Category Archives: Tools
New Survey on Experience with Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Participants Needed!
I’m preparing for an upcoming post on Narcissistic Personality Disorder in a feminist context. Anonymous votes as well as comments would be appreciated ♥♀
Please answer based on dealing with people who are ‘regulars’ in your life, rather than one-offs, randos, or people who exist on the periphery. Most NPDs don’t have an official diagnosis simply because they tend not to admit they have a problem – everyone else is the problem. You’ll know you’re dealing with one of these folks because your relationship revolves around their constant need for praise or acknowledgement and huge sense of self-importance, as well as bullying, antagonism, lying and rewriting of reality.
New Poll on Personal Circumstances – Participants Needed!
This poll is closed now, but community input was incorporated into my Alphabet Series post L is for Living. Thanks to all who participated and please subscribe to this site or to my YouTube channel to participate in future polls and surveys.
I is for Infantilization
This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
Although I’ve touched on this subject in other posts, I thought this would make a nice companion piece to E is for Emasculation. Emasculation is testosterone-fuelled hyperbole where men pretend that having their rapey privileges taken away or even just questioned is akin to the removal of their biological weapons of mass destruction: their cocks and balls. All men see their privilege to harm women and girls as a god or nature given right, and to even question that is a crime against manity. It’s puzzling and frankly, pathetic – if you lose your entire identity when it’s even suggested that you’re not allowed to do violence, what does that say about you and your class of creatures?
In my post, The Female Equivalent of Emasculation, I discuss whether women experience anything like what men do. My conclusion is ‘no’. In order to feel a stripping away of privilege or power, you actually have to have privilege and power, and even more importantly, you have to have them AND feel like you deserve them. Females don’t have privilege and they certainly don’t have any power, and most women don’t even feel like they deserve them, thanks to a lifetime of patriarchal brainwashing. So no, women can’t and don’t feel this unjustified and irrational rage that men often do. But they do experience something that absolutely ensures that they never will gain rights and power, let alone privilege or the feeling that they deserve anything but the suffering that is doled out in the name of male love.
So today, I is for Infantilization.
To infantilize is to constantly, and even systematically, treat women as if they are children or as less intelligent and capable than they are. It involves a whole host of language and behaviour patterns, is carried out by both men and women, and is often helped along by other patriarchal tools such as gaslighting. I’ve suggested before that infantilization is closely related to feminization, the enforcement of unnatural, gendered stereotypes that place females firmly under the male boot, ready to serve unthinkingly.
So let’s talk purpose and methods.
One could easily devote an entire book and even an entire research career to this topic. It is an international problem for over half the population, and generally seen as acceptable, if it’s noticed at all. Many men and women, including women claiming to be feminists, even consider infantilization to be sweet or sexy. But, infantilization is all about 1) transcending and erasing the boundaries of women and girls, 2) denying them power, intelligence, agency and recognition, and 3) breaking down their confidence. It starts in childhood when girls are more susceptible and vulnerable to harmful messaging. It is possible to infantilize a child by treating her as younger or less capable or less intelligent than she actually is. Boys are given free reign in all areas and bestowed with the idea that they are smarter and more talented than they truly are, while girls are protected and punished and denied the most basic freedoms and acknowledgement. By the time girls reach adulthood, they are well used to being treated like naive and even stupid children and often don’t notice that not much changes despite moving into a new phase of their lives. They are primed for heterosexual relationships and for mistreatment in the workplace.
More on the methods.
1) Transcending Boundaries
Girls are taught early on that their bodies are not their own. They are for public consumption. They see it on television, in advertisements, in the places where their clothes are bought. The entire world comments on their physical manifestation. But it comes from parents, too. The girl is over-protected and punished for things that boys can do freely. She is taught how to make her body small, to lower her voice, and silence her wants and needs. She is dressed to be consumed, not to consume or just exist. Mother presents her daughter to friends, family and relative strangers, and the girl is expected to accept being touched, held and fussed over. She is not allowed to say no as it’s rude or defiant. Denying her agency and body-privacy, mother infantilizes and thereby grooms her daughter for her future role as a compliant heterosexual fuckhole. By the time she reaches her teens and early adulthood, the average girl has little confidence, doesn’t know how to look at herself through her own eyes, and seldom holds or presents herself in a natural way in public. Out in the world, boys and men talk too much and take up more than their share of space, and she accommodates their privilege by silencing her voice and making her body smaller. Males touch her in ways they themselves would never accept, and she sees the attention as tender and loving instead of infantilizing, invasive or degrading. Males grip, and lead and force, and she goes limp, and follows, and accepts.
2) Denying Power and Capability
There are a million and one ways in which females are denied power and any acknowledgement of their achievements. I’ll discuss a few of them here.
The number one way to infantalize a woman is to focus on the physical. It might sound strange at first, as sex and sexuality are supposed to be mature or adult subjects, but in actuality, focusing on female appearance and women’s dichotomous status as either a mother or a child-free non-human, serves to infantilize women and completely ignore their achievements and actual contributions to society. Beauty is decidedly not an achievement. It is subjective and has no relevance, meaning or true value. If it had real, objective value, then men would have taken it over and made it the focus of their own lives. So it serves as a distraction and even obsession for so many girls and women, completely infantilizing them, depleting their limited finances, and turning their brains to mush. As manipulatable as children. A focus on the physical also blurs the lines between adult maturity and childhood in a sexual way, giving outlets for male pedophelia. Girls are pushed to become sexual beings and adult women regress under pressure to become more childlike and youthful in appearance. Women who eschew all things beauty and fashion-related are demonized, ostracized, and banished to a circle of hell that even Dante couldn’t conceive of.
All societies also focus on mother-worship, another non-achievement-based focus on the physical, yet considered the pinnacle of female success. The rewards women reap for getting knocked up are legion. You probably do better financially and socially if you become a mother and wife than if you go to university, and I’m not kidding. But I mean, let’s get real. How is motherhood the number one human female achievement if even cockroaches, giraffes, and mice can do it? This is infantilization – essentially, the childlike having children. And all the while, mediocre males have their career paths preserved, working mothers get maternity leave and baby showers in the workplace, and child-free women are ignored, held back, and denied opportunities and respect.
Women are also infantilized through language, either by being denied existence or by having their female status called out deliberately. The use of man, mankind or manpower is still in wide use and women are supposed to accept being adjunct, but unacknowledged, members of that group. If the tables were turned and we used ‘woman’ to describe all humans, males would start World War T (testosterone) and whine about emasculation and the pussification of society. We also refer to female doctors, but not male doctors, and on American television, female law enforcement is most often called ‘bitch cop’, which is not only infantilizing, but dehumanizing. My modern British ESL teaching materials still include words like ‘mailman’ instead of postal worker or letter carrier. And in North America, we still call female parking enforcement officers ‘meter maids’. In addition, women are regulary denied their titles that denote achievement, such as Dr. even going so far as to refer to esteemed women by their first names only. Instead, we become irrationally focused on titles denoting physical ownership status, namely Miss and Mrs., and frequently bestow diminutives, such as hon, sweetheart, beautiful, and my dear, on adult women, even in professional settings. The British even refer to elderly women, patronizingly, as ‘old dear’, while there is no infantilizing equivalent for old men.
When women demand that they be called Dr., there is often angry backlash, especially from other women. I find this puzzling as female achievement makes it easier for girls to develop professional goals and dreams and to actually have a chance at success. Higher education is a positively gruelling process, rife with misogyny and degradation, and women who have not gone through the process seem to think that educated women breathe refined air. I can tell you, as one of those educated women, that academia was in many ways, more misogynistic than other work settings I’ve experienced. I’d even go so far as to suggest that formal higher education is not necessarily the best option for women these days, unless there is a clear requirement for a specific degree. And I further suggest keeping one’s mouth shut if you are completely ignorant on a topic, especially when what is coming out of your mouth is shit directed at another woman. Anyhow, regarding language, there is no reason in the world where we need to be either linguistically sexing jobs or erasing the female sex entirely from our vocabulary. Language problems are soooo easily remedied, which makes it clear that there is a different motive for keeping things as they are. Yes, infantilization and disempowerment.
Men also constantly use their big mouths to infantilize women in another way, and this is mansplaining. I wrote a short post on this phenomenon a while back, so I’ll keep it brief here. Basically, men feel the need to talk at women. Teach them. Show them. Explain to them. But the problem is that most of the time, the woman or girl being talked at already knows. The female can be educated, skilled, intelligent, and experienced, and the male can be uneducated, unskilled, stupid, and inexperienced. And he knows all of this. But he still explains – or mansplains. It is the ultimate act of infantilization. Every single female on the planet has experienced this, usually thousands and thousands of times in her life. I’ve even had boy children do this to me. I’ve had Chinese male students try to mansplain my own language to me – even more significant as it is a very disrespectful thing to do to your teacher in Chinese culture, so there was an element of racism in there along with the infantilizing misogyny. I’ve also had a Korean man try to explain to me what arithmetic is despite the fact that I have a masters in statistics. These are only a few examples, but there are literally thousands of incidents in my life. And the more educated and skilled you are, the worse it is. Some women just accept it à la ‘we have to coddle the fragile male ego’. But I don’t. You have to be really careful though. Males are used to being able to say and do what they want to you, so reacting rationally and not in a childlike way – meaning that you challenge them – can lead to violence, and as I’ve experienced, you can lose your job and career opportunities if you dare to correct the situation.
