Category Archives: Religion
P is for Purity
This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
Okay, where to start… Well, first off, I’ll just say that the plans I had for the remainder of the P-posts went out the window today thanks to a confusing experience I had when I was briefly out and about this morning. I spent the rest of the day hemming and hawing, as I don’t like throwing out good plans, and I’ve been hesitant to name the country where I currently live. Not sure why – I named and wrote plenty about China when I lived there. But what the hell. I’ve already written a number of posts about my time here in the country of Georgia, and I’ve started to think of them collectively as ‘The Georgia Files’. If you want to check them out, there are below:
- O is for Ownership – Part I
- Tits Out: An Observation
- When a 5-Year-Old Boy Creeps You Out
- Sexual Assault: The Quintessence of Femalehood
- It’s Biology: They’ve Got “Surround, Terrorize and Destroy” Down to an Art at 12
- Cry Like a Boy vs. Cry Like a Girl: An Observation
I will write a more in-depth analysis of Georgia one day. I’m not ready. This place is very weird, and I’m still trying to figure it out, you see. The only two reasons – and when I say ‘only two’, I really mean that – that I continue to stay here is that you can stay visa-free for a year, repeatedly, and it is cheaper than most places. But that’s it. I honestly can’t think of anything else I like about this country, including the food, the infrastructure, the people, and the religion-infected culture. Despite the horribleness of China, there are actually things I do miss about it, and even in the midst of living there, I could name things that I liked about my life there. Here, I can’t. I can’t name a single thing I like. And yes, my goal is to find a way to leave, but it takes time. I don’t believe in whining publicly without making a serious attempt to solve your problem.
Anyhow, religion. It is because of that that I decided to rejig my Series plan. You see, few things rile me up more than the topic of religion. I am a militant atheist, and I get so sick of religious people of ALL faiths pretending that they are these innocent oppressed victims. Even religions that are legitimately persecuted are also ALWAYS horrible oppressors of various groups of people – women and girls, first and foremost, and every single one of these religions engages in acts of hate while at the same time preaching peace and love. And every single one of them demands religious tolerance while actively engaging in acts and policies of intolerance and even humans rights abuse. I’m sick of it. It also annoys me when women claim they are feminists and then go on to willingly participate in religion, which let’s face it, is one of the primary weapons of male society used to infect, brainwash, subordinate, and destroy females. I also get annoyed when so-called feminists demonstrate a need to cling to the fantasy of there being a supernatural creator despite no evidence or logic. I’m sure the need to believe in something stems from various childhood fears and family-based programming, but I see things this way: I’m a trained scientist and the default position of untainted scientific methods is to try to disprove the null hypothesis, which is the default. In other words, there is nothing until you can PROVE otherwise. Finally, I’ve had enough of religious people trying to wiggle out of their moral crimes by insisting that atheism is a religion too (it’s not; it’s just a simple rejection of belief, not an entire system of laws based on pure fantasy, fear and hate) or that Hitler was an atheist (he wasn’t; he was a pantheist who elevated nature to the status of a god of sorts). I’m not sure if I’ll do an R is for Religion at this point. I fear I’ll devolve into a bit of an R is for Rant, and I try to avoid that as there is enough of it on the internet already.
Sooo, today, I popped out to the corner shop to pick up a few things to put in my almost-empty refrigerator. The first thing I noticed was police officers directing traffic at the intersection near my apartment for no apparent reason that I could see. As I got closer to the shops, I saw a river of people in the streets. Kind of a strange place for them – they were moving along slowly to which destination, I couldn’t figure out. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. And I saw the Orthodox Christian priests in their long black robes, carrying their flags and crosses and portraits of saints. What the hell was going on? I thought to myself, “Not another fucking holiday…” We just had Mother’s Day, Victory Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, and Easter – all just in May alone. And we’ve still got Independence Day this month. So, I wove my way through the crowd, bought my stuff and then returned home so that I could hit the internet and find out the answer to “What now…?” And my search resulted in me writing this post and including it in my Alphabet Series.
Today is Family Purity Day. Just the name of the holiday makes me feel nauseous. But I wanted to find out what that meant, as the label comes across as some sort of euphemism for something unsavoury. I know how other religions define ‘purity’, and how other countries define their Family Purity Days, and approximately 100% of the time it has something to do with women being whores and menstrual blood making females into impure, disgusting, untouchable non-humans. Yes, I’m looking at all of you Muslims and those Jews on the stricter end of the religious spectrum. The Orthodox Christians also hate female menstrual blood, and women are forced to wear scarves on their head when they are menstruating in order to announce to the world that they are unclean. Buddhists are the same. Females are considered to be unclean and there are various spaces that may not be entered by females and certain objects that may not be touched by females. This may not be universal, but Tibet and Myanmar, for sure, bar women from full participation. No religion is immune from upholding the idea that it is females and not males who are unclean, and this doesn’t make sense to me in the slightest. All evidence shows us that men are filthy, smell worse, generate more filth, don’t give a shit about living in a clean environment, and carry and pass on all sorts of diseases to women through their ‘who cares’ attitude that derives from male privilege. But no, it is women and girls who are unclean. Now, imagine substituting a particular racial group for ‘female’ and imagine the uproar. This has happened in the past, and we see these events as dark days. Yet, these days, liberal Western tourists have no problem with giving money to religious organizations and historical monuments that advertise their misogyny in plain language on signs. Misogyny is still much, much more of a problem than racism today, and no one gives a shit.
But Family Purity Day here in Georgia is about another kind of woman-hate. It focuses on anti-gay and -lesbian action, which is rooted in misogyny, and upholds traditional, pro-rape, anti-woman, heterosexual, religious values. This day of hate was started in 2014 by the Orthodox Church as a ‘take that!’ reaction to the 2013 gay and lesbian rally commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia, which is normally held on May 17 around the world. Religious people and even the priests themselves had shown up and committed acts of violence against the gay community attending the rally – probably to express their peace and love and acceptance that is built into all religions. Following the bloodshed, Georgia was punished by the European Court of Human Rights for their violence demanding almost 200,000 Euros in payment (to whom, I am not sure – hopefully to the 30 people who were injured by the priests and other shitheads). Reminiscent of how Christian invaders in the British Isles colonized the Celts long ago by timing all their religious celebrations at the same time as the Celtic holidays, the Georgian religious fanatics decided that May 17th would be an excellent time to hold their Family Purity Day. Despite the violence of the past, the current government fully supports harm to gays and lesbians, and this year, has drafted an amendment to the constitution to further limit the rights and freedoms of homosexuals, including prohibiting them from working in education, government and cultural institutions. Some people here are worried that Georgia’s 2022 application to enter the European Union will be denied, and I hope to hell, they are cut off from that and much more. This is not a good country.
I feel it somewhat ironic that having lived in a few parts of Georgia, I ended up being drawn, and without knowing in advance, to the location where Anne Lister, the woman dubbed ‘the first modern lesbian’ died after a brave and adventurous life. She’d likely be saddened, but unsurprised, by what is happening currently in her place of death. But I have to admit, I’m not really surprised either.
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L is for Lost Post – K is for Kitten
This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
A long, long time ago,
from Phenomenal Cat, by the Kinks
In the land of idiot boys,
There lived a cat, a phenomenal cat,
Who loved to wallow all day.
