The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Feminism, Victimhood, Therapy

Posted on | July 6, 2011 | 20 Comments

“To me the piece was a stunning example of journalistic malpractice, the kind that reinforces the public perception that deep down journalists think every story or major news event is somehow really all about them.
“McClelland, who covered Haiti for Mother Jones, has provided us with yet another clichéd, egocentric article about documenting unimaginably terrible things experienced by powerless, broken, poor people who are victimized on a regular basis. But here’s the rub, we get a mere few lines about the pain experienced by a Haitian rape victim named ‘Sybille’ but a long screed about McClelland’s pain, albeit with the provocative spin of needing violent sex to cure her of all that ails her. Sybille’s violent rape feeds McClelland’s need to feel victimized.”
– Marjorie Valbrun, Slate, “Mac McClelland: What’s Happening in Haiti Is Not About You”

“[W]hen other women speak out, our first reason shouldn’t be to punish or criticize our own. . . . When men write about their personal experiences and their observations and their roads to recovery and self-discovery, it’s a great American novel or a shining example of journalistic bravery. When women do it it’s narcissistic and selfish.”
– Jill Filipovic, Feministe, “But sometimes it is about you”

Well, let’s you and her fight, huh? It’s probably not necessary to say that I agree with Valbrun’s criticism of Mac McClelland and despise Filipovic’s girls-gotta-stick-together cheerleading. Implicit in Filipovic’s argument is not merely gynocentric tribalism — where all women must support the criticized woman, merely because she is a woman being criticized — but also feminism’s telltale gesture, an insistence that victimhood is the essence of the female experience.

My own reaction to McClelland’s article (other than sarcastic contempt) was a profound skepticism of her veracity as a reporter, inspired by an instinctive distrust of her dramatic “just-so story.” Rigoberto Menchu, Misha Defonseca, James Frey, “JT LeRoy,” Herman Rosenblat, Greg Mortenson — how many times do people have to see the fake-memoir saga re-enacted before they learn to recognize the aroma of bovine excrement?

We at least know for a fact that McClelland is a reporter who has actually been to Haiti. Surely she didn’t just fake those Port-au-Prince datelines like Jayon Blair filing a West Virginia dateline from his apartment in Brooklyn. And for all we know, her account of curing her psychological trauma through brutal sex is actually true — but I call your attention to the phrase “for all we know,” because so much of it is unverifiable.

Putting aside questions of accuracy, however, we return to ask the key question: Why does Filipovic reflexively defend McClelland? Precisely because McClelland speaks from a perspective of victimhood and, to a feminist ideologue like Filipovic, women’s victimhood is a sacred narrative beyond skeptical scrutiny.

Thou shalt not doubt the victim, saith the Goddess.

Isn’t this commandment why the whole feminist universe prematurely rushed to convict the Duke lacrosse team, because Crystal Mangum’s victimhood was so unquestionable?

This veneration of victimhood is deeply rooted in feminism’s history, going back to when Betty Friedan invoked the Holocaust to describe suburban housewives as helpless inmates of a “comfortable concentration camp.” Feminism’s insistence on the unquestionable nature of the victim’s tale — the subjectivity of personal truth – can be traced back to the “consciousness raising” discussion groups that sprang up during the Women’s Liberation movement of the late 1960s and ’70s.

Yet the whole notion that sharing stories of personal trauma has therapeutic value does not originate with feminism. Rather it is a dumbed-down relic of Freudian psychoanalysis. It’s the couch trip, where telling a shrink about your problems and feelings and dreams was supposed to cure all those neuroses, syndromes and complexes which the fin-de-siecle Viennese doctor claimed to diagnose with such clinical certainty. Feminists hate Freud (his accusation of “penis envy” especially made him an early target of their wrath) and yet they seem to have uncritically accepted many of his therapeutic concepts.

The victim is a mental-health patient, who must be supported uncritically as she discusses her experiences and her feelings, because only by discussing her experiences and her feelings can she achieve wellness. Note the language Filipovic employs in talking about McClelland: “psychologically overwhelmed,” “traumatized,” “mental health,” “networks and support systems,” “self-care.”

We cannot criticize McClelland’s article as journalism or any sort of literature, because it is neither. It is therapy.

And the amazing thing is that, rather than having to pay a shrink to listen to her traumatic tale, McClelland is paid to tell it.

Nice work, if you can get it.


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Category: Feminism

Comments

  • Joe

    My initial reaction was the story was mostly bullshit, mixed with a big bucket of sloppy narcissism. 

    Not my idea of a tasty cocktail. 

  • Joe

    So the reporter channels the victim so well, that she starts suffering PTSD and has to self remedy with rape role play?  Don’t they teach you this is a bad idea in journalism school? 

    Rigoberto Menchu, Misha Defonseca, James Frey, “JT LeRoy,” Herman Rosenblat, Greg Mortenson — how many times do people have to see the fake-memoir saga re-enacted before they learn to recognize the aroma of bovine excrement?

    You forgot Stephen Glass and Scott Beauchamp!  Andrew Sullivan had the Glass think happen on his watch and of course Beauchamp’s deal was while Franklin Foer was in charge. 