3) Breaking Down Confidence
Research has shown again and again that females constantly underestimate their skills, abilities and intelligence, while males vastly overestimate what they can do. This is known, proveable, and we see it all the time. It is likely the number one determining factor in career success, or possibly number two, after connections (as in nepotism and Old Boys’ Clubs). We know that education and experience aren’t nearly as important as people tell us. But how well you can sell yourself, even if it’s all a lie, is. And while confidence is not always appreciated in women in the same way it is in men, an employer will still usually choose a confident woman over a hesitant or unsure one. Our world prefers shiny lies over quiet truths, so it is no wonder that men get the jobs and promotions and opportunities and recognition, and higher salaries.
It is also unsurprising that women will not only underestimate themselves, but the capabilities of other females. A woman will usually throw her support behind a demonstrably mediocre male as a potential, promising leader, than a proven, superior female. And not only is there no confidence in the women in question, but capable females will often be criticized and torn down by both men and women. You even see this in so-called ‘feminist’ communities where women discount a female voice because she is confident, outspoken, educated or appears to have a better-paying job. This is an attempt to infantilize a woman who so clearly breaks the rules about female success and confidence.
My general rule of thumb when evaluating male and female claims is this: take anything a male says about his abilities and cut it in half, and take anything a female says about herself and double it. It amazes me how many stellar, intelligent, capable, multi-talented, and over-educated women I’ve met who are barely getting by financially or who are working jobs that vastly under-utilize and under-value their skill sets. But this impacts single women and lesbians much more than married women because the latter have a husband’s income that keeps them from poverty. They don’t notice the problem unless the heterosexual contract doesn’t end up working out for them.
I can say the exact opposite of males – so many of them land well-paying jobs with opportunities for advancement and recognition despite average intelligence, laziness, lack of experience or education, and a lack of skills and capability. I believe a good part of this is due to the building up of confidence in males and the breaking down of confidence that a lifetime of infantilization inflicts on females. There are other factors that work in tandem, of course. Patriarchy is a multi-front assault on the female psyche.
What’s It All Mean?
As mentioned above, infantilization is a mechanism that serves to prevent women and girls from having power and rights and even believing that power and full human rights are possible for them. To give a female agency, confidence, and a complete sense of power over her body and life throws a wrench in the male privilege machine. Even liberal males want to maintain the illusion that some kind of equal exchange is going on, even when they know on some level that there is a power imbalance. Feel free to test this out by watching the rage flare up when you suggest to a liberal male that the so-called sex that he is having is actually consensual rape since unequal people cannot truly give consent. Men need women to depend on them for guidance, approval, and protection – the very things children require from parents. I argue that heterosexuality depends on the infantilization of women and girls, and I think it’s high time to stop dreaming about screwing your dad or grandpa. It’s time to grow up.
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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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N is for ‘No’
This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
Indulge me for a moment, if you will. Think about language, your native language and other languages that you function in. Think about individual words, specifically. If you could choose a word that is more important to you than any other, or falls within the top 10 important words in your life, what would it be? In choosing this word, consider those that give you a sense of or even actual freedom, safety, choices, closure, boundaries – anything that makes your life better. There is no right or wrong answer here; in fact, this may be something you’ve never thought about before. It’s not something we are ever asked to consider, as females. It’s selfish, you see. And if you are female, this might be an extremely difficult exercise simply because we seldom have control over the important things in our lives, especially the things that define and control us, namely language. We are also seldom asked our preferences or opinions on things that matter. Control over language and how the world works is the domain of men. As our creators -and I mean creators of the boxes we live in – they have always known us better than we know ourselves. At least they tell us that. It must be true. They define the experiences we are allowed to have, the crimes committed against our bodies, and what we are allowed to do, think and say as females.
Today, I’m going to consider an extremely important word, a word that is more important for females than it is for males, as we generally aren’t allowed to use it — without consequences. The result of using this word can range from simply being ignored, as if we didn’t say anything at all; to being misinterpreted, as if what we said was somehow different than what we really meant; to inspiring rage and violence in the person at whom the word was directed, as if by speaking our true minds and believing we are allowed to have boundaries, we are intending to harm others. It is truly bizarre and frightening, and it is a sex-specific phenomenon, meaning that males don’t experience it. It also has interesting sex-by-race effects and sex-by-trans effects that will be discussed below.
So, today, N is for No.
I think women don’t realize just how little they matter, and how little their opinions and speech matter. To men, but also to the women who serve men without question. Our erasure is so constant and normalized that we just don’t notice how often we must repeat ourselves, how often we give in to something we don’t want despite having expressed our opinion, and how often we decide to censor ourselves because subconsciously, after years of abuse and erasure, we know that what we say won’t matter or will lead to violence. But you have to wonder. Why is so much effort put into putting women in their place if they don’t matter?
Let’s look at some common scenarios. All females have experienced these many times, although most may not realize how often. As a regular reader of this blog, you are probably quite aware of how much power your ‘no’ has in this world.
Ignored
Women and girls are ignored all the time, but as ‘no’ is a very important word, this is a serious problem. As children, we are forced to endure touching, pinching and kissing from relatives and random strangers marvelling at how cute we are – even when we say ‘no’, or use body language that demonstrates ‘no’. It continues on through school. So many of us are bullied – it’s not oppression; kids are assholes, generally speaking – but for girls, sometimes the bullying can go on to become sexual abuse where we learn that it is pointless to say ‘no’ because nobody cares or pays attention. And on the rare occasion that a girl reports her abuse, she is usually ignored, or written off as an attention seeker or a liar. In adulthood, we are passed over for opportunities and promotions. We are ignored in meetings, and some of us wonder if school bullying was just preparation for the sex-specific degradation, harassment and sometimes terrorism of the workplace. We learn that saying ‘no’ has no impact. The workplace likes the ‘yes-girl’. The only way to get attention is to laugh at the rape jokes, the gay/lesbian jokes, and to pretend everything is great. The quickest way to fall off the radar as a serious employee is to say ‘no’ to what is going on.
Heterosexuality depends on women’s needs being ignored. We talk endlessly about compromise, but as many of us come to realize, men have defined compromise to mean: women sacrifice (i.e., shut the fuck up and submit) and men are catered to. Having had several, what I consider to be ‘normal’, relationships with men in my long-gone bisexual days, I realize, looking back, that my needs meant nothing. I don’t think I even knew what my needs were, as I was well trained to cater to males, see my needs as ‘selfish’, and ridiculously, to call it ‘equality’. If I did express myself, it was ignored or written off.
Deliberately Misinterpreted
When I was a teenager, there was an article in our local newspaper featuring a black and white photo of a couple of male university students at a hockey game holding up a hand-painted cloth banner that read “NO MEANS YES!!!” This was 1980’s-1990’s rape culture at its best. It wasn’t really anything new in the minds of males, but at this point in history, it had become a new ‘women’s issue’. But the males from the photo didn’t get in trouble or anything. Why would they? Men and boys have been raping women and girls with impunity and bragging about it since time began. Who cares? But it was an interesting, but simple, insight into male psychology and how they make rape okay in their minds.
There is this strange belief that men have and that men have been writing about for ages under the guise of ‘literature’ and ‘science’ that women secretly/actually want to be raped. Oops sorry, not raped – because that implies a lack of consent under male definition of their crime against our bodies. Men believe that women want to fuck. They want to be fucked violently. They want to be taken in animal-fashion and treated like shit. Women like to be hit and called all sorts of horrible things. We get turned on by this stuff. But to express these deep wishes goes against morality or something like that. So we have to say ‘no’. But see, when we say ‘no’, we really mean ‘yes’. We don’t want to say ‘no’, but we have to. So it is up to males to take the upper hand and see through our psychological games and just force us… I mean ‘help’ us to get what we truly want.
But do they really believe that, or is it just another bullshit male attempt to put the responsibility for their crimes on their victims? Some women have been convinced by these male arguments – convinced through faulty logic, gaslighting, and prude-shaming, rather than slut-shaming – and these women have become the sluts of the liberal feminism movement, which I’ll discuss below.
The whole ‘no means yes’ deliberate misinterpretation happens ALL the time for women. Whereas males need only say something once, and they are taken at their word, even when the word is ‘no’, females constantly have to repeat themselves to have a slight chance of being heard. I always have a sardonic chuckle when misogynists drag out that standard male reversal about women being ‘nags’. I would argue that men nag infinitely more than women, especially about sex and other self-serving wants and especially when a woman says ‘no’ to them. It is the basis of what I have termed ‘consensual rape’ – which is, at its most basic definition, the manipulation of a woman into saying ‘yes’ to penetrative sex that she doesn’t want. The ‘yes’ can be obtained through many means, including the deliberate misinterpretation of her initial ‘no’ (or multiple ‘no’s’) and protracted nagging, guilting and shaming.
