Beyond Feminism

If you’ve ever been within a kilometer of planet Earth, you will have heard at some point the argument that “the male ego is fragile”. It is annoyingly common in the sub-genre of the Malestream Media reserved for women. Why, one wonders, would WOMEN be concerned with the strength or lack of it in the MALE ego? Because it seems that by patriarchal decree, women have been appointed Official Carers of The Male Ego. Why the (dubious) honour? Are men’s egos more fragile than women’s? No. It’s because the male ego is oversized; and it’s women’s devaluation which makes up for the “extra” in it. And since that “extra” is obtained illegitimately, the ego needs constant “pumping” too keep itself in one piece.

So what’s the course of action? Tell men to suck it up and take care of their own damn egoes. So their ego is fragile? Well, mine is non-existent. And somehow I manage to survive without expecting anyone to come to my rescue when the non-existence of my ego takes its toll on me.

Here we go again.; another outrage denouncing that “boys are doing worse than girls at schoolz”. We already know how this works, don’t we sisters? The feminist reply to this pseudo-problem usually falls on one or more of the following:

* Funny how no one was complaining when girls were doing worse than boys at school on a regular basis for thousands of years (actually, girls have only had the privilige of doing worse than boys at school AFTER they were granted the privilige of going to school at all)
* Interesting how boys do better than girls in college and university.
* Boys will turn on men and they will still get to rule the world just as they do now, so, who cares?
* It’s not true; in posh-priviliged-pricy schools girls and boys do equally well, they both go to Oxbridge and become future world leaders and future world leader’s wives.

Shame that this feminist rethoric hardly ever makes it out of the Feminist Headquarters. And if we consider the truly, concentrated, feminist rethoric, that is, the RADICAL one, well, that hardly makes it out of the Twisty Bungalow. Or the Beyond Feminism Bubble.

What will this Radical Feminist Rethoric say about the boys doing worse than girls at school?
Well, to start, it will try to dig a bit deeper. What could be causing this imbalance and what would the solution look like? Radical Feminists are very smart; this further inquiring has a clear purpose: to uncover the real monster lurking under the guise of “concern for boyz”. They will tell us that the imbalance is caused by the “feminization of school”, and they specifically won’t tell us what they think we should do, that is, to turn schools to the way they were. That’s where the monster is exposed under the light of day for all to see: the solution is to masculinize schools, to turn the clocks back, which would result in boys outperforming girls; the one and only world order and they way things should have stayed. Sexism exposed. The radical feminist can now ravel in glory, beams of smugness streaming from her every pore.

Now that she has your attention, the radical feminist will expand on this idea: we will always, ALWAYS have the problems of one gender being better or worse than the other one as long as we have genders. Because gender is SUBJECTIVE. The only objective part of gender is that of the difference in genital configuration and we know how shaky that one is. But even then, one cannot build up one’s identity from that. The consequences of genders being subjective is that they can only be deined by differentiation from each other. Boys more than girl have to develop in between very clear and contrained limits: “no sissy stuff”. If girls do better than boys, the “doing better” will be associated with “girlyness” and boys will run from it as if from the plague. On the contrary, if the boys are the ones doing better, then either the girls will fall back to show they are not boys or the boys will work harder to show they are not girls.

It’s not that schools are “feminized” (whatever the heck that means). I’m pretty damn sure that whoever plans the overall shape of the education system does so making sure that each and every part is as gender neutral as possible. The differences between genders arise precisely because of the very definition of gender, ie: “different from the other one”.

I am not by far the first or the only one thinking like this. The world doesn’t like our ideas, that’s what happens. And what does this radical feminist say to that? FORK YOU! Oh, wait, no, not that. What I say is this: if you want gender differences you are gonna get gender differences. Accept it or change it, but don’t complain about it when the differences work against you.

Welcome to the Feminist LOL Funfair! What is a Feminist LOL Funfair, you wonder? It’s a collection of quotes from feminist posts that make me LOL. (I love it when people make me laugh when they weren’t planning to). It’s a Funfair, not a Carnival, because it’s tiny.

