Professor Dee Graham: The Psychologist Who Drove Feminists Crazy

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Remember the radfem blogger who says all heterosexual intercourse (PIV, penis-in-vagina) is rape? Sure you do.

Well, it turns out that her insane theories are secondhand madness, as it were, and one of her main sources of lunacy is a book published 20 years ago by a trio of feminists, the lead author being Dee Graham, a professor of psychology at the University of Cincinnati.

How I discovered this: Wednesday, on a hunch, I rooted around in my bookshelves and found Daphne Patai’s 1998 book Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism. As I say, this was a hunch — hey, if radical feminists are declaring that heterosexuality is a myth and that all women are naturally lesbians, a book called Heterophobia might offer some clues. (Who says men aren’t intuitive, huh?) So, after briefly quoting Patai in a post Thursday, I continued reading and came across this on Page 174:

Dee Graham . . . claims to be able to explain the very existence of heterosexuality in women by invoking what she calls the “Societal Stockholm Syndrome.” In a 1994 book entitled Loving to Survive, Graham expounds her theory in minute detail. As in the famous Stockholm bank-hostage episode in 1973, in which four hostages bonded with their captors and came to see the police as their common enemy, women — so the argument goes — are eternally held hostage  to men. . . . The point of all male behavior is domination . . . Heterosexual behavior thus becomes a “survival strategy” for women, as do “feminine” characteristics, which result from women’s need to ingratiate themselves with their “captors.” . . .
Graham’s thesis makes it impossible to distinguish in a meaningful way between situations of genuine abuse and the ordinary life of heterosexual women. And that is precisely the point. Men are women’s captors. Women are men’s hostages. Heterosexuality is the form of their subjugation.

Bizarre as it may seem, Graham’s theory has been widely embraced by feminists, and is cited by the radfem at Radical Wind:

In other words, the strategy is to program us to respond to men’s violence through dissociation and trauma-bonding, and cloak/rename these responses as “love” or “attraction” to men — so on the top of it they make us believe we want it.
Let’s recall what trauma-bonding is: if we look at Dee Graham’s work (p.4,Loving to Survive), for a woman to trauma-bond to a man:

  1. she must perceive her captor — the man — as having powers of life and death over her
  2. she must believe that she cannot escape, and that therefore her life depends on her captor
  3. she must be isolated from outsiders so that his perspective is the only perspective available
  4. she must feel as if her captor — the man — showed her some kindness or attention.

This situation of captor-to-hostage is the situation of all women to all men. (This is also the point that D.G. makes in her book). That is, all men hold all women captive. All women are prisoners and hostages to men’s world. Men’s world is like a vast prison or concentration camp for women. This isn’t a metaphor, it’s reality. Each man is a threat. We can’t escape men. We are forced to depend on men and male infrastructures for our survival. Men’s perspective (and men’s language that names their perspective) is the only perspective available and we are isolated from other women and woman-centered perspectives.

And the radfem blogger concludes:

[H]eterosexuality doesn’t exist and our “urges” to bond with [men] emotionally or sexually aren’t natural drives but normal PTSD reactions to years of abuse and mind-programming.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: Lesbian separatism as the only alternative to being captive to male violence — “Each man is a threat”! — an idea directly derived from a single book published 20 years ago that you probably never heard of, but which has been far more influential than anything published by Graham’s critics.

This intellectual theory is so easily refuted by common sense that it almost seems a waste of time to do so.

Two words: Voluntary cooperation.

For the vast majority of human history, and still for many millions of people today, simply surviving required voluntary cooperation between members of families, tribes and communities. My own grandparents, Alabama farmers, had to work sun-up to sundown six days a week merely to have the basics of life. It is only under conditions of widespread affluence that anyone would have the inclination — or the luxury of spare time — to look at male-female relationships and accuse men of exercising domination through violence against women, or to imagine that the pair-bonding of husbands and wives was the result of “PTSD reactions to years of abuse and mind-programming.”

To quote Orwell: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

 

83 comments

  2. it’s interesting that for these Radfems, it would appear the current state of affairs just sprang up fully formed, yet the RFs demonstrate no curiosity about the “how” or “why” it developed. (I assume they believe the first several chapters of Genesis are part of the Patriarchy’s nefarious plot.) The Oppression of the Patriarchy and “trauma bonding” are taken as a given which need no evidence in support. Indeed, Ms. Wind makes the following remark in one of her posts:

    And I’m not providing any evidence that men are our oppressors here, because that goes without saying. [Evidence being soooooo oppressive . . .–Ed.] [Link]

    One would think that knowing the “how” and “why” would be important to these types, if for no other reason than the answer to those questions could facilitate changing the status quo. I think we all know the reason for this lack of curiosity: It’s much easier to bitch about being a victim than it is to get up off your ass and fix a problem.

