I Blame The Patriarchy

In a recent post I described an antifeminist magazine columnist as a “porn apologist” for suggesting that women should be all gung-ho to sex up in porn drag to make their men happy in the sack. A commenter then used the term “fucking rape apologist” to describe this columnist. Which prompted yet another commenter to take exception to this seeming escalation in rhetoric, fearful that it further demeans “real” rape victims to lump all victims of coercive sex, regardless of the degree of violence, into the same category.

“Maybe” she says, “I just don’t want a bunch of women showing up to rape survivors’ meetings saying, ‘I wore lingerie and heels for my husband, even though deep down I really didn’t want to.’”

Certainly the English language, which is chock full-o many excellent words, can accommodate, for the amelioration of poetry or politics or pornography, differing degrees of abomination in describing the sexual oppression of women. That’s because the English language is the language of men, a proud culture of domination that glorifies its lust for oppression with infinite variations. A woman can be violated, fucked, nailed, hit on (or just hit), ogled, degraded, fallen, debased, put on a pedestal, married, prostituted, impregnated, pronged, boinked, ravished, seduced, cajoled, beaten, videotaped, courted, sold, assaulted, wolf-whistled, harassed, enslaved, dominated and killed. O the pageantry.

On one end of the spectrum in this splendid tableau of violent misogyny is the Nigel who cajoles ‘consent’ with guilt and low-level duress (“come on, just a little longer, I’m almost there.”). On the other, the jewel in the crown of patriarchal dominion: physical assault under threat of injury or death, or what is popularly thought of as rape.

There are 578,843 different little hate crimes in between. I’ve written about a few of them. High heels, blow jobs, street harassment, feminist dudes, the normalization of porn culture. If you are a woman, you have experienced nearly all of them. If you are a straight woman, you have experienced nearly all of them a million times. When experienced incrementally, in small doses over the course of a lifetime, many women are Stockholm-syndromed into viewing these “lesser” violations as tolerable (or even desirable). Taken all at once, in the single violent outburst known as rape, it is a devastating, debilitating trauma.

But for the level of intensity, these are all points on the same continuum. What continuum is that, Twisty? Why, the continuum of rape culture, which is porn culture, which is male culture, which is the dominant culture. Duh, of course victims of violent assault have had a different experience than women who reluctantly pornulate themselves for their boyfriends. Rape survivors have been slammed with maximum hatred all at once in its most unambiguous form, whereas the lingerie girlfriend, ostensibly of her own volition, is merely putting on a cheap polyester teddy made in China. Different experience? Hell yeah. Different concept? Hell no.

It is of dire importance is to recognize that, within the profoundly misogynist climate of our social order, it is considered consistent with women’s essential nature that we are dudesex, and only dudesex. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this condition of oppression absolutely precludes the contingency of a woman’s genuine consent to anything. Therefore it does a disservice to all women if we reserve the concept of coerced sex for its most sensationally violent incarnation.

Get up offa that thing, girls, and see this sex class shit for what it is: a humanitarian crisis.

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Blamer Monika informs me that this ‘male feminist’ Kyle Payne dude links to I Blame the Patriarchy on his male feminist anti-rape blog.

Eeww. I need a hot shower.

Who is Kyle Payne?

An Iowa blogger who claimed to use activism and education to promote “a more just and life-affirming culture of sexuality” for women, especially those women who have been victims of sexual violence, has pleaded guilty to photographing and filming a college student’s breasts without her consent. [cite: Iowa Independent]

While she was unconscious.

Oh those zany dude “feminists” and their heartfelt concern for women’s “culture of sexuality.” Culture of sexuality my ass. They’re blind, bloodless, oozy invertebrates who live in soggy logs. Girls in alcoholic comas make the little fellers sick with excitement. Unconscious receptacle? Plenty of time to whip out the video equipment before writing an anti-rape blog post.

Sexploitation — on a semi-related note — is also irresistible to Oprah. It will gross you out to learn that a current (August 2008) issue of Oprah Magazine fell into my possession this afternoon. On the cover it says “YOU are an EXCELLENT WOMAN! How to finally let that message seep into your bones”. I opened the magazine and read the following letter to the sex advice columnist:

My husband is an affectionate man but only interested in sex if I dress up in lingerie and heels. I was a confident woman, but this is taking a toll on my self-esteem. He says he can’t help it — he’s visually stimulated. Any advice? — Joy in Utah

Twisty’s advice to Joy in Utah: “Great Scott, you excellent woman. Dump the misogynist porn addict with all speed.”

Oprah’s sex advice columnist, a chump named Cindy Chupak, appears to believe that being an Excellent Woman means defining your sexual self exclusively in terms of your service to male fantasy. She tells Joy in Utah to suck it up. “The man wants his sexy wife in some sexy clothes. Is that too much to ask?” Chupak counsels poor pornified Joy in Utah to be “thrilled” that her exploiter only wants lingerie and heels. Having to wear the minor sexbot drag he requires is apparently way less “offensive” than dating a “plushophile” or someone who is “sexually aroused by insects crawling on parts of the body.” Joy in Utah, concludes old Cindy (after titillating her readers with a few more examples of dudely kinkiness from Wikipedia’s perv list), should “work with [the pornulating asshole’s] limitations and celebrate her power to turn him on.”