Happy Belated International Cat Day ♥ 🐾 ♥
The following is dedicated to my own phenomenal kitten who has just reached her first birthday. Although she is entering adulthood, she’ll always be my kitten. We’re a good match. Like me, her adoptive mother, she is a militant atheist and fierce female separatist. She is the right combination of zen and wild. She loves to wallow, and to pretend to bite my computer cables to catch my attention. She cuddles for short, but intense sessions, and attacks my sock-covered hand with the skill of a true hunter. Every morning around 4:00 am, she gifts me with a thorough facial dermabrasion, and she rides along on my shoulders as I prepare my morning coffee. As you may have guessed, I love the little nugget.
If you’re a fellow cat lover, have a browse through the Kitten Chronicles on my YouTube channel, where I feature select moments in time in the life of my little furball. For now, join me on a bit of a self-indulgent post celebrating K is for Kittens where I explore the link between cats and women, and why the connection has mostly been, in the eyes of men, a negative one.
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The Roots
Men have a tendency both to dehumanize the human, and to anthropomorphize the non-human, so it’s no surprise that they have fabricated stories of strange relationships between women and various animals and to equate women with animals, body parts, tools and objects with great success. This is partly due to male fear of a more complete human, and partly rooted in the magical thinking of long-gone primitive cultures that were animistic or that connected their gods with animals. It is possible that women were slightly – emphasis on the slightly – more respected in ancient times. We have evidence of female deities with animal attributes, of course, which is in contrast to modern monotheistic, phallocentric religions where women are both the source of all evil and the unremarkable vessels for men’s seed. But in no culture have women either been free of men and their control and violence or even just on par with them. Strangely, there are always efforts made to try to prove that conquered or diminished cultures of the past, especially animistic cultures, such as various Native American tribes and the insular Celts of the British Isles, somehow managed to achieve ‘equality’ or harmony between the sexes. Modern fantasists, especially women, for some reason, tell made-up stories of sex equality and lady power in these cultures without a shred of proof to back them up and sometimes even in the face of evidence to the contrary. I think this is mostly done to establish a false narrative ‘proving’ that males were once better people, so therefore they can be better again. In that way, men and boys are protected from getting what they deserve when they commit crimes against women and girls, and the onus is put on women to accept, forgive and save men thereby keeping women’s focus and energy away from themselves and maintaining the system of their own oppression.
What is actually more logical and believable, and in many cases proveable, than this fantasy version of the past is that men have dehumanized women since human time began. There has never been an equal or free society for women. And rather than the dehumanizing abating with increased human education and enlightenment, it has only gotten worse and more normalized because of phallocentric and monotheistic religion, general androcentrism, overpopulation, and more recently, access to communications technology and the proliferation of pornography and other media promoting woman hate under the guise of male entertainment. And as alluded to above, men have dehumanized women in a number of ways, including reducing them to their body parts (cunt, pair of tits, or piece of ass), rerferring to them as male-constructed archetypes (slut, whore, hag, or ice queen), and likening them to animals (cow, bitch, sow, filly or cat).
So let’s talk pussy.
Exactly when men started connecting cats with women, we are not sure, but their thinking, deep as it usually is, seemed to go something like this: “Um, cats have lots of babies. Women have lots of babies. So they are similar. Oh, yeah, and um, cats like to hang out in the house. And women hang out in the house. Holy shit. Cats and women are like totally the same!” And lo and behold, the cat-lady-goddess was born to various ancient cultures, and predominated over – you guessed it – fertility, beauty, motherhood, and children.
Some of the earliest evidence of the cat-lady-goddess comes from Ancient Egypt, but these chicks were a little more powerful and rounded out than the simple incarnation in later cultures. The goddesses Mafdet, Sekhmet and Bastet were all depicted with feline heads atop women’s bodies. They were all fierce protectors; Mafdet was the early goddess of justice and execution and had the head of a cheetah; Sekhmet, with the head of a lionness, oversaw war and medicine; and later, Bastet, with a domesticated cat head, represented the home, fertility, childbirth, and joy. Cats were highly respected in Ancient Egyptian culture, and were believed to have magical powers, to be lucky, and to be very clever. They were often painted, seated under the chairs of women, and were considered to be fertile creatures, and thus, the natural companions of women. Ancient Egyptian women certainly had more freedom and power than women in other regions and cultures at the time, although there was by no means anything resembling respect, equality or freedom from male violence. But the cat-female-human link was established in a more positive way then than in any other time in history, including now.
In other religious traditions that included female gods, there continued to be links between cats and love, fertility, children, motherhood, cleverness, and hunting. Freyja, the Norse goddess of love, beauty, fertility, sex and war, rides a chariot pulled by two cats. Shashti, the Hindu goddess and devourer-turned-protector of children is depicted riding a cat. In Chinese mythology, Li Shou (Lí Shǒu, 黎手) was a cat goddess. Interestingly, the ancient Chinese believed that cats were orginally nominated by the gods to rule the world, but it turned out they liked playing and wallowing more. They gave up their power to human males, and while they lost their power of speech, they became the timekeepers of the world. We see the sun’s movement reflected in their eyes and hear the movement of time in their purr.
Things Get Dark
One theme that was common in many later cultures was the linking of cats with magic and with the underworld. It can get a little confusing to understand the true feelings people and cultures had towards them as they didn’t usually keep written records, but it reminds me of the place that women have held in all societies – sort of a mixed awe and fear that usually ends up manifesting in ‘want you, but hate you’ relationships. The Celts were a prime example of this. They believed that cats were guardians of the underworld and some believed that they were humans forced to return to the world after death following misdeeds in life. Some believed that they could take souls, and they were the companions of wise women who later came to be known as witches, which provided fuel for the brutal Christian persecution of women in Europe and the US. Despite what Celtophiles say, Celtic society was not woman-loving or equal. While some tribes may have had female warriors, slavery was rampant, and the cumal or ‘female slave’ was a prized unit of currency. Men were allowed to kill their wives and women were often passed around for sexual use in families. So we had a culture that held cats in suspicious semi-respect and that saw women as things to be used and disposed of. This provided ample fodder for the primitive Christian brain as it swallowed up the Celts of Europe during the expansion of the Roman Empire.
As parasitical Christians proliferated and absorbed Celtic beliefs and values, things got really fucked up for both cats and women. The early Romans had a utilitarian view of cats and they were brought along with invading armies to keep rat populations under control. But superstitious Christian thinking held them in suspicion. Exposure to the Celtic linking of cats with the underworld inspired more magical thinking and suddenly cats were dancing with the devil, and female practitioners of Celtic religions were communing with Satan and were able to shape-shift among other things. The old addage about cats having nine lives actually refers to the belief that witches could shape-shift into cat form nine times.
The idea was cemented in writing by power-hungry Pope Gregory IX in his papal bull of 1233, Vox in Rama, addressing so-called Satanism, the catch-all label for all religions ‘not Catholic’. The 12th to 17th centuries in Europe was one of the most backward, ignorant and testerical periods in European history. Paranoia leading to inquisition, torture, and murder in the name of religion was the norm at that time, and Pope Gregory was reponsible for kicking things into high gear. He even waged an informal war on cats, which led to the torture and killing of many of them, and put cats permanently in the dog house in the minds of Christians. Some argue that the killing of so many cats was the part of the reason that 30-50% of the European population died from bubonic plague in the 14th century. To this day, devout Christians tend not to like cats. A 2019 American study, for example, found a strong, negative relationship between church-going and cat ownership. Christians tend to like dogs, and I think it is for the same reason that men, in general, prefer dogs – I’ll get into that later.