‘Causing’ Violence
The first two reactions to a woman’s ‘no’ are bad, but this third category is very serious business. Men don’t understand and often make fun of female risk-aversion. They don’t understand female timidity in speaking up or acting out. In general, male speech is not met with violence or the opposition that the most innocuous of female speech and behaviours are frequently met with. I’ve described in other posts where males have reacted to my facial expression and/or my tone of voice with death threats and other threats to my safety. You see, I made them threaten me. I made them hurt me. All my fault.
Saying ‘no’ to males, and even some females, can incite riots, rapes, and murders. Not hyperbole, folks. I guarantee you that you know at least one woman who has been harmed after saying ‘no’ to a man. Not just no to sex – it can be absolutely anything. Men react poorly to female clerks in service businesses, to waitresses, to female flight attendants, and any female who cannot provide him with what he believes he is owed. And if a man pays money, it is so much worse. If he has laid out money, he believes a woman does not have the right to say ‘no’ to him. You see this with prostitutes, especially, but you can see evidence of this in any environment or industry. Men are much less likely to react violently to male workers. I believe this is partly the in-built woman-hate that all males have, and partly knowing that attacking a male can be dangerous. Women generally a) won’t fight back, b) physically can’t fight back as the playing field is not fair, and c) aren’t protected under law like men, the religious and racial minorities are.
Many women know all of this on a subconscious level and will self-censor or submit as a result. We see female workers frequently treating male customers better than females. This is in part because we know that males are volatile, and predictably unpredictable, and we have learned to submit to them and treat them with kid gloves, as governments won’t do the logical thing and exert controls over male behaviour. There are other factors that play into treating males better than females, but male irrationality, emotionality, violence, and poor self-control are the main reasons male customers are treated better and are less likely to meet with ‘no’, especially by female workers.
Further, within heterosexual relationships, many women learn that denying their partner can lead to violence. Saying ‘no’ can get you beaten, raped or killed. Long ago, in my bisexual days, that kind of shit sent me out the door faster than exposure to a bad odour, but many women trauma-bond with violent men, and then make increasingly bad decisions, including putting themselves in financial bondage to them and breeding with them. They learn to live with the violence and self-censorship, in other words.
Intersection
a) Sex x Race Intersection
I am NOT an intersectional feminist. It’s not that I don’t believe in interactional effects – if you knew the details of my educational background, you’d realize just how laughable it is to suggest that I am intersection-blind. I just think that intersection is derailing to feminism as it creates oppression olympics and blame hierarchies, and denies some women the right to be heard and to have boundaries. I’m going to highlight an example of intersectional misogyny that has been censored. I don’t centre it in my feminism, of course, but I do talk about it because it is an incredibly taboo topic.
If you are a white woman in a Western country, you will be very aware that you have to be nice and submissive and helpful to everyone. Otherwise, you are a bitch, rich, privileged – probably also a white supremacist, all kinds of evil. Many white women take this liberal-promulgated scapegoating to heart, feeling guilty for everything, and even virtue-signalling constantly and publicly to prove how repentant and unevil they are. It just makes things worse. As a result, white women are not allowed to say ‘no’, especially to people who are not white, and even writing or speaking about one’s own true and personal Twilight-Zone-esque, mind-fucking and degrading experiences of racist misogyny is called out as racist and is conveniently censored in order to maintain the perfect scapegoat. Note that white men do not experience this denial of the right to say ‘no’ and are 100% allowed to have boundaries. And women in Western cultures who are not white do not experience this either, at least to the same extent.
During the first 6 months I lived in the US when I was 24 – before Canada took liberal American social justice warrorism to heart – I had my first of many, many experiences with this kind of victimization: the denial of my right to say ‘no’ because of my sex AND race. I was an impoverished, foreign grad student teaching at a university catering to mostly wealthy undergrads and big-league athletic hopefuls. My first experience was with a black female student of mine who showed up unannounced at my office just as I was leaving for a meeting. She demanded that I see her then and there – outside my office hours and without an appointment. Pure entitlement. I said I couldn’t. But before letting me finish, she launched a high-volume, abusive tirade, the content of which I can barely remember as I wasn’t used to Angry Black Women that early in my stay in the US. As a woman from a race that is NOT allowed to say ‘no’, have boundaries or opinions, or even get angry without being slurred and shamed into oblivion, I actually believe this woman’s display and treatment of me was an act of privilege. After three more decades and a shit ton more of experiences like this one, I’ve come to understand that the privilege to get angry, even over nothing, is a black privilege, and of course, a white male privilege. I WISH I were allowed to express even half the anger that blacks and white males are allowed… Anyhow, if this racist misogynist woman had waited two seconds instead of immediately denying me my right to have boundaries and the right to say ‘no’, she would have been offered the chance to make an appointment with me. And you know what? I still gave her an appointment after I had to waste time calming her down, and I never did receive an apology.
b) Sex x Trans Intersection
I have almost exclusively interacted with females who identify as trans, and they are generally harmless as women generally are. Although I have always made sure to keep things light in the conversation department, as crazy ideologies can inspire violence and who knows if these chicks are on testosterone, which fucks with the brain and increases aggression. I have been in proximity to males who think they are women, and as a rule, I stay the hell away from them. They are generally mentally unstable, incredibly entitled as males and as self-appointed Oppressedest People Ever TM and in doing female parody, show themselves to be incredible woman-haters on par with men’s rights activists. Dangerous combination. We’ve seen the damage they do to women, especially to lesbians and feminists, however. Women are NOT allowed to say ‘no’, to have boundaries, to speak biological and scientific truths in public spaces, to speak truth about trans crimes against women, and lesbians are not allowed to say ‘no’ to sex with these men without being called murderers and bigots. I’m waiting for the day they are rightly seen as domestic terrorists. It is what they are.
Adventures in Cultural No-ness
I’ve said it before, and I’ll likely write a whole post devoted to it sometime later, I believe culture is just the set of traditions and rules governing how misogyny manifests in a socially acceptable way in a particular part of the world at a particular time. Culture is the stuff of both fantasy and religion-like obsession. It is protected and untouchable – unless it is Western culture, that is. It is the stuff of nationalism and army-building. But really, culture is bullshit. It is just local, socially-accepted woman-hate rituals and traditions at its very core. Think about it some, and you’ll find that all the quaint things you discover about foreign cultures all trace back to the control of women and girls. Modern uses of the word culture (company culture, sub-culture, counter-culture, etc.) still describe rules and traditions governing a group, but do not quite have the same sacrosanct importance that standard usages hold.
I’ve lived, studied, worked and travelled around the world, and I’ve seen and experienced a lot of fucked up shit all rooted in culture and misogyny! Let’s explore a few cultural curios with regard to culture, language and the use or non-use of ‘no’.
a) Sluts Can’t Say ‘No’ – New Depths in Western Misogyny
I get so tired of liberal, usually, but not exclusively, white feminists talk about how much better it is for women in Western countries. I disagree. As I said, culture is the manifestation of misogyny in a particular time and place. It changes over time, but it never, ever goes away. Unfortunately, the changes tend to confuse people, as change is a word that is so often mistakenly conflated with ‘improvement’. So in Western cultures, women have been hoodwinked into thinking that things are so much better. But are they? Things have been sliding backwards over the past few decades in the US (and leaking into other Western countries). I think things are worse in the West than they have been in a long time.
In an earlier section, I referred to today’s Western slut-feminists. It’s hard for me to put those two words together, but honest to goodness, there are women who believe that fucking as many men as they want is an act of feminist liberation. I met one in Canada two years ago. I think I wrote about her before; the poor thing was so confused that she was dating a man whom she met on some app, and he was ignoring all her ‘no’s’ to his sexual advances. At this writing, I have no doubt that she has been date raped, and she has probably reframed the event as a slutty, feminist success rather than truthfully as consensual rape.
When women say ‘no’ and a man keeps pushing and pushing and guilting and shaming and nagging that woman until he breaks her down, she gets tired, annoyed, or confused, that is rape. He will make sure that she remains confused afterwards, or even better, that he can convince her that she wanted it. And Western women and girls are falling for this. This is one of the pillars of liberal feminism. Saying ‘yes’, even if you start by saying ‘no’, or you are feeling ‘no’ inside but are too ashamed of or worried about looking like a loser or a prude by actually saying ‘no’, is liberation. Saying ‘yes’ is liberation. Even if you don’t want it. Even if you are worried about getting pregnant. Even if you are worried about contracting one of the male sexual diseases. Even if you end up hurt because it doesn’t end up just being penetrative sex, but a nightmare out of porn or the BDSM handbook.
