Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, Amanda had a post up about Feminists For Life (what? No kewl alphanumeric substitutions going on? No Feminists4Life or anything? Meh) and I hate to nit pick, again, on a relatively insignificant point from an otherwise ancient and long forgotten post, but I thought I'd talk a bit about what "internalized" actually means as Amanda doesn't seem to know.
Now I'm not going to start waving dictionary definitions about because I don't care about dictionary defined meanings. I do however care greatly about how words are actually used and more importantly; what it actually means, a distinction that many amateur linguists seem to have trouble grasping for some reason (I blame anonymous fat transexual bloggers personally, STOP BEAMING PORNSTITUTIONAUTS INTO MY BRAIN YOU MIND CONTROL SATTELITE OWNING BASTARDS!).
The important thing to remember about the concept of "internalising" something is that it does actually apply to a love for puppies - as anyone who'd seen Ann "whubwhubwhubwhub" Bartow's infamous documentary (The Pekinese Candidate) in which she outlined how a vicious army of subversive puppies was brainwashing humanity into accepting their vile oppressive rule would know - the key an "internalised" idea is that it is one which we don't think about or examine due to either a process of hyper-conspicuous anonymity (not being able to see the wood for the trees in other words, like the always-on sexualisation of women in media for instance), or because people are so sure htat an idea or concept is Correct and good and true, that htey don't bother actually taking a second look at it all to actually check that it really is, correct and good and true.
A good example of this is the core assumptions of IDers that A) what ever cannot be immediately explained by science (and even then...) is the result of supernatural intervention, B) that it is impossible for scientists test the first assumption so as to actually be able to prove a negative in regard to it, and finally C) that having made room within the theory of evolution into which a god can be poured, said God must be the primary god of the bible.
The third assumption is the most interesting to my mind because the funny thing is that if you actually think about it, there's no real reason why it must be the christian god, and as such the main purpose for most reaserch with regards to ID theory should be an attempt to apply a mytho-biological examination of the known facts regarding biology and evolution and cross referencing it with any and all theological mythologies to, if not acutally figure out, scientifically, which god is driving eovlution, then at the very least to rule out some of them, for instance; are any of the egyption pharoahs or other Gods-On-Earth like Caligula or Alexander the Great resonsible for the evolution of man? Probably not, but you don't know until you actually research such hypothesii, which is how science actually advances - hypothesis + testing of hypothesis to destruction + confirmation or disproving of hypothesis => scientific advancement.
But of course, because IDers have internalised the idea that the christian god is in charge of evolution, they do not bother researching such things as they should if they want to go around calling themselves scientists.
All of which proves that even assumption B (that ID is untestable) is exactly that: An internalised assumption.
That's the nature of internalised memes - it's the invisible thing that people don't bother examining or analysing for validity or importance because they either don't know it's there or don't think they need to because hey! They know what's what.
So when a anti-choicer talks about how they've "internalised" something, what they mean (or if they didn't they should have fucking well said what they actually meant) is that they have accepted what is being told to them as truth on faith that the person they're listening to is correct and therefore they need not apply any sort of logical analysis of their own to the ideas and concepts being shoved down their throat.
And speaking of Internalised Patriarchal concepts! Let's move onto some of the Fun and Games that have been going on over at Twisty's pad recently.
Now certain people of ill repute - mainly because if they're not actual whores then they're cunt-wafters of the worst kind, and if there's one thing this promiscious mofo doesn't approve of it's grade A cunt wafting, nosir, nohow, the america I know is an objectively anti-cunt-wafting America and that's how I'd like it to stay thankyouverymuch - have had their outrage tendrils inflamed by the use of some of the most out and out nasty and unchecked transphobia I've seen in a while, and which went down in one of the threads at IBTP.
This particualr slut has a good run down of some of the more FucKiNG Cuh-RaaaayZEE quotes from the relevent thread.
