(no subject)

[ginmar]

Oh, Christ, is it time for another round of, "Oh, I hate those feminazis who want all men to die!"? It's like that bullshit email forward that goes around about Jane Fonda---it's kind of disgusting how eager people are to be ignorant assholes.

I always like it when somebody goes, "Oh, but I only hate the feminazis!"

Well, that's okay, then, sweetie, you go on right ahead!

Except since when did feminists invade Poland? Where are the death camps, by the way?

And if you're a Rush Limbaugh fan, go fuck off and die, would you?

The type of people who simper, "Oh, I only hate the feminazis!" aren't interested in accuracy. They just like hating feminists, because they're good girls, not those women, those loud shouty women who just might have reason to be angry. But, no, they're unladylike, let's gather our little sewing circle together and pat ourselves on the back.

Fuck that shit.

They don't want facts. They want the status quo. They want lite feminism, which is basically just being feisty.

They tend to trot out Andrea Dworkin's name, as well as Valerie Solanus. And of course they don't give a shit about facts.

Andrea Dworkin was a few years older than me. She grew up when rape was basically only something black men could get convicted of---if the victim was white----and that sexual harassment was just a fact of life. Women pretty much had to get married, but men could walk away from wife and kids with effortless ease. Men also got to whine about how they needed those good jobs to support their wifey and kiddies, even if the woman they were competing against had a family herself.

Want ads---high paying jobs for men, shitty jobs where you got harassed for women---were segregated. People forget how incredibly blatant sexism was just forty years ago. Girls couldn't wear pants to school in Minnsota till I was in the third of fourth grade---and even then there was an uproar. Contempt for women was everywhere. Oh, and when men agitated for civil rights, even when Rosa Parks struck the first blow, it was clear that men were the ones who were going to be liberated. "The position of women in the SNCC," said Stokely Carmichael, "is prone." Women didn't need rights. Rights were for men. When women broke with the male leftists and formed their own movement after asking nicely for years, the men laughed at them---much the way John Adams laughed at his wife, Abigail, who begged him in a letter to 'remember the ladies.' Later on, he railed at the possibility of a petticoat regime. In the Sixties, leftist men and conservative men both thought the idea of womens' rights were a crock of shit---and the birth control pill meant that for eager guys, there was no longer any reason for the word 'no'. Women had to put out now, these sensitive war protesters gloated.

Eldredge Cleaver boasted about how he practiced raping black girls in the ghetto before switching to white women, attacking and damaging white mens' property. Men of all ages tripped over him to express their appreciation. In reviews of "Soul on Ice" at Amazon, only three or four mention rape, and then act like the poor guy was driven to it or something. The others just use incredibly florid language and maybe mention 'gender', if they hint at Cleaver's real life at all.

It's hard to get across how much power men had over women. It's hard to get across how much power they still have over women to this day. And this is what Andrea Dworkin lived through, without all the extra experiences she had. She was a battered woman, a prostitute, a rape victim. I think she gets to hate men after all that. And I think that's just fine, because after spending half my time as a feminist, I'm really sick and tired of the sort of cowards who go, "Oh, well, rape culture is bad, but what's really tragic is how it affects men!" Try having a discussion about rape, and you'll find yourself confronted with dudes who are looking to find out just how much they can get away with in terms of rape. "But what if we're both drunk?!" they demand, thinking they've found the perfect technicality so they can rape. Absence of no is not automatically the presence of yes, there, asshole. These guys assume, however, that the state of women at all times is one of consent. That's what we're for, right?

As illustrated by the "Schrodinger's Rapist" thing, men have an infinite capacity to whine about how womens' well being is just such a infringement of mens rights to do whatever they want to around women. Men whined to the heavens about how, how would a woman know he wasn't a rapist unless she put her book and her rights down and catered to whatever dude is around her and demanding her attention? Yeah, I think I'm entitled to hate that kind of self-absorbed bullshit. I'm not your widdle reflecting pool, Narcissus. Get the fuck over yourself and let me read my goddamned book. Did I look at you? Did I acknowledge your existence in any way? No? Then fuck off. I don't have to get to know you. I don't want to get to know you. For starters, I think you have problems respecting 'no'. That means something fairly important.

What bugs me most about the simpering souls who go, "I just hate the feminazis'" is that they ignore all the accumulated bullshit that builds up. Oh, wait, am I supposed to be sunny and cheerful to everybody? No, I'm not. Sucks to be you. Go find somebody else if you want that person. It's not me. And if you tell me to "smile" I'm going to smack you till my hand stings. Too angry? Tough shit. I hate namby pamby people, but then again at certain levels of society, you get to be that way.

The other women who get brought up all the time are Valerie Solanas and Jane Fonda. Solanus wrote "The SCUM Manifesto" which every MRA around likes to act is the secret feminist Declcaration of Manhating, and then she shot Andy Warhol. Jane Fonda is the subject of periodic email forwards which contain bullshit. Anybody who brings up any one of the three is trying to damn all feminists. I think it needs to be turned back on them. So are you trying to say that these three women--Dworkin, Solanus and Fonda---are somehow representative of feminists? Asshole. But they always come up. Or else so do general condemnations of 'those feminists who hate men.' You see some echoes of this kind of thinking in the widespread condemnation of Jeremiah Wright, who was roundly criticized after Obama announced his run for 'hating America."

Wright was a US Marine when there was a draft, and when rich white boys protested in the street against fighting in a war like, you know, peasants. He was a Marine when lynchings were common. I'd say he's entitled to say whatever the fuck he wants, however unpleasant it is for white people who don't want to think about what it's like to live in a racist society. When you're talking about somebody with relatively little power hating on their oppressor, the same thing applies. When I see more men condemn rape and rapists and rapists apologists---just look at the Julian Assange fanboys!----than they do feminists getting angry about rape, then we'll talk. Not until and not on mens' terms.

I ain't going to hold my fuckin' breath, frankly.