But you can’t rape a slut. And that is what this is all about. It is male liberation, not feminism. You cannot rape a woman who says ‘yes’. And guess what, the oppressed women in Afghanistan and whatever favourite African nation you like to cite are not clamouring for this kind of female freedom…
b) The Country of No ‘No’
I’ve alluded to this before – there is no single, specific word for ‘no’ in Mandarin Chinese. I lived in Taiwan and China for many years and found this quite curious and frustrating. In addition, there is no single word for ‘yes’. ‘No’ ends up being more like ‘don’t want’, ‘don’t have’, ‘is not’, etc. You basically take the verb in question and put a negative in front of it. I found it much less impactful than a single word that you can use in any situation. But of course, as a woman, does ‘no’ really have much impact at all? I think, like in any country, it comes down to your anatomy. The language is developed around your anatomy, and language is inherently sexist as men control it. And the anatomy of the person using a particular word is more important than the word itself. So what passes for ‘no’ in Chinese has about as much impact used by a woman as it does in any country when a woman speaks her ‘no’ in her language.
c) The Country of the Impolitic ‘No’
I won’t say too much about this, as my experience is less with the country than with my relationships with people from the country. And that country is Japan. I dated a Japanese for a few years, and what I gathered from stories and interactions is that while there is an explicit, single word for ‘no’ in Japanese, it is impolite to come right out and say ‘no’. When dealing with the Japanese, they seem to be agreeing or saying yes to you, and at first you are amazed at how easy they are to get along with, but quickly, you come to realize that a game is being played and you do NOT know the rules. Japan has a very complex and confusing culture, and while seeming courteous on the surface, interactions end up feeling rather duplicitous and insane to an outsider who prefers a more direct and honest and time-conserving way of dealing with people. And conversely, they may tend to see outsiders as crude and rude. The Japanese I have known who refuse to live there tend to be social outcasts who can’t stand the hierarchy and intense social pressure to conform and kiss asses they don’t actually respect. And with all the brutal and cruel television game shows they have as well as the disgusting cartoon rape porn, you have to wonder what the fuck is going on there.
I like origami and Japanese food and the sense of esthetics that you don’t see in any other country or culture, but you couldn’t pay me enough to live in Japan. Nevermind the earthquakes and nuclear contamination…
d) The Country of Double ‘No’
I am currently living in an ex-Soviet country where not only do they have a single, explicit word for ‘no’ in their local language, but they use it constantly AND they almost always say it twice instead of once. I’m serious. I am learning a bit of the language so that I can function, and no matter where I go, I hear ‘no, no’. And I hear ‘no’ much more than I hear ‘yes’. And they have 3 commonly used words for ‘yes’ and I recognize them easily in conversation. I wish I knew enough of the language to know what they are talking about and saying ‘no’ to though. Why do they say ‘no’ so much??? I’ve never encountered this in any of the other languages I speak or cultures I’ve spent time in.
I have little experience with Russia or Eastern Europe, so I don’t know if this is part of what seems to an outsider to be a rather gruff and abrasive set of cultures. I worked with a bunch of Russians in 2021, and although they weren’t super friendly, I seldom heard the word ‘нет’ to the extent that I hear the word for ‘no’ here in this particular place where I am, so there is something going on that I don’t yet understand. More exploration is needed. But it is nothing like any Asian culture I have experienced, and the cultural rules are very different with religion being a heavy influence.
Okay, I’m starting to veer off the path, and that means that I need to end this post. But I want to leave you with the following thought:
Language is important. It is inseparable from culture. As a woman, you have no control over such an important tool for your survival. Think about the words you use and the effects they have on your ability to get what you need to stay alive and safe. Are you allowed to say ‘no’, how many times do you have to say it to be heard, and are there repercussions for defining your boundaries? The purpose of language is to get what you need, but men control language. What does that mean for women? For you? And finally, think about why men and their female supporters put so much effort into making sure women’s words aren’t heard. Perhaps, we matter more than we’ve been led to believe…
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The Pen and the Sword: Best Mates for Life
This post consists of some background to my most recent survey on rape, which is still open to participants (click the button below):
The survey was designed to explore people’s understanding of and beliefs about rape. The content of the survey was drawn from collected data and research, a wide range of reported personal experiences, news stories, and myths and propaganda propagated through various entertainment outlets. If you plan to take the survey – and it would be immensely appreciated if you did – please click through before reading further. My personal views are not important to the survey, and I don’t wish them to colour participant responses.
After years of thinking and examination of the number one influence on and limitation to my existence as a girl first, and later, a woman, I have to conclude that any discussion or consideration of rape must begin with a discussion of language. Indeed, any thinking on hierarchy, power dynamics or control mechanisms (which is where rape finds its roots) must take into account the role of language.
Humans vs. All Other Creatures
In considering the differences between humans and other mammals or any creature for that matter, there are some significant differences that set us apart. And note that this is in no way a comment that humans are superior to animals, as I don’t believe that for a second. Each species has its strengths and weaknesses, which makes hierarchy-development a rather stupid and pointless endeavour. In considering humans, language and the capacity for deep and complex self-awareness set them apart from all other living things on earth. Other creatures may have systems of communication and a limited ability to reflect on simple behaviours, but none rivals human capacity. That is not a judgment, just a fact. Dolphins don’t conjugate verbs and chimpanzees don’t chronically and masochistically self-sabotage or even commit suicide over lack of purpose or meaning in life. Non-humans also don’t develop systems of ethics or morality – even misguided, faulty ones. These are uniquely human ‘achievements’ and are only three of many, many examples of the complexities of human language and self-awareness.
Humans are also the only species capable of malice. Now, note that I am not talking about survival instincts. Men and silly women who defend men often argue that male violence is just a reflection of the instinct to survive and is comparable to the killing that any other species does. This is classic male logic designed specifically to try to justify violent male behaviour. Some of my Chinese male university students will state without blinking that we ‘live in a jungle’. Now, I do believe that males are naturally violent. They are wired for it. But as I’ve written before, as humans, we also have self-awareness, and it is this unique and incredible ability that allows humans to override violent impulses. But, as humans are also uniquely malicious creatures, instinct and deliberate cruelty frequently play off each other. No creature other than the human (male) kills for pleasure. And no creature other than the human (male) tortures other living things. There is no evolutionary or ‘survival’ purpose for killing for pleasure or for torturing. I’ve met a lot of men who try to argue with seriously twisted logic that there is a need for these things. This is when I back away, and wish I had a weapon at the ready in order to do like all other creatures do out of instinct – remove a dangerous threat to one’s survival. But, alas, human females are the only creatures on earth who are NOT allowed to defend themselves.
And this is where language enters the scene.
The Role of Language in Power, Control and Hierarchy
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Language is one of human’s oldest tools. Like all tools, it can be a beautiful mechanism or system used to do wonderful things and inspire the best in all of us. But like all tools, it can also be used to destroy everything in its path. In the hands of men, language is frequently used to express male ‘love’ and ‘creativity’, which as most women eventually come to find out, are dangerous things and not at all what female love and creativity are.
As human males have come to realize, weapons alone will not get you sustainable power. Sure, you can overwhelm a perceived enemy, but it is really difficult to maintain that victory for any period of time without a much more powerful weapon. That weapon is language. Language is, in fact, a much more powerful weapon than any ‘sword’. But they work together. Just as it is hard to sustain control with only swords, it is also difficult to gain and keep power with only words. We’ve all heard that common description of successful evil dynamic duos: ‘You have the brawn and I have the brains’ (cue the Pet Shop Boys here…). Well, that is an apt description of the sword and the pen. Employ the brute force, overwhelm the enemy, enact the mindfuckery of the brutalized population that only language can achieve (e.g., “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”), and then all future brutality just becomes an accepted part of the system. Those few who see beyond the language mechanisms and refuse to believe have no leg to stand on, and find themselves very much alone and often questioning their own sanity.
Whoever Controls Language Controls the World
As a tool and building block of control and power, it is safe to say that if you aspire to megalomaniac status, you need to master language. I don’t mean that you should learn to speak several languages. I mean you need to learn how to use language to manipulate people and situations, and to obscure facts. You need to weaponize language. You need to see where language has its greatest influence. My Oppressor Triangle discusses a few major centres of influence, but there are other arenas. Language has had its greatest influence in the areas of politics, law, economics, academia, and the health care system (industry). These areas don’t function separately. There is much overlap. The language enacted in the political sphere can and does affect all other spheres of power, for example.
The question becomes: who controls language? And the answer is: men. Men have always controlled language. And they control it as much today as they have in the past. It’s not a race thing, as much as some people might wish it to be so. It is a MALE thing. If you are a big picture thinker, if you think internationally across time and place – and really, you have to be if you are ever to hope of ending oppression – you have to accept the truth that males control language, and as a result, they control everything. If you get bogged down on other group affiliations, you’ll change nothing. Only the truth can set you (and everyone else) free.
How do we know that males control language, and as a result, the world? It’s pretty easy. You have to take an overarching look at lifestyle and living conditions and determine who overwhelmingly benefits and who overwhelmingly is denied choices and freedoms. Look at any country. It is the same no matter which country you look at and no matter which race is being considered. Who is the poorest group? Females. Look at any field of research: who is studied meticulously and who benefits from the research? Males. Look at entertainment in any country. Who makes the most money, and who is hired based on talent rather than physical attributes? Males. Who is human trafficked most often? Females. Whose social justice complaints actually make progress? Males of all races and orientations. Who receives the poorest health care, and the most needless and harmful surgeries? Females. Who has been hurt most by the field of psychiatry? Females. Whose bodies and decisions about bodies are controlled by the state and institutions like religion and marriage? Females. Who is barred from politics, employment, education, and safety on a regular basis? Females.