Now the commenters that imply the existence of a Great Trans Conspiracy to spy on their urinary activities aren't worth my time to debunk really on the principle that even the patriarchy must have better things to do with its time than that, though I must say that I shall be ever worried about crazy ladies spying on me to check my cisgender credentials when ever I dare pee in a women's - which means I'll be peeing in the blue bathrooms even more than usual in future* - pee shyness is one thing, pee paranoia is quite another.
What intrigues me is the internalised patriarchal concepts being repeated and dressed up as some sort of feminist transphobia**, because they seem to consist of what is nothing less than gender essentialism/biological determinism.
Now all feminists are probably familiar with those sorts of arguements, they originiate from the modern evolved form of Ye Olden pseudoscience of eugenics that is erroneously called "evolutionary Psychology" these days, much to the chagrin of actual evolutionary biologists who actually have to worry about things like peer review and evidence based science rather than just spouting technobabble and making up some of the most insanely dull origin myths I've ever heard - how the leopard got its spots would never have been thought up by an evopsycho for instance, if only because it's just too much like science for such people, and when a story involving talking leopards is more plausible than the pathetic just-so stories you're peddling as science, you really need a job you're better at, have you considered work as FDL's PR consultant?
Biological determinism states thusly: Biology is the primary definer of human behavior and psychology - social upbringing has little to no net effect upon a person's nature (because to admit that society somehow affects people's prospects in life is to admit to nothing less than class, racism and other forms of society oppression).
Gender Essentialism then moves on from this by stating that behavior and personality is defined primarily by a person's biological gender - so women are good at ironing because uteruses inspire women towards crisply ironed shirts - and upon seeing a man in a crinkly shirt we are forced by our hormones/multi-hemispherical neural architecture/cunt-lobes to leap upon them, tear off their clothes and iron them thoroughly (the clothes, not the man), therefore women are natural house wives who's cunts are clown cars.
Like ID, both theories exist purely because their champions spend their entire academic careers overturning as many rocks as possible in their constant search for evidence biased towards supporting the theories rather than what most actual scientists do; search for the edges around the theory to see if the entire thing breaks down under scrutiny, or where less serious break downs occur, so that they can improve and find useful applications for their theories and come up with even better theories that allow us to advance the understanding of our universe a fraction further than it was understood previously.
Of course some might say that this anti-scientific methodology might in someway be connected to the overtly political nature of such theories, but such hypothesis are of course hard to prove without the diessection of brains.
but I digress! Let's get back to some of the transblamers and their spouting of patriarchal concepts dressed as feminism...
Lucknkl is the prime offender in this particular thread so let's randombird her for a while.
This is a great comment, I love it to bits personally because it has this sentence at the end;
No thank you, trans boys. I have no desire to return to 19th century thinking.
Now this comment is a reference to mainstream 19th century misogyny, but it just begs the reader to apply it more totally.
The 19th century saw the invention of marxist thinking that would later evolve into feminism after it incubated a while within the horribly bigoted upperclass white woman's movement that is sadly labelled "the suffragette movement" (the fight for female - let alone universal - suffrage went far beyond the patheticly puritanical pasty faced gentleladies that it's ascribed to by the history books, and some (such as myself) would actually prefer that it was noted that true suffrage was only achieved with the civil rights bill when it was no longer legal to be too open about disenfranchising poc voters - which means that suffrage would have been achieved, in part, by the feminist movement that grew out of the huge number of working women that emerged and started fighting for their rights during the post-war "golden age" those conservatives are ironically always clamoring for, rather than those asshole sister fuckers in the ankle length skirts and calvinist bigotries who are mistakenly described as "the suffragettes"), it saw ada lovelace making slight improvements to the contemporary thinking about computational theory that is employed in the machine Luckynkl was typing on - it was the worst of times, and the best of time i.e. it was real, and while some of the atrocities that occured in that cnetury were bad, the century also marked the begining of our modern hopes for freedom - without those embryonic theories and movements we would not be feminists today.
