“Patriarchy — an enforced belief in male dominance and control — is the ideology and sexism the system that holds it in place. . . .
“Homophobia works effectively as a weapon of sexism because it is joined with a powerful arm, heterosexism. Heterosexism creates the climate for homophobia with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosexual and its display of power and privilege as the norm. Heterosexism is the systemic display of homophobia in the institutions of society. Heterosexism and homophobia work together to enforce compulsory heterosexuality and that bastion of patriarchal power, the nuclear family.”
— Suzanne Pharr, Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism (1997)
Last week, I spent some time compiling about two dozen feminist quotes into a Powerpoint slide presentation for the “Forum on Campus Sexual Assault, Consent and Due Process” to be held Aug. 1 at Central Piedmont Community College Central Campus in Charlotte, NC. These quotes are intended to demonstrate how the anti-male ideology of radical feminism has contributed to the current climate of fear and suspicion on American college campuses. Feminist rhetoric incites irrational hostility toward male students that fuels the “rape culture” hysteria, and this attitude of sexual paranoia is promoted in Women’s Studies course that enroll some 90,00 students annually in U.S. colleges and universities.
That quote from Suzanne Pharr cited above is actually required reading in many Women’s Studies courses. For example, it was assigned in an Introduction to Women’s Studies (WMS 302) class at Cal State-Fullerton taught by Dr. Susan Feldman in spring 2011. Originally published in 1988, Pharr’s feminist treatise about homophobia is including in numerous anthologies used as Women’s Studies textbooks, included Feminist Frameworks (edited by Alison M. Jaggar and Paula S. Rothenberg, 1993) and Making Sense of Women’s Lives: An Introduction to Women’s Studies (by Michelle Plott and Lauri Umansky, 2000) among others. Its widespread recognition (more than 600 citations listed by Google Scholar) can be taken to mean that Pharr’s ideas about homophobia and sexism are recognized as Official Truth in academic feminism.
Well . . . is it true?
For example, does patriarchy as Pharr describes it — “an enforced belief in male dominance and control” — actually exist? And in what sense is “heterosexism” distinct from “homophobia”? Aren’t these just two different words describing the same concept? Words mean things, and a failure to interrogate the definitions of terms often leads us into confusion, especially when confronted with the tendentious claims of special pleaders like Suzanne Pharr, a lesbian who begins her treatise with what can only be described as a solicitation of sympathy:
Homophobia — the irrational fear and hatred of those who love and sexually desire those of the same sex. Though I intimately knew its meaning, the word homophobia was unknown to me until the late 1970s, and when I first heard it, I was struck by how difficult it is to say, what an ugly word it is, equally as ugly as its meaning. Like racism and anti-Semitism, it is a word that calls up images of loss of freedom, verbal and physical violence, death.
In my life I have experienced the effects of homophobia through rejection by friends, threats of loss of employment, and threats upon my life; and I have witnessed far worse things happening to other lesbian and gay people: loss of children, beatings, rape, death. Its power is great enough to keep ten to twenty percent of the population living lives of fear (if their sexual identity is hidden) or lives of danger (if their sexual identity is visible) or both. And its power is great enough to keep the remaining eighty to ninety percent of the population trapped in their own fears. Long before I had a word to describe the behavior, I was engaged in a search to discover the source of its power, the power to damage and destroy lives. The most common explanations were that to love the same sex was either abnormal (sick) or immoral (sinful).
She is a victim of hateful prejudice, Pharr would have us believe, and anyone who disapproves of homosexuality is “irrational.” Gay people are oppressed, and heterosexual people are “trapped in their own fears.” We must all RSVP to her pity party, or else be condemned as bigots.
What of this “irrational fear and hatred” of which Pharr speaks? Most critics of the gay-rights movement fail to see how the accusation of homophobia involves a diagnosis of psychopathology, an 180-degree reversal of the former consensus that homosexuality is a mental illness. Whereas Freud and other early psychologists saw homosexuality as a disease in need of treatment, it did not take too long after the American Psychiatric Association removed this diagnosis from the DSM in 1973 before gay radicals began playing armchair psychologist and telling straight people that we were the ones in need of treatment.
This kind of reversal is typical of the social justice mentality. Progressives constantly accuse their opponents of bad motives (mala fides), and contend that ordinary common-sense attitudes are harmful prejudices. For example, most people consider obesity unattractive, but this widespread attitude makes fat people unhappy, and so we have the “fat acceptance” movement insisting that “all bodies are beautiful” and feminists demanding equal representation for fat women in fashion ads. Almost any majority attitude is subject to this kind of indictment by the social justice crowd. Patriotism is stigmatized as xenophobia and religion is “anti-science,” etc.
Most people are heterosexual, and insofar as they ever think about homosexuals at all, it is not with “irrational hate and fear,” but rather to wonder: Why are those people so miserable and angry all the time? If “gay” is a synonym for happiness, it sure as heck doesn’t fit the militant activists and pathetic whining sad-sacks like Suzanne Pharr.
Well, you see, this is where the accusation of “homophobia” comes from. It’s not their fault they are so miserable. Instead, society is to blame. Our “irrational” disapproval make gay people feel sad. This accusation raises several questions that the accusers are never required to answer. For example, why is our approval for their private behavior so important to them? Beyond that, however, if an aversion to homosexuality is “homophobia,” isn’t every heterosexual in some sense a homophobe?