And more. So much more.
There are data to back up each of these. Easy to find. Google, government web sites, academic journals. I’m not doing that here. This is not an academic journal article. And it is tedious to state and restate everything that has been said by women a million times before. What I find important here is the theory that it is language and the control of language that facilitates control on every other level.
Language and Rape
Men have been raping, torturing and killing women since they realized they could. It has nothing to do with evolution or survival. Any man who tells you that it does is dangerous and you should get away from him before he hurts you.
Male control of language has had its greatest impact on the one thing that has allowed them to maintain control over women. Rape. Without rape, men don’t have a hold over women. Control the language surrounding rape, and you control the crime itself – or whether it is even considered a crime, or who can commit it, or who is responsible, or who can be raped. We know that women have no power, and certainly have no control over language, because rape is so rampant and that they are on the receiving end with little ability to avoid it or seek justice for it.
It is only relatively recently that rape was even considered a crime, and only extremely recently that rape was considered to be a form of torture. In Western cultures, the rape of a woman was considered to be a crime against the man who owned her. And it could only be committed by a male who did not own her. She herself, as a rape victim, was deemed dirtied, rendered an embarrassment, and often tossed out like so much garbage from family and community. Even today, rape victims often end up in prostitution or suffering from mental health problems that leave them unable to self-actualize, let alone take care of themselves properly. The propaganda and brainwashing campaign that all societies provide to women to get them to accept rape as reality, as normal, often succeeds in neutralizing female protest to unlivable conditions. Rape is a crucial part of Western entertainment – drama as well as comedy – although Western men are not alone in their enjoyment of female torture. Many women will suppress their experiences or deny that rape even happened. Rape victims who don’t follow the rules are often punished by society, and frequently by other women who prefer to lash out at other women than to name the real problem.
In non-Western countries, rape has gone through equally horrible control by men. In some countries, raping girl children isn’t considered rape. Elsewhere, rape cannot occur within a marriage or family. In others, rape has only occurred if a woman can get a handful of male witnesses to support her claim. No, women aren’t in control of language at all. Anywhere in the world. I mean, no woman would ever set up the linguistic, social and legal hoops/barriers to proving rape that are currently in place in every corner of the earth. We aren’t that masochistic or stupid of our own free will.
Men Can Be Raped, Toooooooo!
Likely, in response to women calling more attention to rape and violence against women, men retaliated. Men always retaliate. They are allowed. There are always repercussions to women gaining even an ounce of freedom or power or justice. And language is always at the centre of any retaliation. And there is always violence to back it up.
So recently, men decided to change the language surrounding rape. They decided that rape no longer meant ‘male forcibly entering a female through her vagina using his dick’. Suddenly, males could be raped! And further, women could be rapists!
These revelations served a very, very important purpose. You see, if you can show that a crime or negative circumstance ALSO affects men, it is no longer a sex-based inequality or a hate crime. Men no longer are forced to be held responsible. Men are no longer predators. They are no longer deficient in some way. If you can show that they suffer tooooo or that women are doing the same evil deeds tooooo, then men no longer will be examined as the sole source of a major problem or epidemic. Once males can name themselves as victims, all focus can ‘justifiably’ be removed from women and recentred on men and boys. All we need is one male victim to negate the suffering of millions of women. And all we need is one female predator to negate the predation of millions of males. That is the male control of language at work. Change one word or one definition, and you can change the lives of millions. Control is regained.
Predictably, women got on board with the rebranding of rape, as they usually do when males find new ways to name themselves as victims, to detract from female victims, and to blame women for something. Women are usually the first ones on board with helping men hurt women. And men are experts at painting themselves as victims and martyrs.
Rape, in the minds of many, now also means a woman ‘forces’ a male to pop a boner and stick it to her. And strangely, rape now also means a dick forcibly entering an anus. But the thing is this, even if the former is forced, it is not rape. It may be a sexual assault, and if so, it needs to have its own label. The latter is NOT RAPE. It actually already has its own label. It is called forcible sodomy. Women are also frequently forcibly sodomized by men, more often than men are forcibly sodomized by men, and often in addition to being raped. But ignoring and/or broadening existing definitions has achieved its goal. We’ve taken the focus off what men do to women. And sex crimes are no longer seen primarily as the domain of male perps. Congratulations men and the dangerous women who support them.
Letting Victims Define Crimes
I wrote a short piece in the past on the problem of letting perpetrators define their crimes. Interestingly, it is only with male violence against women that this is allowed. As in my example in that previous post demonstrates, it sounds ridiculous say, to allow a thief to define his crime. But we don’t bat an eye when men get to define crimes against female bodies.
Women need to be allowed to define the crimes against them. As it is, so many victims fall through the cracks because currently, men define what happens to women. Men control women’s and girls’ bodies, and that is a serious issue.
There are several problems with how we deal with rape and sexual assault – besides our unwillingness to name men as the primary perpetrators of sex crimes and the sole perpetrators of rape. One is that we don’t have enough clearly defined categories of crimes. We also have too many barriers to victims coming forward. And finally, our punishment system is inadequate and doesn’t take into account that a) crimes against women are hate crimes, and b) men who commit sex crimes are more likely to commit again than any other type of criminal, even after being ‘punished’ (i.e., no man ever, ever, ever rapes once). Personally, I want all rape, sexual assault, torture and murder of women/girls by men punished by death. This has nothing to do with deterrence (which we know doesn’t work), or revenge (which is a male ‘logic’ thing), but everything to do with protecting future victims. It does not make sense that victims and potential victims have fewer rights and considerations and access to safety than hate-crime-sex criminals. In other words, only a dead rapist can’t rape again.
Other things to consider:
- Many women don’t report rape if their attacker is seen as ‘at risk’ or ‘vulnerable’. This includes non-white men, immigrant men, homeless men, disabled men, unemployed men, etc. It is a mixture of fear and compassion that drives women to negate their victimhood and protect their attacker.
- The burden of proof should be on the perpetrators, not the victims. Men should have to prove that they did not rape. In no other crime is the burden of proof on the victim. This exists ONLY because rape is a sex-specific hate crime committed by MEN against WOMEN, where males, who are in control of language, get to define the crimes they commit. Rape is the only crime where all the perps are male and all the victims are female. And men don’t want to take responsibility or stop raping. This needs to change.
- Consent has always been a problematic issue. It is rooted in property disputes. Bodies should not be seen as property. Further, in no place on earth do women come to the table on equal footing with men, and as such, they cannot give free and equal consent in any agreement with a male.
- Orgasms are erroneously seen as evidence of consent thanks to 2-dimensional male thinking on sex. Females are trained from birth to see servitude as a duty and a pleasurable activity. Orgasm has nothing to do with acceptance or lack of coercion.
- Many people believe that rape must involve weapons or threat of bodily harm in order to be considered rape. I’d argue that most rape is of the coercive or manipulative variety. I’d bet all of Donald Trump’s money that almost all women have ‘sex’ with the men in their lives (including husbands) because they fear abandonment, rejection, cheating, emotional and physical beatings, etc. All women know on some level that male love can turn on a dime if they don’t live up to the constantly changing expectations.
- Male children are born with a weapon – their penises. They learn about how to weaponize their dicks early in life thanks to parents, television/film, porn, and school. I’d argue that if they are using their dicks as weapons, then they need to be treated as dangerous. Sex predators never stop. I don’t have a problem with killing sex predators who are children – innocent child, my ass. And I also have no problem with holding mothers and fathers responsible for the crimes of their boy children. Rape destroys girls’ lives. No girl ever ‘gets over it’. I know I’m nearly alone in wanting boy sex predators eliminated from existence, but you’re deluded if you think predators are ‘born’ in adulthood out of nothing.
- I think statutory rape needs to be rethought. It’s not that I believe that girls are capable of free and equal consent with a boy the same age. No female of any age is ever on equal footing with a male of any age. This one is a hard one for me though. It saddens me that children are fucking. I truly wish girls were kept separate from boys for the duration of their childhoods so as not to have opportunities, educations and futures destroyed by the straight mandate and public school crash course in fuckholery and blowjobbery. One final note: Adult males who fuck girl children and teenagers need to be shot. Period.
- ‘Sex workers’ / porn actresses – paid sex is rape as far as I’m concerned. There is a lot of disagreement on this. And people get mighty pissed when a feminist suggests that sex work is abuse, not work. Abused people often lash out and get defensive when they feel attacked (even if they are not being attacked, but rather someone is trying to help them). All I can say is that women would not sell their bodies if men didn’t exist. It is almost always done out of desperation and/or resulting from childhood sex abuse. These are the conditions that make rape easy peasy to dress up as legit in a capitalist, male-serving society.
- Drugs and alcohol are convenient get-out-of-jail cards for men, and eternal damners of women. It is no coincidence that males joke about helping women relax with a drink. ‘No inhibitions’ is just man-speak for ‘no credible defense’ in a rape trial.
This really is a huge issue. So much more could be written. But it is some background to my survey. Again, if you wish to participate and let your thoughts be known, it would be very much appreciated. The link to the survey is below.
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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.
That’s Some Arsenal You’ve Got There, Gentlemen
Part one: That’s Some Toolbox You’ve Got There, Ladies.