This dark period was also a war on women – athough one could argue that women have always been under attack in this world for one thing or another. A woman didn’t really have to do much to bring the male boot down on her neck, and often it was other women making the accusations, likely in an attempt to garner male approval. It’s interesting. Of the articles discussing the persecution of witches, some say that it was about attacking the powerless and the others say it was about attacking powerful women. I’ll try to clarify because I think the incongruence is just a matter of language. First, there has never been such a thing as a powerful woman in the sense that men have power. Females have always been and still are a class of sub-humans, and they never have and still don’t have the resources to fight back. But these supposed witches weren’t powerful women; they were just women who didn’t follow the rules in some way, or were just convenient, powerless scapegoats. When women don’t fall in line, men get scared. And when men get scared, women get killed or erased in some way. And the killing of women serves the ultimate purpose of stamping out any further inclination towards rebellion in all remaining women.
Skipping Ahead
The negative link between women and cats persists today, although religious paranoia about the supernatural isn’t really a factor anymore. Rather, cats are seen as aloof or disobedient and weak or laughable for some reason. We still use the term ‘cat fight’ to refer to a pathetic style of fighting that is supposedly engaged in between women and that involves scratching and yowling, as opposed to the more manly punching. We also have constant references to the ‘crazy cat lady’ archetype, which describes a pitiable, lonely, older woman who collects cats – the implication being that women who choose not to live with men are pathetic and crazy. And there is a derogatory connection drawn between lesbians and cats – perhaps this is a throw-back to religious magical thinking.
What It’s Really About
I can tell you first off that once I committed myself to female separatism, the only animal I ever considered adopting was a cat. And I’m saying that as a person who grew up only with dogs. Further, after adopting my kitten last year, I realized how much I was missing in my life, and I feel a whole hell of a lot saner having her around.
What is really going on is that men love things they can control. Dogs, although I love them dearly, are highly trainable and highly dependent. What is called loyalty by men isn’t actually loyalty, but obedience. Patriarchal women, specifically, and heterosexual women more generally, are actually more like dogs in the eyes of men, slaving for them and craving crumbs of man-love when they do a good job serving them. Cats are social and loving animals, but they are fiercely independent. They aren’t very trainable to the whims of humans, but still manage to find food and shit in appropriate places without human guidance. On the whole, this doesn’t boost a man’s ego, so of course, men denigrate them. Likewise with independent women, especially separatists and lesbians. Women who don’t bend to a man’s will are dismissed as crazy, losers, or just plain stupid and weak. In this way, you can see why devout Christians might not like cats – obedience is key to their way of living. And I’ve met women in the military and women with large broods of children who absolutely hate cats as well. Ditto with the respect for obedience.
So it’s not actually about any real similarities between cats and women because honestly, there aren’t that many, and men will call you a ‘bitch’ one minute and a ‘crazy cat lady’ the next. This is all about control and obedience. And I can’t imagine any woman who truly understands the value of freedom, especially female freedom, who wouldn’t appreciate a kitten or two in her life. ♥ 🐾 ♥
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H is for Hope
This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
It’s the fluffy stuff of posters, platitudes, politics, and propaganda. It’s the product peddled by motivators, marketers, and movie-makers. And today, it’s the topic of yet another H-post in my Alphabet Series.
H is for Hope
This is a massive topic, and I know I won’t do it justice here. But the concept of hope is a major undercurrent in patriarchy and it is important to understand why this is so. It is also important to think about whether it is a useful concept for women or whether it does more harm than good. So, I’ll give it a rough outline and leave you with some questions, opinions and food for further thought.
Motivation for this topic came from an online conversation I had with an Indian woman I met on Saidit.net a few years ago in a more general and very blackpilled discussion of patriarchy and suicide. I had always been of the opinion, probably thanks to my long education in psychology, that hope was the driving force in keeping people keeping on. Basically, I thought, it was a good thing and should be fostered. My Indian acquaintance was of a different opinion, believing that hope was rooted in religion, which is essentially patriarchal and thus, anti-woman, and I found what she said to be so valuable that it inspired a complete rethink of my position. I haven’t encountered her since, but if she ever runs into me or my writing online again, I’d like her to know that I’m grateful for our short, but meaty, discussion.
Hope vs. Faith and the Link to Suffering
Now, I think religion is one of many symptoms or tools of patriarchy, and thus, hope is not rooted in religion, but just another symptom or tool of female oppression. You can see hope used as a tool in both religious and areligious male-dominated societies. But many often see hope as a religious concept and mistakenly equate it with faith and the non-thinking that goes with it. They do often go together and prop each other up as both require the withholding of critical thinking, but they are not the same. And faith doesn’t have to be religious either, of course. So, first, some definitions.
Hope: a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.
Faith: complete trust or confidence in something based solely on conviction rather than proof.
So why do these exist? Why is such a state of non-thinking so irresistible, especially for women? Well, my theory is this. Suffering is always present in patriarchy, and as a result, there is a need to explain it and to develop ways of accepting and coping with it. Required suffering is part of every religion and cultural mythology, and it is often explained that women must suffer more than men. It’s god’s plan and therefore women’s duty to accept a life of suffering. We are told to have faith, despite any evidence or rational argument, that there is a reason for what we endure, so instead of thinking critically and then realizing that fighting back is the only way out of it all (aside from suicide), we then develop hope as a means of coping and trying to survive. Religions and political machines often use ‘hope’ as a way of getting people both to accept suffering and seeing it as a way to become better and stronger. And there is a heap of guilting, shaming and morality policing done to those who don’t submit, accept and hope.
Here is an example of the effective use of hope in religion and political campaigning.
…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
a close-enough version of Romans 5:2-5 NIV
Religious use of ‘hope’ to justify and almost eroticize suffering.
Political use of ‘hope’ to manipulate hearts and minds.
The bonus to men and to patriarchy is that if we accept required suffering as women, it opens the door to more abuse by men. They can do what they want and are allowed to repent and be forgiven ad nauseam, and we are only allowed to hope for things to improve. The reality is that suffering isn’t actually necessary to exist as a human, males are never sorry for what they do, and women can hope until the cows come home, but things will never get better.
Hope vs. Purpose – Is Hope Necessary?
I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of young people in different countries, and I think this world is filled with people who don’t have anyone to talk to honestly or anyone to just listen to them. I’ve listened to a lot of youth, and if asked for advice, I try to give them the benefit of my experience without sounding like a finger-wagging old person. They get enough of that from family and society. The young seem to be preoccupied with the elusive concepts of success and happiness, and everyone seems to tell them to be positive and hopeful and focused on the pursuit of money and love. What a recipe for mental health problems. I have found that those obsessed with hope and happiness tend to be extremely unhappy, very confused, and even quite depressed. Hope is about expectation, and the youth of today seem to have a lot of expectations. I think the internet has had a hand in this, present lies as reality and telling young people that they can expect to have everything they see even when what they are seeing isn’t real. But it’s complicated.