  • Norman Invasion

    McClelland is a typical feminist, in that she perpetuates the stereotype that feminists, if they were being honest, really want to get roughed up a bit and then screwed good and hard.  I’m oh so shocked that her little non-cookie-baking friends are too dense to even notice the coincidence.

  • DaveO

    I’m inclined to agree with Joe: something in the milk ain’t clean. I know the latest (and oldest) techniques for having a patient address his or her PTSD is face the trigger event in that moment (or through a recreated that-moment), but this seems to be more than a little out there. Out there enough to be a work of fiction, at a minimum.

    Pulitzer Prize? Or Nobel Prize for Journalism?

  • Anonymous

    RSM wrote, “We cannot criticize McClelland’s article as journalism or any sort of literature, because it is neither. It is therapy.”

    Some teachers/therapists believe that writing can be therapeutic, not just a means of communicating to an audience. They call it ”writing for wellbeing.” 

    Inasmuch as such exercises actually enhance “wellness,” all power to ‘em. But please don’t expect me to read those blatherings – not unless I’ll get paid $100/hr just like a therapist.

  • Anamika

    Reading what you wrote here brings the ego’s need to respond.

    I see the whole thing differently than you, and the others who have responded here.

    The whole thing reeks of victimhood…perhaps not in the present sense, but that of past tense. Do you really believe for one moment, that the roles of dominatrix and submissive partner things, are not based in some sort of abuse somewhere or at sometime in one’s life? It’s not something that just appears overnight, or some fantasy out of the wild blue….The fantasy appears from a need of some kind. Domination is a role that one craves, needs or desires to achieve a certain effect or emotional fullfillment. Not much difference than any other addiction.

    I base my understanding of this on real time people I have known, and through their own stories of why and how this came to be in their lives. Each one suffered abuse, be it physical, emotional or sexual. Not saying that role playing once in awhile won’t include this experience, but those who have the driving desire or addiction for it, suffers from deep emotional pain. 

    And some who like to be dominated, are total controllers and manipulators in their daily lives. Submissives know they are in control or they wouldn’t partake. But what happens when they lose the control they thought they had, and the other doesn’t listen? I would suggest running as far away as possible and hiding.

    The world is full of other people who enable suffering to continue, and this is just one of those ways. I haven’t heard of these acts being used as a therapy, or in conjunction with therapy. And so called “therapeutic cure” isn’t going to happen through being dominated or ball bashing.

    And I have to see a male victim hanging about with his sexuality being tossed about in string bikinis and beating of the chests with Tarzan jungle calls.

    But I could be wrong.

  • JanetC

    I think this has less to do with McClelland being a feminist and more with her being batsh!t crazy. Just my opinion as a woman..l.

  • Anonymous

    . . . less to do with McClelland being a feminist and more with her being batsh!t crazy . . .

    You’re saying “feminist” and “batshit crazy” are not synonyms?

  • Anamika

    Well, anyway, don’t drag this “anti-feminist” screed on an on an on any longer or those Pink Lady Goddesses are going to kick your beat, dog-like ass.

    If you think it’s just their usual, feminist, sex-starved BODIES calling out for OVERWHELMING stimulation, that would be true in your dream interpretations, dude!

    Hey RSM, just cause you’re not the one supplying, doesn’t mean we’re not getting!

  • Joe

    Anamika, were you the gimp in Pulp Fiction? 

  • Anonymous

    Stacy, I know I’m repeating myself, but I don’t think it’s possible to overemphasize:

    Yeah, but what ought to scare you is that if she had taken this to
    either the cops or HR and filed rape / harassment charges. as opposed to
    writing a confession in some rag, some poor schlub who never dreamed he
    needed a 24/7 alibi around her would be waving goodbye to his ability
    to work and probably hello to jail, because “women never lie about
    rape!”

    Bullshit.

    If you are a straight male, you need to
    assume you need a 24/7 alibi. If you are a straight male serving on a
    jury, you need to assume reasonable doubt in any case where there is no
    unambiguous physical evidence (which is about 75% of them).

  • JanetC

    They’re synonyms the way you define the word feminist, but not the way I define the word. One can easily find examples of craziness from people of all ranges of ideology.

  • Anonymous

    Dungbat.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Now it all makes sense, Joe — thank you.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere
  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    It’s not that all people who are batshit crazy are Feminists; it’s just that all Feminists are batshit crazy.

  • Pingback: The Five Most Dangerous Countries For Women « The Rhetorican

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere
  • http://thatmrgguy.wordpress.com/ Mike

    Or one of those stories sent to the Penthouse Forum magazine…not that I know anything about that. ;)

  • Anonymous

    We have raised a generation so insulated from any actual life experiences of their own not carefully fitted to their cocooned lives that they are desperate for anything that will make their own shallow existences more “authentic” or “significant”.  But rather than step out of their cocoons, they seize on the experiences of others more daring or less fortunate and try to associate themselves with their experiences in any way they can short of actually doing something in their lives.

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