Jill at Feministe sort of beat me to it, but I have a shti load of stuff to add to it and this whole thing, which is not so much part of the sex wars as it is the first full blown Sex-Positivist Melee (as in the kind of melee seen at medieval knightly tournaments) of nought-six.
Now let me Mea Culpa: I totally resorted to trolling the hell out of, well Bitch|Lab mainly, but only because she fell for it the most (which is not to say that it’s her fault that she reacted to the trolling, the troll is ALWAYS at fault, always always always, and only a troll would say otherwise). This does not mean that my love for Twisty or Pony or other people shown during the two days of trolling were insincere, they’re what drove me, and you can’t fake shit like that.
Now I didn’t troll B|L not simply because, as B|L put it, I “thinks, apparently, that shit stirring is productive”, which I could almost swear is just her attempt to goad me into keeping the trolling going (shall I flip on the satire button and rant about “Oh, how it’s so wrong to denounce shit stirring as inherently unproductive, woe is me, woe is me, and now my foot has fallen off due to my outrage”? No I won’t. Fuck you, I’m not your monkey), but it’s an erroneous statement, shit stirring can be productive if done right, Twisty showed us as much, and as soon as I realised that I had erred and that people were reading a highly nonsensical (as in I have no idea what I was going on about) rant against the utter shittiness of Bussel’s shitty photo (If I ever mention that Fucking Goddamned bullshit to hell yah photo, EVER again, shoot me), as an attempt on my part to slut shame Bussel, I realised that there was no chance in hell that anyone was going to actually read or remark about the valid points in the post, but were going to hate me for an (quite understandable, if slightly irritating) misreading they made of my disgust at a photo I had, apparently erroneously, thought that she had chosen for the peice. So I went back and put in that shitty faux-apology, because, quite frankly, fuck pissing people off by accident because I couldn’t sleep and wrote a stream-of-conciousness rant (at 6am, after being up for 24 straight hours, twelve of which was a busy double shift because I want a fucking laptop and maybe something new to read if I have any left over cash) which some people couldn’t understand because my brain was far from working correctly when I wrote it. Goddammit, if people are going to be angry at me, they might as well be angry at me becaue I went and tried to piss them off.
At least that way I can own the offensiveness, none of this unintended shit, hate me because I did something to make you hate me, not because of some misunderstanding that I don’t really hold to. And the number of people who used my first blowjob post as a jumping off point for hating on twisty, because apparently some of them are such cowards that they can’t attack twisty straight on without the need to hide behind my skirt while they do it just made me feel righteously justified in doing so (the “Well I’m never going to read IBTP ever again after this” peeps were the best though, I mean, Exsqueeze me? What will that achieve exactly? How does Twisty being wrong about blowjobs make posts about having cows on her ranch and being eyed up by creepy guys (let alone that guy from the 70′s – mullets are always amusing) invalid or anti-feminist in some way?), seriously people, fuck you all. I can stand to be hated if it’s the right people hating me, I can stand being hated because I’m me, not because you think I’m some magical strawmildred you’ve based on a nonsense line you’ve “decrypted” using your magic biblical decoder ring.
Of course, after being misconstrued as a slut shamer, I knew that there was no chance in hell that anyone would actually pay attention to the valid criticism of the picture or the oped, I know how this whole internets/blogging thing works after all and I’m no optimist.
On death ground, fight, right? Or maybe just starting one to see what random outrage (and enlightenment) a really pissant bit of trolling brings forth.
Which is where this post comes in, yes this is the great debreifing/dissection post that makes an absolutely pointless act of shit stirring, into a pointient act of shit stirring (little miss “I hate absolutes” obviously forgot she’s been championing the view that it’s not what you do, but how you do it that makes something bad (or not) for the past couple of days, which can happen, there’s no shame in a tiny bought of forgetfulness).
First of all let’s go with Bitch|Lab’s latest so-so rant in reaction to the Sex-Positivist Melee of ’06.
Now there’s a number of problems with this rant, quite a few actually, and all of them stem from B|L’s lack of practice as far as self-analysing goes, to the point where I’m very tempted to call her a “book le’rning” feminist (with tongue firmly planted in cheek of course), the fact that she appears to have based her entire conception of feminism and feminist thought on what other people tell her about such things in published books strikes me as both ideologically constricting and flawed, probably because it’s a far cry from my largely experiential based feminism (which I do not intend to place in some hiearchy above her route to feminism btw) that emerged from a basic zen buddhist (later taoist) examination of myself and the society I exist in. The labels she throws around seem very odd to me because of this different background, that’s why I called myself a radfem in another post, I’m more marxist than rad really, but there are times (not necceasrily many) when rad analysis of patriarchy seems more useful for understanding things and apt than marxist ones (which can lead to a pointless and diversionary game of “follow the money” when there’s no real need), so I won’t call myself marxist or rad because I don’t feel like either label describes me or my approach towards patriarchy blaming very well, let alone the fact that I wouldn’t want to represent either lest I fuck up and make them look bad by association. I am definately a sex-positive feminist though, I have no quibbles with That label being applied to me, because it accurately describes me and my feminism, I like sex, I want sex, I want other people to have sex if they want to have it, I hate with a deep passion the ways that patriarchy warps human beings’ concepts of sexuality and sex so that a loving act – like being tied up to a rack and beaten with a stick by someone you love – is turned into something disgusting and abusive.
Here’s an interesting part of B|L’s rant:
When RMildred goes on and on about how sexpos claim that porn is not coercive, she’s presented with evidence that two prominent sexpos don’t say this, as well as evidence that a bunch more don’t say this. Then, there’s McElroy, who should fit everyone’s stereotype of a libertarian freak about sexual choices. Even SHE doesn’t say it. I don’t say this. None of the bloggers listed on the Wikipedia sexpos page say this — of the ones I know who are on there. So here we are.
Stuffed full of fucking straw.
And no, it’s simply not enough to point to the individuals saying crap on chatboards. It’s not. I can say I have 250 email that prove me right. Big fucking whoppee. IF this isn’t going to devolve into idiocy, then there has to be evidence. And the only thing we have are actual blog posts, the actual comments on the board, and published writing.
(I’m not going to point out that this is, itself, a strawman considering I never went on and on about how sexpos claim that porn is not coercive, and I would like it if no one else pointed out the straw falling out all over the place either, It’s too easy and B|L isn’t really used to flamewars – n00bs, tch!)
Now here’s a thing, first off, B|L has repeatedly gone off about how no sexual act can be inherently coercive, but any sex act performed by women in the sex industry is coercive, and that makes me less than certain about B|L assertion that “no sexual act is inherently oppressive”. Because I know how the universe works (some times I am nievely optimistic though), if I start going on about how no sexual act is inherently oppressive, someone will come along and say “oh but what about this” and prove the entire concept flawed because, oh look, that sexual act really is inherently oppressive, actually, now that you mention it. Even if the tao te ching didn’t repeatedly tell me not to hold absolutes in a chaotic world, the fact that the universe is specifically out to get me makes me nervous to tempt it like that
It just strikes me as a sounder stance to take that, while most sexual acts are not inherently oppressive, there probably is something that is, and rather than declare that nothing is oppressive and backpedal later on I can skip straight to the denouncing from the get go instead of wasting time arguing with people who’ve decided before hand that an inherently oppressive sex act is impossible, and who then demand that I have to deal with a whole load of stupid arguements designed to protect the bit of their ego that has attached to the concept, rather than get straight to the juicey blaming goodness.