But enough with histrionics! Let's get back to the randombirding!
Of course women aren’t the opposite of a man or castrated men. Transwomen, however, *are* transwomen (not simply either “men” or “women”).
MTF trans are SCAMS. Surgically/Chemically Altered Males. But no matter how you slice and dice them, they’re still male.
What is a man?
Answer: an adult human male.
What is a woman?
Answer: an adult human female
What are male transsexuals?
Answer: Men. They are adult human males.
Okay honey, take a deep breath and listen: Using terms like "adult human male" does not magically make sophistry not-sophistry.
Male transsexuals are not female, never have been female,
Sorry to cut you up midsentence here but; everyone starts off female until men's Y chromosome kicks in and prompts their innies into outies and starts the growth of testicles. yes yes, I know you wouldn't consider embryonic women to be "women", don't worry, I'll be getting to your warped and thoroughly mangled misunderstadings of Marx's theories on social classes in a second, do continue...
and never will be female. So using the term “transwoman” is erroneous terminology. Trans are not women (adult human females) in any sense of the word. Many prefer to use the terminology “She-Male.” Which, altho closer on target, still co-opts that which is not his to own or have and which will forever elude him. He can never be female. He therefore can never be a woman, a transwoman, a mtf, a she, or any other word which covets, co-opts and objectifies those that are of the female sex.
Point the One: Can I just declare a freaking moritorium on radfems using terms they've stolen from bad porn movies? "she-male"? I don't want to know what god aweful stuff you flick off to in your spare time really, so stop sublimating at me ffs, Puh-leeze?
Point the Two: if you say "in any sense of the word", it kinda helps if you're not specifically talking about the radfem conception of "class woman" and tossing all (and I think I really do mean "all" here) other senses of the word "woman" away.
Point the Three: "Objectifies" doesn't mean what you think it means. Please don't try to inform me of what you think it means, please, your abuse of feminist language to justify evil is bad enough already, I prefer ignorance in this particular case, really, like how I prefer ignorance of the awesome and horrible face of our Lady Cthulhu - I really like my sanity.
What hasn’t been brought up yet is that transgenderism is based on 19th century thinking. That’s right. While the bible thumpers would like to turn the clocks back 2,000 years, the trans boys would like to transport us all back to the 1800’s. In the 1800’s, if a woman showed assertion, took charge, had a head for business or figures, or showed any sign of being anything other than a doormat, she was thought to be a transgendered male. Wanna go back to those good old days? Well the trans boys sure do.
Wowsa, where to start... where to start...
First off, the current (western) patriarchy we're dealing with began about 1000 years ago with the rennaisance and eventually the enlightenment - both added to the recognisable methods of trying to totally suppress female sexuality through just so tales (the whole "the snake in the garden of eden was a phallic symbol" thing makes no sense unless penises had legs and wings and could talk, and if my hunch that penises are those things that occur between men's legs then they do not, the eventual religious imagery that came to surround the eden myth which omitted this fact started popping up in bulk during the rennaisance - satanic snakes which looked like penii tempting butt naked women into evil is not, by anyone's stretch of the imagination, an accurate portrayal of biblical canon) about how women weren't naturally sexual and that therefore sex was a satanic/sinful thing that women needed to control - prior to that the control of women was justified by our uncontrollable sexual natures (we were property, but property that had a habit of running away and humping other men, and this was only bad due to property issues between men rather than because women having sex was in and of itself considered bad) the distinction is small, but the importance is that out of the enlightenment's conceptions of sex as a satanic oddness came the modern rape culture because the rise of the big three patriarchal religions (buddhism, islam and christianity) across the world led to the adoption across eurasia and africa of the idea that women didn't want sex, shouldn't want sex, and hence forth needed to be raped (married or otherwise) or else they were whores. before the enlightenment rape was either a case of privelaged individuals abusing their social power (but not on a society wide basis - it was just a few bad apples because women were allowed to say yes occasionally and did so when they ever they felt like it without too much social stigma attached to it - european women of chaucer's time were much more able to have power and be individuals with personal wants outside of the family arena than any time afterwards until the 1970's came round) or it was used as a form of ethnic cleansing like it is currently being used in south west asia, eastern europe and africa (armies raped, men didn't). After and during the enlightenment rape became the socially approved sexual norm rather than an oddity and so it still is to this day - what this all means of course is that the next statement you make, about how women weren't allowed to participate in society is highly erroneous - in fact you have pulled it fresh out of your ass.