Anyhow, in my experience, letting go of expectations, of hope and of this silly notion of constant happiness are key to navigating a patriarchal world without entering a downward spiral and considering killing yourself. Is this ideal? Of course not. But as there is no solving the Man Problem, you need to find a way to deal. And I don’t mean adopting an “if you can’t beat them, then join them” mentality. Sadly, that is what the majority of straight women do. Denial is a little more comfortable than living in reality, but you are still suffering even if you don’t realize it for a long time, usually after it is too late. I’ll write more about this when I get to the P’s of my Alphabet Series. No, what I mean is that you should conserve your gynergy and make your efforts mean something.
Here are some examples:
- Pick your battles wisely. If you are going to fight for something, then make sure it’s worth the consequences. There are always consequences when women go against men and their handmaidens. Even if you manage to accomplish something good for women, almost no one will thank you for it – probably the opposite actually. So fight for your higher principles and without expectations or hope.
- Live for ‘moments’. I’ve tried to help young people who are confused about why they can’t attain a constant state of bliss with the following. Enjoy small things. Notice details. Take pleasure in what is happening now without thinking past its ending. Myself, I actually am one of those people who literally stops to smell flowers. Once I started doing this type of thing regularly, I was freed from the burden of not being constantly happy. I have moments. A piece of chocolate. A good conversation. Taking an amazing photo of a bumble bee. No. I am not a member of the Cult of Positivity. I am skeptical, jaded, and have very low expectations of other people and of my own life.
- Find a purpose. Hope and purpose are not the same. Purpose has nothing to do with expecting that things will get better. They can be linked, but they don’t have to be. And I think that it’s better if they are not. Having a purpose is about doing something that has meaning to you. It could be about morals or principles. It could be about achieving mastery in something. It could be anything. And while it would be great if your purpose contributed positively to the world (i.e., it is a feminist purpose), you need to start with something that helps you sleep at night and helps you get up in the morning. I think most of the world is suffering from lack of meaningful purpose and so many bad things result.
In conclusion, I’ll say this. For women, hope is a useless concept. I think it only exists because suffering exists, and suffering only exists becuase men exist. Forcing hope down women’s throats serves men by keeping women compliant, accepting of forced suffering, and illogically believing that things will get better without questioning the status quo or fighting to change anything. Hope doesn’t float; it is the anchor that pulls you under the water and drowns you slowly.
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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.
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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…
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Conversations with Men: The Belt
I kicked off a new topic last month: conversations with men (first post in that category). These posts will consist of interactions I’ve had willingly and unwillingly with men. These are the interactions that have cumulatively led to me gradually pulling away from dubious friendships, support of, and even chance encounters in public with men. I’ve become much more selective and self-protective in deciding who stays in my life and with whom I’m willing to cross paths. Women are not always so lucky in being able to select. We often find ourselves in horrible, damaging or life-threatening situations with men who want us to know where we stand with them. Often we have no control over what happens to us.
The conversations I will recount will be both verbal and non-verbal. A lot of the time, men convey very important and dangerous messages through their non-verbal conversations with us. Words don’t need to be exchanged for information to be delivered in a loud and clear way, you see.
~~~
Rewind to 1996: Pre-9/11 Belgium. Pre-hysterical-Islamophobia-obsession. But not pre-gynophobia among Muslim men – they’ve hated women for millennia, and they have a special, violent hatred for Western/Westernized women.
I had taken a short trip to Europe prior to starting graduate school in the US. I tend to travel alone, and often meet interesting people as a result. I’d met a few travelling German women, and together, clothed conservatively in jeans, t-shirts, and our hiking boots, like most budget-travelling women, we went out to enjoy some music.
It was a lot of fun for me. Until I was unwillingly entered into a frightening conversation.
One minute, I was dancing in the crowd, and the next, I was lifted backwards off the ground by the neck. I couldn’t breathe.
After struggling for my life – no one had noticed or helped me – I managed to break free. Or had I been released…? A group of Muslim men had gotten it into their heads to engage a white whore in conversation and remind her that her life was in their hands and that she was garbage. Disposable. The ring leader had taken his belt off and put it around my neck, and jerked me backwards off the ground, dragged me over into his group in the corner – a thoroughly effective way to bring me into their conversation on male dominance, Islamic superiority, and Western whoredom. I screamed at them afterwards, once I was able to breathe again. They laughed. A good joke.
I don’t know if they had intended to kill me or whether being in public had stopped them short, and the conversation was enough for them. If I had encountered them in the street while alone, would they have raped me? Beaten me? Killed me? Like in the club, they would have gotten away with it. Especially now, they’d be home free in our post-9/11 world where associating Islam with violence is a no-no – especially violence against women.
I am terrified of men. I am terrified of religious men. I am especially terrified of Muslim men (although apparently, I subconsciously hate Christianity more). According to many liberals, me writing about this true event in my life is likely to be seen as hate speech. But what those men did to me wasn’t hate, wasn’t crime. Still isn’t. Racially-motivated crimes against women are not hate crimes.
There is a reason I stopped going to clubs after that. I realized that I had done nothing wrong. I existed. In public. I was a woman. I was white. Apparently, that is enough to sentence me to death. And the message from that conversation came through loud and clear. There is nothing I can do about it save avoid going out.
And I have complied. And I still remember the feel of that belt around my neck nearly 20 years later.
Atheist Men Hate You Too
When I was younger and more naive, I held out some hope for the atheist movement. When all you see around you is conservatism, religious violence, and traditional male arguments for why women need to be kept down, atheism can, on the surface seem like a fresh, clean wind blowing from a freer, more rational place.
I’ve been a non-believer all my life. My somewhat moderate parents installed me in an Anglican Sunday school when I was five, but when the brainwashers started teaching me my parents were evil for consuming wine, I was pulled out immediately.
I was saved because my parents were borderline alcoholics.
There was some occasional religious sputtering in school. The Lord’s Prayer was a morning ritual in Ontario where I went to school. At some point, that stopped. I can’t exactly remember when it stopped in my particular school since it was meaningless to me. We mumbled for years without understanding. Today, all children in public schools in Canada are free from this form of brainwashing – prayer in schools is disallowed under the concept of Freedom of Conscience thanks to our rights and freedoms charter. I do recall one particularly nasty Christian fanatic teacher who forced children to take home and prepare class lectures from the picture bible she kept in her class (not part of official curriculum), but again, the exercise was so meaningless as to have no lasting effect on my intellect. The same can’t be said for the few Jewish students that that same asshole teacher punished for, you guessed it, being Jewish (although, I, like many others, would argue that children are not religious – they are just the children of parents who are religious – too bad they’re punished for their parents’ beliefs).
As a high schooler, I had friends of different denominations, and I did visit their places of worship to find out what was going on. Each time, bad things happened. At one place, we were treated to a couple of hours of terrifying and repetitive ‘going to hell’ dramatic skits, and afterwards, the adults held a friend and me captive for an hour trying to wheedle our addresses and phone numbers out of us. We managed to escape. At another place, I was taught that one of my parents was evil for practising hypnosis on their psych patients who were trying to quit smoking. Yeah, there was no convincing me of the merits or sense of religion. All I saw were lies, manipulation, and cruelty – even what I would consider law-breaking.