And I don’t mind being proved wrong by the way, half of the points I throw out there I expect to be proved wrong, the ones I don’t aer of course the ones I most enjoy being proved wrong about though, for instance I am both weirded out and in sheer awe at the whole variance of human sexual practices by Belledame222′s correction in one of the pre-sex melee posts, that some lesbians like performing fellatio was a new one to me, one I’m almost too scared to inquire about (if you have a post explaining the whys and wherefors Belledame I wouldn’t mind knowing about it though, I am a curious cat indeed), and her point about the incorrect nature of the idea that lesbians find sexual acts with men disgusting is a good point (though not one I actually made, like how I never said that missionary position was a submissive act (B|L) nor how submissive fellatio apparently is (I have in fact argued otherwise, Darklady, but you know, don’t read what I actually said or anything people, piss me off until I go out of my way to give you something substantial to hate please, I like fucking with your heads) especially as it is part of the classic “man-hating lesbian” canard, and you can’t publically flog a canard enough for my tastes (I denounce my inherently oppressive sexual canard flogging kinkiness in all its forms btw, because that adds an extra level of taboo based juiciness to it all, mwoar).
Now my lack of caring about being wrong is actually relevent to the quote I took from B|L, because the thing about sex-positive feminism is that it rarely, if ever, actually goes out and says “porn and the entirety of the sex industry is, inherently and coercive due to the presence of money, and generally abusive and dehumanizing also”, so what you end up with is, because anti-feminists have been going on TV and writing articles in magazines for the past decade now telling everyone that, unlike those meanie sex negative feminists like EEVIL sex and man hating radfem Dworkin, equity feminists love pr0n, have nothing agaisnt prostitutes, because everyone in the sex industry choose their life style of course silly, and pr0n stars really love teh fake orgasms they experience simulating coitus with ugly ass guys who perform acts of really risky penetration on them. This means that popculture concetps of feminism has two different sorts of feminism, sex hating feminism, and pro-pr0n feminism.
B|L talks at cross purposes there in otherwords, I don’t care if sexpos types routinely call porn good, I care that it is not a commonly known fact that feminists who are not man hating sex-phobes think that prostitution is inherently bad for many highly valid reasons (while they, of course, fight for legalisation of prostitution or what ever measures will best ensure that prostitutes as a class are better treated by society and less vulnerable in the feminist’s communities), and that porn is inherently exploitative because of that monetary aspect inherent to it, that no, it’s not sex positive for guys to jerk off to what amounts to videos of women being abused, even when the acts portrayed don’t appear to be abusive, because she’s being paid money to not show how little she’s really enjoying herself.
sex-positive feminists need to mention those things and not let being lumped in with Dworkin or being called a radfem by anti-fems stop us from saying what is true, or too afraid of criticism to object to coercive sex or to even say something as apparently anethema to B|L’s conception of sex-positive feminism as point out that there are many many many sexual acts that, more often than not, are going to be oppressive to the women who are currently performing them in spite of knowing full well that they don’t want to do them or enjoy them but do them anyway because of [insert socially conditioned insecurity based justification here].
That’s what urks me to peices with the Bussel peice, it, like too many other sex-positive bits of feminist writing, focuses on precisely the aspect that everyone kinda gets by now – in this case, the idea that Crowley’s “As ye harm none, do as thou wilt” moral construct is a pretty good standard for people to decide what they can and cannot do in bed – while ignoring the more pertinent apect of sex positive feminist, namely that you’re allowed to say “no, I don’t want to do that” for any reason, at any time, that you are free to walk away from a situation without allowing others calling you “frigid” or “sexless” or, worst still, “radfem” (and get encourgaed to embrace Dworkin no less), just because you said “I don’t like doing that!”.
Note B|L, that I’m not trying to misrepresent Twisty’s original statement nor say that you’re using radfem as a tool to shame women into doing stuff that they don’t want to do. Twisty said an absolute statement about how no woman could possibly enjoy blowjobs, and she no doubt believes as much, but the way Radfem has become something of a generic boogeyman on your blog when you want to slam someone who you even suspect might be holding an even potentially anti-sex view, or just as a general all purpose insult – like there’s nothing worse than saying that women should give up sex if it might put an end to the millenia of patriarchal abuse they, and their ancestors, have suffered under.
I personally don’t think that a single revolutionary period based on an inherently antagonistic sex strike (or whatever) could create the social momentum to end patriarchy for even a generation, let alone indefinately, and the apparent radfem doctrine about how men cannot fight patriarchy because they are in no way oppressed by the patriarchy and thus have no reason for changing anything in the system of gendered oppression we call Patriarchy (an idea that should also put the highly privelaged white, upperclass woman’s place in the feminist movement into as questionable position as men’s is btw, what impetus to change the system does hillary have considering she’s got all this privelage and fighting for feminist causes might threaten that privelage?) is just plain erroneous as well, considering that men really are hurt by patriarchy. But if (and it’s a huge “if” btw) all those points weren’t incorrect, the price of sex for freedom is more than worth it, and so I can understand why they hold the position they do and think what they think.
But using them as an insult just stinks of the classic (oppressor created usually) divisive Us/Other dichotomy, will radfems work with us while they’re farting around trying to organize their doomed revolution? yes/no? If yes then they’re feminists, and if you have doctrinal differences with them then argue them, draw them into the neccesary argeuments and debates if neccesary, don’t sit on your blog going on and on about how foolish and bad radical feminism is on your blog in what amounts to little more than an insufferably stuck up act of marxist feminist auto-fellatio. If they won’t argue or they keep trying to screw poeple over rather than actually face criticisms of their often whacked-out-to-jerusalem-and-back theories based on selective bias and willful dismissal of the oppression of homosexuals, POC and the working classes, then fair enough, ignore them, don’t continually discuss how flawed they are because they object to orgasms, just ignore them – it’s like when erika declared that I’ve managed to convince ks that she needs my permission to wear highheels, when did I get that power? Who gave me that power? ks would have been the only one who could have given me veto rights over her shoes, but if she had been doing that (and she wasn’t) I would have laughed her off PAB, I’m not going to be anyone’s ideologue, if I say something that leads someone to change their actions in someway, and it’s a good sort of change, well good for them. I’m not going to get an inflated head or think that I’m a good person or even a smart person who’s words people must obey, ffs, who am I to tell anyone what to do? Who gives me power to force change upon people’s lives? Why do I have to tell other people this? Surely my total pissant nature as a blogger shows this to be an obvious and inherent fact of whatever I write?
If some radfem tells me to give up all orgasms for reason X, and reason X makes no sense what so ever for reasons Y and Z, then I’ll correct them and then move on with my life – the total effect of radfems to mess with me and my life is equal to how much power I choose to give them, and waffling endlessly on about how evil radfem theory is does ntohing more than legitimise and empower what is largely a nonsensical theory espoused by an apparent minority of long debunked fools suffering what appears to be a chafing kind of tooth decay in their vagina dentata*.
Radical Feminists are not the problem right now – Rape affirming antifems ARE.
I think it’s highly important that sex positive feminism should take into account (I’m not saying it doesn’t, more like, not enough in my humble opinion) that most acts of active oppression by the patriarchy will involve instances were a woman is forced against her will into a sexual encounter or is brutalised by sexualised violence of some kind, B|L herself tried to start an abuse based pissing contest with me when I tried (and failed. Seriously if you’re goint to pick anyone to be an ideologue, I’d hope you’d pick someone better than me, geez, talk about a bargain basement dictator…) to point out that Twisty’s history of abuse makes the statement that blowjobs are oppressive true for her (if not for anyone else), and that that viewpoint needs to be considered valid and taken into account (though not universalised or put forth as the only way of seeing things) by sex positive feminism, or it really does not deserve the name.
