Monday’s post and yesterday’s post both have had excellent comment threads, for which I’m very grateful. Both posts were written at least partly in response to the work of Factcheckme (FCM), as well as to the ideas of Andrea Dworkin.
FCM and Dworkin belong broadly to the tradition of radical feminism, and FCM’s community belongs to what is sometimes called women’s nationalism. Radical feminists and liberal feminists famously disagree about many things, and that disagreement tends to be most pointed around issues of sexuality and individual agency. Liberal feminism (the tradition to which I belong) shares common cause with radical feminism on a number of issues, but often breaks with the radical tendency on a host of issues ranging from pornography to transgender identity to the role of men in the feminist movement. Obviously, “liberals” and “radicals” aren’t monolithic; the terms are used differently in different instances, and many feminists feel understandably uncomfortable with being pigeon-holed into one particular tradition. These are useful categories, but need to be employed with caution.
Going back to the early 1980s, liberal feminists have pointed out that many of their radical sisters sometimes seem disturbingly close to the religious right in terms of their views on sexuality. The birth of that criticism may have come in 1981, when Reagan was newly president and the Moral Majority was in its ascendancy. The late Ellen Willis wrote a very influential review of Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women in which she made the case that social conservatives and radical feminists were becoming dangerous bedmates:
…in certain respects the arguments of the two groups are uncomfortably similar. If anti-porn feminists see pornography as a brutal exercise of predatory male sexuality, a form of violence against women (and an incitement to such violence), the right also associates pornography with violence and with rampant male lust broken loose from the saving constraints of God and Family. Nor have conservatives hesitated to borrow feminist rhetoric about the exploitation of women’s bodies.
This peculiar confluence raises the question of whether the current feminist preoccupation with pornography is really an attempt to extend the movement’s critique of sexism – or whether, on the contrary, it is evidence that feminists have been affected by the conservative climate and are unconsciously moving with the cultural tide.
Since at least 1981, that same argument has raged on between the heirs of Willis and Dworkin, and those of us in the liberal tradition have made the same point about the strange similarity between the far right and the radical feminist left. Even arch-conservative Maggie Gallagher (who has done more to fight to ensure a limited and narrow marriage franchise than anyone in America) wrote of her overlap with Dworkin in this touching tribute penned after the latter’s death in 2005:
I received a gift from Andrea, the kind of gift which, intellectually speaking, you can receive only from someone with whom you profoundly disagree. From the opposite ends of the political spectrum, we had each glimpsed a piece of the same truth. Against the backdrop of a pornographic Playboy culture that tried to teach us that sex is just a trivial appetite for pleasure, radical feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote that “sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal.”
I was not alone! Andrea saw it, too. As I wrote in “Enemies of Eros”: “In sex, persons become male and female, archetypically, exaggeratedly, painfully so. And to us, corseted in modern sexual views, femininity appears incompatible with the personhood of women. … What Dworkin observes is essentially true. Sex is not an act which takes place merely between bodies. Sex is an act which defines, alters, imposes on the personhood of those who engage in it. We wander through the ordinary course of days as persons, desexed, androgynous, and it is in the sexual act in which we receive reassurance that we are not persons, after all, but men and women.”
And as I later learned, to a lesser degree, Andrea Dworkin received the same gift from me. Standing in the local bookstore in Park Slope in Brooklyn (where we both then lived), she thumbed through my first book. “At last, someone who understands my writing!” she shrieked excitedly.
Then she, the infamous feminist, invited me, the unknown young conservative, to tea. I found her soft-spoken, pale, intellectual, anxious, motherly.
Motherly, perhaps, in more ways than one.
Gallagher suggests that she and Dworkin shared a revulsion at the “Playboy culture” that trivializes sexuality. The problem is, of course, is that both Gallagher and Dworkin assumed that a feminism that was sex-positive, that did see sexual liberation as genuinely freeing for women as well as men, wasn’t really distinguishable from the Hugh Hefner philosophy. Dworkin and Gallagher both assumed that a pleasure-centered ethos ultimately meant pleasure for men and misery for women. Both assumed that sex-positive feminists (what FCM calls “fun fems”) are ignorant, deluded, and naive. They both deny women’s agency. They aren’t alone; commenter MsCitrus, who blogs in the radical feminist tradition, wrote yesterday in the thread: “free will,†aka agency, is a load of western individualistic special-snowflake crap. (She’s challenged on that in comments by Lynn and Glendenb.)
In the end, I am much more optimistic than the Gallaghers and the Dworkins about the capacity of individuals to extricate themselves from their acculturation, their programming, their biology itself. I am optimistic (an optimism rooted in experience as much as ideology) about men’s potential to transform, to overcome the “myth of male weakness”; I am equally optimistic about women’s capacity to unlearn the misogynistic toxicity that at times seems to be in the very air we breathe. This doesn’t mean I’m some sort of Ayn Rand disciple who imagines that individuals must do all this work on their own. We do this work in community, with support, with reflection and with a mix of resolve and doubt. But do it we do, and change we do. And we reclaim our sexualities, and we reclaim our relationships, and we remake our world.
I wonder if some of the profound distrust of eros from the radical feminist side springs from the impossible to keep promise of “free love.” The notion that we could somehow have sex and be liberated was part of the 60s mythos; college kids running around naked and having lots of sex was proposed as a serious act of social reform. It was a disaster for lots of women because for a long time the men in the various movements didn’t regard women as their partners. The chics were for making out and sleeping with, brewing the coffee, running the mimeograph, and serving as a barrier between the police and the protestors.
Lots of very smart women showed up to be part of a movement that was going to change the world . . . and were treated no different than their mothers in the ladies auxiliary in the church at home. Contrary to what the advocates of free love were selling, sex by itself wasn’t a path to liberation, freedom or equality. The product wasn’t as advertised. And lots of otherwise liberal sounding men didn’t see women as their equals. In response to those experiences, radical feminism makes a certain amount of sense. (Not for nothing, American fundamentalists have been fighting the same fight for similar reasons.)
Push the analysis a bit further and you reach a point where you begin to realize that the cart was before the horse. Sexual liberation (wow that’s a tacky term!) follows equality, it doesn’t create it. To put it another way – sex is best between equals, between people who share mutual respect.
Damn right we do, God willin’ and the crick don’t rise!
Funny. I was just reading PUBLIC SEX, a collection of Pat Califia’s writings, which touches on a lot of this in the Introduction. Can’t say I subscribe absolutely to Califia’s program, but it’s a hell of a read.
“In sex, persons become male and female, archetypically, exaggeratedly, painfully so.”
Is *that* what is supposed to happen? I must be doing it wrong then.
Seriously though, that quote and the descriptions of sex after that seems so foreign to me, no wonder I have so little appreciation for this viewpoint. It just doesn’t match up with my personal experiences at all and thank god it doesn’t, because it all does sound rather unpleasant. Though, as a virgin I *did* expect having sex to alter my personhood and then was a little surprised when that didn’t happen. I’ve since learned that 90% of all messages I’d gotten about sexuality up to that point had been totally false and/or harmful and I had to figure out what worked for me from scratch, a journey I think everyone has to go on and find their own path. If some people find that sex transforms them into an archetype of their gender that’s fine, but that has no relevance to me at all.
ElleDee, are you thinking about the archetype of your gender as you experience it, or the archetype of your gender you’re told to expect by others? (Maybe it’s presumptuous to assume you even differentiate?)