Women who strove for success outside of marriage and their family were accused of gender bending only as part of the initial anti-feminist backlash against the emergent feminism of the post-war years - that's the late 40's through to the 60's, though such ideals are still repeated today by rightwingers.
Prior to ww2 however, women who strove were in abundance, Women were exploding all the old stereotypes until the rise of facism occurred across the world, the interwar years saw the mid point of the actual 20th century sexual revolution, when women had sexual partners rather than fiances and platonic boyfriends despite the attempts by the Suffragettes and their facist little Focus-on-the-Family-as-the-highest-calling-for-white-womanhood-aren't-lynchings-fun? tendencies, and that revolution had been going on since the late 19th century, because such social trends do not just appear one day, ex nihilo.
This same 19th century fucked up thinking brought us hysterectomies and the ban on abortion. Surprise, surprise. It was not the godbags that banned abortion. It was the doctor boys. Abortion was not an issue with the godbags. Abortion was acceptable up until “the quickening.” Even in Christianity. “The Quickening” refers to the period when women feel fetal movement. Which occurs about the 5th month.
Okay missy, there are many things you can blame 19th century medicos for (such as abortions, safer child birth practices and, you know, medicine - not least of which was radiation (thanks to marie curie) which is used to treat cancer today), indeed there are an even huger number of things to blame christianity for, but the idea of the "quickening" is old, the ability to feel a feotus kick isn't exactly something they invented in the 19th century and has been picked up by the more misogynistic cultures from time to time as the ultimate point at which humanity begins.
The specific papal (you remember the pope right? Big hater of women? Gets carried around on a chair while other high priests praise his testicles during his coronation yet is totally against homosexuals in the priesthood?) decree that declared that every sperm was sacred but that women weren't occurred... my memory fails me for a second, but it was either the 18th century or the early 19th century - we're talking napoleonic wars and such like, slavery being legal globally rather than just in the middle east and the americas - the specific papal decree, like all papal decress, came after a long period of what was in the papal decree being accepted by the catholic church on an informal basis anyway so again: It wasn't a 19th century thing really.
And that decree had nothing to do with the quickening (though as I believe that's a jewish idea, and yes my anti-semitism sense tingles noticably, though it is prone to false positives now and again) but with the idea that life begins at conception and was a rehashing of the old greek idea that the womb is a fertile soil in which sperm grow into children (which had to be revised every so often because they discovered the existence of ovum every so often - women just bled because god hated us according to that folk wisdom you no doubt adore - yes those midwives were all hardcore tools of the patriarchy as well as the doctors)
It is the 19th century doctor boys that wanted to meddle with sex, conflate gender roles, and take control over female anatomy and reproduction. The patriarchs wrestled control away from mid-wives and replaced women’s natural remedies for healing with the boys’ beloved scapel knives. Got an affliction? Hey, just step right on up here to the veg-e-matic. It slices, it dices, it chops! It continues on with trans.
Okay first off: When they "wrestled control away from mid-wives" what the doctor boys also did was apply germ theory and modern day sterilisation practices to the tools and practices of maternal care, they instigated things like true pre-natal care and set about a process of modernisation that would later lead to the modern day state of child birth - in whcih the pregnancy may be dangerous, the birth itself may be dangerous, but women rarely die-post partum as a result of infection and being given huge quantities of gin as an aneasthetic. No, germ theory is not patriarchal, it's a morally neutral observation of the natural universe and MORE IMPORTANTLY EVEN: It is not spying on you when you pee.
