RadFem Takedown

Piercing the Misty Veil

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:49:00 -0600

If there’s one thing the trans borg hates, it’s Ray Blanchard’s suggestion that some trans women are not “women trapped in men’s bodies” but are acting out their particular paraphilia, in this case, autogynephilia. The mere mention of this term is guaranteed to start a shit storm in any online arena populated by trans women (and trans men and queers)…or any online arena these folks can find via Google. As radical feminists know practically and intuitively, whenever something strikes a nerve so powerfully and gets such a strong reaction, it’s got a grain of truth at the center. Also, there are plenty of individuals out there who feel at home with the autogynephilia descriptor. So let’s dive right in, shall we?

Ray Blanchard, a much-maligned sexologist, sat on the gender dysphoria working committee for the DSM-IV, which makes many on the LGBTetc spectrum nervous. Blanchard definitely falls into the category of thinking that transsexual people suffer from a mental disorder (whether they think they’re suffering is another story) and does not think surgery is the answer, generally. This last opinion alone is enough to warrant him death threats, I’m sure.

So here’s how Blanchard defines autogynephilia: “a male’s propensity to be erotically aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.” (Origins of the Concept of Autogynephilia, 2004).

While there are several types of transsexualism for males recognized by researchers and lay observers alike, this term specifically describes a group of men who “seek sex reassignment in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or even later, after having lived outwardly successful lives as men. Usually they were not especially feminine as children, and many are not especially feminine as adults, either. Often they have been married to females and have fathered children. Many identify as lesbian or bisexual after reassignment. Nearly all have a past or current history of sexual arousal in association with cross- dressing or cross-gender fantasy.” (Autogynephilia: A Paraphilic Model of Gender Identiy Disorder, Anne Lawrence.)

The individual who generally matches this type at some point in their “transition” is the one I want to explore today, in relation to some revelatory statements from Andrea Dworkin’s book Pornography: Men Possessing Women. (This piece will not address other manifestations, such as the younger, queer theory/identity politics trans group. Although, similar motivations will affect anyone raised male in the patriarchy and claiming female.)

Dworkin posits that males objectify everything around them in order to dominate the objects and thus feel their own power and gain a sense of self (side note: that is terrifying). (Dworkin, p. 104) The male, therefore, objectifies and dominates the female-as-object, basing the actual reality of a woman on an idea or idealized notion of woman. When the real woman does or acts not according to the ideal, the male’s spell is broken, and she must be punished.

“In his view, she is not a woman unless she acts like a woman as he has defined woman. … His definition need not be coherent. It is never scrutinized for logic or consistency or even threadbare common sense. He can theorize, fantasize, call it science or art; whatever he says about women is true because he says it. He is the authority on what she is because he has made her, cut away at her as if she were a piece of stone until the prized inanimate object is extracted.” (Dworkin, p. 65)

Of course, most, if not all, autogynephiles (AGPs for expediency) and “trans women” claim to not “think like men” or to have “allied with” women early on. They claim to have “felt like a woman” even as they outwardly appeared as a man, with all the attendant external and internal benefits that affords. Out of sheer survival, they had to negotiate the male hierarchy to whatever extent they could, and in many cases, did so successfully.

In the patriarchy, true womanhood is hidden behind the foggy veil of male assumptions about women and womanhood. For men who operate in the world as men while only secretly thinking of themselves as women, to pierce that veil deeply enough to truly know what it’s like on the other side is impossible. Many point out that their behaviors and preferences while still men prove that they were women all along. But let me be clear: Time spent trying on women’s clothes, pretending to be the woman in a sexual fantasy, or even taking the “submissive” (e.g, childcare, vacuuming, etc.) role in a marriage does not make you a woman. That is simply the AGPs idea-of-woman being paraded out as reality, which is the most male thing a person can do. But I digress.

As the male’s entire worldview is based on objectification of the world around him, it comes as no surprise that male heterosexual sexuality is also completely based on objectification. (Dworkin, p. 113) Like all other objects in the male’s grasping view, men assume it’s their God-given right (huge surprise given they invented God) to act upon the woman-as-his-own-idea.

