Author Archives: storyending
Scent of a Man
This is a companion piece to that snore-fest of a misogynist classic, Scent of a Woman, starring tired old typecast actor, Al Pacino.
Soooo, let’s pretend I’m blind. All my other senses are heightened. I’m not going to go so far as to say I can identify individuals, unlike the Pacino-pornhound, but I will say this: no matter where I go in the world, my nose knows when I’ve entered or passed a place where men go. And by ‘go’, I’m not just talking location, but also the euphemism.
Yep. I mean urine.
Male urine is one of the worst smells in the world, up there with male jizz and dead bodies/rotting meat. (I’d rather smell poop or farts than those other three, actually.) But you don’t need to be blind or bolstered by heightened olfactory powers to know when males are lurking and leaking. First, they piss everywhere! Not just in washrooms, but in public. On my most recent trip to the US, the very first smell to greet me when I alit from the public transport from the airport was male urine. And the first thought to go through my mind as I choked and tried to breathe was first ‘Welcome to America!’ but I quickly revised it to ‘Same smell, different country’. Interestingly, that smell was the last one I experienced before I boarded public transportation in China on my way to the US. Only my location had changed. The smell was the same. I realized that male wee is the great globalizer. McDonald’s or Walmart may peddle the globalizing shit, but male bodies, literally, produce the globalizing piss. And while all serve to make you feel a sense of familiarity no matter where you are, the urine does so more than anything else because olfactory memory, especially paired with fear and disgust, tends to be one of the most powerful mind-fucks. That scent alone will remind you who is in charge (men), who is destroying the world (men), and of whom you need to be afraid (men).
There are reminders of this power in the form of piss and pissing everywhere you go. One example from my world: I was walking down a busy street in China two days ago in broad daylight, and a dude ahead of me stepped off the sidewalk, unzipped his fly and let loose right then and there under the trees lining the walk. No shame. Just pure, unadulterated male privilege. The privilege to be completely safe while uncovered. The privilege to go unquestioned while exposing genitals. The privilege to filth up common space with human waste. Imagine a woman doing that. Wouldn’t happen. She’d end up raped, beaten, shamed and/or arrested. Children, as well, are given a free pass, especially if they are male. Chinese mothers teach their boys from a young age that they don’t need to learn to control their urges. Male urges must be given precedence over everything else, including public health and safety. I don’t wish to see cock in public EVER, yet I see little-boy dick absolutely everywhere I go in China, even in ‘civilized’ places. Little-boy dick pissing on the sidewalk, on trees, in the street from the curb. Who the fuck wants to be reminded of their masters’ presence on a constant basis?
But let’s get to the toilets. Even in countries where males are sort of required to limit their urination to designated areas (like that is possible…), these places often stink much more than women’s toilets. Part of it might be the spray factor. This need to stand and spray isn’t human, but rather, pure, unthinking animal. Men really should sit down to pee. Basic logic. But given the world we live in, men don’t have to think about their grossness and entitlement because either a woman is cleaning up after them or they just live in their own filth without noticing. I can’t imagine ever again sharing a residential space, including a bathroom, with a male.
In China and other places without a strict cleanliness mentality or understanding of basic hygiene, and with out-of-control populations (meaning high volume male urinating), and with poor plumbing systems, the bathrooms are absolutely disgusting. I even find the women’s bathrooms in China horrific. They stink. Part of the problem is cleaning mentality. People very much believe that if someone is employed to clean, then they can be as filthy and inconsiderate as they want. They leave urine, blood and shit everywhere – for someone else to clean up. But unfortunately, the cleaners seldom know how to clean properly or care about cleaning properly. Another part of the problem is the design of squat toilets. Unlike with the Western sit-down toilet, the squatter bowls are open and shallow. Unless you can force your piss stream to a trickle or position yourself directly over the small hole at the very end of the long and very shallow bowl, urine bounces off the porcelain and sprays absolutely everywhere. Gross.
But the male toilets in China? #$%@! Unlike the women’s, I can smell them from 100 feet away. Directly passing by them is an eye-watering, brain-cell-killing, throat burning, lung-emptying experience. My swearing reflex, much like a gag-reflex, is triggered every time. When I taught high school in the Chinese countryside several years ago, my poor American colleague’s classroom was situated right beside one of the male toilets. Her room was permanently tainted by the smell of wee. Male wee. It must have gotten into the wood of the students’ desks. So, even with the door closed during a low-urination time of day, it was suffocating. I felt so bad for her. I was luckier with my classroom placement.
Now, I got curious. Not that curious – not all-day research curious – just a little. Male stench can’t just be a plumbing or cleaning or entitlement problem, right? There has got to be a difference in male and female urine. I can’t deny what my nose, throat, eyes, and lungs constantly tell me. I read that there are differences in male cat urine (felinine protein for marking territory) and male mouse urine ((methylthio)methanethiol which attracts females), for example. Scientific inquiry (or lack thereof) indicates that there is nothing that really explains why male and female urine might smell differently. The implication is that it must be all in one’s head (and, goddammit, one’s throat and nose…), of course. Individually, urine smell can be affected by dehydration, types of food eaten, and disease conditions. After a cursory look, there is no conclusion that excreted hormones account for male stench. Who knows what is true? Either there is no difference (hard to believe), or men are abusing science to prove they are not gross, or the science hasn’t been done because it is more important to fund studies trying to prove women are natural, abusable fuckholes. I found one poorly written pop-sciencey/interpretation article written by an unintelligent, male-identified woman trying to imply a link (where no link exists) between mice and humans. Sorry lady, women are not fucking ‘turned on’ by the smell of male wee. Quite the opposite… Quite the opposite indeed… The smell of men inspires violent urges in me, actually.
Regardless of whether there is a difference in urine – really, that is not the point here, and I don’t really care – there is still a conclusion to be made. Men stink, and they need to pee in designated places, sit down while they do it, and clean the fuck up after themselves – especially if they are using residential bathrooms or dual-sex/unisex bathrooms where women are forced to use the same facilities. And this is yet another reason to keep male trannies out of the women’s toilets, btw. And their man-pee stench will give them away as dudes even if the bad wig and smirking entitlement don’t. Aside from the fear/intimidation, safety and violence issues, and usurping women’s status and rights issues, trannie men stink, too, and they should put their stinky male urine where it belongs – THE MEN’S ROOM.
Requiring men to self-regulate is not a human rights abuse. It is a tempering of ages-old privilege and infringement upon the rights of women.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Inadequately Comforting a Distressed Young Woman
I had a rather delightful day on Saturday. I mentioned in a previous post that I was invited to a little grass roots English club. Out of this encounter, I’ve acquired some new mentees. It’s a mixed sex group. I’m quite pleased to have young women present, and I’ve likely mentioned in at least one past post that as a survival mechanism, I de-sex the male students so that I can bear to be around them. In other words, I go out with a group of young women and young students (males). Any outings I have with groups such as these are generally pleasant. If it were unbearable, I wouldn’t do it. I go places I may not have been before, I learn about local culture and history, try new food and new restaurants, and if I’m very lucky, I can give the young women a chance to talk about anything they want. It is my frequent impression that they are not really allowed to voice their deepest concerns or fears. I exist outside their cultural paradigm, and I think that makes me less threatening in a sense.
On Saturday, a group of five students (two females and three students) and I arranged to visit two culturally important venues in our city. It was actually a heap of fun and ended with a glorious meal at a restaurant with Dongbei cuisine. But at one point, the two young women began talking about marriage, which immediately put me on edge. I frequently have to deal with incredulous reactions to being unmarried and child-free. I am on the receiving end of concern, surprise, disapproval, and very, very, very occasionally jealousy. Mostly, it is annoying. I’ve spent my life being told how abnormal I am, that there is something ‘wrong’ with me, and there is always this valuation/appraisal of my human status no matter what culture I live in. Only women deal with this. Even if a man is questioned on his status, which he frequently isn’t, there is no value judgment made of him. Marital and parenthood status does not affect men. With women, you can be denied employment because you are assumed to be defective or lacking an important human quality that magically affects your ability to do work.
But I’m pretty much used to the disdain and questioning. I used to try to justify myself. I don’t do that anymore. Sometimes, I’m downright honest about the whole mess that is female slavery. By the time I’m sixty, I’ll be right salty!
One thing that makes me very sad in places like China is that women have no choice whatsoever about their slavery. Western women have much more choice when it comes to their fates. I get why and how Western women buy into the heterosexuality mandate and why they still cave under the social pressure (which is real, but seldom a life or death situation) to sell their vaginas, uteri, and physical, emotional and psychological energy to men who may not even be the highest bidders. But at the same time, it is bizarre to me and fucks me off to no end. The threat of punishment keeps the majority of women cowering and doing their duty. Those of us who have disobeyed have suffered and will suffer in old age for these important defiances.We help our enslaved sisters when they inevitably suffer at the hands of their Nigels, but we don’t get help in return when we are alone, old, injured or unable to support ourselves. Sigh.
But while I feel fortunate in some ways (economically poor, but somewhat psychologically free) for not being forcefully enslaved, despite my lower status among women and the recipient of punishment no matter where I live, most women in the world really have no choice at all. In China, I’ve never met a single woman who has managed to escape forced marriage and forced motherhood. But I have met a handful of girls who say they don’t want that life for themselves. And I get strong impressions from each of them that they are lesbians or completely sexually naive or asexual. These women, I have great sympathy for. Non-compliance is a much more serious issue here.
On Saturday, one of the young women told me repeatedly in amazement and with some envy that I was so independent. She couldn’t believe my father didn’t push me into anything (I permanently left my mother’s control when I was 20, and the pressure hadn’t started from her at that point in my life). The young woman quietly told me that she didn’t want to get married at all. Interestingly and with insight and sadness, she told me that she wished she did want it. This young woman knows what is in store for her. She knows how difficult something can be when you are forced into doing something you don’t want to do. I’m not sure if she articulates the concept of rape to herself, but she definitely has dreams of freedom, independence and choice. She said she hopes she will change her mind when she gets older. Right now, she is about 19.
It hurts me to hear young women talk about this and that girls of this young age are worrying deeply about this issue. The male students, on the other hand, have nothing to worry about. Marriage was built for them. Marriage benefits men in many ways and it doesn’t negatively affect any aspect of their lives. I’ve never heard a young male talk about marriage or children in anything but a flippant, carefree, positive way, in fact.
The males in our group tried to find out what the conversation was about. I summed it up for them. Marriage was designed by men for men. And it is not good for women. They seemed shocked. Like I said above, they don’t think about this stuff. Life is easy for them. They are the oppressors. One of them concluded that each person is entitled to their own opinion. Sure. Opinions. But I know more about women’s history than they do, so I am coming from a place of facts and reality, as well as my experience as a member of the oppressed, as the basis of my very informed opinion.
These conversations with women are difficult because I can’t do anything concrete to help them. I want for them to have freedom from males and the freedom to do whatever they want with their lives. I’d like to see a worldwide system change away from Patriarchy and female enslavement. I want to see the institution of family and marriage demolished. I wish women to be economically independent so that they don’t need men at all and they can concentrate on healthy, lifelong female relationships. But I know there is nothing at all I can do for them except listen to them, let them know they are heard, and that I care about their experiences and stories.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
Dismay…
There are so many reasons to hate capitalism, but at the top of the list is the requisite and abundant abuse of women. The abuse happens in several ways. One of them is through advertisements. As China has become more capitalist, the objectification of women has gotten worse. Woman-hate has always been there, as it is and has been in all cultures. It just manifests in different ways depending on politics, social system, economy, national history, etc. Capitalism, which is completely dependent on the abuse of women (and would collapse without it), offers men several new ways to hurt women. Using their images in abusive ways is just one.
As I’ve posted before (specifically here), China, like many places, sees white women as the ultimate whores. White female bodies are used to sell all sorts of products in China, but are especially useful for sex- and female-targeted (aren’t they the same? woman=sex) products.
The dismay felt today occurred when I walked past my local, 3-storey department and grocery store. A few times a year, they change the massive 2-storey-tall advertisements. And I noticed something. One of these ads is not like the others. Let’s see if you notice too. I present to you the current set of ads lining the outer walls of the largest shopping centre in my area.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Did you catch it? Did you notice which one was different? In case you can’t figure it out, let me help. There are two fully clothed, white dudes. Yeah, their styles are kind of effeminate, but that is actually quite normal for straight men in China. Chinese women will probably find these dudes attractive, I think. Then there are two white boy-children. Fully clothed with the ‘too cool for school’ look on their faces. Chinese people will find them acceptable. Then we’ve got a Chinese adult male. Slick, respectably dressed. This dude will command respect. And to be honest, I’d actually wear that outfit. Then we’ve got a young Chinese woman. Fully clothed (hard to see, but there is a tan-coloured shirt under all the red outerwear). She’s young and a cool up-and-comer. Timid, but part of China’s future.
And then we’ve got the White Whore. Dressed in clothes that are the very symbol of female slavery, humiliation, degradation, and inhumanity. Dressed in next to nothing in a culture where uncovered women are only seen as garbage to be used by men. This is part of the dual message that comes through in the advertising. “This is Woman – specifically White Woman – and she should be used, but not respected.”
All over the world, including China, white women are the object of choice for advertising lingerie, wedding rings, condoms, and other woman-as-sex-object items. I face these images of what are essentially representations of ME every single day, and it always occurs to me how much these images and their evil messages are internalized by everyone around me. We know these marketing devices work, otherwise we wouldn’t have advertisements at all. People have degrees in this shit from business schools. Marketing sends messages. So when I encounter people after they are daily bombarded with the ‘white woman as whore and nothing else’ message, how am I supposed to garner respect? How am I supposed to be seen as human? All they see when they look at me and other white women is some sex-crazed, fuckable property of white men. It scares the shit out of me, and I fucking hate it.
This is the intertwined racism and misogyny of China.
[This post is part of the White Girl series.]
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Talking About the Boys and the Bees
I frequently get bored. I do a lot of stuff by myself, which is fine. I’ve always been that way. Since I was a kid. But that tendency is exacerbated in China to the point where I am frequently bored out of my skull. While in other places, doing things by myself can be either indoors or outdoors, in China, I spend most of my time indoors simply because going outside – even just outside my building – means facing too much negative attention from racist, misogynist people who don’t see me as quite human.
So getting bored means that sometimes I sign on to do things that may or may not be fun. I had one such opportunity this week. There are a couple of kids who drop in on one of my English classes at my home campus. I like ambitious people who look for chances to self-improve without being forced to do it, so I let them sit in and participate. There aren’t a lot of truly self-motivated people in the world, and I’d hate to put out what fire they may have. Anyhow, one of them announced he was a member of a little grass roots English club on my campus and invited me to attend. I figured I’d check it out. After all the group was small, and the students were not English majors, but young people just interested in improving their oral language skills that they are sadly not offered in their university programs.
I won’t get into what transpired, as that is not the point of this post, except to say that it was a nice meeting, and I was impressed with all of the students. I think I’ll go again in the future because they really are quite keen on learning and practising. And some of them have interesting things to say – I like to know what young people in a growing economy and weird political system think about the world.
What was interesting – or not, depending on your perspective – was a question that came up and the conversation that ensued. People always ask me what I do in my free time or what I’m interested in. I hate this question because I don’t have a lot to say. I don’t do a lot. I read. I write. I go to the market. I cook food that is suitable for a person living alone. I see friends or students occasionally. That’s about it. Boring stuff. But if I can’t hold back, I will tell people that I love bees. By hold back, I mean that if I start talking about bees, I can go on and on and on. I love them. I have worked with bees and I have fallen in love with them, so to speak. They make me happy. And I like to watch them, photograph them, and think about them. I also like to dispel myths about them, alleviate irrational fears of them, and tell people about how they operate. They are very misunderstood creatures.
One thing I really love about them is that they are a female-dominated society. Now, they are not female-dominated in the way that the few matriarchal human societies have been/are. Human matriarchies are good for women, but they are also good for men. Under human matriarchy, everybody actually does well. It’s not based on domination/submission as patriarchies are. The reality is contrary to what men fear – because men think women in charge would behave exactly like men. Total nonsense and indicative of how limited men are in their imaginations and how aware they actually are of how much they abuse us. They can only project, and they know they deserve to be punished for what they have done… No, unlike human matriarchies, bee society is female-dominated in a way that doesn’t benefit male bees (drones). I approve, actually. Not of the hierarchy with queen on top, but of the efficiency and cohesiveness of bee society. Males are essentially USELESS. Only a few are born and their sole purpose is to impregnate the queen. Other than that, they are completely and utterly useless. They can’t even break their way out of their birth cells, unlike the females. The females must liberate the poor little fuckers from their cells. The drones contribute nothing to the hive. They don’t bring back resources. They don’t clean or heat/cool the hive. They don’t even have a stinger with which to defend the hive. After mating, the females do what no human female has the guts to do: they either drive the males from the hive, or kill them immediately. Bee hives depend upon the contributions of every single bee. Non-contributors use badly needed resources. Males are a drain on hive resources from birth. And the girls deal with this problem effectively.
Whoops, see what I mean? Once I start, it is hard for me to stop.
Anyhow, the students asked me about what I was most interested in, and I started in on the bees. I told them all about this female-dominated society. They were fascinated, but what was interesting to me was how the students reacted. It was a half female, half male group. None of the males said anything at all in response to the cold hard reality of bee life for drones. But several of the young women started lamenting on how unfair it was for the males to be killed. Waaah!!! Poor resource-sucking males!!!
And this is why human society is in the poor, go-nowhere, filthy state that it is in. Women constantly stick up for unproductive, abusive, destructive, poisonous, dominant, rapist, parasitical, disgusting men. Most women accept their brainwashing and support the female slave structure instead of taking their rightful place as leaders and creators and protectors and stewards.
Bee society isn’t my ideal society. I do believe there is a place for those who are unable to be in top productivity (i.e., elderly wise women nearing the end of their lives), but that is probably more practical for human culture and not realistic for bees. And the hyper-focus on breeding is not what I would consider a human priority like it appears to be for bees. But removing destructive, abusive, unchanging forces entirely from a culture or society? That I can get on board with. And I think it is something human females need to do if they ever expect to live in peace, safety and happiness in this world.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Chinese Male Privilege or ‘You Will Bear My Son, Or Else…’
Because it doesn’t happen a lot, every time I make a new female friend who doesn’t immediately turn out to be a complete raging misogynist, I cheer inside. And often out loud, too. With a happy dance. Female friendship should be cheered. And cherished. Unfortunately, the opposite is true in most corners of the world. Women are trained from birth not to invest in other women. That would undermine patriarchy and threaten their relationships with men.
On the whole, it is really hard to connect with Chinese women. First, I am ‘other’, so engaging with me is seldom something they pursue. They (the women) do violent things me and say mean things to me, oh yes they do. The women are often more aggressive to me than the men, and friendly engagement is rare. This is borne of the divisiveness created by patriarchy that keeps women from bonding. And as I don’t comply with femininity, I am further ‘othered’. With the really young Chinese women, they are usually wrapped up in shopping and beauty products and obsessing about boys and double eyelid surgery (all of which repulses the hell out of me) – and occasionally with studying really, really hard (which I fully support). And come mid-20’s, almost all women are sucked into mandatory nuclear family life. All women, including lesbians, are forced into the drudgery and humiliation of finding a husband, popping out a kid or two, and then enthusiastically embracing the lifetime of slavery that goes with that. It’s not unique to China. All cultures either force or coerce women into the family track through some means. I oppose the family structure because it is designed specifically to isolate and disempower women and to place female friendship and support and the possibility of professional networking at the very bottom of their priority list. It doesn’t work that way for men – quite the opposite actually. Family is a disastrous (male) invention that makes men’s lives easy and destroys the lives of women. But I’ve managed to cultivate a few friendships with Chinese women despite all this. They probably have greater meaning for me than for them, however, given my existence outside the family system and my wish to connect meaningfully with women.
One new friendship is with a lecturer at my university. We crossed paths as we use the same classroom – my class is immediately before hers. She did her Masters degree in Canada, so she has no hesitation about speaking with foreign people, unlike most Chinese who can’t even be bothered to say ‘ni hao’ to me or return my smile (which I gave up on a few years ago). And we have other things in common. We both have backgrounds in statistics and methodology and in addition to our scientific creds, also have degrees in the realm of management.
We got together for lunch yesterday, and even though my new friend told me right off the bat that she is a ‘traditional person’, I really didn’t feel that was entirely true. First off, she has a PhD (more education than her husband) and is currently looking for international opportunities to further her career. That doesn’t sound so traditional to me. Yes, she has several standard heterosexual views that almost all woman hold due to social conditioning, but I find her rather open-minded and reasonably rational for a woman from a very rigid culture in the clutches of dictatorship. I think her international experience really helped broaden her perspective (e.g., she had a gay masters advisor in Canada). And it was really easy to have a discussion on issues while holding sometimes differing views. Honestly, it was the most open face-to-face conversation I’ve had in… years?
I learned a lot of fascinating things during our lunch, but there is one thing I want to talk about in this post. The whole male child obsession.
There is new propaganda out in China about ‘girl children are important, toooooo’. It’s mostly bullshit, but the government is panicking about the backfiring of their population control policy and the disastrous effects it has had years later. And the panicking isn’t due to regrets or fighting misogyny. It is still all focused on male privilege. Let’s spell out what happened clearly.
- China’s population was exploding due to female slavery.
- The government decided to control the explosion by limiting families to one child (with exceptions).
- Like anyone but an idiot might expect, a culture built on woman-hate automatically gravitated towards that single child being a boy.
- Illegal sex determination testing was carried out by all people who could pay for it and many female fetuses were aborted. If people couldn’t afford the testing, they often abandoned or killed female newborns once the nasty surprise was born.
- A few short decades later, and the country is missing 40 million females.
- And note that the crisis is not that females have been killed, but that there now isn’t enough cunt to allocate to all of the males who were allowed to live.
- Boys must have access to pussy! What are we to do!!!!???? Oh no!!!!!
Now, it would be great to shit all over China for the horrors done to girls. But you know what? If you implement this population control policy anywhere in the world, the exact same thing would happen. There is no country in the world where boys aren’t worshipped and girls hated. When push comes to shove, given the choice between breeding a future rape victim or a future rapist, 99.9% of people would choose the rapist. Some of them might delude themselves into thinking they can produce a ‘good one’, but the fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a good one. There are just entitled ones who ALL benefit from the threat all women live under. A male doesn’t have to rape to benefit from rape. Men (and most women) don’t get this. At all.
Despite being ‘traditional’, my new friend and I got into a good discussion of marriage and male privilege and the whole mandatory breeding thing in China. Women cannot escape from marriage and breeding. It is unthinkable and undoable. Even ‘out’ lesbians, the few that there are, are hounded by the government (in addition to friends and family) to submit and do their duty. Your twat and portable incubator belong to us and all the men in the country!!! And regardless of the deceptive ‘pro-female baby’ campaign, even educated people are still lusting after sons. We discussed a few examples from my friend’s life that made for some depressing food for thought.
In particular, she mentioned one of her closest Chinese friends. Someone she described as at the top of her career, accomplished, smart, talented – a great woman. But of course, she is married. She is also 43 and is now pregnant. This hit me very personally – I am 43 and can’t imagine wanting to be pregnant at this age. Anyhow, this woman had a daughter years before, but her husband is desperate for real human progeny – I mean, a son. So he badgered her. And the threat is that if this intelligent, accomplished woman doesn’t bear this asshole a son, he will leave her. [Me? I say ‘good riddance’. There is no reason for an economically independent woman to stay with a rapist-abuser.] And she relented. Being 43, she has been forced by Husband-Dickface into putting herself at great risk of death and endless physical and psychological complications, disfigurement, and/or permanent injury. Less important, but still worth considering, she is at high risk of having a child with any of a number of problems – which, as the mother, she will be solely responsible for taking care of. But Cock must be satisfied. He has absolutely nothing to lose in this narcissistic frivolity. The bitch must put out, or she will be tossed aside like garbage. I am positive that Cock will pay the money for an illegal sex determination test, and any defects (aka ‘femaleness’) detected will be aborted toot sweet.
My lunch companion then entered into the standard het-female spiel about her special Nigel (I need a Chinese equivalent for a special snowflake, can-do-no-wrong male partner – I may use the the popular name, Ming – 明 – ‘not my Ming’). She said that her husband wants another child, but she is 38, and she said she didn’t want to have another because she is getting too old, and um, she is an accomplished woman moving up in her career. He has given in. So of course, he is the Best Husband on Earth™. But I asked her, do you have a son or daughter? Wait for it… She has a son! Ding ding ding!!! If she had a daughter, her super special Nigel/Ming probably wouldn’t have let her get off so easily.
But she chooses to see his giving in as some superior quality, rather than only relenting because he already has what he wants – a son. And this kind of rationalizing preserves the hetero marriage paradigm, not just in this case but all over the world. Women need to find examples, even the tiniest shred, of positive male behaviour in order to justify their slavery. And cookies (in the West) and dumplings (in the East) are prepared and showered upon husbands and boyfriends for not hurting them. That day. That moment. This is the trap all heterosexual women fall into and it is what will keep het relationships (and male privilege, including forcing women to produce sons) safe until the end of time. Turning the whole ‘he could do x, y, z to me, but he chooses not to’ into ‘he’s a perfect male specimen’ is a defense mechanism. Is that not creepy or scary to you? The implication always is with men that they are choosing not to do something to you AT THAT MOMENT, but it could change at any time. The threat of what could be done with impunity is what keeps all women in line.
But I get it. I don’t like it, and personally, I made my life infinitely more difficult by NOT supporting heteronormative slavery through not getting married and breeding. But not all women have the fight in them needed to resist, or in the case of rigid cultures like China, the mindset to rebel. But, separate from my personal life choices, I like this woman just as I like all my enslaved female friends. We don’t have to agree on how to survive in this world.
So, I ended that conversation with an emphasis on the importance of female friendships and support. That might be a topic for another post as I gained some insight into debunking a stereotype that Western women have of non-Western women (specifically the myth that the latter have stronger female bonds because they are family- and group-think-oriented).
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Not a Feminist Ally If…
Feminism. The poor term has been battered time and again, and it is still standing. It started off as a less powerful replacement for the clear and proud Women’s Liberation Movement. It has, more than once, fallen out of favour and acquired an unsavoury taste. It seems to have gained in popularity more recently, but perhaps not in a good way. Everyone and their dog seems to be either calling themselves a ‘feminist’ or saying “I’m not a feminist, but…” or pairing the word with choice hate speech against women. I truly think no one really knows what it means anymore and frequently doesn’t resemble anything that was practised by the warrior feminists of yore.
Perhaps the most disturbing resurgence has been among male-identified women and worse, men – straight men, gay men, and men in dresses (trans). This latest trend has rendered the label either practically meaningless or inseparable from Cock Supremacy. Yes, in the mainstream, feminism has become the quest for men to retain their privileges with enthusiastic yessing from liberated women. And the few who live by true feminist principles (radical feminists, especially lesbians) have become the absolute bottom of the human heap. Evil personified.
If you – especially if you’re a man – are strutting around calling yourself a ‘feminist’, then consider the following statements below. Some of these are more obvious than others. Some are complete ‘no-brainers’. But their inclusion is necessary because you wouldn’t believe how many men feel they have a right to weigh in on and be included in every single thing women do – especially when these things concern women alone. And there are plenty of women who put men first in feminism. Chances are, most men who read this list will not be able to see themselves and their behaviour within. This is standard narcissism observable in most men, partially resulting from biological tendencies and partially from socialization as oppressors. Willful disconnect from women’s reality, a free pass to attack women (often victims, the ignorant, and frequently radfems) under the guise of ‘activist feminism’ and perhaps a desperate, immature need to score activist/liberal points (and lays) from self-appointed, unashamed, feminist *sluts*, are the main motivators for adherence to the latest and most liberal feminist current. Personally, I don’t believe in such a creature as the ‘male feminist’. With skepticism based on years of experience, I might allow the title: ‘feminist ally’, which I’ll use below, but I attach parameters/conditions to this very special status. Look for yourself in the list. I might have to turn this whole thing into a Super Fun Quiz™ at some point. But for now, it’s just a list, and as it’s just off the top of my head, I’m sure I’m missing crucial things.
—
If your support of women’s status as humans depends solely upon my ‘attitude’ (how I respond to you, my willingness to tolerate you, and how nice and accommodating I am to you), then you are not a feminist ally.
If you think someone a) stating a fact you don’t like, b) disagreeing with you, or c) looking at you in a way you don’t like is worse than being raped, you are not a feminist ally.
If you are using derogatory words (cis, fish, TERF, etc) or well-worn slurs (b****, c***, w****, s***, etc.) to refer to women, you are not a feminist ally.
If I say ‘no’ to you and you don’t let it go then and there, you are not a feminist ally.
If you spend more time vocalizing (even if you manage not to mansplain) on feminist blogs and in women’s spaces than you do raising righteous hell among men, you are not a feminist ally.
If your support of women’s status does not include criminalizing, with the aim to abolish, the demand for pornography and prostitution, you are not a feminist ally.
If you are still having penile-penetrative sex with women, you are not a feminist ally.
If you think sex (especially intercourse) is a fundamental human right, you are not a feminist ally.
If you are not standing up against trans people’s hate speech and hate crimes against women, and instead support their takeover and further subordination of ACTUAL women, you are not a feminist ally.
If you can’t understand what the big deal is about protecting women-only spaces, you are not a feminist ally.
If you find your feminist voice in loudly holding women responsible for racism (and other isms), you are not a feminist ally.
If you get offended or pissy or outright angry if a woman reacts to your presence or words with fear/aversion, you are not a feminist ally.
If you think feminism has at its core anything other than the liberation of women from the oppression of men, you are not a feminist ally.
If you respond to women’s free speech with death or rape threats or slurs, you are not a feminist ally.
If you see no problem with a born male (regardless of how he ‘identifies’ now) leading feminist organizations, lesbian groups, or women’s studies classes/departments, you are not a feminist ally.
If you believe the presence of a single male (let alone several males) has no effect on the dynamics of a group of women, you are not a feminist ally.
If you put your identity and feelings above the safety of the entire class of people called women, you are not a feminist ally.
If you are quick to blame women for what men have done to you personally, you are not a feminist ally.
If you cherry-pick ‘scientific’ studies to confirm your point-of-view instead of looking objectively for legitimately acquired facts that run the risk of proving you wrong, you are not a feminist ally.
If you are under the delusion that trans or blacks or any other racial or religious group are more ‘oppressed’ than women, you are not a feminist ally.
If you can’t understand the difference between sex and gender, you are not a feminist ally.
If you can’t see the male trans performance of femininity as being as offensive and horrific as a blackface minstrel show, you are not a feminist ally.
—
Call me harsh, but seriously, women have been both strong-armed and shamed / manipulated into making concessions to men without getting anything but grief through the erosion of rights and voice in return. None of the above items concerning basic female rights and freedoms hurts men in any way. Removal of privilege does not equal harm or oppression.
This is part of the Wolves in Women’s Clothing series.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
The Need for an Old Girls’ Club
Since I was old enough to really take notice, I realized there is just no equivalent to the ‘old Boys’ Club’ for girls and women. Through my own struggles both in school and in my professional life, and through observing the struggles of other females around me, I noticed that the absence of this system had and still has much deeper and more significant implications and repercussions than we may realize. Male dominance ensures complex safety nets for men and boys only. And female success in life is fairly random – there is seldom anyone looking out for girls and women and so much talent and intelligence and creativity are lost. Such a shame.
One might argue that playing to the Boyz (i.e., complying and going along) is good for women’s careers. Perhaps on the surface, for individual women, it might seem that way. But if you take a closer look, compliant women aren’t reaping the benefits that the boys do. They still aren’t included in the ‘important’ stuff. Their climbs to the top are limited and controlled by men. And further, they are constrained by the yes-girl role they’ve opted (yes opted – compliant vs non-compliant, those are the options) to take on in order to get the crumbs they are given. Like in a lovey-dovey, standard hetero relationship, once compliant, women can’t suddenly start standing up for themselves. They’ll find out exactly how much they are considered ‘equal’ by the male(s). ‘Acceptance’ and ‘love’ are conditional for women whether in relationships or in professional lives.
Not having a ‘Club’, girls and women lose out in the following ways. There is a dearth of role models, mentors, supports and go-to people. Their (female) peers are set up as the opposition, rather than teammates, and girls often struggle on their own. Their learning and earning opportunities are severely limited. Information access is random, patchy, and unreliable. Achievement requires more time and effort and is much less acknowledged or rewarded. Less able, intelligent and talented, but more connected and supported, people (males) always seem to have a leg up in all situations. There are fewer socially and psychologically healthy outlets available. In short, girls and women are seldom supported and nurtured in the same way that males are, and thus, have a much less chance of achieving intellectual and professional success.