I dunno; I’ll cop to saying “In sex, persons become male and female, archetypically, exaggeratedly, painfully so.” fits my own experience pretty well, as long as we control for it being the archetypes that I’ve been taught. Outside of sex and romantic love, why do I care what someone’s gender is? (But I am heterosexual, in those contexts I obviously do care.) For instance, while Hugo (say, not to pick on you Hugo) might suggest that seeking homosocial approval is an important part of the male archetype, the male archetype I got had approval being strictly gendered so that only women can give approval to men, maybe the closest thing men can give each other is respect? Since men lack moral authority over other men in the gender archetypes as I was instructed in them by parents/society/whoever. And I definitely experience PIV sex as the maximum of approval I’ve ever had.
Brain, I don’t really feel my own gender very strongly. I’m cisgendered and yeah, I deal with gendered aspects of being constantly, but it all feels pretty external and the result of my environment and upbringing and not something that resides strongly inside of me. I think if I had been born a guy I would just be gay, but not transgendered, if that makes sense.
Ugh, sorry about the brain, Brian.
“I wonder if some of the profound distrust of eros from the radical feminist side springs from the impossible to keep promise of “free love.â€
How about just clinging to a pre-adoloescent stage of life where you ahd things figured out and all the authority figures in life, all of whowm were women, approved of you and your efforts? Then it all went horribly wrong, your friends started worrying about boys and ignoring you unless you had the same interest in those rude, loud, smirking, dirty boys, the ones you had always been so superior to, and no one envied and looked up to you any more for pleasing Teacher so much.
To put it another way – sex is best between equals, between people who share mutual respect.
As far as I know some rad-fems see it as NEVER being equals, and I think it’s because of the physiology of penetrative sex, so penetrative sex can never be had by equals. I think this is where FCM got her stance PIV is never okay, never will be ok…or that’s the gist I got from her.
Sex is best between equals, but they will never be equals because of the penetrative quality of PIV. No matter what way you paint it in this view PIV sex is out of the question…for individuals, or on the whole of society, and anyone participating in PIV is hindering the movement…it actually negates any sex act in general, unless everyone stops PIV… this is the problem I have with her view, if we all were to stop PIV even pregnancy by other means would be an invasion, a danger, exploitation, and we still wouldn’t be equal…the only choice we have is to die…bleak…bleak indeed.
I am a graduate student in the social sciences, and before yesterday, I had never heard about this argument. So this is all really new to me. I can see good points on both sides, and the topic really gettig to me. So, as I think about this, I want to be sure that I am understanding the argument correctly.
I am going to reflect back what I think you guys have said. In places where I am not sure that I am getting it right or where I was unclear on the logic I use a (?) like quotation marks. I welcome corrections.
So what some feminists, like FCM, Mandos and MsCitrus are saying is that heterosexual women should abstain from PIV, even in committed, loving relationships, because:
1. Women are unable to give true consent to PIV because penetration is inherently an act of domination, and much as one cannot give consent to become a slave, one cannot give consent to be penetrated.
2. Women are unable or unlikely to give true consent because the toxicity of patriarchy renders women unable to determine their own real best interest. Just like developmentally-disabled adults are unable to make a true appraisal of their risk and benefits and are highly subject to manipulation, so women are easily manipulated and blinded by cultural standards for sex.
3. We tend to think of heterosexual sex as PIV so that even in egalitarian heterosexual relationships, PIV becomes the main act. Therefore we should take it off the table so (?) we can better develop our non-PIV sexual skills (?)
4. Men enjoy and want PIV more than women. Women achieve more sexual satisfaction from non-PIV sex. (?) But women will not ask for what they want (?) and even if they do, men are unlikely to give it without attaching some expectation of PIV.
5. Some PIV is very risky for some women. Even for women who are not fertile because of age or tubal ligation, or who are with partners who have undergone vasectomies, there is still an increased risk of STI. Although with truly monogamous partners and the use of condoms this risk becomes pretty insignificant, the risk is still disproportionately borne by women. Because there is a risk that a relationship thought to be monogamous might not actually be monogamous, women should not (?) engage in any activity which is disproportionately dangerous for them (?)
6. In gender solidarity, we should stop engaging in PIV, so that it is no longer expected in a heterosexual relationship. This will allow women who do not want to have PIV to avoid it without stigma or relationship penalty.
Hugo’s response has been:
1. The context, not content, of sex determines whether or not it is an expression of domination
2. Women are capable of giving consent, despite millennia of gender oppression. We can appraise the risk accurately and withstand manipulation.
3. Men are capable of acting as caring sexual partners, with or without the prospect of PIV.
4. Women can and should ask for what they want in every sexual encounter and relationship.
5. All sex is risky in one way or another. Caring partners try to eliminate or mitigate the risks to their partners.
6. If we make abstinence from PIV a requirement for feminists, then we have just created yet another rule for how women should or should not use their bodies.
So, did I get this about right?
Jim – I think that being stuck in adolescent developmental stage may be true for some radical feminists just as it’s true for some gay men who decide they’re going to do nothing but think about queer theory and their going to deconstruct the heterosexist paradigm of everything. I can also buy that some young women use radical feminism as means of managing anxiety about intercourse – about pregnancy and STIs and so on.
But I’m inclined to think that in a society that has deep cultural anxieties around sexuality in general, that radical feminism (like religious fundamentalism) serves to alleviate those anxieties, to restrict sexuality within a set of strong taboos and rules. Sex within the boundaries of those taboos is automatically acceptable, sex outside those boundaries automatically unacceptable. Negative outcomes then become the natural consequence of unacceptable actions. The rules are about creating a moral order in the universe.
If you are someone for whom moral order is the same as rules, the liberal position in which one negotiates with one’s partner, in which boundaries and rules are not fixed, can feel very risky.
Ok, so what kind of sexuality is ok to rad fems? PIV is out, I know that they are transphobic… what else?
I honestly don’t know ElleDee… They say they enjoy other sexual acts, just not PIV…or anything to do with a penis really..I’m not sure of the stance on oral, and I don’t dare ask…lol.. but honestly it doesn’t matter what sexual acts they deem appropriate, because as long as PIV exists we are still in essence sexual slaves no matter what the sex act… If the main point to avoiding PIV is to make women equal in the eyes of men, and not everyone is avoiding PIV, we’re having sexual relations, no matter what form they take, in an unequal environment, and thus not part of promoting equality…even the rad fems who are enjoying other sexual relations besides PIV.. we as women are still objects acted on, instead of people acting with.
what else? They see pregnancy as a means to control (and highly damaging…disfiguring is the word that was used I believe) and not much else is all that different I don’t think.
ElleDee,
I’m thinking any sex that reaches its climax without a living male participant would gain their seal of approval.
Radical feminism, even more than the fundamentalist right, is simply a nonsensical, contradictory, and impractical philosophy. There have been a few intelligent “radfems”- Andrea Dworkin, though I disagree with everything she says, comes to mind. Hers is one of the few coherent radical feminist philosophies- she made sense, at least. But she was, honestly, significantly less radical than some of the downright scary people you meet online (like FCM). At some point, it all just becomes a clusterfuck of impossible expectations, weird contradictions, and arbitrary double standards. I can’t make heads or tails of FCM’s position on sexuality- all I can see is a lot of shouting and negativity, all about what we shouldn’t do as opposed to what we should- she’s still not sure about that, I think.
I’d like to briefly (heh) suggest that a class analysis of common practices in any domain does not always imply that people are FORBIDDEN from engaging in it or a BAD PEOPLE for doing so. Is it possible for us to discuss/critique the effects of what people do or the context in which they do them without also invoking the implication of personal moral defect?
