The Other McCain

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

Reading Feminist Theory …

Posted on | August 23, 2014 | 124 Comments

. . . so you don’t have to!

Shulamith Firestone, circa 1970

“Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance men’s lives. . . . Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of physical violence. . . .
“We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . .
“We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation. We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are all products of male supremacist culture. We question every generalization and accept none that are not confirmed by our experience.”

Redstockings, “Manifesto,” July 7, 1969

There was a nice boost of tip-jar hitters last week, mostly in response to the complete triumph over Brett Kimberlin in the Maryland state lawsuit. Somewhere, there is online audio of the trial testimony, including me reading from “How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog.” Readers have also been both patient and generously encouraging with my “Sex Trouble” series about radical feminism. Putting together these long articles (some of them over 2,000 words in length) is time-consuming, because of the amount of research involved. Ultimately, I plan to compile and edit this series into an ebook, but for now, I’m getting so deep into the research that I’m sure I’ve already read more of this stuff than the average Women’s Studies major.

Today, I ordered $108 worth of feminist books from Amazon, including two early classics, Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics and Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. I’d previously read extensive excerpts of these, but I want to have them both in their dead-tree entirety, simply because that’s how I work best. I’ve also ordered books by lesbian feminists Jill Johnston, Marilyn Frye, Sue Wilkinson and Dana Heller, as well as Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives by radical feminist psychologist Dee Graham.

That last title is important, in terms of the theme of my series, because Graham’s ideas about male “Sexual Terror” provided much of theory behind Radical Wind’s anti-heterosexual rant, “PIV is always rape, OK?” She expanded on Graham’s theory in August 2013:

No woman is heterosexual. What men call heterosexuality is an institution where men make women captive for PIV, to control our reproductive functions and steal our labour. Heterosexuality, or sexuality with men does not exist, because the only relationship to men that exists is men’s violence, physical and mental invasion — one that men have so well crafted and disguised for so long that we can mistake it for attraction, sexual urges or love. All women’s “attraction” to men is 100% eroticised trauma bonding / stockholm syndrome. There is no other form of attraction to men possible than that. None.

This is a categorical claim; one must either agree or disagree. Radical Wind cites Dee Graham by name four times in this single post, elaborating on the esoteric meaning of Graham’s theory:

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.

Radical Wind says women “are programmed and groomed to react in this way to male threat since birth,” part of what she calls her “female child-grooming theory,” which leads (by the inherent logic of the crazy premises she establishes along the way) to the conclusion that women’s feeling of attraction and emotional bonds to men are actually symptomatic of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Now, there are two things immediately obvious from her claims:

  1. She is comparing the development of heterosexual orientation in women to the way in which pedophiles “groom” their child-victims. Does anyone believe this insulting comparison is accidental? No, of course not. She clearly means to suggest that male sexual interest in women is morally analogous to a pedophile’s interest in children, and that women are victimized by men in the same way that children are victimized by sex offenders.
  2. Any woman who does not reject heterosexuality, who thinks of her own sexual and romantic interest in males as natural and healthy, is suffering from a sort of psychiatric delusion. If a woman believes she genuinely enjoys sex with men, if she is “in love” with her male partner, this simply shows that she is a victim of PTSD — “trauma bonding” — and childhood “grooming.”

Radical Wind makes these arguments with such fanatical certainty that, as I say, we must either agree or disagree. Compromise is impossible.

There is an undeniably totalitarian quality to her ideological rigidity; she declares her doctrines in the manner of a dictator issuing an ultimatum. And if you disagree — as I think every sane person must —  you might say to yourself, “Well, that’s just one kook on the Internet.”

Except you’re wrong. She’s not alone in believing this. In 2011, a radical feminist known as CherryBlossomLife cited Dee Graham in asking, “Can Women Escape From Men?” The answer was no, and you can go check the comments to see whether any of her feminist readers disagreed with her radical analysis. She was enthusiastically praised:

“First of all,that’s an excelent post Cherry!. . “

“Thanks, Cherry, for summarizing this. . . .”

“Courageous post. Keep telling the truth! I really wish womyn understood that it’s in their best interest to leave men. . . .”

“Fantastic, measured, informative post – as always, Cherry. Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. . . .”