And believe me sister, if I were for some bizarre reason to give birth, anyone who tried to help me with herbal teas and various other sorts of snake oil rather than actual medical knowledge would find herself looking for her teeth and several of her more readily grabbed limbs in a ditch several miles away from where I was giving birth - I've got quite an arm on me you see, two at last count and I'm not afraid to use them.
But do excuse me for getting distracted for a second, the interesting thing you've got there is your intriguing use of the phrase "conflate gender roles".
Now it's not so much what you say there, but the way the context and tone implies that you think there is something wrong with "meddling with sex" or conflating "gender roles" and I'm confused on this point: What's wrong with that again?
That was one of the reasons why when, during that whole bussel blow up I got drawn into ages ago, the idea that Ariel Levy - or any feminist for that matter - might object to butch women just wasn't something that I could readily comprehend. You see I had internalised the idea that conflating and messing around with gender roles - which are all inherently patriarchal, because the idea of "gender roles" are nothing less than a patriarchal myth that is used to define men and women into the cosy little social straight jackets of an oppressive society - was pretty much the whole point of feminism and the LGBTQ community that it is deeply connected to, so if dragkings and queens are bad, I don't really want to be right.
What it appears you're complaining about is that El Padre Diablo has plotted to destroy the very gender roles it created in the first place - which in light of your belief that the main goal of patriarchy is to allow men to spy on you taking a whizz (god only knows what you've got hiding down there, though as the only other thing I've seen defended from spies so well is area 51 I'm just gonna go ahead and assume aliens if that's alright and all) - during the period when those doctors you are bitching at for inventing transgender people through the magic of scalpels (I can only presume that sclapels are made of steroids of some kind on your planet, or that sex-realignment ops consist solely of hacking things off (because the vagina is indistinguishable from a great big axe wound dontchaknow) were most prone to labotomising and applying the new invention of electricity to the genitals of men who displayed homosexual or trans tendencies, and as a result you now fear being raped by trasnwomen and their mighty hyena-like pseudo-penii more than transwomen fear being beaten, killed and raped (not neccesarily in that order) if they're caught in the men's toilet.
Ah. Now you see there's one of the first points in this comment where, even if Twisty was the sort of feminist blogger for whom it was usual or understandable that they might not really bother actively trying to get their commenters to stop flinging around patriarchal concepts and generally acting like huge sexist tools (or is there some sort of commentariat exception written into the radfem articles of using slut-shaming hate speech to defeat patriarchy or something?), any blogger has to get involved because you now have someone actively A) erasing the murders and rapes of women (because GODDAMMIT, there but for a quirk of the chromasomes go any of us and solidarity should never be conditional) and B) advocating that, to placate this little cisgender's sensitive little bladder, transwomen should go into situations where they are far far more likely to be murdered and raped than this silly little girl is.
And that's before we get into the whole issue of a so-called feminists prancing around and whining about their almighty fear of stranger rape.
Ookay for all you folks who didn't get the memo: Stranger rape = really uncommon.
So from there we can then posit that therefore: Stranger rape while you're on the can = really really uncommon, and stranger rape committed by transwoman = really^10 (that's "really" to the power of ten) uncommon.
Again, a member of a commentariat who is renowned for resorting to slut shaming (because when trying to mend a prostitute's ways, the ideal thing to do is call them whores, because that hardly ever happens to them anyway and is known to work) at the slightest hint of someone doing something in a "patriarchal" fashion is repeating the stranger rape myth - and twisty is declaring aloof amusement, because apparently IBTP is just a self-propelled disturbance in the space time that she has no control or interest in.