While I’ve always been a bit of a social outcast and always struggled to find a group I felt comfortable joining, I somehow managed to see the value in at least trying to start women’s networking groups. They don’t always last long. It’s hard to be a one-woman organizer on a long-term basis for something that most women don’t seek out in the same way or find important. I’ve found that a lot of women just don’t seem all that comfortable in all-woman professional settings. I found this fascinating, but sad. On a strictly informal level, getting together is easy/easier for most women. But, disappointingly, I found these gatherings always seemed to devolve into talking about babies and children, which I had zero interest in. Why did women always reduce themselves to that? Yes, it is important to SOME women, but why does it have to be the default topic/focus? Why couldn’t a group of women come together regularly and talk intellectually or professionally on a casual basis (i.e., not a conference)? Still I tried. And these outings were fun. Don’t get me wrong, there was bonding. Having social connections is needed and awesome. We managed that. But that networking synergy that men seem to gravitate to and create naturally? It wasn’t there. I never felt that I was making connections with women that would extend beyond enjoying food or a laugh. And that is what women, still to this day, are missing on the scale that men have it. Where are the women’s professional networks? I know some exist, but they are not natural and pervasive and informal. They are usually extremely constructed and intentional. Partly, it is because women are so new to the workforce, and partly, many women see themselves as secondary earners in hetero relationships. Partly, it might be that women don’t see other women as allies because of how men have pitted us against one another. Whatever it is, it needs to change. We need an old Girls’ Club, and we need it now.
Anyhow, having entered my 40’s, and now being around young people all the time (when I’m with people, that is), I worry about my female students. Traditional China is even harder for young women than in Western countries. There are huge pressures from most families to achieve, but not ‘too much’. And of course, women earn much less, are herded into lower pay and respect jobs, are 100% required to marry and breed at a young age, and will often be excluded from jobs on the basis of their looks. Some of the things my young students tell me are heartbreaking. A few of my English translation majors told me that despite wanting to become interpreters, they know they won’t be able to get a job because only ‘beautiful’ girls are hired. Skills or ability, who cares? Fuckability is much more important in securing a job as a woman. Just like in the West. Another of my former female writing students told me today that her options upon graduating (in a year) will be limited because the jobs available to women are low-paying and difficult.
I have made it my mission to act as mentor to any and all of my female students. I may not be able to hire them myself, but I will always write them excellent letters of reference. For jobs where English skills are required, a letter from a native speaker of English who is also a university instructor can go a long way, and I was happy to find out recently that one of my students successfully got a part-time job over this past holiday thanks, in part, to my letter. Yeah! She has a new round of applications going out for summer jobs in foreign countries soon, and I’ll be contributing to that.
I also act as a confidence-builder and supportive counter to their parents’ conservatism. Many young women have ambitious ideas, but fearful, traditional parents will easily crush their dreams and prevent them from thinking further about their potential. With some parents, however, they can actually be convinced to allow their daughters to try out something if the girls just push a little harder. I try to give these young women the confidence to push. And push again. I mean, hell, if an entire life can be changed for the better based on the strength of an argument and a show of passion, I will try to make sure it happens. I know one young woman whom I taught in high school about 6 years ago who is turning out to be very ambitious. Her mother wants her married like yesterday (she is only 22!!!). But dad is on the fence and therefore malleable. My young protégée likes to bounce ideas off me. I support her dreams, and then her dreams become more concrete, she becomes more confident, and the dreams get a little bigger. She came to me last year with this idea that she wanted to have her own business as a buyer for foreign businesspeople who come to China looking to import goods to their countries. She has been working freelance in this line of work and is slowly building a client base, and it occurred to her that she might want to travel to Kenya to meet with several potential clients. Hell, I wasn’t even dreaming that big when I was 22, and my parents didn’t give a flying fuck what I did with my life! So, we discussed the idea of finding a like-minded female travel and business partner to make the idea more palatable to her parents. Long story short, she ended up going to Africa over Chinese New Year this year, and she even extended her stay. I’m waiting to meet up with her and hear about the adventure. Yeah, again!
But these are just small and isolated things I can support. And I certainly don’t take credit for these young women’s achievements. But the bit that I’m doing reinforces to me the need for professional female networking and mentoring. This needs to be happening on a wider and more automatic basis for women. Women need networks for idea exchange, confidence-building, opportunity discovery and crafting, and professional collaboration. And until this becomes a more natural part of women’s lives, the professional world will be dominated by men, who by and large, are not the most talented out there and who are getting jobs because they are men and they are naturally and well connected.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Liquid Courage and Stopping a Dick Mid-Swing
Yeah, this is a rant. Not light, and not short. Warning given. Proceed at your own risk 😉
I don’t drink that much. Alcohol has long been associated with abuse, fear, and rape for me, so I stay well away from drunk men, drinking with men I don’t know or trust (which is, at this point, every single one of them), and places where people drink. In my experience, you severely raise the risk that not only will something bad happen to you, but also that you won’t have a leg of credibility to stand on when (not if) something happens to you. This is women’s reality. Alcohol provides men with an excuse for their criminal behaviour, and takes away from women everything including the slightest shred of believability or humanity.
I almost completely limit my alcohol consumption to the occasional bottle of foreign red wine (decent alcohol is very expensive in China), and I’m such a light weight that it can last me for 3 days. And it does the trick, it dulls my depression and makes me forget the worst parts of living in China. Temporarily.
But in the last few years, there is one other time that I have a few drinks, and that is the two or three times a year that I go out socially with this piece of shit, 61-year-old, white, British, male misogynist whom I’ve tolerated because a) he is a rare atheist, and b) he is a colleague and unfortunately, one of my few ‘allies’ (wrong word) where I work. I’ve described this douchebag before.
I was much less enraged three years ago when I first met DB (douchebag). I tolerated his mansplainy narcissism. And this is a topic for another post, but even though every country’s males have their own unique brand of misogyny, there is something I absolutely fucking hate about British men. I’m not sure if it is my perspective as a woman from the “New World”, but I find men from “Old World” countries (Western or Eastern) have a very deep-seated, centuries-old, traditional misogyny that you don’t see in places like Canada, New Zealand, Australia or even the US. It’s not specifically religious. It’s something else. A colonizer mentality. And there is some left over colonial, British Empire attitude that sits in the DNA of British men – the men who raped, conquered and held hostage half the world and left destruction in their wake. The somewhat subdued, historic pomposity of British men is, in many ways, more obnoxious than the loud, superhero, dumb jock, ‘we’re number one!’ ignorance of modern American men. It’s hard to explain. And I will say that I don’t see any of that in comparing the women of both worlds, except perhaps in how they rationalize their slavery. But of course, women don’t colonize. They don’t attack, invade, rape, pillage, kidnap, infect, kill, or any of that, in the name of discovery, conquering, ‘civilizing’, taming, nationalism, or claiming one’s birthright or cockright. I like British women just as I like American women and any other women from any place. Individual women may pose problems, but as a class, they are not the enemy.
So anyhow, after my first week swimming in Chinese semen, I had planned a strategic Saturday outing with DB. Not for fun. I needed crucial information related to my job. I figured I’d get this toxic event out of the way and be safe from further exposure for months – perhaps even for the rest of the semester.
When out with DB, there is alcohol. He is a fucking fish. An alcoholic (like most older men who come to China). He jokes about going to class everyday having to mask the smell of alcohol consumed the night before leaking out of his pores with his sweat. I usually have a few drinks while I’m on these outings with DB because it helps me suffer through his grossness.
But on this recent outing, I discovered a more practical and useful side effect. I found courage.
I am really good at defending other people – women especially – but I am horrible at defending myself or having general debates. I’m not an orator. I prefer to think, mull, and write, rather than have a verbal discussion. I’d also rather avoid men who disgust me than get into arguments with them about things they don’t understand and that involve my human rights and their male privileges. Once the insanity starts, I tend to close down and fantasize about killing them. But on Saturday, after a few drinks and in the feminist frame of mind I’ve been in, especially recently, I was ready for a fight of the verbal sort. I mean, I still sat there for much of it imagining a clean shot put between DB’s eyes. But verbally, I trounced that fucker, and did it using his own (and all men’s) low-blow and aggressive techniques against him. And those techniques mostly involved interrupting. Shutting down his irrelevant lines of thought before he could complete them. Dismissing his rebuttals. Derailing his derail attempts. Refusing to defend myself and my claims. Keeping on the attack rather than the defense. Basically, I treated him as he has always treated me – as men always treat women. And it worked. It didn’t gain me respect necessarily, and it didn’t feel ‘natural’ to me, but it shut him up. Instead of the male voice, I eventually got silence. Blessed silence. The male voice, silenced. He gave up trying to dominate me and forcing me to back down and agree to his misogynist viewpoint. He took on the pouty, abused, ‘is-is-is she saying no to me?’ look that some men get when women speak with authority or righteous anger. Didn’t stop me. I firmly believe that women can’t ever win or be heard or make men shut up unless they use the ‘master’s tools’ against the masters themselves. Men don’t understand anything but aggression. Reasoning doesn’t work. Appeals to logic or empathy or humanity don’t work. But a good beating, verbal or physical, coupled with shaming, do. It’s what they do to us. I get so tired of women refusing to see that taking the high moral ground will never, ever make men stop their abuse of us. Even men’s request for ‘educating’ aren’t true or real, but women fall for it every time. That derailing technique works every time. Women’s energy derailed and stolen.
Not until you become more self-aware do you realize how much woman-hate is organic to conversations with men. Almost everything men say smacks of misogyny. But we don’t notice, or we laugh along, or we get nervous, or we have already tuned out and are nodding and smiling in boredom. When you become self-aware, it is horrifying how nasty and ignorant men are. And they remain unopposed by all men and almost all women. Honestly, I should have brought a massive fucking misogynist bingo card with me. This guy hit almost every stupid point that men come up with when trying to assert their dominance and entitlement/’rights’. It was trope central. And standard to pretty much all British men, even the young ones, he kicked it all off with basic fighting words: “mankind“. And it went on from there. Here are only a few of the highlights:
Religion, not men, caused gynocidal events in history
DB is a history buff (male history) and he is both a China apologist and an atheist. China can do no wrong and is superior for not being a religious country (except that traditionalism is a form of religion – a topic for another post). DB loves dictatorships and censorship (as long as HE is free to do what HE wants, that is).
I had pointed out that the two worst events in the history of humans: 1000 years of footbinding in China and 300 years of witch burnings and torture of women in the West. DB immediately leapt in with a condemnation of religion. I cut him off. Nope. That doesn’t explain footbinding. I just kept repeating: “Men did it. Male hatred of women. Misogyny.” Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dumb people need repetition. And you can list all the horrific gynocides throughout history – DUE TO MEN. The 6-week rape-fest in Nanjing, China by the Japanese. Not religion. Men. The perfection of what we now know as the ‘concentration camp’ by Winston Churchill and Lord Kitchener used on Afrikaner women and children. Not religion. Men. Cruise through time. Make notes. Men have done it all to women. Men. Men. Men. To women. Women. Women. And it seldom makes the history books or history class curricula.
Chimps trade meat for sex
Atheist men fucking LOVE LOVE LOVE evolutionary psychology as a tool to try to justify their love of rape and domination. Atheist men hate you too, ladies. This particular stupid douchebag doesn’t have a single course in science. He doesn’t even have a college degree. Through some weird British educational loophole, this idiot was let into a Masters program in something that was decidedly not science, WITHOUT an undergraduate degree. But he loves to try to school ME in science, a woman with post graduate education in science, published articles in science, research in science, and teaching experience in university scientific methodology and statistics. And like most atheist men without an understanding of science, he trots out debunked evo-psych bullshit based on male confirmation biased interpretations of animal behaviour (anthropomorphize much, rapists?) to support his love of rape and prostitution. Dumbass. Anyhow, I shut that fucker down before he could actually finish his first sentence as I saw it coming a mile away. I said, “Debunked. Non-science.” To derail me, he tried the male trick: where is your proof? I said, “Google it.” You prove it. Science, my scientific ass.
Good things always come from war
Nothing smacks of male privilege like dismissing the effects of war. History is basically the male masturbatory recounting of wars. It is also the dismissal of the female experience, the erasure of female existence. So men, when they start jizzing over how fucking awesome a battle was, or how fucking awesome the world became due to some war, they forget one tiny thing. Women are the overwhelmingly large majority of victims when there is war or civil unrest. I was reading a psychological site on PTSD in women, and they cited the statistics that during civil unrest and warlike conditions, women comprise up to 80% of the victims (general victims, not PTSD victims, specifically). Men can’t see this because they only see soldier mortality as victimhood. What they forget are the women civilians killed. And that victimhood isn’t just death. Rape is rampant during any kind of uncivilized event. Men don’t get raped. Women and girls are raped. And tortured and injured and killed. They are raped and killed by the enemies. They are raped and killed by the men on ‘their side’. Women are the largest group of victims during unrest.
As for the good things that come from war? WTF? Is the world a better place when war is concluded? Not for women. And no aftermath is worth all the loss and suffering. Any freedoms or benefits usually go to men and boys. For women, it is business as usual. The only war I can imagine resulting in something good is one where women stand up for their rights, physically fight, and win over men. Liberation for women is the only cause that makes sense for me because every current ill in society results from women’s oppression. Liberating women would help alleviate all human problems as well as environmental, animal, and food/water problems.
We then moved on to:
If we don’t do it, someone else will
Men are positively obsessed with progress and growth. This is the only way they define success. Progress and growth are seldom logical or reasonable and always come with a high cost. A cost that is paid by women and girls.
There is no such thing as creating something out of nothing. There is no such thing as ‘bottomless’ or ‘without limit’ when men seek success. The male demand for more and more is only possible if you tread on the rights and humanity of others – the least powerful. The least powerful are women, so they get less so that more is produced. So women are paid less for the same job. They work more in order to produce more. They are removed from their homes and made homeless so that buildings and structures they will never benefit from can be erected. They suffer through wars and environmental disasters and medical atrocities. Just so men can achieve ‘progress’ and ‘growth’. And I’ll add recognition and power to that list.
I suggested to DB that there are several lines that should not be crossed, whether it is in science or any endeavour. His answer? If we don’t do it, someone else will. We can’t let the other guy get there first! And I hammered him. “What a shitty, amoral excuse for evil behaviour.” This guy swears he is not a capitalist.
The world is safer than it has ever been
For men? Yes. Definitely. Not so much for women. Men don’t have a clue what safety issues are. And how much do you love it when men try to tell you that you are perfectly safe now. I mean seriously, fuck off. They have no idea what women think about, worry about, and have to do in order to get from Point A to Point B.
His measure of safety is that we have longer life spans. Yeah. That’s it. Longer life spans. What an incredibly nuanced way to look at safety. And I told him so. Did I also mention that I have worked in forensics as an analyst? I have worked with an FBI consultant on serial rape data. I have worked with police departments on workplace violent crime. I have also worked in the health field on medical errors research.
In what world does living a long life mean that you have lived free from danger? That you haven’t almost died? That you don’t suffer from fear or trauma or anxiety due to living in a crime-filled, corrupt world of danger for women?
They’re trying to criminalize johns and let prostitutes…!!!
We’d already covered the chimps, meat and sex bullshit, and the world is a safer place bullshit. So why not move into trying to shut down the male right to rape?
I jumped on this one before he even finished his sentence of outrage. There is nothing I hate more than men telling me that they have a right to stick their dicks into women, or that women ‘choose’ lives of rape and degradation over health and happiness. So I derailed him. I said, “Yes!!! Finally!!! The Swedish model is the best thing to happen in a long time. Finally, we can take away men’s right to rape and finally, we have a fighting chance in hell to reduce male violence against women, misogyny, and endless rape – all of which increase when women are jailed for prostitution and males go free in order to pay money to rape again. I launched into the cold reality that prostitution ONLY exists when men refuse to allow women the means to support themselves properly. We have prostitutes because women are poor. That’s it. Holding women severely economically disadvantaged positively ensures that women will be forced to sell their bodies and ensures that men have a constant supply of enslaved cunt to rape.
I didn’t allow any response from DB. There is no response to this issue that isn’t dripping in pro-rape, pro-poverty, male privilege and psychopathy. Did I mention that this guy is NOT a capitalist? Right. Unless it’s something he wants sold for his pleasure as a male.
But but but the Women’s Movement was successful
I mentioned that women-only social justice movements are never allowed to succeed. Only when men’s rights are at stake, do they succeed. And they do so mostly because they have women’s free labour supporting them. Women don’t receive the backing of men when it is their turn. And he came out with the ‘right to vote’ success. Most men don’t know anything about the herstory of women’s struggles. And of course, any successes that occur are assumed by men to have been the single purpose of the struggle. When women won the vote, that was not the whole point of the movement. It was actually a decades-long struggle for several legal rights, one of which was the right to vote. Following backlash from men and possibly exhaustion from that landmark achievement, the women’s movement lost some steam. They didn’t achieve most of what they had set out to do. Would I call the First Wave a success? Not entirely. It wasn’t a complete failure, but it wasn’t a roaring success in the way that all male movements have been – including that of black males in the US.
It’s time to start looking for a Chinese wife
Speaking of prostitution and male privilege… As an over-60, DB has overstayed his welcome in China. The Chinese who, in addition to being sexist and racist, are also ageist. They love Chinese old people, but the foreign people who stay for decades diligently and devotedly educating their youth? Nope. Once you hit 60, you’re tossed to the curb. There is no pathway to residency. There is no pension for foreigners. No ‘thank you’ for your service. You’re out.
Unless you are a man. Foreign males can find local pussy, convince them to marry (which is pretty easy to do), and then stay forever on the equivalent of a green card. This isn’t really an option for foreign women. First, Chinese men, like Western men, want subservient wives and baby factories. Besides, Chinese men only see us as whores. Something to fuck, but not to ‘respect’ in the form of a slave relationship (marriage). Second, most Western women who come to places like China are either already enslaved or they are the most independent women from what are independence-embracing countries. They aren’t looking for a slave-arrangement. So this dealio works well for men who have no problem owning a slave. But it is not an option for women.
The only other way to stay is if you are extremely well connected with someone in government who can ‘arrange’ an illegal visa if you have the money. This is rare. I think about all the people, including those from China, we let stay forever in Canada, despite having little or nothing to offer, and I think about devoting my education and talent to a place like China and their complete disrespect for my years of service and their abuse while I am employed with them. Mind-boggling. There is no reciprocal arrangement between our countries.
Anyhow, DB is 60 or 61 and he has been told that he will be kicked out of China next year. He is joking now that it is time to find a Chinese wife. Who knows, he might just do that.
—
There is actually a lot more here to tell, but this is long enough. My bingo card was full by the end of things. And I raged for days. Even though I put this douchebag in his place, thanks in part to the liquid courage of a couple of G&Ts, I spent the following week calming down. When it really hits you full force how much a dude you have known for a while hates women, and by definition, you yourself because you’re a woman, you rage. You rage. You rage. And just think, even your Nigels (if you have one) are the same. Maybe he has different words and tactics, but the woman-hate and privilege is in there. Waiting. Waiting for you to oppose him in some way. Deny him what he feels is his ‘right’ (but which is only a male privilege) and you’ll find out how much your sweetie ‘loves’ you. The truth is these assholes walk the planet taking what they want. They are not used to hearing ‘no’ and having to abide by it. They don’t respect ‘no’ in the way that women do. They are given more than you (more money, more respect, more space, more consideration, more understanding, more freedom, more safety) despite their inferiority simply because they have dicks. So, while I felt a victory – and it was important one, personally – it came with a price and it changes nothing about how the world works. I stopped a dick mid-swing, but unless it is cut off completely, it will live to swing another day, knocking down all women in its path.
Filed under the Conversations with Men series.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
The Semester Starts with Racism and Misogyny – Mmmm Good
I have a very strange internet friend whom I’ve ‘known’ for a long time from years ago – back when I was a serious researcher doing serious research and not frittering my life and spirit away in China. We collaborated on a short project online, but we have never met in person. At this point, this acquaintance’s role has morphed into one of sending me occasional stories of ‘how fucked up China is’. News of the weird. Of human rightsy weirdness. Bizarre deaths resulting from Chinese neglect. That kind of thing.
The thing is, I KNOW ALREADY. I live here. I experience bad and weird things here all the time. I don’t bother to comb through alt-media sites or even mainstream Western media for Chinese fuckery because the day-to-day stuff that I see in situ is bad enough.
When you come from a country where there are *sometimes* consequences for abusing power – or at least the pretense of consequences – or at least mechanisms and bodies set up to deal with power abuses – it is hard to imagine it working otherwise in other places. So Westerners can’t understand that if they go to China, if anything untoward ever happens to them, there will be nothing whatsoever that can be done. Unless you have managed to get very well connected with powerful people, that is. And the majority of Western people – or any foreign worker, for that matter – are extremely vulnerable to abuse because they aren’t connected. Newbie Western workers will often try to fight what has happened to them with logic or human-rightsy arguments that usually start with: “This would never happen in MY country.” And they might be right. Maybe. It might happen, and you might be lucky to have a way to fight it. There is definitely more of a chance of fighting it in the West. But in China, you learn very quickly that anyone can do anything to you at any time. And you are not allowed to say anything about it. Even contract agreements between you and the Chinese only apply to you. If you don’t live up to the contract they can do what they want to you. But as a Chinese, they can break the contract every single day. You can complain if you want. And they will ignore you. And they might fire you because you don’t take abuse well. Their firing techniques are almost always passive-aggressive, subtle manipulation. It is actually the exact mentality behind Western men complaining about Western women. The whole “I love Asian women” phenomenon. Western women believe they have rights as humans. Most men don’t like that, and some will go East to find the perfect docile slave.
Many of the younger Westerners who come here are ‘liberal’, so they don’t usually complain, and may often make excuses for the Chinese (aka ‘apologism’), because they hold the Western mentality that the Chinese are oppressed – which isn’t actually true anymore in the West, nevermind the East. It’s the older white (and usually incompetent) male who comes here for a pussy and booze free-for-all who gets very angry and loud when he isn’t treated like a member of the dominant race. And both groups are delusional, by the way.
The Chinese are the dominant and the majority race. And China is very patriarchal. And it is still a system that is run as a dictatorship. And with that combination, you get very serious racism, very serious misogyny, and no concept of human rights whatsoever. There is no such thing as a race-motivated crime. There is no such thing as a crime against women. And there is no such thing as workers’ rights or human rights abuse of any sort.
It is hard for many Western people to wrap their minds around that non-Western reality.
I once read a disturbing, but amusing (because I could understand it on a personal level) little essay written by a long-time foreign resident in China about the stages foreigners go through when first living in China. It was written by a man, and thus didn’t take into account that China is much easier for men to deal with for a number of reasons. But I still recognized some of the elements in it. The whole essay reminded me of the grieving process one goes through when dealing with a death – starting with anger, moving through depression, and eventually resolving with acceptance of reality. It was troubling to realize that living in China was so similar to dealing with a serious loss such as a major death, but it is actually very much like that if you stay long enough. Living in China really does mean giving up your personhood or identity. It is a death of sorts. Whether you can be reborn or whether you remain living as the undead, is another thing entirely and is dependent upon either having your mind and spirit broken completely and thus becoming open to brainwashing or being able to escape most of the mundane Chinese abuse through obtaining an elitist kind of job with super-high pay.
I’ve thought about this a lot. Many sociologists and cross-cultural researchers paint this simplistic black-and-white picture of individualistic cultures and group-based cultures. And of course, the former are painted as evil and latter are somehow superior. But I think this conclusion, and the whole type-of-society dichotomy are not quite right. I actually find the Chinese to be much more individualistic and self-centred and heartless in some ways that I have not been able to explain (until recently) using the group-think or collectivist society model. Likewise, that model hasn’t explained the countless examples of supposedly average, individualistic, selfish Americans and other Westerners relentlessly donating their time and money to humanitarian efforts or to helping random people on the street. You may not see this if your knowledge of China has come solely from movies and the news, but given how much time I’ve spent in non-Western countries, I’ll tell you how jarred I am by how much positive and pro-social interaction there is between strangers in the West. Every time I return, I get freaked out. Strangers helping strangers. Hell, strangers talking to strangers. You never, ever, never, ever see this in China. Ever. Ever. People don’t even say ‘thank you’ here. But that is a post for another time [update: here it is, 7 years later 😉 I is for Individualism. I have developed my own theory as to this individualism vs group-based society phenomenon.
My point is that to survive in China, you can’t see yourself as a person in the Western sense. And most people are not able to see themselves as a person in the Chinese sense. It’s not a great way to live. Undead.
I haven’t written in a while simply because my first two weeks back at work have been a racist, misogynist fuck-fest. There has been plenty of Chinese bullshit and some Western male bullshit, too.
The first day of class involved university officials and photographers stopping by my class to photograph me while teaching. I’m never allowed to say ‘no’ to anything they do to me, and in this case, they will use my image for their greedy capitalistic and political purposes. (See! We have foreign staff! Come to our university!!! Pay our tuition!!!) Like a porn contract, you sign on the dotted line, and that means they can do whatever they want to you after that (don’t worry, I’m not equating teaching with porn… I’m telling you that the Chinese mentality is the porn producer’s mentality).
I spent the week correcting the grammar of misogynist sentences produced by my male students, which was fucking awesome and not a mindfuck at all!
And the second week saw a quiet, moneyless payday – and an announcement from the university that they had no intention of paying us this month for last month. They announced to us that the pay schedule will change (again). Now, they are going to start paying us TWO WHOLE MONTHS after the start of each pay period. We get paid monthly, the pay date has been pushed further and further away from the pay period each year that I have been with this university. And now, work that I do on March 1st won’t be paid until April 30th. What??? I am not allowed to protest this. They have implemented worse abuses in past years – like breaking my contract and quadrupling my work load for no extra pay. The foreign staff has protested individually, but as Chinese, they give excuses and end up doing what they want to us. This new payment policy actually feels very much like one of the passive-aggressive Chinese punishments. They may be looking to clear out foreign staff by implementing abusive policy, so they can bring in new, naive people whom they can pay less.
Every night at 11:00 pm, staff were chained into their building. Apparently, it was ‘too dangerous’. For whom…?
This happens all the time. I’m used to it. There is nothing ‘fair’ about the Chinese. It may surprise you to know that this is the best place I’ve ever worked in all the years I’ve been in China. At least these employers don’t chain the staff into our residential building every night like my last employer did. Nobody could get in or out except the key master. The Chinese didn’t understand why the Western staff had a problem with that. A simple, humane solution to the ‘grave danger’ looming over our building would be to install a key card or coded key pad entry system. But that would cost the Chinese money. The Chinese don’t like to spend money.
But the worst of these first two weeks back was actually dealing with a horrible, British, male acquaintance/co-worker and his disgusting misogyny last Saturday. I’m still reeling from it. Unfortunately, I need to stay ‘friendly’ with this asshole, as one really needs allies when you’re working for the Chinese. The Chinese deliberately try to keep Western people in the dark and misinformed and isolated on several levels so that we remain powerless and disorganized. Because foreign workers are ALWAYS abused, it is really key to have as many allies as possible – even if they are assholes. Information needs to be shared since it is so hard to come by, and sometimes protests must be done as a group or at least in numbers. But the cost of being friendly with jerks can be really hard, and the deeper I get into feminism, the harder it is to deal with men who don’t see me as a full human.
I’m going to write about this asshole. It’s one of those things that ended up being successful in my mind even though it didn’t and doesn’t necessarily feel like it. I’m glad I did what I did, but my body and mind are paying for it. More soon…
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Only Men Benefit When Even Feminists Don’t Know What Rape Is
Language is important. I’m not going to do a history of language or do a deep analysis of how language, in the hands of men, has affected and continues to affect women. There are excellent blogs (one in my side bar) devoted to the study of patriarchy and language, and while I teach language and love to learn about meaning, evolution of meaning and word origins, I am in no way an expert nor can I do a better analysis than said experts.
But I want to talk about the word rape and how it is defined. I am not going to provide a deep history of the word or a legal history of the meaning. There are actually some excellent articles out there that do this very thing, which are highly findable through a Google search. I’ll give a brief background, and then plunge into my intended topic, which is current and relevant now, and I’ll tie it in to some unexpected results of my quickie quiz on feminism dilution, which you can still participate in if you wish.
The purpose of language is to communicate. Maybe you’re saying ‘duh’ to yourself, but given that I teach university ESL (speaking, writing, research communication) in China, I’ve noticed that after 10+ years of English study, most of my students can’t communicate to save their lives. (The Chinese government isn’t focused on communication, but obscure-grammar-test-taking.) So, I don’t consider my statement to be all that elementary or obvious. Language exists to allow us to communicate. To communicate problems, needs, wants, states of being, observations, discoveries. You name it.
It’s a tool. And like all tools that exist in our international patriarchy, it is controlled by men. What is the purpose of controlling language? Well, simply, the class that controls language, also controls who gets to express problems, needs, wants, states of being, observations, discoveries, etc. So, as men are in control of language, they are the ones who get to express themselves openly. They are the ones who have legitimate problems, needs, wants, states of being, observations, discoveries, etc. Women? Not so much.
Language forms the bedrock upon which the educational, political, legal, medical, and all other systems are built. So if you control language, you control these systems. And they work for you, the controllers.
The legal system uses male-defined language to protect men from each other and from women and their silly-willy accusations. Women are not protected by the law because the language does not allow them to define their problems/crimes against them.
So we get to rape. The word ‘rape’ has a long history, and men have been fucking around with its definition for centuries. Since the early 13th century, it has been used to mean all sorts of things from speed/hurry, a kind of food, plundering, theft, seduction of men, kidnapping women, and sexually violating women.
In more modern times, most of the various definitions have fallen away, and it has come to vaguely mean ‘sexually violating a woman’. But even that is problematic as it doesn’t address by whom, how, and under what circumstances. And that was the intention. By controlling the meaning of the word, men essentially controlled the crime and its prevalence. If a woman can’t fit the constantly shifting definition of the crime, then no crime has been committed against her. Sweet! For men.
Now there are many other issues and problems with how rape is seen and prosecuted, but I won’t be addressing those here as many, many other worthy people have devoted their expertise to its discussion and analysis. My concern is with language; specifically, defining rape, and by whom and to whom is it done.
At some point in the not too distant past, women started speaking up for male victims of sexual assault (male prisoners, Catholic school boys, DV abuse victims, etc), and the movement took on a life of its own. Once a problem experienced by males has been identified, it takes on immediate importance and seriousness on all levels of society, and almost always, if it is similar to a very widespread problem experienced by females, the latter is brushed under the carpet in order to devote time and resources to men and boys.
This has happened with rape. At some point, it was decided that men and boys could be raped. I suspect, like with backlash to all progress women make in having their oppression acknowledged, this male rape victim business followed women making headway in having rape taken seriously. All of a sudden, we heard: “Men can be raped, tooooo!!!” And everyone got on board. With that movement came the mantra that rape wasn’t a sex-motivated crime but one of violence, which I think is incorrect, despite what experts say. If rape were a crime solely of violence/domination, straight men would be ‘raping’ men right, left and centre. They don’t. And at the same time, straight men would just beat up or kill women like they do men and leave the vaginal penetration out of it. I believe rape is a sexual and violent/dominance/power-motivated crime. And the adamant nature of the ‘it’s not sexual’ argument smacks of a patriarchal system cleverly trying to weasel its way out of naming sex-based oppression and male-domination as real problems, which would then have to be dealt with. Men would be held responsible for once, in other words.
And so, ‘rape’ is no longer a sex-based crime committed by men and boys against women and girls as a deliberate act of terrorism designed to uphold a millennia-long system of male dominance. And when you subscribe to that, you erase the existence of misogyny and hate crimes against women. You give equal importance to the occasional ‘rape’ of one man here and there as you do to the international crisis of the rape of women and girls. They essentially become the same, and thus women no longer have a unique problem.
Now, let’s get to my little quiz. On the whole, the respondents were on board with radical feminist theory. There was a small contingent confused by which factors influenced economic outcome most (15% of respondents didn’t see sex as being the number one factor harming economic success, and instead erroneously chose race or sexual orientation).
