyone it’s an instrument of love, the patriarchy doesn’t want women having sex, certainly doesn’t want us enjoying it, so it tells us that “love” is this act of abuse so that even heterosexual women don’t want to have sex with men, because we’re convinced that sex isn’t fun, while it’s also telling us that we’ve got to have “sex” to be good women.
Which shouldn’t be surprising really, as “penises are icky” is this tribalistic badge that many radfems cling to, it becomes an unassailable dogma of radical feminism, which is a weakness the patriarchy, because it never stays static for longer than neccesary, adapts to exploit so as to include super-reactionary feminism into its system of oppression.
And so Patriarchy turns even lesbians into unwitting heteronormativity affirming patriarchal stool pigeons, just like men.