Note that all the abusive acts she describes are sexual in nature except for one – and even that occurred within a relationship she had with a man – the problem of society not pounding it into the heads of everyone that if someone doesn’t want to do a sexaul act, then they shouldn’t be forced, coeirced or manipulated into such an act takes precedent due to its urgency in my mind and places an obligation upon any sex positive feminist to focus upon women’s right to refuse sex over our right to be sexual – if we have to drop one at all, this is not an either/or blog after all, and I’d suggest that every sex positive feminist focus on both in any discussion or writing they do about sex positive feminism, the rights to say that “yes, I am a total freak in bedroom – and proud of it damn your bigoted eyes” go hand in hand with the right to say “I may be a freak, but I not going to do that- and I don’t need you to okay my reasons for saying so either”, one really doesn’t work without the other and that’s why, ultimately, I despise the Bussel peice.
I hate large, public acts of ego, they piss me off, maybe it’s the buddhist philosophy I still carry around (at least, I assume that’s why I apologise when I kill insects, though maybe I’m just weird) but Bussel’s was bad not just because it’s a total egotistical puff peice – the whole thing from the picture to everything else screams “Validate me and my engorged clitoris!” – but because it used this false equivalence between twisty, Levy and some rightwingers it managed to miss the key point that, while Twisty or Levy might try to be taking away certain sorts of sexual expression, ONLY the rightwingers are tring to take away the right to say “no”, her citation of DeKeuster continued this theme of ignoring the harm that teh loss of “no” entails to women, because while women on campus felt that DeKeuster’s piece contributed to a loss of personal security for women on campus, according to DeKeuster the only objections that mattered were the idiots saying how nasty her sexual fetishes were, none of whom appear to be feminists – but that was the real crime DeKeuster laid at feminism’s doorstep, that we were trying to take away her right to self expression while the problem feminists on campus actually had was that it intimidated women in a situation where the infamous 1 in 4 rape statistic is most accurate – but DeKeuster is one of those nasty little egotistical asshole women that oh so righteously use the “feminist” label to justify supreme acts of asshollery that amount to nothing less than a thoughtless trampling of other people in their attempts to be “sexually liberated”. Which, of course, only ever manage to turn such acts into yet more sexual oppression that real sex-positive feminist women have to deal with, and remember, this egotistical female asshole is Bussel’s so called “hero” in the fight against the sex hating strawfeminist.
Man I was pissed at this, not only did she misrepresent and dirty the name of sex-positive feminism, but she did so in such a way as to insult all feminists (making no distinctions as she did between rad or marxist or other sorts of feminists) and twisty in particular who, no matter how much you dislike her, doesn’t deserve to be shoved next to Levy in a paragraph so that you can make some false claim of equivalence between the two, because there is no real equivalence, not ideologically, not of any kind whatsoever.
The problem with Bussel’s yearning for validation is almost as bad (though it’s hard to top rape culture supporting stuff as far as offending my sex-positive feminist sensibilities goes), why does she need Our validation? Why can’t she just accept that she enjoys such behavior, enjoy it, and save us the details? What point does her quest for validation serve but to further and spread her false belief that a woman needs someone’s validation to enjoy what they enjoy? That’s not Sex Positive, that’s just needy and pathetic.
And Amanda pegged in Marc’s thread what made me a bit pissed off at myself for my original pro-blowjob post, why did I have to say that it’s okay to suck cock? Surely it is more remarkable to say that it’s okay to not suck cock? Did I destroy the ability for people who do not like sucking cocking to voice their opinions on a feminist blog?
That it is, actually, more remarkable to say that it’s for a woman not to do something sexual brings me naturally to thoughts about Asexuals of course (!?). For all the variations of human sexuality that occur, none fascinate me more than the relatively new (to me at any rate, older feminists might find them to be old news) concept of asexuality as a specific sexual preference – the preference not to be sexual even – my runs increasingly familiar rings tyring to grasp the concept, should I pity them for not being able to enjoy sex in it’s rich variation? But what pity is there to feel for people who could only have sex of an unwilling and uncomfortable kind? Why not pity myself for not feeling the exhilirating rush than can only be had by jumping off of a high cliff to my death? Are they flawed? Do they need treatment? But why does a person need to be sexual though? The joy of just having an amusing or thought provoking conversation with someone you’ve fallen in love with is a rush “greater” (close but not the correct term, I suppose the closest correct term would really be “amazingly different in amazingly different ways”, but there is no english word for that, as far as I’m aware) than that felt by even the most tantricly perfected sexual collision, and if they only have that feeling of being in love, then why must they be greedy and have sex too? Maybe it is true that the sexual are merely especially blessed rather than the asexuals being especially lacking in some fashion?
Now thinking about the Asexual in relation to sex positive feminism, it seems clear to me that the first and most important goal of SexPos feminists should be to validate the Asexuals first, ahead of anyone else’s particular kinks, only if the Asexuals and the ability to say “no”, not just to some sexual encounters but to all sexual encounters if an individual requires such a lifestyle (or merely chooses one, though do note that this is not a moritorium on mocking The VBen Shapiro’s legendary technical virginity – cuz that shit’s just plain funny no matter how you cut it), are freely able to exist in society can anyone else’s sexuality, without the ability to say “no” a submissive becomes nothing more than a victim, a dom become a victim, a fellator just ends up vomiting and people who like anal end up with blood dribbling down the legs – in short it’s not something anyone really wants.
Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, holding an either/or dichotomy between the saying “yes” aspect of Sex Positive Feminism and the saying “no” aspect of it is bullshit, “I say yes because I enjoy it, and I am able to enjoy it because I can say no” is how I think of Sex Positive Feminism, but if it, for some uncomprehendable reason, comes down to a Sex+ feminist having to choose between affirming the rights of women to say “yes” or to say “no”, then I’m sure even B|L will agree that the correct response should be:
“Fuck Yes.”
No I don’t want to suck cock. No I don’t want to be dominated. No I don’t want to wear That. No. En-Oh. Nuh-uh. Non. Nah.
Until the right to say “no” is universally recognised right, then going off on little pointless validation trips about what you can say yes to is kinda jumping the gun, oh and like I said, pointles, because guess what Ladies and germs?
You can always say yes to what you want to do, even if it’s actually illegal, just ask Zombie Oscar Wilde, the only thing stopping you is yourself, fear… and possibly lube or improperly warmed up muscles, depends on what you’re doing.
Which I don’t care about you hear, I really don’t, any thing I said previously that suggests otherwise, really, ignore it, I Don’t Care, I care deeply about my willful ignorance about what you’re doing in the privacy of your own bed, don’t take that away from me!
But that thing you do with your hands? Very bad.
*I don’t care about this sentence, if you want to get offended, fine, I don’t care now will I play with you any more, if you feel offended, then remember that I don’t care about this setence, it was an amusing mental image, okay, a gross one but I have a sick sense of humor, nothing more and neither really believe that radfems have gum disease in their vagina dentata, nor do I believe it is itchy.
I do however, obviously, believe that radfems have vagina dentata and I refuse to dare radfems to prove otherwise (what worries me is that Twist might actually do it if I did dare them, because her genitalia ovals are big brassy things indeed, and goddammit, I don’t want to see how big and brass they are)
thank you thank you thank you for writing a post that is longer than any post I have written.
obviously, will have to read this many times to understand it.
I have a question, though, about what it is you don’t understand when I say blow jobs aren’t inherently oppressive. my meaning would be akin to saying, work isn’t inherently oppressive. but all work under capitalism is oppressive and to make it so that work is no longer oppressive, we have to get rid of class society (which for me would include actually existing communism)
I’m unclear as to what you mean when you say they are inherently oppressive.
also, this:
You are laying the blame for this failure at the feet of sexpositive feminists. Or something else? A combo?
You know, some of my best friends are militant lesbian Trotskyites.
well, after reading that, it’s really clear that we have totally different understandings of oppression.
when i say that a blow job isn’t inherently oppressive, i’m saying nothing different than Andrea Dworkin who says that, when the patriarchy is gone nothing will be oppressive.