“Is it possible for us to discuss/critique the effects of what people do or the context in which they do them without also invoking the implication of personal moral defect?”
Absolutely…but doesn’t discussion require that you consider the other position without say…getting a punch in the face??? I don’t take her position personally until I get told I’m stupid for not yet holding her position…her assumptions of my lack of agency are insulting, not what she’s suggesting.
I’m not and never was opposed to her position, but by asking questions to find my way to her position instead of the acceptance of being fed it (which to me is VERY intellectually dangerous) I was not at all met with answers…answers that I suspect even she doesn’t know…which would lead me to suspicion of her position as intellectually dangerous.
I’d like to briefly (heh) suggest that a class analysis of common practices in any domain does not always imply that people are FORBIDDEN from engaging in it or a BAD PEOPLE for doing so.
Of course! In an important sense, the importance of doing precisely this is exactly what I object to here. Right, but when FCM announces that men are BAD PEOPLE for remaining open to, or actively engaging in, consensual PIV sex, they’re violating your suggestion pretty directly. In point of fact, my problem with this version of radical feminism isn’t their reliance on structural analysis! I find that analysis, when done well, is an invaluable tool for feminist progress and the generation of knowledge. The problem is what they think it’s appropriate to do with the that structural analysis as it relates to individual cases.
“Right, but when FCM announces that men are BAD PEOPLE for remaining open to, or actively engaging in, consensual PIV sex, they’re violating your suggestion pretty directly. ”
The fact is, liberal feminists definition of “consensual” is an incredibly low standard. Most men do NOT have partners who considre the social structure that’s pressuring them towards certain decisions, and most women have men who demand PIV. If he would leave if you abstained from PIV, that’s means that the PIV, if it was had, is non-consensual, because he’s clearly not having it as one way out of many to express a bond or to please her. He’s fucking her. Again: it is dangerous for women, and not for men. He’s saying she has to compromise her safety, because he wants to stick his dick somewhere. That’s not okay, ever. Also very important is that the man NEVER asks to have intercourse, gets mopey when he doesn’t get it, or initiates it. Which is what most men do, obviously. It has to be totally the woman bringing it up, and if the man isn’t hesitant to put her at risk for pregnancy, he IS a bad person.
And that’s just in a monogamous relationship. I think any man who has PIV in hookups is bad, yes, because of STDs and the fact women often become emotionally attached in ways men don’t (see FCMs post on trauma bonding for this).
@djw:
I would suggest that reading and understanding their writing requires the cultivation of a particular eye. We are talking about people who have a particular sense of or desire for gender/class justice at a scale that they will never, ever see—and this is a fact of which they are well aware. In that context, they don’t have an incentive not to take the maximal position, and and I don’t think it’s correct to demand it of them either.
It should be obvious to anyone whose ever bumped into me in the past on the feminist blogosphere that, um, I don’t always agree with what radical feminists, particularly of the “female nationalist” type, have to say, but this is a point that’s quite difficult to argue with.
It could well be the case that in most straight relationships, women genuinely want and enjoy the PIV that they have, but penetrative intercourse could *still* be a major site of women’s oppression. That’s basically the conflict here. If the oppressed class generally approves of some particular behaviour of the oppressor class, does that make that particular behaviour OK?
And if PIV is a site of women’s oppression, then how do you ameliorate it without at some point interrogating the practices of individuals?
Mandos,
“And if PIV is a site of women’s oppression”
again, all this only makes sense if you accept the answer prior to engaging the world. You’re effectively approaching the big, big world using a deductive method. Yet you are unwilling to even state that everting you argue is requiring submission to the axiomatic base you are working from. You are making a faith based argument, not a fact based argument.
Out of curiosity, how far would you extend this accusation? Do you reject the claim that women are generally an oppressed class outright, or merely that women’s oppression is not associated in some way with straight sexual practice? I’m new around here and don’t know the details of your views.
If he would leave if you abstained from PIV, that’s means that the PIV, if it was had, is non-consensual, because he’s clearly not having it as one way out of many to express a bond or to please her. He’s fucking her.
I’m fairly sure that most people- women or men- would break off a relationship if it did not include sex. Or, at the very least, if it did not include common sexual activity that they found pleasurable. That’s one of a few important distinctions between a relationship and a friendship, kiddo.
“I’m fairly sure that most people- women or men- would break off a relationship if it did not include sex.”
I met a man that had a rare disease that affected his ability to get and maintain an erection (it affected other parts of his body too..it was neurological)anyway…his main complaint about his wife was that she didn’t maintain intimacy in any way shape or form…all he wanted was to cuddle, and his wife was frustrated that he couldn’t have PIV…not sex…PIV.. It goes both ways honestly..I’ve heard of women leaving husbands over inability to have PIV, where does that leave those men? Are they oppressive?
“Jim – I think that being stuck in adolescent developmental stage may be true for some radical feminists just as it’s true for some gay men who decide they’re going to do nothing but think about queer theory and their going to deconstruct the heterosexist paradigm of everything.”
Oh GOD YES. I ran into two on Feminste who made all kinds of naive and stupid assumptions about me and presumed to lecture me on societal hompphobia and then took grand offense when I told them they were naive and stupid, as well as dishonest. They are going to have to get used to that the more they get out among people not in their litle sect.
“If you are someone for whom moral order is the same as rules, the liberal position in which one negotiates with one’s partner, in which boundaries and rules are not fixed, can feel very risky.”
Personally i think rules area crutch you use until you can figure out what the guiding principles are. This is a very anglican approach, and it has worked for us for centuries. It applies in everry area really, not just sexuality and relationships.
If he would leave if you abstained from PIV, that’s means that the PIV, if it was had, is non-consensual, because he’s clearly not having it as one way out of many to express a bond or to please her. He’s fucking her.
I’m fairly sure that most people- women or men- would break off a relationship if it did not include sex.
Oh my god-did you hear what I said? I said abstain from PIV. You just prove my point, that for 99.9% of the human population, including liberal feminists and “feminist” men, sex = intercourse. The fact that you can’t conceive of sex outside of PIV is unsurprising, but depressing. (It’s kinda hilarious because everyone reacted as if HOW DARE I ACCUSE them of thinking that sex=PIV, because they never said that. Well, here ya go.) No one is chastising you for assuming sex = intercourse, either. Shows how much they get the point of what radfems are trying to say.
You know I’m starting to think that what MsCistrus and other radical feminists need is not theory but a good sexuality education class like Our Whole Lives, which grounds disucssions and understanding of sexuality in a broad, healthy and moral context, which addresses questions of consent, communication, desire and love, which provides space for people to struggle with their own understanding of what it means to make love and have sex, which explores intimacy in both emotional and physical terms, which addresses spiritual, emotional and physical aspects of sexuality. At a minimum that would help us avoid the jawbreaking jargon and use, you know, language that doesn’t jar the ear.
“Or, at the very least, if it did not include common sexual activity that they found pleasurable.”
I was going to write a comment similar to yours ms.Citrus until I read this part.
“If he would leave if you abstained from PIV, that’s means that the PIV, if it was had, is non-consensual, because he’s clearly not having it as one way out of many to express a bond or to please her. He’s fucking her.”
I’m saying I’ve seen different circumstances then the one you describe here..one in which WOMEN file for divorce in such situations and the man is left in an emotional rut because of the anxiety of being unable to perform. Relationships of close friends of mine that I have seen dissolved by WOMEN who want nothing but PIV, even when other sexual acts are offered by the male. I’m trying to point out that not all cases fill this PIV or I’m out model that you’re presenting…granted they are in the minority, but that doesn’t make the experience any less painful for the man or woman involved.