But the most surprising outcome was that this mostly feminist group of respondents didn’t have a feminist working definition of rape. It surprised me because they well understood why allowing men to define sex, as we are seeing with the whole trans (MtT) movement, is a problem for women. Specifically, when men can magically become women, and when sex and gender are equated, it erases sex. It erases misogyny and sex-based oppression. Women suddenly become ‘oppressors’ of newly transformed/realized ‘women’, instead of the largest and longest-standing oppressed group in the history of the world. So respondents saw this and understood this issue with men controlling language, and specifically the language of oppression as it related to the trans movement.
But what most respondents didn’t get was how allowing men to define the specific term ‘rape’ to be a crime against men and women where perps could possibly be either men or women, erases the seriousness of a crime of sexual terrorism against women. Rape has lost its unique and important meaning, in other words, and even feminists have bought in. I’m worried about that.
One of the three options to the question was about a male-on-female act (which was the feminist answer). The other two options allowed for male AND female victims with variation in wording of details.
Specifically and sadly, only 26% of respondents correctly defined rape as ‘forced, coerced, or unwanted PIV (penis-in-vagina) sex that is done by males to females.
Now, this quiz is not nuanced enough, as I stated in the original post. As the designer, I’m the first one to admit inadequacy. There is more to explore here. I didn’t look at the sex of perps, specifically, but focused on victims. And you certainly can’t draw big conclusions based on an untested test with one inadequate, related question. So, I honestly don’t know what respondents are thinking. I mean something is going on. Possibly people were thinking that in the case of lesbians, women can rape women. Possibly some people believed that rape could involve the penetration of an anus or a mouth. But what was clear was that most respondents believed that men could be raped. And that is a big problem.
But regardless of what is going on, one thing can be said for sure. We need better, woman-defined language concerning different kinds of sexual assault. I would like to see rape better defined to return to a male-on-female crime (as it was for so long) that is both sex-based and sexual in nature as well as power or violence-motivated. I am not sure why ‘forced sodomy’ isn’t enough to describe the assault of men’s (or women’s) anuses. Prison ‘rape’, speaks to me of male guards and psychologists and doctors (and MtTs) sexually assaulting the vaginas of FEMALE prisoners – not of male prisoners/guards assaulting male prisoners. And I think we need to stop calling it that in order to ensure that assault of women and girls actually means something. We need language to address crime between lesbians. We need language to define the occasional assault of a man by a woman. We need clear language about specific acts. We really don’t have that. There is better definition of acts in porn…
As it is, rape is now a word that can apply to anyone and everyone for all sorts of different acts of sexual violence, which isn’t really sexual, but ‘violent’. Whatever.
[Note: Since this post was published, I created a rape survey, and provided a post-survey discussion.]
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Waiting for It: The First Trannie School Shooting
Like all people, I’m constantly surrounded by male violence and the sensationalism and glorification of male violence. Today was no different.
I was forced to spend precious time dealing with Chinese racist bullshit today, and as I was standing in one of the businesses I had to deal with, my attention swivelled to the television they had turned on in a corner of the establishment. It was news hour, and lo and behold, the story was about some Chinese man who’d made a video (ransom demand? who the hell knows) of himself with a knife to the throat of some Chinese kid. All the customers, including a little kid hanging about, were riveted. I was disgusted. Same shit, different day, different country, different culture. Men being garbage and shitting on innocents.
And that sent my mind to wander. In the US, the same scenario has presented itself time and time again – the weapon of choice is more likely to be a gun, but the intent is the same. Psycho man threatens woman or child or a whole mess of them at once. And my mind turned to how women just don’t do this shit. You never see news stories about women taking hostages (unless they are under the thrall of a male psychopath), or shooting up places, or doing random violence. Very rarely you’ll see a mother who has killed her children; I’m actually surprised we don’t see more of this given how many women are forced into motherhood and marital slavery despite hating children and become mentally broken down as a result, but that is another post. I’m following a train of thought here.
So after contemplating how little violent crime is perpetrated by women, my mind turned to school shootings and the little turds who commit that kind of crime. They are ALWAYS male. Always. Always. It’s a very male thing to do despite most people’s knee-jerk scrambling wish to explain away the behaviour as a random act. Nope. Men are about violence. It is their solution to what they see as problems.
And then my mind turned to trannies, in particular men and boys who feel squishy inside and think that squishiness is an essential and defining female quality. With the desperate push all over the West now to convert boys to girls as early as possible, I really believe we are going to see a change in crime statistics. Suddenly, there will be (we’re seeing it already!) this inexplicable (haha) increase in women raping women. Magic! Sociologists are likely salivating over a new conundrum. Why are girls suddenly becoming so violent? We don’t understand despite all our insight and higher learning. What could be going on??? Is it all the education girls are getting these days? Is it that evil feminism corrupting them???
No, undeserving PhD holders. You see, putting a dress on a boy doesn’t change anything except his outward appearance. He is still a boy with all the violent tendencies that go along with XY status. When he commits violent acts, he is doing it as a boy and because he is a boy. I mean, I read some of the threatening, evil shit they write to and about women online, and all I see and hear is male. Women don’t talk filth like trannies do.
And I really think it is only a matter of time before one of these social-outcast, mentally deranged, confused, damaged, gun-home-residing boys comes to school in a dress and a mask and toting a metal penis gun, and shoots the fucking place up. And he’ll shoot girls, primarily. Because girls – especially ones who don’t trust and embrace them without question – are the natural enemy of a trans, according to most of them. And the news headline will read “First female mass school shooting.” And a whole new cohort of sociologists will have their PhD dissertation material at the ready. And I guarantee you that under the bus, you’ll find a badly smushed radical feminism, an easy target for all that’s wrong with the world.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Getting Inside the Head of the Head
I’m gearing up to a big post on rape. I’ve been reviewing the data from the fun little quiz that I designed recently (which is still open if you care to take a few minutes out of your day and click the button) to get some ideas about diluted feminism (larger context: The Ice Cube Effect and Feminism Dilution).
I’ll be posting soon on a few interesting things I noticed, namely the overwhelming misunderstanding of what rape is.
Today, I’m preparing for teaching, which starts up again tomorrow, and also procrastinating a bit by listening to Mancheeze’s live meet-up/broadcast on prostitution. Every time I read about or listen to stuff about male depravity – anything having to do with porn, prostitution, violence against women, etc. – I’m sent into a very important, unmaintainable, self-preserving, and ultimately stressful state. It is a state which, if maintainable, would help women quit men for good (which some of us have managed). It is a state that I can only describe as being the chilling or ice-cold, crystal-clear awareness that men absolutely hate women. There is no other way to describe a human who can take pleasure in any of those things that women only do because they are desperate or dependent. I’m not going to get into how all those things are harmful because it is a truth that has been described elsewhere in great detail, and as such, is both Feminism 101 and not debatable to me. Anyone who can’t see the harm to women in marriage, prostitution, pornography, BDSM or any of that line of male domination business is no friend to women. And I don’t get into discussions with them. Men who engage in or defend these unassailable ‘institutions’ hate women. Period.
So when I enter these intense, short-lived states of being highly aware of the male hate that absolutely surrounds and suffocates me and every other woman on the planet, sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be male or to live like a male. In order to do this, I try to imagine putting at the centre of my motivation and my entire existence a single body part. That single body part guides how I treat other people and how I see myself. It is hard to know whether I love that part, hate it, worship it, or have some complicated mix of all three, but what is clear is that catering to that body part requires that I do harm to at least one other person. How could narcissistic self-love not harm others? So I design my relationships to cater to that body part. My sexual interactions with others revolve solely around that body part. I design and support a world that caters to my body part to the detriment of other people who don’t have that body part. And I defend my body part and the world that caters to my body part against (perceived) attack, questioning, demands for justification and reparations for those who suffer because of them. I defend myself using violence, threats, arguments about the rights and supremacy of my body part. My body part is more important than the lives of millions. And the government, the law, the medical establishment, and every other power structure in the world agree with me.
In other words, cock is king.
In order to get inside the heads (either one) of men, one must put the supremacy of a single body part (the penis) at the centre. That is the best way I can understand how men operate. And I think that women really can’t see men for what they are – apathetic, narcissistic and sometimes sadistic destroyers with a single body part at the centre of it all directing the show/game/war – because women aren’t capable of putting a single, selfish body part at the centre of their pleasure at the expense of the rest of the world. And for that matter, women don’t really have an equivalent body part that can deal the damage that the penis does.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Gay Men Hate You Too
Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.
Germaine Greer
I generally dislike using quotes and those who quote frequently/constantly either in speaking or writing. I teach my writing students that, unless their essays are specifically about discussing the ideas inherent in a particular quote, to try to avoid using quotes altogether because it breeds a dependency on them and a lack of originality in thinking. My problems with quotes are multi-fold. First, most things have been said before in different ways by many people. Second, men frequently get credit for things that were most likely said by women first (often their mothers or female spouses, but also friends and colleagues). Third, nasty and/or dumb people live on in history for some chance statement that they have stolen and said loudly enough to be heard, and are then remembered as clever or noble. And finally, heavy reliance upon quotes can be problematic as it prevents you from trying to use your own words, and I find that most of us misunderstand the original meaning of quotes or get the attribution wrong. Quotes can be handy for starting discussions or to start an essay, but addiction is easy.
I do take a bit of exception to feminist quotes because for one, women, their existence, their ideas, and their words are typically erased from history by men. When a feminist says something important that is remembered, I try to preserve it. As well, feminists tell us very important truths about reality, and we’d all do well to remember them. Women tend not to remember or even acknowledge their realities. So I have a choice slideshow of feminist quotes in my sidebar, and today, I’ve pulled one of my favourites, one of the simplest and easiest to remember, and of course, one of the messages that pretty much all women forget.
It would be easy and convenient if it were only rich, white, Christian, straight dudes who were the thorn in Woman’s side. They could easily be targeted and dealt with. They certainly are not the majority in the world. But alas, it is not true. The truth is that all men hate all women. It might be seething violent hate manifesting openly in criminal behaviour against women. But it can also be as hidden as an undersized testicle, no one finding out about it until the right set of circumstances put you into direct contact with it. But it is there, in all men. On a continuum from violently open to extremely well-hidden. And one thing women don’t want to believe is that even men who are clear or visible members of Oppressed Groups™ hate them too. One of the worst mistakes a woman can make is to assume that a man can bond with her over being silenced or erased.
No, you see, men are men and all that comes with it (this is the differential interaction effect of nature and nurture on females and males). Key among their group qualities is a real and significant inability to empathize. And this means that men in groups that are hurt by society are unable to feel anything for other marginalized groups and are often quite easily able to abuse those people without any kind of self-reflection. And by ‘those people’, I mean women, primarily. Oppressed men can frequently feel some kind of kinship with men from other marginalized groups, but not with women, in general, or women in said groups. So in this way, a poor man can show support for a gay man, but is open about his rape fantasies of lesbians or watches ‘lesbian’ porn. Likewise, men of any and all groups will take the PTSD of male soldiers seriously, but will have a laugh about or just dismiss the rape of female soldiers by these same male soldiers. (Oh, and by the way, soldiers are not ‘oppressed’ – quite the opposite, in fact, as they are state-sanctioned murderers, and the males are state-sanctioned rapists, as well. I’m referring to PTSD, a mental health condition, which is marginalizing.)
And within groups themselves, women have discovered that fighting the good fight alongside their male counterparts hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be. Lesbians don’t get support from gay men. Poor women don’t get support from poor men. Atheist women don’t get support from atheist men. Black women don’t get support from black men. Rather, they are expected to do all the grunt work, act as cannon fodder on the front lines including getting arrested, take charge of feeding and watering the male members, look after children if there are any, and (except in the case of LGB groups – although that is changing since adding the T and Q) provide sex. When there are movements for change, what women forget is that men aren’t interested in equality. They are interested in moving up the ladder of power, the rungs of which are women’s backs, and we see this time and again in revolutionary movements. The underclass fights the oppressors, and then replaces them and keeps the same male hierarchy in place. Nothing changes. Women are still on the bottom and left wondering what the fight was for.
So let’s get to gay men – that is, after all, the topic of this post.
I recently wrote a post about another marginalized group – atheists. And as atheist men hate you, so do gay men.
I just spent three weeks travelling through California, which means I was surrounded by tons of out-and-proud gay men loudly spewing woman-hate, and not caring if women were around to hear them. I sat in restaurants PAYING for service that didn’t just include food, but also large sides of misogyny. PAYING to sit there listening to the gay men across the room – including gay staff members – talk about bitches and cunts and say some of the most misogynist things I heard on my trip, even surpassing the bullshit said by straight men I encountered. If I were a gay man having to listen to homophobia in a restaurant, I could probably sue. But as a woman, I have no rights to feel safe in a public place. I would have been laughed out of the joint.
You don’t have to look far to find nice little object lessons. And yet another was presented to me the other day online. The latest horrific piece of news in Trans-World is that some smug little MtT is looking to take leadership within the UK’s National Union of Students as the Women’s Officer. It is distressing. And women are blogging in protest. I headed over to the reblog of an article on this by a woman I read only to find some dude was already jizzing all over the comments. He had provided an insulting reference to a female public figure commenting on how the trans looked like her (he didn’t, actually – I couldn’t see the similarity). He also couldn’t figure out from the title of the original blogged article what the issue was with a trannie heading up the arm of a major women’s organization. He went on a mansplaining, dick-wagging, woman-shaming blah-blah-blah about clothing and how lesbians dress or don’t dress. It actually didn’t make any sense and had nothing to do with why the article was reblogged. If the mainsplaining didn’t give him away as a misogynist, it was the inability to understand the problem with the article that did.
I normally try to resist interacting with clueless men, but he asked a question: what is the issue here? He thought it was clothing. I had no idea he was gay or actually known to and a friend of the female blogger. All I knew was that he was pro-trans and thus anti-feminist. I mean seriously, he has nothing to lose from a man taking over a woman’s movement or women’s spaces. So, of course, he will promote it. Only women are hurt by this. So I let him know that the information about what was being disapproved of was clear in the title (directly naming ‘male pretendbian’, which we all know means ‘MtT pretending to be a lesbian’) of the post. I mean come on, my Chinese students have better reading comprehension, I said. The misogynist responded with a flurry of woman-hate, calling me both a genius AND an imbecile, which was hilarious, and for some bizarre reason, telling me that the article was a reblog, which I and everyone else knew. And then, when I addressed the blogger on the woman-hate in the comment section, Dood attacked me again by announcing his gayness and positing that the only way he could possibly hurt women is by throwing a glitter bomb on us. Clueless, but given that he supports men in dresses, and by definition, of the pro-trans right of men (in dresses) to demand sex from lesbians, this is not a big surprise. Men think they are harmless. Even when they are in the middle of being harmful.
Gay men may not actually rape us, but they play an important role in normalizing violent and denigrating thinking about women and about normalizing the idea of women as objects (e.g., negating women in the LGB movement) and filthy, hateful things (e.g., the ‘ick factor’) or as walking pornified sexual stereotypes (e.g., gender reinforcement through drag queening). And they are often more vocal in their misogyny than straight men. And they are just as excellent at mansplaining as straight dudes. And because they are marginalized, they get away with it.
The lesson here is that you should never forget that no matter how marginalized a man may say he is or that society says he is, he is always more powerful than all women. As I appear to continually say (because it’s true, goddammit), penis trumps vagina. Always. Always. Always. Don’t be fooled. Gay men hate you too. And it’s more than just glitter bombs and cat fights they threaten you with.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Naming the Problem vs Scoring Points for Slur-Slinging
Sometimes, I write unpopular posts. They are unpopular because they make people uncomfortable. They make people uncomfortable because I don’t jump on bandwagons, I don’t join the fray, I don’t like adopting and using catchy slogans or mantras just to gain points with the ‘socially aware’. When people jump on band wagons because it feels like they are doing the ‘right thing’ according to frenzied activists, the ability to analyze reality is lost. And when you can no longer stand back and analyze what is going on, you don’t realize the harm that you’re doing to people who have more in common with you than you think. You don’t realize that you’ve lost sight of what you thought you were joining up with and what your purpose was in the first place.
It is irresistible to attack women. We have ALL felt that, and all people do it, often without realizing it. It is so normalized, and there really is a feel-good effect of taking down a woman you think has over-stepped in some way. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found pleasure-producing, chemical effects in the brain following attacking an uppity woman. No matter what your credo is, there is an underlying current running through us that women must be perfect, self-effacing, and no matter what place they hold in the male-created hierarchy, they are to blame for allowing it to be so. Even experienced radical feminists are tainted by this lifelong brainwashing that creates an automatic, negative, woman-blaming response to social phenomena and every single evil in the world. It really takes a massive effort and commitment to learn to condition yourself to stop and look at what is really going on.
I read a lot of feminist blogs – not just current stuff, but posts published within the last 8-10 years, and this phenomenon can be seen everywhere. It is incredible how many posts begin with or eventually devolve into woman-castigation, usually riding the wave of intersectionality. If you start off a feminist post or discussion with open, unanalyzed blame for one or more of the most hated and criticized groups of women, including, educated women, academic women, white women, lesbian women, or childless women, you’ve lost me a bit. You’ve meandered off the feminist path and are demonstrating your male-identification. There is a difference between critique and blame. There is a difference between naming the real underlying problem and scoring points for using a tired, smug, bullshit cliché (‘privileged white woman’ and ‘privileged white feminist’ are the most overused, but feel like magic on your tongue) to slam a group that is unpopular in current liberal times, convenient to pick on, and not actually at the root of what you’re complaining about. I mean, I get it. I have particular groups of women that fucking piss me off, and I could rail on them all day. Would it solve anything by shaming them into silence – just like a man would do? Absolutely not. They are women and they are trying to survive in the same world the rest of us are. They may have different conditions presented to them, but they have the same central reason for being targeted that we all do. And no woman is omniscient. No woman can be all things to all people. No matter what you think all her advantages are, she is still part of the underclass and blaming her for not doing enough to see every other person’s point of view as she navigates her survival as a woman, is unreasonable, and frankly, exactly what men want and need in order to maintain their power.
When you really back things up, you’ll find that penis dominance and petty rewards for penis worship are at the root of pretty much everything. If you need to think about that for a moment, ask yourself, ‘Would this shit exist if men didn’t exist?’ We can’t answer that definitively, but you can actually break something down by asking key ‘why’ questions. Why does this particular group of women react this way? Why do these women hold these particular views? Why can’t these particular women see or understand my particular perspective? Why does it seem like these women hate meeeee? And when you answer that – and I mean a real answer, not a knee-jerk, unthinking “Because they are privileged” – you’ll find that male dominance is there running the show, providing the shitty and limited options to women. Women haven’t created the oppression that women experience in this world. That is the important thing that we need to remember and that most forget. In fact, it’s a little presumptuous and self-centred to expect other women to alleviate every one of your specific oppressions for you. Your anger is justified, but it’s pointed at the wrong person/people. Ask the ‘why’ questions and explore reality and who your allies are.
After you ask and answer the why-questions, you can easily see that women appear to take on oppressive, ‘privileged’ positions because it has been made clear that in order to lessen the potential harm in their lives, they have to play the power game. Academic women, and business women for that matter, don’t keep their jobs (which they need to feed themselves) if they are aggressive radical feminists, but by playing the male-power game. Rich women usually aren’t as rich as you think they are, or they are the concubines of rich men, which is a different form of prostitution than most people usually think about, and leads to serious penis-identification. Religious women frequently don’t have a choice about their penis-identification because it is all they have known since birth and there is often serious ostracism (and sometimes serious physical danger) threatened if they leave the fold. Heterosexual woman have scary and complicated ties to parasitical males, including birthed sons, and have serious male-identification issues as a result. And on it goes.
I’m not making excuses for people. I do believe that the more ‘freedom’ you have within an oppressive regime, the more responsibility you have to oppose the dominant order. And there are a lot of things that can be done that don’t threaten your life or your survival, although they may threaten your sense of place in a world where you’ve become very used to wearing chains. A lot of women can’t get to that point because it IS scary AND you have to come face-to-face with your own woman-hatred. And while there is a lot to gain from opposing Dick, it is safer when done in numbers, which will never happen. Doing it alone while feeling alone can be very threatening, but it can be done. Life will be hard, and few women (and no men) will thank you for it.
But if you are going to commit yourself to feminism – female-focused feminism – then you have to resist the knee-jerk blaming and shaming of particular groups of women for something that men are fundamentally responsible for. Men need to change it, not women. Point your fingers in the right direction and work together with (or if you can’t then just distance yourself from) the female groups you have trouble with.
That is not to say that critique is not possible. Critique of harmful movements or actions or statements is necessary. Of course. But critique, don’t blame. Women aren’t doing shit you don’t like because they are evil oppressors. They are doing it because they are reacting to (often poorly or in an uneducated fashion) and trying to survive in a system designed to destroy them because of their sex. And sex is at the root of all other oppressions, thanks to men. Critique feminist or anti-feminist movements. Blame patriarchy. Hold men responsible for the lack of options women have and for being forced to choose one of those shitty options.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Ads and Rape Culture: Only One Message Comes Through
It seems like a year ago now that I was abroad, especially as I look at some of the photos I took whilst away. Some of the photos, I wanted to put on my blog, and others are just for me to remember specific things and are for my eyes only.
I’m going to file the one featured in this post under my White Girl series and include it in my growing collection of ‘Whores: How the Chinese See White Women‘ photos/advertisements.
On my way back to China, I had an overnight layover at the Taipei airport. I spent hours wandering the place – most airports are kinda weird at night, and you can notice things you might not see when things are crazy and populated during the daytime. I’ve being in some shitty airports, and I’ve been in some state-of-the-art airports, and I’ve noticed something. The more modern the airport, the more apparent it is that they are male-dominated, capitalist strongholds that sell rape, and (mostly white) female objectification and subordination to the men of the world, and that convince the women of the world that it is sexy, required, and therefore ridiculous to complain about or oppose. And this is done very, very easily through advertisements. Pictures of vulnerable, pornified women draped over or adorned with crap that no one needs.
And most of the time, the ads are of pornified white women and girls. It is not a mark of privilege to be the most rapable, the most objectified. To be seen as cunt on legs is nothing to aspire to or envy. Sorry, ladies of colour. This is not privilege. And it is not what we freely choose, no matter what a handful of really loud fun-feminist cockpuppets tell you. When they open their mouths, you can actually see the head of a penis directing the show and talking away about its needs. Real feminists want ALL women to be completely free from being used in this way and to figure out what their place in the world is while free of male demands for penis worship.
Anyhow, while walking the miles of corridor in the Taipei airport, I ran across tons of pornified, two-dimensional white women and the products on which [rich men of all colours decided] their tits and pussies put the stamp of approval. And you know what? I often couldn’t figure out what product was being sold. The only thing that I knew for sure was for sale was the white girls and women themselves. I used to wonder if men were that fucking stupid to fall for this. I was disbelieving in my youth. We women always want to believe in the best in people, especially men and especially after they abuse us. But with age and more experience than I wish I had, I have come to know for sure that, frighteningly, yes, men are that dumb. Super dumb. And coupling lack of intelligence with entitlement and willful ignorance, they sink to unfathomable depths of violence and depravity, reducing females to things. So the advertisements are of things (women) selling things (products). All to make men (rapists) feel like men (rapists) who want and own shit – shit being both the women themselves and the stuff they are advertising. And of course, all to make women feel inadequate and distract them from pursuing more important things (careers, skills, independence, self-confidence) than becoming temporarily desired (hated) objects.
The most disturbing advertisement I saw that night was selling white pedophelia. It was a larger than life poster of a vulnerable-looking, white girl-child with almost-exposed, barely-formed breasts. As you can see below, she looks like she has been violated – that haunted, ‘is rape all I can expect from life?’ look – and is just realizing that she is just a fuckhole. I think she might be selling a watch (?), but really, it is just White Girl Tits and Pussy™ that are being sold.
She *might* be 18, but she looks about 12. And that is the point.
It seems like a year ago now that I was abroad, especially as I look at some of the photos I took whilst away. Some of the photos, I wanted to put on my blog, and others are just for me to remember specific things and are for my eyes only.
I’m going to file the one featured in this post under my White Girl series and include it in my growing collection of ‘Whores: How the Chinese See White Women‘ photos/advertisements.
On my way back to China, I had an overnight layover at the Taipei airport. I spent hours wandering the place – most airports are kinda weird at night, and you can notice things you might not see when things are crazy and populated during the daytime. I’ve being in some shitty airports, and I’ve been in some state-of-the-art airports, and I’ve noticed something. The more modern the airport, the more apparent it is that they are male-dominated, capitalist strongholds that sell rape, and (mostly white) female objectification and subordination to the men of the world, and that convince the women of the world that it is sexy, required, and therefore ridiculous to complain about or oppose. And this is done very, very easily through advertisements. Pictures of vulnerable, pornified women draped over or adorned with crap that no one needs.
And most of the time, the ads are of pornified white women and girls. It is not a mark of privilege to be the most rapable, the most objectified. To be seen as cunt on legs is nothing to aspire to or envy. Sorry, ladies of colour. This is not privilege. And it is not what we freely choose, no matter what a handful of really loud fun-feminist cockpuppets tell you. When they open their mouths, you can actually see the head of a penis directing the show and talking away about its needs. Real feminists want ALL women to be completely free from being used in this way and to figure out what their place in the world is while free of male demands for penis worship.
Anyhow, while walking the miles of corridor in the Taipei airport, I ran across tons of pornified, two-dimensional white women and the products on which [rich men of all colours decided] their tits and pussies put the stamp of approval. And you know what? I often couldn’t figure out what product was being sold. The only thing that I knew for sure was for sale was the white girls and women themselves. I used to wonder if men were that fucking stupid to fall for this. I was disbelieving in my youth. We women always want to believe in the best in people, especially men and especially after they abuse us. But with age and more experience than I wish I had, I have come to know for sure that, frighteningly, yes, men are that dumb. Super dumb. And coupling lack of intelligence with entitlement and willful ignorance, they sink to unfathomable depths of violence and depravity, reducing females to things. So the advertisements are of things (women) selling things (products). All to make men (rapists) feel like men (rapists) who want and own shit – shit being both the women themselves and the stuff they are advertising. And of course, all to make women feel inadequate and distract them from pursuing more important things (careers, skills, independence, self-confidence) than becoming temporarily desired (hated) objects.
The most disturbing advertisement I saw that night was selling white pedophelia. It was a larger than life poster of a vulnerable-looking, white girl-child with almost-exposed, barely-formed breasts. As you can see below, she looks like she has been violated – that haunted, ‘is rape all I can expect from life?’ look – and is just realizing that she is just a fuckhole. I think she might be selling a watch (?), but really, it is just White Girl Tits and Pussy™ that are being sold.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
A Quick Note on Bonding
If this diverse group of guys can see past their differences to bond over enjoyment and perpetuation and normalizing of rape, rape culture, and female subordination…
Then this diverse group of women should be able to see past their differences to bond over opposing men’s enjoyment and perpetuation and normalization of rape, rape culture and male domination.
And yet, they seldom do. Instead, they bicker, blame, finger-point, and forget all about what they have in common: that men hurt them because of their sex and that ALL men benefit from both this hurt and the inability to come together over it.
Why can’t women bond?
The answer, my friend, is blowing through the pubic, leg and pit hair that men are allowed to have and wear with pride. Men have divided women through the male invention and maintenance of racism, homophobia, religious bullshit, and capitalism. Without men, women suddenly have no manufactured reason to hate one another.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Sex Matters: Here’s How You Know No Woman is ‘Privileged’
It gets worse and worse. Nowhere on earth, never in history, and regardless of economic or educational status has a woman been able to speak up about being subordinated without serious repercussions for her. On the rare occasion that a woman has a) believed it’s worth it to speak up, b) been allowed to speak her truth, c) been believed, and d) seen justice done to acknowledge her human status and basic human rights – you are witnessing something of a miracle. An actual miracle, not a bullshit ‘Madonna on toast’ type of miracle.
Every single one of you of the XX variety has experienced this at least once, even if you can’t bring yourself to admit that yes, for fuck’s sake, you have been victimized because of your sex. ‘Victim’ is not a dirty word. It is a temporary status that describes having had your freedom (even if you have very little) taken from you in some way.
Each and every one of you has felt unsure that:
- something is happening to you because you are female,
- something is happening to you because you are female in addition to being white/black/aboriginal/etc, lesbian, old, attractive/unattractive, fat/thin, etc.,
- your intuition that something bad is happening to you is spot on,
- you don’t deserve what is happening to you,
- you have the right not to have your personal space and, yes, your body, invaded,
- you are allowed to verbally question a perceived wrong,
- you are allowed to physically defend yourself against violence towards you, and
- you are allowed to say NO to a man of a visible minority group who is trying to hurt or abuse you in some way or even kill you.
Here are some recent (increasingly common) scenarios where women have something taken away, hesitate, and then talk themselves out of demanding that it stop and that they have their human rights/status upheld.
Women victimized by men pretending to be women
A man looking distinctly like a man or man visibly pretending to be a woman and dolled up in ‘lady-face’ enters a women’s bathroom or change room and proceeds to act like he owns the joint, doing his business, taking his clothes off and possibly even watching or staring at you or other women/girls. You hesitate to interject because you are afraid of his backlash or backlash by society for being a fucking bitch and denying a possibly ‘oppressed’ person his freedom. Meanwhile, you have had your freedom to feel safe in a women-only space taken from you. You can’t see that you deserve to be human, and that feeling safe, which is something you may never have felt in the way men feel safe, is your right. Men’s special, inside-feelings of pervy-sexy-womany goodness, and mental illness of the dysphoric variety are much more important than women’s safety.
Women victimized by *oppressed* men of colour
You are a white woman and a man of colour comes up to you and begins to harass you. It starts as a verbal altercation, but upon the slightest opposition to his attention, escalates quickly. He enters your personal space and rains verbal, sexual, and/or physical violence upon you. You don’t feel you are allowed to defend yourself because you will be labelled a ‘racist’ even though he has targeted you because you are a woman and because you are white and he knows he will get away with anything he chooses to do to you. He yells ‘racism!!!’ if you choose to report him or defend yourself. And you end up terrorized and/or raped and/or beaten, and if he leaves you alive, believing that a) you deserved it because you’re white, and b) you are not allowed to say anything because you are ‘privileged’. Women are not privileged over men. Zero debate about that. And in my educated opinion, there is much evidence to support the theory that misogyny cancels out the possibility of racism given that racism is a male invention based on woman-hate. If you can’t see that, you need to go back and read some world history. History is the story of what men have crapped upon the world, at the expense of women. And take a look at the endless violence against women today and you’ll see that a woman cannot hurt a man in any way regardless of the races involved. Walking While White and a Woman (WWWW) in no way justifies what men of colour do. And they shouldn’t get away with it.
Atheist women victimized by religious men
You are an atheist and a feminist, and you are worried about the increasing number of religious fundamentalists dictating policy on the local, institutional, and national levels in your country. Your gym (in Canada) has been forced to frost all of its windows so that pervy Hasidic Jewish boys who can’t stop looking in the gym’s windows won’t have to look at all the filthy whores working out without full length dresses covering their filthy whore bodies (true story). You are not allowed to oppose this. Your university class project schedule (in Canada) has been extremely inconveniently altered to accommodate the Muslims in the class because the men won’t work with filthy whore white women, and the Muslim women can’t work with any men (true story). You are not allowed to oppose this because Muslim values (de-values) are crucial to introduce into Canadian policy on filthy whores local women. Teen-aged girls attending a high school dance (in the US) are sent home due to wearing filthy, whorish mini-skirts, because the fundamentalist (white and black) Christian fathers of attending students who signed on to chaperone the dance are popping boners and finding themselves with uncontrollable urges to rape the filthy whore cock-teases (true story). No one is allowed to oppose this. Religious ‘freedom’ and male control over female bodies is most important.
In short, while women have never had full human status, current political agendas, which have slipped in under the guise of ‘inclusivity’ and ‘sensitivity’, are making things scarily worse for everyone. This applies to women of all races, who are being held hostage by male terrorists of all races. And the most effective part of this new political agenda has been to silence the most vocal of women (usually real feminists, and most often white feminists – those who have done the most to help ALL women) by calling them privileged, entitled, phobic, and a whole host of other nonsense and slurs.
Women are getting on board with fighting the trans agenda, but what scares me most is the free pass that men of colour and religious men are getting. Women are not getting on board with fighting that. These *oppressed* men have figured out that claiming oppression is a free pass to threaten, attack, beat, rape, and murder women who don’t belong to their group. Feminists are speaking out about the lie that is ‘transphobia’, which is a very good thing, but are still very scared to defend themselves against men’s strategic accusations of racism, Islamophobia, and other isms and phobias designed to shut women up and give men power. When you force a woman to shut up about what has been done to her, you send the message that her sex, which has been and still is at the root of the longest-running and most accepted oppression in the history of the world, does not matter.