That’s because the patriarchy makes things oppressive, not the thing in and of itself. It’s sorta like trying to say that women are inherently X (whatever characterici you choose). No, whatever their characteristics now, they are shaped by the patriarchy. There is nothing *in* women that makes them X characteristic.
But since we have completely different understandings of what terms mean, it’s kind of ridiculous to have a conversation.
So, like I told marc, I’ll read and listen and see how I might have a fucked up definition of oppression. As I wrote in this post about learning one another’s language, I’ll just keep reading.
because I’m a big wimp who is scared of ya too.
You are laying the blame for this failure at the feet of sexpositive feminists.
Uh, who else is going to represent our views if not…us, I’m actually confused here, sexpos feminists tend to pussy foot around the sex indsutry like john kerry around choice, sure we feel this way, but we don’t say it out loud if we can avoid it and turn it into a position that is widely held or even known.
we’re at least partially to blame, and I do hate to miss out a good opportunity to blame myself for something.
when i say that a blow job isn’t inherently oppressive, i’m saying nothing different than Andrea Dworkin who says that, when the patriarchy is gone nothing will be oppressive.
Oh I get that, but if it turns out there some practice that inherently revolves around oppression (like the sex industry inherently revolves around coercive sex) I want to be there comdemning it straight off, it’s a “just in case” “what if” hypothetical position really taht has no baring on current reality, I’m totally with you as far as you say there, I think I just dressed it up in overly flowery language and everyone’s gotten confused. I can argue for the moral neutrality of necrophilia if you want, I find it deply icky but there’s nothing
However, the original thing I called “inherently” (possibly objective) oppressive were highheels, and as they cause physical discomfort regardless of patiarchy because of their physical shape (which is neccesary for the effects that give women justifications for wearing them) the idea that highheels are inherently oppressive products of patriarchy makes some sort of sense to my mind.
I basically am working under the hypothesis that in a world without patriarchy high heels may not actually exist or be worn because they’re disfiguring, harmful and immobilizing, and women won’t need highheels to feel powerful or sexy.
You know, some of my best friends are militant lesbian Trotskyites.
It’s a really obscure reference to a Steve Bell cartoon from the 80′s in which Labour party MPs would denounce militant lesbian trotskyites to show their tough stance on “commies” and “poofters”, in place of actual policies.
I had the compilation of the cartoons at one point and I’m not sure what I’ve done with them, they were errily prescient of the dems’ every move, except of course, replace commies with terrorists, and poofters with… themselves, and women basically.
I get the general idea of “first we get to the point where no really means no for everyone, and then we can talk about yes,” but I don’t happen to agree with it.
What you’re saying here, if I’m understanding correctly (I freely admit that there is a distinct possibility that I’m not, and perhaps won’t) is that safety comes first; the rest is a luxury.
On an individual level this makes some sense. Maybe. Although if you read someone like Dorothy Allison, who is an incest and rape survivor and is very very clear about how vital to her survival reclaiming her own eroticism has been, you might start to doubt whether even that’s as clear-cut as you’d intuit.
On a collective level, you know what, I just don’t buy it. It all matters. Even if it is a luxury to claim your eroticism–by the way, it’s a luxury that some people in this culture tend to take more for granted than others, depending on their particular proclivities (I am still trying to parse the bit about Oscar Wilde, and failing). Bread and fuckin’ roses, yeah?
More to the point, perhaps: I fail to see what good it does to snipe or snark at other people for what they do or don’t do in bed, or how they dress. Ever. At all. If you really truly think that someone’s harming herself: well and good, but it’s really not “confrontation” in the twelve-step/therapy sense if 1) the person’s not your friend and 2) you’re doing it in such a way that actually causes more pain. At that point it just becomes invasive. And it doesn’t help the other person, honestly, it doesn’t.
If you’re just trying to amuse yourself, well, that’s another thing altogether. Not really seeing how the use of such tactics makes one’s actions any more in the service of feminism than “go fug yourself,” though.
Well, I’ve missed this entire ruckus. But I will say this—I have a feeling it was recreated at the NOW conference, so I don’t feel entirely upset.
As per high heels: oh I don’t know. if nothing else they make great weapons.
anyway people do all sorts of strange and disfiguring shit to their bodies. maybe it’s all in the service of patriarchy/what have you, but in some cases i gotta say it’s harder to see than others.
you know, back to BJ’s, the whole deep-throating business reminded me, obscurely, of Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. which includes among its performers a guy who swallows swords. I mean, that’s some *serious* deepthroating. is he a tool of the patriarchy for doing it? or is he just mostly going, hey, look what i can do, isn’t that wild?
it also includes among its regular acts a woman (one of the owners/founders) who balances a pole with a spinning plate on top, the other end buried in her vagina (she lies on the ground spread-eagled).
interestingly i sat through a whole performance’s worth of similarly outlandish acts witha room full of squeamish little grad students. there was one woman who was just fine with everything else, including the woman who whipped a cigar out of a man’s ass, but that last bit had her white and trembling with fury. as we left the theatre:
“That was SO DEGRADING TO WOMEN!!”
she goes.
I sez, “How so?”
She goes, “Well, uh, well, uhh, well, uhm, uhm…that’s a good question actually,” and sputters out.
Well, there is the whole history of poor women of color doing ‘tricks’ with their vaginas in dive bars to entertain crowds of drunken men. That’s what came to mind to me, anyway, but it sounds as if you’re speaking of a much different context.
Yes. It is/was their own operation, is Bindlestiff; the whole damn show’s like that. people of all genders doing bizarre things with their bodies, including the naughty orifices.
i won’t say that no one in their audience is ever both 1) male and 2) drunk, mind.
I wouldn’t call teh whole saying yes thing as a “luxury”, as that smacks too much of the whole “sexual decadence” thing the church has been gibbering on about since the rennaissance (where saying you enjoy sex is itself seen as decadent, as though lying and saying otherwise is a sin or something), in a homophobic society the only truly decadent or luxurious sexual activity would be heterosexuals going on and on about their sexuality – that’s a luxury, because all true luxuries are borne of privelage.
I think my point is that the right to say “no” underscores and is more fundamental to pro-sex feminism than public pride in female sexuality, homosexuality exists only so long as homosexuals are free to say “no, I don’t feel sexually attracted to people of the opposite gender”, bisexuals can say “no, I don’t feel attracted to just one gender” and trans can say “no, this is not my real gender, that one is”.
That of course, doesn’t mean that we should focus exclusively on the “no” issue, focusing on both would be preferrable (there’s no reason why that’s impossible or impractical, right?).
As per high heels: oh I don’t know. if nothing else they make great weapons.
Lol, I’ve been doing martial arts for the last ten or so years now and I can actually kill with my bare feet already, so it’s a mute point for me.
I think I understand better what I’m saying about highheels (which I always wanted thsi ruckus to be about dammit), it’s not that they’re, as artifacts, inherently oppressive, it’s that they exist as a result of patriarchal oppression, i.e. they are patriarchal cultural artifacts, like female genital mutilation or burkas (which are explicitly not justifed by the quran and/or hadith before anyone asks), and would not exist without patriarchy enforcing them.
Chinese Footbinding always springs to mind when I’m talking about highheels, but what you say about body modifications totally changed my mind now, even footbinding – if done willingly which is the main reason to object to such practices – doesn’t have to be oppressive, it can be a choice.
Maybe the only reason that I hold to the “but something could be inherently oppressive” yard stick is because it pleases me when it’s proved wrong (there’s a certain righteousness in having my own bigotries highlighted and destroyed that is highly addictive).