“I was going to write a comment similar to yours ms.Citrus until I read this part.”
The fact is that he distinguished between “sex” and “sexual activity,” as if only intercourse was really SEX, everything else just being “sexual.” This still makes intercourse into the “main act,” something different and specialer than everything else. Which is one of the main problems I have with intercourse.
Assuming he didn’t mean that intercourse equals sex, why did my post warrant a reply from him? I never said that we should abstain from sex period. It’s a bit defensive and indicates that he STILL doesn’t get it. Not to mention the patronizing tone of his post (calling me “kiddo). And acting like I don’t know how people distinguish friendships from relationships has NOTHING to do with what I said, whatsoever.
Mandos,
I’ve come down with a fever and my mind is not aching for an epistemological debate right now – I’ll reply tomorrow – thanks.
““And if PIV is a site of women’s oppressionâ€
again, all this only makes sense if you accept the answer prior to engaging the world. You’re effectively approaching the big, big world using a deductive method. Yet you are unwilling to even state that everting you argue is requiring submission to the axiomatic base you are working from. You are making a faith based argument, not a fact based argument.”
As I understand Sam is saying she came to the conclusion first, then sought out how it applied to her life… am I right Sam? That however, leaves her assumptions unquestioned as she feels she already has an answer. It appears as though she looked back on her life in retrospect saying Yes, I do draw these conclusions from my sexual experiences, and thus negating any experience that has told her otherwise, such as many that were expressed here. For instance, if I make the assumption all men are rapists, then look back on my life and point out the ways in which I was “raped” it makes it awfully difficult to point out an instance in my life where I wasn’t, because I haven’t looked at that evidence, and any evidence brought to the contrary puts me in a rage, because my conclusions are based on my real life dammit!!! Not my real life provides basis for these conclusions.
Oh my god-did you hear what I said? I said abstain from PIV. You just prove my point, that for 99.9% of the human population, including liberal feminists and “feminist†men, sex = intercourse.
When I said “a common sexual activity” (which you conveniently ignored), I meant activity outside intercourse. I don’t think all sexual partners engage in intercourse, although the great majority do.
You’re right in that on the whole, men experience more- or at least more consistent- pleasure from intercourse. However, you’re deluded if you think that there is nothing in it for women, or if you think that most couples do not engage in anything other than intercourse. In a normal relationship, if a man did not want to do anything sexually that would give her pleasure, most often, she would break off the relationship. Is she using him? No, because a central basis for relationships is sexual activity. Get it now, bro?
“if you think that most couples do not engage in anything other than intercourse.”
Tantric sex is gaining in popularity and while it’s not total abstinence from PIV, it at least allows the couple who practices other options for intimacy before the event of PIV. It encourages that exploration, and puts more emphasis on the journey rather than the climax, and subsequently couples could decide to go months without PIV TOGETHER to have a sexual spiritual journey, as opposed to one party having choice and the other party being thrown to the dogs.
I saw this comment earlier and wanted to let it bubble in my brain a while . . .
Years ago I heard the approach described as “via media” – the middle way. In the religious context, it started as the idea of a way between the Roman Catholic hierarchy and Puritanism, with its absolute rejection of hierarchy. The idea was to find a balance between the two views, to take what is best from both.
That instinct to my mind represents the liberal tradition in the English speaking countries – a desire to find a middle way, to avoid the extremes on both sides, to examine what works best and use that to create longterm positive social change. Liberalism in the US has been under attack from both right and left for several decades now. Radical feminism represents a perfect example of that attack from the left.
I also find it interesting that radical feminism arrived at essentially the same place as religious fundamentalism albeit by a very different route. Religious fundamentalism tells us the only acceptable sex is missionary position, man on top, exactly the from of sex that radical feminism tells us unacceptable. Both movements see in sexuality the core problem of humanity. Both movements attack liberalism at every opportunity. That’s not accidental.
Glen, the term via media takes in all that. It also refers to a creedal rather than a confesional approach – general principles laid out in mythic form, as in the Apsotle’s Creed, as opposed to detailed confessions a member has to sign up to.
Detailed confessions are a feature of the Reformation. They don’t apear before then, as far as I know. They are modern, as is the literalist approach Fundamentalists take to scripture in general. Very modernist. And yet Fundamentalism is anti-modernist, a reaction to medernity. That’s a prety disabling contradiction.
But anyway, you have a failry profound cultural and cognitive disparity within Protestantism, and this Protestant cultural matrix, with this deep contradiction, is what the feminism grew up in. Could this account for a lot of the talking past each other on doctrinal matters?
This is what passes for humor on radical feminist boards:
“maybe we need to administer a PIV oath… men vow never to do this. If they are caught lying about this, we take them to the town square and have a special guillitone ready.
Another sci fi plot— women invent hoses for men to put their penis’ in, and it gives them super orgasms. This goes on for years, until the hoses are changed. Then every 100th orgasm triggers a mechanism, so that a hose gets “teeth†in it, and the unfortunate man who uses the hose gets the penis bitten to death while he screams in agony, we make a video of real men screaming as they can’t get the penis out of the torture hose, make millions of dollars off this “rock video†or rap song…. millions go to FCM’s account… and she can buy several Dairy Queen franchises.”
If that’s not hate speech, I don’t know what is. These people are not worth your time.
If you want to talk about a disturbing nexus between conservatism, particularly conservative Christian fundamentalism, and what many refer to as “radical feminism” or feminist nationalism, it doesn’t do to leave out the way the focus of radical feminism on issues that radical or nationalist feminism deems important to women ignores the manner in which oppression, exploitation, and class follow racial lines and feed on racist myths. Just as some conservatives dismiss racial oppression as irrelevant to a people united by the duties they owe to faith, family and flag, so radical feminists lump all men together as oppressors, and all women as victims.
Dworkin made this brutally clear in her book on pornography, when she mused that Black men in slavery seeing their wives, sisters, daughters and mothers raped, humiliated abused and sold did not regret the fact of these crimes, only that they themselves had not committed them. This attitude appears to affect much of her analysis, as when in her book “Right Wing Women” she ignores the possibility that wealthy, powerful conservative women may simply prefer to live lives of greater ease, material abundance, and power than 99% of the people on this planet, even if the price includes submission to the remaining half of one percent, namely upper class, “white” American men.
You did notice that it’s a tit-for-tat reference to pornography, right? They believe that men are commonly getting off on depictions of the sadistic torture of women.
Agreed, Mandos; what I read in that comment was no more hate speech than Swift’s Modest Proposal is hate speech towards children.
And for what it’s worth, Mandos, I’ve appreciated your comments here. PIV is indeed problematic, more problematic than any other sexual activity of which I can think. Its centrality in our consciousness; the refusal to take seriously the potential negative consequences for women, the focus on men’s pleasure rather than women’s — all of this is important. It’s not an argument against PIV, it’s an argument against thoughtless PIV, against a culture of entitlement to PIV. I’m right down there with y’all on that one.
But I still contend that education, empowerment, and access to the full range of reproductive and contraceptive services can radically reshape how we think of PIV (and all other forms of sex). In the end, the gulf between the sides in this argument ain’t as big as folks seem to think, purple prose notwithstanding.
“In the end, the gulf between the sides in this argument ain’t as big as folks seem to think, purple prose notwithstanding.”