Except IBTP has more of an "anti-monlith" type feel to it, a human being touches it and *POOF* A monkey of ignorance comes away, dazed and confused and with a sudden urge to fling feaces at someone lower down the societal totem pole than they. One can only surmise that the fourth wall breaking use of pop cultural references in most modern media eventually just ripped a hole in the fabric of space and time into a whole other world of stupid somewhere out there.
Which seems like as good a way as any to segue onto the many many things said that weren't just stupid, ignorant or malignly bigoted and moved into the wonderful world of hate speech.
Let's now pluck Heart from the heaving masses of that thread and put her in the spotlight for she has this to say about hate speech:
Re, hate speech. I don’t use the words “tranny” or “trannies” or similar words, and I think it’s wrong to lump marginalized people together and stereotype them any time, call them names, and so on. I think it’s also wrong-headed for marginalized people to stereotype, lump and call other marginalized people names, no matter who is doing it, whether it’s radfems calling transwomen names or transwomen calling radfems names. I would not allow this on my own blog, which this isn’t, and radfems are not some kind of borg, we do things differently. Having said that, I can only wish that the soapbox-mounters who are so very, very righteously indignant about the hate speech here, so-called, and their supporters, would evidence half as much interest in a defense of girls and women who are targeted for hate speech, brutality, murder, rape, incest, who are prostituted, trafficked for sex, beaten by men if they don’t go to the back of the bus, cut up by their “boyfriends” and stewed on the stove, raped, brutalized and burned up by soldiers, dragged a mile to their death by their “boyfriend,” and so on, as there is in calling radical feminists “bigots.” I wish I could see some attention drawn to *these particular events and issues* on far, far more of the soapbox-mounters blogs. Really, I’ve just had it with that shit (not addressing anybody right now, talking generically, there’s just too much of that going on.)
Now what's mostestly lovely is that, well yes she's certainly concern trolling (which is where the writer works to try and shut down criticism of what ever they're defending by denouncing what ever they're defending and then telling people why what ever they just denounced is infact not at all important and therefore doesn't really need to be denounced (because it's not really important like oppressed muslims women or taiwanese brides or whatever the Othered Object IS this week), but the definition of hate speech is really quite delicious as well.
Note the specific mention of "words" there as the examples of hate speech in the thread, which of course naturally pales into insignificance when compared to the horror aimed at women everyday their male partners (not stranger rape of course, because that hardly ever happens - thank god the confems at IBTP slapped LuckyNKL down for perpetuating the ubiquitous stranger rape myth, isn't it good that they care so?).
But Wait! When she talks about "girls and women" who are victimised by society...
Which is the slight trouble you have when you have one group of people who deny transwomen their right to humanity, who are trying to concern troll people who consider transwomen women by pointing out that "women" are "also" victimised...
Because you can't really talk about how one group is ignoring the oppression of patriarchy defined womanhood by noting (*smites forehead*) the patriarchal oppression of transwomen, when the group you're talking to defines transwomen according to their own self definition - which places them squarely within the prenumbra of "women" who are killed, raped, generally abused and oppressed by their "boyfriends".
Because if transwomen are woman enough for the purpose of feminist solidarity - and make no mistake, they are - that means that you are unable to avoid acknowledging their murders and rapes and abuse if you are serious about actually caring about the abuses of women - because they're women, duh, just like you, but completely different at the same time.
To fall for heart's concern trolling you first have to accept LuckyNKL's primary bit of hate speech - which is that transwomen are by definition men because... well heart doesn't want to go into why that is as far as I can see but I can only assume that she agrees with LuckyNKL that being able to give birth is the prime standard by which womanhood should be judged.
Money quote:
She is saying that no matter how much they identify with the opposite sex, they can never ever be that way or she explains it away as some form of psychological disorder or sickness.
That’s what I’m saying all right, Punko. When a mtf trans can pull a baby out of his ass, come back and talk to me.