Hope you LOL too!

“Hands up all feminists who’ve been told in a patronising tone that they should drop their struggles for gender equality, because there are MORE IMPORTANT PROBLEMS in the world today? *waves hand frantically* Nice to know there’s a precedent… and nice to know there’s a precedent for replying with bugger off, too.”

The “Bugger Off” did it for me.

from Friday Hoydens: The Suffragettes In Court

“Everyone agrees that Hillary has too many icky girl cooties to be President. But just how icky are her cooties? Normal icky or super-duper icky?”

from She’s probably a bad driver too

“Lauca: If a woman touched Daddy’s penis?
Me: She’d be in big trouble, let me tell you, BIG trouble.”

from The body sovereignty conversation you didn’t get to hear last time

“Q. Is eating Heinz Tomato soup feminist?
A. Yes. (…) It therefore fills all the requirements of feminism. Which are 1)A woman, somewhere, likes doing it and 2)It is therefore full of empowerfulmentnessism.”

from Things you didn’t know were feminist - No 1

I present you sexeee anecdote: when I was 2 I had chubalicious baby fat, the kind that fell in rolls down my legs and arms. My hair was short and whitish blonde. I had a drooly mouth cuz I chewed on everything. And because I wasn’t some prodigy-pooper I was bottom heavy in a diaper like all my tot friends.

Prodigy-pooper! HA HA HA!!!

from Hot for Tots (Sexual Stigma, p.1)

“This post is about all those young women (mostly young) who think Opossum is Cream of Jesus on toast.”

Cream of Jesus on Toast!!! LOL!

from The Opossum Delusion

“Only women who conform 100% to patriarchy’s exacting standards - ones who are beautiful, white, slim, blonde, big breasted etc, etc, etc blah blah de blah blah, don’t get shit. And even then you get shit - because you’re too sexxayy! Rule number one of patriarchy - you can only win with patriarchy if you’re a man!”

In short: you will bet shit.

from Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

I have been reading, listening and watching Noam Chomsky lately (yes, I am a baby lefy feminist taking her first steps into the field of ideas). And because I believe strongly in passing the wisdom on, here I give you tiny snippets of his thoughs. If you can read the whole articles, that’s good and if you read his books, that’s even better. But if you can’t, like me, for whatever reason, then I strongly advice you to read this quotes, or, if you can’t, read my emphasis of them. They have clarified lots of things for me.

From “The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”

“The people in the public relations industry aren’t there for the fun of it. They’re doing
work. They’re trying to instill the right values. In fact, they have a conception of what democracy ought to be: It ought to be a system in which the specialized class is trained to work in the service of the masters, the people who own the society. The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. They ought to be sitting alone in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you’re watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism. That’s all there is in life. You may think in your own head that there’s got to be something more in life than this, but since you’re watching the tube alone you assume, I must be crazy, because that’s all that’s going on over there. And since there is no organization permitted—that’s absolutely crucial—you never have a way of finding out whether you are crazy, and you just assume it, because it’s the natural thing to assume.”

From “What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream”

“”The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. (…) It’s dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government (which is so closely interlinked with corporate power you can barely distinguish them), they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of. People within them, who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don’t do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society.”
“When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, “nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure.” Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system.”
“Okay, you look at the structure of that whole system. What do you expect the news to be like? Well, it’s pretty obvious. Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses. “
“The next thing you discover is that this whole topic is completely taboo. If you go to the Kennedy School of Government or Stanford, or somewhere, and you study journalism and communications or academic political science, and so on, these questions are not likely to appear. (…) If you look at the institutional structure, you would say, yeah, sure, that’s got to happen because why should these guys want to be exposed? Why should they allow critical analysis of what they are up to take place? The answer is, there is no reason why they should allow that and, in fact, they don’t. Again, it is not purposeful censorship. It is just that you don’t make it to those positions. That includes the left (what is called the left), as well as the right. Unless you have been adequately socialized and trained so that there are some thoughts you just don’t have, because if you did have them, you wouldn’t be there.”
“(…) By manufacturing consent, you can overcome the fact that formally a lot of people have the right to vote. We can make it irrelevant because we can manufacture consent and make sure that their choices and attitudes will be structured in such a way that they will always do what we tell them, even if they have a formal way to participate. (…)”