And sex matters.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
The Ice Cube Effect and Feminism
First: A Cultural Curio
When Canadians cross their southern border to spend time in the US, we notice all sorts of weird and wonderful things about how our cultures differ. So I figured I’d entertain you with a small, but significant, difference (significant if you enjoy a properly prepared beverage, that is) before I use it to help illustrate a very significant problem in feminism today.
When a mild-mannered Canadian finds herself in an American restaurant, she usually gets herself a beverage. It might be water, it might be pop (that’s Canadian for ‘soda’, ‘soda pop’ and other American variations on ‘carbonated beverage’), it might be an alcoholic beverage. But no matter where she finds herself, one thing is true: you get a glass with your beverage of choice, and a massive fucking pile of ice within. It sets you to cussing and looking for an extra glass, plate, ashtray (in the old days) and a spoon, so that you can scoop out most of the ice. Canadians don’t like a lot of ice in their drinks, and we are used to getting a choice about it. Go to any Canadian restaurant and your server (if a good one) will always ask you if you want ice in your drink when you are ordering. Most beverages are already refrigerated and are thus cold enough. And if you choose to get ice in Canada, you get just enough to keep the beverage cold. I learned about this as a small child, but when I lived in the US, I very quickly learned to say “no ice” upon ordering whenever I went out.
What’s the big deal, you might ask. Am I just a princess, or rather, are all Canadians princesses? Do we carry ice within our bodies, coming from the Great White North, as we do? Well no. Of course not. I can’t poop an ice cube to save my life. I occasionally have ice in my drink – a few cubes – but really, I seldom need it given that most bevs are refrigerated beforehand. The big deal is that with all that goddamn ice in your drink, it isn’t long before you have this watered down liquid that is no longer flavourful, satisfying, resembling what you wanted in the first place, and is ultimately not worth drinking. The ice cubes are not only plentiful, but they are also usually small, so they melt quickly, taking over with their own seeming agenda instead of just ‘supporting’ the drink. There is nothing more unsatisfying than an expensive, watered down rum and coke – or even just the coke on its own. Yuck to the nth degree! It always made me wonder whether Americans are just really fast drinkers, sucking down gallons of soda pop lickety split. The ‘unlimited refill’ is ubiquitous in and unique to the US – is it because everyone’s drinks are diluted and the time to enjoy beverage perfection is but a fleeting moment?
Anyhow, silliness aside, the melting ice cube phenomenon has nice imagery and application in other, more serious, areas of life. But please note that any comparison with the US is over. It applied to the non-serious story above only. The following is international in scope, and it is one that affects more than just your taste buds.
And so I come to feminism, my drink of choice. And the ice cubes, you might have guessed, are males.
Males pollute and dilute feminism, and if present in a feminist’s life or in the movement itself, very quickly will take over and impose their own agenda. It makes perfect sense if you allow yourself to think about it. Throughout history, men have ruined everything and have made women’s lives hell on earth through their violence and colonization of every aspect of our controlled lives. If it weren’t for this truth, there wouldn’t be this thing called feminism. In short, if women were liberated with equal access to all resources and opportunities, rights and freedoms, there would be no need for a tall glass of feminism. Feminism is the quest to liberate all women from oppression by males. Kaboom.
And so, like ice cubes in a drink of feminism, the more connections you have to males or the more you try to include males in feminism, the more watered down your feminism is. The ice cubes – males – melt and overwhelm the beauty of the drink. Your pure, simple and explicit feminist agenda turns into some unidentifiable, unsatisfying concoction that no longer serves your original interest. Rum and coke with melting ice becomes watery rum and coke. Feminism with males becomes male-focused ‘feminism’.
This truth will hurt the feelings of many women who consider themselves to be feminists. I’m talking about women who have men in their lives, and especially those with very tight and intense trauma bonds with husbands and sons. When you have pledged to take care of all the emotional, psychological, biological, sexual, and economic needs of a male or males, often to your own detriment as a woman, it is near impossible for you put women first. And putting women first is non-negotiable in feminism. After all, feminism isn’t “freeing women, so long as males aren’t inconvenienced, neglected, held responsible, or have their feelings hurt”. So, I’m sorry if this describes you and you feel defensive. Note that I haven’t said that you can’t call yourself a feminist. I’ve said that your feminism is compromised and diluted because your two investments are not complementary, but rather oppositional or contradictory. Supporting and lurving men does not help women. Rather the opposite, actually.
Even if you don’t have special, special relationships with special, special males, there are other ways men can infect how you approach the plight of women. How you conceptualize gender, violence, the cause of violence, and what your social justice priorities are – even painting your face or dressing like you’re advertising sex (no matter how you rationalize it) – will colour your feminism.
But let’s get down to business. I have some interactive fun – in the form of a quiz!!! – for you so you can explore your own glass of feminism to determine how much ice you have included, and ultimately, how diluted your drink is.
Now, I have graduate education in test design, intent, and analysis and I have government training and practice in measurement issues. So I have thought about and have experience in measuring shit and figuring out how bad our (male-designed) assessment tools are. Please note this: there are many problems with this quiz. Most important, my design tool (Polldaddy) was inadequate for my purposes. I wanted more nuance (e.g., weighted responses, assignment of ‘part marks’, etc.), and it just wasn’t possible. Also important, I haven’t tested this test (e.g., reliability and validity) prior to going public to determine whether it measures what it is supposed to. Hell, I haven’t even run it by a human editor or focus group to determine whether people can actually read and understand it!!! I mean, I have a leg up over other test designers, but without proper testing, proper tools, and needed edits and re-edits, this test is no more serious than some dumb-ass personality or sex quiz you’d find in some dumb-ass women’s magazine. So, what you have here is something that was fun for me to do cuz I’m a big nerd, but which shouldn’t be taken seriously other than perhaps to inspire some self-reflection on how much you are infected by the penis virus.
So if you want to take the “How Diluted Is Your Feminism?” quiz, please click the button. There will be a pop-up window care of Polldaddy. And it has 10 questions. Easy peasy.
Note that you’ll get a percentage at the end of the quiz without any explanation as to what it means. There is no ‘fail’. You can interpret your score how you wish. My only suggestion is that if you are scoring below 50%, you probably need to refresh your drink — and all that that implies.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Shrill, Bitter, Humourless, Prudish Man-Hater
Not super-original, but I’m in a foul mood, and I feel like lightening things up a little. And nothing lightens the mood more than taking a look at the ‘insults’ that men hurl at women.
When a woman, especially, a feminist is called any of the following – shrill, bitter, humourless, prudish, or a man-hater – I really have to laugh. I don’t consider these insults, perhaps because I have a lot of interest in what words mean. Other than the last one – man-hater – all of the terms have broad application. They weren’t designed to hurt women, specifically. The insults that really bother me are those with very specific, woman-harm in mind. I’m talking b****, c***, s***, w****, etc. Those terms, which are becoming much more common, normalized, and publicly used in entertainment accessible to impressionable children, hurt women. They hurt women in the same way that the n-word hurts blacks. But racism is taken seriously these days – you won’t hear the n-word used as a slur in the past few decades of television or film unless you’re looking at a character who is specifically a race-supremacist or within an historical context. Woman-hate or misogyny, on the other hand, is becoming mainstream and embraced. Misogyny has always existed, but it is no longer buried under innuendo in the public arena, and this is reflected in the language. Slurs against women are hurled at females (or as a grave insult to men) in entertainment as comedy and or as hate by male and female characters alike, by all racial groups, and by characters of all ages. I was watching an American show the other day where an older black man forced his way into a white, teen-aged girl’s house, called her a ‘bitch’ with hate behind the word, and when she tried to stop him, he yelled out to the street, “Racism!!! This white girl is oppressing a old, black man!!!” Yeah. That’s where our world is going. Slurs against women are fine and dandy, and men of colour are often leading the pack as some of the most protected perpetrators. ‘Art’ reflects life which, in turn, is informed by ‘art’.
Now here’s the problem. The slurs that are really bothering women, especially feminists, these days, are not the ones I just talked about. Hell, call a lib-fem a ‘slut’, and she’ll take her top off and shake those titties at you with pouty lips and a defiant “yeah, I’m a slut, so what?’ look. No, what really gets women a-scampering these days is being called a prude or a man-hater. And even radical feminists will bend over backwards to demonstrate exactly how they couldn’t possibly hate men or want to stop men from putting their dicks into people.
Let’s break these suckers down, why don’t we?
Shrill
Shrill refers to a sound that is high-pitched or piercing. It is used by men to refer to their dislike of women’s speech. They even use the term to refer to women’s writing, so we know it may only partially refer to the actual sound. The content plays a major role, too. You see, strangely, the voices are more piercing or ‘shrill’ when women are trying to fight for their basic human rights. Personally, I’ve encountered very few women’s voices that you could categorize as ‘shrill’. Occasionally, I’ll run into one that is hard to listen to because it is high-pitched. But on the whole, for me, voices that are annoying or difficult to pay attention to are that way for more complicated reasons. No two are exactly alike. It can include geographically-based accent, pitch, timbre, loudness, and/or whether someone whines or slurs. And a bad laugh can make things worse. I find men’s voices equally or even harder to endure than women’s mostly, but not only, because they are so loud and the content is so boring. I remember years ago, participating in a weekly trivia group thing in grad school, and there was always this one dude sitting across the room who would drive my ears fucking crazy – like poison-ivy-itching crazy – with his freakish, weird, loud voice and laugh. If I’d had a steak knife with me… Anyhow, shrill is more about men not liking to hear about human rights for women than any objective qualities of women’s voices.
Bitter
I’m not sure if I’ve ever met a bitter feminist. I’ve met a lot of bitter men, that’s for sure. And I’ve also met a few women who are IN relationships with men and who defend the penis who are actually bitter. What does bitter actually mean? It refers to someone who is “angry, hurt, or resentful because of one’s bad experiences or a sense of unjust treatment”. The bold is mine because it is the important part of this definition. Having a sense of being treated unfairly doesn’t necessarily mean you are actually being treated unfairly, and this is why ‘bitter’ doesn’t apply to feminists. Women ARE treated unfairly. Regularly. All over the world. For thousands of years. Women SHOULD be angry and hurt and resentful. Men, who often have hurt feelings and anger because they may not get what they feel they are entitled to (i.e., free access to as many women’s bodies and free labour and attention as possible), are bitter. They think life is unfair for them. But it is decidedly not. Bitter. Bitter men.
Humourless
Of course men are funny. To call women humourless is the funniest thing EVER. But seriously, men’s humour, which mostly relies upon slamming the oppressed (women) through rape jokes, cheap ho jokes, female biology jokes, or through boring, repetitive jokes about farts, poop, masturbating, etc., is not funny. Men are humourless. Women are funny. They really are. Now, we’d have a better sense of this if men didn’t control the entertainment industry. As it is, to become a female comedian, you have to be fuckably hawt first. Being hawt is unrelated to comedic talent, so we miss out on probably 98-99% of the funny women out there. Funny women who are not hawt are barred from speaking, performing, acting. I have my personal (growing) list of female comedians whom I like to watch and laugh with, two of my faves being Tig Notaro and Janeane Garofolo. If you like funny of the visual sort, I highly recommend Phemisaurus, who caters to women of the ‘man-hater’ persuasion. She makes me laugh and laugh. But there are many funny women out there. Many. Google. Look, watch, listen. And laugh. They are women and they are talented. And somehow, they don’t need rape, whores, shit, farts, or penises in the mix to do it.
Prudish
Oh, this one makes me tired. Countless rad-fems have spent time doing justice to the ‘we’re not prudes, we just think PIV (penis-in-vagina; aka ‘dude-sex’) is harmful’ argument. So I’m not going to go through the whole thing here. Femonade is a great resource for this, and FCM does it better than I ever could. There is a massive difference between hammering home (yes, I know the imagery I’ve created) the point that penises are the source of most, if not all, of women’s problems, and doing the religious, woman-hating, anti-sex, guilt-hate-shame parade. Feminists aren’t anti-sexuality. They wish for women to be free from men’s sexuality so that they can finally figure out what theirs is about. As it is, men define all sexuality, and it is all about serving men and harming women. Period. There is nothing prudish about wanting women to be free to be or not to be sexual beings on their own terms.
Man-Hater
Perhaps my favourite insult? Maybe. I also like the word misandrist, but most men can’t pronounce it and so don’t use it. Plus ‘man-hater’ is catchy – like a venereal disease! All I know is when men call women ‘man-haters’, it makes me laugh and laugh. Men are so fucking insecure. It is an unassailable truth that men hate women. We’ve got that down, right? And since they can only envision hate, it is impossible for women to exist in a state where they don’t hate men. Or perhaps it is this. Men know that if women treated them the way that men have always treated women, hate would be the inevitable and rational effect. Simply put: “We men treat you women like you are maggots on shit. How can you not hate us?” And craftily, men will use this assumed hate to justify more shitty treatment, anger, ranting, violence, etc. And really, whether we hate them or not is actually irrelevant. All men need is the belief.
But so what if a woman or group of women or all women do hate men? It is justified, reactive, defensive hate. And when we hate, we don’t follow it up with violence. In fact, most women will feel the hate burn, and then find excuses for men, allowing them to continue trying to destroy us. Men, on the other hand, have aggressive, unjustified hate for women that is the fuel for all the violence they do to us. We have done nothing wrong – except exist – they hate us and try to destroy us. And then they blame us if we speak up to defend ourselves.
So ‘man-hater’? Give me a break. Take a look in the mirror, assholes. Read the papers. Take a look at the women around you in a human, non-pervy way. You are more likely to see fear in women’s eyes than hate.
Conclusion
To women and feminists, especially, stop defending yourselves against male accusations in the form of ‘slurs’. It is a waste of gynergy. If you really must fight something, then fight the real slurs – the b- c- w- and s-words. The slurs that actually hurt us and are designed to do so.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Men’s Intuition: I Can Tell From Looking at You
[Part of the Conversations with Men series, but a different format than the usual post.]
If you’re a woman, chances are extremely good, likely close to 100%, that you’ve had a run-in with ‘men’s intuition‘. It’s not called this, but we’ll get round to that and what it really is.
Rather, we hear constantly about ‘women’s intuition’, which is a real thing, and which is disparaged, downplayed and used by men in their jealousy and fear to hurt women in a myriad of ways. Men define intuition as women’s unthinking, non-rational, knee-jerk, emotional response to everything, or sometimes the ‘neeeeeed to have baybees’ and being naturally good with baybees and unpaid labour. Scientists operationally define intuition as the “ability to discern what other people are thinking and feeling”. But neither are quite correct. I believe the male definition is just bullshit, as most male thoughts on things are. The scientific definition partially covers it. What women often report is that intuition has to do with being able to sense dangerous people and situations before ‘shit gets real’, or the ability to sense what someone is feeling without any information, or the gut feelings they get about things (positive or negative). It’s a hard-to-define, deep sense of the world that results from awareness and experience of how shit works coupled with a deep connection to nature and people. I believe it is strongly connected to empathy and to being part of the prey class. Some scientific studies (with questionable intentions, imo as a bona fide methodologist) posit that there is a partial biological cause for intuition – greater intuition is linked with lower exposure to testosterone in the womb, which explains why they see higher intuition in women. Who knows? Regardless of what the scientists think they’ve found, I see evidence of intuition in women every day, and unlike what men and many scientists like to think, it is unrelated to being rational, analytical or thinking-oriented. Amaaaazingly, people (especially women) can be intuitive AND analytical, as easily as others (especially men) can be unintuitive AND unanalytical. It’s not an either-or scenario. But men love black-white, either-or dichotomies that put women permanently in the shit house when one category can be labelled a ‘woman’s category’, and thus, ‘inferior’.
Let’s get to men’s intuition. First, let’s say straight off that nobody refers to such a thing called intuition when it comes to men. But I’ve done a lot of thinking and omg, analysis of a phenomenon that has happened regularly in my life and, without a doubt, happens regularly in the lives of most, if not all, women. And it falls under this category of intuition, at least on a surface level.
Men frequently have ‘intuitions’ about women’s wants, needs, personalities, states of being, place in the world, etc., and they never fail to let us know, either verbally in advance or eventually, violently, after it is too late to escape, what they’ve concluded from these intuitions.
Before providing some examples of men’s intuitions, I’ll say two things. First, the intuitions/conclusions men come up with and actually tell us about in advance of serious violence are almost always completely wrong. And they are wrong because the intuitions are self-serving AND dangerous to the woman/women in question. Second, men’s real intuitions – the ones they WON’T tell you about verbally – are almost always correct, and are also self-serving and dangerous.
[Note: women’s intuitions are often self-serving too, BUT and this is a huge but, the intuitions are not dangerous to anyone. Even when they are wrong, they are not dangerous. But they sometimes hurt men’s precious and fragile little feelings.]
Let’s look at the first kind of male intuitions. The ones that are always wrong and dangerous and self-serving.
The verbalized intuitions/conclusions men draw fall into two categories, but there is one underlying theme. You are a target. You are prey. And the two categories are these. Positive (for him) – he has ‘intuited’ that he can get something from you that he believes you are offering. Most of the time, it is sexual in nature, but it could also be money, support, free labour. He has spotted some kind of weakness to exploit, in other words. He will frame his intuition in a way to show he can help you. These intuitions are wrong because women don’t naturally serve men unless coerced through violence or brainwashing. Or negative (for him) – he has ‘intuited’ that you are the enemy. He has realized that you are not open to his exploitation and he is going to try to put you straight in some way, including: shaming, guilting, psychological abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and/or sexual abuse. He might end up killing you ultimately. While it might be true that you are not open to his exploitation, his intuition is wrong in that you, as a woman, don’t exist to destroy him. He is the destroyer. It is standard male projection that fuels this intuition.
Much of the time, when men choose to share these intuitions, they take a particular language form. “I can tell…” Man has looked at you, and he can just tell something about you from this cursory look. Whenever I hear one of these, I get very, very nervous, as through my REAL intuition and experience, I know that I have become a target for some kind of woman-hate-in-the-form-of-male-love-or-desire-or-need-to-help-me.
- I can tell from your face…
- I can tell from looking at your eyes…
- I can tell by the way you walk…
- I can tell by the way you are looking at me…
- I can tell from what you’re wearing…
- I can tell from the shape of your [insert body part here]…
I’ll give you an example. There are so many to choose from in my life. Likely, you can think of at least one of your own, and I truly hope, your own real intuition allowed you to get away as quickly as possible before, he acted on his incorrect intuition.
I can tell from your eyes, you are lonely and need a man.
Through 2009-2010, I once again found myself broke and almost living on the streets (yay white privilege!), and since a) I’m not attractive enough to be a prostitute/stripper, and b) I could never bring myself to do that anyway since I’ve had enough rape in my life, and c) I at least try to turn any indentured servitude I do into something beneficial learning-wise, I ended up doing a series of volunteer work/’internships’ within the realm of agriculture. The last one was with a beekeeper. I was seriously impoverished, and was forced to exchange some hard core physical labour for a place to sleep. Not actually a fair exchange. It never is for women, actually. Luckily, I liked the work a lot, but being really, really poor is a very scary place to be as a woman as you don’t have options and you can find yourself vulnerable to every single man around you with nowhere to run to.
And so it was when I answered the door to the ‘bee house’ where I lived and worked one day. I was expecting a delivery of all the pieces/parts to a massive greenhouse I was going to help assemble. The delivery guy was a middle-aged Russian or Eastern European. And he was an aggressive piece of shit who immediately started in with anger and accusations of things I couldn’t understand – just a general, underlying sense of violence filled the space around him and of course, me. I boldly told him: “I don’t understand why you are so angry with ME. I haven’t done anything to YOU.” This took him aback. It astounds me constantly how abusing women seems to be so many men’s natural state. It is so natural to them and unquestioned by the women they abuse that they don’t even notice it. And I have had endless problems with immigrant men OF ALL COLOURS who bring their extra abusive misogynist attitudes – which are accepted in their own countries – to the countries that welcome them and take it out on the local women they encounter. And the local women are expected to shut the fuck up since they are usually “privileged, rich, white bitches” of course, and let their ‘advanced’ cultures slide backwards into the Dark Ages. No fucking way.
Russian(?) fucker did make a switch in behaviour at that point, but it wasn’t any better. It was the same attitude, but coated with honey. He pulled the truck over to our driveway, and there was a fuck ton of really heavy shit to unload. I immediately began unloading it and carrying it the distance to a dry spot (it was pouring rain). And I tried to move quickly to get the ordeal over with and get rid of this asshat. He didn’t help other than to move the pieces to the motorized lift on the truck so that I could pick them up at ground level. And the rest of the time he spent just watching me. He commented, disbelieving, on how hard a worker I was. Um, yeah, I’m a woman. No fucking kidding, you piece of shit! I work harder than you. AND I’M NOT EVEN GETTING PAID! Like you are. In MY country. For doing nothing.
And then, it came. I was drenched, exhausted, scared, pissed off. It came. His magical intuition.
“I can tell from your eyes that you’re lonely and need a man.”
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
I said, “Nope. Thanks for your help. I need to get back to my work.” I was terrified that he would come back. He knew I was alone. And he thought he could fill some kind of need that he intuited I had.
~~
Now, let’s briefly look at the second kind of men’s intuitions. These are the ones they WON’T tell you about – are almost always correct, and are also self-serving and dangerous.
Men are actually pretty good at determining one thing. They can tell how easy a prey a woman is or will be. There is some interesting research on male psychopaths, the ultimate hunters. They are incredibly good at reading female body language. For example, they can tell by the way a woman walks, how easy it will be to overpower her. Scary, but it does suggest to me that all women and girls should take martial arts classes to develop the confidence they need to put off opportunistic predators reading their subconscious body language… Anyhow, as men are constantly on the prowl for easy prey, they have to be on high alert for all the signs that make their lives and ultimate purposes easier. I’d argue that all men are like this to some extent. Not all men are psychopaths, but they all have the self-serving hunter in them. And all women are prey. The better they are at determining the high return for low effort ratio, the more successful they will be.
Now is this ‘intuition’? I’m not sure about that. There are elements that are similar to how women determine how dangerous a predator a man is. But if you can call it intuition, it is not very deep. It is a ‘gut sense’, but it isn’t based on deep connection with people or the earth or anything in the way that some aspects of women’s intuition are. They read body language, and rely upon experience to determine how far they can go with a woman towards her destruction, and the risk involved.
Regardless, what we can say is this: men are not very good at understanding women’s thinking, feelings, needs, wants or states of being. But they are, indeed, good at determining how good a mark women are based on our verbal and physical cues. And it’s all about predation.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Freeing Women: Deprogramming and Reprogramming as First Steps
I decided last year that I had to transition. From Male-Focused to Female-Focused. I mean, a lot of women know that men harm them fundamentally and relentlessly on a daily/constant basis. But knowing is not the same as committing to doing something about it. Commitment is fucking hard, especially one that requires that you deconstruct an identity formed through years and years of 24/7 programming that goes against your nature, and to create a new one that has no model to which you can look for guidance or upon which to build.
Becoming a ‘natural woman’, by which I mean ‘free woman’, is uncharted territory, or perhaps undocumented territory is the better term, given how thoroughly men erase any evidence of women’s progress and even their basic existence beyond the second dimension. There are just so few amazing role models for women seeking to free themselves. Those few that exist are so thoroughly punished, excoriated, eviscerated by men, patriarchy, and frightened, brainwashed, penis-identified women, that you wonder whether it is even worth it to try even conservative emulation.
But you have to do it. You open your can of whoop ass, and you realize there is no going back. The price of self-immolation is too high. You start to see all of these things about yourself – evidence of your brainwashing – and you know you can’t continue. You realize even the ‘nice guys’ you have in your life aren’t really that nice. They, too, use you, and will turn on you the moment you fail to fall in line. You realize that despite your independent spirit, you do all the things you hate about male-identified women’s behaviour.
You realize that deprogramming is going to be much harder than just making realizations. It will take time and effort and repetition. But realizations, acceptance and commitment to change are the first steps. Negative automatic behaviours – we’ll call them acts of femininity compliance – must be noticed, stopped mid-action, and then replaced with positive, new programming. And yes, it is new programming until you can successfully remove detrimental behaviours, free yourself, and then have options for how you deal with the world.
Given that I have a weird, very isolated, and highly unhealthy life in China, my first real opportunity to test out the 1) noticing, 2) interrupting, and 3) replacing methodology for freeing myself, was my recent trip to the US. Just being in a more social, human-interaction-oriented country offered so many more opportunities for me to test out behaviour in a variety of situations. I’ve probably inadvertently provided examples of pro-feminist behaviour in some of my previous posts. This one is a good example. In a previous life, I almost certainly would have engaged more with the male narcissist. I might have listened to him, provided him his energy supply at my great expense (especially as an introvert with limited people-oriented energy stores). But using my methodology, I (a) recognized the role he wanted me to play, (b) stopped my automatic, compliant behaviour, and (c) reprogrammed my response to benefit me instead of him. And he didn’t like it. And that, primarily, demonstrated the success and promise of my endeavour, and now I need to repeat, repeat, repeat, until it becomes my natural response to male narcissistic demands for my attention and energy.
There were other examples, some small (but still important), and others that were really significant. An example of the latter came in the form of dealing with two long-standing relationships with men. I wrote about one of them a few times, including here and here. And there was a second one whom I consented to meet with before I left, that I don’t want to write about because it is very personal and very difficult. But the essence of both situations is this: I had kept two males in my life for a long time. I put up with and explained away their misogynist treatment for years since they were Liberal Nice Guys™ instead of blatant, raging MRAs. And they caused me frequent pain, which I suppressed in order to maintain the relationships. Well, these recent interactions went differently, even though they were incredibly difficult. I (a) recognized the roles they expected me to play / what they wanted to take from me, (b) stopped my automatic, compliant behaviour, and (c) reprogrammed my response to benefit me instead of them. My interactions with these types of guys had previously been part of cycles of abuse. They hurt me, I spend an enormous amount of time explaining my feelings, my hurt, etc. The don’t quite apologize, but do just enough to placate me, and then shit goes back to the way it was only to build up to another abusive event. I stopped that. I didn’t explain myself. I acted. I walked away. I gave them what they gave me – the bare minimum – instead of what they wanted/needed. And although it hurts now, I know I did the right thing, and I have begun building a model of behaviour that I can rely upon if forced to enter relationships with men in the future. It is impossible to avoid them completely in this world, after all. And with respect to one or both of these dudes described above, I unfortunately need to keep them in the periphery of my life, at least for now. But I don’t need to maintain the abusive cycle of the relationship anymore.
To sort of wrap this up, I’ll say the following. If you can find a female partner/friend (or group) in this endeavour, I highly recommend it. Being able to review what you’ve done/learned with someone, having someone support you and comment and make suggestions, and getting positive reinforcement for your successes (because sometimes they feel like pain rather than success and you wonder if you did the wrong thing) is so very important. Many women don’t have this, and they must navigate their struggle on their own. Support is invaluable. But if you don’t have it now, you shouldn’t stop yourself from heading down the road to healing and rebuilding.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Wolves in Women’s Clothing: A New Collection
Just an announcement that I’ve started a new series, or collection might be a better word, in the right side bar. Once you get writing for a while, certain themes become apparent. The new collection deals with the people who pretend to support women’s concerns, but who have ulterior motives.
We’re talking about ‘liberated’ men, male ‘feminists’, male ‘acti
vists’, transfolk (specifically MtT’s), liberal ‘feminists’, and very occasionally women who seem to walk the talk of radical feminism, but who may eventually cave under pressure to support particular male rights that hurt women.
Anyhow, the collection can be found here.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Conversations with Men: You’re White, So Put Down Your Lunch and Give Me a Blow Job
I’m baaack. Not that it matters to online readers, since we all transcend time and place here, but I’m back in China after 3 incredibly long weeks in the US.
Get set. I’m about to drag another one screaming from the vault. While I have much to talk about that is more current or more recently on my mind or related to events during my travels, I think it was my trip back to Asia the other day via a Taiwanese airline, sitting beside a few Taiwanese folk on the long first leg of the trip, and then spending an exhausting 9-hour layover in the Taipei airport in the middle of the night, that stirred up some memories.
I lived in Taiwan for a couple of years in the early part of this century, and it was rough. As rough as living in mainland China? Jeez, that’s hard to say. China is probably worse in many ways. But Taiwan is no picnic either. I was younger, fresher, less apocalyptic than I am now. I still had so much to learn then. And learn I did. Taiwan was full of hard lessons that have helped shape me, helped turn me into the tough, middle-aged, jaded, hard-to-disappoint-further, been-there-done-that woman that I am today.
Before I get into the story, I want to talk a little about this thing called ‘white privilege’. First, I’ll just say that ‘white privilege’ is a thing, but I want to talk specifically about what it means and where it applies. You see, even though it is a real thing – for men – it is also a buzzword used by Western people to shut other people (mostly women, mostly white women) up. Westerners forget that they usually cannot apply Western socio-political models to non-Western countries. We are taught that in all cases and in all places, whites rule. But on the ground, in individual countries, it is easy to see that that isn’t actually true. Racism isn’t a black and white issue like misogyny is. The ‘white privilege’ trope is Western liberal-speak / non-think, and typically it is people who have never lived – and I mean, really lived – in a non-white-ruled country who scream the loudest about this non-existent, international white privilege, and also who point the finger at white women to shoulder all of the blame for what white men have done throughout history.
So, I’ll tell you how this works based on my experience living and working for about 8 years among the ‘real people’ (not staying in 5-star hotels working for international corporations and making 6, 7, or 8 figures a year) in countries with non-white rule. There is no such thing as ‘white privilege’ in a country where there are no white nationals and no whites in political office or policy shops. There are countries where white men came in and wreaked havoc on local populations (especially the women), ruled for a while, and then left. While there, they would have had white privilege, and now that they don’t rule, they don’t. The race that rules has to have political, legal, and economic power in that country. They don’t have to have to be the demographic majority, they just have to have the political, legal, and economic power. And extremely important, racial privilege is predominantly a male thing. Nowhere do women have political, legal or economic power to rival men. The only time a woman can have any claim to racial privilege is among women, and even then, the power isn’t that great. Women just don’t have much power. Period. And race does not win over sex. A woman of the ruling race does not have power or advantage over a man of the non-ruling race. That is true everywhere in the world. We see that with the recent horrors in Germany. Muslim men have relentlessly attacked white women in a country where there is ‘white privilege’, but the crimes are being hushed up. It’s as if they didn’t happen. The women have been blamed and controlled and continue to suffer and are terrified. The non-white men have been coddled and are allowed to stay and continue what they’re doing. People feel sorry for them. Penis trumps vagina, regardless of race. Always. Always. Always.
In Taiwan, there is Asian privilege, and it applies to the Taiwanese males of the country (except in groups of women, where Taiwanese women will have Asian privilege over non-Asian, non-Taiwanese women). White men may be given some respect or consideration because they are men and because their success and riches are envied by the world. White women are not respected, however. They will get attention, but it is not the enviable kind. The attention a white woman is given is based solely on what women everywhere in the world get attention for: their physical attributes – specifically, their fuckability– which is decidedly not power. ‘Sexual power’ – a term invented by men and lib-fems to mean attention from and ability to distract men due to being highly fuckable – is not power.
And so with that out of the way, I bring you another tale from the Conversations with Men series and White Girl series. Enjoy, enjoy!
~~~
Rewind to 2004: I had spent my first 14 months in Taiwan as a workaholic living in the small, over-crowded, and very polluted city of Taipei. I had worked 6-7 days a week. I had a primary job that secured me my work visa, and a whole bunch of little jobs on the side in publishing, editing, writing and teaching. Part-way through 2004, I decided to cut back on the work and started studying Mandarin formally and regularly. There were aspects of this life that I liked, but there was a lot that was unacceptable and that I wouldn’t put up with nowadays. Even with the work-focus change, and with the increase in free time that went with it, life didn’t improve that much, and that was 100% due to the racism-misogyny, white whore special that I was experiencing, but not quite seeing for what it was.
I had been living near Liberty Square (not the name when I lived there), which is a fabulous little park with winding paths surrounding three major monuments/buildings, including the National Theatre and the National Concert Hall. It’s a great place at any time of day for exercise, meeting up with friends, or quiet contemplation.
Or at least I thought it was until one day at noon.