Sex has to do with reproduction, Einstein. I’d call men that imagine they are part of the sex that produces eggs and young about as delusional as it gets.
Trans boys identify with a patriarchal construct, which is in and of itself, sick and delusional. Not the female sex. Gosh, what a big surprise for males to be in love with their own constructs! Not!
Yes folks, post-menopausal women, women who've had hysterectomies, ALL are men apparently, no eggs, no womb, no humanity folks, do not pass go, do not collect your personhood.
which is perfect quote with regard to the evopsych nature of it all because look; a so called feminist being unable to tell the difference between sex and gender!
Oh but they don't know what "gender is a patriarchal construct" means either so no harm really.
Okay listen up, gender is a patriarchal construct, but that doesn't mean that identifying with a gender is itself patriarchal.
The problem I see occurring is that people have assumed that the patriarchy invented the behaviors, identities and genitalial arrangements that it later attributed to specific groups - so you ended up with this or that thing, behavior, classed as "masculine" or "feminine" generally.
Now you see the trouble with this patriarchal construction of gender is not the behaviors or genitalial arrangements but rather the idea htat one thing or another is "masculine" or "feminine" - those are social constructs, labels applied, not particularly consistently, to things that in and of themselves existed prior to patriarchy and are not therefore themselves inherently patriarchal.
The problem with gender is the assumptions and extraneous social wossanames attached to those genders - and the things that are not covered by the monochrome gender conceptions which are promptly erased from view by the universal application of those extremely narrow (because the oppressed are supposed to fall off and be forever scrambling to attain True Masculinity/Femininity while failing miserably because the standards aren't consistent and changes everytime you achieve the old standards) standards of gender - and so the actual behavior that has been placed into Category Male or Category Female isn't hte problem, but rather the defining of actions 1 through 3 as "male" and the defining actions 4 through 6 as female - it's the definitions that are the problem you see.
Because once you lose the definitions look what you got: People!
But don't get confused and think that just getting rid of the definitions will get rid of the hatred, oh no, because the hatred is aimed at people, and the definitions are just the way the hatred is focused and aimed.
That's the main reason the whole right wing BS about how feminists should be "humanists", or how the black power movement was "racist" because you know true non-racists don't even acknowledge people's skin color and just pretend that everyone is green and stuff...
Of course the hate is still there, for all their supposed obliviousness to the definitions, but they've now risen above the need for the definitions and become true
Bigothisvattas, saints of wrong action.
Which is getting off the topic of Heart and Luckynkl, because their stuff ain't exactly that stuff.
No their stuff is the bad application of marxist conceptions of "class" that have been applied by radfems to the pre-existent cisgender definition.
Now back in the day some incredibly well intentioned, but still basically daft as a brush, radfem decided that what feminism needed was someone just grabbing a handful of marxist theories surrounding class, and just started throwing those handfuls of theory in the general direction of the patriarchy and labelled the resultant mess a mod art peice they is erroneously call "radical feminism".
what that means, for those who don't have either the time or money to do the book research involved, is that that same dunderheaded radfem, way back in the dawn of time, decided that society could be broken down into two groups: Class Men, who are oppressors, and Class Woman, who are oppressed.
Now somehow we got from there to the MWMF standards of womanhood wihtout anyone saying "Isn't that something of an oversimplification of a much more complex problem?"
Now I have to bring up MWMF, because it puts into context what Heart and Luckynkl are saying, no they're not just some loony fringe... well Lucky is a fringe, and a loon, and believes in a conspiracy of people spying on her peeing habits, but it makes a sort of twisted sense only within the context of the innately transphobic Class Woman theory that is most famously used by MWMF.
Now as I've already stated, the classification of women who are also "Class" women is focused on the oppression of women, in fact it is the oppression by the patriarchy which makes and defines someone as a "woman" (where "woman" equals "Class Woman" of course). I suspect that this idea comes from the early second wavers taking one look at how the other radical progressive groups of the period - the early incarnations of the black panthers and nation of islam and their aborigine counterparts - based their resistance to oppressive systems around an idea of their own group identity, to aid with both solidarity and to reclaim what was stolen from them by the oppressive systems they labored under.
