I’ve read several radical feminist texts, including “Intercourse” and “Right Wing Women” by Andrea Dworkin, and the wonderful “I Blame The Patriarchy” by Twisty Faster. Radical feminism is something I think is fascinating as a theory but not very practical. I also tend to view it as hyperbole rather than absolute truth.

I’m also very familiar with Men’s Rights/Pickup Artist/Red Pill online communities and I understand their arguments very well. Something I have noticed is that many red pillers seem to prove one of Andrea Dworkin’s most famous (infamous?) theories – that the practice of heterosexual vaginal intercourse is degrading to women because it is constructed as being degrading to women. Red pillers, however, clearly believe that it is inherently degrading to women.

Some radical feminists also focus on misogynistic messages in both pornography and popular culture. These messages can paint a rather grotesque picture of cis hetero male sexuality. Red pillers believe that a sexuality based on dominating and degrading women is inherent to their masculinity and their humanity, and that any critique of it is misandry. Therefore many red pillers and racial feminists alike paint a bleak and grotesque view of men and masculinity, although they differ on what causes it to be that way.

Finally, rhetoric filled with gender essentialism and absolutes is common to both radical feminism and red pill bloggers and commenters. Although I think these are used in different ways – radical feminists are explaining women’s oppression in order to dismantle it. Red pillers use sweeping language to uphold the status quo or to idealize the past. They are both describing patriarchy, and the gender binary – though they disagree on whether it is a good thing or what should be done about it. Red pillers seem to be the platonic ideal of the way radfems talk about masculinity.

It’s for the reasons explained above that sometimes I find myself reading a red pill blog post or comment thread and thinking that it sounds exactly like a radical feminist critique. I find this amusing. Red pillers are some of the most vocal misogynists on the internet, and yet much of their writing would support a radical feminist analysis.

Can you tell the difference?

#1

In times gone by, women were submissive to the male in large part due to the sexual act. The emotional response to having another human being penetrate your body and deposit their genetic fluids inside is not to be overlooked in terms of establishing a power structure.

#2

A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie… She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity.

#3

A woman having sex with a man meant to some degree that she had given herself away to that man, that she was under his umbrella.

#4

Man penetrates. Woman is penetrated….Man acts. Woman is acted upon

#5

[A man] could never respect or listen to anything that bends over and takes it

#6

Intercourse as an act often expresses the power men have over women.

#7

Entered, she has mostly given something up.

#8

Physically, the woman in intercourse is a space inhabited, a literal territory occupied literally. In the experience of intercourse, she loses the capacity for integrity.

#9

Sex can never be a politically neutral interaction as long as the interests of one party are by universal decree prioritized over the interests of the other.

#10

Prostituted women can never say no to sex because they are sex.

#11

If Men existed in a universe where fully formed, hot 16-18 year old girls with long, silky hair and .7 hip-waist ratios grew out of the ground without agency, wants, needs and desires of their own and without families to care for and protect them, men would kill each other to collect as many of them as possible–replacing them with new ones as the older ones cycled out.

#12

The only thing he can think about is lust and sex. Have you ever heard a woman ask the question “how do I tell the difference between lust and love”? Well, there is a reason you’ve never heard a man ask the same question. Because for a man, the answer is obvious, it’s entirely lust.

#13

Men are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence rather than to be victimized by it.

#14

I’m 99% sure sex is much much more fulfilling for the woman.

#15

Females, unless very young or very sick, must be coerced or bribed into male company.

#16

It is the increase of fatherhood, resulting from the increased and more widespread affluence that fatherhood needs in order to thrive, that has caused the general increase of mindlessness and the decline of women in the United States since the 1920s. The close association of affluence with fatherhood has led, for the most part, to only the wrong girls, namely, the `privileged’ middle class girls, getting `educated’.

#17

The `hippy’ babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature, back to the wilderness, back to the home of furry animals that he’s one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities — farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one upon which it is based, is gang-banging. The `hippy’ is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect for free pussy — the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking, but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness for the pussies themselves.

#18

The nicest women in our `society’ are raving sex maniacs.

***

Answers:

1. Red Pill “Men Should Assert Their Dominance Over Women Through Anal Sex” – The Return of Kings

2. Radical Feminist “Intercourse” by Andrea Dworkin, chapter 7

3. Red Pill “Men Should Assert Their Dominance Over Women Through Anal Sex” – The Return of Kings

4. Red Pill “A man penetrates, a woman gets penetrated. Different physiology, different psychology.”

5. Red Pill Red Pill Women comment by DanaBanana

6. Radical Feminist “Intercourse” by Andrea Dworkin, chapter 7

7. Radical Feminist “Intercourse” by Andrea Dworkin, chapter 7

8. Radical Feminist “Intercourse” by Andrea Dworkin, chapter 7

9. Radical Feminist “Spinster Aunt Prattles on About Pornography”

10. Radical Feminist “About consent, or, the legalization of women’s humanity”

11. Red Pill “Toward a Reconciliation of Male and Female Nature in Red Pill Thought”

12. Red Pill Red Pill Women comment by Fleeting Wish

13. Radical Feminist “Pornography: Men Possessing Women” by Andrea Dworkin, Chapter 2

14. Red Pill “The ‘Game’ is Rigged?”

15. Radical Feminist – The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanis

16. Radical Feminist – The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanis

17. Radical Feminist – The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanis

18. Radical Feminist – The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanis

Hat Tip to The Blue Pill. I wouldn’t have noticed this odd parallel if it wasn’t for you.