With my greater free time in my second year there, I sometimes went to this park to find a quiet bench on which to eat my lunch and read. I was in the middle of doing just that when a man came up to me. He approached slowly with his wallet out. Without any attempt at verbal communication, he began indicating through body language that he wanted me to suck his dick, and that he would pay me for it. I noticed a male friend of his waiting in the distance to see what would happen. Was he offering me money for the both of them? Just him? I had no idea. I told him to get lost and used a hand motion to indicate I was sweeping him away from me. He persisted. Insisted. Took the (pitifully low amount of) money out of his wallet and started shaking it in my face. Pointed at his groin. Pointed aggressively at my mouth. Friend in the distance, laughing and looking eager, nervous, antsy. I couldn’t get rid of him. For some reason, he had decided that I, with short hair and no make-up, in my trousers and short-sleeved, men’s buttoned shirt and sensible shoes, sitting on a bench eating my lunch, with a book in one hand, was obviously on prostitution duty. I will tell you this. There could have been no mistaking me for a prostitute. It was simply this:
I was a white woman.
He was male and the dominant race.
I existed as a whore to service his cock, just like all white women in the world.
I knew I was in danger. Even though I was not yet clued into the idea that I was experiencing misogyny and racism on a daily basis, instead of just ‘bad luck’, I did know that I was in serious danger. I quickly left the bench, lunch and book in hand and ran. I ran like hell. Despite it being broad daylight with lots of people around, I wasn’t safe. And strangely, almost all of the ‘Asian man assaults’ I have experienced have been in broad daylight with people around and not giving a shit. Sometimes watching me be assaulted. Apathetically. White whore. Look at what they do in our country. They make trouble.
Needless to say, the park was ruined for me. Lunch never happened there again.
I’ve been talking to folks recently about the Burning Times and the whole thing about dicks in a box. And as I was writing this post, I thought wryly, when a woman orders a boxed lunch*, she definitely doesn’t want dick on the menu… Not related, but the mind does what it does.
*aka ‘packed lunch’ or ‘brown bag lunch’
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
My Special Group of One: The Problem with Intersectionality
Years and years ago, when I started my first round of grad school, I got a tiny, simple tattoo that made the tattoo artist laugh because it was the easiest money he’d made in a long time. I’d wanted an important reminder, and did a ton of research to find the perfect symbol for that reminder. The reminder was that I had a tendency to overthink and overcomplicate things and I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out which steps to take. My dithering was stressful, and in graduate school, there is enough stress from external sources that you don’t need to add more of your own.
The symbol was historically and scientifically important, and to me, signified the idea that simple solutions tend to be the best way of going about things, even when problems are complex. I haven’t always heeded my reminder, but I have saved myself some grief because of it. And it has stayed helpful in many areas of life – it wasn’t just useful or applicable in my grad school world of scientific inquiry.
I approach feminism in this way, too. Although many of the problems women face in this world are complex, the best way to approach them is actually incredibly simple. And a non-intersectional, radical feminist approach is one that works the best. It starts with a basic, true, inclusive premise that all women need to be liberated from the sex-based oppression of all men.
All women, women as a class – the XX people – no matter where in the world they live, what language they speak, what colour their skin is, how much money they have, how attractive or intelligent or able they are, or what they are wearing
Are held against their will and nature, through violence and the threat of violence, under sex-based oppression
By all men, men as a class – the XY people – no matter where in the world they live, what language they speak, what colour their skin is, how much money they have, how attractive or intelligent or able they are, or what they are wearing.
But all of those details aren’t necessary. The basic premise includes all of that by definition. By all women, we mean all women. And by all men, we mean all men. Period.
One of the worst and most divisive things to happen to feminism, and which likely made men laugh, relax and order up another beer from the bar wench, was the introduction of intersectionality. You see, there is nothing like focusing on our differences to break down solidarity over our very important commonalities. Feminism is, at its root, about men’s oppression of women. With the introduction of intersectionality, women stopped focusing on male oppression and started pointing fingers at their fellow women as their major enemies. Very basically, women, in their fight to stop doing men’s dirty support work for free, ended up doing even more of men’s dirty support work for free.
And we saw horrible things happen. And it is getting worse and more violent towards individual groups of women as we speak.
- White women became solely responsible for racism
- Rich women (who are all apparently white) became solely responsible for homelessness, poverty, illness, capitalism, the poor education system
- Able women became solely responsible for the prevalence of mental illness, the cost of medication, lack of health services, misdiagnosis
- Educated women (who are all apparently white) became responsible for the Pink Ghetto, the rising cost of education, grammar snobbery, learning disabilities and dyslexia, massive and sudden male failure in school, and lack of job opportunities for the uneducated
- Single women became solely responsible for the breakdown of the family and the ’emasculation’ of entire nations of men
- Childless women became solely responsible for the race war (the race that produces the most children wins!!!), declining birth rates (like that’s a bad thing???), and posing threats to working women with children
- Atheist women became solely responsible for natural disasters (magical religious thinkers have told us) and the breakdown of entire societies and social orders
In short, every single problem that has actually been caused and exacerbated and maintained by men suddenly found an easier blamable target cause: some specific group of women. Through intersectionality, women were able to ‘other’ other women and blame them for their problems. Attacking other women a) was safer since women generally aren’t violently retaliatory, and b) garnered huge support and ‘rewards’ from men. For example, black women who demand that black men become accountable for and actually stop raping them might find themselves in further danger at the very hands and dicks of black men. But by making up a story and blaming a powerless group of women, such as white women, for black male rapeyness, they garner support in all communities, including confused, over-guilt-burdened, activist, white women, themselves. White women, in fact, have nothing to do with black men raping anyone, but it has become a popular way of saving men from taking responsibility for anything they do. And besides, it makes great press. Men control the press. And it is very hard to stop the domino effect of delusional and persecutory thinking once it starts.
Another major problem with intersectionality is the competitive atmosphere, and the derailing and thought-stopping behaviour that it creates in discussions of reality. No longer can a group of women come together to discuss female oppression without things going off track as soon as someone says something unpopular. People lose focus of the fact that they all have a common experience and begin to form groups, ‘other’ each other, and focus on individual feelings and individual experiences. These individual experiences are held up to a measuring stick of oppression and it becomes a typical male pissing contest over who has been hurt the most, and even worse, who is allowed to speak given their level of bona fide hurt. Those who are perceived to be less hurt or less oppressed lose credibility and even status as a woman. A white woman’s rape becomes less important than an aboriginal woman’s rape. A middle class woman’s beating becomes a joke next to a poor woman’s beating. A mentally healthy (whatever that means) woman’s workplace harassment becomes infinitely less significant than that of a woman with autism. It is disgusting to watch unfold, and unfold it does. The nastiness, slurs, hatred, silencing tactics, and sometimes outright banning or banishing can spring forth in the blink of an eye. It’s so gross that I’ll wonder to myself, how can you determine the relative horribleness and validity of two women’s victimizations? How can you deny compassion to one woman simply because you don’t like her supposedly ‘privileged’ status? Oftentimes, the privilege we *think* a woman has isn’t quite what we want it to be, if it even exists at all. Not that we’ll ask her. Her truth might humble us and destroy our vendetta/agenda. Stereotyping hurts and perpetuates ignorance and violence. But men and their institutions (media, law, etc) work to keep sister-hate going. The play that men give to women’s ‘problems’ in the news has nothing to do with women oppressing women, even thought it might be presented or interpreted as such. Women who care about women don’t downplay other women’s realities, traditionally. Men do. Don’t forget that. All men oppress all women, directly and/or indirectly, and we need to bond over that fact alone. We need to believe each other, listen to each other, and support each other. Accusing and blaming women for something they had nothing to do with – like colonization or rape, for example – serves men, not yourself and not women as a class.
And yet another problem with intersectionality is not knowing when to stop dividing. At some point, we all find ourselves in groups of one according to our unique disadvantages. It is important for data collection and research purposes to know what women face on a detailed level. Complex issues should be studied and approached while armed with this knowledge. I’m not advocating for group blindness or erasing. I have my own pet groups that in my world, deserve more of my attention than others. Personally, I am quite concerned with the oppression of elderly women and of single, childless women, and I believe they are two of the most vulnerable groups in the world, regardless of culture. They are also two groups that get almost NO attention. But I won’t derail a feminist discussion or effort or activism in order to demand their immediate attention by all. If I want to call attention to oppression of elderly women or to that of single, childless women, I will either form my own group, or I will join a group focusing on these populations and their issues. All while also being part of general feminist groups/discussions. And I would ask the same of any other sub-group member. You’re a woman first, and you are also part of other groups that can be of equal importance TO YOU. To date, things have not worked like this. Established groups are infiltrated and shamed, derailed and forced to deplete already limited resources in order to be ‘inclusive’ to every single sub-group of women (and sometimes of non-women, i.e., MtTs). I believe these derails weaken feminism, which is supposed to work to benefit all women by focusing on the common oppression. It is unreasonable to demand that sub-group interests take precedence over general interests – and that applies to anything, not just feminism. General mandates apply to all members; group-oriented, specific mandates only apply to a few, and suddenly you find you have several mandates and a broken, distrusting, self-protective group of groups. No solidarity is possible when everyone is too special and self-involved to focus on a very clear, central mandate.
Divide and conquer. Maybe not the original intention of intersectionality, but it is certainly the outcome. Ask a male ‘feminist’ how much he loves shaming women with perceived ‘privilege’ instead of focusing on what he and other men gain from oppressing women. When we’ve got men enthusiastically on board with showering particular groups of women with hate, then you know that’s not feminism you’re doing.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
What Does It Mean if I Find You Neither Endearing nor Horrifying?
Still travelling, still stuck in Doodville. Two more nights. Like infants, the doods demand constant attention and to suck at the collective tit of Woman. Some more than others. Most women deliver. Fawning. Patiently listening with an interested look. Cooing, clucking, nodding. Reassuring. Building up their confidence and egos. Laughing at their rape and ‘dumb ho’ jokes. Tee hee, you’re right, girls are so [insert misogynist stereotype here]. For the pathologically narcissistic of them, you could be lying there, clearly dying, with a knife protruding from your throat, and they’d still keep up with their demands on your energy. Yap, yap, yap.
I’m puzzled and perhaps only slightly amused by a new dichotomy presented to me by an egotistical, but untalented, ‘travelling artist’. He fascinates himself. He is tickled by what a jerk he is and its effects on the women he comes across during his travels and the female students he instructs (apparently he teaches some art class somewhere – details apparently not necessary to the casual inquirer, I discovered). He fully admits with a scary, psychotic laugh, that he enjoys how he treats people. Disapproval, insults. He said it makes fledgling artists better and they usually thank him later. Who knows if that’s true. We live in a mandatory S&M world where abuse is seen as positive attention and even love. So maybe he’s right on a surface level.
But Artiste says that in general, women either find him endearing or they find him completely horrifying, both of which he enjoys, but he says he clearly prefers the former. This means he gets laid, although, I suspect, given how this world brainwashes women and as evidenced through every bloody romantic comedy out there (those misogynists are so damned sexy, aren’t they?), those horrified women let him fuck them too.
But where do I fit in? I’ve thrown this guy for a loop because I find him neither endearing nor horrifying. He is boring, typical, standard, an EveryMan. And my reaction, or perhaps non-reaction is the better word, to him clearly rubs him in a way that he is not used to. I’m waiting for Gowan to pop out of nowhere and sing the chorus to ‘You’re a Strange Animal’. Artiste waxes on loudly about himself to anyone who enters the room. I can see him looking at me from the corner of my eye. “Why isn’t she paying attention? I don’t understand how this reaction fits in to my schema.”
This morning, he sat down across from me at the breakfast table, and I didn’t look up from the newspaper and my coffee. Somehow, even as he loudly started announcing things about his newly shaved head and the reasons for doing so, and how often he does this, and how much time the hair takes to grow back in, I registered nothing. I mean really, who gives a shit? I was busy reading about a local firefighter who had taken a teenaged girl as a sex slave, raping her continually. She got away and is telling her story. She will be labelled as a whore. You can see the set up in the language. “She had sex with him many times…” I put the paper down before finishing. I left the table and the hair monologue. A woman from the room I was staying in came in as I was preparing to get up, an apparent ‘nurse’ with tracks and several healed, self-inflicted cuts on her arms and wrists. Ignoring me, she entered the ‘he’s endearing’ camp and was enticed out to Artiste’s van to look at his collection of masterpieces. He has enough groupies. I’m not one of them.
Look at my hair cut, I’m endearing/horrifying, pay attention to meeeee, trusted community protector rapes teenaged slave repeatedly, teenaged girl is a slutty whore, not a victim… its all on the same continuum of male domination and narcissism and violence, violence, violence against women. It’s the sea we’re all forced to swim in.
Can someone please make it all stop? Make men stop. Make them accountable. Take away the entitlement. There aren’t enough goddess sessions to counter it all. What does it mean that I’m bored and tired rather than endeared or horrified? I think it means that I’m opposing the social order. I’m behaving naturally, and it’s a very simple, but threatening, position to take.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Goddesses Meet, Talk, Bond, Fuel Up
When you’re travelling on a budget, you often find yourself staying in places of the more communal sort. Youth hostels (which are not just for the young) are a good example of this kind of accommodation. Dorm rooms are usually sex-segregated (oh jeez, have the effing trannies infiltrated those as well??? Life used to be simpler.) Some places will have a mixed dorm which is slightly cheaper – as in, if you’re a woman, you can pay less for greater access to pervs looking at you and a higher risk of being raped in your bed. Very, very occasionally, you’ll run across a women-only hostel. I stayed in the fabulous Frauenreisehaus in Christchurch, NZ years ago. Sadly, an earthquake got it and it is closed. I’ve heard rumour of a hostel with a separate women’s wing in Perth, Australia. And these are not battered women’s shelters. These are regular budget accommodations with the good sense to recognize that the world isn’t a friendly place for women travellers, especially those without much money and who are travelling solo. (I’ve written a little about the differences between men’s and women’s travel experiences before.) The energy in women-only places is different. Safe. Healthy. Conversation doesn’t revolve around the men staying there, (since there are no men) who are, for the most part just looking for a one-night stand with an anonymous, cute, young traveller. You think I exaggerate? Let me tell ya, honey. I’m an experienced traveller. I’ve seen it all. Hell, I’ve been that anonymous, cute, young traveller and I’ve heard all the lines, all the mesmerizing accents, and seen how easily hostels are mismanaged in such a way to put female travellers in grave danger and to create a fertile hunting ground for males. I’ve fantasized about running a women’s hostel of my own. Women need safe places to sleep and rest and refuel.
I’ve gotten pickier over the years as I’ve gotten older and less tolerant of danger and discomfort. I don’t earn much, but I also don’t travel much anymore, and I live an incredibly spartan lifestyle in China. So when I do travel, and I’m not staying with friends, I no longer put myself in dangerous and uncomfortable situations if I can help it. I strongly dislike sharing rooms with people, I hate bunk beds, and I don’t like being in parts of town centred in the middle of all the clubs and bars. But hostels that allow men (which is most of them), even if you splurge and get yourself a private room, can be infected with the male voice, which can grate on your brain like nails on a blackboard even if you hone your skills in tuning them out. I stayed in one place in China which seemed to have such little discretion that dangerous, woman-hating men were allowed to stay. One psychotic, Middle-Eastern nutjob walked into the common area, and unimpressed with the selection of women travellers present, shouted “Where are all the fucking bitches!?!” In the same place, the desk staff gave my room number to a nasty Australian man who was trying to follow me around and tell his boring stories to. And oh yeah, in the same place, this PUA Indian man who was trying to immigrate to my country (yes please!), after trying to get sex from me and failing, asked me if I wished I could have Asian skin, since they were much more attractive than me…
But if you can avoid the men, you do run into goddesses – and I don’t mean that in any religious or spiritual sense as I’m an atheist and materialist and don’t feel the need to come off as enlightened or to barely suppress a secret smile over having achieved a soulfulness/mindfulness/gratitude tier that those around me obviously haven’t. No, I mean goddesses in the ‘awesome women’ sense. I always meet a few on my travels. They are not always feminists in the way that I am. But that isn’t always the most important thing in the formation of an immediate bond. In my current location, which is infected with doods, I had a Goddess Session. This one, like all of them, happened unexpectedly. And like all of them, it was healing, gynergy-generating, insight-giving, and mutually burden-lightening. My fellow Goddess, to whom I will give credit for this post as she is the one who recognized a kindred spirit and named what was happening in the way that I have here. And while we shared only an hour of talk and emotion and non-judgment, we probably smoothed over hours and hours and even days and weeks of toxic male infiltration of our souls and beings. At the parting, she related something a friend had told her, “the road will be hard, but you will meet angels along the way.” I’m not religious/spiritual in any way, but I got the gist of it. We had just experienced evidence of the truth of the essence of this statement. And we were ready to face the day’s challenges as a result.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
A World Without Women
[This is part of the Year of the Fantasy series.]
Upon first glance, at least at the title, you might have clicked over assuming that I fantasize about a world without women. Some of you may have even popped a boner at the idea of not having women around at all. Finally. Yeah no. That’s not it. While this is a series devoted to my fantasies (not sexual ones ya big perv), I’m presenting this one not as what I would like the world to be like, but as a sort of satisfying daydream about what men would be in for if they did away with us for good. It’s pseudo-companion-piece to this one where I give a cursory, fantastical look at a world without men. I say with a straight face that women would easily, not only survive, but thrive, if men didn’t exist. We can create life without them, after all. Thank you science! Not so for men. I’d argue that they don’t do away with us for good because a) they can count on (the majority of) us to tolerate the horrific woman-abuse that they impose on us as a condition of being allowed to exist and that they thrive on and would be lost without, and b) they know they would be doomed to extinction if we ceased to exist. Biologically, women can exist without men. Men cannot biologically survive past a single generation without women. They could become cyborgs, perhaps, which is a hilarious thing to comtemplate.
I look at this fantasy with a superior, pitying eye – the kind that girls and women silently give when watching as a boy or man prepares to do something really fucking stupid. We know what will happen when, say, he builds a ‘ski jump’ on his roof so that he can ride his dirt bike off it, do a flip in the air and then land in the backyard swimming pool while his best bud videos the whole thing. We women know he sucks at math and physics, we know he will land, not in the pool but on his ass or head, and break his arm or leg in the process (which we will then be stuck paying for and taking care of). But we are women, he is a man and ‘knows better’, and besides as a man, he will be given recognition and cocksucking from both men and women for being such a smart and brave jackass. We clean it all up, suck his cock along with everyone else, and the world continues its nosedive into the cosmic bin because of another Great Man’s contribution to humanity.
So let’s take a look.
Although homophobia or gay-hate is rooted very clearly and directly in woman-hate, I do believe the beliefs, behaviours and practices of extreme gay male culture à la post-Stonewall scene (described with plentiful references in Sheila Jeffreys’ “Unpacking Queer Culture”) can provide us with some insights into what a womanless world would look like. In other words, while woman-hate would no longer be a significant influence in how men think and behave, many of the thinking processes and behaviours currently practised by ‘liberated’ gay men would hold.
If you do any reading into either straight or gay male ‘thinking’, and I refer to those men who think they are being transgressive or liberated or true to the essential male ideal (and I find gay men much more honest about what they believe and want than straights, in general, for very obvious reasons), you’ll see that absolutely everything revolves around their penises. Everything. Absoultely everything. And it is a very, very, very adolescent philosophy (if you can call it that). Extremely narcissistic, extremely immature, extremely short-sighted, extremely destructive, and extremely sadistic. The very nature of the thinking is antithetical to longevity, creation, planning, and sustainability. I think it would be a very difficult world to live in for men who actually attempt to think. They would be hated, probably in similar ways to how women are hated.
Without women, men would need to have an underclass. The only reason our current world has lasted as long as it has is because women have always been held as slaves expected to do unpaid labour of all sorts and to clean up after and/or mitigate male damage and disasters. Women are enslaved based on their sex and specifically their ability to create life. So how would subordination work if you only have one sex and you can’t impregnate them? It is anyone’s guess. I suspect it would be based on sheer size and strength and ‘intelligence’, just like in the animal world. I think men would return to an animal state, although with much more of a focus on sex than any other species on earth. Men would die much more frequently than they do now at men’s hands, and even more frequently than women do at men’s hands.
It would be a much more violent world than we have ever seen. Women are not a violent sex, so we don’t generally fight back when men try to detroy us with their violence. Without women, men would be victimized and they would fight back. Violence would be constant. It would be a bloodbath.
Disease would be rampant. Not just general disease from lack of nutrition or self-care. We are as healthy as we are because of women. Women are biophiles. We take care of the body, including men’s and boys’ bodies. Without women, male health would falter. But it wouldn’t just be basic disease, it would be sexually transmitted disease. We have as much sex-disease that we do because of men, specifically gay men living risky lifestyles. Bisexual men, including closeted homosexuals who perform hetero-sex to keep up public appearances, will fuck men and then take their diseases home to spouses/girlfriends or to prostitutes. This has always been true. Secret, unsafe, gay sex (and probably sex with animals, since men will fuck literally anything, animate or inanimate, as data from hospitals, psychologists, and self-report, show) led to disease transmission among men and then into the heterosexual world to innocent women. So a world without women would be a disease-ridden world.
There would be little progress intellectually. There would be no women to steal from. There would be no women to keep men on track or to hold them responsible for anything. The few men who might be concerned about keeping the species going would have a very rough time. It would be hard because men can’t create life as women can. Sperm isn’t a life creator. Women’s bodies are the life creators. And sperm isn’t actually as important as men want us to believe. So male ‘thinkers’ would need to come up with a way to engineer life without the benefit of women. And competing with a massive, unregulated, violent, male population unconcerned with anything but sex and domination, would be near impossible.
The world would be filthy. Men don’t connect with the earth and environment in the way that women do. Men see the world as something to be conquered and exploited. Women know their bodies are connected with nature on a very fundamental level. Men choose to use and discard. You can see this with the fairly recent obsession with exploring Mars. “We’ve destroyed Earth. But hey, let’s find another planet to abuse.” It’s always this way with men. Everything is replaceable. Everything is unlimited. Without women, the world would be like a bachelor pad. Stinky, filthy, unnavigable, toxic, waiting for someone to take care of it. Waiting forever.
This is a cursory look at what I fantasize the world without women would look like. I suspect that I’m not far off the money on this. Men would all be dead within a generation and most of them would, like many of the post-Stonewall gay men during the HIV epidemic (as documented in several sources), embrace death and seek to take as many down with them as possible.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
How I Lost My Smile
I hope I won’t meander too much here. This isn’t a straightforward little Aesop’s Fable with a sweet little bottom line. It’s involved, layered, and there is no clear conclusion. Just something I’ve been thinking about for years and that I continue to think about as I experience more and more and find myself further down that downward spiral that is life as a woman.
Let’s just start with this: Canadians are miserable fuckers. I’m saying this as a Canadian and one who tries to spend as little time there as is humanly possible. As evidence, despite my great boredom on ‘holiday’ here in the US from China, and despite the fact that I have a piece of business I need to take care of up North, I’ve decided not to cross the border. I just hate the place. A small part of it is that Canadians are miserable fuckers. Various data/polls even show it. I remember a comparison poll I once read about done by the airline industry on the differences between Canadians and Americans, and they found that the number one thing American airline passengers hated was fellow passengers who brought too much carry-on luggage. Canadians? The number one hated thing was strangers sitting next to them trying to talk to them. Yeah, miserable fuckers.
But it’s all relative. Canadians are, for example, much, much friendlier and more helpful than the Chinese who are some of the rudest, most selfish, emotionless and humourless assholes on earth. But we’ll get to that.
And I will say this, having disparaged my fellow countryfolk, friendliness varies depending on where you are in the country. I’ve travelled a fair amount in Canada, and I’ve lived in four of the 13 provinces/territories. Having grown up in one of the nastier parts of the country, it was a breath of fresh air to move to the West Coast. I’d say that about American geography, too. I’ve lived on both American coasts and also travelled through 25-30 of the 50 states. While Americans are much friendlier than Canadians, in general, the West is waaaay friendlier than the East. And I’m talking basic friendliness, not politics or ability to think, etc.
Living on the West Coast, and in particular, on the various islands is a different world. People look each other in the eye. Strangers say hello to one another on the streets. You strike up conversations with people at bus stops. You help your neighbours. And people smile. Could be the weather. I really do think better weather makes for more easygoinginess, in general. It’s not that simple, of course, but I think it plays in. So when I moved out there in my later 20’s, I felt myself relax, connect more easily. And I smiled a hell of a lot more.
If you don’t think about smiling in particular contexts and the meanings it can have, you can make the blanket statement that smiling is good for your health. I have felt that, and still do to this day. Exchanging an ‘unloaded’ smile (I’ll get to that in a moment) with a stranger can change your frame of mind and put a different spin on whatever is going on in your mind.
But then there are the ‘loaded’ situations. This is where men come in and ruin things for women like they ruin every fucking, innocent, positive thing on the planet with their filthy minds and need to humiliate and dominate.
It is dangerous to smile at or around men. It is also dangerous not to smile at or around men. Nothing is safe, but a blank look – the kind you see on rape victims or women destroyed by working in porn – is best. Smiling at or around a man can, TO HIM, mean, that you want him, want sex, want to be approached, are submissive and friendly and compliant, and are the perfect victim/prey. Not smiling, and even scowling, may invite sexual harassment, belittling requests for a smile (“Smile for me, honey. It’s not that bad.” Um, yes it is. Now that you’re talking to me.), or the seeing of you as a threatening bitch in need of punishment. Women are required to smile in order to make men feel like men and to help them get what they want from you. Fucking fuckers.
But having said all that, it is not Western men who made me lose my smile, although I will say that now that I have been permanently affected and my eyes are fully open, I don’t waste smile energy on them anymore.
No, I lost my smile due to long-term immersion in Chinese culture. And it took only a month for the first changes in my behaviour to occur.
I still remember my very first month in Taiwan. I’d gone directly from the West Coast of Canada – happy, smiley territory. I was bright-eyed and pleased to be working in a foreign land once again. Until I got there. Despite having a machine gun held up to my face by an aggressive young man on the second day I was there, I still remained my smiling self. But I realized something. Not only did the Taiwanese not return my smiles, ever, the only thing I ever saw were blank, robot-like faces, or just plain old disgust. It was bizarre, and very disheartening. Chinese culture discourages emotion. Emotion = bad, weak, out of control. Even fucking smiling.
Even the children don’t smile. Even most babies!!! Back in those days, in between my regular teaching, publishing, editing and writing jobs, I took on some private language-teaching sessions with the children of rich families. I had one weirdo kid – an 11-year-old boy from a very rich family – who had a freakish interest in out-moded English vocabulary and whose mother would enrol him in adult-level film classes (um…). And oh yeah, the kid refused to smile or even laugh because he thought it made him ‘look ugly’. I got him to engage in some tailored, fantasy/comedy-based murder-mystery story-writing centered on the strange-looking photos of the authors of one of his English books. His stories were hilarious and I laughed my ass off. The kid would start to laugh and then deliberately choked on it to prevent himself from getting all ugly. But I pushed and pushed and finally one day he started laughing and couldn’t stop. Every time I came by his home after that, to his mother’s confusion, the kid would spend the first five minutes laughing hysterically before exictedly whipping out the next instalment of his who-dunnit.
Jezus fucking christ. My biggest accomplishment in Taiwan. Forget the textbook I published, I got a fucking little kid to learn to smile and laugh. Pathetic.
I spent a couple of years in Taiwan, found myself changed fundamentally in a negative way, but not entirely smile-less. I returned to Canada for about 6 years. And then I went back to a culture I said I’d never return to, and I’ve been in Mainland China almost solidly for the past 6 years. The Mainland is even worse than Taiwan, which might be expected given the history and the sheer terror that communism wreaked on the country for so long. And having been there so long, I’ve had a lot of time to study and reflect on the culture and how I have adjusted to it and been mostly destoyed by it.
China killed my smile. It’s not that I am incapable of smiling. I do it a fair amount when warranted. It is much less automatic or natural though in these situations. But in public, outdoors, it never happens. Never in China. And while it has a significant effect on how I feel inside and my outlook, in general, it helps me dissociate, which is necessary when you are a white woman in China. It also saves me a lot of energy. I was quite surprised actually, when I began to analyze the effects of the implemented changes to my public demeanour in China. I used to try to be ‘present’ when I went out, and it was exhausting and demoralizing, especially because there was never any reciprocation from the Chinese. Once I started behaving like them, things became, I don’t know… streamlined? Energy-efficient? Self-centred? I’m not sure what the right word is. I mean, I absolutely hate the way it has changed me, but at the same time, I don’t feel exhausted every time I finish an outdoor ordeal. Going outdoors is always an ordeal. The funny thing is this: I know from feedback from some of my students, that they think I look angry or they are a bit afraid to approach me. But the thing is that I look exactly like them, expression-wise. Blank face. ‘Chinese face’ is what some of them call it. But as a Westerner, and especially as a woman, I am expected to be the kind and entertaining dancing monkey. Double standards. But it saves me energy and I don’t have to be concerned with how I appear when I don’t waste time on distorting my face into something I’m just not feeling. I want to feel nothing, so I put nothing on my face. It becomes easier and easier.
The double standards happen in the West, too – only for women though. We must be the happy slaves at all times. Men can wear whatever the fuck they want on their faces including murderous rampage or disgusting, rapey perv. They’re fine no matter what. Not so for women. Now that I’m visiting the US, I have relaxed a little, but I am much more economic and mindful of my smiling. Tons of women have smiled at me, and I smile back. No problem, and it feels good. I like women. I like the solidarity and energy I feel when exchanging a smile with one. But I don’t smile at men anymore. I try not to even look at them. I’m mindful of where they are in relation to my person, but I don’t look at them. And I don’t scowl. I adopt blank, trauma-face. It is the safest. And so far, so good. I am hyper-aware without perhaps appearing to be so. I come across perhaps as on a mission, hopefully ‘not prey’.
I hate that men and male culture have destroyed something so simple as smiling and relating positively to people. I don’t feel natural, comfortable, easygoing, or healthy. Thanks, China. Thanks, men. Thanks, international Patriarchy.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Black American Men and the Air Crash Effect
Let’s talk about fantasy and reality, sensationalism and mundane facts, penis-loving and woman-hating.
The media loves a good story. The more gore and horror a story has, the more play it will get in the public eye. And the more attention it will receive. And the more distorted the facts surrounding the story will become. There will be a kernel of truth, and then the rest will be blown out of proportion and lead to the masses and very often the supposedly educated hordes going on an illogical rampage in a blood-thirsty, scapegoating frenzy, and society at large will adopt illogical, fear-based, hate-satisfying behaviour.
A good example of this phenomenon is perceptions of safety concerning air and auto-vehicular travel.
Many people are terrified of flying because they believe flying is more dangerous than driving or riding as a passenger in a motor vehicle. But if you look at actual data compiled by government or insurance organizations on number of accidents, number of accidents per miles travelled, the number of fatalities per million miles travelled, and odds of dying in a lifetime, you get a different story. No matter how you slice it, car travel is considerably more dangerous and the odds of dying in a plane crash (if you actually travel by plane – even a lot) are much, much lower.
But air crashes, on the rare occasion that they occur, are catastrophic and deliciously interesting. Being both rare and devastating, they end up getting a lot of play in the media. Car crashes, on the other hand are frequent, even deadly ones, so they don’t get worldwide (or even nation-wide) play. Let’s just say, if you want your name to live on after your death because you haven’t made it big by showing your tits in public (if you’re a woman) or perpetrating a school or workplace shooting (if you’re a male), your best bet is to fly and make sure your plane goes down. It works for Muslim extremists, so why not you? [Yeah, I said it. It’s true, so get a grip.]
Let’s call this ‘the air crash effect’: rare, extreme events get a) a lot of public attention, and b) lead to irrational conclusions. Air crash gets attention and people develop unjustified fear of flying.
Race and Sex: An Eye-Opening Comparison and the Stark Reality
Let’s apply this phenomenon to social problems. I’ll use a current, massive problem that has hit the radar in the US recently, but is having ripple effects in other countries. It is the old racism vs misogyny war.
Women are constantly silenced by liberal men (and women) when they attempt to talk about violence against women. This happens across history and in all countries. But we’re going to talk about the current American climate right now. The most common current argument is that cops are shooting black people right left and centre and that trumps the petty, indulgent, narcissistic claims of American women whose few rights are being fast eroded. So noticeable in fact that the UN has uncovered and given legitimacy to the claims of the deplorable state of women’s rights in what is supposed to be a country at the forefront of human rights. Women in the US are suffering and no one gives a shit or believes those few brave women who are speaking out, in other words.
At some point in the American collective subconscious, it was decided that women, who hurt more than any other group both in the US and on the planet, had to take a back seat to men of colour (many of whom abuse women, themselves). And the issue of the day is violence experienced by men of colour (specifically black men), and in particular, the killings of black men by police officers.