R. Mildred, you’ve made a good point about being able to say no, and value no.
I know a number of women (one is my sister) who think bjs are teh icky, and won’t go there under any circumstances (so I’ve had many bj conversations). Doesn’t mean they’re prudes or don’t like sex. Yet they are pressured unmercifully by their significant others and society (which is generally why the subject comes up); they should not also feel pressured by feminism to do something they don’t wish to do. Although I find a great deal of pleasure in bjs, I don’t see any point in saying, “Try it, I like it, you might” when there is already so much pressure being applied, and she’s already said No. Isn’t that what most of us hate, that constant wheedling and whining and finally saying Yes just to get it to stop?
People who insist that someone else might like it when they’ve already said No are just continuing that.
If you hate beets, and everyone is always trying to get you to eat them served in different ways, but you already know that you’ll hate them, what purpose does it serve? There are plenty of foods one can eat other than beets and all you do is reinforce that person’s dislike.
That’s what I take away from all this. “I like it, so it must be OK and there’s something wrong with you if you don’t.” There’s nothing wrong with my sister or the other women I know who don’t like bjs. There’s nothing wrong with me, who does like them. We need to accept each others’ choices, not keep on trying to change someone’s mind which is what saying “you can’t really believe that bjs are not teh icky” is when what we should be saying is, “well, I like bjs under the right circumstances, but I can see that you might not”. AND say that in such a way that the women doesn’t feel as though she’s being belittled or somehow less sexy/sexual.
I don’t like beets. You can if you want, and you can eat them any way you want and I’m OK with that. It’s when you start telling me that I should like beets because they’re really delicious (when I already know they’re not; are you calling me a liar?) that I get upset.
People who like beets don’t need me to like beets to continue to like them. They can like beets for their own merits, regardless of the fact that I think beets taste like dirt…and regardless of the fact that I think it’s OK to state that I think beets taste like dirt. That’s a reflection of MY reality. Their reality is obviously different, and their experience with beets is a happy one.
If you like bjs, you shouldn’t have to have my sister’s validation to continue to enjoy them, just like I don’t have to, either. Her reality is that bjs are icky. Should she give her husband bjs because he feels they are his due? No. She should not do any sex act she doesn’t feel comfortable doing, and other women should not be telling her that she’d like it if she just tried it. She doesn’t want to. She’s already said so. To insist that she would like it is to invalidate her opinion.
Now, if my sister were to say, “you can’t possibly like bjs,” then it’s my cue to say, “Oh, but I do, providing it’s under the right circumstances,” and then say what those are — just as if I were to say “I don’t understand how you could like beets,” then you could pull out all your beet recipes and say, “Here, try a little of this and tell me what you think.” I can still say No. But I’ve opened the door for you to show me differently. Until I open that door, though, you have no business in telling me that I ought to like beets, because, by golly, they are the food of the Gods.
I have yet to meet a sex act I don’t like IN THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES. The times I’ve said No are the times when the man appeared to think that whatever it was, was his due, or when his own pleasure was paramount, mine a mere second.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have these conversations/discussions/arguments/knock down drag out blog wars. You can continue to like or hate beets or bjs and we can continue to discuss the patriarchal implications of each. So it gets heated sometimes. So what? That’s what makes it interesting because when it’s heated that means we have more discussion ahead. We will never all agree, but we can be open to modify our views and incorporate others’ views into our learning process.
I’ve actually found much to think about on both sides of the debate. It’s important to examine WHY we like things and how society shaped us to like them and what that means for all of us. I also think it’s important not to take offense so easily, and that’s ALSO something to examine. Why did this stir up such anger in so many people? Why was it so threatening?
Actually, I read somewhere (and wiki backs me up on this one) that high heels were originally used by men, and for a long time fashionable in equal measure for both men and women. So as someone who has never worn heels higher than two inches and never will, ever (I wear mostly sneakers or equally comfy shoes, my feet are very spoiled, said the woman at the shoe store when my mom made my get heels for something or other), and who resents that it is this society’s expectation that women wear them on a daily basis, I still don’t think they are inherently patriarchal.
At last it becomes clear. I was wondering what you were getting at by bringing it up all the time.
Radical femnists are not the problem–rape affirming anitifems ARE
Hallelulia! Of course affirming women’s right to be sexual in both the positive and negative sense is incredibly important and valuable, but the amount of angst about radical feminism being thrown around in some quarters sometimes defies credulity.
My chief gender based fear is not that roving bands of radical feminists are going to break down my door and prevent me from performing fellatio. Or at least break down my door and give me *really cross looks* for performing felatio. It’s more that fledging theocrats who control all branches of government are going to break down my door and imprison me in a cage.
I know that Andrea Dworkin may be the most popularly known feminist in America, but that’s largely due to Rush Limbaugh, who also thinks that the second most influential theorist is Vladimir Lenin.
I also think that the indiscrminate use of “radfem” is rivaled in meaningless only by “PC.” Most of the time, those accused of being radical feminists don’t seem to deserve or fit that label. It doesn’t seem to take much for the “radfem” to be brought out, sometimes simply believing that in the aggregate, women are slightly wose off then men, is enough.
It seems ironic that with all the disapproving handwringing over the use of “antifeminist” as an epithet, some of the very same handwringers don’t seem to notice that their overuse of “radfem” fulfills the same functon.
I also appreciate the fact that you have perspective on blogs. Yes we like tham and yes community is valuable for its own sake, but the reality is that the percentage of the population who have regular access to a computer was not all that large the last time I saw figures though it’s of course increased, the percentage with internet access is smaller than that, and I’d wager the percentage who visit the political blogosphere, never mind the feminist blogosphere, is tiny. Nobody’s altering the course of history here, it’s a small highly selective overclass conversation.
We’re not the overclass. It’s true that only a minority have Internet access, but it’s a large and growing minority. More relevant here is that many of the people in this discussion are activists to a greater or lesser extent.
I’m not worried about radical feminists succeeding in creating a police state. There are bigger things to worry about — which we’ve spent far more time discussing. My primary objection to radical feminism is that it’s a false theory, which leads to reactionary conclusions: particularly the idea that men cannot oppose sexism, that alliances with rightwingers are preferable to alliances with leftwingers, and that in general, human freedom is not goal worth pursuing. My secondary objection is that I’ve run into nasty sectarianism on the part of some radical feminists — not Twisty, I want to be clear, nor particularly any of the participants in this latest argument.
Cassandra: While it may be true that shoes with heels that were somewhat high were worn by both men and women, I sincerely doubt that they included 5-inch stilletos. So yeah, though merely having a noticeable heel on your shoe may not be inherently patriarchal, there are definitely some styles of heel that are.
Yeah. My problem with–well.
First of all, the power of the Internets to get one swept up into sturm und drang-esque battles over shit that didn’t even register six months ago is pretty awesome.
Part of my reaction was due to the fact that heretofore (getting involved in Blog O’Sphere) I had not even been aware that Dworkin-style feminism was still around, much less among younger women. stupid internecine battles and dwama and what’s been termed as p.c. (not the demonic beast that the right makes it out to be, no, but still existent in the form of what Borges once termed “two bald men fighting over a comb,” yes: exasperating), yes. the froth and foment over “pornstitution,” no.
It’s quite possible that the blogosphere is such that leads to a false impression of overrepresentation, in which case the best solution would probably be to: ignore.
nonetheless I’d run into this sort of thing often enough that it seemed worth talking about.
I know I’m not alone in this. paleofeminist/antiprincess was sufficiently moved to start a blog specifically to address this shit.
all I know is that
1) I have my own particular very hot buttons about having my sexuality sneered at, trivialized, told with the Voice Of Authority that it doesn’t exist or is disgusting or risible.
