Radfems are Conservative (and Women are Stupid) August 28, 2011

Posted by FCM in feminisms Tags: cathy brennan

a recycled graphic from SOR. click on image to view full-size.

i thought this topic deserved its own post. and since i am still not finished reading “pure lust” i thought i would address this rather timeless classic: the disingenuous dodge the trans and transactivists (and liberal dickwads) try to confuse everyone with, when they make an analogy between radical feminists and conservative christians.

they must believe we are all complete morons of course, because only a complete moron couldnt see right through this one, even if it starts out as an intuitive “WTF?” because we all know this ones a baldfaced fucking lie. anyone who wants to could give the trans and liberal dickwads the benefit of the doubt here, and assume that the ones making the fallacious analogy are too stupid themselves to understand whats wrong with it? i dont know. maybe its a little of each.

anyway, whats wrong with this picture is that the “analogy” only holds up if all you see is the “access denied” sign: stopping there is the only way this works. and therefore, assuming they really believe this analogy holds, the transactivists and other assorted “progressive” men who see their own rights to unfettered access to women being impinged on here, and drawing the fallacious analogy ignoring the rest of the picture, *must* be stopping there. theres no other way to explain their conclusion (again, unless we assume they are lying about believing it themselves. and they may well be lying.)

so one must wonder, mustnt one, why is that all they see? why is their perspective so obviously distorted and skewed here, so that they dont see what lies beneath: the agendas and reasoning of both groups that are completely different, oppositional in fact, and from which no analogy can legitimately be drawn?

why indeed? the reason men can only see the “access denied” sign is because they are men, and this is the part that affects them, as men. they dont appreciate being limited in their sexual access to women and womens spaces, at all: this is a direct challenge to their rights as men under patriarchy. a direct challenge to what was granted them as part of the social contract that they entered into at birth, being assigned male as they were, due to the presence of a penis and the probability that they would someday be able to cause female specific harm to women by raping and impregnating us. its also the “bonus” many of them signed on for, when they became progressive in the first place (when their other asshole politics — specifically sexual politics — so closely parallel religious and conservative ideals. like normalizing PIV for example. the bonus of unfettered access to women is absolutely required, and maintains the illusion of meaningful separation between male-supremecist political factions).

and NO ONE, especially not some fucking bitch or group of fucking bitches, is going to get in the way of whats theirs. of *us* being theirs. this is what this is about: male ownership of female-bodied persons. and challenging this particular entitlement absolutely enrages them. again, why is *this one* so important? hmm? men have everything, but this one is the holy grail. why?

specifically in the case of those pushing the trans/genderqueer agenda (but also including those pushing PIV-positive rhetoric too) if men and women are the same, or if “sex” as a meaningful category doesnt exist (or if the penis *isnt* harmful to women) why arent they going on about something sex-neutral that doesnt directly implicate the female-specific harms of the penis, and mens opportunities and access to inflict these particular harms on women?

again, assuming they arent lying here (and thats assuming alot!) one could easily imagine that white-hot rage and nothing else was informing this idiotic discourse. because their logic is right out: this is a ridiculous analogy that doesnt even withstand the most basic scrutiny. and they are used to women backing down, arent they, on the basis of mens white-hot rage alone. due to mens demonstrated ability to harm us, as a sexual class, including inflicting the female-specific harms of the penis. you know, the ones fun-fems, transactivists and self-identified feminist men say dont exist.

the thing about the internets of course is that there is no imminent threat to women, from men who rage at us online. the internets have castrated mens dangerous sexual presence: mens ability to physically and imminently harm women, in the moment, with their dicks and with the ever-present threat of sexualized violence. its telling of course that they still rage at us, online, and that they are using their castrated online presence to advocate for mens continued sexual entitlement to women and access to womens spaces in real life. they know where their real power over women lies, and its in the flesh, as it were, in our real-life spaces and between our legs. due to the female-specific harms of the penis, that they say dont exist.

and its also telling that they use threats of real violence that go even beyond raging at us, banking on womens learned and instinctive tendency to back down in the face of violent threats by men, or to defuse the situation before it ever gets that far. the learned response of women, responding to the reality of the female-specific harms of the penis, and the systematic use of sexualized violence by men as a sexual class against women as a sexual class.

men have that in the bank: womens response here is completely reasonable (and therefore predictable) and critical to mens success in “debates” with women in both public and private, and in fact its critical to mens success everywhere. because women remove ourselves from the situation or change its trajectory the best we can, all the time, to avoid this particular negative outcome. and these men are cashing this one in, at the exact same time they are saying that these very threats and harms and classes of people dont even exist.

of course, theres garden-variety PIV-entitlement happening here too.

fail, fail, fail, fail.

cathy brennan and elizabeth hungerford have started a new blog dedicated entirely to discussing and debunking the idiotic “frequently asked questions” to their paper on womens rights recently submitted to the UN.