Sheesh…I’ve been saying that..I never said I was opposed to FCM’s ideas, just the way in which she remedies them. (I’m sure you recognize this Hugo..not a speech for you). She keeps trying to balance out a majority view by remaining in the minority (more extreme views tend to take this shape as they alienate possible allies)..I understand the need for shock value, but when the remedies are just as “shocking” (though I don’t think awareness of PIV is shocking, or even abstaining) it stands to reason your views will remain in the minority…I always thought I was rad-fem, but if that is how rad-fem is defined…
Of course, Hugo, the difference between Swift and the aforementioned radfems is that Swift gave no indication of hatred for children outside of A Modest Proposal. In other words, his lifestyle gave no indication that he actually supported the satirical manifesto, whereas it is obvious that radfems, on the whole, don’t like men very much. It’s akin to, say, the KKK posting a “satirical” article about how all black children should be killed because black people commit a disporoportionate amount of crime in this country.
“You did notice that it’s a tit-for-tat reference to pornography, right? They believe that men are commonly getting off on depictions of the sadistic torture of women.”
Is that supposed to mitigate or excuse hate speech? I can’t think of many excuses for hate speech, myself. In fact that filthy accusation is itself just another example of hate speech. It sounds a lot like projection to me, judging from the emotional tone of most of what these people say. And to say that, haha, it’s just a joke; what, don’t you have a sense of humor, well I know where I tend to hear that dodge.
Id, you have to read FCM rhetoric in the context of rad-fem discourse — much of which, like all radical discourses, is performative. For some folks, civility represents an acquiescence to a kyriarchal order; it’s fighting the war by the enemy’s rules, rules set up to determine one winner (from the dominant class.) Do I think or write in that radical way? No, and it would be absurd if I did (it would smack of colonialism I suppose). But I get the use of hyperbole to capture authentic rage and hurt, and the passage you cite was very specifically set up as fantasy/satire for dealing with men’s perceived need to penetrate anything and everything.
Ain’t my cup of tea either, but it has its place on the feminist menu.
And Jim, on my blog, take it down a notch. In my comment thread, civility will reign.
“whereas it is obvious that radfems, on the whole, don’t like men very much”
Careful there Id…many of them are partnered with men…I’m sure they have decent views of their men…again another parallel to the compartmentalizing we see in other extreme groups…psychology people…it’s very useful
“haha, it’s just a joke; what, don’t you have a sense of humor, well I know where I tend to hear that dodge.”
You know I made a similar remark on facebook in which I commented everyone having aches and pains made me feel younger…I however had no idea that one of my friends had suffered a car accident…when I heard the hypothetical situation proposed by another friend I apologized profusely for a joke I made in bad taste even though the intention was not harmful…I didn’t play it off as just a joke once the context had changed. Maturity I guess
kristina: Careful there Id…many of them are partnered with men…I’m sure they have decent views of their men…again another parallel to the compartmentalizing we see in other extreme groups…psychology people…it’s very useful
Well men have generally been partnered to women for centuries and have oppressed them for centuries. I don’t think heterosexual love or lust overcomes sexism unfortunately.
‘And Jim, on my blog, take it down a notch. In my comment thread, civility will reign.”
I will. I’m not aware of what was uncivil, but I’ll be more careful. Can you point out what was over the line? I was not accusing Mandos or anyone here of anything, so I’m not seeing what you are, and I need to.
” Maturity I guess.”
Yes that was, even where you had no idea or intention it would give offense. Very much unlike the instance we are discussing.
Id, you have to read FCM rhetoric in the context of rad-fem discourse — much of which, like all radical discourses, is performative.
See, Hugo, I just don’t buy that. Maybe- maybe- in the case of scholars such as Dworkin or Daly, but quite honestly, I don’t think FCM is that smart. I see no indication whatsoever that she is using hyperbole, and obviously, MsCitrus wasn’t in her few posts here. Why should I believe that these people are “putting on a show”, so to speak? There are a lot of crazies in this world. Honestly, your explanation just seems like a very flimsy way for you to excuse the radfems as, at the very least, sane and worthy of attention.
Had that proposal been made by an impartial third party- as was Jonathan Swift- I might not approve but I would agree that it was meant as satire. And obviously- insofar as it goes- it probably still is. HOWEVER, the actions of radical feminists outside of that proposal, as a whole, have shown that they really do despise men, and thus it is a biased proposal made out of hatred and, in my opinion, wish fulfillment.
I’m old enough to remember the ‘feminist sex wars’, which weren’t simply about male/female PIV, but in which it was Bad and Oppressive for women to enjoy penetrative sexual acts with other women.
If he would leave if you abstained from PIV, that’s means that the PIV, if it was had, is non-consensual, …
No it’s not. It’s certainly possible to consent to a particular type of sex with someone who otherwise has no interest in you, not even other types of sex.
…because he’s clearly not having it as one way out of many to express a bond or to please her.
a) Sex doesn’t have to be about expressing a bond;
b) PIV sex can please a woman;
c) Men have as much right as women do in controlling the bounds of sexual interaction, if the man only wants PIV sex then the women has no right to expect him to do otherwise and has every right to walk away if PIV sex isn’t on offer.
He’s fucking her.
There’s nothing wrong with two people consensually fucking each other.
“Well men have generally been partnered to women for centuries and have oppressed them for centuries. I don’t think heterosexual love or lust overcomes sexism unfortunately.”
What I was saying is in context to compartmentalization, it’s a normal psychological response to deal with negative aspects in your personality. For instance…I don’t know if you’re familiar with “Nice Guy” syndrome, but it’s basically these self-proclaimed “Nice Guys” whom are just blind to their misogyny separate themselves from you know…those other guys..the ones that rape or beat women or worse yet kill…they’re not those guys, yet they may still be very offensive, but since they aren’t like the bad guys, it’s a convenient excuse to not self-examine.
I personally think PIV is a symptom of sexism, not a cause and therefore not the root…like “radical” implies.
kristina, I think you’re actually making my point for me: by compartmentalising their feelings for those male/female people close to them female/male people are able to maintain sexist beliefs in the face of contradictory personal experience. Thus centuries of oppression of women, or aroomofourown.wordpress.com.
I’m definitely aware of the Nice Guy concept and yet I don’t agree with you on its basis. I think it is based on an unawareness of female heterosexual desire for men, so that the niceness is a kind of payment for sex. When that payment is rejected in favour of a more attractive man the Nice Guy goes into the “women like Bad Boys” death spiral.
I’m not sure if we’re talking past each other here machina, but that is what I meant.
“so that the niceness is a kind of payment for sex.” That is what’s misogynistic…Faking Nice to get into someone’s pants…and the frustration of it not working is when the real guy appears. The Nice guy doesn’t make his bad boy death spiral until after many rejections, it’s not after his failed attempts at getting into ONE girl’s pants…I know, I’m married to a reformed nice guy.
I’m sure it is unawareness of female heterosexual desire that contributes, but there is no “payment” for sex. I’m not saying misogynistic in mean terms here…it’s more accidental than purposeful, but those men need to be aware of those behaviors, and how they could come across misogynistic. Sex is not about payment to me, it’s about expressing a mutual love for each other, one that is more likely to be developed over time and not to be expected on the first date. When you say they wish to start a relationship with an expectation of sex it comes across pretty dubious to me…I want to know the person I’m with is who they are, and not someone they pretended to be to get in my pants..(that is a scary thought, scarier than the asshole who’s intentions I already know)
“Faking Nice to get into someone’s pants”
Let me also clarify…it may be genuine nice intentions, but when the frustration appears it seems as though the guy isn’t that nice after all…Nice Guy is less of an actual event, as it is a perception of circumstances of an event…meaning just because a guy is labeled as Nice Guy, doesn’t mean he’s not a nice guy with good intentions, but his own lack of self examination through the eyes of another is what contributes to the label of Nice Guy…hence the compartmentalization, he figures he’s not ALL that bad…and he’s not…but it’s based on his perception and not the perception of the party he’s pursuing.