Now, before I dig in here, I want to be clear. I don’t use data reported by MRAs or right-wing or ‘concerned white male’ groups (aka: white supremacists). First, I don’t trust anything any and all men say about violence, regardless of colour. Second, I can’t stand MRA’s or any kind of racial supremacists or purists. Too much agenda, too much testosterone, and thus, lies, lies, lies – and even worse, the woman-hate. You never get racism without deep, frightening woman-hate. I don’t personally give a shit about which race ‘wins’. That is a male concern. Racism is a male invention and it is rooted in woman-hate. Men, concerned with who gets to fuck their slaves (women), get violent at the idea of men outside their racial group having access. That is where racism comes from. Men own the pussy of their own racial group and they’ll fight to the death to keep it that way.
So, back to the data. I prefer to look at the data that black activists themselves provide. They will either be accurate or exaggerated, and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, because it helps my argument, which I am basing in reality and on fact. According to black activist groups, fewer than 5 blacks (men and women) are killed by police per million (as compared with 2 per million for both whites and hispanics). [Note, I have found another more statistically-based site that offers raw data for 2015/2016 that 568 blacks were killed by cops in total in the US. Blacks are also the racial group most often armed with guns. Asians, for some reason, love knives more than any other – markedly so…] The majority are armed, mostly with guns, occasionally with knives. I have no reason to argue with these figures. I believe the activists. I am not a racism denier or cop apologist. And I don’t think people who are not committing crimes should be killed. If people are committing crimes, especially violent ones against women or girls, that is another matter entirely. Shootings of blacks by cops is a big deal and is widely reported in the news. Whether the cops are prosecuted is another matter.
And these killings are getting A LOT of play in the media, a lot of shouting and demonstrating by activists, and white liberals are completely on board and behaving the way they are supposed to by saying all the right things and silencing anyone who questions the data or anyone who would rather focus on larger social problems.
And so we get to those larger and longer-running social problems. We are getting to the car crashes. Violence against women. Cops killing black men is the deliciously salacious air crash, violence against women is the too common, too boring car crash. Let’s look at some conservative estimates (most women don’t report crimes against them, so these data are low-ball estimates of reality).
152,000 women per million are stalked. Remember, the number of blacks killed by cops is 5 per million. Also note that of all the women killed by their partners, more than 3/4 of them are terrorized through stalking first, and that is more than 5 women per million.
200,000 women per million are raped in their lifetime. Remember, the number of blacks killed by cops is 5 per million versus 200,000 raped women per million. And that is a very conservative estimate due to refusal to report, self-denial, mishandling and trashing of rape reports by law enforcers and hospitals, and doesn’t take into account multiple rapes by different men and repeated rapes by the same man/men. This figure is also conservative because of the very narrow, male definition of rape. And this figure doesn’t include sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other sexual terrorism. That figure would be 1,000,000 women per 1,000,000. And many of these women are living an aftermath that makes death look sweet and kind. Often, rape is the worst torture imaginable. Men can’t imagine. It doesn’t happen to them.
111,111 little girls per million are sexually abused by adults. The adults are almost always men and almost always men they know. 111,111 abused girls (who often go on to kill themselves, abuse drugs, develop mental illness, and fall into rape lifestyles of porn and prostitution) per million compared with 5 blacks per million. And this figure, unlike killings of black men, are hard to confirm or identify and vastly underreported.
15 women out of 100 rape victims will try to kill themselves because of what men, including black men, and cops of any race for that matter, consider to be harmless and natural and hilarious fun times. I think most rape victims at least think about killing themselves. And I think the figure is conservative as most women don’t talk about what has happened to them.
This is why I’m just not that concerned about a few killings compared to an insanely more prolific phenomenon. There is a REAL problem out there and that is men committing violent acts against girls and women. It is shameful and insulting to ignore, negate and erase the millions and millions of women suffering and dying at the hands of men of ALL COLOURS and including male police and men from all walks of life and all professions, from homeless men to male politicians and male doctors. It is insulting to erase the millions of women and what they suffer through in order to focus on a few very well-publicized killings of men. It is not my job to fight for (often) armed black men. I support innocent women and girls victimized simply for existing while female. A woman doesn’t even need to leave her home or even her bed to be brutalized.
Bottom Line
For most people, their thinking is greatly affected by what they read in or hear on the news. We have brains so that we can think critically, analyze information, ask important questions, and draw correct conclusions. Our media tell us what is important, and what is important has little to do with reality, facts, and statistics/numbers. Importance wears a penis. That penis has many colours, but it is still a penis, and reality is bent to accommodate and support that penis.
When you look at the numbers, the facts, reality, you see that it is still safer to take a plane than drive a car, and it is certainly safer and better to be male than female regardless of your race in this world. And in the specific example here, it is safer to be a black male than a woman of any colour in the US. Regardless of what liberals tell you and how loudly. There is no shortage of black men despite the fact they are being *constantly* killed by police (5 per million), but women are being raped right, left and centre (200,000+ per million) and living with the aftermath of that torture, the negation or erasure of their ordeals, and the physical complications for the rest of their lives.
Another Oppressed White Male is Liberated by Yours Truly
Last night, I went to bed lighter, but with a heavy, heavy heart. Only if you have felt it yourself do you know what that phrase ‘heavy heart’ means. The words don’t do the feeling justice. All at the same time, you feel like something hard and weighty has crept into the space where your heart should be, a coldness invades you as emotion sears you from the inside out, you feel like you are slowly and uncontrollably, physically sinking. It is weird, and I don’t feel like I can describe its complexity.
As I lay down, I felt some relief, but more poignantly, a bottomless sadness bordering on despair. The layers of this despair are many and might be better understood through a reading of all of my posts. But this post alone will convey at least the sadness part of my emotional state, and perhaps some of the relief too.
I’ve had to let go of another misogynist male in my life.
In the space of four months, this is the second important and long-term relationship I have nixed. Both men, both from California, both uber-liberal ‘nice guys’. Not self-professed feminists (thank goodness), but guys who are totally on board with opposing (not fighting) racism (against males is the unspoken part, I’ve realized). It is fucking hard to end a long-term relationship. But it is harder to accept being treated as less. It is harder to silently accept really sexist opinions, pontifications, theories, actions and orientations from men who profess to be my friend and to care about me. If you cared about me, you wouldn’t treat me as less. It’s really that simple.
This current misogynist – I am staying with him and his wife (until this morning, that is) – didn’t seem to be so horrible in the past. I mean, he was horrible, and I chose not to examine it too closely. Until recently. I’ve been talking to another feminist online about some of the shit this guy has done over the years, and only when you talk about it do you realize what you’ve not allowed yourself to process in a necessary way. When you say it out loud or in text, you realize you’ve been tolerating abuse from or the existence of an abusive individual. But this ‘nice guy’ has become worse over the 8 years that I’ve known him. I think it is because of two things: 1) he has a dysfunctional relationship with a wife whom he both needs and antagonizes and who also is an antagonizer and controller herself – they are both fucked, co-dependent; and 2) he has been spending more and more time online engaging in ‘virtual BDSM’ with women who buy the male idea that female slavery is empowering. (I may have to do a post on the online BDSM community, where I have spent time trying to figure out what makes these idiots tick. It is the silliest thing. Ever.) Use of misogynistic sexual material or services has been correlated with increased violence against women by men. I’m not surprised that liberal dude’s online playtime has made him more outspoken against women.
Said misogynist is the liberal white dude that I wrote about in this post. He is behaving atrociously during his wife’s second bout of cancer just as he did during the first. I was around at the beginning of the first, and the second was announced just before I arrived this time. So, I’ve been around at the beginning of both and watched how this dude has mishandled both situations. Eight years ago, when her first and more serious episode of lady-cancer was diagnosed, dude realized he wasn’t going to be getting laid for a long time and issued an ultimatum that they adopt a polyamorous relationship or else he would leave. What choice did she have? She needed help through recovery. She had to say yes. He got what he wanted and still didn’t support her properly. But he still got to live for free in the house that SHE owned. And this time, it is a very treatable, slow-growing breast cancer. He announced to me and the liberal white lady from the post I linked to above that his wife’s cancer was going to kill HIM. I gave him shit for that, which he didn’t like.
And I’ve since opened my mouth several times to challenge the bullshit that has come out of his. And it has been endless. Him explaining away the cute pedophelia theme in a film we watched one night. Sexist comments when he is ‘forced’ to listen to a small group of women talking about health, travel and misogyny in the world. And the endless harping on the topic of black men getting killed by police. (I am soon going to post on the actual data on these killings provided by black activists and give the issue some perspective that you won’t get by the media, any male, or any government agency.) As I’ve become more observant and less tolerant of this man’s abuse, he has become more petulant, and has adopted a facial expression that speaks of serious male oppression. Pouting, sulking, and then more verbal antagonism towards me. This man in all his years, has never been challenged by a woman. His misogyny has gone unchecked. Because he pretends to be an activist for the poor, he receives serious cock suckage, despite the fact that he relies very heavily on free female labour (I worked as a full-time volunteer for his non-profit for 8 months, which he tends to forget about or downplay) and seldom follows through on his ideas unless a woman is involved.
I’ve had enough. I thought I could deal with or handle this stuff. I need to retain some connections in the meat world for some very practical reasons. I feel that I’ve invested too much energy in relationships with males, and now that my eyes are open, it is practically impossible to respect myself, be healthy, and maintain those relationships. I think to myself that I should have made more connections with females, but they are not necessarily any better. So many women are male-identified, and any relationship you have with them is inevitably tainted by the toxic males in their lives and the female friend’s requirement that you accept abuse that she herself Is willing to accept. And when push comes to shove, these women will often throw you under the bus to support the male abuser.
Where are the feminists in real life? I used to have a few. All were lesbians. But that was years ago. Perhaps, I need to go on a mission, a pilgrimage… Things to think about.
As I contemplate that, my heart is heavy and will be for a while. I still can’t quite figure out which is the worse feeling, dropping toxic males/connections from your life and being almost completely or completely alone, or subordinating yourself in order not to feel alone. Both suck. In different ways.
But at least from Liberal White Dude’s perspective, he has been liberated (a little) from the oppression of a feminist unwilling to accept his free range misogyny. Luckily, there are other women in his life to burden him and fuel his victim mentality and justify his beliefs and the ways he acts on them.
Ask a White Woman
Woman, I have so much to write, so much going on in my mind that I don’t know where to start. Mostly, it is prompted by my current trip back West from China and helped along by my rapid and deep official and deliberate immersion into radical feminist theory during this last year. The general feminist orientation I’ve held for years and years is nothing compared to what I’m going through now. I opened my can of whoop ass and things changed in a more positive, but infinitely more difficult way. And because of this deep immersion, it has really become clear to me how traumatizing living in China is, and how that trauma affects me when I come back to a very different, but equally disturbing West.
I do want to write some things about East vs West, and I also want to write about politics, but I still have much more to say about the whole race-sex interplay and the myth of the privileged white woman, so this post will be a part of the White Girl series.
I and some other bloggers, in light of the escalating white woman hate and the recent rash of sexual attacks on white women by men of colour, have been addressing the topic in a variety of ways. Today, I want to address something that really only clicked for me a few days ago as I was standing on an Amtrak platform waiting for a train. It is a matter of illogic. It is a matter of reactions and beliefs not matching reality.
We all know that white women, especially those of true feminist inclinations, have become the most hated group on the planet, responsible for all the evils and oppressions the world knows. According to the world, white women practise all the newly invented phobias and negative ‘isms’. White women don’t do enough good, but manage to perpetuate all the bad. We are the super-powers that hold the public purse and pull the strings of all the world leaders, apparently. We are turning the education system to shit, and are personally responsible for poverty and school shootings and police brutality. How this all works, I have no fucking clue, but the world says it’s true and they advocate punishment to rectify the situation.
But here’s the thing. When you look at reality and how people behave when not fired up by agenda, you will notice that all people know that white women are the most harmless, most innocuous, and possibly the most do-gooder, free-help-providing and activating people in the world. White women are safe.
Well, that sounds pretentious, doesn’t it? How the fuck would I ever come to such a conclusion?
As I was standing on that Amtrak platform, a middle-aged white woman and a foreigner, I realized that I was the beacon. I was the one targeted as the safe, universal information and protection kiosk. And it has always been that way. And they are right to come to me. I am a helper. I help people. I empathize. I know what it is like to be insecure and lost. I try to be very aware of my surroundings, and when I help the lost, I also try to reassure. I am safe. I make people feel safe. I am a white woman.
I hadn’t taken that particular train in 8 years. I don’t live in the US, as I said, I’m foreign when I’m in America. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about Amtrak or that particular route. I don’t necessarily look ‘American’, and carrying travel gear, I certainly don’t look local. But standing on that platform, it was me that everyone went to for help. In the space of 20 minutes, I helped four people with train and location and logistical information: an older white man from Australia, a middle aged man of colour, a young white woman, and a young black woman with a small child. They could have approached any of the people on the platform, but they all came to me. And when they were finished with me, they felt safe. They knew what was happening, where to go, and what to expect. And they were all thankful.
It has always been this way. I am always asked for information, directions, reassurance. I am always assumed to be the docent in a museum, the librarian in a library, the local person. I’m never in uniform. I don’t necessarily walk around with an air of confidence or knowing. I am not especially tall or striking in appearance. But I am safe to approach. People just know that I won’t beat them, rape them, murder them, steal their money, take them hostage.
So my question is: if I, the white woman, am so helpful and so safe-seeming to all regardless of others’ ethnicity, sex and age, then why the fuck am I so hated? Do we hate that which we can trust most? Is it easiest to lash out at those who help the most?
That’s how it seems. And if you want a definition of unfairness, that is it right there. You use us, and then you brutalize us. We are safe, and we take our abuse in silence like we deserve it. We are told we deserve it. We tell ourselves that we deserve it.
Yes, it is the definition of unfairness.
Conversations with Men: Liberal White Dude Explains a Main Difference Between Men and Women and How White Women Aren’t in Danger
Recently, Miep wrote a post talking about the difficult decision to remove a problematic male of long-term acquaintance from her life. I get it. I get the feelings and frustrations associated with making a decision like that. I’ve been going through some really difficult and similar situations of that nature over the past couple of years, and especially in this past year. Men are problematic, and it is really difficult to rationalize keeping them in your life as a feminist.
I’m currently visiting some uber-liberal friends, and already I’m being irked to no end by nonsensical, politically-correct, but misogynist, analyses and explanations. I discussed the MLK event dilemma in the last post. And less than a day later, I’m deep into conversations with a liberal white dude on how shit works (this ties in, don’t worry, you’ll see).
Over coffee, a liberal, white dude decided to explain to two white ladies, including a scowling me and an open-to-sexist-bullshit woman, a major difference between men and women. A difference that can be seen in young children! Apparently, boys want to know how shit works. Girls don’t. Girls expect things to work the way they want them to work without wondering or caring why they don’t. This explains why we get mad at computers when they malfunction. (Fucking what? That actually describes how males behave, in my experience.) So liberal white dude gave an example of how some three-year-old boy got super impressed with how some adult showed him how something worked and equated that knowledge with being smart. In fact, the conversation between the boy and the adult was generic and demonstrated nothing to me about the kid wanting to know how something worked. And in fact, if liberal white dude had told the same story, but substituted a girl instead of a boy, I’m sure the story would have illustrated how girls want to understand social communication or some sexist bullshit like that. It’s all in the interpretation and agenda. Always.
I continued to scowl at the stupid sexist story and completely invalid theory, and the other white woman contributed a story of her own about some ex-boyfriend travelling to some far-off land with her with a complete lack of interest until he bonded wordlessly with some foreign monk over some stupid tool. Then he was interested in culture. See? Men are interested in how shit works. It allows males to bond. How this explains all the women in science I know, and how talented women and girls are at building and using machines, I know not. But clearly this unvalidated theory achieves something for men. And I suspect it has something to do with men wanting a special domain of talent all to themselves. Unfortunately, women can do everything men can do, as well as create life. So nice try, but nicer fail, dude.
The funniest part is that liberal white dude then told an unrelated story about his wife, that was meant to be some kind of criticism of her, but was actually a really, really good example of how she was exceptionally good at trying to figure out how shit works. He didn’t see that though and neither did liberal white lady. I tried to point it out subtly “How interesting that she was so adept at quickly figuring out how that worked!” but no one picked up on the hint, sadly.
Bottom line, these bullshit unproven biological arguments, which have been used for centuries to keep women out of the sciences and maths and any domain that would gain them independence and public recognition, have no merit and make liberals look really stupid when they use them to prove something.
Next. The same liberal white dude started talking about how the poor brown and black dudes are getting all shot up by police. I pointed out that white women are increasingly being used as human shields and hostages so that these often CRIMINAL individuals can get away with the CRIMINAL acts they are committing. He tried to negate my statement, and I pointed out that I had just been reading another example of this happening. That didn’t fly. You cannot point out facts about men of colour. They are victims. White bitches are just white bitches. They have no voice, they have no valid claims to human rights. They definitely are not victimized by men, goodness no. I didn’t bother pointing out that white women are increasingly the victims of sexual violence and sexual-racial threats and attacks, and I definitely didn’t venture into the recent German rape crisis and the problem of Muslim men. Unsurprisingly, none of my liberal friends has said a single word about what’s going on over there. You. Cannot. Criticize. Men. Of. Colour. And they stick to that. Religiously.
I’m tired. So tired. How can I keep friends like this? They spout insanity. They subscribe to stereotype-based biological essentialism that looks a lot like determinism. And they are so filled with racial guilt that they are willing to overlook or explain away crime, negate real victims’ rights and exaggerate reality in order to feel better. They refuse to name men as the problem that women experience. And they refuse to see sex-based violence as a thing especially when it is commmitted by men of different SES, colour or religion, and a more common thing than say, occasional police violence towards males. Violence directed at women is a much more serious, and long-standing problem than anything else going on today.
I’m not sure how long my visit will be. I feel like I wear a mask in China where I pretend to be something I’m not. But I’ve realized the same is true in the West. And acting is exhausting. There is no place for a radical feminist to take off the costume and speak truth. Except maybe on her own blog.
Why Do I Have to Be One or the Other?
I’m on the road, Jack. For the next I’m not sure how long. At least a month and up to six weeks. Chinese university is on holiday – we are between semesters and there is Chinese New Year to celebrate or take advantage of, depending on your perspective on Chinese festivals. This year, I decided to leave the country. About half the time, I don’t. I don’t love travelling like I once did. Something about men existing and ruining a woman’s exploration into the unknown, or something. I get tired of being assaulted when I venture into the world.
But this time, I have a little personal business to take care of, and I don’t know, my energy feels a little more up than usual. So I’m travelling. I spent a few good days in Hong Kong, a night in San Francisco. And now I’m with old friends in Northern California. I’ll be around for a spell. Where to after that? Not sure.
Now here’s the thing about California. While it has its rednecks, and certainly while it has its pockets of conservative communities, it is a pretty hardcore liberal state. I know I’m not really telling you anything new. California is known for its ‘fruits and nuts’ of both the food and human variety.
Sometimes, when talking about American ideology, it is hard to separate viewpoints from official political stance. For me, it’s like trying to separate culture and religion for homogenous societies (for example, in the US or Canada, religion doesn’t define the culture in the way that it does in say, Israel or the Middle East). When you start talking about conservative and liberal, however, at least in the US, it is hard to separate the thinking from the politics. Liberal thinkers, on the whole tend to subscribe to Liberal/Democrat politics. This is a result of a two-party system. You can’t apply this in Canada, which is not a two-party system and where the Liberal party is much more conservative than the party to which most liberal thinkers subscribe. So for non-Americans, this whole conservative-liberal divide gets very confusing, especially when you are naturally categorized once you start talking about issues.
The next problem is that since there are only two real camps, you are assumed to be part of either one or the other. And frankly, neither one is attractive. Frequently, I find liberal and conservative thinkers are on the same page, even if the words sound different.
And so I find myself deep in liberal/Liberal country, and scared shitless. I am definitely not conservative, but I can’t get on board with unthinking, knee-jerk liberal reactionaries. I deliberately don’t talk politics or social issues here. It some ways, it’s worse in the US than it is in China. I’m expected to be a crazy, weirdo in China with my strange Western ways and viewpoints (I have to remind people that I am not like most Western people). But in the West, especially the US and even Canada, talking my crazy talk about feminism and religion and culture can get me hurt. So much for free speech and thinking in the West, eh? China is not a safe place to have opinions, but I’d argue that the US isn’t either.
My first night with friends, I found myself with my first conundrum/ethical issue. I’m staying with a liberal couple, and the female of the duo is a full-time activist/volunteer. And she announced that is is MLK (Martin Luther King) Day coming up. Whoops, forgot about that. Not on my radar. Apparently, there is going to be some event involving marching to some given place and then lots of food, probably some speeches. She is going and she really thinks her husband and I should go too. Now, knowing her and the type of person she is, I know this is more than a suggestion. At the risk of sounding high school, there is serious peer pressure here.
I don’t want to go.
My primary reason for this is that I’m a radical feminist. Yeah, you heard me. If you are American, you probably automatically put me in the conservative camp when I failed to support MLK Day. You’d be wrong. I’m not a white supremacist or a ‘down with black people’ kind of asshole. I’m a radical feminist, and I am done supporting Dick and his many manifestations. And MLK Day is about Dick. Black Dick, but still Dick. MLK was a misogynist who wanted to free black men. MEN. Black women were expected to support their men in this cause. And today, white women are expected to support black men, despite the fact that these men are doing better economically than even privileged white bitches (yes, there are data on this). Women of colour have always taken a back seat in this movement, which defeats the whole purpose for me. I support female causes, and I am also not taking reponsibility for white men’s racism, another thing white feminists are expected to do. I’m still waiting for a pile of black men to support a radical feminist cause (not a slut-walk where they have their cameras out to capture liberal feminist titties for future wanking purposes). Since that is never going to happen, I see no reason to support a black men’s rally. More precious gynergy wasting, imo. Female causes only.
But of course, I’m not allowed to say this to the woman who is hosting me in her home. I will have to fabricate a reason not to go as a fellow guilty white lady. In a dichotomous world, there is no third stance. There is no position where you can divert your energy and attention to women as a class without focus on race as a diversion and not be seen as a conservative racist. I hold true to the belief that racism is a direct result of misogyny and that focusing on the latter is the way to go in order to tackle both. But I can’t say that in public.
Welcome to America.
How to Respond to Male ‘Feminists’
I’m going to enter this under my ‘Conversations with Men‘ series for obvious reasons, although I’ll follow a slightly different format than I usually do for posts in that category.
If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that not only do I assert that male feminists don’t and can’t exist, but I really dislike men who apply that label to themselves. Further, I’m not too keen on the women, including supposed feminists (ffs!), who shower praise and blow jobs on these self-professed activist woman-lovers either, but I get why they do this even if it is enormously damaging to women.
I’ve written about these creeps before:
They Don’t Do It Because They Care: Where I talk about why men join the helping professions, activism, and volunteer organizations.
Is It A Necessary Concession? Where I talk about the hidden, selfish agenda underneath the male feminist costume.
Truth Will Out: Where I talk about how you can reveal the misogynist turd that is at the heart of the majority of male feminists?
Today, I want to demonstrate how to respond to a male ‘feminist’ who tries to ‘engage’ you in dialogue. The thing with most male feminists is that they always end up in the same place using the same set of tactics. Most of them, with their keen male predatory radar, will sniff out real feminists. What are real feminists? There aren’t many around despite the label starting to become fashionable again for pole dancers and identity politickers. Real feminists are those radical women who are consistent in their belief that men as a class oppress women as a class on the very basis of sex. Real feminists name the problem: men. Real feminists understand the interplay of biology and socialization, and that men are free to be their biologically violent selves and have created a society that supports this through socialization, while women are NOT free to be their natural selves and constantly fight against gender socialization and comply against their will to attempt to avoid male violence.
So having zoned in on a real feminist, the male feminist starts a conversation. It might start out in a seemingly innocent or friendly way, but it quickly devolves into antagonism. (Or he might just dive right in.) The dude just can’t help himself. You see, men, no matter how human rightsy they say they might be, are not on board with radical feminist theory because they don’t see themselves as part of class, male. They are special, different. And they neeeeeed to make you see that you’re doing feminism wrong. Your thinking is wrong. You’re mean. You’re rigid. You’re responsible for everything bad in the world. You’re not doing enough to help women less fortunate. You… you’re something. And whatever it is, you are wrong and you should feel ashamed and guilty. Luckily, he is there to set you on the right path. And if you want to help him out somehow to show your thanks, well, you are free (free!!!) to do so.
Where most women, even real feminists, go wrong is in dealing with these douchebags. Even the most hard lined feminists have been socialized from birth as females to be constantly on the defensive. Being a woman means constantly being under attack in many ways. So women will spend enormous amounts of energy trying to explain themselves. No, I’m not a man-hater. No, I’m not humourless. No, I’m not violent. No, I’m not… oh, please just stop. I’m sorry I’m alive.
It is endless, and even staunch feminists cave under this relentless apologizing, self-defense, and explaining. We’ve seen bizarre capitulations by women once seen to hold the flag of feminism. I’m sure you can think of a few.
Online, these dickheads are even worse. They’ll flounce into a women’s space like the king of the castle and pounce on a feminist. They’ll either ask short, snarky, derailing questions, or they will lay it on thick with multi-paragraph mansplanations. What is expected is that all interested women drop everything they’re doing to address the male feminist’s concerns, defend their positions, and answer his stupid questions.
I propose something different, and I’ll illustrate with a real example put in my lap a few days ago.
~~
I left a comment on one of the blogs I follow. I can’t remember the exact topic, but it had something to do with male ‘feminists’. My comment was:
“Just as there is no such thing as a woman with a penis, there is no such thing as a male feminist.”
A concerned penis-brain responded to me, quoted the second half of my comment “there is no such thing as a male feminist”, and then said “Really?”
I did what most women automatically do, I wrote a draft explaining my position and a few other choice things. And then I stopped. This asshole spent two seconds to write one snarky word that demanded that I defend myself. And I almost fell for it. I found that as I was writing my answer, my stress level increased, and my anger flared. And then all became clear.
I decided to respond. And I responded in kind.
“Yup.”
And it felt good. It felt right. And he didn’t engage me further, which was exactly the right thing to happen. Some people might include their blog address or specific posts, and let the dude know that the argument is laid out there. I don’t bother. This kind of guy isn’t interested in feminism, and he will definitely not take the time to read your blog or post. He is looking to antagonize. He is looking for followers and praise and possibly a liberal woman who will be feisty, but who will still suck his dick because he is so fucking awesome.
In other words, not a feminist. Feminism isn’t about individualism, selfishness, or men/male ‘needs’. It is about women as a class. And if men want to be feminist allies/supporters (not feminists), they should go educate men, not spend time on feminist blogs antagonizing already overburdened, harassed women.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Killing the Internet
I do believe I’m in the midst of a new series on fantasy, which I’ll post in the sidebar once I have a few more posts under my belt. I kicked it off with a New Year’s post on the topic.
Next, I’m going to try to tackle a topic that is near and dear to many people’s hearts: the internet.
Background
I need to include a little background lest I be accused of being a technophobe or anti-something-or-other-along-those-lines.
I fucking love the internet.
Is that a strong enough statement? I was introduced to the internet in two installments. First, in 1991, through having to access bulletin boards to provide information and programs to customers at the little computer consultancy for which I worked before I went to university. And then full on in 1992 when I started uni and could walk into a computer lab and come face-to-face with a Windows-based browser. In 1991, I didn’t quite grasp the implication of what I was accessing, but the following year, it was pretty clear. And my world changed forever.
It’s perhaps for a different post on a different blog all the myriad ways my life changed, often for the better. Suffice it to say that the internet’s capabilities spoke to me, my interests and skill set on a number of levels. I’ve had opportunities because of the internet, I have certain RL friends because of the internet, and much of the informal learning and formal education I’ve been driven to pursue has been facilitated by the internet.
It’s Just a Fantasy, Honey
So, let me pose a question.
If you could opt to turn off the internet for good, for all people in the world, would you do it?
Hmm, just writing that question down (typing it, whatever) sends many different thoughts and feelings through me. Many people among males and the younger generation might consider this a no-brainer of a question and answer immediately with a ‘hell no!’ But it is a question that gives me very serious pause, even saying this as a heavy and long-term internet user. Let’s explore.
If you’re over 40’ish, grew up in an impoverished nation, or grew up in a cave in the West, you can remember what life was like before the internet (and cell phones, for that matter) became mainstream / accessible to the hoi polloi. Life was fine. It worked. Nothing was missing. People didn’t bump into things, lost, wondering how to function. People had friends and networks and ways of learning and disseminating information. In some ways, I miss those days. My world was more local. My friends were people I saw regularly, in person. We made appointments and kept them. Emergencies were emergencies. Work (except for traditional ‘women’s work’ which is 24/7/365) mostly happened during business hours.
With the internet came a freedom of information (of sorts) and a greater speed of access to information that made a large world smaller, increased social and knowledge networks, and provided a whole host of personal and commercial economic opportunities. Some of this was good.
But there was a whole sinking boatload of bad that came with it thanks to men. Earlier, I wrote a post comparing a few of the bads and the goods and how women are affected by the internet. As someone who has spent a lot of time on the net, socially, intellectually, and doing research, I’ve noticed a downward, depressing and alarming trend in net citizen behaviour. Despite all the potential for good, and the current projects that allow positive phenomena to happen, the internet, like all tools controlled by and designed for men, has become increasingly a place of male abuse and violence against (primarily) women and girls.
The internet has become – as all male-focused tools inevitably become – fouled, debased, filthy, destructive, violence-fuelled and -fuelling.
It is estimated that up to 40% of the internet and internet traffic is porn-driven now. Major porn sites generate more traffic than the major social networking and online video sites put together. Most American men (equal numbers religious, Christians are just as disgusting as any other dudes) watch porn. And this site can give you a tiny taste of the kinds of search terms men use to find shit on the net. And the content is getting more and more violent and bizarre.
All in the name of fantasy and free speech. Male fantasy and free speech.
And all the male fantasy and free speech spills over into both internet interactions and real life in the form of violence.
Outside porn sites, men now set up websites or over-populate social networking sites to go on woman-hate vendettas. Women are driven off of sites when they dare to speak. Women are targeted online for vile abuse and threats and shaming for doing nothing other than daring to exist. Men with nothing to lose and no sense of shame, humanity, empathy or accountability pile on lone women online using the most disgusting and hateful language imaginable. Women’s own sites are targeted for trolling and censorship.
But the hate doesn’t stop at the keyboard. The effects of online porn and then the inflamed online woman-hate (whether deliberately organized or organic) moves to RL into the very interactions women have with partners, sons, male acquaintances, classmates, bosses, and random male strangers.
Not fantasy. This is real stuff. Real for women. It’s not getting better.
So I come back to my question. If given the choice, would you turn off the internet for good?
I think about everything I would lose if I turned off the internet. I think about all the ways my life would have to change. And I think about everything I and the world would gain by the act.
Losses: I would lose access to readings from around the world by women. But then I could start a local women’s writing, reading, discussion group. I would lose connections with feminists online, but really, what good are these online connections if I need RL help or I lose power or something happens to them and I have no idea how to find out what’s going on? Honestly, as much as I do get something important out of the few interactions I currently have with online feminists, I’d rather have a small group of them in RL. I would lose my ability to speak my mind in anonymity. Perhaps this is the biggest potential loss. I’ve never been able to speak in RL. First, I come from an abusive home – I was not allowed to dissent or have feelings. Also, I’m a writer, not a speaker. And finally, I am a woman – women are not allowed to speak in this world without consequences. It is dangerous. I think these are the three biggest things I would lose and feel the loss of. The knowledge and the relationships and the speaking platform. The first two, I could deal with – I think relying upon online versions takes away from forging something in RL. The third would be difficult.
Making changes: Since I can remember life before the internet, and that life was just fine, or at least not worse than it is now, I think it is doable. It actually is attractive. Imagine having to cultivate local relationships and networks again. Imagine having hobbies that would take me outdoors. Imagine finding something creative to do instead of falling back on doing something useless, but amusing (maybe) online. I used to do this before the internet. I mean, I’m normally a fairly quiet and solitary person, but I had more dealings with the meat world than I do now. And especially being in China, I spend much, much less time outdoors than I do in the West. Having the internet supports this asocial ‘agoraphobia’. I don’t go out for walks here. My outdoor forays are solely purpose-driven: work, buying food and meeting a friend. No internet? Things would have to change radically. I wouldn’t be in China, likely.
