The Other McCain

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

Feminist Tumblr: Don’t Even Ask

Posted on | August 2, 2015 | 93 Comments

 

Ashley is @sailor_P00N on Twitter, where she advertises herself as “BIG GAY HATE MACHINE . . . I’m the feminist Rush warned you about.”

She has piercings in her right nostril and the middle of her upper lip. She shaves the sides of her head, she wears dramatic eye makeup, and she is obese. Her appearance over the years, Ashley says, has been “an exciting adventure.” Oh, did I mention that Ashley is obese? Because she mentions that a lot, the same way she mentions her lesbianism a lot. Of course, she’s got a Tumblr blog and her profile describes her as a “Fat femme lesbian feminist.” More than an attitude, this is an ideology:

So-called “fat-positive feminism” is a movement that “addresses how misogyny and sexism intersect with sizism and anti-fat bias.”

This movement has been analyzed by Women’s Studies professors who invoke “neo-Gramscian theories of hegemony” to explain how “power hierarchies” contribute to the oppression of fat women:

Problematizing the existence of a singular, oppressive beauty standard has been a useful corrective to monochromatic understandings of gender inequality and oppression. However, the emphasis on feminine beauty and the body as a site of individual meaning and empowering play is prone to a naive self?determinism that assumes that women act completely voluntarily, thus minimizing corporate domination and the “normalizing power of cultural images” . . . The persistence of domination in the realm of beauty ideals raises serious questions for our two cases of beauty rebellion, as well as for the cultural turn in beauty analysis. Can resistance to beauty ideals rely on therapeutic, individually focused strategies, or must activists also target the institutions and material structures that support hegemonic beauty standards?

Feminist theory justifies Ashley’s view of her obesity as resistance to the “normalizing power” of “hegemonic beauty standards.” For feminists, obesity is not a personal problem, but a political issue in the same way that feminism, by a sort of theoretical alchemy, transforms lesbianism from an individual erotic preference to a revolutionary challenge. The lesbian feminist sees herself as a freedom fighter against heterosexuality, which is condemned as “the ideology of male supremacy.”

Feminism reframes psychological maladjustment (an individual’s inability to fit into normal adult life) as a critique of society. It is not the individual’s failure to adjust that is the problem, according to feminist theory. Rather, society’s definition of “normal” is inherently wrong and oppressive. Feminism insists that the misfit minority are justified in rejecting “socially constructed” expectations — the gender binary imposed by the heterosexual matrix, in Professor Judith Butler’s jargon — because the normal majority are beneficiaries of oppressive privilege exercised through Foucauldian discourses of power.

Are these ideas crazy? Well, I’ve been accused of ableism for using the word “crazy” to describe feminists who make a point of discussing their mental health problems. Feminists hurl labels like “ableism” at their critics in the same way Stalin’s enemies in the 1930s were accused of being “Trotskyist saboteurs.” Feminism is a non-falsifiable theory. Anything and everything can be cited as proof of women’s wrongful oppression by a male-dominated society. The correlation between feminism and mental illness (remember that Shulamith Firestone was a paranoid schizophrenic) therefore is construed by feminists as proof that (a) male supremacy inflicts psychological harm on women, or (b) psychiatric treatment is one of the mechanisms the patriarchy uses to control women, or (c) both. Whatever explanation she offers, no feminist is ever personally responsible for her own problems, because somewhere there is always a male scapegoat who deserves blame.

Therefore, when Ashley isn’t posting alluring selfies on her Tumblr, she’s on her “pop culture criticism” blog Pussy Goes Grrr, talking about being in a mental hospital for bipolar depression, an experience she interpreted through a feminist perspective:

I guess it was silly of me to think I’d be safe from sexism in the nut house. Beyond the fact that there’s an long history of institutional sexism in mental health facilities themselves, there’s a simple reason why I should’ve known better: men would be there. Men don’t stop participating in sexism or perpetuating microaggressions just because you’re all sick.
The most overt example was the man who told me how beautiful and sexy I was every chance he got. . . . Gross as his aggressive come-ons were, he was the easiest to deal with. His explicitness made it easy to report him to the techs. I felt his wide eyes moving over me even though he stopped speaking to me. I watched him move on to a patient who was more receptive to his grossness. . . . I was relieved that he’d stopped talking to me.
There were other men who were more difficult to deal with.

