Friday, January 23, 2015

Ask yourself: Is this really feminism?


Everyone and their pornsick uncle claims to be a feminist these days. However, many people claiming to be feminists are merely woman-haters in disguise, who spend a good deal of their time engaging in brazen reversals (an old trick of patriarchy) - such as denouncing actual feminists as fake or bad or evil (see: TERF and/or SWERF.)

So whenever you are reading an article by someone who claims to be a feminist, I suggest asking yourself if it rests on any of these 10 anti-feminist premises:

1. Ova-producing people are not entitled to a name for ourselves.

Feminism is the fight for women's liberation. Women are female humans, and we are oppressed because men wish to control our female bodies. How do you liberate a group if you cannot name that group nor describe the root of their oppression? More discussion here - I'm not retreading this absurd, infuriating ground.

2. If we dare name the biological processes specific to ova-producing people, ova-producing people are somehow necessarily reduced to and enslaved by those processes.

Also known as the "acknowledging the biological category of women is determinist/essentialist" fallacy. Whether you let us name our physical reality or not, it still exists. And guess what, there's nothing shameful about it. Women as a biological class have the ability to make other humans. Men don't. Get over it.

3. There is any such thing as ladybrain.



This is TRANSPARENTLY sexist pseudoscience meant to reinforce the naturalization of male dominance. Fuck off with it.

4. Ova-producing people must never exclude sperm-producing people.

I mean, seriously? I know it's scary - allowing women to talk to each other with no male overseer is the first step towards women figuring out how to live without constantly seeking male approval - but once again, you're gonna have to get over it. Because: Numbers 5 and 6.

5. Sperm-producing people are entitled to emotional caretaking by ova-producing people.

Nope. We are not the mommies of the entire world. Grow up.

6. Sperm-producing people need and are entitled to orgasms facilitated by ova-producing people. Corollary: "real/good" feminists not only refuse to name the penis as the locus of male privilege, they are absolutely *gagging* to facilitate penile orgasm.

Nope. Men will not die if left on their own to masturbate. And feminism is not #fuckabilitypolitics. Once again, grow up.

7. If ova-producing people do not comply with the desires of sperm-producing people, sperm-producing people are bound to respond with violence, for which the non-compliant ova-producing people are responsible.

Also known as the "porn/prostitution save lives" crowd. Also known as the "men only attack transwomen because women say penis is male" crowd. Also known as Elliot Rodger.

Men are capable of growing up and acting like decent human beings. And men are responsible for their own actions. Stop blaming us uppity women for shit men do.

8. The choices of ova-producing people are free and unconstrained by intimate lifelong oppressive socialization and the ever-present threat of (physical, economic & psychic) violence.

After a lifetime of being groomed to worship and fear cock, women then have the "agency" to objectify themselves for money? Fuck all the way off.

9. Ova-producing people who conform to the feminine gender role -A ROLE OF SUBSERVIENCE- must be doing so out of an innate identification with subservience. And to do so is a privilege.
 
As above: sexist socialization - it's a thing. You might perceive that if you pulled your head out of your ass.

And fuck your "cis privilege" nonsense wankery. Womanhood is not the retreat to blissful childlike dependence males imagine it to be. (Did I mention: GROW UP.)

10. Oppression of ova-producing humans doesn't really count, unless that oppression can be shared by sperm-producing humans.

AKA the common perversion of the solid and necessary theory of intersectionality to mean all oppressions must intersect with penis. Leads to the "white women (meaning-though-hardly-ever-bothering-to-state: straight, financially stable, healthy white women) are the real enemies" gambit.

Sexism - WHICH IS BASED ON SEX, THE CLUE IS IN THE NAME - is an axis of oppression. Either wrap your mind around that, or stop calling yourself a feminist.

Sexist oppression is not erased by any other axis of privilege, anymore than racism, classism, homophobia, ageism or ableism are. (Is the racist vitriol daily hurled at President Obama excusable because he commands the world's largest army and has a private jet at his disposal?)

As Catherine MacKinnon explains, the woman who does not share any axis of oppression with a man is no more definitive of the class "woman" than any other woman - but the way said women are imagined is "a particularly sensitive indicator of the degree to which women, as such, are despised."

Check your "feminist" articles accordingly.