As an adult, I got to know of the prominent atheists – all were men, of course (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, to name a few). Women seldom are given recognition in this world for anything unless they are flashing their tits or doing something *evil*. And then it is notoriety rather than respect or recognition.
As I was becoming a militant atheist, I was also developing my radical feminist standpoint. Initially, I had felt some hope that atheism would help women, liberate them from mandatory, submissive sex roles. But I realized something. And it was a true downer.
Atheist men, including those famous nutsacks I mentioned above, hate women just as much as right-wing, religious or traditional men do. They just put a different spin on it. Some of them use sexist language and outright dismiss anything women have to say, but most of these dudes are wily. They manage to get a few women on board (aka fun-feminists) by supporting abortion and women’s ‘right’ to fuck as much as they want. But the motivation is not to support women’s true freedom. It is to maintain current privileged male access to women’s bodies. If women can have abortions, they’ll fuck more. If women fuck more, they’ll do lots of men for free. So it is more sexual power for men spun as ‘women’s liberation’. And fun-feminists gobble it up like indentured girls do a blow job in a porno – humiliated, and pretending to like it. There is an illusion of freedom and an illusion of male support. But true freedom and true power are still not accessible to women under the atheist and/or left-wing male agenda. And the easiest way to expose a male atheist for the misogynist he is is to a) refuse him sex, b) threaten to take away their porn/hookers/lap dancers, etc., or c) continue fighting for women’s real freedom in economics, politics, etc. You’ll get called every name in the book, receive rape threats, and have support rescinded.
You see, men don’t get behind women’s causes unless it benefits them in some easy-to-understand way that supports the existing power structure. Even though feminism benefits men much more than any domination-submission standpoint ever has or will, it is dependent upon men giving up violence and the power that comes from it. In a feminist world, men don’t get to rape, beat, murder, harass or otherwise dominate women. And to most men, including atheists, they don’t like that scenario.
Atheism is a good, good thing. Necessary for moral advancement. And necessary for female liberation. I stand by that. The problem is that any movement in the hands of men will continue to support the male agenda. Men can take any movement/proposal that has the power to liberate the oppressed and turn it into something that benefits themselves and the existing power structure.
So yes, be an atheist. Intellectual freedom is only possible if you let go of fairy tales. But do it on your own terms. And never go for atheism that doesn’t embrace radical feminism. Otherwise, it’s pointless.
Why It’s Important to Fight Western Misogyny
From all corners, we are exposed to the patronizing tsk-tsking, mansplaining, and of course, much more aggressive threats, from men who think Western women need to shut the fuck up over their imagined oppression. Like all men who think of themselves as intellectuals, they like to trot out Muslim women as examples of the truly oppressed. In mansplainy fashion, they try to derail Western feminists by telling them they should stop whining and focus on helping these poor Muslim women in far-off places – to not do so is anti-feminist or something like that. Of course, not a single one of these offended men helps (or likely even knows personally) the Muslim women of whom they speak. Not one of these men assists at local women’s shelters, let alone marches/petitions to stop honour killings or FGM, donates money to feminist causes abroad, or volunteers in war-torn countries to help oppressed Muslim women. Rather, like the men in the cultures they are criticizing, they are simply using these Muslim women, and easily throw them aside and forget about them once they are finished their tirade against uppity Western bitches and their whining about the imagined harms of pornography or strip clubs or pervasive rape culture. The ‘Muslim women have it worse’ trope is a convenient and oft-used tool to shut feminists up about valid misogyny.
But there is a lot to fight against at home, and it is at home that one always should start because fighting what you know and experience gives you your best chance at success. Success is important if one is to provide an example to the world at large. And if the above male response to Western women speaking out isn’t evidence enough that there is work to be done at home, then we can easily find other things to fight against. And one could start with the current, media-friendly, sexay-fun image of faux-feminism. To those examining feminism for the first time, a false image can be quite confusing and damaging.
Pornsick lefty ‘male feminists‘ and libertarian chest-beaters along with their choice-feminist pole-dancing bimbettes (aka Third Wavers or fun-feminists) are lockstepping American women and girls (and unfortunately other Western-world citizens infected with the americo-virus) towards the other extreme of female sexual slavery: 24/7 pussy with a side of empowerment and cheeky smiles. It’s the porn/prostitution/stripping are feminist choices crowd. These days, Western girls are trained in the basics of sluthood (or How to Be a Modern Girlfriend) before they learn Intro to Algebra in school. And the grown-up, self-actualized, I’m-a-slut-so-what feminists are getting right pissed off when someone like me suggests that they’re hurting women as a global class, regardless of how free they feel as individuals to have made their ‘choices’. Yes, individual choices can hurt groups.
It’s all just misogyny taken to one extreme on the female sex class continuum.
I can just imagine all the tired, repetitive, indignant comments I’d receive from those who choose to miss the point to stave off cognitive dissonance (being offended feels soooo much better), which is one of the reasons I don’t allow comments here. They are a waste of time to read and respond to. Deprogramming is a long process, and a comment war on a blog is not how to go about it. Plus, I don’t have the patience to deal with the deluded and the willful ignorant. I’m better with those who truly wish to help themselves. Suffice it to say that I am pro-human rights, wish that all women were free from brainwashing to conform to male demands, and believe that sex and how it manifests could be decided freely between parties outside a structure of dominance. We don’t have that situation now. Not sure we ever will given how few women are really interested in standing up for true liberation. We don’t have the critical mass.
Why is it important to fight this ’empowerment’ and ‘choice’ nonsense that some so-called Western feminists insist they have? Well, when women on other points of the female slavery continuum, such as those who are forced into marriage or who are forced to cover themselves up to hide their filthy female bodies, take what fun/choice-fems do and say as freedom and feminism, they often don’t see the appeal. They don’t necessarily see them as free and don’t see Western freedom as a great alternative to what they endure currently. They may, in fact, see fun/choice-fems as the real slaves (or possibly sister-slaves on the continuum). And when one doesn’t like the alternative to one’s current situation, one is not likely to fight against the latter and will remain oppressed as per local custom.
That’s not good.
Unfortunately, nowhere in the world is there an example of what true freedom for women looks like. I mean, there are radical, Western feminists who are walking the talk and going about it in a way that makes sense. We can tell who they are because they are not receiving the enthusiastic male support that the pole dancers are. And that should tell us something. Men always go along with shit that maintains or increases their privileges. But as for a healthy model we can point to to demonstrate what female liberation and true feminism looks like? It ain’t there. I think we’d need a separate planet for that – Patriarchy wouldn’t allow a separate, liberated society to exist unmolested, unattacked, unraped in such close proximity. There may be small pockets of women’s communities, such as this small separatist community of rape survivors in Kenya who are going strong after 25 years. How unmolested are these individual communities by angry, insecure men? I can’t tell you. But in general, and on an individual level, there are serious consequences for women who cry out for liberation and/or separatism – hell, just voicing an opinion in public can bring on merciless attacks from men as well as their handmaidens.