In the previous post linked to above, I talked about several of the tools and techniques women have at the ready in order to survive as slaves in a patriarchal system. These are the mechanisms that lead women to:
- accept abuse, rape, heaps of discrimination without complaint;
- seek out and stay in romantic relationships with men where anything can and does happen (keep in mind that no relationship between men and women is equal);
- comply and perpetuate Patriarchy by attacking potential allies (non-compliant women/feminists) and indoctrinating children in the ways of gender; and
- fail to notice the millions and millions of daily messages, large and small, direct and indirect, aimed at women to let them know that they are members of the sex class, meant to serve men, and undeserving of freedom or respect.
That post was about defense. This one is about offense. I want to talk about the tools and mechanisms – or weapons – men have in their arsenals to reinforce their supremacy by keeping women in line. Note that ALL men are given starter arsenals as boys, and most grow up to add more vicious and effective weapons as they get older – even the liberal, so-called ‘Nice Guys’.
I’m not going to talk about physical weapons like guns or knives or physical violence like rape or beatings or BDSM torture. These are obvious. Instead, like in the previous post, I’m going to talk about psychological warfare and what men do to mindfuck ‘loved’ ones, acquaintances, and strangers.
In case, you’re prepared to jump in with a standard, knee-jerk “But women do it tooooooo!” whinge-fest, please note that a) this post is not about individual women attacking individual men as DOES happen, but is not a systematic problem, and b) this post is about class warfare – by men as a class against women as a class. There has never been a war waged by women against men. If so, there’d be millions of dead and maimed men out there. As it stands, the only ones killing men in any number are MEN. So zip it and read on!
Offense Mechanisms
Note that some of the defense mechanisms talked about the the previous post can be used by men as attack mechanisms. Projection, for instance, can work the following way in the hands of a man on the attack. As a rule, men have a socialized, underlying hatred of women. Many men will project their hatred of women onto the women themselves claiming that women actually are the ones who hate men. This is the current chant of the MRAs (morons’ rights activists), and is why terms like ‘feminazi’ and ‘man-hating, lesbo feminist’ exist without evidence for them. Men’s hatred is turned into women’s hatred to make men feel justified in issuing rape threats, actual rape, beatings, and psychological warfare.
Gaslighting
This is a form of denial, but it is denial used to attack or manipulate. By refusing to admit that something is true, often repeatedly, the attacker causes their victim to begin to question their perceptions and lose confidence. The more off-balance a victim is, the more likely she is to remain in thrall to an abuser. The victim is increasingly likely to overlook often outrageously bad behavior, especially if they are in a relationship.
Example: On an individual level, imagine a newbie to the BDSM scene. She feels like what she is experiencing is abuse, but her dominant repeatedly says it didn’t happen or reframes her experience as something entirely different – submitting isn’t abuse, it is freedom, it is love. It is actually she who has the power. He invalidates her perceptions and she comes to doubt herself. She becomes primed for a deep commitment to submissive status.
We also see this in the low incidence of rape reporting – we can apply gaslighting to women as a group. Women are almost never believed when they dare to speak out about being raped. As a result, women as a class, often doubt their own experiences of rape and don’t bother to speak out. Women are not believed, so most women believe their experiences aren’t real.
Infantilizing
I’ve devoted a post to this topic, so I’ll keep it brief here. Infantilizing is the treating of woman as if she were a child or as less capable or intelligent than she actually is. You can also infantilize girls by treating them like younger children and over-protecting and denying confidence and agency. Infantilizing goes really well with gaslighting. Imagine being treated like an idiot over and over, and then if you dare to complain, you’re told that you’re imagining things or are oversensitive. You eventually come to believe that how you’re being treated is perfectly normal and you become an ineffective and relatively useless adult with no confidence and always second-guessing yourself.
Pathologizing
It is common for those who don’t conform to mainstream expectations to be pathologized. If someone doesn’t meet expectations, there must be something wrong with her. She needs to be fixed, medicated, given therapy, subjected to surgery, controlled and brought to heel.
Example: The current craze in pathologizing is, of course, centred on sexuality. These days, women need to be ready for sex and thrilled about it 24/7. Of course, sexuality and sex are still defined by men for men, so the perfectly reasonable avoidance or lack of desire on the part of women to engage in something that will not benefit them in any way (and is actually dangerous in many ways) becomes ‘a problem’. Instead of seeing and accepting it for what it actually is – a normal response to sexual slavery and erasure – women are labelled ‘frigid’ or ‘depressed’ or something that indicates that they aren’t fulfilling the expected role. Out come the drugs, sex therapy, psychological abuse, demands for polyamory, and porn.
Shaming and Guilting
Very simply, the act of inspiring feelings of guilt or shame in someone to get them to do something they don’t want to do or to back down on requests for fair treatment.
Example: Men love to push women to the edge and over it in relationships, and inspiring shame or guilt – some of the first powerful feelings young girls experience in all cultures – is a very effective way for men to get what they want. Men often play the victim. Their lives are so hard, and according to them, women make their lives even harder with their nagging and unreasonable demands for respect or consideration. It is these techniques of shaming and guilting that inspire the following: “If you loved me, you would…” and the demands almost always entail some demeaning, degrading, brutalizing, unfair sexual performance or concessions on the part of the woman.
Shaming and guilting (in addition to spreading lies and misinformation) are the key tools in the Pro-Choice movement’s assault against women who need abortions.
One-Upping
A tool used to silence another person by claiming greater victimhood status.
Example: This has recently become a very effective tool in our modern age of oppression status. Everybody is being oppressed. It is a common tool used by men of colour against white women who rebuke their rape or harassment attempts. These men will scream ‘racism!’ or society will do it for them if the rape attempt becomes public knowledge. It is one reason I didn’t report being violently raped by my Arab Muslim boyfriend 8 years ago. ‘Islamophobia’ is a buzzword right now, and current Liberals can get enthusiastically on board with the idea that a white woman is using her poorly suppressed Islamophobia/racism to make a false rape claim but have an incredibly hard time believing that a man has raped a woman.
Some of these men know exactly that is what will happen when they scream racism – it is a joke and a get out of jail free card since racism is taken seriously, but misogyny and violence against women are not. For others, they truly believe they are being oppressed when a woman refuses or fights against their violence. Men of all colours (and SES, religions, etc.) are taught from birth that they are entitled to pussy any time they want it.
Others argue that this is also what is happening with some of the male-to-female trans community trying to silence women by one-upping them on the oppression scale. By using male tactics of aggression and claiming status as ‘women’, actual women are forced into silence. Again, some of these folks know exactly what they are doing, while others may wear oppression as clothing and truly believe everyone is hurting them personally.
The most egregious examples of one-upping occur when a white dude with no true difficulties in life claims victimhood status that is more important than a woman – any woman. This happens CONSTANTLY (see MRAs, for example).
I truly can’t count the number of men – white and non-white – who have silenced me by shouting me down with examples of how they perceive themselves to be the most unfortunate victims on the planet. It has been especially effective when coupled with guilting.
Hope / Manipulated Forgiveness
Hope, is probably one of the most powerful forces out there. Giving someone the impression that things will get better can erase the effects and memories of an incredible amount of abuse.
Example: The most common scenario is that of the battered spouse/girlfriend. Despite the well-known mantra of psychologists and statisticians that past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour, the battering male will erase this idea by promising that he will change. And he seems to… until the next time he beats and rapes his wife/girlfriend. It helps that women are programmed from childhood to forgive.
Bestowing the Backhanded Compliment of ‘Otherness’
I have an entire post devoted to the concept of ‘other’, and there is a section on how men psychologically manipulate women into enabling them and accepting misogynistic abuse through a sort of backhanded flattery: they are not like all the other girls. Women can feel special and ‘loved’, but eventually may come to realize that this status can change immediately if they dare to question the flatterer.
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There are many more psychological attack devices that men use against women to keep their system of dominance firmly in place. This is just a taste.
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Calling All Female Hackers
Although the question is: are there even any female hackers? There must be, but I suspect they’ve all been relegated to fetching coffee or tea or giving blow jobs to all the male hackers in the various hacker movements and missions. Just like every other counter-culture movement or mission in history.
What the hell am I on about now?
I’ve always liked the idea of hackers. But I need to explain this a little so dudes don’t get all puffed up and start jerking off about how great they are. I like the idea of hackers who use their mad skillz to fight The Man – and by The Man, I mean Patriarchy.
I get the sense that most hackers – and note of course, that most hackers are men and thus are privileged – are ‘in it for the lulz’. Which means they are trolls. Which means there is no real mission in the proactive sense of the word. Which means they get off on hurting people indiscriminately.
I dunno, I guess I’m into having a sense of purpose in life – even if the purpose doesn’t make much of a dent – and that the purpose isn’t about spraying machine gun fire into a random ***crowd and laughing hysterically. But then, I’m not a dude, so what the fuck do I know? I believe in leaving the place better off than I found it.
*** a crowd of rapists, I could get behind. But when the fuck do rapists ever get what they deserve…?
If I had the mad skillz of a hacker – and believe me, I’ve fantasized – I’d do something that might actually help people or send a message or piss off people who are given free reign in this world to abuse women and children.