So, a man who was hospitalized for mental illness found Ashley “beautiful and sexy.” Ashley was released from the psychiatric ward last year, and yet heterosexual males continue to pose a threat to her:

it doesn’t f–king matter how “nicely” or “respectfully” you ask a lesbian out on a date if you’re a dude. it doesn’t matter how much you clearly express that you don’t have any expectations. that. doesn’t. f–king. matter.
because there is a social expectation and pressure for women to accept relationships with men. so even if you are being “nice” and “respectful” you are still creating a potentially coercive situation even if you are not intending to. there is an inherent power imbalance and when you disregard a lesbian’s sexuality (because i don’t care how respectful you are about it, you are still DISREGARDING their sexuality for your own feelings) you are disrespecting their identity and boundaries.
please understand how compulsory heterosexuality works. it’s not like a cold that you get over and suddenly you’re totally sure in your lesbianism. there is constant social pressure for women to include men in their sexuality and when you ask a lesbian out on a date you are an active participant in that. that is not respectful. That is not nice. there’s is literally no way to do such a thing respectfully.

Lesbianism is not a problem, heterosexuality is — that’s the bottom line of feminist gender theory. To invoke the title of a Women’s Studies textbook, Feminism Is Queer. Women like Ashley are under “constant social pressure . . . to include men in their sexuality,” and any male who expresses interest in any female is “creating a potentially coercive situation” because of society’s “compulsory heterosexuality.” A man who is attracted to Ashley is attempting to coerce her, so don’t even ask.

Men must never talk to Ashley, because there is “literally no way to do such a thing respectfully.” Men are “participating in sexism” simply by being heterosexual and they are “perpetuating microaggressions” if they talk to women. This kind of anti-male hostility (a characteric paranoia, “Fear and Loathing of the Penis”) provides the emotional basis of feminism, which is why it is impossible to debate a feminist.

Facts and logic can never refute emotions like hate, fear, envy and self-pity. It does no good to cite indicators of widespread opportunity for women (e.g., females are 57% of U.S. college students) nor to point to the examples of happy, successful women in society, because evidence cannot change the feminist’s feelings of victimhood.

“Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim.”
— Sandra Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (1990)

Her “consciousness” enables the feminist to evade responsibility for the problems in her life. Even to suggest that a woman could be responsible for her own unhappiness is to engage in “victim-blaming,” according to feminists. If a college girl gets so drunk that she doesn’t even remember having sex with a guy she met at a party, and her morning-after remorse leads her to claim she was raped, your skepticism — or even your belief that the accused should be entitled to due process — makes you a “rape denialist,” as feminists at Oberlin College branded Christina Hoff Sommers. (“A rape denialist is someone who denies the prevalence of rape and denies known causes of it,” they explained.) Of course, Dr. Sommers was not actually trying to deny anything. She was pointing out that the actual “prevalence of rape” is far lower than the deliberately exaggerated “1-in-5” statistic promoted by feminists. Making such distinctions, however, is not possible in feminist rhetoric, because totalitarians don’t debate their critics, they silence them.

Feminists are always right, because shut up.

Whether they speak the crypto-Marxist dialectic of Catharine MacKinnon or the postmodern babble of Judith Butler, feminists always seek to “win” the argument by silencing opposition, so that feminism becomes the dominant ideology by asserting its authority as the only ideology. Thus, nothing is true unless feminists say it is true, and no analysis is valid unless it is a feminist analysis. This feminist Catch-22 has the effect not only of invalidating anything said by men (because they are men, and therefore, shut up) but also invalidates anything said by a woman who does not share “feminist consciousness.” Feminism becomes an echo chamber crowded with angry chattering lunatics because the voices of sanity are systematically excluded.

“Fat femme lesbian feminist” Ashley is an example of this principle of epistemic closure by which feminists separate themselves from explanations that do not conform to their ideology. Consider something she wrote six years ago when she was 19 and in college:

So, if it’s not obvious, I am an insanely neurotic individual. The kind of neurotic and paranoid that makes me believe that the wholly illogical is actually going to happen to me. Like oh, a pregnancy, despite the fact that I’m on birth control and haven’t had intercourse and haven’t had any semen anywhere near me. . . .
So, I could talk more about my deeply internalized fears of pregnancy and motherhood, the paralyzing terror I experience when faced with the idea of being pregnant and the ridiculous amount of neurosis involved with this (like how I used to be afraid I was pregnant before I was ever even in a relationship) but instead I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about how this has created a bit of a shift in my art.

Click to see her bizarre 2009 drawing “Motherhood.” This “insanely neurotic” phobia of pregnancy is a continuing theme of Ashley’s work, as in her 2011 cartoon series:

That last cartoon begins, “Loving sex while simultaneously being neurotically terrified of pregnancy seems like a conflict of interest,” and features Ashley’s “impressively long list of reasons why I don’t want kids,” including, “I hate kids,” “I would be a horrible mother,” “I’m emotionally unstable,” and “I have no maternal instincts.”