  4. Many astronomers in the past began with the church’s position that the earth was the center of the universe and proceeded to explain planetary motion. Convincing arguments were made but they were wrong. Graham begins with a conclusion that she desires to be true that lesbianism is the natural state of womanhood. However, she is simply wrong. An objective observer of human and animal behavior could not arrive at the conclusion that women are naturally gay. Freud has largely been discredited because he wasn’t working with normal minds.

    Ladies, it’s Valentines Day and I love you. And should any man out there screw it up today he’ll find out who the real oppressor is.

  5. I’ll oppress my girlfriend by making pork chops and baked potatoes tonight. Then, I’ll play with her cat, because they both deserve attention, and the furball needs to be out of the kitchen when it’s time to do the dishes.

    Being a heteofascist oppressor is AWESOME when you’re oppressing the willing! 😉

  7. It is only under conditions of widespread affluence tha anyone would
    have the inclination — or the luxury of spare time — to look at
    male-female relationships and accuse men of exercising domination
    through violence against women, or to imagine that the pair-bonding of
    husbands and wives was the result of “PTSD reactions to years of abuse
    and mind-programming.”

    If you put any sized group of these “RadFems” on a deserted island where they had to work in cooperation with each other just to survive, let alone have the time to indulge in their so-called intellectual activities, they would resort to brutal oppression and cannibalism within a few weeks. At the outside. “Lord Of The Flies” would pale in comparison.

  9. Hahaha Dworkin. I remember her now. I remember seeing a picture of her once and thinking, “Man, Ronny James Dio really let himself go!”

  10. “[H]eterosexuality doesn’t exist and our “urges” to bond with [men]
    emotionally or sexually aren’t natural drives but normal PTSD reactions
    to years of abuse and mind-programming.”

    So do femenists study nature at all or just listen to the crazy voices in thier heads….

    aww who am I kidding!

  13. Personally I need a daily reminder, possibly an up to the minute stock exchange style ticker, to tell me what leftist think I should believe about human sexuality.

  16. WTF? Do these RadFem idiots realize there needs to be some PIV action on the part of us “breeders” so they can have children for said RadFems to do their worst? I don’t think humanity has figured out human cloning or asexual reproduction yet.

    I know, I know, I need to stop making sense, but mein Gott in Himmel!

  17. The neat thing about this theory for feminists is that they don’t have to listen to women who might disagree with them because they are OBVIOUSLY suffering from exactly the mental disorder they’te talking about and therefore not competent.

  18. Just wait until someone tells them why they call it the “birds and the bees.” I imagine them reading about evolution and shouting for us to come and see the violence inherent in the system. #heteroevolutionary

  20. These broads are indicative of the degradation of higher education – where ludicrous intellectualizing replaces teaching and scholarship. Her writings should be the occasion for the trustees to shut down her department and discharge its faculty, but it has little significance outside that. She will not persuade one student who is not already messed up.

    The lesbian population is quite circumscribed in its dimensions and poses a problem only of secondary or tertiary significance.

    The salient problem can be found in mass entertainment, in women’s magazines, and in the table talk of ordinary women. That in turn has its expression in the wretched dyad men and women form these days, which is beneficial to men of a certain corrupt disposition but injurious to everyone else.

    The education of girls needs to include vigorous and unrelenting drill whereby they do not come of age with a truncated sense of personal agency, or addled by self-centeredness and narcissism, or disfigured by borderline tendencies. They also need to be taught that husbands and fathers should not be regarded as pets, ATM machines, or employees. They need to taught as well that promises are promises.

  24. As I’ve said previously on these threads, the problem is that Progressives, steeped in the Oppressor/Victim meta-narrative, view every human relationship as zero-sum. If I’m happy, you are sad, and it’s because I took something from you. Therefore the scales must be balanced. Thus is every relationship turned into an accounting ledger of debits and credits. No wonder people are unhappy.

    This is especially true with younger women who are exposed to Feminist ideology, even in some of its less malignant forms, which you point out in your last two paragraphs. That attitude toward relationships has reached its fully metastasized, Stage IV endgame in Ms. Wind’s ludicrous musings.

  26. Our esteemed host wrote:

    For the vast majority of human history, and still for many millions of people today, simply surviving required voluntary cooperation between members of families, tribes and communities.

    And, of course, there’s that big voluntary cooperation thing required if the species is going to survive. 🙂

    But remember Bitchwind’s heterosexual experience: she was seduced by a 30-something man when she was 15 or so, and then she was devastated that the only times he called were when he wanted to get laid, at which points, she showed up! If she doesn’t adopt this cockamamie theory, then she was complicit in, she was responsible for, her own stupid choices.