2) I also don’t take kindly to the whole self-proclaimed authoritah (even if not acknowledged as such) by some prominent bloggers and their followers, wrt this is “advanced” feminism, “you’re not a feminist, and the generally patronizing tone that I tend to associate with recent converts to the One True Way of the Lard, even though many of the little dears have yet to actually crack open a Bible.
anyway, much as I also appreciate the cries of “Can’t we all just get along? No! the common enemy is not the Judean Peoples’ Front, it’s the Romans! the Romans, people!”, I must also say that if some (few) people aren’t willing to even “agree to disagree” about certain particular issues, even at the expense of being able to talk about other issues that we might actually agree on, then, well, I got nothing further to say to those particular people.
and I will continue to speak out when I see those people trying to gain sway.
Finally, while it’s true that radical feminism of a certain stripe is probably better known than others because of reactionary voices, unfortunately, that’s not *only* because the likes of Rush Limbaugh like to use hairy-legged axe-wielding feminazis as a handy straw scapegoat. It’s also because the emphasis on shutting down certain forms of sexuality often dovetails nicely with the agenda of the radical religious right. The fact that the two factions are coming from different ideologies ultimately doesn’t matter much to the people who end up getting the shaft (sex workers, queer folk, kinksters); in this case, the thought *doesn’t* count. not when it comes to realpolitik.
I mean: you get the Dworkin and MacKinnon ordinances getting co-opted by the RRR, not just the actual ordinances but their research and language and rationale, which filter on down into both repressive laws and actions at the time and the way they go about their own anti-porn and so forth campaigns even now.
You get the likes of Dr. Judith Reisman, darling of the religious right, getting her research used in the activism of grassroots antiporn feminism (blogged on this one here: http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2006/06/strange-bedfellows.html)
You get Sheila Jeffreys (Judith Halberstam: “If Sheila Jeffreys didn’t exist, Camille Paglia would have had to invent her”) raging about dildos and lipstick and the bad influence of gay men on lesbians and the deep wrongness of pomo theory and god only fucking knows what, speaking of (to some of us) odd choices to focus one’s passion.
You get curious cases like angry women in ski masks attacking a lesbian SM nightclub with crowbars (Chain Reaction in London, back in the day), on account of I guess opposition to violence against women.
You get Janice Raymond, whose virulent “The Transsexual Empire” is/was no more than a quaint curiousity–unless, of course, you’re a transsexual, Sandy Stone for example, the TS woman who was hounded out of her job at Olivia Records by women who, like Raymond, believed that transsexual women are/were a threat to their very existence–as feminists, as women.
“All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves …. Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive”
But she still wields a fair amount of influence, does Raymond, in the arena of making policy wrt trafficking and prostitution.
http://www.catwinternational.org/bio_JaniceRaymond.php
Janice Raymond is also Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), an international NGO having Category II Consultative Status with ECOSOC, and with branches in many world regions. Under Raymond’s leadership, CATW has expanded its regional networks and partners in many parts of the globe, most recently in the Baltics, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe and supported prevention of human trafficking projects in the Philippines, Venezuela, Mexico, Mali and the Republic of Georgia. CATW has also helped provide services for Nigerian women trafficked to Italy.
Raymond has been the recipient of grants from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. National Institute of Justice, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Information Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Norwegian Organization for Research and Development (NORAD), and UNESCO. In 2000, she co-published one of the first studies on trafficking in the United States entitled, Sex Trafficking in the United States: Links Between International and Domestic Sex Industries, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Justice. In 2002, she directed and co-authored a multi-country project in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States, entitled Women in the International Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation.
In January 2004, Dr. Raymond testified before the European Parliament on “The Impact of the Sex Industry in the EU.” In 2003, Raymond testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. Congress on “The Ongoing Tragedy of International Slavery and Human Trafficking.”…
***
All sounds like terrific work, and it may well be. God knows there’s plenty of real, awful exploitation and abuse out there. They push the Swedish model of criminalizing the male customers and decriminalizing the women (there is no recognition of adult male prostitution anywhere in that site that I’ve found). If nothing else I suppose it’s an improvement over the other way around, that. Maybe. Probably.
Thing is, that organization, like Raymond herself, takes the position that there is *no distinction* to be made between voluntary prostitution and forced prostitution.
I don’t know as I agree, based on my own experience with voluntary sex workers. And the fact that Raymond (with whom I have a number of beefsm ideologically) heads up this very influential organizaton makes me wonder just how much her own frankly seriously-outside-the-mainstream ideas are affecting the research and activism wrt sex workers…and how those ideas get put into practice.
This has been driving me crazy. I’m still not getting how I’m supposed to ignore women getting fucked over in the porn industry, or how women and girls are being pressured into sex acts that they don’t really enjoy, but somehow I’m supposed to be all up in arms, because some lady was mean to some other lady on the internet or because before I was born, some ladies wanted porn outlawed or something. I don’t get it.
I have another more specific comment wrt the “some ladies wanted porn outlawed or something” and so forth here, but for some reason it’s still in the moderation queue.
animeg: you’re not supposed to be anything, at least as far as I’m concerned, okay.
point is: pressure comes from all directions, and some of us don’t like it any better just because the foot on the neck is smaller and wearing a comfy shoe.
“I know I’m not alone in this. paleofeminist/antiprincess was sufficiently moved to start a blog specifically to address this shit.”
I am such a one-trick pony. I gotta find something new to talk about.
OK, so who’s got Cliffs Notes for this whole argument?
Cliff Notes:
TF: Blowjobs are patriarchal and inherently degrading and also icky and no woman really likes them, discuss.
bunch of women: actually I like blowjobs
handful of other women: ew icky gross
the entire fem/lefty blogosphere: BOOM
RM: Bite me Twisty
RKB: Sexual freedom is vital to feminism/feminists like doggy style and bukkake too
RM: Bite me RKB, who the hell do you think you are?
BL: Huh?
RM: Huh?
MB: stop ripping on RM
BL: Bite me MB
RM: Haha the trolling was a success, I shall mold you in my image
BL: Fuck off RM
AK: YEAH!
PM: You too AK
somebody: can’t we all just get along?
everyone: NO!! FUCK YOU!!! (we are. can’t you tell?)
somebody: groovy ‘k thx
FoolishOwl, radical feminism is a false and reactionary theory, but it’s a theory that has virtually no adherants and virtualy no influence. Hell, most of those who refer to themselves as radical feminists most likely don’t agree with most of the tenets you mention, which I would imagine creates both confusion and defensiveness. I personally tend to agree with a lot of what is said by those who seem to spend most of their time attacking radical feminists, as would, I imagine, many other women. However, when the term is used so loosely, so generally and so often it tends to take attention away from the points being made and put more on the definition of radical feminism, the perniciousess of radical feminism, whether or not the alleged radical feminist in question is really so evil or being mischaracterized. Etc.
I have a really hard time resisting the conclusion that this receives attention far out of proportion to its actual existance. This attitude of “they’re on the march again, to the barricades!” seems slightly puzzling when it seems to occur so often.
I’m sure the number of self-identified radical feminists (or non self describers who neverless subscribe to the tenets) are far outnumbered by those who believe that the sun revolves around the Earth. That’s a pretty significant subject to debate, but you’ll find very few who are willing to engage in it to a similar degree, simply because the sun revolvers have no influence and there are many more immediate concerns at this moment.
Of course many activists are bloggers, but at the same time, it seems like the internet can have carrying away influence. I have read numerous posts (not necessarily here) that tend to imply that there is no life beyond the digital world, problem can be solved by finding a new blog, one blogger represents a threat to our survival as a species, etc. I just appreciated the fact that R. Mildred didn’t go there.
belledame, nobody’s asking you to talk to anyone you don’t want to. But you can’t expect someone else to issue a wolesale denounciation whoever or whatever just because you or BIL tell them to either. You say you don’t like it when someone tells someone else she’s not a feminist. Okay, but how does that square with the “radfem” stuff? What’s the point of such common use of that term where it manifestly does not apply if not to create a distinction between the real feminists and the defective ones, as R. Mildred alludes to in the title?