Gains: No internet, I firmly believe, translates into less violence. Men are violent. We can’t get away from that unless we get rid of them all. Seriously. But the internet fuels their violence and gives them an outlet for their hate. And it is an outlet that allows men who would normally not have a place to talk about their hate to feel supported and egged on. All the men who previously kept the violence at bay are now given permission by nameless, faceless others to act out their ‘fantasies’. No internet means less violence against women and girls. Less normalization of violence. Less hate propaganda. The internet is not about free speech. It is about letting men say whatever they want, including hate speech, and about censoring women for speaking truth. Women are only tolerated if they parrot hate speech against themselves and fellow women.
Conclusion
As much as I love the internet, I would turn it off permanently if I had that power. To put a stop to the major outlet of male violence and male violent ‘fantasy’ outweighs any gains I or we might currently enjoy. I could envision a re-do of advanced communication systems in my fantasy world with no men. I do think an internet-like contraption is a very good idea – just not in the hands of men.
2016: Year of the Fantasy
I’ll start with a note on fantasy since I don’t think a lot of people really understand what it means and it is used incorrectly by men (of course) to justify any number of things they do or say or endorse. Men control language, you see, so they can define something one way, and then when it’s to their advantage, they can spin the table.
Fantasy, essentially, is
the act of imagining something impossible or very, very, very unlikely.
All of the video, pictorial, and written porn that exists supposedly falls into that category, and if men decide not to abuse the term ‘free speech’, they’ll fall back on “it’s just fantasy”.
Except that it’s not. The things that happen in porn happen to women, to quote Andrea Dworkin. So porn doesn’t fit the definition of fantasy because it is based on and perpetuates reality. It is violence. It is crime. It is rape. It is reality.
But I don’t want to be sidetracked here. This isn’t a post about men’s vacant inner lives and the need to fill their void with the worst kinds of hate and destruction.
No, this is a post about real fantasy. A woman’s fantasy. My fantasy. It is fantasy because it is impossible (or very, very, very unlikely). The purpose of a fantasy is to escape from the oppression of reality. And who needs to escape more than anyone? Women.
Perhaps 2015 would be better known as the Year of Anger because that’s what it seemed like to me. I’d like to think that this recent period leading up to and including the turn of the year, which has been filled with delightful thoughts of a world that is not possible, will continue through the remainder of the year. We’ll see. I hope so. I tend to be a realist and that is not necessarily a fun place to be – ask any woman who rejects feminism. She can’t handle it because it is a framework based on reality and reality is fucking depressing. And who wants that? Jeez.
I am fantasizing about a world with no men. I don’t care how they disappear. That has not yet entered into the equation. All I have at this point is an established world that doesn’t know men and certainly doesn’t fantasize about having them there! In many ways, it is unimaginable – as I said, it is pure fantasy. We have nothing to base the fantasy on except the negation of the current wrongs, or the opposite of what currently exists. It’s simplistic, but a starting place for a person or people who have known nothing other than slavery and whose history has been effectively erased to support the maintenance of that slavery.
So indulge me in a cursory look at the start of my fantasy, in the form of a list, which is no more than a woman’s surface look at what taking away the testosterone element might effect. At this point, I’m working from the negation/elimination of the current evils men have perpetrated and that have led to widespread destruction. I firmly believe women would not have gone down that same path as we don’t destroy ourselves of our own free will. Once you start thinking about everything you could do if you didn’t have to worry about the threat of men in all areas of life, you find yourself with endless possibilities. I truly think that without men, society would have achieved infinitely more in a much shorter amount of time. Woman-hate is a time and resource waster, a distraction.
Without men, we would have under the following topics:
Sexual Safety
- No rape
- No fear at night
- No sexual harassment or intimidation
- No sexual assault
- Little to no violent crime
- No gangs
- No dominance/submission structures
- No BDSM or sexual power play
- No prostitution
- No stripping/pole dancing/demeaning ‘sex work’ of any kind
- No sex/human trafficking
- No missing girls or women
- No slavery
- No pornography
- No surveillance
- No need for a police force (mediators, perhaps)
- No misogyny
Global/Community Safety
- No property ownership
- No vandalism
- No weapons (other than practical ones for hunting)
- So, no guns, no bombs, no biological weapons, no nuclear weapons
- No territorial disputes
- No need for armies
- No terrorism
- No spies
- No diplomats
- No peacekeepers
- No war
- No refugees
- No racism
Economics
- No money-based system
- No drive for material wealth/possessions
- No bullshit ‘women love shopping’ myth/propaganda
- No corruption
- No privileged class
- No underbelly social class
- No ridiculous demeaning jobs
- No strikes
- No sweatshops
- No greed
- No poverty
- No classism
Ideology
- No religion
- No ignorance
- No blind faith
- No dogma
- No irrational punishments and requirements
- No negation of truth or knowledge
- No needless shame
- No ideological persecution
- Commitment to truth rather than preservation of lies
Social Structure and Breeding
- No family
- No marriage
- No domestic slavery
- No pair bonding
- No forced breeding
- Little need for abortion (medical only)
- No pregnancy worship or denegration
- No myth surrounding biological clocks ticking
- Possible alternatives to natural pregnancy
- Low birth rate / population
- No unwanted children
- No male children
- No orphanages
- No street kids
Health
- No monetization of healthcare
- Universal healthcare
- No denial of services
- Longer life spans without the obsession with longevity
- No sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV
- Little mental illness
- No mental illness stigmatization
- No anorexia / morbid obesity
- Little needless surgery
- Easy, non-stigmatized, humane access to assisted suicide
- Integrated, healthy relationships between patients and all practitioners of the health arts
- Health research not tied to agendas, cover-ups, fuelled instead by a willingness to explore all avenues
- No animal research
The Body
- No ridiculous focus on youth or beauty
- No gender
- No trans nonsense
- No body hate or image problems
- No cutting or self-mutilation
- Comfortable, woman-centric clothing
- No make-up or other hate-driven, toxic/harmful masking behaviours
- No body-destroying fashion
- No illogical body rituals (shaving, bleaching, whitening, etc)
- No surgery designed to ‘augment’ the body
Environment
- No global warming
- No needless waste
- No needless killing of animals
- No water, air, soil pollution
- No massive cities
- Only clean energy
- No property/money/patent-oriented messing with food
- No monocrops
- No large-scale agriculture
- Community gardens
- No animal farms
- Focus on biodegradable products
- Composting, vermiculture
- No chemical pesticides
- Environment-focused, local growing
- No introduced species (animals, plants, fungi, bacteria)
Education
- Complementary technology for life assistance and co-existence rather than life destruction
- No education-as-childcare mentality
- Multiple styles of education available regardless of age
- No rigid age-to-grade classes
- Regular person-focused educational needs assessments
- Universal education to all who want it
- No priority subject areas
- Premium information search tools and information repositories, untainted by pornography and violence
There is so much more. This is just off the top of my head. And I’ll fully admit that it is only a starting point. As I stated earlier, when living in a slave system, it is hard to imagine a world of possibilities and so you must begin imagining the opposite of what you have.
Lunch with Ladies of the Law and New Year’s Shenanigans
It’s officially New Year’s Eve in China – about 8:30 pm. I’ve settled in with a bottle of overpriced red wine from Australia, and I won’t make it to midnight. I’m in a musing frame of mind.
I’m not a traditional person. I don’t have many rituals that I manage to keep for years. I have rituals that serve a purpose, and then when no longer needed, they go away. That’s their function, in my opinion. So the turning of the year isn’t that special to me. I don’t take stock or make resolutions. And if I wanted to, I don’t think I could anyways. I’m comfortably uncomfortable in my unstable life, and the comfortable part of that discomfort means that I haven’t been all that motivated to make big changes in my life. Under all that, I really just don’t know what I want anymore. The few things I know I do want/need are not achievable anyhow.
So what do you do when you’re low-key, unmotivated, feeling a bit lazy, and kinda strangely okay with all that? Well, you organize a huge group of young ladies with whom to go out for lunch and act crazy.
I mentioned in earlier posts that a) most of my students are male, b) I do occasionally go out with the most motivated and least offensive of those, c) I try to nurture female students if they want help, and d) a couple of young, first-year, undergrad law students crashed one of my Masters English classes this year. I’m happy to say, there are a lot of women in the law program, and it is with a group of 8 of them that I went out with today. No testosterone!
It happens so seldom these days. There used to be so many more opportunities to go out with groups of women when I lived in the West. When I was part of the working world then, I would always organize ladies lunches – and called them that too because it we all thought it was funny. And I miss those days so much. Gynergy. I’d like to say, if you could bottle the stuff… but it is definitely something that shouldn’t be sold and to even utter those words is to soil it with typical male non-thinking and greed and devaluation. Gynergy is priceless and should be free to all WOMEN. Not men, women. They get the stuff for free now, and women have to pay to keep the tiniest bit of their own.
So anyhow, to once again get a bunch of nutty girls together, even if they are all less than half my age, was a good thing. Yep, there are generational and culture differences. As soon as we sat down in the restaurant, half of them whipped out their cell phones to log into the free wifi. That is ubiquitous here and among the young world-wide. But there was plenty of talk about life, school, reading, plans, the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday. And then, it was photo time.
When young people tell me they have a hundred thousand photos on some social networking account, I used to disbelieve them. I remember the very first camera I got when I was 12. It was precious, and you had to really consider when you decided to take a photo. You only had one chance and then later you paid to have the roll of film developed. It was a crap shoot, and an expensive one. Cell phones have changed the world in so many ways (most of them not good ways). Photo-taking is constant and definitely not as valued as it once was. If I go out with a group of students, hundreds of photos are taken. When you add a foreigner to the mix, multiply the number of photos by a gazillion. Today, I was the only one without my camera out. That is not always the case, but I can usually have a few of the cooler shots sent to me. Today, things got pretty crazy, and with 8 people taking shots, I can’t even imagine how many photos there are. I wish I could include at least a group shot and a couple of the more charming concoctions, but you know, men ruin absolutely everything about a woman’s online existence, so I’ll remain faceless and anonymous. *Sigh*
Today was so great for everyone, that I’ve invited the crowd over to my place on Sunday for a dumpling-making party.
Dumplings are an important staple snack in China, and a very common thing to get together and do with family and friends. They are easy to make, and a hell of a lot of fun to prepare (especially if you are just learning how to make them). You can buy the little circles of dough (translated from Chinese as ‘dumpling skins’) fresh from the local farmers’ market if you don’t want to make your own. And you can make whatever filling you want. I’m meeting the students beforehand to go to market. This is part of the fun, for me, at least.
I also have a few games planned (which they might not have experienced in China) for after everyone has eaten too much.
I can’t imagine a better way to kick off the new year: cooking, eating, playing fun games, and sharing gynergy – oh, and of course, there will be a butt load of photo taking.
It Takes a Village
[First, a big shout out to all the trans who popped over from Facebook for a visit to learn about how you are using your male entitlement and natural, biological propensity for narcissism, violence and misogyny in order to abuse women and take away hard-earned rights. I’m sorry I don’t allow comments on this site, so you likely had to limit your rape and death threats (you know, male violence against women) to the Facebook vacuum and whatever space exists between the ears. But anyhow, thanks for the blog hits, boys! Traffic is always appreciated, and as an educator and life-long learner, I fully and sincerely endorse your commitment to information-seeking. I hope I could help.]
This current post has nothing to do with trans issues. It was inspired by last night’s short venture out to find some food as my apartment’s fridge was empty except for a green pepper and a small jar of hot chili paste care of a friend from Hunan province. The post was also inspired by the latest posts by and subsequent back and forth on essentialism and socialization with other bloggers.
This post got published and then sent to draft since I thought it was too long, and now I’ve reworked it into something more digestible (maybe).
Background: Children
I don’t like kids, generally speaking. There, I said it. I’m the fucking devil, and I can sense hackles rising around the world as people dig in for a full-scale, personal attack on their individual little monsters. Advice: if you’re getting pissy, don’t throw a hissy. I’ve managed not to kill anyone even though I’ve had it up to here (here being really far up my ass) with mostly women and the occasional douchbag mansplaining man giving me all kinds of nasties about wanting to be childless since I was yay tall (yay tall being about the level of where my ass hangs now) and then achieving it. You like kids, I don’t. Who cares? Although I suspect there are plenty of people who don’t like kids who have ’em. I’ve met plenty. And I say, poor kids. I know first hand what that feels like.
Background: Families
The family unit is one of the worst social inventions men have ever come up with in history. It is solely based on and only survives because of a slavery or ownership model. Traditionally, the man of the household owns the home and assets, including his sex and domestic slave (wife) and all children, whether blood-spawn or adopted. He may also have dominion over other female and under-aged relatives. And he can do whatever he pleases with them as they are all trapped there and meant to serve with a smile. The family unit provides the easiest and cheapest possible way for a man to repeatedly access human prey (women and children). The family unit is the most effective way to hobble a woman and destroy her from the inside out in a long, drawn-out sorta way. And the family unit is the worst possible government-sanctioned environment in which to socialize a child (maybe aside from an orphanage). I’m very much of the village model in child raising. That old proverb (origin unknown, common in many older cultures) “it takes a village” has value. Everyone should have some responsibility in ensuring a child becomes an upstanding citizen, although I’m also in favour of keeping men away from children, especially girls, as they inevitably promote patriarchy and good ole male dominance and female inferiority, and frequently turn to them for sexual amusement.
Somewhere along the way in the family model, we’ve run across things like jumping to conclusions about parents based on limited evidence of something ‘going wrong’. Appearances can be deceiving. We also have a shitload of parents who a) are overworked and absent and who try to assuage guilt by trying to be their children’s friends rather than their parents or by buying them off or mollycoddling them (a sad inevitability of capitalism and the pursuit of wealth/excess), and b) are so out of touch with current society/rape culture that they have no idea the kinds of stuff their children are getting involved with or accessing (porn, drugs, sex, violence, gangs). Kids are disconnected, community members don’t care what’s happening unless they are finger-pointing at parents (which isn’t constructive) or guarding their shit. Moral systems and social/human connectedness need to be a group effort. When everyone feels invested in children, children see themselves as worthy and invest back – everyone wins, and a group effort means less work for all.
Background: Animal Abuse
I love animals. I like them better than people for the most part. Along with pro-lifers and rapists and pedophiles and pornographers and prostitute users, there is a special place on my shit list for animal abusers. When I was five, we came back home to where my stay-at-home mum was imprisoned to find our dog locked in the basement with duct tape wound tightly around her muzzle. For how long? Hours? All day? Mum hated animals and children, and I’m glad patriarchy and a controlling husband provided her with unwanted children and an unwanted pet and then forced her to stay home with them 24/7. Still, she gets some blame here – she was a chronic, narcissistic abuser in addition to being a victim, and no abuser gets a free pass in my world. To this day, I try to protect animals when I can to make up for mother’s sins.
And being informed is important. I forced myself to watch “Earthlings” (everyone should – it’s horrific) and cried my way through it just like I do documentaries on porn and human sex trafficking.
Bringing it all together
So last night, I donned my hazmat suit to protect me from my usual dose of misogynistic racism that I’m gifted with whenever I go outdoors, and ventured into the commercial area near my residence. It was early dark. I stood at the corner waiting for the light to change and looked back over my shoulder at the little fruit shop I sometimes go to. In the summer, one of the employees got a sweet little orange kitten (I have a very soft spot for the oranges), which they kept tethered at the side of the shop. Recently, since she has grown quite a bit in size, they’ve been tying her up at the front of the shop to two cement blocks (see the second photo). where, she can sit front and centre for all to admire, interact with, and unfortunately, abuse.
Animals are seen differently in China than they are in the West. Only recently have people started adopting a ‘pet mentality’ similar to, but not as prevalent as in, the West. Really, pets are just domesticated animal slaves. We are emotionally attached to them, but we have done more harm than good, I think, in changing them in very fundamental ways. I say this as a domesticated animal lover. Humans are selfish. Anyhow, in China, there still is quite a difference in how animals are viewed and treated. I find that many ‘pets’ I encounter are quite a bit different from the pets of my Western friends. Although I am a ‘toucher’ (I can’t keep my hands off animals if they approach and want to be petted), I seldom touch animals in China. First, they are a bit feral, not human-oriented, and they generally don’t approach humans. Affection isn’t common among humans (it is amazing how many of my undergrads have never said ‘I love you’ to their parents or heard it from their parents). And it isn’t really common with animals either. And second, they are generally dirty and often diseased. One of my students died of rabies a few years back when his pet cat bit him. It’s not so uncommon in southern China. I’d prefer not to die of rabies.
But this little orange cat, although very dirty, is incredibly friendly and loves to be petted. So I oblige. It appears to be mutually beneficial.
Now when I turned back while standing at the traffic lights, I saw the little orange tethered to and sitting atop the cement blocks. In a circle surrounding her was a group of children, mostly boys with a couple of girls. They were young, ranging in age from about 5 to 8. One adult man – one of the fathers? – was looking on wielding a cell phone camera capturing the hijinks. And there were other adults, including the shop owner, the cat owner, and various workers standing around. The children were tormenting the cat. Smacking her. Dropping garbage on her. Poking her. And laughing their asses off. I was horrified. The cat was cringing, terrified, flattening herself to the cement block, realizing there was nowhere for her to go. I was surprised she wasn’t hissing or trying to bite/scratch. And it went on and on. I noticed the adults didn’t give a shit. I don’t really like the word ‘triggered’, but I think at that moment, I was triggered. All I could see, despite the young age of these little shits and despite the tormented object being a young cat, was a group of men torturing a woman prior to raping and or beating her to death. It was just so fucking familiar from porn, from mainstream film, and even from actual video from places where male mobs attack lone women for some bullshit infraction like wearing the wrong clothes. I couldn’t walk away. So I stomped over to put a stop to the bullshit. Very, very un-Chinese. I broke social rules with that one decision. The rule here is not to intervene when you see something wrong, when a person you don’t know needs help. But you can stare all you want. I called bullshit and moved in. Luckily, I speak some Chinese, so I told them Enough! This is a good cat. Be nice. And I demonstrated how to pet her. Immediately, the cat’s posture normalized a little. The kids were freaked to have a foreign person in their face. And I waited for them to go away. I don’t know if they got the message. They did realize, however, that fun times were over.
I feel I’m part of the village, even in this distant land, that needs to contribute to socializing, instilling humanity and perspective-taking and valuing life in the young. How can they grow up to be decent people if they don’t learn? The problem is this, though. I was the only one who saw what was going on as wrong, or at least the only one willing to demonstrate that I saw it as wrong. If the patriarchal ‘village’ doesn’t see violence against women, children, animals, (pick a group) as wrong, how will children learn? And further, the sadistic tendencies in this mostly-male group of children are unfortunately biological, so can they actually learn and truly understand that sadism is wrong, even if the correct socialization is in place…?
There is more to think about here. But in the meantime, I feel like going on a cat rescue mission. I wish I had a stable enough lifestyle to support a cat.
Fine, Let’s Just Have Two Male Bathrooms
Living in China and Taiwan has frequently made me feel I’m living out surreal Kafka-like scenarios. Strange racist demands or limitations or really unfair policies directed only at foreigners are delivered with a straight face to the foreign victim, and there is always the implication that you are psychotic for not going along quietly and seeing how rational the treatment is.
I’ve been told I can’t have a university faculty email address because I might be a spy for my government. I’ve turned down jobs where I was told I would have a significant portion of my earnings withheld until I could prove I was honest. Guilty until proven innocent are foreigners. And I’ve been chained into my residential building at night because it was ‘safer’ that way – in some places, I was not allowed by the police to live outside the school, so there really was no avoiding a prison atmosphere.
And because many people’s knee-jerk reactions will be: you’re Western, you can’t complain, and this doesn’t sound so bad – let’s paint this in another way. Imagine in your country, disallowing Chinese university instructors staff email addresses, withholding only the Chinese instructors’ paycheques, or chaining Chinese instructors into their staff housing at night if they are forced to live on campus. Yeah, that makes it sound a little crazier, yes? Well, it is normal to do this to foreigners here.
This is Chinese thinking and they explain and do these things as if they believe they are correct and good for Chinese for foreigners. To the recipient of these edicts, your mind starts spinning. In what world is this rational? In what world are these not human rights abuses? One has no way of fighting this. I’ve spoken about China being another planet before. China is a fucked up place, but it is fucked up in a different way than Western or other countries are. For example, they are not dealing with the West’s equally Kafkaesque trannie issues.
In the trans wars, the victims expected to accept human rights abuses are women, not foreigners. I’ve read countless examples of what appear to be very male-entitled, mentally ill MtT people (men) demanding the conversion of a safe’ish female-only space (bathrooms and change rooms) into man-friendly zones.
I don’t believe on principle that non-gender-conforming men should be messed with by other men because of their non-conformity – it is stupid and unfair and typical male bullshit. BUT it is a men’s issue, and I won’t waste my precious energy policing man-on-man violence. If they want to kill each other, have at it. If they all disappeared, women would finally be safe. How would this be a bad thing???
These non-conforming men lose the tiny bit of sympathy I can muster for them when they try to solve their problems at the expense of women. And of course, that is what they automatically do. That is what men do. “Poor me. Men hate me. I, I, I know! I will make myself feel better by shitting on women! Yeah! We’ve been doing it forever, and they are not allowed to fight back! Problem solved.” Instead of creating trannie spaces, which is the logical and fair thing to do, they just take the little that women have. It is so much easier to conquer an already conquered class than to start from scratch and forge your own resources and spaces and identities.
And so the invasion of women’s very private and safe’ish spaces – the very places we piss, shit, deal with our menstrual blood, cry, hide, escape from men, have a private moment, change our clothes, and sometimes exchange woman-oriented information and bonds – is well under-way. Men under the delusion (and sometimes not so deluded delusion…) that they are women because they like Hello Kitty and sparkly nail polish are convincing the legal system in general, and institutions/organizations one-by-one that they need to invade have access to women’s bodies, privacy, feeling of security, spaces.
And what can women do when they try to argue against the invasion of men into their very private spaces? Nothing. It is a Kafka-like scenario – it is so messed up, it is hard to even get a handle on rational thought. Women are suddenly the oppressors. Trans are being victimized. No word is made of how they are treated in the male bathroom/change room and that the violence being done to them (if any) is by men. It is women preventing the individual from feeling safe. It is women preventing the trans from having a place to do his business. It is not logical, rational, sense-making. And given that she is now painted as an oppressor, the woman has two ‘choices’: accept having to do her business in a male space, or not entering the space at all (having nowhere to go at all). There is no longer a woman’s bathroom/change room, but two men’s rooms.
And the best part? If a trans commits any kind of hate crime against the women whose space he has now legally taken over and in these very spaces, it is seen as woman-on-woman crime. Mark my words, we are going to see a ‘strange’ and ‘inexplicable’ jump in sex crimes with female perps, and men will sit back and smugly say: “See? Women are violent too.”
The Male Therapist (Post-Christmas Navel-Gazing)
I’ve never been to therapy.
I think I badly need it, but I know I won’t ever go. And I’ve come to realize why this will never happen.
I was raised and abused by a father who was a male therapist. I won’t (in this post) even touch on my even more abusive mother (who was not a therapist). Between the two of them, I grew up to be an emotionally paralyzed, very confused, silent, angry, socially anxious and awkward, depressed individual, and then was further abused by these parents for being emotionally paralyzed, very confused, silent, angry, socially anxious and awkward, and depressed. Exactly the kind of person who could use a little therapy to untwist the emotional twine binding her.
But as I said, I’ll never go. Even though I went on to formally study psychology for years, I kept to the hard sciencey specializations (statistics, neuroscience, psychometry) and kept all my clinical dealings as a sideline through clinical and forensic research projects, coursework and collaboration/friendship with the more interesting of the clinical (female) crowd.
Even in the thick of things, I still declined therapy while feeling I desperately needed it at the same time. Instead, I self-examined. I know exactly what’s going on with me thanks to years of this relentless questioning and probing. Unfortunately, therapists are useful creatures – you can self-examine all you want and still not make much progress towards balance or health. Therapists are guides, and they are supposed to support you when you are at your most exposed and vulnerable.
As I am an expert in mind-fuckery, I often think about therapy professions. That was what I wanted to be as a kid, and I discarded it in college. At the time, I thought my classmates were too wishy-washy, and hey, I was really good at math and experimental design, but looking back, I know that I left because it was too threatening. Part of me didn’t want to have to address the nasty truths in my life and thus become vulnerable. I knew what vulnerable was and the therapist I grew up with both made me vulnerable and exploited it relentlessly. Who wants more of that?
And as I’ve explored the therapy professions (social work, clinical psychology, clinical psychiatry, etc), I keep coming back to the same question or set of questions.
What draws men to this line of work? And more specifically, what draws men to therapy for female victims of sex crimes (rape, sexual assault, incest)?
Let’s come back to this and talk about female therapists first.
First off, not all female therapists are good and/or appropriate for your needs. The therapist’s professional orientation may not line up with yours. The therapist has been educated by the patriarchy and likely holds patriarchal views of women and their illnesses. Speaking from experience with clinical psych undergrad and postgrad students and professors, many therapists (male and female) are not the most stable themselves. People with problems tend to gravitate towards this profession and the field is sooo competitive that often, only the most obsessive and neurotic are given admittance to programs. I can’t speak for social work programs, but most of the practitioners I’ve met have been really weird people with weird agendas. But I DO believe that it is people with problems who are exactly the people who should be working in these fields because they understand first-hand what the patient is going through. It is important, however, that the therapist have worked out her issues to minimize the intrusion of said issues into her patient/client’s situation.
All said, there are tons of well-meaning women who gravitate towards the helping professions. Well-meaning doesn’t mean effective or correct, but it is a starting place. Men don’t often have even the correct starting place.
To speak more specifically about work with female victims of sex-based crimes (aka hate crimes against women), it is easy to understand why women get into it. Women want to help women. Therapists are often victims themselves. Oh who am I kidding, all women are victims of at least one sex-based offense and are exposed to male filth on a daily basis. Female therapists want to get in there and do some good. Are they going about it the right way? I don’t know. I don’t think most of women’s energy expenditure actually makes any progress towards ending male violence. But someone has to put on the band-aids, I suppose.
I’ve also known female therapists who’ve worked with rapists and men who sexually assault women and children. I can even understand why women gravitate towards this. The work is, of course, pointless. You can’t fix men, and you absolutely can’t fix a rapist. But again, women pour endless energy into trying to fix male problems that can’t be fixed. It’s a misplaced, erroneous belief in male ‘goodness’ (whatever) and a desire to keep women safe. *Sigh*
So we come back to men. I’ve written about men and the helping professions and volunteer work before. What could possibly bring men specifically into wanting to ‘help’ female victims of sex-based crimes? It boggles the mind. Men have little capacity for empathy, and I have never met a man who can wrap his head around the fear women live with daily as a result of forced proximity to men. So to deliberately be around and ‘help’ female victims isn’t a problem in their minds. The last thing women need after victimization by a man, however, is to be made even more exposed and vulnerable with a man controlling her aftermath. Male therapists must be looking for control or a vicarious experience or something. Perhaps they are invested in putting forth a male agenda in ‘managing’ female victims. Does he want to show that ‘not all men are bad’? How completely selfish and self-centred, if that is the case.
We have a new problem with aggressive MtT’s targeting battered women’s shelters and demanding to work there and be put into direct contact with female victims. They are becoming so self-centred and disrespectful that they are bringing law suits to fight for their right to access female victims. Why are they doing this? Is it an attempt to use women’s real experiences to build up their own sense of victimhood? Whatever they are doing, it is assault. It is disgusting. And it needs to be stopped.
Men also love to gravitate towards helping male sex offenders. I have personal experience with one of these creatures. I was taking a course in a form of counselling and was paired up by phone with a black, American, Christian man who headed up his own church and specifically helped rapists get on their feet after (unfortunately) being released from prison. He and I were to do ‘counselling’ sessions on the phone. He was controlling of me from the very beginning, and took advantage of my commitment to the course. He cancelled our sessions, let me do all the work, and would take other phone calls while we were in the middle of a counselling session. But he was smarmy, saying all the right things to smooth things over. If I were 20, I would have accepted the abuse and chided myself that as a WHITE woman, I supposedly was the privileged one. But I was older and well-versed in how all men have privilege over all women regardless of other group membership. Penis trumps vagina, regardless of race, every single time. One day, I called him on his repeated disrespect of me, and the truth came out. He attacked me mercilessly, and threw all the information I’d given him in my vulnerable state as counsellee in my face. And then he played the god card – he knew I was an atheist, and let me know I was shit because of it. Pure abuse. I suspect he was a ‘recovered’ rapist himself. I put my foot down, complained to the school, and only after my fellow student attacked the teacher was he thrown out of the program.
So, I suspect that sex offenders help sex offenders, and any man who gravitates towards therapy for female victims or male offenders is just there to perpetuate the system of abuse, keep the male agenda alive and well, ‘help’ women to put their experience in a compartment and not paint all men or the patriarchy as bad, and experience personal control and vicarious excitement over female victimization. I advocate for keeping men out of all professions where they have access to vulnerable women and girls.
Opening Your Can of Whoop Ass
There are a lot of containers that, once opened or broken or dumped out, cannot be resealed or refilled with their original contents. Think of a tooth paste tube, a piñata, or an aerosol can. Release the contents and there is no going back. Sometimes, the containers are fragile – batter or abuse them too much, and they lose their integrity and ability to hold anything anymore. With other containers, the contents may be such that there is no possible way of getting it back into the container once released – it’s all over the place.
The worst containers of stuff are those figurative cans of whoop ass. Not only can you not re-contain said whoop ass, but it is toxic, toxic stuff. The worst can of whoop ass out there is one that sits on every woman’s shelf in the pantry and is that which we call society or culture (aka Patriarchy). Patriarchy is a nasty little container full of toxic shit, and everyone is really, really careful to guard the can and prevent it from coming to harm.
Because once a woman damages or opens that can, something monumental happens.
She sees the actual contents of the can. She realizes that the list of ingredients has nothing to do with what is inside, and what is inside is poison. Whoop ass is dangerous shit, and once a woman opens that can and whoop ass leaks out, she can’t put it back in. She can’t return to that state of ‘can-protection’ that previously ruled her life.
Many believe that knowing the contents of the can is worse than relentlessly protecting the can. And it can seem that way. Once the contents spill, you see it and understand it for what it is, and you realize that there is no way to clean it up. You can try to get away from it, and succeed in some small ways, but you can’t un-see the whoop ass and return to your tiny, limited world of can protection.
Many women, however, admit that they always hated that damned can looming on the pantry shelf. They’d always asked themselves why the can was so special anyways. It was processed, unappetizing. They’d always cooked fresh food, and doesn’t the can have an expiry date anyways…? But men always insisted on the can being there, and many women, their families, their friends, most of them had their own cans and didn’t approve of can-criticism. And it remained a centrepiece. Those who questioned can-care did the minimum, kicked it around a bit, and some finally opened it as a brave, defiant, and curious act.
I opened the can, myself, once I found the right tool. And although I don’t personally celebrate Christmas, it is my holiday wish that in every stocking of every celebrant in the world might be found the tool needed to open their can.
Seasons greetings to can-protectors and can-openers alike.
Sermon Sunday or Rapist Day or The Screwdriver
This post is part of the ongoing Birth of a Feminist series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
I was 16 when I began carrying a weapon with me to go out.
Does that sound young to you? To me, it sounds old. Thinking about it now, I would have done well to arm myself when I was five and boys started beating me up because I was a girl. I’m sure they just liked me, though. That’s what we’re told, anyhow. Love = hate when it comes to boys and men – from birth.
But it turned out that 16 was the age at which I decided that carrying a weapon might be to my advantage. There had been many violent incidents in my life, but for the most part, those were committed by boys and men I knew or at least knew in passing. But at 16, I had a frightening encounter with a strange man, a stranger, and it scared me shitless.
~~
Religious men and their cockpuppets are dangerous. Every policy, rule and regulation they have ever set up has been designed to hurt women and girls on some level. I’ve lost friends over my belief in this truth, even agnostic friends. It hurts their feelings, you see. To them, freedom of religion is more important than female freedom and the right to be safe. But not to me. Religion is a choice, being female is not. And the data show that opening the door a crack when it comes to men, religious or not, gives them permission to kick it open and rape you on your kitchen floor. So yeah, I take a hard line when it comes to men and the shit they invent – and religion is one helluva big male fantasy that I refuse to accept.