Western women are nowhere near free or safe, but we do have a little more freedom to speak out than do our sisters in more oppressive cultures. Men may still hate us deeply and will fight us viciously to keep their right to hurt us with impunity, but we can and do find public platforms to speak out against the misogyny and Patriarchy that we live with. And our successes will fuel movements and individual rebellion in other places.
That, at least, is the idea.
A Young Chinese Woman’s Exposure to the World
As a university instructor in China, I take great delight in mentoring young women who venture outside the traditional ‘women are property’ box. Planting seeds of personal rebellion is my specialty, as is providing validation for the stirrings of feminist thinking that normally get stamped out by controlling parents and concerned friends.
One of my young protégés, a lively English major who took my writing class last semester, had an exciting summer. We had lunch last week and I heard all about it. She had joined up with a volunteer organization that brings young people from different countries together to teach children. I’m not quite clear on what they teach. I thought it was English, but most of the people who came to China to teach were not native speakers of English. Maybe culture? There were young men and women from Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia, Egypt, Tanzania, and the US, in addition to the local Chinese.
But I was less interested in the teaching experience and more curious about my former student’s exposure to people from around the world. On the whole, I think it was a good thing. But there were several alarming elements.
First, it becomes quite clear how sheltered and naive the Chinese are. All of the foreigners, save the Vietnamese and the Indonesian, spent time teaching my young friend English slurs and general swearing. And most of it was woman-hating, of course. She learned how to say cunt, bitch, fuck you, retard, etc. And she also got some odd, inaccurate advice from the non-native English speakers. Apparently, “Screw you!” is a very polite form of “Fuck you!” Huh? I worry about a) ESLers, and b) 19-year-olds, teaching the intricacies of language to the impressionable. So, we had an in-depth discussion of nasty words and who they hurt (usually women, and other oppressed groups), and by the end, I think she was much less enthusiastic about hurling insults at people. But swearing is the number one thing most people want to learn when they are first exposed to a new language. I just give a different perspective on it – I do, after all, swear a lot, and put a lot of thought into why and who gets harmed by it.
Second, the poor thing ‘fell in love with’ the young Egyptian dude in the group. She thought he was awesome. Luckily, he was crushing on the properly diminutive and dainty Vietnamese girl and wasn’t interested in my more outgoing Chinese friend. I got to watch a few videos she took featuring him posturing in his macho way, and I wasn’t quite so taken with him as she was. Personally, I don’t find Egyptian men or Egyptian culture all that progressive. The country is, after all, in full support of female genital mutilation – over 90% of the current female population has lost their clits and/or had their fuck holes sewn up in the name of ‘respecting women’. I personally have had way too much experience with the rapeyness and violence of Muslim men (both strangers and a man I had the misfortune of dating) in a few different countries, and I worry about non-Muslim women who get involved or find themselves trapped with men of that persuasion. Men are scary enough on their own, but when they are religious, there is a whole nuther layer of justification for woman-hatred present.
Third, my young friend got an instructional dose of the ‘female dichotomy according to men’ care of the young Tanzanian man. The viewpoint certainly isn’t limited to Tanzania or to black men – it’s universal. But the dude laid the viewpoint out quite clearly and matter-of-factly. And my friend, being young, female, Chinese and naive, didn’t see anything wrong with it. The viewpoint goes something like this:
There are two kinds of girls: the ones you have fun with and the ones you can take home to your parents and marry.
What my friend didn’t understand, because Chinese girls are not educated about sex, was that ‘the ones you have fun with’ translates into: bad girls, the ones you can fuck, but don’t have to ‘respect’. She didn’t see that men have this thing called privilege where they can place value on women. You fuck the trash and then throw it away when you’re done, but you marry the pure. And both types of women are objects. You are a whore one way or the other – either a public whore (the bad girl/slut – girlfriend material) or a private whore (the pure, wifey-wifey material that you can only rape after marriage).
I made sure to explain all of this.
Do I do young women a favour by telling them how the world really is? How men will always enslave us? I don’t know. As a Chinese woman, she doesn’t have options. She must get married. Her parents definitely don’t want her marrying a foreigner – that is just racist, Chinese culture talking. But marrying a Chinese isn’t going to be any better than marrying a foreigner – they are all men, and marriage is the slavery of women. So is it better to go into female slavery naively than going into it with wide open eyes? I don’t know. I’d like to think that being prepared is better than being bitterly disappointed that the fairy tale that girls are force fed from birth isn’t true.
I was much less naive when I was 20 and a budding feminist to boot, but I do so wish I’d had an older woman in my life to open my eyes to reality. It would have saved me a lot (not all) of the grief I went through in navigating a world of woman-hate.
~~~
Addendum written after leaving China. That young woman never spoke to me again after that lunch. Not an isolated incident, in my experience. Most women don’t want reality. The rape-coloured glasses fit way too well and make life shiny and fun, at least if you don’t pay attention to detail. Some women will tell people like me that we are too ‘negative’. Presenting facts is ‘negative’, logic is negative, and we just can’t have negativity around us, right? I call it realistic, but ya know… Most women are just weak. They know what I say is true, but they also know there is immense punishment involved in holding men responsible for what they do. For example, she (and 99.9% of women in the world) socially punish me and women like me for speaking out through isolation. As well, this woman will get married and be financially better off than me – that is the financial punishment a woman like me experiences. And there is so much more.
What You Won’t Find in Discussions of Syria
I’ve been reading about the latest nonsense in the Syrian saga and refugee crisis, and one thing strikes me – not as odd, but as typical.
There is no mention of the fact that only in a world run by men is this kind of horror story possible.
With men in charge, you get dominance paradigms. You get religion; you get female slavery; you get baby-overproduction through enforced pregnancy and rape; you get guns, bombs, tear gas; you get human trafficking; you get war, war, war.
None of the articles I’ve read has mentioned the word Patriarchy. Neither has any criticized the disgraceful, violence of Islam. Everything is couched in political terms that takes responsibility away from men as a group. It’s the government elite or radicals/fanatics, not men, not religious men.
Neither this nor any other ‘political’ problem will ever be solved until we can get down to it and call it what it is: a direct result of Patriarchy, religion and the enslavement of women.
But without men shitting all over the world on a daily basis, what would the media write about? War and violence make money on so many fronts. We’re addicted, and peace under rational equality and freedom would take all the fun and adventure out of life.
Naiveté, Stupidity, and Ignorance
Let’s take a look at a few terms that get confused often. I will reference men and privileged people, but my end goal is to ask a question about religious goombas of all flavours.
Naiveté
Naiveté is a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment. It implies innocence or a lack of sophistication about how the world works. It is a word that can usually be applied to children that have been fortunate enough to miss out on serious abuses of one sort or another.
Naiveté is neither good nor bad – it is just a typical stage people who have not yet had exposure to a wide range of experiences go through. But it often implies a value judgement when it is applied to girls and women. In this case, it blames or insults the person in question regardless of whether she is naive or she is not (i.e., a naive girl is a stupid girl, and a girl who is not naive is a slut or seductress). Girls and women, can never win in this world, and this is just one of many examples that show the damned if you do, damned if you don’t rule of ladyhood.
Nevertheless, with age and life experience, most people lose their naiveté and find themselves in another state of being.
