On gender and the claims made about it. 2008 July 6

I was watching Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! last night. It was the episode about pornography (‘War on Porn’ season 6, episode 3) and it was good. It divided arguments against pornography into the two camps (feminist and conservative) and dealt with them each in their own way. It moved away from using statistical data either way.

What I was particularly interested in was the feminist argument. It contained the same tired repetition of objectification and acceptance of rape. Penn and Teller easily demolished this. They should, as the argument is quite dead, intellectually, but radical feminists repeat it like a holy grail.

There is one issue I have with radical feminism that was not addressed to its full force in the programme. It has been criticised for misogyny on the grounds that it makes some claims that reduce the meaningfulness of women’s choices and abilities. When they say that a woman who becomes a pornographer or becomes a prostitute does so not out of choice, but out of mental illness or pressure or the inability to choose otherwise then they are (so the argument goes) reducing the recognition of choice.

Now the thing I want female readers to consider is: are you really like that? Do you need to be protected from society because it will remove your inability to choose? Do you really feel, phenomenologically, that even things such as language make it difficult to express yourself as women and force you to adopt positions? Do you honestly feel that things like science, logic and reason are male attempts at objectivity that are thrust upon you? Read the The Second Sex and ask yourselves, are you really the miserable creatures that Simone de Beauvoir presents as being oppressed in that book? Finally, do you really feel men are doing all that to you?

But my true target audience is not really female, it is male. If women should be annoyed at what radical feminists say about them, men ought to be downright furious. Take in the episode, where the claims are made that men, by viewing pornography, learn to objectify women and treat them as objects, the standard fare, but that it also makes us more likely to rape women. On top of this one claim is that as pornography becomes more commonplace, it acts as some kind of “gateway drug” and, with the increase in shaving pubic hair midst pornographers, it will lead to more men becoming attracted to children and the demand for children increases. This “think of the children” argument is no stranger to radical feminism, they have used a similar line in prostitution (another episode of Penn & Teller’s programme I recommend, by the by).

Here I ask the male readers to examine their own phenomenology: do you honestly believe that you ever treat women purely as objects because of something like that? Do you believe that your sexual desire is so base that it could cause you to rape? Do you honestly believe that any amount of exposure to shaved genitalia will cause you to feel sexual attraction to children? Do you even mentally associate it with children at all?

If you feel these are all false then show it. Do not just let these people say this and pass by, take action. I know that due to the residual fat of the cultural junk food that makes up the 1960s, many of the women (and, even sadder, sometimes men) who present this nonsense make up the now dwindling generation of academics who have run the American university system aground, but resist it. Boycott class, form groups, harness the anger a lot of these people felt for a genuinely just cause. Do not just ape their opinions to score marks because you are harming yourselves when you believe it (or even claim to). Disavow and have nothing to do with friends, whether male or female, who preach this bile. I cannot, myself, understand why any man would have a friendship with a woman who believed him pre-disposed to rape, violence and paedophilia. Get angry with the hypocrisy of feminists, get angry when women have posters glorifying or trivialising male-directed violence, even if it is as small as the trashy “boys are stupid” posters because they would do the same to us. They win when we ignore them, because their opinions seep in like an ooze through our culture’s defences.

This applies to men as regards radical masculinists who preach similar nonsense about women; it also applies to women as regards both sets of radicals. People of either gender should hate what both sides say about both genders. They are trying to fit you into a group and all identity politics wants to do is place you in these groups so they can tell you how you think and feel, how you behave because you are a member of this or that group.

Everyone loses when they win. Resistance to these false and epistemologically bankrupt ideas are exactly what is needed and they will use every trick to remove that resistance.