When porn apologists “celebrate” women’s “power,” it’s like saying “war is love” or “Cool Whip is real.” The power to get men off. Yo, quaver before its terrible compulsory awesomeness.

Jesus Huckleberry Christ.

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Unrelated bucolic photo of the day: my boyfriend Stanley on horse-shoeing day. He doesn’t grow any heel on his left fore. It’s so problematic!

Great Scott! Canada has handed out a big gold loving cup to a dude abortion rights activist! That’s right. Dr Henry Morgentaler, pioneer abortion provider, gallops home with an Order of Canada, the government’s top civilian award. As the Guardian’s Heather McRobie points out, this is a big deal; imagine the extent to which your mind would be blown if either the US or the UK even dreamed of officially admitting that women’s abortion rights is a human rights issue, much less publicly announced that a dude who provides abortions ought to be regarded as a national hero.

McRobie does not neglect to mention what we’re all thinking, which is that although Morgentaler has no doubt done his bit for the cause, it’s funky that, you know, a dude should win such a big prize for feminist pursuits. But it turns out that this little hitch isn’t problematic for McRobie, who opines that it is “courageous to commend a man for fighting for women’s rights,” because doing so somehow demonstrates that women’s rights are human rights.

You know, because if they gave the big award to a woman, nobody would notice.

I dunno, man. I think it demonstrates that women’s rights are still officially the purview of men. I mean, sure, yay for dudes who provide abortions in the face of antifeminist terrorism, and yay for governments that acknowledge the legitimacy of pro-choiceism, but come on. Bestowing the Order of Canada on a pro-choice man isn’t “courageous,” it’s patronizing, paternalistic, and predictable. The human status of women will always be in question as long as it remains a foregone conclusion that dudes will mete it out, take the bows, or take it away.

Incidentally, if I read any comments containing the words “baby steps” I’m gonna blow a wheel.

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Stanley eating hay: my Number 1 Jam.

Nobody asked, but this is what I spend 9 hours a day looking at these days. Even if you don’t give a corn tortilla for hot bay horses with four white socks, you can see how looking at Stanley is more excellent than watching Dude TV, or reading blogs that say “Barack Obama thinks it’s perfectly reasonable to cede control of women’s internal organs to the state”.

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Shall I rip my own mentally distressed head off now, or wait until after the election?

Barack Obama waxed not-so-poetic about late term abortion, the federal abortion ban and the validity of mental health exceptions in said ban to the Christian magazine Relevant last week, telling the interviewer that states should have the right to restrict or ban late term abortions. And Obama made no bones about the fact that, as he sees it, “mental distress” should not qualify as a threat to “the health of the mother”. [cite: Huffington Post].

Human rights abuses will continue unchecked until people, including trendy, with-it people, quit sentimentalizing, religiousizing, and politicizing reprofuckingduction. What’s it gonna take? A woman is a human being, whether her body has been colonized by a parasitic human growth or not. I mean, fuck.

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Nobody knows why, but from time to time there wells up from deep within veteran blamer rootlesscosmo’s beneficient magma the urge to share with me the unexpected poetical fillip of eerie, plaintive pleasantness. Perhaps he has surmised that there’s more to a spinster aunt than a blog, a couple of nieces, and a bagful of “THIS DEGRADES WOMEN” stickers.

In fact, rootless has discovered an entire yodel blog. Korean yodel. Malaysian yodel. Obstreperal yodel.

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As is always the case when I forget I have a blog, I’ve been getting emails from concerned blamers who have gotten it into their heads that the reason I’m not posting regularly is that I have been out sick with cancer again. I am sincerely moved by your interest in my tumors, but the truth behind my absenteeism is nothing nearly so dramatic as impending doom. I have merely been farting around in the boondocks with my horse Stanley.

Regular readers will recall that last fall, after a 30-year hiatus from equestrianity, I acquired a giant 7-year-old quarter horse gelding named Stanley. Since then I have been more or less transfixed by Stanley’s magnificence. He is hot stuff. Stingray alludes to him as my “boyfriend.” I would rather hang around watching Stanley eat hay than do anything else.

Just call me Ahlivah.

In fact, the excellence of Stanley, and by extension the excellence of the bucolic life in general, is so riveting that when I am Stanleying I find it almost impossible to even remember that there is a patriarchy to blame. Thinking up sarcastic things to say about human rights crises pales in comparison to shoveling manure. To discussing the sugar content of forage with the barn manager. To whittlin’.

These simple pursuits have worked wonders on my post-chemo physique, I might add. For the first time since my 247 cancer surgeries, assorted radioactions, and poisonings, I have biceps. Their names are Thelma and Louise. They will fuck you up.