You’ve probably heard about this book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. Maybe you’ve already bought it and read it 3 times. But in case you haven’t, or can’t for a number of reasons, I’ve just found this talk by her outlining the theory of the book, from December-ish last year. It’s in handy mp3 format and here’s the link, courtesy of KGNU Independent Community Radio. All you have to do is right click on it, select “Save Target As” and save it! How neat is that?

Link to mp3 file, Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”.

PS: pass the knowledge on!

This idea sounded better in my head. Oh well.

Here’s a depiction of how women were distributed in the hierachical structure that is patriarchal society* BEFORE…

And NOW…

I tried to show how things have changed. Well yes, they have, but mostly for those on top. You know, the ones who were already A-OK-ish.
There’s a big reason why the people at the bottom of the structure are sistematically ignored by feminism. Yes, it is, partly, because feminists who have time to engage in feminism are usually from the top themselves. But also, because the only way to move the people at the bottom UP is to move the people at the top DOWN. And yes, the very feminists who are at the top are not very likely to work towards moving themselves down. But also, because in order for that to happen, we would have to bring “teh left” into the table. And “teh left” is, like, not cool. It’s a dirty word. It’s not gonna make you very popular. And it’s definitely not gonna help you sell “cool” books.

Constructive criticism welcomed!

* not to scale, not scientific, not researched, not… that good.

Here’s a concept that’s so obvious I needed to hear it from someone else. As a feminist in constant training, I am aware of the most common types of privilege, even the ones that don’t affect me directly. And yet this one, which has punched me in the face throughout my life and scared my soul for lives to come has somehow managed to fly right through my Privilege Catching Net of Feminist Awareness (cool name, ha?).

And so it was that, thanks to Littoral Mermaid, that I could finally articulate my feelings. The Privilege Catching Net has grown in surface. Watch out, world!

So, let’s get on with it.

I’m an average looking woman. I know. There are millions of us. I can imagine myself saying those same words in a support group for Average Looking Women. “Hi, my name’s Mary…”; “Hi Mary”, say all the women in a neat choir; “… and I’m a *sob* average looking woman”.
This idea would be much funnier if it wasn’t so needed. With all the messages out there making us feel like utter trash ‘cuz, you know, it’s profitable to “un-trash” us, I believe it would be tremendously helpful for all of us average looking women to get together and discover that
a) we are by far the majority of women on the planet and b) our very existence, or rather, the label put on our very existence, actively PRIVILIGES the ones on top. That is, the pretty ones.

See, for every 10 pretty women, there are 100 average looking women who exist to make the pretty special. That’s the thing about privilige: the ones who have it, have it precisely because there are considerably more who don’t.
Pretty-ness wouldn’t be worth so much if it wasn’t so rare. And for it to be rare, there has to be far more average-ness than pretty-ness.
That’s the thing about privilege, it causes oppression. Pretty-ness is used in pretty women’s favour and against average looking women. Pretty-ness is used to put yourself up. But the only way to do that is to put many many down.

I could go on and on about pretty privilege, particularly the effect it has on the ones who, like me, do NOT have it and more particularly still on the effect it has on one’s perceived worthiness of being loved. If for some reason this resonates with you and you want to rant with me, feel free to do so.

I’ll leave you with the words of two awesome feminists:

Amananta, “Ugly Girl”

“Yes, I am ugly - why should it matter? Why should it invalidate my opinions, be used to dismiss me as a friend or a gaming buddy, be used as a weapon against me whenever someone becomes angry with me or some random stranger sees my picture and decides he wants to use me as a toilet to dump his emotional shit into? Why should I be required to be ornamental? Why is my refusal to try to be an ornament met with such strident disapproval from complete strangers? What gives them the right?”

