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Guest Post by GallusMag
Wow, that FCM post on the dickwad self-proclaimed sperminator and “molester” sponsoring Baltimore SlutWalk really raised my blood pressure, and my awareness. Minutes later my spamtastic email informed me of today’s SlutWalk at the University of Connecticut. Well, who the hell’s sponsoring that one I wondered? Lordy, it’s co-sponsored by Matt Tuscano, a student at UConn.
so here we are again. another slutwalk, another sex-positive man organizing it, standing behind women (but not in a creepy way!) and supporting womens god-given right to be sexually penetrated by men. now thats good faux-feminism! and it gets even better than that: this particular dood as recently as earlier today went by the internet handle “molester” on internet forum “formspring”. you know, because sexual assault is funny, and stuff and things. alas, the women who allowed this dood to “help” them pull off slutwalk baltimore probably shouldve done a background check; or at the very least, followed the links he left on his facebook profile, where they wouldve learned about the “molester” thing. oh well! im not blaming the women, really; thats just what happens when you do feminist organizing with men. you have to be super-extra vigilant, and they werent.
**This is Part II of a three part post. Part I is here.
Trauma Bonding/the Mind-Body Split
We cannot know for certain how many women in the BDSM scene have experienced rape or childhood abuse, but in the context of asking ourselves why women should fuse pleasure and pain perhaps it hardly matters when we consider that women are conditioned to masochism by the wider society.
It could be one incident, one boundary violation, one man taking more than he should, one rape. Or it could be the drip-drip of marketing messages depicting women tied in chains and ropes, found in the most innocuous places such as between the glossy pages of teenage-girls’ magazines, and reproduced in popular culture as far as the eye can see. Images beamed out to the masses from highway billboards, high-street clothing stores, and the silver screen, all parrotting the Big Brother message that an immobilized and bound woman is a beautiful one.
That these distorted depictions of female sexuality are today regarded as normal, reasonable and good is reminiscent of another collective societal psychosis that once took place elsewhere, one that Chinese women bore the brunt of for a thousand years: culturally condoned foot-binding.
image by R&T
This post was originally published in radical feminist journal “Rain and Thunder” in its “Positive” issue #52 (Fall, 2011).
I understand that this issue is about “positivity” and what’s positive about the radfem movement. I admit that I actually laughed both out-loud and internally at the very thought, but mostly about “me” writing about it: positivi-whaa? As I said to my fellow bloggers upon receiving the invitation to write for this issue: “bahahaha! havent they read my blog?”
As a radfem blogger, I can definitely say that there is nothing “positive” about radfem blogging at all. I mean, nothing that any sane person would probably consider positive, or “worth it” where the good consistently outweighs the bad. There’s constant harassment and abuse from all sides: from unrepentantly woman-hating men’s rights activists (MRAs); liberal and libertarian feminists calling names and tossing deliberately-distracting liberal/progressive rhetoric around, and acting surprised when it doesn’t stick (as if radfems haven’t already heard it all before); and my personal favorite, (as cannon-fodder) self-identified “feminist” men, those loathsome liberal/progressives who – unsurprisingly – support women’s right…to be sexually penetrated by men. Now that’s good faux-feminism!
image by R&T
This post was originally published in radical feminist journal “Rain and Thunder” in its “Positive” issue #52 (Fall, 2011).
I am positive that we are in the midst of a glorious revolution. All outward appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Listen. If you listen, you can hear us in revolt. Hear that? that is the sound of a door opening, a woman inviting a girl into her home. A woman asking another woman for help. Three women together making stickers to paste onto porn magazines. laughter. a splash as two women leap fully clothed into the ocean after a day of intervening in men’s brutality toward women (mostly women they are supposed to love). Listen, there is the sound of shovels in dirt; a match struck to light a torch; the clink of tools from a tool belt; a car starting up…voices, murmuring. muffled laughter, a shriek over there. We are plotting our liberation. There is a lot to do, there are many lives that hang in the balance. It is a fine balance between hope and despair and yet an enormous, yawning chasm between slavery and freedom. Can we even see freedom from here?
In Australia, we love our criminals and we love our criminal history. One of the most popular TV shows here in recent years has been the Underbelly franchise, which has dramatized several Australian gang wars and received critical and popular acclaim. It’s considered by many to be “high-brow” TV, like The Sopranos.
The latest series of Underbelly covers the criminal scene in 1920s Sydney. In particular, it explores the phenomenon of the “razor gang” (which is exactly what it sounds like). Back then, criminal Sydney revolved around the usual 1920’s gangster activity – illegal alcohol trade, cocaine and prostitution. What makes the Sydney version interesting is that it was dominated by the two gangland rivals Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh. Yes, that’s right. Our most notorious 1920’s gangsters were women.
**This is Part I of a three-part post.
The measure of a group’s oppression is not how well their oppressors can convince them to accept their lot, or how completely they give up hope of rebellion; nor is it the extent to which their sense of self becomes so thoroughly annihilated that they lose awareness of the very fact they’re oppressed.
No.
The measure of it, is how well you can convince them to enjoy their oppression. To revel in it. To seek it out. To regard subordination and pain as a path to freedom. The measure of it, is how many women you can get to embrace the belief they are being subversive when they are permitted to glorify their degradation.
HPV vaccines have been a big political topic this week in the U.S. It all started at a Republican presidential debate when Michele Bachmann criticized Rick Perry’s executive order which mandated Gardasil for girls in Texas. Refreshingly, the framing of the issue was of pharmaceutical companies buying politicians, rather than the regular conservative line about how the vaccine makes girls turn slutty. This debate dust-up gained more ground when Bachmann began telling news outlets about a post-debate encounter with a woman who said her daughter was harmed by the vaccine. Because women have no credibility, and this story includes three females claiming harm, you can probably guess where this goes next.
The famous “Freedom or Death” speech was delivered in Hartford, Connecticut on November 13 1913,
by Emmeline Pankhurst.
I do not come here as an advocate, because whatever position the suffrage movement may occupy in the United States of America, in England it has passed beyond the realm of advocacy and it has entered into the sphere of practical politics. It has become the subject of revolution and civil war, and so tonight I am not here to advocate woman suffrage. American suffragists can do that very well for themselves.
I am here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field of battle in order to explain – it seems strange it should have to be explained – what civil war is like when civil war is waged by women.
Radfem Hub 