Unfortunately for some, naiveté can morph into willful ignorance with age either as a coping mechanism (for women) or as a maintainer of privilege (with men). For example, regarding the latter, a good friend of mine is a 47-year-old man who was shocked to find out from some recent news story that a huge number of men use online dating sites advertising hot women in order to cheat on their wives. What appeared to be naiveté was really a willful ignorance (see below). How can a middle-aged American man not know that men are shitheads? Because he isn’t on the receiving end of misogynistic abuse every day of his life, and he has no reason to give a shit about what women experience. Because he hasn’t been forced to open his eyes, he is not responsible for anything. And that’s how men can look innocent/naive with looks of horror on their faces when really they just can’t be bothered to notice how their lives are better than women’s. Note that men, once eyes are opened (honestly, I do believe they know exactly what is going on in the world, but just feign innocence), still don’t do anything to end the hurt done to women.
Ignorance
Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge or information. Every single one of us is ignorant about many things. It is impossible to know everything even if we devoted every waking moment to learning. Thus is cannot be a blameworthy state on its own. In certain contexts, however, it might be suspect. For example, it can be sometimes surprising when a young, supposedly educated adult or group of adults appears to lack basic information in a number of rather important and basic areas of knowledge. We’ve heard this said frequently of the current, young, American population – most university students can barely deal with a map of their own country, never mind a world map. The comment on their ignorance is one of blame, although how much of it is the fault of the young people rather than their parents, the government, and the education system that they are so woefully ignorant of what is going on around them?
Stupidity
Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, or ability to reason. Some believe that stupidity is a biological limitation of the brain, much like height is a limitation of physical stature, that one is born with, and that cannot be overcome, even with great effort to learn or improve. Like with height, some believe that there is a range one is limited to at birth and that the conditions one lives in determine the point within that range that one will achieve.
While limited intelligence in and of itself is not blameworthy, when coupled with privilege and especially willful ignorance, it can be very dangerous. It doesn’t take great intelligence to be able to understand basic human rights for all, you see.
Some people use the term stupid to refer to behaviour, especially harmful (to self and others) and cruel behaviour, which of course invokes blame. Whether stupid behaviour results from privilege or from biological stupidity, I’m not sure. But note that most behaviour that could be categorized as stupid is committed by boys and men. There are tons of movies and television programs devoted to celebrating stupid male behaviour. Also note that girls are more likely to be called stupid, especially when they do things that make it easier for males to hurt or take advantage of them. I am somewhat loathe to call females stupid when males hurt them, moreso when the female is young and truly naive to the sheer horrors of what males perpetrate every second of every day.
Willful Ignorance
Willful ignorance is the decision to ignore evidence and information that contradicts one’s beliefs or that may lead to a loss of benefits. This kind of behaviour or way of thinking/being often results from and maintains a state of privilege (e.g., being male, being religious, being straight, being a breeder, being non-white in a Western country these days, etc.) or as a coping mechanism in women who might find themselves in danger if they allow themselves to fully absorb the reality of their slavery.
To admit one is wrong or deliberately ignorant requires one to be humble, to take responsibility for one’s behaviour, and to give up things no human should do or have (e.g., control or ownership of another human). For women, to admit reality can be very difficult and requires some serious decision-making regarding one’s slave state as a woman. It is decidely easier in many ways for a woman to maintain a state of willing ignorance than to live in reality.
While one may understand the psychology of willful ignorance, it is still the most blameworthy and shameful of states to be in, and it is a state occupied by a lot of men and by religious people (especially religious men of all races). Note that I place much less blame on women who are willfully ignorant of their slavery (Note – 2021 – although my views have been changing a bit on this issue over time as 6 years have passed since this post was originally written). Some women have little choice to escape without risk of death, rape, beatings and/or stalking/harassment, and pretending all is well is sometimes a necessary way of surviving. Yet, at the same time, there are plenty of women who don’t risk death, but who just don’t want to deal with reality or making hard decisions. Unfortunately, these women’s choices affect ALL women negatively. As someone who has rejected happy-fun-lies and made some hard grounded-in-reality choices (out of the limited choices men allow me as a woman), I can tell you that while I have attained more freedom in my mind, there is a lot of pain and vulnerability associated with my choice to face reality and act on it. I blame the men and the shitty slavery system they have created and maintain. Women shouldn’t have to escape reality and tell themselves lies just to exist.
Final note: one can be willfully ignorant and very stupid at the same time. And those folks are dangerous.
A Question
A question that often gets batted around both online and in the meat world is: Are religious people stupid? My knee-jerk reaction is a resounding ‘YES!’ But let’s consider a little.
I think religious people fall into all of the categories discussed here. The children are naive. The fact that they are brainwashed into the major religious cults is child abuse. I wish Richard Dawkins hadn’t have backed down when he was confronted during an interview by a Muslim male breeder. Said Muslim asked Dawkins whether he – a religious father – was a child abuser. Dawkins, of course, said ‘no’. I guess it’s hard to tell people to their faces that they are in fact doing something horrible to their children.
Many religious people are ignorant. And I blame this on their families, idiocy on the parts of certain governments, and dreadful education systems that place religious teaching higher or on par with the teaching of science, philosophy and logic, for example.
Many religious people are biologically stupid, and I think early religious training limits how far people can push their brains within our given personal ranges of intelligence. But don’t take my word for it. People are researching the link between religion and intelligence. For example, a meta-analysis of 63 studies does indeed show a strong correlation between religious beliefs and intelligence. Lower intelligence is related to higher religiosity. And smart people just tend not to be religious. Nevertheless, it isn’t news to me. These are obvious correlations, although having data to back them up is necessary, of course.
Religion is just magical thinking that preys on fear and reinforces fear-based misogyny. Intelligence allows us to work logically though fear and adjust our world views accordingly to become better people. With low intelligence, easy, bullshit non-answers are appealing and soothing. Hate is justified and requires no personal responsibility. No effort required.
Lastly, I think most, if not all, religious people are willfully ignorant. To see reality would be to reject religion for the hateful, backwards, dangerous nonsense that it is. Clear-thinking and humility are incompatible with religion. To be willfully ignorant, one has to feel that there is something to lose in accepting reality. Like men with their privilege over women, so too do the religious have the same things to lose – comfort, political power, money, sanctioned violence, and that smug sense of superiority that you see in most religious people. Give up the privilege and you just have to accept being… human.
Those Debates Aren’t for Everyone
I’ve watched many a debate between staunch atheists and rabid godfuckers of various flavours over the years. The debates are in and of themselves pointless in that there is no common starting point. When the two parties don’t exist on the same planes of reality – atheists base arguments (mostly) on facts and evidence, while godfuckers rely upon nonsense and use an incorrect definition of ‘evidence’ as argument support – you can’t proceed in a productive way. To even consider the positions equal is crazy because of this.
But I suppose the debates serve a few purposes. Myself? I wouldn’t bother. I don’t enjoy public speaking – although I formally train students of the debating arts. But for those skilled in oratory, with hidden depths of patience, and who enjoy the process of debate as an intellectual exercise, a few things can be achieved. First, those on the fence about their religious stance may be convinced by the logic, goals, sanity, and evidence supporting the atheist position. Second, neophyte-atheists can become familiar with the sad, tired non-arguments of the religious and learn how to defend themselves properly when under (sometimes literal) attack. Third, we can publicly remind the world of the evils that have been perpetuated and defended by the religious. And finally, the debates can be pure entertainment of the dark sort. There is amusement to be found (usually coupled with sadness, pity, and/or anger) in watching the religious defend bullshit. So while, for many, it is mostly a waste of time to bother arguing with idiots, the ignorant, bullies, and the fear- and hate-filled, there can be benefits in the exercise to the public.