L.M., Pretty Privilege

“Pretty women are not devalued under this system and may even reap some benefits for their good looks. That’s why I think that pretty women* often express indifference or even hostility towards radical feminist criticism of beauty culture as misogynist or hell even as a little sexist or see beauty culture as something to be celebrated or even as empowering. They can’t see through their pretty privilege.”

Everyone in the blogosphere seems to be up and down nodding vigorously at some article in the Sunday Times about literary deal-breakers in relationships. When I say “everyone” I mean Hugo and references therein. And when I say “literary deal-breakers” I mean something along the lines of:

“Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!””

I’ll never understand how can people justify to themselves their snobism without calling upon it. They kinda defend themselves by claiming that judging on the basis of literary taste is no different from judging on the basis of any other hobby or interest. But guess what, it is. When you change “literature” for, let’s say, to keep the comparison valid, any other high school subject, it all breaks down. Can someone in the Biology field get away with saying something like “Can you believe it? He doesn’t know what the pancreas is for!”. Or someone in the Physics department coming up with “How can I have a future with someone who doesn’t know what Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is? *snif*”. No, and no. Funny how it only seems to work with “literature”.

What would happen if we instead change “literature” for another hobby? Hugo has attempted to do it with music. I’ll try to apply it to one of my all time favourite interests: Disney movies. Oh, yes. I can see myself saying with a straight face “I cannot believe he doesn’t know who Mrs Potts and Sebastian are! *sob*”. I am sure that kind of judgement will be deemed very reasonable.

So it doesn’t work with “any” hobby or interest. Only those with a “posh” sounding ring will do.

Let’s be honest here. For a long, long time, the only people who had access to literature were the privileged aristocrats. The elites. The crème de la crème of society. The whole literature = “(high) class” equation got stuck and it haunts us til today.

So remember, folks. Judging people for their tastes on snob pastimes like “literature” is OK. You are not trying to get away with a valid justification for feeling superior to everyone else on this world a.k.a. “the masses”. Nope, not at all.

If you’ve been hoovering the blogosphere lately, you must have stumbled upon a blog with a title strikingly similar to this post’s. It’s gotten obcenely huge. That blog has been alive for 1 month and 8 days and has gotten 4 million 7 hundred thousand hits. Meanwhile, my blog has been alive for 50 years, (feels like), and has gotten a grand total of 0 hits, (again, feels like). Is there a non-existing reader who is starting to think that I may be slightly jelous? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. I have never complained about blogs which I respect and admire, regardless of their popularity. *cough-Twisty on the blogroll-cough*. However, I do NOT respect the tone of this blog, and here’s why.

First, the blog works strictly under the following premises:
1) All white people live in the US and
2) White people = upper middle class

Now, I feel slightly offended by those assumptions. I’m all up for mocking the habits and tendencies of the ubber rich, but I wouldn’t be so BLIND as to call them “white people”. The author seems to be entirely oblivious to the fact that there’s white people outside of the US, the countries from the ex URSS, for example. These people not only do not indulge in the sibaritic and consumerist orgy-like practises of the rich the world over, but also lack some things we tend to take for granted, like freedom and basic human rights. That’s right! There’s plenty of white people out there who are not even close to upper middle class. Some can even be found in the very US! And I’m so sensitive and bold to believe that the racist claim “all black people are poor” is a teensy weensy bit similar to the claim that “all white people are rich”.
But I guess Stuff “Rich” People Like doesn’t sound all “that” original after all. And here we encounter the other reason why I find this blog annoying: it’s NOT original. It has the exact same cynical and sceptical attitude that is the default of the “creative” ones of my generation and younger ones. They are what I call “The Simpsons Generation”, and one day I’ll blog about them. They don’t believe in anything and they look down at the few who do.

