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.





 

Comments

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

  1. Jim R
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 5:54 pm

    We are normalizing – nay, celebrating – lunacy in our country.

    What will it be like in ten years or so when my daughter is hitting her teens?

    SMH…

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 5:57 pm

    Why is Ashley/Sailor P00n trying to look like Devine or is it Ursula the Sea Hag’s look she is trying to capture?

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 5:58 pm

    What will it be like in ten years or so when my daughter is hitting her teens?

    Answer: Scary

  4. concern00
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 6:08 pm
  5. concern00
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 6:09 pm

  6. Daniel Freeman
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 6:22 pm

    A trend only continues until it provokes its own counter and is ended.

    The premature triumphalism of SJWs, imagining themselves on the “right side of history,” is only matched by how much they are universally loathed by everyone else.

    If we all do our part, then maybe ten years from now self-avowed feminists will be as ostracized as neo-Nazis (or more). The velocity of cultural change is accelerating, and there’s no law that says it has to go in one direction; quite the opposite.

    Nothing is forever, and I am proud to call myself a reactionary.

  7. guinspen
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 6:26 pm

    Looks more like, “Gonna eat all the pancakes.”

  8. Feminist Tumblr: Don’t Even Ask | Living in Anglo-America
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 6:29 pm
  9. Patrick Albanese
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 6:39 pm

    If someone like Amanda Marcotte knows for certain that she will never want a baby, why doesn’t she just get her tubes tied? Then she won’t have to rely on birth control, or consider an abortion.

    Maybe on a subconscious level, the maternal instinct is still gnawing away at her. Maybe that is what she really hates. That she can’t shut it off.

    So she won’t tie her tubes just in case she changes her mind some day.

    It’s really not that hard to prevent pregnancy.

  10. M. Thompson
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:09 pm

    Envy and gluttony, easily.

    Not to mention pride.

  11. Bumr50
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:11 pm

    Pancake = Whatever she sits on.

  12. RS
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:21 pm

    Rather, society’s definition of “normal” is inherently wrong and oppressive.

    What then is the “correct” definition of “normal?” “Normal” is a term rooted in statistics. That is, it is rooted in facts. Society does not “define” “normal.” “Normal” is in the sense that for a given variable there is a range of outcomes. The more/most prevalent outcomes are the “norm,” i.e. “normal.” It’s like saying the speed of light is “inherently wrong and oppressive.”

  13. Robert What?
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:30 pm

    Thank God she has no.plans or desires to become pregnant. That would be a horrible thing to do to some innocent kid.

  14. jakee308
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:35 pm

    Are these women Lesbians and Feminists because they’re fat or are they fat because they’re Lesbians and Feminists?

    Chicken, Egg? Egg, Chicken?

    Didn’t the feds just do a study on this?

  15. mole
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:45 pm

    Thanks for the link to the firestone eulogy.

    It becomes quite apparent that most feminists are revolting against “daddy” and projecting their domestic petty affairs into world shattering events for validation.

    “……“Unless revolution uproots the basic social organization, the biological family—the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled—the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated,” Firestone wrote. She elaborated, with characteristic bluntness: “Pregnancy is barbaric”; childbirth is “like shitting a pumpkin”; and childhood is “a supervised nightmare.” She understood that such statements were unlikely to be welcomed—especially, perhaps, by other women.”……

    Mad as a box of frogs.

    And then the sweet, sweet validation from their own mouths of just how “effective” throwing over social norms has been to make them happy.

    “…..Last fall, as I interviewed New York’s founding radical feminists, the stories of “social defeat” mounted: painful solitude, poverty, infirmity, mental illness, and even homelessness. In a 1998 essay, “The Feminist Time Forgot,” Kate Millett lamented the lengthening list of her sisters who had “disappeared to struggle alone in makeshift oblivion or vanished into asylums and have yet to return to tell the tale,” or who fell into “despairs that could only end in death.” She noted the suicides of Ellen Frankfort, the author of “Vaginal Politics,” and Elizabeth Fisher, the founder of Aphra, the first feminist literary journal. “We haven’t helped each other much,” Millett concluded. We “haven’t been able to build solidly enough to have created community or safety.””……

    If I had a theory that claimed to be quasi-scientific (well Marxist at any rate) and claimed it could make peoples lives better, but actually resulted in a lot of its most devout practitioners going mad/unsuccessful I doubt it would have “studies” offices in universities promoting it.

  16. Wombat_socho
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:45 pm

    Pretty sure some idiot feminist has said exactly that.

  17. MaMcGriz
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:55 pm

    On the other hand, if she were to become (by some means) pregnant, there would be a good possibility it would be a male child, which she would no doubt abort.

    For her, the potential chance to kill a male might be the keeper.

  18. bookish1
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:56 pm

    Brilliant! Great article!

  19. MaMcGriz
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 7:56 pm

    More like ate all the pancakes and drank the syrup.

    That kind of obesity takes ‘work’ to achieve.

  20. Kirby McCain
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:01 pm

    Robotic Gynecology. Isn’t it time?