Are there feminists who disagree with this extreme anti-male doctrine? Where are they? Where are the harsh denunciations of radical feminism from “moderate” feminists? And if they don’t denounce such extremism, aren’t they tacitly endorsing it?

Moderate feminism is a myth. One might as well believe in unicorns or leprechauns as to believe in moderate feminism. What feminists believe today, what they will believe tomorrow and forever, is the same thing that Shulamith Firestone’s group Redstockings declared in 1969: “Women are an oppressed class. . . . We identify the agents of our oppression as men.” The minute a woman says that she does not believe this — if she rejects the claim that men (collectively) oppress women (collectively) under the system of male domination known as patriarchy — then she is not actually a feminist, no matter what she may call herself.

If there are, however, women who call themselves “feminist” who wish to argue against the anti-male/anti-heterosexual doctrines of radical feminism, how would they go about making such arguments? With facts? With logic? With empirical data? Impossible!

“We regard our personal experience, and our
feelings about that experience, as the basis
for an analysis of our common situation.”

If each woman’s own “personal experiences” and her “feelings about that experience” are the only possible basis for analysis, there can be no objectivity, no neutral facts, no empirical method.

If it is her experience that 2 + 2 = 5, if a woman feels that 2 + 2 = 5, then anyone who says 2 + 2 = 4 is obviously trying to enslave her to the oppressive mathematics of male supremacy.

Feminism tells women that if they feel oppressed, they are oppressed. If a woman doesn’t feel oppressed, feminism tells her she’s wrong.

Flip a coin: Heads, feminists win. Tails, you’re a victim of the patriarchy.

+ – + – + – + – +

At any rate, the folks at Amazon — greedy capitalist exploiters! — demanded that I pay actual money for those feminist books, refusing to accept my Patriarchal Express Platinum Card. Therefore, in order to continue my campaign of male supremacist oppression, I must remind you of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!




 

 

THE ‘SEX TROUBLE’ SERIES:

 

Comments

124 Responses to “Reading Feminist Theory …”

  1. Isaac T. Quill
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 8:23 pm

    It is all so deliciously bonkers. It’s only when you do the research and read that you find out just how Bonkers, and how inconvenient facts are just glossed over – ignored – or not mentioned to students by the Gender Studies Pros!

    “Rape culture is a concept of unknown origin and of uncertain definition; yet it has made its way into everyday vocabulary and is assumed to be commonly understood. The award-winning documentary film Rape Culture made by Margaret Lazarus in 1975 takes credit for first defining the concept.”

    Blackwell Encyclopaedia Of Sociology, 2007, Page 3791 – http://goo.gl/9sEkWi

    http://youtu.be/RwdVENIVaJY

  2. M. Thompson
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 8:28 pm

    You are going deep into dangerous territory which is full of things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

    I think the writing is keeping you from becoming a quivering mass of protoplasm…

    Along with a normal family life and a grandson.

  3. boinkie
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 8:45 pm

    now the feminists have infiltrated medieval studies, never mind that people just didn’t think that way in the past (or the present if they aren’t carefully taught to do so).

    http://www.medievalists.net/2014/08/23/pope-joan-black-swan-medieval-christianity-resource-gender-justice-church/

  4. Reading Feminist Theory … | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 8:46 pm

    […] Reading Feminist Theory …. […]

  5. Daniel O'Brien
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 9:34 pm

    Biology wins.

  6. Matthew W
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 9:39 pm

    You made a mistake and posted a photo of John Lennon with your story.

  7. Reading Feminist Theory | Batshit Crazy News
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 10:12 pm

    […] TOM: Reading Feminist Theory… […]

  8. Feminism is About Smashing Things Now? | American Glob
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 10:19 pm

    […] What a shame I missed the “slut walk” in Chicago. Paging Stacy McCain… […]

  9. The Daley Gator | That Stacy McCain guy is a glutton for punishment
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 11:01 pm

    […] I get that he likes to expose the more radical, radicals that infest the Feminut movement, but this just amounts to cruelty, to himself! Here is the shocking confession of Mr. McCain. Today, I ordered $108 worth of feminist books from Amazon […]

  10. David R. Graham
    August 23rd, 2014 @ 11:48 pm

    In the late 60s and early 70s I researched and wrote much of a book to be published by Robert Theobald and me. The subject was environment/ecology. My end was to research and catalogue environmental catastrophes world-wide, both patent and latent. The data made me sick. I charted it out on butcher paper and then wrote it in type-script. Bob read it, said no one would ever believe it was that bad and tore up — literally — the data part of my MS.

