My closest friend has been wild about this blog for a long while, and very recently, after going through archives and reading other linked blogs, I’ve found why, despite agreeing emphatically with Twisty and looking forward to her brilliant style of writing, that something bugged me about it, and chingona summed it up perfectly:

“A lot of people want to believe that the world is basically okay with a lot of fucked up people in it doing fucked up things, but if we could just get to those people and stop them or open their eyes or whatever, it would be okay. But that may not be the case. The evidence presented here is that it is much more systemic than that. And that’s a more frightening reality.”

It’s how i believed there could be balance, that yes everything else is fucked up and women are asked/forced to submit to contradictory and humiliating ideas set forth by men who want to possess and consume the traits they impose, and practically EVERYTHING is gross or crazy in some measure but if *I* were decent enough to resist arbitrary power plays, then that was the most i could do. Because most people don’t, most people enthusiastically embrace this insane set of systems and are completely perverted, so just take the step to not let it happen to myself.

But it’s not enough, obviously, and the more I read the less satisfied i get with this self-centered focus. I’m no longer an exception. there’s a million excuses made for me if i decide to look or act a certain way, and most of them are favorable. I have never, in a social setting, felt the need to affect anything as submissive as that special, ugly little giggle because i didnt want to be looked down on. i was feeling pretty complacent, and this is now no longer justifiable. So *I’m* the one that sounds crazy when my girlfriend and i were washing the car yesterday.

*long silence*
“soooooo…. what are you thinking about?”
“radical feminism.”
“… why?”
“i dunno, it’s a completely different thing for me. here’s a set of ideas that make complete sense, but because of who i fundamentally am and how i benefit from being me, i run contrary to those beliefs”
“but Alan, everyone finds a target to blame for anything”
“okay, but this isn’t ‘i can’t go into the woods because there’s men with a pack of miller lite’, it’s a sustained observation about how oppression permeates *everything*”
“uh huh”

after that i just changed subject because i felt silly talking to a woman about what it is to be a woman, because i thing she just *might* know better than me, but i love this blog. and even though it’s distressing and “abrasive”, it doesn’t make it any less true. i don’t think I’m going to comment here again, because it’s a unique space that really doesn’t *need* my input, but who knows, and at any rate you’ve definitely got another reader.

Like makeup and tiny handbags!

Holy crap–this is what you do at WORK? How the hell did you men ever get to run the world, anyhow?

He responded with “Don’t forget, he’s got to be a misogynist too.” I think there’s at least a little hope when even a Marine can tell there’s a problem.

No, your Marine buddy was not conceding any kind of “problem” at all–just equating ultimate manliness with women-hating. Just another Monday morning in the patriarchy.

It’s a start at least.

No, Tuba Terry, equating misogyny with ultra-manliness is the start of nothing; it’s part of a long continuum of history, marching directly over the bodies of women and girls. Same old fucking same old, and you’re calling it progress.

This even beats that thread in the forum where women are slapping each other on the back for ushering in the feminist revolution by wearing “low-heels” and not shaving their legs (although at least one admitted it was because she was home in pajamas and unemployed). This is what we are celebrating as progress?

Meanwhile, I’ll contribute to feminism today by scowling at Cal Thomas’s webpage and not killing any kittens. Yeah me.

(6) Adopt desirable or enjoyable traits and habits traditionally seen as feminine.

Here are some practical suggestions for reducing this congnitive dissonance:

(1) Give up all use of pornography.

(2) Treat all women you encounter like human beings with full independent agency.

(3) Do everything in your power to in your workplace to ensure that women have a genuinely equal opportunity for success and advancement.

(4) Call out misogyny when you see it.

(5) Make it clear to the women in your life that it is not important to you for them to adopt the trappings of femininity.

And Shira, “. I pointed out that this defines women as the rape-able class, that his framework does not explain why men demand a class of rape-able people in the first place, and that rape, by definition, ignores the demand of the raped not to be raped. ” Excellent.