The trouble is that the first feminist feminists were white middle class women, and as the only culture or identity such women have is one that exists implicitly to oppress everyone it can.
But if it worked for those other groups...
Of course unlike those other groups there isn't any actual depth to the society and culture they were trying to draw from - middle class white society - there's just the constant downpressing, when the middle and upper classes go on about capital-C Culture they're talking about methods of exclusion, linguistic and fashionable tiks and fads, manners and civility designed to limit the ability for the unterclasses to rise up, because it's not just a psychological hatred of the poor that drives class warfare but strict economic neccesity - the smaller the aristocracy, the greater the number of serfs that is needed to maintain it's gross acumulation of wealth†, and the more strictly observed is the Culture that is used to exclude the unterclasses from the higher levels of the social strata.
And with that to draw from as a cultural base on which to build "second wave feminism", those early white women had to somehow reconcile the oppression of their culture while at the same time using it as the pusherplate from which they'll use the atomic bombs of theory to propel their movement into the void of... well it turned out ot be the big dark void of idiocy, but they had no way of knowing that before they set off and can't be blamed for that bad start, the fact that that they continued into that void long after they past the sign that read "you are now entering the the big dark void of idiocy, population: you!" (e.g. that weird alliance some radfems took up with the fundies against prostitutes), is somewhat more their fault.
* When it's a question of waiting in line or squatting over one of those trough thingies it's squatting everytime. Once you've lived in a condemned building with no door on the john along with some of your friends for a year or so you stop messing around with pee shyness, and also men's public toilets are always much cleaner than women's for some reason - there's also no confusion over how the hell someone could piss all over the seat in a men's cubicle; I've had to conclude that there does seem to be a rather worrying number of women who have some sort of spray nozzle attached to their urethra for reasons known only to them and upon walking in to a cubicle just turn around, drop their pants and proceed to aim vagueling in the direction of the toilet, after which they leave exactly one pube on the toilet seat, like some sort of hideous toilet garnish.
I, unsurprisingly, blame the patriarchy.
**they don't seem to care that they're transphobic as they consider "transphobia" to be a made up term used by concern trolling MRAs - though who these MRAs are is a mystery to me becuase I've never seen any pulling out transrights to defend misogyny, and considering how many MRAs I've seen in the past few years that means that these must be some as yet unmeasured weakly interacting moronic patriarchs who hang around in secret cabals plotting to spy on my defecation practices when I'm not looking. Though if they do exist Ann bartow will probably turn out to be one, if anyone would be involved in a grand conspiracy to watch people peeing it'd be that fruit - so if nothing else they're consistent in their craziness, which isn't a good hting or anything but it is definately something, and consistently psychotic weirdos are far easier to deal with than wild and inconsistent ones at any rate.
† this may seem counter intuitive, but the only way you can have a small aristocracy is if you have a large proletariat that is in constant conflict with itself for the scraps thrown to it by the system that maintains the aristocracy's social status, bourgious societies with a more socialist bent tend to have much larger aristocracies, larger middle classes, but require a constantly expanding proletariat to support the upper classes before the upper and middle classes' demand for capital outstrips the supply of workers which can be exploited to create that capital, and the whole system just collapses.
‡ Well it's either a tree root or the monster is already infront of the crazy screaming ninny due to the magical handwavium powers all homocidal slasher movie villians have.
Which might have made a better metaphor now that I think about it, but meh, I have to prove my Bumble Beeist credentials somehow, and if mangling a materphor doesn't prove it I don't know what will.
3 comments:
Ah, a big old bucket of head meet desk, that is...
R. Mildred, you rock!!
Awesome, RM. Just awesome.
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