    My research source: microfiche (high tech then) of the NYT at the Phoenix public library.

    I quit the project and Theobald and refused to have my name associated with the book, which was published, with much of the material I created (uncredited) but not the hair-raising data — and in those years it was, believe me, hair-raising, emotionally crippling.

    Off topic? No. Stacy is detailing something even more hair-raising, morally, and not quitting. Good.

  11. Matt_SE
    August 24th, 2014 @ 12:27 am

    I always get a kick out of the self-negating arguments of relativists: There is no absolute truth, only relative truth.
    …which is a statement that the audience is supposed to accept as an absolute truth.

  12. Dianna Deeley
    August 24th, 2014 @ 12:46 am

    I’ll read this in the morning, and send you an email rant. Right now, I just bought my guy a really, really good dinner for his birthday, and have, shall we say, other plans for my evening than worrying about feminists.

  13. Old dude
    August 24th, 2014 @ 1:41 am

    The hippy chick with the round glasses — well, if I was 25 again and this was the sixties, I’d definitely do her.

  14. Käthe
    August 24th, 2014 @ 2:42 am

    Firestone has some truly bizarre ideas. It’s somewhere between science fiction and delusional word salad. I feel sorry for her because she was verifiably severely mentally ill. What slays me is the radical feminists who say that her ideas are really great and “ahead of her time” even AFTER they know that she died alone in squalor because of her severe paranoid schizophrenia.

  15. RS
    August 24th, 2014 @ 8:06 am

    The Radical Feminists are like the dog chasing the car. They’ve never stopped to ponder what happens if they actually “catch” it.

  16. Jeanette Victoria
    August 24th, 2014 @ 8:59 am

    Is Feminism a Symptom of Schizophrenia?

  17. Jeanette Victoria
    August 24th, 2014 @ 9:04 am

    Valerie Solanas another schizophrenic feminist and lesbian

  18. Jeanette Victoria
    August 24th, 2014 @ 9:10 am

    How my mother’s fanatical feminist views tore us apart Rebecca Walker explained her family feud for The Mail Online, a personal
    essay blasting her mother’s lifelong hatred of motherhood. blames her mother’s radical brand of feminism for the lack of contact.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021293/How-mothers-fanatical-feminist-views-tore-apart-daughter-The-Color-Purple-author.html

  19. PoorPoorCons
    August 24th, 2014 @ 12:30 pm

    Of course there’s no absolute truth. Human’s don’t have an absolute picture of physical reality. That’s not theory, or religion, either. It’s physics. NEXT.

  20. maniakmedic
    August 24th, 2014 @ 12:31 pm

    I remember reading that a while ago. The one thing that really resonated with me was where she talked about finding the poem comparing her to several different calamities. I didn’t have a feminist mother – far from it – but I did have a mother that didn’t want me and made sure I knew it. That is incredibly damaging to a child, to know that the one person in the world who is supposed to love you no matter what doesn’t want anything to do with you – unless you do exactly what she wants you to do.

  21. DumbRunyon
    August 24th, 2014 @ 12:32 pm

    Believing in an invisible man in the sky who controls your destiny, and who you must bow to, sounds closer to symptoms of a schizophrenic than feminism. At least feminists can reach their conclusions through data, culture, and analysis. All you have is wish fulfillment. You’re not terribly bright, Runyon.

  22. Stogie Chomper
    August 24th, 2014 @ 12:48 pm

    Your concept of God is shallow, but it is off topic. Feminists are abnormal and seek to make their abnormalities respectable. They are at war with biology and nature. I see feminism as a form of madness rather than a political persuasion.

  23. Et Tu Maureen Dowd? | Regular Right Guy
    August 24th, 2014 @ 12:56 pm

    […] Reading Feminist Theory … […]

  24. Rob Crawford
    August 24th, 2014 @ 1:04 pm

    If there is no absolute truth, when is slavery not wrong?