Which is to say, she’s a feminist.

Antipathy toward pregnancy and motherhood has been a core value of feminism for decades. In her 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone declared flatly, “Pregnancy is barbaric” (p. 180) and described motherhood as “a fundamentally oppressive biological condition” (p. 202). Fat lesbian Ashley has turned her persistent nightmares about pregnancy into artwork, but she is certainly not the only feminist who views her own reproductive anatomy as an existential menace.

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . I don’t want a baby. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 14, 2014

A frenzied horror toward the biological and natural consequences of human sexuality is abnormal. At least fat lesbian Ashley recognizes that she is “an insanely neurotic individual” for feeling that way, whereas Amanda Marcotte has no such self-awareness.

Are there men who find feminists attractive? Yes, and the scary thing is not all of those men are locked up in mental institutions.

P.S.: Ashley wants you to sign up for a contest to win a free vibrator, otherwise known as the “Hitachi Feminist Boyfriend.”

The Sex Trouble project has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

93 Responses to “Feminist Tumblr: Don’t Even Ask”

  1. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:44 am

    “Make pies not war” IS a pretty good slogan , though. I think Hills could win with that in 2016.

  2. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:47 am

    Huh. I hadn’t thought of that, but I bet you’re right. Maybe she’s waiting for a beta “boyfriend” who won’t mind the black widow, eat-your-own-young type.

  3. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:47 am

    [snort]

  4. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:49 am

    It hasn’t been MY friend, I can tell you that.

  5. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:51 am

    Reminds me of a Monty Python sketch, where a baby drops out of one of the cross-dressed Pythons, and he says to another kid, “Get that, would you Deirdre?”

  6. Jason Lee
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 3:49 am

    Prolly some bogus PCOS diagnosis.

  7. robertstacymccain
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 5:21 am

    “… the party of the mentally ill and perpetually aggrieved.”

    Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

  8. robertstacymccain
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 5:30 am

    “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)

    While I’m bogged down in the weird madness of radical feminism, my wife keeps reminding me of this quote. It is very difficult to go down into these dark tunnels to mine this freakish stuff without succumbing to despair. As I keep telling people, pray for me.

  9. RS
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 7:07 am

    BTW, the first photo illustrating this post was enough to prevent me from clicking over to her ostensibly “alluring” selfies. (I don’t think that word “alluring” means what you think it means.) Of course, then I read through the whole thing, only to be confronted by the bathing suit . . . thing.

    Why do you hate your readers, Stacy?

    : )

  10. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 7:53 am

    He hates us because we keep forgetting the 5 most important words in the English language.

  11. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 7:54 am

    Those two pics are bit much to face on a Monday morning.

  12. Finrod Felagund
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 9:08 am

    I think that was the Catholic family in _The Meaning Of Life_.

  13. Jeanette Victoria
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 10:47 am

    The are Feminists because they are so damaged

  14. robertstacymccain
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:03 am

    “… clicking over to her ostensibly ‘alluring’ selfies.”

    Last night on Twitter, Ashley and her friends were going berserk, accusing me of “stalking” her because I quoted what she published. Tumblrinas seem to believe that their domain is a sort of private clubhouse where only members are admitted, rather than a publishing platform that anyone can read. That produces a cult mentality on Feminst Tumblr where critical scrutiny simply does not exist. This is why they freak completely out when they see themselves quoted in a critical context.

    At one point during the Sunday evening meltdown, Ashley denounced me as “creepy” for describing her selfies as “alluring,” and someone had to point out my sarcasm. Of course, the images linked on the phrase “alluring selfies” were intended by Ashley to be “alluring.” She posed in the familiar “Fat Girl Selfie” manner — chin up! — and wearing artful makeup. All selfies are ultimately narcissistic, a form of display that is meant to elicit admiration and praise and, if the person posing is single, one presumes the selfie is an advertisement, a bait intended to solicit romantic attention.

    Naturally, and without really thinking about it, Ashley projects her intention on the viewer, so that the purpose of her display — her “alluring” intent, to attract sexual or romantic interest — is presumed also to explain any attention she gets from any viewer.

    Of course, my only interest is in a typical example of Feminist Tumblr, more than a dozen examples of which I’ve chronicled her, to illustrate the effect of feminism, having elsewhere examined the cause of feminism. It is impossible for a Tumblrina like Ashley to understand why this phenomenon is a journalistic interest, because she is not sufficiently objective about feminism to understand how it influences her.

  15. Dana
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:31 am

    The lovely Miss Marcotte has been sharing a domicile with a gentleman named Marc Faletti for over a decade.