Fetishes are, essentially, this objectification taken to an extreme - only part of the idea is romanticized and seen as bestowing the magic erection-giving powers. In the autogynephile, this notion and behavior is taken to an even further extreme: the ideal female is not even nominally based on an actual woman, on the existence, out there in the world, of real femaleness. The woman isn’t even necessary here - she’s merely a figment of the AGP’s imagination, conveniently projected within the only mise-en-scène that counts for anything in the patriarchy: the male’s own body and in the male’s own mind.

Here’s the problem: “Male perceptions of women are askew, wild, inept. Male renderings of women in art, literature, psychology, religious discourses, philosophy, and in the common wisdom of the day, whatever the day, are bizarre, distorted, fragmented at best, demented in the main.” (Dworkin, p. 64) Thus, we end up with men who want to be women but who not only have no idea what it’s like to be a woman, but no idea what a real woman is.

With the figment of female firmly implanted in the real actor of man, the AGP has closed the circle of objectification and purified the ritual of dominance.

In one sense, this makes them the utterly ideal male - he doesn’t even have to get his hands dirty by using a live female. In the real male world, the removal and redirection of man’s external objectification schema from female to male self threatens the entire hierarchy, thus bringing on them a shit storm born of terrified male egos (hate crimes). At the same time, all men know that they have the birthright to act out whatever desires they have - this is how war is created, serial killer-rapists are made and surgeons came up with the idea for inverting the penis. Deep down, if a man wants to do it, they will find a way.

For women, and feminists, to accept someone displaying this behavior/desire into space meant for born-females means accepting that real women have no autonomy - no right to define their own reality whatsoever. It’s not even about the AGP individuals in women’s space - it’s about the precedent that sets to the male world in general. To argue that born-females cannot set our own boundaries argues for the continued imprisonment of all womankind.

But the more dangerous point is this: To accept someone displaying this as being one on our side of the misty veils of patriarchal womanhood means accepting that real women are not even necessary in the world. The AGP sets the precedent that there is another way to femaleness, through maleness. And as anyone who has even considered the patriarchy for even a moment knows, that’s exactly what the fuckers want.

The Real Housewives of Domestic Terrorism

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:59:15 -0600

I want to start by acknowledging the ways in which all women make concessions to the patriarchy. We all do something to survive the grist mill, whether that’s keeping our opinions to ourselves in groups, crossing our legs in public, marrying a man or behaving according to the scriptures of some ancient patriarchs. It’s not easy for any of us.

One of the mechanisms by which men maintain their domination is a divide and conquer technique. It’s a warning to women: associate with other women at your own risk. The carrot dangled before women is security by association in the male hierarchy. The stick is the threat of being cast out from the protection of males to be used at will by many men instead of used at will by one man. Part of that stick is the knowledge that when you are cast out, there will always be another woman who’s younger than you and displays whatever current fashionable feminine traits better than you. And women always know: we are one mis-step away from losing our association membership. Of course, despite these threats and this enforced isolation, women tend to gather and ally themselves anyway.

One way male culture has traditionally divided us is to remove the female from her mother, sisters, aunts, grandmothers and girlfriends and isolate her in her very own domestic prison, where she is given nominal control/responsibility (at the discretion of the male, of course). Men have named those of us who dedicate our lives to keeping our mortgaged cells particularly neat and tidy “housewives”.

Which brings us to my topic for today: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I’m going to go ahead and assume that other radfems aren’t watching this particularly drivel, but don’t worry, I have taken a bullet for you.

Now, examining all the ways in which these particular women capitulate, and celebrate their capitulation - even just cataloging their plastic surgeries, hair extensions, and in Kyle’s case, penchant for doing the splits at parties - would take the rest of my unnatural life. So let’s focus on the relationships, particularly surrounding Taylor Armstrong.

Taylor hails from Oklahoma, where she grew up in a home terrorized by at least one male. But now Taylor’s all grown up and her (now ex) husband, Russell, fit perfectly with the nouveau riche elite of Beverly Hills. She has a young daughter and her own business and is by all accounts living a great life - except for the fact that her husband regularly beats the shit out of her.

Season 2 of RHBH finds Taylor quickly devolving into an escalating cycle of abuse-trauma bonding-abuse. We get hints about the abuse, but it’s not discussed very openly until later in the season. At an afternoon tea (naturally), Camille says “what [they’ve] all been thinking and hearing about from Taylor” behind the scenes: “Because we don’t say he hit you. Because we don’t say that he broke your jaw or that he beat you up. We don’t say that, but now we’ve said it. You need to be honest because that’s not cool.”