  25. darleenclick
    August 24th, 2014 @ 1:07 pm

    At least feminists can reach their conclusions through data, culture, and analysis.

    ::::snort::::

    About to be expected from an anti-theist fighting a strawGod of his own making.

  26. Jeanette Victoria
    August 24th, 2014 @ 1:21 pm

    Hello obsessive loon thanks again proving my point that feminists/liberals are nuts

    Clue I’m NOT your life

  27. Dana
    August 24th, 2014 @ 1:40 pm

    Our esteemed host wrote:

    There is an undeniably totalitarian quality to her ideological rigidity; she declares her doctrines in the manner of a dictator issuing an ultimatum. And if you disagree — as I think every sane person must – you might say to yourself, “Well, that’s just one kook on the Internet.”

    Except you’re wrong. She’s not alone in believing this.

    That there is more than one kook doesn’t make her an less a kook. One of my Facebook acquaintances is a total conspiracy theorist, who tells me that ISIS and al Qaeda are really the creations of the CIA and the Mossad, and that the World Trade Center was bought down by controlled demolitions (apparently set by George Bush and Dick Cheney, personally) and that the Jooooos secretly control everything, and she has plenty of stupid people who agree with her. But plenty is still a very tiny segment of the population, and they are no less kooks for being plural rather than singular.

  28. Dana
    August 24th, 2014 @ 1:43 pm

    Well, I can see why she’s a lesbian! Even our host, when he was 25, wouldn’t have copulated with her!

  29. Mm
    August 24th, 2014 @ 1:56 pm

    Yes – a former classmate of mine blamed everything on “neocons” and conservatives during the Bush years. Today? You guessed it. Neocons and conservatives are apparently running the Obama administration.

  30. Jeanette Victoria
    August 24th, 2014 @ 2:29 pm

    I hav a family member who claims Obama is Bush lite. Todays liberlas are so out of touch with reality it is diffficult to reason with them

  31. RS
    August 24th, 2014 @ 3:24 pm

    Aren’t you precious, bless your heart. You confuse the existence of something with whether or not it has been discovered! It’s so cute! Most people discover the difference at age 12 months when they realize Mommy still exists even though they can’t see her during the peek-a-boo game.

    Oh, look at the time! Put down those Duplo blocks, get your blankey and take a nap.

  32. Mr. Saturn
    August 24th, 2014 @ 4:04 pm

    Personally I blame TV’s Frank. Always ruining things with his being there.

  33. PoorPoorCons
    August 24th, 2014 @ 4:26 pm

    Wow! Someone got his undies in a twist because I flattened their world view in one sentence. I’m well aware that there are things we have no evidence for, and might very well exist. Point remains though, with our current limited view of physical reality(we dont know what matter makes up 75% of the known universe)we can only have a relative view of things, and that includes truth. Moral relativity should be obvious though to anyone, because morality differs on certain things from culture to culture, and is mostly imposed by the ruling class in that society.

  34. PoorCons
    August 24th, 2014 @ 4:33 pm

    Sadly, that would depend on the culture since some segments of society still have a form of slavery. The US had slavery as an institution up until 160 or so years ago, and the people who utilized it for their own wealth, had moral reasons to back themselves up. Same would go for modern forms of slavery. Sure we dont put people in chains anymore, but a lot of outsourced factory work paying a buck a day, for 15 hours of labor, and you’re shot if you try forming a union, could still be considered a form of slavery. Every American knows this too, and turns their head because they want cheap goods to keep flowing in.

  35. RS
    August 24th, 2014 @ 5:22 pm

    You still are an idiot. Consider your first comment:

    Of course there’s no absolute truth. Human’s don’t have an absolute picture of physical reality.

    What’s missing is the word “therefore” to start your second sentence. That is patently absurd.

    Knowing this, you subtly shift your argument from “there’s no absolute truth” to “we can only have a relative view of things, and that includes truth.” One cannot conclude therefore that absolute truth does not exist, which was your original assertion.