  16. Dana
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:33 am

    It’s for regulating and evening out rough periods, you know!

  17. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:36 am

    How on earth anyone could get a gallon of Coke down is way beyond me. Lay aside I hate Coke, the corn syrup sweetener used in the US wouldn’t just have me wired, it would blow the top of my skull off. Hopefully y’all use sugar in Oz.
    It’s no surprise your old mate is gone.

  18. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:39 am

    That’s 32.1719 ft/sec/sec for us STEM types.
    Yeah, I know. STEM is patriarchally oppressive.

  19. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:39 am

    You’re Lawyer so you can’t be a pedant.

  20. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:40 am

    Hope there wasn’t any coffee behind that.

  21. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:42 am

    Galileo was an optimist.

  22. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:42 am

    If that happened to Satan, he’d be so ashamed he’d just slink and tell God, “Go ahead and send me to the lake. I can’t take this anymore.”

  23. Quartermaster
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:43 am

    Given her obesity her hormones are probably a great mess.

  24. arcadius
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 12:30 pm

    The academic left certainly has a lot to answer for.

  25. arcadius
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 12:32 pm

    Nice mansplaining.

  26. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 1:37 pm

    Would that stop her from getting something on the side? Can’t say for sure, but since we know that she is morally and intellectually challenged, I’d guess that she’d be subject to do anything randomly.

  27. I Art Laughing
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:25 pm

    Robert Calhoun’s term: “Behavioral Sink” is an apt description of this phenomenon. These people are nothing more than increasingly disruptive dropouts.

  28. Andy
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:25 pm

    What a God awful pig ham beast. She is reading this, she is a revolting sow, an totemic obese mentally unstable worthless failure in life, who hides behind fancy language instead of facind her problems. When you are too ugly for a lesbian to consider f@&king you, you know you have problems.

  29. Andy
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:32 pm

    One of them has a ‘BA in Cinema and Media Studies’…………

    Oh good grief.

    And my taxes pay for these people.

  30. RS
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 4:11 pm

    It would be interesting to trace back to the time when being critical, i.e. analyzing, something put forth by another became taboo. In English classes, you began to see a shift in that direction when composition instruction ceased to be about–generally–argumentation but rather emphasized expressive prose, emanating from inside one’s own head. There’s a place for that, of course, but that doesn’t mean what’s in your head is valuable or praiseworthy, just because it’s your opinion or you’re angst-ridden about it.

  31. CaptDMO
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 5:05 pm

    Well, you know, when that “Communications” degree seems just out of reach….and Philosophy, or Economics, are just out of the question….

  32. miklos000rosza
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 5:09 pm

    Divine. I used to watch all those John Waters movies, from PINK LAMINGOS back to MULTIPLE MANIACS.

  33. MaMcGriz
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 6:29 pm

    I think maybe the only thing that would get near that would be a theta male.

    And judging by her weight, she may already have a head start on the process.

    She reminds me of the snake I came across yesterday. It had just eaten a mouse…or maybe even two, and was quite, er, bulgy.

  34. trangbang68
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 10:57 pm

    Although I’m trying, kind-of, not to make fun of leftist freaks, this bag of suet would be low hanging fruit (no pun intended) for mockery, but what’s the point. She’s so deranged that she mocks herself with revolting selfies.

  35. trangbang68
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:00 pm

    I think his name is Marc Castrati.

  36. trangbang68
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:01 pm

    She lives in two zip codes.

  37. trangbang68
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:04 pm

    How about a whole coop full of chickens, 12 dozen eggs, waffles, a side of pig, a potato patch, a case of Ding Dongs, a 16 gallon slurpee, That’s just for starters

  38. Daniel Freeman
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:06 pm

    Is that where people start copying each other without knowing where the behaviors came from? The term sounds familiar, like from the “mouse paradise” where they would only eat with each other in the same room, despite other rooms full of food, because they had never eaten alone.

  39. trangbang68
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:09 pm

    Bro, a little sensitivity here, poor Miss Thing marches to the beat of a different drummer

  40. Daniel Freeman
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 11:41 pm

    But you don’t see them in the mirror every day. Count your blessings.

  41. Gunga
    August 4th, 2015 @ 7:32 am

    Teach your children well.

  42. I Art Laughing
    August 4th, 2015 @ 11:54 am

    Close, aberrant behavior becomes the norm and once it achieves a certain level extinction of the population due to the aberration is inevitable.

  43. FMJRA 2.0: All My Bloggy Friends Have Settled Down : The Other McCain
    August 8th, 2015 @ 9:23 pm

    […] Feminist Tumblr: Don’t Even Ask Living In Anglo-America […]