That’s nice. Now that you’ve established that you’re not one of those girls, perhaps you might consider that, for other people, sex can be respectful and mutual without being ‘mutual love for each other’.
PIV sex is not inherently anything. It carries a patriarchal message in a culture where it’s seen as domination and where female = inferior. I thought Andrew Dworkin explained this already.
“you’re not one of those girls” It was never about establishing what group of girls I belong to…the ME was about my preferences..not about taking sides in any perceived group.
“sex can be respectful and mutual without being ‘mutual love for each other’.”
I never said it couldn’t…hence to me… It is my preference…why are you trying to squeeze me into a particular group…I’m an individual, and so is everybody else which is why getting to know someone is important..what works for me may not work for you, and I won’t know that unless boundaries are established beforehand, or a disagreement arises.
“Women like bad boys” is not a death spiral. It is an accommodation of feral female sexuality.
“I’m an individual, and so is everybody else which is why getting to know someone is important..what works for me may not work for you.”
If I don’t take into consideration someone else’s needs, wants or desires in an individual case by case basis and align it for what I desire out of the situation it can cause me and the other party pain…hence the mutual love for each other…love is coming from understanding of each other’s wants and desires…not an impossible ideal you think the other must live up to.
Mandos,
I’m sorry, but you seem to be rather generous with the “tat”-part – public castrations of the sort described in the two quotes would be a “tat” only if female genital mutilation were a part of mainstream pornography. I also don’t think a vegan who believes that eating meat is murder has the right to go around killing humans to make a point.
ok. feeling a bit better, let’s do this.
I think that depends very much on what you mean by “oppression”.
I reject the “strong” notion that “oppression” and “privilege” – in the way applied by radical feminist standpoint epistemology – have any epistemological value, since they non-falsifiable categories. Which, on the other hand, doesn’t mean they cannot be valuable for introspection as some sort of intuitive categories of humility when trying to understand the experience of other people. I should add that my rejection of these categories on an analytical level doesn’t mean that I reject the notion that women have been (and in parts still are) subject to unfair social restrictions for a long time in the West, and are still subject to intense social disadvantages (the “weak” notion of “oppression” I would use) in other parts of the world .
Btw, I don’t like you better in the old thread, I just think you had a good argument back then, and you don’t have a good argument now…
I think that the explanation of “patriarchy as affirmative action for men gone overboard” – discriminatory social rules as a consequence of the “cancerous” growth of social patterns that were appropriate and useful to balance social positions in an indigenous society but became problematic with increasing “institutionalisation” of the originally balancing rules in a growing society in which the public sphere became increasingly abstract and formalised – makes a lot of sense.
With respect to PIV, I don’t think you’re making a good argument.
Hugo, I find your comments immensely thoughtful, insightful, careful, and appropriate to the discussion at hand. My issue is with making the discussion a kind of spotlight on Dworkin or FCM’s ideas, as if their ideas rule anywhere on Earth. To make their ideas the focus of a thread on a blog, a respectable one at that, is to effectively target the oppressed as being responsible for or overly empowered to impact society negatively.
The irony and the agony is that non-radical activists and non-radical thinkers often target the ideas of radicals as a way to avoid dealing with what is in far greater need of sustained attention including activism beyond writing: Rape exists largely unchallenged by men. Genocide exists largely unchallenged by whites. White male supremacy (not White Nationalism) is generally ignored by white men except when used to differentiate “average” white men from “those really racist ones”. Now, from the perspective of people I know, dealing with liberal sexist-racists is far more dangerous an act, interpersonally, than dealing with conservative sexist-racists. Because at least with the overly racist and sexist folks, you aren’t dealing with someone who denies what they think and feel, believe and act out. Whereas the danger of the liberal anti-sexist and anti-racist person is often that they believe themselves to be non-sexist and non-racist, and, in my experience, have a great deal of ego-investment in believing precisely that. Which means they can more easily manipulate and deceive someone structurally oppressed by them into friendship or “relationship”. I know of way too many examples of this to cite here.
I’m requesting, I suppose, a discussion about sex that doesn’t “target” the views of a few white radical feminists in the following ways:
1. Presuming it is possible that whites exemplify radical feminism.
2. Presuming “radical feminist ideas” are the ones that need to be challenged if we’re going to arrive at a humane place with one another.
3. Presuming that “if only those radical [white] feminists got their acts together” we’d be able to have more “reasonable” conversations about things like PIV sex.
I’d prefer to know from the male-men contributors here what you do that is sex and oppressive: and what values get expressed when you do what you do that you call “sex”, because in my experience, men talk a good line about everything, and then when I speak with the women in their lives, I find out a whole other reality–one that becomes entirely apparent, yet is unowned by the men who proclaim themselves sensitive to this or that matter. So the oppressive behaviors hide behind the platitudes and proclamations.
I’ll add that there’s a steady polluted stream in this discussion of rather virulent anti-feminism, not by you, Hugo, and not by the women contributors generally, but in the comments of a few of a men. To me, the function of their speech here is pro-patriarchal. They (John Spragge, Id, and Jim, to name names) exercise and enact male supremacist ideologies in their rather harsh and bigoted critiques of “those” radical feminists: are they referring to Audre Lorde’s essay “The Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power” or to the work of Patricia Hill Collins or Chrystos? No. Yet those women are all radical feminists who write about sex and oppression.
Perpetuating the idea that radical white feminism is “radical feminism” is, to me, an act of languaging reality in a racist/white-centric way. It is to pretend that the most radical thinkers in feminism are white, when that is not the case. Malalai Joya, Ruchira Gupta, Yanar Mohammed, Andrea Smith, to name but a few, are radical feminists whose work goes ignored by those who look only for and to white writers when attempting to summarise anything at all about “radical feminism”.
I’d argue a better approach, if focusing on this whole matter of “PIV” sex–one far more respectful to various radical feminisms–would be to discuss how and in what ways het men’s expressions of heterosexuality oppress women. Start there but with the actual ways the het men here have behaved or continue to behave oppressively during “sex” with women, whether or not it was or is “PIV”. There’s a great tradition in the West of gross, rampant inequality among heterosexually active teens wherein males “expect” blow-jobs and don’t “expect” to have to perform oral sex on the teen girls/young women, in part because girls grow up knowing what male-men expect and/or demand of them sexually–to be a masturbatory device, a sexual service station, a person who allegedly exists for men’s visual and physical pleasure.
We might note that there is also VOP sexual intercourse, and Dworkin describes it quite effectively in her book on that subject. Thank you, mythago, for mentioning this:
“PIV sex is not inherently anything. It carries a patriarchal message in a culture where it’s seen as domination and where female = inferior. I thought Andrew Dworkin explained this already.”
Also, it strikes me as a fundamental flaw in discussing Dworkin’s work to leave out that she was an activist. A radical, revolutionary activist. She wasn’t about “discussing ideas” as if “discussing ideas” was what we needed to do to remedy problems of social oppression. The effort was to incite action aimed at remedying the problem of patriarchal oppression of women, also to remedy the problem of white supremacy, which is a significant theme of her work.