    And BTW, we didn’t need modern physics to realize our view of truth may be incomplete. See, 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13.or if you prefer a pagan, try Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

  36. News of the Week (August 24th, 2014) | The Political Hat
    August 24th, 2014 @ 5:40 pm

    […] R. Stacy McCain: Reading Feminist Theory … so you don’t have to! Today, I ordered $108 worth of feminist books from Amazon, including two early classics, Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics and Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. I’d previously read extensive excerpts of these, but I want to have them both in their dead-tree entirety, simply because that’s how I work best. I’ve also ordered books by lesbian feminists Jill Johnston, Marilyn Frye, Sue Wilkinson and Dana Heller, as well as Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives by radical feminist psychologist Dee Graham. […]

  37. Käthe
    August 24th, 2014 @ 6:20 pm

    Yep, Rebecca’s essay is etched in my memory for the same reason. It’s no coincidence that while my mom doesn’t identify herself as a feminist, she was very much in the thick of the second wave rhetoric as a hippie and she always carried on about me (the eldest) has having cramped her style and kept her from “going on to greatness” so to speak. It’s poison, pure poison, and a lot of women ate it up and passed the damage on to their daughters.

  38. Käthe
    August 24th, 2014 @ 6:23 pm

    I think that extreme paranoia about men and patriarchy can be a manifestation of schizophrenia, and one that can be sneaky because there’s a whole subculture of people who will think you’re a prophet, not ill. Just like how some schizophrenics end up as cult gurus.

  39. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    August 24th, 2014 @ 6:38 pm

    These Egyptian women show how to do a protest…

    They know the true enemy of women have the courage to confront it, although granted they would fit right in on the far left in terms of tactics.

  40. NeoWayland
    August 24th, 2014 @ 6:54 pm

    Except those outsourced wages are usually higher than the prevailing wage in the area and often result in an economic jumpstart in that impovrished area.

    There are other beneficial effects too, but since they are second and third order, most casual observers ignore them.

    Basically, the wages don’t have to match those in the US as long as they are higher than the average pay.

    When the wages match the major industrial nations, that is one sign that nation is now industrialized as well. And the search starts for more cheap labor, the cycle starts all over again.

  41. The blood of youth used to combat Alzheimer disease? | Batshit Crazy News
    August 24th, 2014 @ 7:00 pm

    […] was a pioneer in blood treatments The Countess Báthory would have fit right in with many Feminist Theory thinkers too (or alternatively as a Florida public school teacher)! Via […]

  42. NeoWayland
    August 24th, 2014 @ 7:01 pm

    “At least feminists can reach their conclusions through data, culture, and analysis.”

    No, because they seldom test the theory.

    Some feminists can be good at proclaiming the theory, but there are very few practical uses.

    Fortunately the times, they are a changin’. Many young ladies today don’t define their feminism like the Third Wave did. They’re more interested in something that works and helps them be happy.

  43. maniakmedic
    August 24th, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

    It couldn’t possibly be his hair, though. TV’s Frank had some of the best hair on TV. Though he could have stood a little more time with the Square Master.

  44. maniakmedic
    August 24th, 2014 @ 7:47 pm

    Not just the liberals. Libertarians aren’t too far behind in their mad dash off the anti-Semitism cliff and conservatives are too busy playing nice to take back the Republican party. When people were refusing to vote for Romney because he’s “just as bad as Obama” I wanted to slam my head on the corner of a desk because it would have felt better than trying to square that logic.

  45. Rich Vail
    August 24th, 2014 @ 8:07 pm

    “PIV is rape”

    Please…how do you explain biology…except for amoeba’s…sex is…PIV…idiots will say stupid shit…

  46. Rich Vail
    August 24th, 2014 @ 8:14 pm

    Love it! “bless your heart” is Southern for “you’re an idiot”!

  47. Rich Vail
    August 24th, 2014 @ 8:15 pm

    You go girl!

  48. Zohydro
    August 24th, 2014 @ 8:39 pm

    Well… With a trollop like her, there are “other options”…

  49. Zohydro
    August 24th, 2014 @ 8:54 pm

    Voting for Romney was one of the hardest choices I ever had to make…

  50. maniakmedic
    August 24th, 2014 @ 9:27 pm

    The way I looked at it, I could either vote for the idiot flooring the gas pedal toward the cliff (and pushing the NOS button) or vote for the guy who wouldn’t necessarily change directions, but wouldn’t speed things up, either, giving us more time.