I think, first and foremost, I’d have a go at porn sites. They soooo deserve it. I’d wager they are the single most harmful (and common) genre of site on the web. And they hurt women and girls as a global class of people immeasurably. Porn is protected as ‘art’ or ‘free speech’ despite neither being true because there is nothing more important than boners and hurting women in this world. Rape and depictions of rape rock, man!!!
Why am I on about this? Well, ***supposedly some Russian hackers managed to fuck up Skype, which affected a whole bunch of people around the world who run small businesses or talk with friends and family for cheap to free. I use it – although, I had no calls planned, so the interruption wasn’t a big deal to me. Yeah, Microsoft sucks ass, and it sucks even more that they bought Skype. I don’t like any big company, and that whole system needs to be dismantled. But still, hacking Skype? Fucking idiots. Pick a real target, whydontcha?
*** that is the word on the electronic street at this point, although I wouldn’t put anything past Microsoft. ‘Russian hackers’ might be code for ‘we don’t know what we’re doing’ and we are cowards.
Nevertheless, I would dearly love to see more women entering the esteemed world of hacking so that we could actually address real problems. If a couple of Russian masturbators can cripple Skype, then think what an army of female keyboard activists could do to the online porn industry. It might not dismantle it, but things could get right fucking hilarious.
As usual, though, the problem with male domination of jobs and fields that can actually make a difference/do some damage is that there is no incentive for men to dismantle festering systems that cement viewpoints of dominance and abuse. First, men benefit from dominance. And second, if I know anything, it’s that men always need incentives to do anything. There are huge incentives to dismantling Patriarchy for ALL people, but you might need a few brain cells in operation to see past a raging hard-on into the Big Picture.
I’m quite convinced that male privilege will bring down the human race eventually – either through societal or environmental collapse. It’s just a matter of when. I figure, if you’ve got the brains, why not hack your way to the end of days by harassing the true oppressors instead of Mickey Mouse bullshit like the Skype attack?
What’s This Internet Contraption Doing to Women?
I don’t necessarily think that the hatred men have for women has either increased or decreased over the years. What appears to be the case (and one could say this holds for every aspect of societal evolution over long periods of time) is that how the hate manifests can appear to intensify. The hate levels and proportion of infected hater population can stay the same, but the manifestations of the hate can appear to escalate in horrificity. With globalization and improvement in modes of communication and information sharing, there has definitely been a change in the spread of hatred towards women.
A handful of years ago, whilst living in rural China, a local teacher explained to me that the internet made people bad. It is still a commonly held view in China that information censorship is a good and necessary thing. My immediate reaction was to oppose her view. I like freedom of speech despite that the principle does not yet serve the oppressed like it does oppressors. We just don’t live in a world where the principle is applied equally. Oppressors (men, religious people, straight people, breeders, etc) use freedom of speech to spew hatred and perpetuate violence, while those they oppress (women, atheists, lesbians and gays, non-breeders, etc) are often censored. And I think the definition of ‘speech’ is often twisted and abused in order to include and protect violent acts like pornography that serve to hurt the oppressed and make money for the dominant class.
Communication tools can be harmful and beneficial at the same time. Unlike the Chinese teacher, I don’t think there is a simplistic and direct, one-way, causal relationship between tools and people’s goodness or badness. That is not to say they don’t influence each other. They do. I would argue that there may be more harm than good being done, but then again, I don’t think any society in our world is set up to reward good behaviour to the extent that they do bad behaviour. That is Patriarchy, and it’s not a good system for most people. The internet was created as a tool to serve Patriarchy, and while some have managed to do good things with it, it still serves its masters: men.
Anyhow, back to the people.
Assholes existed before the internet was created. Awesome people existed before the internet was created. And then came the internet. Assholes became more assholish (perhaps a few stayed the same or reformed). Lots of people found ways to become assholes thanks to this thing called ‘relative anonymity’ – one key, defining element of the internet. And many awesome people became more awesome. Some people used the internet to learn and self-improve, or help isolated people organize and overcome various hardships. Other people found convenient and rewarding outlets for their hate and self-indulgence that they never had before, or found ways to make money off peddling hate. In short, like any other tool, it is impossible to label the internet as good or bad. It made some people better, had little real effect on several folks, and it made lots of people worse. And of course, people had an effect on the internet in a myriad of ways. Cause and effect are hard to discern.
Let’s get back to the woman-hate problem.
Woman hate has existed for a long, long time. The internet has provided a means for that hatred to manifest in disturbing ways. And these manifestations are colouring human interaction in the meat world, which then continues on to affect the online world. Now, the internet has:
a) provided a common, virtual space for men to meet and bond regardless of race, age or religion in a new kind of brotherhood of hate,
b) provided a platform for manifestos and other writings advocating for hate of and violence against women that can be accessed by anyone in the world. Unlike in previous times, ‘publishing’ is no longer limited to those who can write well or think well, or who are connected enough to find a respectable publishing outlet, In essence, any dickface can jizz online and be read by millions of other dickfaces,
c) increased men’s boldness and willingness to hurt women by allowing anonymous hordes of dudes to e-threaten or e-gang rape a woman who dares speak in public. The kind of repulsive hate speech you can easily find online is like nothing we have ever seen before. These dudes far outspew historic sex-based hate writers, such as de Sade. Previously, men had few places where they could go to bond with other men over rape and sexual violence (e.g., strip clubs) and were limited to private hate at home, in the office to a certain extent, or during the clandestine paid rape of a prostitute. Before the internet, men who couldn’t find support for their hate may have suppressed or localized their violence, and may have even questioned themselves, out of fear of repercussion and lack of support. But these days, group think and group acceptance has increased male boldness and made it easier to let loose on women violently, both online and off.
d) provides unlimited access to free or inexpensive depictions of horrific sexual violence (e.g., porn, ‘edgy photo art’ and BDSM sites) for many who never before had access, including young boys. The latter are getting their sex education primarily from sites fetishizing gruesome sexual violence against women and girls. And pairing this ‘learning’ with boners and orgasms (previously not possible in public, but now possible anonymously at home) is unnervingly effective.
There is plenty more to say on that, but I’ll stop at four.
On the positive side of things, the internet has:
a) allowed abused women who have been socially isolated by patriarchal structures such as marriage and poverty to find support, strength and the courage to escape in online support groups,
b) allowed women who haven’t found a community of like-minded women in the real world to find hope and support in online communities,
c) provided knowledge of and access to feminist literature that cannot be found in most libraries due to censorship of women writers/radical material or bias towards providing published penis’ pointless pontification,
d) allowed marginalized radical feminists an outlet and a voice in the form of blogs and web sites that they themselves can control. Men still try to attack them and derail them, but women can choose how much to interact or allow on their sites. They can also choose anonymity and still speak to promote positive change. This is impossible in the real world, and many women have stayed silent in the past due to very real, constant threats to their safety at the hands of men and sometimes patriarchy-supporting handmaidens,
And of course, there are other ways women benefit from the internet.
How does it balance out? Impossible to say, exactly. The positives are encouraging and do provide help to individuals, although I doubt women are taking advantage of it in the way they need to to effect real change on a societal level.
The negatives are disturbing, and I’d hazard a guess that one of a few things will eventually happen.
1) Violence against women will become so normalized that we’ll regress as a society and end up with a repressive something-or-other akin to what Margaret Atwood depicted in her classic novel or the way things went in Iran, post-Revolution.
2) Western men will become so addicted to and distracted by the pornification of women that more controlled and focused societies (aka China) will easily take over global dominance. China is no picnic in terms of women’s status, but they are definitely not as obsessed with porn and normalized, widespread depictions of rape as the West is.
3) Highly unlikely, but I dream – women will finally wake up, get out of their Bibles and off their dance poles and say, “Enough is enough. Time for revolution. Either you’re for human rights or you’re against ’em. Pick yer side!” and shoot the whole place up. Not for the imposition of another dominance structure such as matriarchy, but for liberation from sex-based oppression.
I root for #3, but I suspect #2 is the most likely scenario. As I mentioned in another post, I increasingly find myself in the position of having to explain the American porn and sex obsession to my Chinese undergrads, Masters and PhD students. It’s what they’re learning about and are confused about in Western entertainment.
I love the internet. My life would be incredibly different and much smaller without it. But I worry. It depresses me to no end that so many men have used such a valuable and amazing tool for the most disgraceful, shameful, boring and base of power fantasies.
Moron of the Day
If only there were only one moron per day, we all could rest a little easier. But alas, they exist everywhere and the more moronic they are, the more they feel they need to speak.
Anyhow, some background to the moron I managed to run into online, mid-coffee, on this lovely Saturday morning.
The internet is a strange place. Unlike in the real world (for the most part), online, it takes about 3 seconds for one to start out in one place with specific intentions, and then somehow end up in the middle of one of your worst nightmares. And so it happened today. I was googling something, and magically found myself on a pro-capitalism site run by a moron that sums up capitalism in his sidebar in the form of a busty, be-bra’d bimbo holding up an ‘I’m your biggest fan’ poster. Capitalism can only exist when women are enslaved. Good job, Captain Obvious. You made your point without having to even speak!