To start a conversation by drawing a circle around a couple of the ideas of Dworkin and FCM in the ways done above is to set both of them up to be targets of critique, when, I’d argue, what’s needed in society is more critique of the behaviors of the defenders of the status quo. Radicals and other anti-status quo thinkers and activists are at least trying to destablise and decenter, challenge and transform the status quo views, institutions, and acts as “God-given”, “natural”, and/or inevitable.
Also, Dworkin wasn’t transphobic at all.
Also, white liberals and white conservatives have been “in bed together” a whole lot longer and in far more powerful ways to humanity (read: women) that radical feminists ever have been. To [erroneously] discuss how “Radical feminism and Religious fundamentalism” are often “arriving at the same place”–when in fact they do not and have not, is to effectively draw attention away from the fact that both white liberals and white conservatives ideologically and practically reinforce some really dangerous views that are institutionalised and acted out as harm, exploitation, and degradation. Radical feminist views, whatever they are, have no such rooting in society and are therefore never really the “threat” that far too many white liberals and white conservatives make them out to be.
For a post on “Eros and Its Strange Enemies” to not discuss Lorde’s classic and entirely radical essay on the topic of the erotic (mentioned earlier in my comment) is to once again reinforce a very white perception that Black women’s writing isn’t radically feminist.
These remarks are meant to be constructive challenges here, not punitive ones.
P.S. Andrea Dworkin nor any other radical feminist I’ve known or read, was a man-hater. That’s one of the biggest myths going. And it goes on and on because too many men assume that critique of sexism and patriarchy is a judgment on the souls of men. It isn’t. Feminists, in my experience, far more than men, are optimists about men’s capacity to be humane. See this essay for much more on that.
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html
And please see this for Audre Lorde’s essay on The Erotic:
http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/08/uses-of-erotic-erotic-as-power-classic.html
I think this is pretty patronizing. How did you know that they’re white? Or that they object to the discussion/dissection/spread of their ideas? Or that they needed you to jump to their rescue from “targeting”? I’m really not getting that sense from them.
And this discussion falls afoul of your patriarchy radar because people didn’t namedrop enough? That’s a pretty uncashable privilege cheque right there.
Bwuh? Well, I, for one, am not about to start participating in a creepy TMI confessional for your prurient ideological amusement, Julian. Political self-flagellation is merely another conceit and/or fetish. I like my discussions of feminist theorizing without a helping of Mao, and approx. a billion Chinese citizens agree with me, so you can stick that in your multiracial pipe and smoke it.
I was re-reading Anais Nin’s diary from 1931-32 last night (the Henry and June period) and I was struck – in light of the ongoing conversation here – by Nin’s journey, as a woman in her late twenties, through a mature sexual awakening; she grew sexually assertive (charting her own course through sexual experiences) and more compassionate; more explicit as well, gaining a language with which to describe sexuality. She describes June as erotic and intoxicating (and her prose is erotic and intoxicating), but she also sees Henry the same way; that Henry comes off better in diaries is a function of Nin seeing in him a soul mate and in June a muse.
Nin’s experience was complex, multi-layered; liberating and empowering, confusing and clarifying; it transformed her. In Audre Lorde’s essay, I detected similar themes and ideas as Anais Nin experienced – a joyous acknowledgement of the physical self and the pleasures of the flesh. Nin’s unexpurgated diary Henry and June was first published in 1986; I started college in fall of 87. The film was released in 1990 (I remember watching it in both college and grad school). Nin’s approach to the erotic was hugely influential in my circle of friends (I think it had something to do with a sense of kinship with her style and sensibilities); I have a friend who recently commented “I thought I was going to be Anais Nin, turns out I’m actually Mrs. Dalloway”.
On FCM’s blog (and those she links to) I don’t see a celebration of the erotic as in Audre Lorde’s speech or in Nin’s diaries. I don’t think that’s accidental; Audre Lord was a poet, her world was the world of poetry, her view of the world that of the poet, Nin a novelist, keenly aware that she was writing from within her perspective as a woman; I’m tempted to use the phrase polymorphously perverse to describe the liberated sexuality described by both writers. That creative impulse seems absent from the majority of radical feminist blogs I’ve read. Rather, those writers seem consistently to evince a harsh, even repressive view of human sexuality.
As a gay man and a Christian, I find that view of human sexuality troubling. Sexuality and the erotic can be a path toward personal liberation (although let’s be honest that you can’t screw your way to enlightenment); it’s more a matter of growing to love and accept your physical self and seeing that same physical being in others. I met a wonderful pastor a while back who described her love of her own body as biblically sanctified – that the bible said you should love the full harvest and she grabbed her breasts and said, “I have a full bushel to love.” That may sound silly but I found in her liberation to love her physical being a path toward a deeper sense of self-acceptance (and a growing empathy for the erotic on others).
Certainly, I didn’t believe and I don’t believe Huge argued that FCM and other radical feminists who hold similar views are the totality of radical feminism. But I find in their writings a hostility toward eros, hence the topic of this post. I see a hierarchy that is the inverse of the patriarchy. I’m an old-fashioned boy and I believe that the opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy it is fraternity (cite: Norman O Brown, Love’s Body). Equality is the opposite of hierarchy.
In some sense the values espoused by radfems such as FCM are the mirror image of those espoused by conservative fundamentalists, which means to my mind they hold many of the same problematic assumptions about human nature and sexuality.
Despite his civil tone- which is noted, and appreciated by me- you need only to look at Julian’s blog to understand that he is as radical and as unreasonable as FCM herself. He himself is a man-hater- or at least, he hates 99% of men (I assume he excludes himself and perhaps a select few who pander to his insane hyperfeminist worldview).
Id, tone it down a notch. One of the things civil people refrain from is calling each other “insane.” I think Julian asks some interesting questions,and as you surely know, sometimes our most helpful interlocutors are people with whom we strongly disagree.
No hateration in this bloggerie, folks.
Okay, fair enough. I think Julian’s views are as extreme as FCM’s, however, as he has presented himself respectfully, it’s the least I can do to respond in kind.
Julian, I think you’re a smart guy. I’ve visited your blog maybe a dozen-odd times over the past few years , and I can at least verify that. I ultimately stopped going because it seemed to me stagnant, pointless- needless anger spewing forth in all directions. You may say that anger is a necessary fuel, and maybe you’re right, but you need to have someone who can rally around you. You attack whites, men, straights, the upper class, the middle class, the West, and really everyone else, at least in some way. You have no group to turn to, really, in order to get anything done, because everyone aside from the eight radfems who visit your blog are the enemy. You’re not willing to work with any of those people you despise, and you’re not willing to cooperate with anyone whose views, especially on gender, deviate even slightly from your own. Since very, very few people are as extreme as you are, your blog seems to me an exercise in futility, serving primarily as an echo chamber for the 15-20 people on the blogosphere who agree with you. It’s just a swirling black hole of negativity and with no real tangible benefit to all the yelling, it just seems to me like a giant waste of time. I say this not to be mean or cruel, but simply to be honest. And- unlike factcheckme or MsCitrus- I do think you’re smart, and I do think you have something to say. I just think you go about it wrong.
I’ll address your post on this blog tomorrow. But just know that that is how I am approaching you as a debater.
Hi Id,
“You may say that anger is a necessary fuel, and maybe you’re right, but you need to have someone who can rally around you. You attack whites, men, straights, the upper class, the middle class, the West, and really everyone else, at least in some way. You have no group to turn to, really, in order to get anything done, because everyone aside from the eight radfems who visit your blog are the enemy.”