“White people spend a lot of time of worrying about poor people. It takes up a pretty significant portion of their day.”

Notice the slight swift of bullying? The subtle tone of mockery? How dare you think about something! See,it’s not what people are doing or thinking. It’s not that they are choosing to change their actions or beliefs for more ethical ones. It’s the fact that they have ethics in the first place. Because in this age of moral relativism, having a clear idea of what is right and wrong is tantamount to proclaiming that some ideas are BETTER than others. And that cannot be. It would get in the way of individualism. Anyone should be whoever they want! Even if that means being a pseudo racist copy-cat passing as “cool” and “trasgressive”.

Oh my! Will Laura Woodhouse and I ever agree on something?

“While many women in the sex industry are not there out of choice, some of them are and, while some of us may not support or like these women’s choices, it does not mean we can go around disregarding their feelings, attacking their right to a voice and accusing them of encouraging rape.”

Except that they do encourage rape. Or rather, THE SEX INDUSTRY ENCOURAGES RAPE. And the women working in it are accomplices. That’s the way it is.
Jebus, haven’t we been over all this already? If Andrea Dworkin were alive today, she’d be killing herself. “Porn is the theory, rape is the practice”. “Porn influences men’s attitudes towards sex”. It’s been proven over and over. But you know what? Don’t take my word for it. Just go and ask the women who have been raped by a man who wanted to “act out” porn in real life. Better still. Go to those women who have had the “luck” to have a camera record their rape only discover that, when presenting said video in court, they have their screams for help and cries to stop dismissed as a sign of her own enjoyment in the act.

I’m gonna say it once again. I don’t care if one, two, a thousand or ALL women in the sex and porn industries are “happy” to do their “freely chosen” job. Because what these women do AFFECTS MEN’S ATTITUDES TOWARDS ALL WOMEN. That’s ALL OF US. That includes ME. Get it? It affects ME. Personally.
This is HALF of the argument against the sex and porn industries. The other half tells us that they are damaging to the women who work in them. But even if THE WOMEN THEMSELVES weren’t damaged, WE, that’s the rest of us real women on this planet, ARE. Because we all have to deal with the men who engage in prostitution and porn. Because we all have to deal with the impact that the very existence of porn and prostitution have on this society.
This is all quite straightforward. It gets muddier when we consider what is actually going on in the minds of the women who “happily” embrace such “work choices”. And I have absolutely no problem in pointing out that they are brain washed. Why? BECAUSE WE ALL ARE. I repeat. EVERY PERSON IS BRAINWASHED. Including ME. By the mere fact of LIVING in a society, you will be brainwashed into thinking whatever that society teaches you. And unless you actively challenge that brainwashing, you are condemned to carry it in your brain. Hell, even when you DO challenge it, it’s still bloody hard work! The examples of this range from active feminists who still wear high heels and cannot tolerate the sight of their hairy legs to Muslim women who stand against the most extreme misogyny in the Islam while retaining the rest. And this is what makes feminism and all other political movements so difficult. That everyone is brainwashed into ascribing to the status quo. And this is precisely why the number of people thinking one way or another doesn’t guarantee one bit that they are right. Democracy might work that way, but science and morality don’t.

Note: I’m only focusing on porn because that’s what’s seen as the most “harmless” and because it’s the only topic I know anything about. I am not familiar with the way prostitution affects a society’s attitude towards women, probably because proving any theory on it would be very difficult, considering how ALL societies purport prostitution. But Rebecca, who has escaped prostitution, can tell anyone who is remotely interested why we should all be against it, based on her real world experiences.

Note 2: Why do we value so highly the opinion of those people inside the sex and porn industries who are so peachy about it all? As I said above, they might not suffer any damage, but the real women out in the world do. What can these women say about how their “work” affects us? It’s like asking the tobacco companies if they think their product is bad for non-smokers!

Note 3: And this assumption that whatever a woman does is “her choice only” just SCREAMS of Rightwing mentality of the “There’s no such thing as society” kind.