Sorry, got cut off. My only point is that I don’t agree with someone like twisty much of the time, but I don’t see her as my enemy. I wouldn’t want her running the world, necessarily, but an enemy, no. There are probably some ways in which she and I can make common cause even if we spend most of our time screaming at each other. Not all radical feminists are equal and not everyone lives by monolithlic dogma. I don’t think because I don’t want to throw someone like her completely over the side it means that I’ve thrown in my lot with women who want to oppress transsexuals or anyone and everyone who claims or fits the label radical feminist.
Who did I tell to issue a wholesale denunciation of who?
I can understand being cross at being given a label one doesn’t think applies to oneself. As per the term “radfem,” though…personally as far as I know I’ve gone out of my way to only use it wrt self-ID’d radical feminists. lately I’ve tried to be more careful about even that.
As per “having no influence:” again, see the links above. If you’re a mainstream feminist who just wants to give her blowjobs and ho about her business, sure, radical feminism probably doesn’t have much influence on you and yours. If you’re a transgendered professional dominatrix, perhaps somewhat more so, even if indirectly.
slip. oh I see.
look, I haven’t told anyone else to read or not read Twisty, okay. my own issues with what she did actually aren’t even so much about ideology; I just think she behaved rather shittily. if your mileage varies, godspeed and god bless.
anyway: sure, I agree with a lot of what Twisty has to say on many issues. and btw she’s not who I’m talking about when I refer to people who go “you’re not a feminist.”
erm above that should be “go about her business”…
btw, mind-meld aside, you know, BL and I are actually two separate people and don’t necessarily agree on a number of things.
Hey, she can ho about her business if she wants, belledame.
Yes, but is she falsely conscious when she does it? how about falsely unconscious?
anyway: and yes I realize that some people who style themselves radical feminists don’t fit into the Jeffreys/Raymond or Dworkin or MacKinnon camp.
which is why lately I’ve been rather lamely saying stuff like “…that particular brand of…” or “anti-____” or…instead of “radical,” at least when speaking in generalities.
one of the reasons I’ve valued BL’s posts is that she takes the time to go back and do the homework for this stuff. we’ve had several intrablog conversations (Violet Socks, who also ID’s as a radical feminist, among the participants) about what the definition is and was. we talked about the breakdown between “cultural feminism” and “socialist feminism” and “Marxist feminism” and “separatism” and how radfem can incorporate any or all of these.
and then there is/are also radical WOC feminism(s).
–and another book recommendation, which isn’t one I’ve read but I know BL has vouched for a number of times, Alice Echols, “Daring to be Bad,” I believe talks about the history of radical feminism in a fairly in-depth way.
i believe there’s a fair amount of talk about the factionalism and purges (Robin Morgan I think declared a bunch of people or at least movements persona non grata; Dworkin shunned Kate Millett after she signed onto anti-censorship task force and against her and MacKinnon’s proposed anti-porn ordinances…)
That’s exactly why radical feminist theory must be examined. Several people participating in this argument have picked up bits and pieces of radical feminist theory, without understanding how that sets them up for all sorts of contradictions. Thinking things through clearly is important.
I also think that aspects of radical feminist thought have uhm trickled down to the zeitgeist, more than people think.
just today we were discussing the etymology of “pornography” over at antip’s; I was wondering where the notion that it meant “writing about vile whores” came from (particularly the “vile” part).
some research gave me to understand that while the current (more or less) coinage of “pornography” has been around since the late 1800′s, Dworkin is probably the one most responsible for the notion that there is a kind of unbroken line between whatever “writing about courtesans” meant for the ancient Greeks and the imagery we have today, not to mention the sex work industry. and the “vile” bit, too, I think, is hers.
…anyway in passing I noted that everyone from Prairie Muffins (or some other reactionary “ladies’” group) to William Safire used pretty much that same breakdown of the word, the same assumptions about the etymology and the history, to bolster their own hearty disapproval.
“That’s exactly why radical feminist theory must be examined. Several people participating in this argument have picked up bits and pieces of radical feminist theory, without understanding how that sets them up for all sorts of contradictions. Thinking things through clearly is important.”
Isn’t that exactly what R. Mildred is saying makes no sense? You’re claiming that NOTHING in “radical feminist theory” (is radical feminist theory the product of only one person? There’s only one strain of radical feminist theory?) has any value whatsoever, and that anyone who agrees with anything in “radical feminist theory” is setting themselves up for complete illogic, heading towards female separatism?
If you have a lot of knowledge about radical feminst theory, you’re probably ahead of about 99% of the world, including some of us here. I’m willing to enteratain the possibility that radical feminst theory, as you’re defining it, has absolutely nothing to offer, even though it’s unlikely, but can you be a little bit more specific? In the interests of thinking things more clearly, what are the bits and pieces that have been picked up, and what contradictions? Can we examine radical feminst theory?
Well, BL’s been fisking it for a while now; here’re a few posts you might find germane here:
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/06/10/is-that-a-simulacrum-in-your-pocket-or-are-you-just-happy-to-see-me/
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/06/25/feminism-as-moral-revolution/
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/05/01/jo-freeman-valley-girl-sorta/
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/05/01/hanisch-new-intro-personal-political/
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/06/13/big-red-book-that-tore-a-hole-in-my-wall/
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/06/13/adventures-in-mopping/
…there are some links to online articles and other blogs/further reading w/in the comments of several of those, among other BL posts (try “feminism(s) and “theory”). Happy hunting.
In terms of the bits and pieces here–I can’t speak for FO, but I am assuming the general notion that sex, or rather sexual abuse/exploitation/domination of men over women, is not only something that could be examined analytically but THE cornerstone on which patriarchal oppression is founded.
which, it feels like, sometimes is true and sometimes isn’t, depending on who you talk to and when; and it all gets mixed up with personal hot buttons (but then i tend to believe that particular theory was always all about personal hot buttons at least as much as anything else).
not to mention the very use of the word “patriarchy.”
…maybe it’s just my own tiredness, but I’m not seeing anything that says “NOTHING in radical feminist theory has any value whatsoever.”
there’s also some discussion in the comments in this post on my own blog you might find relevant.
http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2006/06/nice-girlsmean-girlswhat-is-this-all.html
…oh, yah, and here’s a handy Cliff’s Notes breakdown of various (some) schools:
http://www.uah.edu/woolf/feminism_kinds.htm
Wow…just…wow.
“…maybe it’s just my own tiredness, but I’m not seeing anything that says “NOTHING in radical feminist theory has any value whatsoever.”’
That’s why I put a question mark at the end of the sentence, because I’m curious if that’s what’s meant. I think it’s pretty common for most people to take bits and pieces of information from many sources/theories to form their own views, so to me saying that taking bits and pieces from radical feminist theory leads to unsupportable contradictions, in conjunction with calling it false, tends to imply that it’s useless and not even the smallest bit or piece can be valid. I may be misinterpreting.
Caromboard, I believe B|Lab and belledame222 have offered much more detailed critiques of radical feminism than I can, as yet.
Part of your question is basically the problem in the philosophy of science of how to recognize a flawed theory, and what you’ve gained by considering a flawed theory that kinda looked right at first.
I’m imagining theory as a map of reality. In the real world, a flat map is fine for travelling short distances, but accurate long distance navigation requires a map in the shape of a sphere. Follow the course you plot on a flat map too far, and you’ll end up off course, and farther off course the farther you go.
So, radical feminist theory, even if it leads to false conclusions, isn’t so far off from reality at all points. And in practice, as you say, people are eclectic in their views. Radical feminist theory would be used by women in the real world trying to describe their experiences. The more they break from consistency with a flawed theory to accurately describe their experiences, the more accurate their insights will be. In fact, since there’s no perfect theory, every theory is more or less flawed, any reasonable person will break from a theory occasionally.