This event, the public airing of her laundry, severs any frayed strands of emotional stability in Taylor and leads to a public meltdown at a party soon after. A few episodes later, Taylor announces her marriage is over and shortly after that, Russell committed suicide.

The interesting part of this situation is how the other housewives reacted to the situation.

Lisa comes the closest to being a real friend, despite the fact that for 2/3 of the season, Lisa and Taylor are engaged in a passive-aggressive war that all women are familiar with. Despite their rocky relationship, Lisa offers to open up her home to Taylor and her daughter if she’ll just leave. “She seems to be in a very dangerous place,” Lisa said in episode 3. Later, after Taylor and Russell are kicked out of Kyle’s white party due to the threat of lawsuit, Lisa is one of two women who take Taylor’s side with no hesitation.

Kyle, on the other hand, repeatedly discusses the situation on camera with her other pals and husband and expresses immense confusion: she sort of believes Taylor but questions how bad it could really be if Taylor continues to stay with Russell. She believes that is she were in Taylor’s shoes, she wouldn’t hesitate to leave.

Both Adrienne and her husband repeated, “There’s her side, his side and the truth” several times throughout the season. Adrienne says it’s unfair that Taylor has told them all this stuff and then won’t leave the guy - which is true, it’s hard to be friends with someone who is being hurt and won’t leave the situation. But to insinuate that it’s not true, to suspect Taylor’s credibility, well…that’s not what a friend does.

The real damage comes from Camille Grammer. Remember that stick from earlier? Well, season 1 ended with Camille being handed a giant stick from her husband, Kelsey Grammer. Kelsey left his first, aging wife for Camille, just as he left Camille for a woman 12 years her junior. At the tea party, Camille says “what’s on everyone’s mind” - and adds, “But I have a hard time believing it because when we see you, there’s not a sign of physical abuse on your body.” (Apparently, the thousands of dollars these women spend on makeup couldn’t possibly cover up a bruised cheek or a black eye. And, since when does Camille regularly inspect Taylor for signs of abuse? Give me a break.) She also says such gems as, “Unless I know [she’s being abused] as a fact, I can’t judge” and “Russell’s always been lovely to me, he’s always been nice, so I don’t know what to believe at this point.” It’s as if, being kicked out of the male association herself, she’s waging a pro-men PR campaign in the hopes that defending a domestic terrorist will win her enough points to get back in the club.

One sick irony is that while the housewives are saying all this behind Taylor’s back, Taylor only arrives at the decision to leave her husband after considering that the difficulties in her marriage were costing her friendships. But she did leave, so that’s something.

It’s a sad commentary that these women didn’t automatically, without a doubt, believe Taylor when they saw their friend losing it before their very eyes. That they couldn’t put themselves in her shoes. That they couldn’t do a fucking Google search for signs of an abusive relationship. That Kyle listened to Faye Resnick, whose best friend was murdered by her very own domestic terrorist, O.J. Simpson, tell her what it’s like and Kyle still had the nerve to insinuate again and again, Well, maybe it’s not true. That Kyle and Camille watched Taylor have a complete breakdown, screaming “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME!” (meaning, my husband now knows that I’ve been telling people, and he might actually kill me this time) and said, Well, it’s probably true, but nobody knows for sure.

This is what the patriarchy encourages women to do and be. It makes us non-believers of our own eyes and those who should be our closest allies in this long nightmare of male rule. Even if Kyle, Camille and Adrienne couldn’t convince Taylor to leave her husband, even if they found it so painful to be around Taylor that they had to disengage from the friendship, they owed her simple belief.

When our friends tell us outright that they’re being abused and we say, yeah, but she’s also kind of a drama queen…when our daughters tell us that our boyfriends/husbands/brothers/fathers are molesting them and we tell our daughters to keep quiet for the sake of the family…when our sisters confide that their date raped them, and we think, well, she IS kind of slutty… When we do these things, we need to be awake to the fact that we are doing it to protect our own deals with the devil. Our friends, sisters and daughters get hurt. But we do not spare ourselves by complying. We are selling our own souls. We’re abusing ourselves in the name of the patriarchy.

dont ever hesitate. reblog this.