I hear from most people who read my blog not in the form of comments, Id, but in the receipt of thank you notes sent to me personally. Primarily by women of color worldwide. That’s not 10-15 people, and the very idea that if we exclude whites, men, straights, upper class folks, and Westerners–accepting for the moment that I do (and I don’t)–that we are left with a dozen or so people proves one of the main points of my blog: that the most marginalised and invisibilised people in the white male supremacist West are not really considered, are not listened to, are not regarded as experts on “humanity”. That population is Indigenous and non-Indigenous women of color. I hope you’ll accept this: women of color, globally, are the world’s majority population of these groups: white men, men of color, white women, and women of color. By far women of color do most of the world’s work and have the deepest and most direct experiences of various forms of globalised oppression.
My experience of most blogs is that they start with an assumption that one must appeal to the better side of white het males or that for political action to be effective it must be organised around white men or white male supremacist premises about civilisation and human nature–however varied those are.
Contrary to your summary about me earlier, I’m no man-hater–which is abundantly clear if you read my blog–and I wonder, continually, what the political function is of (usually) men accusing people of this rather preposterous term. We know plenty of valued men are misogynists, for example, but they are still regarded for their ideas. Why doesn’t this work for people who are presumed to be “man-haters”. Andrea Dworkin was one of the most important political philosophers of the last fifty years, yet gets written off as a man-hater so no one has to take her ideas seriously. How convenient is that? And how privileged?
As I said, I don’t know any man-hating radical feminists and I know a lot of women who identify as such and who are politically active. So the function, it seems to me, of tossing around that label is to dismiss, box up, and ship out someone’s ideas, because, well, someone doesn’t feel appropriately “regarded” and because the ideas are too threatening to the status quo.
Women of color are both the most threatened population (demographic) and aren’t generally regarded as human by most white men–in the sense that white men feel compelled to know what they think, figure out how to be allies to them and their efforts–whatever those are–and center their own values around those ideas and philosophies.
Yurugu by Marimba Ani is a brilliant book and I can name on less than one hand the number of white men I know who have read it. Why do you suppose that is? If the argument is “I never heard of it” well, that’s more proof of what I’d discussing here, isn’t it? The politics of popularity, the politics of publishing, and the politics of who is regarded as being “brilliant”. Can you name ten women of color who are regarded by white men as being “brilliant”?
If a philosophical, political viewpoint doesn’t put white men at the center of the universe, in my experience white men will not seriously engage with the ideas–as seriously as white men and women of color engage with the ideas of Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche or any number of white male philosophers who are not as smart or as important to listen to and understand as Dr. Ani, Dr. Shiva, or Andrea Dworkin.
I see that the most politically savvy activists, the people who most work in community, the people who are the best organisers across socio-economic differences, are women of color. The reasons are structural, not genetic.
My blog exists to support women of color’s activism globally, as I think that certain forms of privilege preclude some groups from being effective organisers, and I most certainly include myself in the bunch who wouldn’t make good organisers. Privilege has a cost, and one of the significant costs is that it makes some people think they are “the center”, “the most important”, the most bright, the geniuses, and so on. I have not found that to be the case. All of the most brilliant people I know are not white and are not men, with a few exceptions–Andrea Dworkin and James Baldwin, for example, being among the exceptions. White men typically balk at this sort of “sexist” or “racist” assessment, imploring me to see white men as individuals. I respond: when you regard women of color as individuals and stop projecting biases and stereotypes onto them, let’s have that discussion. White men typically respond that I’m making assumptions about white men. I’m not. Everyone on Earth who encounters white male supremacist institutions carries those biases and stereotypes of women of color, not just white men.
My blog speaks a language that doesn’t appeal much to white men–across sexuality. And given who I’m most directly supporting, that really isn’t too much of a concern to me. I see blogs across the web appealing to some need to be regarded well by white men in many ways. I was an active participant on Stan Goff’s blog and watched how the intellectual debating was organised around white male supremacist values, and how the only Black woman on the blog was routinely ignored or turned into many things she wasn’t, because those “brilliant” white male masters of social discourse couldn’t get beyond their own biases to even see or hear her. It was then I realised that there wasn’t much use in appealing to the oppressor classes, and that for me, my work was to support the most oppressed in the world. So that’s what I do and hundreds of thousands of people read and a small percentage of them report in to me about what’s going on in their parts of the world usually with the addition of these words: “THANK YOU FOR GETTING IT. I didn’t think white males could”. I don’t exist to make people think that white men can “get it”. But as a white male, I understand the value of being validated by someone from the oppressor classes–it’s what most people are seeking in one way or another, after all. Including the validation that comes with being told “I see you, and I see how my civilisation’s values and practices require your destruction.”
My goal isn’t to form a political bond with you, Id. I don’t seek out opportunities to network with people who demonstrate a repeated investment in castigating feminists while not holding pimps and rapists accountable in a society in which pimps and rapists rule, and feminists of any kind do not. When I find men who argue against patriarchal oppression of women by men, to men, with as much “virility” as too many men defend rapists and pimps, I listen to them and seek engagement. I will say this: I’ve rarely encountered a white man with the subtleties of insight and political sensitivities of Hugo Schwyzer.
So thank you Hugo, for giving me hope.
Hi Mandos,
You ask:
“How did you know that they’re white? Or that they object to the discussion/dissection/spread of their ideas? Or that they needed you to jump to their rescue from “targetingâ€? I’m really not getting that sense from them.”
I’m not presuming it. I’m stating my own views. How do I know Andrea Dworkin and FCM are white? Because each was/is out as white.
“I, for one, am not about to start participating in a creepy TMI confessional for your prurient ideological amusement, Julian. Political self-flagellation is merely another conceit and/or fetish.”
That’s not what I was asking of you, but it’s interesting that that’s how you interpreted it. And, for the record, that’s what most men say when asked to be honest about what men do sexually in their own lives. For examples of how to speak honestly, without “self-flagellation” or anyone’s “amusement”, see the blog “Sexist Man” here:
http://sexistman.blogspot.com/?zx=b31c8ccd3f0c6143
And to Id,
Do you assume the values, premises, and ideas of Western Civilisation are not extreme? I’m curious to know if you take it as a given that our contemporary society is in any way moderate.
See this for more:
http://www.endgamethebook.org/Excerpts/1-Premises.htm
Hi Glendenb,
Your points, to me, reinforce my points: why focus on one woman’s blog, and the ideas in it, when you could be engaging with the ideas of Audre Lorde? Who is served by doing the former and not the latter?
Wait, did my post get deleted? Er, what the heck? I spent like forty-five minutes on that response.
I, comments that include personal attacks are all being deleted now. Period. Civility reigns here, and if you don’t like it, you are free to go elsewhere to vent.
Julian is someone with whom I disagree about many things, but he asked a thoughtful question that I understood in a certain way, and I gave him what I hope is a thoughtful answer. The merits of my answer are open for debate and discussion, but teeing off on radical feminists isn’t.
Well, perhaps I’ve made some unwarranted comments and I apologize, but I really don’t think that was one of them. It was a detailed response to (some of) Julian’s points. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
And? What implication do you draw from this? It suggests to me that most people have a healthy barrier against TMI, and that they get a creepy vibe from people who ask them for purity checks on their sexual behaviour, and they’re quite rightly not willing to share it to satisfy someone’s ideological predilections.
What does it suggest to you?
Oy. That blog is clearly a self-flagellatory sexual fetish. There’s absolutely nothing radical about that. It is attention-drawing behaviour that is only available to the supremely privileged. I have no truck with self-criticism sessions (they’re by definition dishonest), and neither should you.
So for your purposes, consider me to be an ephemeral being who wafted in from another dimension. Thank you very much.
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