The very same can be said for debates between radical feminists and dangerous misogynists (e.g., MRA’s, NiceGuys, Right Wing Religious Nutjobs, Porn Sick Left Wing Men, trannies, and Fun/Choice/Third Wave Feminists). The former argue from a position of human rights, freedom, and benefit to ALL women and men. The latter argue irrationally from a position of domination/submission, human rights abuse, privilege, individualism, and selective censorship. Like with the atheist/godfucker debates, there is no real common ground from which to begin the debate. It is a logic vs nonsense war. But I applaud those feminists with the bottomless patience an oratory skills to take on what are truly dangerous opponents. The debates are ultimately pointless and unwinnable, but they can indeed a) convince those on the fence about women’s status as human beings to join the side of logic and empathy and human rights for ALL, b) arm neophyte-feminists with the tools to defend themselves against dangerous and aggressive anti-woman, rape-supporting proponents, c) give misogynists a platform upon which to display the full extent of their ill intentions and past crimes, and d) give us something to laugh at cynically.
Those courageous, rational people (especially women) who stand up to and openly debate proponents of cultures of hate and oppression, whether they be Religion or Misogyny/Patriarchy, and who have won freedoms for us all, are brave souls who put themselves in danger for the benefit of the world. They (especially women) are on the receiving end of death threats, rape threats, censorship, and hate speech accusations, simply for speaking truth and calling upon criminals to defend themselves in public. The saddest realization for me is that so many people currently benefiting from the bravery of those who have stood up to religion and misogyny, have turned around to castigate these same crusaders.
Is it human nature to kill the person who unlocks the cage and extends a hand in friendship and compassion?
Equal Opportunity Religion Hating – Or Not?
Do you love online quizzes? Do you like the idea of contributing to academic research? Are you into social justice and personal bias? Well, head on over to Project Implicit, a collaboration designed to investigate “thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control”. They administer tests on race, religion, gender, age and more.
It’s pretty interesting. I’ve taken a couple of the tests. They seem to rely upon timed keyboard response to word pairings and categorizing, and dependent variables are the time you take to respond and the mistakes you make. The idea is that how we respond is not just a factor of our conscious processing – after all some people are good at consciously self-monitoring their behaviour. We have hidden biases that can come through despite being politically correct.
There were some follow-up questions after the quizzes I took that attempt to examine what I believe influences the way I think, but likely, most people have no idea why they unconsciously behave the way they do. Only when you make a true effort to examine your privileges and biases (through reading, listening, interacting, adopting humility, etc) can you even begin to understand what is going on inside you.
Anyhow, I took a test on views on religion, as well as one on gender stereotypes with regard to science and liberal arts. With the latter, I scored in (the top – my interpretation, haha) 1% of people who overwhelmingly associated science with women and liberal arts with men. I wasn’t surprised at either the misogyny of the rest of the population or with my atypical response. They asked me at the end for possible explanations for my results. In all honesty, having worked in both science and liberal arts, all the best scientists I’ve worked with have been women. Men tend to suffer from arrogance, inflated sense of importance, misogyny, and the need to confirm their own, often strange, beliefs. Women, I’ve observed, are more humble, less biased, and thus truer to the spirit of science. Good role models, in other words. So in my mind, I always associate scientists and properly done science with women. In all honesty, I also tend to associate women with liberal arts and anything intellectual, creative, interpretive, and artistic, as well. Men? I am more and more frequently associating men with porn and violent oppression than noble endeavours, creativity or rational thinking… Hey, once the scales fall from the eyes and you decide you aren’t going to suck the Patriarchal cock anymore, you begin to see things for what they really are. But there was no text input or radio button option to explain my thinking on that, alas. I’m sure the mostly male research team will just pass me off as an anomaly or as we research types tend to say, “an outlier”.
Regarding the test on religion, that one was more interesting and surprising to me. I hate all religions, for obvious reasons (misogyny, ignorance, magical thinking, control, violence, hatred, homophobia, anti-progress, and I’ll say it again, misogyny). The test looked at the four major religions: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They had two lists of words. One consisted of ‘positive’ words (excellent, good, etc) and the other of ‘negative’ words (bad, terrible, etc). There was a series of groupings. In each, you were told to press one key if you saw a word from one of the religions OR a positive word, and to press a different key for all the other religions or a negative word. The test purported to tap your subconscious attitudes toward each religion.
At the end, I was given a relative placement of my negative attitude towards each of the religions, and as you can see from my outcome above, Christianity fell to the negative bottom of my personal religious shit-pile. Keep in mind that I believe that ALL religions are evil, which is my conscious attitude, but subconsciously, I suppose, I associate the most negative qualities with Christianity. I thought I was an equal-opportunity hater. I’m kind of disappointed.
* note for all dudes discovering their knickers suddenly in a twist at my audacity to associate science and competence with women, I am explaining my personal experience and thinking, not reporting on a scientific study I’ve done or treating my experience as a study. Chill out and stop getting so bloody sensitive and emotional, for fuck’s sake! Note also that women have tolerated this kind of bias from you for millennia. And you’ve been rewarded for it! At least I don’t rape or deny you employment!!!
Why Aren’t Muslims Solving the Problems Within Their Ranks?
I have an equal lack of love for all religions/cults. Let’s make that clear. There isn’t a single religion/cult out there that builds on the premise of human rights or equality for all. They are all based on misogyny and hierarchy. That is aside from the fact that these belief systems are also based on a willingness to ignore evidence and focus on the very, very dangerous idea of ‘faith’.
I don’t respect religion. I do respect an individual’s right to believe in nonsense, though. But when we move into the realm of action/behaviour, I keep a closer eye and become more critical. I don’t acknowledge an individuals ‘right’ to hurt other individuals (unless in self-defence). And so many religious actions do hurt individuals – purposefully and as acts of aggression.
And so we get to Muslims. Like all religious adherents of any faith, Muslims hate women and practise misogyny on a daily basis. But currently, Muslims are further stained with the horrific actions of a growing minority of them. This minority is the group of radicals who commit acts of violence and terror within their own countries, in their adopted countries and in other countries.
My question is this. Why aren’t ‘mainstream’ Muslims, who number over 1.5 billion, doing anything about the radicals? Surely, such a massive group could take down a comparatively small number of crazies who are tarnishing their reputation. As ‘Islamophobia’ increases, Muslims, who, I assert, are not an oppressed group, choose to spend more time crying victim rather than focusing on those doing the real damage – the radicals within their ranks. They get zero sympathy from me as a woman and an atheist – which, by the way, are two groups that actually are oppressed.
It reminds me of men who get pissy about women being afraid of them instead of getting out there and taking down rapists, rape culture supporters and MRA’s (Moron’s Rights activists).
That old saying, “If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem” holds true here. Stop blaming the real victims – in the case of religious terrorism, the people killed and maimed by the terrorists – and focus on the evil-doers.
Story Ending Never 
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