Now, I grew up in a town that didn’t give off the stink of religion, but we still adhered to a strict policy of no Sunday shopping – Sunday being the Christian fuckers’ day of rest and all. As a result, on Sundays, the downtown core was a ghost town. Nothing happening. Very anti-social, anti-community. That’s religion for you. I am in no way a capitalist, but commerce does bring people together and at least gives the illusion of safety in numbers.
But the downtown library was open in the afternoons. And being both an atheist (as far as a child can be a member of this type of ‘group’) and a very good student, I did frequent the library when project research needed to be done.
What I managed to do, however – and I’ll chalk it up to being eager – is fuck up the library hours. I thought it opened earlier than it actually did. I had caught a ride downtown with my father, who was headed off somewhere to avoid being with my mother. And I quickly discovered after he sped off that I was early by an hour. So I wandered around in what on all other late mornings was a bustling commercial area. On Sunday, it was a creepy, post-apocalyptic scene from a movie where you are waiting for the zombies to start crawling out of the cracks. After some unpleasant time killing, I realized the library was opening finally, and made my way back to it.
It didn’t take long to find the perv.
Now, this was a small city, not hicksville. But said perv was sitting there in his dirty pick-up truck beside the train tracks that ran by the parking lot that I needed to cross to return to the library. A middle-aged white guy. What the hell was he doing there? No coffee shops. No stores open. Nothing interesting to look at. Unless, it was a good spot to pick up young girls to abduct and rape. And given that that was exactly the scenario that I found myself in, I guess it was indeed a good spot.
He tried to verbally coerce me into his truck and made a move to open the door to convince me in a different way. I wasn’t having any of it. I ignored him and ran like hell towards the library. It could have gone horribly wrong. If I had encountered him an hour earlier when there were no friendly havens into which I could escape, would my fate have been different?
I was shaken, and after that point, for a spell, I started carrying a screwdriver with me. It did occur to me, even at 16 and even without anyone telling me that as a female, I had no rights, that I could get in trouble for carrying or using on an aggressor a knife or something that was distinctly a weapon. Prey usually know they are prey, even if they don’t come right out and acknowledge it. The worst part about the human prey known as girls and women is that we are NOT allowed to defend ourselves against male-predator aggression. All prey animals on earth, with the exception of human women and girls, are allowed to defend themselves when they are attacked, and are allowed and expected to kill their attackers. It is a given. No one faults a mouse for biting when a cat attacks it. No one faults a bee for killing ants attacking her hive or even for killing all the male bees once they’ve outlived their usefulness. Why do girls and women go to jail when we defend ourselves or do things to safeguard our bodily integrity, such as carrying weapons, or ensuring woman-only spaces are free of penises? With humans, predators ensure they are unopposed. Men ensure they are unopposed.
So, I carried that screwdriver with me knowing full well that I was doing so at my own risk. I was breaking the first rule of human predator-prey relations. In my 20s, I upgraded to a Swiss Army knife. Looking back, I can’t believe how much time I spent mulling over the pros and cons of carrying a screwdriver and how much time I spent trying to figure out what I could carry without it appearing like I was armed. It’s not like I walked around with a tool box. And now, after so much international experience, including living in the US where the range and accessibility of weapons is startling, I now see that in Canada, our government does a lot to make sure that girls and women are not allowed to defend themselves. It blows my mind now that I had to spend time worrying about all the possible scenarios that can only exist when a girl lives in a male-dominated world, and that there is no good situation. Like with all aspects of female lives, there is only the illusion of choice: living in fear, armed or unarmed; unarmed and assaulted and/or dead; armed and assaulted and/or dead; armed and in legal trouble for defending oneself and harming an assaulter. Tell me, where is the good scenario here?
Anyhow, luckily, in my hometown, the religious nuts lost out to the capitalist pigs and Sunday shopping was legalized and brought life and the illusion of safety to the city centre. But really, who are we kidding? We all know that the religious and capitalists are pretty much one and the same. Always have been. And once they started raking in the extra dough from Sunday business, no one made a peep of complaint ever again. The most important thing was that eliminating Sunday shopping bans eliminated an unsafe situation for women and girls – at least during the hours the library was open.
Of course, religion allows pervs numerous other opportunities to abuse women and girls. But at least I could go to the library on Sunday without fear of abduction and rape in empty parking lots.
But we still had all the pervs IN the library. And that is another story for another time…
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
New Series: The Birth of a Feminist
I’m beginning a new series in my sidebar. It will be the Birth of a Feminist series, a record of what went into my formation, or I suppose I should say rebirth (given my understanding of feminism) as a radical feminist.
I was raised academically as a quantitative analyst. A boys’ club to be sure. Statistics are important in describing problems and in predicting outcomes, and being able to quantify things is useful to some extent for a variety of reasons. I was further raised in this tradition to pooh-pooh everything that seemed subjective or qualitative – we were ‘hard’ scientists in the ‘soft’ science of psychology – there was a lot of posturing needed, of course, to make sure *our* dicks stayed hard. This is how men roll. The unspoken rule was that that qualitative shit was the domain of women. Women and their experiences. Women and their stories. Women and their emotional ties to information. And I believed it for some time. I didn’t take my fellow graduate students in community and social psychology so seriously. After all, I was mapping the brain and quantifying male-defined forms of intelligence. I had access to numbers. I was using math. So there. We win.
And then years later, I went back to graduate school expecting to do more work in numbers and business and technology, and I found myself exposed to different forms of knowledge creating, dissemination and preservation. I learned about the art and value of story-telling. I learned about the complexities of non-quantifiable knowledge exchange. It was fascinating. I followed that academic degree with a year of research with a group of doctors and, more interestingly and importantly, qualitative analysts. Our work was in mixed-methods (quant and qual working together). I realized that numbers only take you so far. You need stories and personal accounts and understanding and sometimes including biases to truly explain reality. You need both. I felt I improved as a researcher. I was humbled. Humility is essential in a researcher. So I see value in stories. They have an important place in our record. Our early ancestors communicated this way, and somehow we moved away from it as men have come to dominate.
So anyhow, onto Genesis: my series on the (re)birth of a feminist.
Genesis:
the origin or mode of formation of something
Feminists, or women-centred women:
- are born;
- swiftly and relentlessly undone and subordinated; and then
- remade through
- experience resulting from
- systematic, impersonal misogyny through rape culture, and
- unique, chance encounters with particular individuals, times, places, and situations;
- and glimmers of remembrance of the collective memories of feminists-past lying in their subconscious.
- experience resulting from
Or something along those lines.
If I think about how I became a feminist, that is how I would describe it. I think all girls are born to be free. The majority (excluding those with the propensity for the nastier of the personality disorders) are born with the capacity to be free, intelligent, creative, empathic, mindful, and cooperative.
I think girls are born into the flavour of subordination dictated by their culture/patriarchy whereupon all members are subject to that culture’s indoctrination. But girls are also individually stripped of their birthright to feminism upon entry into the world when all the ‘cutesy’, protective, paternalistic, and dismissive, underestimating treatment particular to their family/group starts.
All girls test out rebellion – a natural response to the language-free remembrance of their real woman-defined purpose as women through what Jung* termed the ‘collective unconscious’ – in small ways. They defy gender-defined behaviour. They break rules designed for them as girls. And they are smacked down in a variety of ways – verbal, emotional, psychological, physical and sexual punishment. For almost all girls, this works effectively to keep them in their chains and then to do the work themselves to keep the chains in place unquestioned.
* [Note: I have little use for the misogynist, Jung.]
For others, for one reason or another, the punishment doesn’t take. The call of the wild, the natural, their real purpose is too strong. And they take a better, but harder, path. The one to feminism. Woman’s natural and rightful state.
This collection of stories was/is my path to feminism. Many of the punishments worked on me, but my feminism was always so close to the surface of consciousness, that in the end, I got back to where I belong.
Genesis I: The Girl and The Stranger in The Car
Letting Perps Define Crime
Let’s say you own a house. One day, a person comes to your door, you open it, the person orders you out at gun point, closes and locks the door, and sets up house. The person immediate sets about changing the locks, rearranging everything within the house, discarding things that are not to their liking, and carrying on as if the house were theirs. Any attempt you made to re-enter and re-claim the house was fended off by the person who ousted you. When you went to the authorities, they listened to you and then asked the person now residing in your home for their side of the story. The person tells the police that the house was yours, but is now theirs, that you willingly signed over the house, and can even produce papers that appear to be signed by you. The police do not dig any further, seem satisfied that you are not the rightful owner of the house, and essentially tell you that you should be ashamed of yourself for taking up their precious time, possibly you are stupid, and to shove off.
You are distraught and feel helpless. You believe a crime has been committed, but no one seems to believe you. The person who took your house was given more respect and credibility than you were. You begin to doubt your anger and wonder whether you had it coming. Perhaps you should have been more careful. Shouldn’t have answered the door. You have moments when you are angry again, and you try to build up your confidence by seeking support from friends. They don’t believe you either, and remind you of several instances reflecting your incompetence as a home-owner. They tell you to look on the bright side, be more positive, remember that there are people worse off in the world who have never owned a home. You become silent. The person living in your home prospers and actually goes on to steal other homes in the same manner.
Okay, the whole story sounds implausible. This would never happen in a civilized society, right? Thieves aren’t automatically believed over their victims, that a theft occurred isn’t questioned, and thieves absolutely don’t get to define what makes something ‘theft’ or not. Those who benefit from committing a theft are not the ones who get to make the rules. And victims of theft are not reviled.
So here’s the question or questions. Why do men get to define crimes against women? Why do men get to decide whether what happens to a woman’s body is a crime or not? Why doesn’t a woman get to say that what has happened to her is a crime? Why aren’t women solely responsible for setting up policy and law around crimes against female persons? We know best. Our bodies are ours and even among the most brainwashed, there is always a part of us that knows that what is being done to us by men is wrong. When men get to define whether what they are doing to us is right or wrong, there is no justice or objectivity. Male definitions also affect incidence (thus you can have a ‘rape free’ society if men define rape in the narrowest of terms, and you can have a society where men are raped equally frequently by women if men define rape as an equal-opportunity crime). Only men rape (sexual assault is different from rape), so only men benefit from rape. Men set up policy and laws to benefit themselves. Since only women are raped, women should be doing the defining.
We can only conclude that even in the most ‘advanced’ of countries, women are still owned by men. Men define crimes against men’s property, thus they define what is or isn’t a crime against a woman. While rape is a ‘crime’, it is very, very narrowly defined and under this definition is so very difficult to prove that the law is meaningless.
To those men who say that the West is female-dominated, no. No, it isn’t. That is your imagination and entitlement talking. A female-dominated society would mean no crime targeting women at all. We are far from that. Like light years away kind of far. This same issue that I am describing now was at the heart of first-wave Western feminists’ pursuit of suffrage. Sadly, getting the vote didn’t achieve what those women sought – power in defining and legally being able to do something about crimes against women.
‘Out There’ Women
We live in a world where men are allowed to follow their thoughts to the very end and announce them in bold caps, surround sound and techni-colour.
How?
Men are the censors, the thought police, the free-speakers, the fuckers, the threat-issuers, the policy-, law-, and rape-makers, the law-breakers, the judges, juries and executioners, the johns. The Free.
This is how they turn their fantasies into reality. This is how they turn their crimes into rights. This is how they turn their mediocrities into merits. This is how they turn their hate into freedom.
Women are not allowed to speak freely. We must support Dick or shut up. If we don’t shut up, we will be shut up. Women may not state the facts. Women may not question the status quo. Women may not ask ‘why?’ Women may not fantasize in response to what men put out there in the name of ‘free speech’, in the name of our annihilation, in the name of their orgasms. Women may not defend themselves.
It is a rare woman who dares to follow her thoughts to the end, and she pays dearly. A few applaud her bravery within earshot, eyes gleaming and then darting, careful. A few more silently support, nodding in privacy and anonymity. And the majority wish her harmed, silenced, erased, dead. Sometimes, they get their wish.
I wish to see, hear, read more women who are ‘out there’. Daring to follow their thoughts to the end. Speaking the unspeakable – women’s words. Daring to be seen, heard, read… potentially silenced. But ultimately, daring to be believed and joined.
~~~~
Lordy, I have FINALLY found myself on YouTube and made a recording of this post. Only 7.5 years later 😉
By the way, ♀️ if you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
My Planet Is Simpler, but Not Better
I first moved to another planet in 2003. It was called Taiwan. And then several years after leaving, I returned to that part of the solar system and moved to a planet called China.
I guess I should explain, since I’m coming off as a space cadet of sorts. There are places you go that feel so completely different and seem to operate so differently that it’s as if they are a separate world from your own. There are a number of things that factor into other-worldliness. Operating language, political and economic system, values, social structure, racial composition, general standard of living, environmental conditions, educational system, taboos – really, it’s hard to list everything that goes into how out of your element you might feel. I think it’s different for everyone – both the factors and the level of differentness you experience.
I don’t really want to get into the particulars of China or Chinese culture except where they involve feminism and atheism – the purpose of this blog. I have a completely separate blog on China that I have maintained for several years.
I will say that while Chinese culture is very complex and convoluted in some ways, there is something missing that the West hasn’t managed to export (yet) and that makes it very simple in some important ways.
Sexual and identity politics.
When I read what Western feminists are talking about – things that are going on in their home countries, particularly around trannies and issues surrounding the silencing of feminists – it is a little hard for me to believe. It has been a while since I lived in – or I should say was immersed in – Western culture. Even in the last 10 years when I have lived in the West, I’ve not lived in cities or around young people or within academic circles. So it astounds me the level of craziness that is going on with this need to ‘identify as’ something. To be honest, it sounds very ‘high school’ to me. It smacks of this needy, dysfunctional immaturity that one typically sees with teenagers as they strive so hard to be different, unique and rebellious, and that ends up making them all kind of the same. Pathetic, sometimes laughable, but mostly harmless. Most of us go through it – when we are kids – it’s a phase. But unlike with teenagers and their identity quests, what is going on is having serious legal and social consequences. For women, feminists in particular. Nothing laughable about that.
We just don’t have this in China. We are still barely dealing with the idea of homosexuality here. And for me, since I’ve become used to the insanity that for a long time marked China as a different planet, the sexual/identity repression has become a major factor in my seeing/feeling China as another world.
It is very hard for me to describe China to people who have never been here in a way that they can understand. For example, the best, but still mostly inadequate, way for me to describe it is that it is a mix of the 1950’s and almost-now. The almost-now part refers to technology. For example, their high speed rail system is top notch and puts public transportation in North America to shame. And they skipped email and went straight to smart phones and texting as the primary mode of communication. But sexually and socially, China is living in the past. A traditional culture coupled with a dictatorial government is responsible, I believe. Gender roles are strict and people generally comply. Even the rebellious weirdo type isn’t commonly seen – and I live in a major city where you are more likely to see this stuff.
To this day, I’ve only met one person who has told me they are gay, even though my gaydar has gone off for both males and females tons of times over the years. These folks will go on to marry and breed and perhaps never wonder why there is little joy in their arrangement, unfortunately. I’ve met many people who adamantly profess that they are not gay, however. The gay-jokey accusations are constant among students. All in all, being gay really isn’t on the table as an option and there is nothing resembling a social movement here.
But on a smaller scale, I’ve noticed that students are paying more lip-service to both valuing female babies as well as acknowledging that gay people both exist and should be treated better, however. One of my Masters students asked if he could choose the topic of gay rights for his speech in my class – not that HE was gay – because he was feeling some shame and sympathy that gays and lesbians were treated so badly in China. He also told me that he wouldn’t dare talk about this anywhere other than in our English class – it wouldn’t be accepted. I’ve also noticed a few student groups tackle a gay topic when our department has held film-making contests.
All in all, this is where things are in China’s sexual landscape with regard to identity. It feels not sufficiently open but safe from identity pirates at the same time. It is a naive society, although becoming less naive due to the intrusion of Western sitcoms coming through via the internet. I’m not aware of any Western television programs that both encapsulate the transgender or queer identity madness and have made their way into Chinese consciousness. I’m trying to imagine attempting to explain it to my students. Someone would inevitably ask me what it all means. I do get students ask me why, for example, Americans are obsessed with sex. That is what they see in television and films. Sex, sex, and more sex. And I try to give an explanation.
I don’t really feel I’ve done this topic justice, but I’ll conclude. While I feel like I’m living on a completely different planet, I will say that similar to the planets I’m familiar with, all are run on patriarchy and misogyny. China is simpler, but not better, and at its core, perhaps not all that different.
—
Addendum: I just read the following post by Phonaesthetica on the show ‘Transparent’, and the second-to-last episode of season 2 which paints lesbians in a bad light because they don’t accept MtTs in their space. The description of the episode sounds like the usual activist drivel – the man-in-dress character is painted as a Nazi-victim. I’m glad this nonsense hasn’t hit China. I’m having this weird sense of dread that like with their technology experience (skipping email and going directly to text messaging), they are going to skip the gay rights movement and move directly into pushing every gender-confused person into forced sex changes. Sounds crazy, but yanno, this is a crazy world.
Conversations with Men: The Cambodian
In my last ‘conversations with men’ post about the rape holiday, I mentioned that I would pull another experience from my Cambodian visit. In the former, I was an observer. In this story, I was an object.
Women are constantly divided and divided again. It is a male strategy to prevent women from joining against them in solidarity to fight back in a serious way. But scores of women get on board for a variety of reasons in order to show their sisters that the dissimilarities and points of disagreement are much more important than their common experiences and needs.
Despite being the violent and sadistic sex, there is a great deal of evidence that men of different races, socioeconomic classes, religions, and political leanings are always quite able to come together – and even bond – over a single common cause: abusing, torturing, terrorizing and destroying women and girls. It is a pity that women cannot come together over the single common cause of liberating themselves from men, their violence, and their parasitic tendencies.
And it is with this thinking that I present a conversation from several years ago. Reviewing my two experiences well after the fact made me realize that despite the many differences between me and the young, female, Cambodian prostitute, we both shared the reality that we were objects. We were both seen by men, first and foremost, as bodies to be used.
~~~
Rewind to 2003: I was in the middle of a two-week trip by myself to Cambodia. It is very common for travellers, especially if you’re alone, to hire motorcycle guides in the larger areas. These drivers are often connected to guest houses, and you can hire them for single trips or pay a flat fee for a period time. While in Phnom Penh, I hired a driver who was able to speak some English (I don’t speak Khmer, and those few Cambodians who speak French are quite old now). I did a number of things, including seeing some of the historic sites, checking out one of the riverside, local clubs for some live music (no other foreigners there), and on one of the days, spending an afternoon by the water in the shade eating durian.
Through conversation, I was able to get an inside look into the life of a typical, low-earning, young man. And I also was reminded of my place as a woman.
At that point in my life, I sported very short hair, so I had to provide an answer as to why. Surprisingly, I wasn’t asked why I never wore skirts or dresses. After many more years living in China, I’ve come to expect and hate this whole line of questioning about hair, clothes, husbandlessness, childlessness. But at the time, I was still in my first year in Asia.
But then we moved on to other things.
Dude took on an air of sadness. He said he was too poor to get married. he had to share a room with several other guys. And he had to go to prostitutes.
Yeah, he lost me there. One thing I do hate about traditional cultures is the mandatory marriage thing and the idea that you need to have X amount of money in order to live up to expectations and procure a slave. But I don’t feel sorry for the MEN. I feel sorry for the women. Being sold into slavery – which is exactly what marriage was and still is – is not something I agree with or think is part of a healthy society. And in traditional cultures, if a woman can’t get married, there aren’t a lot of other options for her to support herself. Further, she becomes vulnerable to all men when she isn’t owned by one man. It’s a racket that men designed. Women are screwed no matter what happens. But married men benefit, so who gives a shit, eh?
But the marriage thing wasn’t where dude lost me. It was the ‘had to go to prostitutes’ comment. Men believe they must have sex. And they believe that if they can’t get it from their personal whore (wife/girlfriend/family member), then they must get if from a public whore. And then there is outright, payment-free rape of strangers, which I won’t get into in this post. The thing is, nobody has ever died from not having sex. And I say this as someone who, for much of my life, has had a demanding sex drive that no man (or woman, for that matter) I’ve known could match. Ever. And yet, despite almost never getting what I wanted – quality or quantity – and then eventually just ditching men altogether when I came to my senses about ‘how shit works’ in both the greater world and in my own world, I never felt I was entitled to sex. And I haven’t died from the lack. Presto magic. So take it from me, men don’t need sex.
And then the conversation got worse.
Dude got it in his head that he should have sex with me. The suggestion was put out there. He didn’t actually offer to pay me for sex. No. The idea was that I could continue to pay for his driving services as well as the food we were consuming, and he could have sex with me. It was almost as if he were offering himself up as a prostitute (although he didn’t ask for extra money), except for one very, very significant difference.
This difference lies in the sexes of the people in my last story versus this current story.
Women generally don’t offer themselves as prostitutes because they like sex or want random sex with strangers. Prostitutes are generally desperate, vulnerable women with a history of sexual, physical and psychological abuse. Both men and sex are dangerous to women, and men generally don’t cater (let alone acknowledge) women’s sexual needs. Don’t believe me? Well there is a shit ton of evidence on all. I don’t need to provide statistics. Spend five seconds on Google.
Men seldom offer themselves as prostitutes to WOMEN. To men, yes. That is more common and I don’t really care about that dynamic. When a man, like in my scenario, suggests sex to a woman, he is looking to get off. And in this case, especially, a) he didn’t suggest a monetary exchange, and b) in most cultures, especially traditional ones like Cambodia, men don’t service women – they use them. And if they give something, it is never without the expectation of something in return. So this dude wasn’t offering me anything. He was expecting something.
Of course, I said, “No.”
Everything about this exchange was repulsive. There was fear that he would attack me because I said no (luckily, that didn’t happen – HIV rates were at an all-time high in Cambodia at that time – and nobody wants to be raped anyways). I realized that none of my ‘privilege’ could erase the fact that I was still a woman and thus was under the thumb and at the whim of this guy and every single man on the planet regardless of their status among other men. I realized that because he, a man, brought up sex, no matter how this guy had framed it, he was insulting me: to offer me money would be to tell me I was a piece of meat, but to not offer me money told me that I wasn’t worth paying for and I should give it away like (they think) all ‘free’ Western white women do.
I went away from that conversation with another piece chipped off my tiny block of female self-confidence and then added to the growing pile of evidence of male yuck.
Transitioning: But Not The Kind You Think
I’m in the middle of transitioning from MF to FF.
No! Don’t worry! I’m in no way thinking that my brain would be happier if I had balls to scratch and I could pee standing up.
My transition doesn’t involve taking dangerous hormones or denying mental illness or cutting up my body. And it is not rooted in woman-hate. No, that would describe the transgender kind of transitioning.
The kind of change I’m talking about is health-oriented and woman-friendly and doesn’t require me to erase myself or my lived reality. It is just a refocusing of energy, a streamlining of behaviour to remove unnecessary actions, and cutting a swathe through the hard, impacted bullshit that is Patriarchy.
I’m transitioning from Male-Focused to Female-Focused.
Whether women are aware of it or not – and I’d argue that it’s mostly unconscious – we are trained to serve male ‘needs’. In reality, men don’t ‘need’ anything from women, but over time, desires and a sense of entitlement have created a whole host of needs that cannot be realized without one or more female slaves. And the needs are uncountable. They can be the obvious and universal: “I need my dick serviced when, where and how I want” or “You will prioritize my words and ideas – I can interrupt you and any girl/woman no matter what you are doing, everything I say is right, etc.” But the needs can be sub-group-, geography-, or man-specific. It is elaborate, but has one simple rule. Woman caters to man to her detriment.
I lament the female energy, talent, and intelligence that has long been and continues to be wasted on catering to the weaker sex.
Back to my personal transitioning.
It is hard. I can imagine it would be next to impossible if you lived with a man in a heterosexual relationship. You just wouldn’t be allowed not to cater. I don’t really have any advice for women in this situation other than: leave. That simple, but really key, suggestion can inspire angry reactions (my Dick isn’t like that! He caters to my needs too!); sad reactions (I wish I could, but I can’t for X, Y, Z reasons); and the sacrificial lamb reactions (He would be lost without me – I can’t leave him. He can’t help it.) And I’m sure there are other categories.
In addition to romantic relationships, it is hard when you are forced to work around males. Most of us can’t work in a man-free environment. Most women have male bosses, colleagues and clients. Myself, I seldom have to deal with supervisors – male or female – which is awesome. But as a university instructor in science and engineering in China (the land of propaganda and conformity to rigid Patriarchy in a way I’ll write about in the future), almost all my students are male. That sucks. They demand so much more of my energy than female students because they act like 5-year-olds, can’t focus, don’t listen, don’t follow instructions, and wear misogyny like a bad perfume. [I have a whole post on dumb boy-children in education.] I find I dissociate almost completely when I teach in order to stay Female-Focused. I have a completely separate persona/identity/mask/hazmat suit that I put on when I enter the classroom. I do help some of the more enthusiastic students outside of class, though – that is the teacher in me, and I’d feel like I wasn’t doing a good job if I trampled on natural motivation to learn/improve. Unfortunately, female students with ambition in China are few and far between. Women are not supposed to help themselves, or pursue goals other than finding a husband and an acceptably low-level job and popping out a preferably male kid and catering to its every need. So most of the students I help are male. To deal with the obvious male-focus, I try to de-sex them and just see them as ‘youth’ or ‘student’. It goes better if I tell myself, “I am helping a student.” If I do get an ambitious female student, I try to help them as much as possible. This semester, for example, a 17-year-old, first-year, female law student crashed my class (it was a class for Masters-level Management/Finance students). Afterwards, she came up to talk to me, and she told me she was reading “The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir. I think my jaw hit the floor. Most Western woman have never read it, and feminism is very frowned upon in China. Anyhow, I’ll nurture this one as long as she wants it. She is highly unusual in her self-confidence and thirst for forbidden knowledge.
Finally, it is hard to evaluate friendships with men. Once I started transitioning, I realized that most to all of my friendships with men were ones from which I got very little and sometimes had to put up with a lot of bad stuff I wouldn’t have to with most women. There are weird abuses, confusing insult-compliment combos, the inevitable sexual intrusions, the demands on your energy, and having to overlook a whole lotta misogynistic behaviour that wouldn’t be acceptable if you were honest with yourself. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been shedding many of these male parasites over the last few years. One of the things that becomes really hard – and I think this is true of friendships as well as romantic relationships – is seeing one’s investment (time, money, emotion) as a waste or a loss and then letting it go instead of using it as a reason to stay. It doesn’t help that relationship-building isn’t easy, and it gets harder to make friends as you get older. But ultimately, breaking an unhealthy tie is better for you than allowing a parasite to feed and drain and ultimately kill you.
Transition periods can be very, very difficult. You often question what you’re doing. You often feel alone and lonely. You worry about what your future will look like. You wonder whether you deserve to have a better life and whether you are being selfish for taking care of your own basic needs. You may find yourself insulted in a variety of different, but standard ways, but that will just show you how right you were about leaving.
But what you have to remember is that no one deserves to be second or less important or a slave to anyone else. And that basic belief will sustain you and get you to a better, healthier place.
♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢
Story Ending Never 
All Along the Watchtower
Dec 27
Posted by storyending
This post is part of the ongoing Birth of a Feminist series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♀ ♥
I’ve called myself a feminist for a long time. I’ve had ‘crazy’, unspeakable-in-public, totally ‘offensive’ notions since I was quite young. But I’ve never been formally educated in feminism, I had no stable or lasting feminist role models in my life, nor did I seek out specifically feminist writing until not that long ago. And getting to where I am (and where I am still going) has been a process. I’ve made tons of mistakes with regard to men and how to frame my reality in a man-made world. I’ve had realizations that didn’t have complete impact until years later – when I was ready for their full force. This is all part of the development of a radical feminist that I’ve begun writing about in my Birth of a Feminist series.
About a year ago, I realized I was missing and needing something in my life. I was feeling lost, hurt, alone, lonely, chronically and mildly depressed, and unable to come up with at least a short-term plan or desire or motivation for the future (which is unusual for me – the survivor, the Plan/Strategy Queen). Without a lot of thinking about it, I found myself one day googling radical feminism, and a year later, I’m in deep. What had been missing was a philosophical system that spoke to me and how I work and that could help me pull everything together and make sense of the world. No other philosophy has ever done this for me. You see, they’ve all been male-orientated, and I’m not a fucking male. That initial internet search drove me directly to some of the most hard-core radical feminist blogs around (or archived). And I was home. I lamented that had I been able to find such intelligent, outspoken and honest women sooner, life would have looked quite a bit different. I think a lot of the misery could have been avoided. And I might not be stuck in China completely and utterly isolated from the kind of women (especially near’ish my age and older) I really need and want to be around. But better late than never?
Well, yes. Better late than never. Radical feminism saved my life. And that is not a unique sentiment. I’ve read it and heard it countless times by women who, one way or another, found themselves in RF’s comforting arms. Radical feminism gives you a framework in which to understand why you feel so damned angry, why you don’t fit in, and why the majority of people not only don’t understand you, but often react violently to you when you state your opinions and experiences.
~~
As you’re getting your footing among women who’ve been RFing for years, and finding out where you’ve gone right and wrong on your unaided journey prior to that, you encounter a lot of confusing stuff.
Calling yourself a rad-fem doesn’t mean you’re perfect. There is always room to grow. And that is a-okay. Growth comes from dialogue, sharing and learning from those more experienced than you and with different takes on similar situations. But more troubling – and this is where things can be confusing for those entering ‘the scene’ – are RFs who appear to hold all the basic tenets of rad-feminism to be true, but who will engage in behaviours that contradict the main objective. And I’ve noticed two confusing and thought-stopping behaviour camps present in online interaction. Both are actually common among liberal feminists, but I’ve seen purported and community-accepted rad-fems engage in them, as well.
The first one is well-documented: these are the ‘oppression olympians’. These folks are very concerned with making sure everyone understands all the ways in which they are disadvantaged. They often believe they are worse off than anyone else, and they will whip out the relevant oppression to thought-stop/silence any person they disagree with. It also serves as a derail technique. Many an excellent discussion has veered off track once an olympian shows up to remind everyone about how hurt she feels because of her special status. This kind of posing is antithetical to radical feminism as any RF worth her salt sees women as the primary focus of any RF discussion, movement, action, protest. Focusing on ‘intersection’ (and really, intersection can get so crazily defined that we all end up in groups of 1) is a divide and conquer technique that only serves to benefit men and take power and solidarity away from women as a class.
The second group I call the Watchtower snipers. These are most often women who instead of identifying first and most importantly as women – an oppressed class and the very subjects of radical feminism – take whatever privileged group membership(s) they have very, very seriously as a badge of shame. So seriously, in fact, that they will negate their own valid, horrible experiences because they are not as oppressive or legitimate as any other more oppressed woman’s. They also become hyper-vigilant for any sign of offense-giving in others, ‘shoot down’ anyone and everyone for these perceived offenses, and coddle olympians who show up to throw tantrums and to abuse perceived oppressors (their fellow women! ffs!). For some reason, these rad-fem watchtower snipers are also uniquely prone to neurotic grammar policing and will derail a thread by picking apart another woman’s comma or contraction usage. Weird. Snipers shoot wildly and indiscriminately to protect a perceived uber-victim. And sadly, it produces a similar result to olympianism by derailing, silencing and thought terminating.
The first blog I read from cover to cover, so to speak (which I won’t name here as I won’t shit on women who are, for the most part, doing important work and have my utmost respect for speaking dangerous thoughts and moderating comments), was brilliantly, brilliantly written by a woman with deliciously , what I call ‘out there‘ views. But to my great sadness, I found her to be a bit of a sniper, and allowed and supported olympians in her comments section, and wouldn’t tolerate trans-criticism. It really confused me as I quickly got up to speed on current feminist issues. She called herself a radical feminist, but failed on a few crucial points. Nevertheless, this blog was really, very important to me.
Women need to be able to criticize other women on important issues. Women are also allowed to feel and express their righteous anger. Nitpicking grammar (and I say this as an English instructor) is not a serious issue in feminism. Whether trans folk (men) should be allowed to take over the few safe spaces we have left is. And if comments are allowed on blogs, well of course, bloggers can have whatever policy they wish, but coddling trolls (who are probably very damaged women in need of real help/support – not anonymous blog discourse) and shooting supporters in the head doesn’t make for good female solidarity.
Share this:
Posted in Anti-Feminism, Birth of a Feminist, Feminism
Comments Off on All Along the Watchtower
Tags: blog, comments, discourse, olympics, oppression, patriarchy, radical feminism