    It’s kind of a lose/lose situation: if she doesn’t adopt this notion, then she’s stupid, but if she does adopt it, she’s still stupid. 🙂

  27. Let’s suppose that did happen, but those oh-so-wise islanders recognized that males were needed for reproduction. So, they capture Stacey Stacy and His Wombatness, use them mercilessly to impregnate the chosen women — and clean out the gutters in their spare time — and then slaughter them once the primary tasks were verified to have been accomplished.

    Since half of the children born of such copulations would be male, would they try to rear them to be the nice, metrosexual, girly-men they think males should be, or just cast them into the volcano?

  28. Being the designated “Victim” means never having to say you’re sorry.

    Of course, that means that in addition to fighting the Patriarchy, you must struggle with those, nominally of your own kind, who attempt to raise themselves to the apex of the Victim pyramid. Nothing is more amusing than watching “lesbians of color” having an online tiff about “white privilege” with their Caucasian “sisters.” Or, to watch the acrimony toward those who’ve put their socialization money where their penis is/was and become “women.” How quickly does philosophical consistency vanish in the presence of men purporting to be women, er “womyn.”

  29. She’s a crackpot. In her twisted head you develop PTSD as a consequence of being born. What’s even worse is that she trivializes women who have actually suffered real mental trauma resulting in PTSD. If you read her blog, she then goes on to dismiss people who make that claim and say:

    “To be a rape victim isn’t a competitive elite oppressed status reserved to a special few women, which loses in specialness as the number of rape victims increases. All women are raped in patriarchy, even by non-radfem standards.”

    This is a truly disturbed and vicious human being and I would love to see her outed. It’s what she needs.

  30. It’s ironic that rad fems are usually women no man actually wants to fuck in the first place. I’ve seen pictures of Dworkin and just thinking of how bad she might have smelled was enough to make me want to puke. Dworkin, like Hitler, and just about any cult leader does nothing more than project how damaged they are, and then turn it into an ideal for living.

  33. She’s a crackpot.

    No doubt about that. The problem is, these types infest academe and prey upon young women who, alas, have not been taught to critically examine any pronouncements from on high. The days of “question authority” went the way of all flesh the moment the mud-caked hippies of Yazgur’s farm got tenure. Ms. Wind may be a lunatic in spades, but we need to examine and expose her lunacy through the critical lens of logic and reason, if only to prevent the latest class of 18 year old women from being seduced by this stuff the moment they head off to college.

  35. Wind is definitely an extremist, but I agree that what starts women down this path is feminism in more benign forms like the kind preached by Jessica Valenti, Amanda Marcotte, Gloria Steinheim, the staff at Jezebel, etc. Dworkin’s ideas, which is the real basis of radical feminism have always been pretty marginal though and most mainstream liberal feminists take issue with them.

  36. For sure. If you read Wind’s blog the fight isn’t just with men. It’s with trans and liberal women as well.

  37. would they try to rear them to be the nice, metrosexual, girly-men they think males should be, or just cast them into the volcano?

    I think it’s clear they’d be tossed. There are comments on her blog in favor of “culling” male children as an appropriate “survival strategy,” with the obligatory, evidence-free assertions that women have “done that forever to protect themselves.” Plus, google “lesbian view of trans females, i.e. men to “women.” Evidently, “gender” suddenly ceases to become “socialization,” and morphs back to biology where transsexuals are concerned.

  40. What’s all this “wind” stuff? Radical wind, Stranded Wind – it sounds like the entire left has an intestinal gas problem.

  41. The idea is much older than 1994. I read Andrea Dworkin making the same claim in the late 1980s. Likewise, Catharine [sic] Mackinnon was pushing the same argument when I was at law school (where she was,and still is, a professor) in the early 1990s.

  43. Oh, yes, heterosexual rape-ism and the violent domination of the oppressive patriarchy are inherent to feminist thought. But here you had a psychology professor presenting this ideology as if it were clinical science. This was the secret of Professor Graham’s enduring influence.

  44. It appears that these feminists are deniers of the science of evolution. Sexual reproduction came before mankind. And mankind evolved by sexual reproduction. These feminists must deny the very existence of sex and sexual reproduction.

  46. Feminism is a privileged white-female social construct designed to get men to pay attention to ugly women.

  47. Just before I got married I told my soon to be husband that I wanted to keep my checking account. His only comment was “Why?” And do you know, I had absolutely not good answer to that. 26 years of marriage later, and a LOT more conservative in my views, I still don’t have my own account and I still don’t know what I would have done with it.

    Marriage is either a partnership or it’s a failure.

  48. Turkey basters. They have not come up with a replacement for the semen yet, but I’m sure they’re working on it.

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