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:15:14 -0600

Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696

Suicide Hotline: 1-800-784-8433

LifeLine: 1-800-273-8255

Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743

Eating Disorders Hotline: 1-847-831-3438

Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673

Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272

Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000

Exhale: After Abortion Hotline/Pro-Voice: 1-866-4394253

Current reading: "Pornography: Men Possessing Women"

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:06:37 -0600

I’m about 100 pages from finishing, but I wanted to record some of my favorite quotes/passages so far.

“A bible piling up its code for centuries, a secret corpus gone public, a private corpus gone political, pornography is the male’s sacred stronghold, a monastic retreat for manhood on the verge of its own destruction.”

And, similarly: “Pornography is the holy corpus of men who would rather die than change.”

But the most intriguing part has been the section on objectification. As Dworkin is wont to do, she takes objectification way beyond the realm of pornography - right to the root of male psychology. Thus, we can summarize with this quote:

“A man must function as the human center of a chattel-oriented sensibility, surrounded by objects to be used so that he can experience his own power and presence.”

Recently, some OWS Facebook page I’m subscribed to posted a screenshot of a Tweet - it said, in essence, homophobia is being afraid a man will treat you like you treat women.

Well, guess what, kids? Andrea Dworkin said it first, with the next few sentences:

“He must not reduce himself to the level of women, for instance, by becoming an object for another man. This degrades the whole male sex, which is inappropriate.”

The entire chapter on objectification is predicated on words by psychologists on the subject, with very little connection to the individual. My question is: How much of this idea is real-world, standard operating procedure for teh menz, and how much of this idea is the idea of one man (and Dworkin) hypothesizing about the function of others? It seems likely true, but I need to work it out on a micro level before assuming the macro is true.

My problem understanding stems from the fact that the idea of operating this way is so foreign to me that right now, it’s impossible for me to really grasp what that is like. … to live, essentially, only in relation to domination over objects outside the self. The idea is such a simple explanation, and yet, nearly impossible to grasp right now. It sure would explain a lot, though. Here’s another passage that will help facilitate that process:

“Male perceptions of women are askew, wild, inept. Male renderings of women in art, literature, psychology, religious discourses, philosophy, and in the common wisdom of the day, whatever the day, are bizarre, distorted, fragmented at best, demented in the main. Everything is done to keep women out of the perceptual field altogether…. In male reality, women cannot enter male consciousness without violating it. The male is contaminated and distressed by any contact with woman-not-as-object.”

Can’t wait to see what the rest of the book has in store.

Next up: A radfem takedown of this season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

You know what I'm over? Men. :D

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:10:10 -0600

You know what I'm over? Men. :D

You're right, Joe Paterno is not the problem

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:06:48 -0600

Or more accurately, he’s not the only problem.

Consider this:

I also read the grand jury report, which recounted a horrific incident in 2000, where a janitor witnessed Sandusky giving oral sex to Victim 8 in the Penn State locker room showers. The janitor was so upset by what he saw, his co-workers thought he might have a heart attack. Still, the police were not called in that incident either. Then I read about the 28-year-old who witnessed Sandusky raping a boy in 2002, and that he did nothing to stop it, but left, upset and confused by what he’d witnessed. I read about the wrestling coach at a local elementary school who stumbled into the gym to find Sandusky lying on top of a young boy, and again, he didn’t beat Sandusky within an inch of his life or call 911 right away. He left and contacted the principal later on.

So, we have three men who saw boys being raped and did nothing. (Oh, but the poor janitor nearly had a heart attack, and I’m sure he feels real bad about it in the years since.) Add on top of that the multitude of men, including the famous “Joe Pa”, who heard about it secondhand and did nothing.

The common denominator here is that they were all men involved. A man committed the acts of brutality (on a one-day-will-be-a-man), men kept the secrets and men covered it up. All to protect men. Because this isn’t just about those boys or those specific rape incidents: this is about men systematically protecting their own.

It’s pretty obvious by this point in history that men cannot be trusted to or even expected to act with any shred of moral dignity. Put in a groupthink situation like this, the best we can expect from them is a bloodbath. The rest of us (women and children and the unicorn “good guys”) simply cannot afford to keep deluding ourselves that one day they will act differently.