I fully expect that once I sufficiently re-acclimate to the rustic schedge I will be able to resume my duties as That Internet Feminist With the Delightful Demeanor full-time. Meanwhile, it’s not like I’m not making subconscious notes, you know, while I’m hoisting hay bales. For instance, it won’t surprise you to learn that, although the horse world is populated so overwhelmingly by women you’d think it was a separatist cult, it remains patriarchal to the core. A shocking exposé is in the offing!

In the interim, perhaps you might content yourselves with this photo of one of eight Gulf Coast toads I found living under a water bucket in the barn this morning. My toad-wrangling chops are not what they once were, or the photo would have contained all eight specimens. You know how it is; when you remove a water bucket from a settlement of toads secreted thereunder, their interest in being photographed — which interest was scant at best — instantly evaporates, and they biff off in all directions, hopping mad.

By the way, Green Acres has often been hailed as a mid-century masterpiece of broadcast existentialism. Fuck that. I could never understand why Lisa didn’t just blow off that dweeb Oliver and get back to her penthouse. And what about that Post cereal ad at the end of the YouTube video? Skin crawls.

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You know how spinster aunts love to lounge around on or about the TempurPedic eating Cool Whip and watching TV. Today I saw a series of programs on the E! channel. The E! channel, for those blamers who obstinately decline to monitor world misogyny via American television, consists, even more transparently than most other channels, entirely of antifeminist celebrity idolatry/hatred. Whose dress is ugly, who drove her celebrity man into the arms of another celebrity woman, that mouthy slut Amy Winehouse in rehab, etc.

This morning there was a show called “Soup” where a smirking motherfucker cuts famous people down to size by screening embarrassing video clips of them attacking their fans or being fat.

This was followed by a show starring a young hottt woman named Denise Richards. In this show, a camera crew follows Denise Richards around while she goes about the grueling business of being hottt. What? You’ve never heard of Denise Richards either? I looked her up, and here’s the summary: she was married to and divorced from a couple of other famous people, and appears to be made almost entirely of flowing hair. In today’s episode, Denise explains to her 13-year-old nephew why she did a spread in Playboy and starred in some patriarchy-affirming pornographical films. She did not do it for the money, apparently. No. She did it to prove that a hottt young woman who was married to and divorced from a couple of famous people can still be sexy, dammit. Any 13-year-old boy ought to be able to respect that.

Then there was a show where a camera crew follows Lindsay Lohan’s mother and teen sister around while they go about the grueling business of being related to a famous person with a drug problem. The sister is 14 and is recording a CD in Las Vegas. The skin crawls when the words “Vegas! All right!” squirt like Astroglide from the teenager’s mouth as she plops into a limo. Her entourage tells her what a genius she is and how she’s going to be the next big thing. She has a lot of eyeliner on.

I need not describe the stomach-churning details of the show entitled “The Girls Next Door,” where a camera crew follows around a few of Hugh Hefner’s interchangable 19-year-old blonde bikini “girlfriends” as they go about the grueling business of being prostituted in a brothel built to glorify a famous septuagenarian perv’s exceptional sexploitational success.

What all this programming has in common is the combined fascination/abhorrence that afflicts all modern media characterizations of women. Particularly of women who have bought into the patriarchal myth to the extent that it has rewarded them with the only thing that counts in this world: attention from men with money. It blows the Twisty mind that the subjects of these “reality” shows never seem to get that the whole point is to make them look like morons so their insatiable public can more devoutly despise them. Why this obvious truth universally fails to expose Hollywood as ground-zero for American misogyny I cannot say, but watching Hef protrude his grotesque liverlips at his teenage girls certainly seems to generate a lot of ad revenue from cosmetics corporations who have convinced a nation that female skin can and should “glow.”

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Ha, here’s a guy who thinks that blaming means “blaming.” Ordinarily I wouldn’t mess with fish in a barrel, but I’m sorely pressed for time. I don’t understand a word of this, do you? Do your worst, girls. I swear, I’ll be back soon.

I am an MRA, and learned about your blog from an MRA board, AntiMisandry.com:
http://antimisandry.com/misandry_radical_feminist_message_board-t12052.html?t=12052

One thing that I have come to realize is that blaming really doesn’t give you any power. You may feel justified in your designation of blame, but ultimately you depend upon the validation of others to reinforce your position. As long as you receive such validation, you are well-positioned relative to whoever (or whatever) you’re blaming. But ultimately, without violent force or coercion to enforce your beliefs (as punishment), you are weak and helpless when you feed off of a sense of blame.

It’s far more empowering to blame the victim, that being yourself. Take responsibility for your own choices, and you’ll experience a form of empowerment that external validation never could provide. Blame others (or other things) if you like. But the usefulness of blaming is no different than blaming a sand trap in the desert after you’ve fallen into it. It’s much more useful to prepare oneself to avoid becoming a victim. I suppose you view the law as doing this for you, but I think even then you are at the mercy of collective judgments. Personal responsibility over one’s own happiness and safety is the only true empowerment any one individual can experience — and yes, that is a very brutal reality to accept.

I would be interested in your thoughts.

John Dias

He’s so concerned for my well-being. It’s heartwarming.

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Still not dead, just marooned. This connection is gonna fizzle at any se

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