But that is not the moron I’m talking about – although he does qualify. Morons tend to attract further morons, and no place loves morons more than comments sections on moronic blogs.
Click to the ‘About’ page. And moronic comment gold! Especially this one, whom I will call Dumbass.
I have never found a liberal to admit they are wrong or concede to a debate especially feminazis. They just keep just keep doing attack after attack and unless the fight was physical, it would never end. These liberals today are radical extremist and we have to bend to them is what our society preaches. How come society did not tolerate and still does not tolerate Nazis but embraces radical liberals and feminazis?
We’ve got the classic Liberal hate. But that shit is meaningless to me. Generic American Liberals are frequently as stoopid and misogynistic as Conservatives or Libertarians. And those labels are often meaningless and defined differently outside the centre of the world (aka the USA).
No, I’m talking about the misogyny, which is naturally part of the set meal when you go for the Capitalist Dude lunch special. First, we’ve got usage of the meaningless term ‘feminazi’. It’s so overused that it’s getting old. Although we all know it is an insult directed at women, the term doesn’t actually make sense. And as Capitalist Dumbass so blatantly displays through what I’m sure he feels is a Clever Intellectual Question, he doesn’t even understand what Nazis are. This is what happens when a) you’re not properly educated, b) you’re privileged (person who got into a university simply because he had money, pasty skin, and a penis, but alas, no brain), and c) you can’t keep your damned mouth shut even when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
To answer the question posed by Dumbass, We don’t/didn’t tolerate Nazis because they committed genocide, targeting Jewish people, gay people, and non-White people (some of whom overlapped). You know, human rights abuses. Radical Liberals and ‘feminazis’ – or let’s use the correct word, Radical Feminists – fight for human rights. The former may have any number of oppressed groups at its focus or may focus on protecting the environment rather than oppression, while Radical Feminists focus on liberating women from sex-based oppression, while supporting intersectional issues (race, class, orientation, etc.). So to make it clear for Dumbass, Fighting for human rights is a GOOD THING. Genocide is a BAD THING.
But I’m not sure if feminists are ’embraced’ as, Dumbass asserts. His comment is representative of the majority of men in the world and some women, and their hate speech – and it is hate speech to the letter – is tolerated and even embraced.
In short, hate-spewing, capitalist windbags – even genocide-supporting ones – are still tolerated and even embraced. Feminists are derided, threatened, and harmed daily, unprotected from hate speech (although women don’t classify as an oppressed group anywhere, so legally, hate speech directed at them isn’t hate speech and cannot be prosecuted). They are not embraced.
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ps: I’m not linking to this web site because a) I have no intention of driving traffic to it, and b) through the magic of the internet, you’ll find it or one of the countless millions like it within 3 seconds all by yourself. Besides, I included a hint above 😉
Real Logic is Gender-Neutral
I’ve never understood the male mantra, often spouted by Patriarchy-serving women, as well, that ‘men are logical and women are emotional’. It just doesn’t make sense in the face of reality.
Every time I see a man:
- freak out about nothing, especially imagined slights,
- verbally abuse people, especially women,
- act out physically because of frustration, jealousy, pride, fear, helplessness, etc,
- whine because of some minor illness,
- get distracted by lust in the workplace or other otherwise professional situation,
- or get pissy when he doesn’t get his way or has his privilege pointed out,
I see emotion. High emotionality. And more importantly, an inability to control his emotions. Exactly the opposite of the qualities I want to see in a leader or person in a position of power. There are men who can deal with emotion sensibly, of course. But to say that men aren’t emotional is a load of crap.
Every time I see a woman:
- negotiate her way out of a violent situation at the hands of an emotional male or Patriarchy-compliant female,
- diffuse a situation, professional or otherwise, where men are getting emotionally out of control,
- ensure that everyone’s needs are heard and met in a group situation,
- look for the least violent, most peaceful and satisfying answer to a problem,
- or sensibly evaluate an unpredictable or escalating situation as one from which she should extricate herself and then do so,
I see logic. Objective, fair logic, and more importantly, a sense of control and consideration. Exactly the qualities I want to see in a leader or person in a position of power. There are women who do things that don’t seem sensible, of course – and most of these instances have to do with complying with Patriarchy and the impossible-to-deal-with pressure that such a system places on women. Patriarchy isn’t logical, you see.
So why the gender-based stereotypes?
First, the positing. I posit that once upon a time, long long ago, a man noticed a woman being emotional about some human rights abuse or other – possibly her own abuse and slavery administered by said man – and thought to himself, “This won’t do. She is distracting me from my self-serving plan with her plea that I consider other people’s/her feelings. I must put a stop to this!” And from then on, emotionality became a bad thing. Calling out a woman for a display of emotion – regardless of whether there is actual emotion being displayed and regardless of whether it is ‘appropriate’ for the situation, would immediately discredit a woman’s valid words, and form grounds for preventing women from seriously participating in anything. This tactic has worked for millennia.
Okay, so the particular catalyst for this very misogynistic derailing tactic may not have happened in exactly the way I posited (although, I’d be tempted to bet money on a scenario such as that). But the point is that somewhere along the way, men defined their emotional displays as good and women’s emotional displays as bad. Further, they failed to understand what ‘logic’ actually is, and became adept at selectively noticing and ignoring behaviour to support their own emotion-driven illogic. And then called it logical to carry on this abusive way!!! Fucked up or what?
First and foremost, Logic is a branch of mathematics. Very few people in the world have a strong grasp of it and can use it correctly. I knew a couple of guys in college who took Logic with a female professor (holy shit!), had their asses kicked, failed, and had to take the whole course again. What I’m saying is that Logic isn’t a male thing or a female thing. It is just a thing. A tool. A field of study. And both women and men are capable of understanding and using it if they study hard.
The term ‘logic’, on the other hand, is more loosely defined, and very often used incorrectly by men to define ways of acting or not acting that are acceptable to them. Logic, as men define it, is more about socialized male behaviour, primarily: expressing negative emotions, suppressing positive emotions and empathy, and engaging in violence and oppression. ‘Logic’ actually has little to do with logical thinking processes, as men define the term. But in reality, logic is about thinking and reasoning, and has nothing to do with sex or gender. Further, logical thinking and emotion are not mutually exclusive. One can have an emotional response to a moral issue that complements one’s logical thinking on the subject, for example.
Bottom line. Tools, such as logic, are gender-neutral. They have no agenda. They don’t target groups of people for harm or help. The users of these tools, however, can be very gender-biased and agenda-driven. In the hands of a well-meaning user, any tool can be efficient and helpful and elevate our species. In the hands of an idiot with nasty, self-serving intentions, the tool can appear to take on the power of that bad person and be used to hurt others and take society several steps backwards in its evolution.
So, even if just using the term to apply to a way of thinking, rather than referring to the branch of mathematics, logic is still gender-neutral. Only when you use it in a negative emotional way (as men tend to do) to stereotype and hurt groups of people, are you moving away from ‘logical’ usage. Nothing affects one’s ability to think logically or misuse a tool than having a fear- or hate-based agenda. Right, dudes?
Let’s Kick Things Off
Let’s face it. It is NOT easy being a woman in this world. It never has been, and still isn’t. When compared to all other oppressed groups, women have been enslaved the longest, progress towards their liberation has been the slowest, and it is the group with the largest number of its members refusing to fight back, remaining brainwashed into compliance and self-sabotage. Misogyny has lived and still thrives in all cultures, all nations, all eras, and all age groups.
Misogyny is so ingrained that most people don’t even notice most of it. When it is noticed, many people rationalize it away or develop defense mechanisms to cope with it. Even egregious examples of woman-hate are held untouchable, and those who dare to expose it are attacked mercilessly, even by the oppressed themselves.
Even in this supposedly enlightened day and age (a common way to view one’s current times, despite all evidence to the contrary), the willingness to see women as full human beings doesn’t exist. Those who fight for this very logical wish to be human are castigated, seen as evil pariahs, and likened to the most psychopathic mass murderers in history.
Internet feminism has served to get the word out there. It is still a dangerous, exhausting business, however. Women who speak and who have opinions are universally hated and are at the receiving end of some horrific backlash. I’ve noticed so many feminist sites start up and then die off after a few years. My guess is that having to constantly deal with the ignorance and hate and violence of men online in addition to that which every woman endures in daily life eventually breaks the writers. Part of the problem, I posit, is allowing discussion. Discussion is important for women, but opening up a forum for this online also attracts evil in the form of ignorant men (and some women who don’t want to accept reality). Constantly moderating and being bombarded with idiocy and violence is very psychologically difficult. Only a superwoman could remain immune. And so, my current policy is to write, but disallow comments/discussion. It is for my self-preservation. Writing is healing and intellectual, and getting the words out and repeating the message trumps any secondary need to interact, at this point. If someone reads and learns, that is a bonus.
I link to other feminist sites (in the sidebar) where discussion is possible to varying degrees. Each writer chooses her level of willingness to interact with men who, generally speaking, are too emotional, impulsive, and illogical to realize that they should just be reading and learning.
Story Ending Never 
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