However, some theories are better than others. And adopting elements of a bad theory can distort an insight. This is why, for instance, I object to the way that the term patriarchy is used loosely, as if it’s just a synonym for sexism, since it implies the idea that the fundamental structure of society is the domination of all men over all women.
Not much time, but one important point: Radical feminism is like a big sister to most of our feminismS. Radicals did a tremendous amount of work then, shaping how we think about oppression for instance (Maryilyn Frye’s analysis, for instance, which draws on the bird cage I described here once.)
While Liberals and Marxists were generally working at it before, Radicals offered a new analysis, upending Marxist framework to analyze the patriarchy instaed of capitalism, for instance.
In the late 70s and early 80s they engaged in their own self-criticisms, doing the most work early on to understand how their theories and practices reinscribed racism, classims, and imperliasm.
Libs and marxists altered their theories to accomodate their insists. Socialists emerged as a response to the persistent critique of racism, classism, imperliams, etc in the movement as a whole — as did what is called Third Wave feminism which was a response both to the media hyped “death of feminism in the 80s” but also Rebecca Walker’s (Alice Walker’s daughter) concern that feminism needed to address the concerns re: race, class, ability, imperialism. The work of emi at eminism is another example, particularly with incorporating an analysis of the transphobia, biphobia, and suppression of sexual minorities and dissidents within feminisms.
Alice Echols is widely reviled by current radicals who follow Robin Morgan, Dworkin, MacKinnon et al because she argues that they should rather be called Cultural Feminists and she wants Radicals to refer to the earlier work of radical feminism that hadn’t made the turn toward cultural essentialism. (She’s not saying cultural fems are biologically essentialist, but culturally: that is, their view of social structure is that it is so powerful, that it wipes any possibility of people operating at an individual level of social interaction in a way that might resist, redefine, challange patriarchy. In turn, this structure is so powrful that, while men and women may be socially constutied genders, patriarchy is so pervasive historically and currently, that no one escapes. Thus, when the Michigan Women’s Music Fest has a war over transfolk, it’s because they feel that transwomen have been so powerfully shaped by sociaization that their masculinitiy (traits, etc.) will never be easily shucked off and this is why they violate the “women only” policy at MWMF.
I started reading Radically Speaking with the huge hopes that I might find material there to address the “does gender trump race” war. I’d believed Alison Jaggar when she insisted that Rads would internalize their own criticisms and advance their theory. I have seen that in the book, though I certainly see it in Heart’s work here in bloglandia. I’m sure there are many more.
Still, it’s not clear to me that reform of the theory, which does put the analysis of gender at the center, can work out. There are periodic wars on the Women’s studies list over whether courses should teach about gender, which makes it too easy to study men and male gender roles, etc.
Anyway, gotta fly…
There is also the notion that sex-positive feminists such as Susie Bright and Gayle Rubin *are* radical feminists; Susie Bright for one has made her indebtedness to Dworkin very clear, even as she critiques her and (obviously) moves in a radically different direction.
but perhaps this is indeed related to something Katha Pollitt was talking about wrt an Ana Marie Cox critique of her latest book: something about how she could only understand this as a “kill the mother” thing.
which to me suggests that, well, maybe; but also the holder of such sentiments may be harboring her own “kill the rebellious/competitive daughter” issues.
none of which goes very far in addressing the actual ideological points, but I expect at some point that shit *does* need to be discussed.
from that admittedly hella long comments thread in my blogpost i linked, here’s a bit by Violet Socks that’s probably relevant at this juncture:
>>what d’you make of the above-linked article’s distinction between radical feminism as it once was and “cultural feminism?” and the notion that (a number of) people now using the term “radical feminist” mean something closer to what those authors are calling “cultural feminism” than what used to be called “radical feminism?”
>Nomenclature’s a bitch.
First of all, I think of cultural feminism as an explicitly woman-centered attempt to create an alternative feminine space, in art or life. Essentialist notions may or may not be included. That simply doesn’t describe most feminists who call themselves radical, including the anti-pornstitution faction, who are interested in transforming this society.
The second problem is that I don’t think Echols’ supposed trajectory (radical feminists became cultural) really matches what happened. Radfem splintered into many different factions, and new theories and permutations emerged. Lesbian separatism, goddess worship, the anti-pornstitution faction, etc. And quite a few feminists just remained undifferentiated radicals, like me.
For example, look at Gloria Steinem, who is a good test case for how inadequate labels are: she’s the most famous radical feminist and has continued to call herself a radical throughout the decades. But she wasn’t part of the Dworkin faction, she certainly didn’t become a cultural feminist, so what do you call Gloria? Some people have called her a “liberal” feminist because she became deeply involved in NOW-style political action, but then most of us embraced traditional political action — while continuing to espouse radical ideology. I think Gloria herself has said that she’s been labelled every kind of feminist, but she personally still calls herself a radical.
For me the biggest difference is simply between feminists and non-feminists. That sounds overly obvious perhaps, but it’s my lived experience. I have a great deal in common with all other feminists, and there are elements of most of the various strands in my own philosophy.
“I object to the way that the term patriarchy is used loosely, as if it’s just a synonym for sexism, since it implies the idea that the fundamental structure of society is the domination of all men over all women.”
I’m not sure that I agree with that. I’m not sure that patriarchy is used as juat a substitute for sexism, first off. I don’t see the two as interchangeable. Sexism to me implies more garden variety every day individual experiences that are less systematic and less egregious. Which is not to say that I use the word patriarchy very often, but that’s not how I interpret it when I see it used, unless it’s meant to be ironic, as Amanda often uses it, for example.
I also don’t necessarily think that “patriarchy” implies the domination of all men over all women. All men obviously aren’t dominant over all women, nor do they wish to be. I don’t want to enter the Oppression Olympics, and I certainly think that race is a greater vector of oppression than gender. I’m not sure I can really explain what I think of when I hear the word, but just that within classes and races, there tend to be certain discrepancies of power between men and women. There are a lot of other factors in any individual situation, and it doesn’t hold for cross class or cross racial analysis, and yes women have agency and no it’s not something that’s true across the board.
The only example I can think of to try is clarify is my classmate was recently working on a project about a postcolonial society, I think it was Nigeria but I’m not completely sure, I can’t rememeber right now. Anyway, this wasn’t the focus of what he was working on, but he was watching some films that included some interviews with citizens of this country shortly after they’d won their independence, and one thing that struck me was that in the precolonial period, women in this society had a fair amount of independent social and economic power (I think from cattle herding, but again the details are fuzzy). Then missonaries came and instituted separate spheres and tried to put women back into the home where they had no real source of income.
Obviously everyone horribly suffered under imperialism, but then in the postcolonial period some of the men who’d risen to prominence and were going to be leaders of the new society were asked to give their accessment of the past, present, and future, and one theme that was touched on a lot was that the idea that women should have independent sources of income was an imperialist perversion of traditional society, and women needed to repudiate these decadent Western notions and return to the home like good members of this country. Now, obviously, it’s much more complicated than that and there are ideologies and a whole host of other factors involved as well, but on some level you’ve got some of these men, all of whom have been horribly oppressed by colonialism doing some distortion of their own history to almost try and lay claim to this little piece of imperialist ideology because it can be used to their benefit in the future.
That may not be a fair representation, but that’s what I got out of it. I wouldn’t absolutely call that patriarchy, but it’s that sort of apparent impulse that’s more of what I think of when I think of the word, that in general within classes and races, and taking into account that this can be affected by a million other factors, certain factors tend to have created something of a power differential between men and women, and overall those with power or a means to attain power will prefer to consolidate their power, when they can, rather than give it up. Or something.