  21. Saltyron1977
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:02 pm

    To paraphrase Al Bundy, “She’s an activist? Apparently not active enough!”

  22. mole
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:04 pm

    Normal is the result of centuries of trial and error, it wasnt slapped together over a few gin and tonics at the Patriarchy club one evening.

    That we can now afford (yes economics allows weirdness) to have a certain amount of non-normal people expressing themselves doesnt invalidate the norms at all.

  23. RS
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:08 pm

    I noted this quote from Firestone with my emphasis:

    Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that’s how deep it goes they don’t want to know.

    Thus, she acknowledged that her wants and beliefs were ultimately contrary to nature. That is, contrary to facts. This realization, according to her, leads to “despair.” And so we see, at the outset, the proto-radical feminist admits that her wants and beliefs require a restructuring of reality, as that reality actually exists in nature.

    Is it any wonder that so many who proceed down that path find only madness. Firestone predicted it herself, yet people still follow.

  24. Eastwood Ravine
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:09 pm

    Its better to be happy and fat rather than be hateful and fat. She didn’t get the “a good personality goes a long way” memo.

  25. PapayaSF
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:11 pm

    Maybe I missed something, but why would a lesbian be on birth control? For some medical reason, or just in case she gets raped…?

  26. robertstacymccain
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:13 pm

    The force of gravity is 32 feet per second square, until feminists decide otherwise.

  27. Joseph Shmeau
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:14 pm

    BIG GAY HATE MACHINE

    Another case of supposed irony actually stating the truth.

  28. RS
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:24 pm

    The pedant would say, “that’s the rate of acceleration of a body within Earth’s gravitational field, i.e. ‘gravitational acceleration.’ The ‘force of gravity’ varies with the mass of any given body.”

    Fortunately, I am not a pedant. So, this comment thread has that going for it. : )

  29. Eastwood Ravine
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 8:46 pm

    I’m pretty sure we’re looking at all seven.

  30. theoldsargesays
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 9:00 pm

    I can’t see any of ’em, she’s blocking the view.

  31. mole
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 9:05 pm

    And a sponge on a stick for all those hard to reach places

  32. M. Thompson
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 9:06 pm

    And it’s only an average! The gravitational field of Earth is variable.

  33. gvanderleun
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 9:07 pm

    All fat lesbians have a family resemblance to Devine. And if they want to eat the dog shit, that’s fine by me.

  34. MaMcGriz
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 9:17 pm

    eeeeuwwww!!!!!

    You’re right!!!!

  35. Kelly Zat
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 9:23 pm

    Devine would be insulted. He was far more campily fabulous and far less full of shit.

  36. robertstacymccain
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 9:39 pm

    Probably her mother put her on the Pill when she was a teenager. This has become the “smart” thing to do among liberal parents these days.

  37. RKae
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 10:12 pm

    Of course, things don’t right themselves until AFTER hitting bottom, destroying the culture, and then suffering a Dark Age before humanity wakes up with a hangover and says, “What the hell did we do?”

  38. mole
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 10:29 pm

    In her case “How many roast chickens/boiled eggs” in a single sitting.
    Had an old (deceased) mate of mine whos idea of lunch was a whole roast chook, 2 liters of coke and a loaf of bread for lunch. Similar appearance.

  39. Matt_SE
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 10:52 pm

    I’m not sure there’s enough personality for that much fat.

  40. Matt_SE
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 10:54 pm

    Because their emotions are totemic, and they can’t let go.

  41. Matt_SE
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 10:56 pm

    How would she ever know, until one day the baby just dropped out?

  42. LoneSage
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 11:11 pm

    So, a man who was hospitalized for mental illness found Ashley “beautiful and sexy.”

    Hope for her sake the doctor wasn’t a man. Imagine her horror in proving a man can make a correct diagnosis.

  43. RKae
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 11:23 pm

    There’s always the chance that she really doesn’t know where babies come from.

  44. RKae
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 11:24 pm

    Linear time is an illusion.

    They are lesbians, feminists and fat all occurring at the same time.

  45. concern00
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 11:40 pm

    In the absence of good psycho-analysis or institutionalization (which she’s apparently already sampled), where do these mentally ill people turn? Feminism takes responsibility for all of that out of your hands and attempts to dump it at the feet of normal people and they get to vote democrat – the party of the mentally ill and perpetually aggrieved.

  46. Daniel Freeman
    August 2nd, 2015 @ 11:46 pm

    Gravity keeps women down!!!

  47. BozoerRebbe
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:26 am

    When she sits around the house she sits around the house.

  48. BozoerRebbe
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:28 am

    Let us never stop reminding women that men gave them the vote.

  49. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:37 am

    Daniel Freeman, you are an optimist.

    As Galileo once wrote in a letter to Kepler, “…for very great is the number of the stupid”.

  50. DeadMessenger
    August 3rd, 2015 @ 2:42 am

    I wanted to add “wakes up with a hangover, with [*] next to them in bed”, but I couldn’t think of any [*] good enough.

    I tried Satan, Roger Waters, or Bill Clinton, but none of those really seemed to capture the moment.