That is to say, if we really buy into the “equality” argument, believing that homosexual behavior is such wholesome fun that no one would dare disapprove of it, shouldn’t we be eager to participate in this pleasurable recreation? The mere fact that we are not gay ourselves rather strongly implies that we personally dislike homosexual behavior, and why should heterosexuals sit in guilty silence while Suzanne Pharr or anyone else lectures us about how “irrational” our preferences are?
The reason so many heterosexuals do suffer such insults in silence, I suspect, is that they have a guilty conscience and are afraid of being accused of “hate” if they defend themselves against the charge of homophobia. This is how “Kafkatrapping” tactics work: The liberal calls you a racist, and if you try to deny it, your denial is cited as proof of your guilt. How do you prove your innocence of such Thoughtcrimes as racism, sexism and homophobia? Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on the accuser? And beyond this lies the question that the person targeted by “Kafkatrapping” seldom thinks to ask the self-appointed Thought Police: Exactly how does my personal opinion on this subject harm anyone?
Suppose, for example, you find yourself accused of “Islamophobia.” You were engaged in a discussion of terrorism or immigration or foreign policy and said something a liberal didn’t like: “Islamophobia!” the liberal shouts, accusing you of being a hateful racist bigot. What the liberal is doing here is asserting that it is immoral to disagree with him.
Well, who is harmed by your opinion? You aren’t the Secretary of Defense or a member of Congress, so that your alleged anti-Muslim prejudice doesn’t influence public policy in any meaningful way. It’s not as if you are running around hurling Molotov cocktails at mosques or otherwise committing lawless violence against innocent Muslims. Therefore, why is this liberal ANGRILY TYPING IN ALL CAPS about what an awful person you are, merely because you expressed an opinion on the Internet? And exactly what does “Islamophobia” mean, anyway?
Words mean things, and the Left’s habit of coining new words to define as “oppressive” any attitude or opinion the Left dislikes is one that isn’t challenged often enough. It wasn’t until the AIDS crisis hit in the 1980s that the word “homophobia” began being hurled around haphazardly. In common usage, “homophobe” is simply a synonym for Republican. As with “sexist” and “racist,” the word “homophobe” is really just a political label which can be defined as someone a Democrat doesn’t like.
No one ever accused Suzanne Pharr of being a Republican, and she testifies to having “experienced the effects of homophobia through rejection by friends, threats of loss of employment, and threats upon my life.” Well, I’m not gay, but I’ve suffered “rejection” and “loss of employment” on various occasions, and I’ve been threatened, too. However, because I’m not a member of an Official Victim Group, there are no textbook anthologies teaching college kids to feel sorry for poor, pitiful me. And damn their pity all to hell, anyway. This whole liberal guilt-trip mentality is nothing but a political hustle, the kind of cheap scam no ordinary con artist would touch less it taint his reputation.
Suzanne Pharr would have you believe that your disapproval of her preference has “the power to damage and destroy lives.” I don’t make a habit of inquiring about people’s sexual habits, although since I began researching feminism I assume that all Women’s Studies majors are lesbians. It’s impossible to imagine how any woman could fill her mind with such toxic anti-male poison and actually like men. Only a man with enormously high self-esteem could read as much of this wretched stuff as I have without becoming completely demoralized.
Why does Suzanne Pharr hate men so much? In typical feminist fashion, she justifies this by accusing men of unjust “dominance and control” and denouncing the nuclear family as a “bastion of patriarchal power,” and more generally depicting men as brutal, loathsome tyrants:
Violence against women is directly related to the condition of women in a society that refuses us equal pay, equal access to resources, and equal status with males. From this condition comes men’s confirmation of their sense of ownership of women, power over women, and assumed right to control women for their own means. Men physically and emotionally abuse women because they can, because they live in a world that gives them permission. Male violence is fed by their sense of their right to dominate and control, and their sense of superiority over a group of people who, because of gender, they consider inferior to them.
Who are these men? Every time I read feminists going on about the universality of “violence against women,” and the “sense of superiority” over women by which men allegedly justify their abuse, I start wondering if somehow I’m failing here in my “bastion of patriarchal power.” Having been married for 27 years and fathered six children, certainly such a patriarch as myself ought to have some of this “power”and “dominance” and “control” that feminists insist I possess, but where is it?
Also, “boys don’t hit girls” is a basic rule that I was taught from childhood, as was every other boy from a decent Christian home, and my wife and I have taught the same thing to our sons and daughters. For a man to hit a woman is the act of a coward and, if a man should feel himself insulted by a woman, the manly thing to do is to walk away, speaking of which . . .
How many times do I have to repeat this advice? To be accused of oppressing women through domination, control, abuse and violence — which is what every feminist accuses all men of doing — is a deliberate insult that no decent man should be expected to tolerate.
Any intelligent person who reads Suzanne Pharr’s Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism can see that what she is really doing is asserting the inferiority of men. Her vehement anti-male prejudice — her belief that all men are brutal monsters — is essentially a rationalization and justification of her own lesbianism. The emotional subtext of Pharr’s argument can be summarized succinctly: “I do not love men because men are bad and therefore do not deserve love.”
Of course, no one can be forced to love anyone else, and it would be cruel to compel someone to empty out their subconscious and publicly confess their most shameful secrets, but you read enough of this stuff (and dear God, I’ve read more than enough) and you cannot help noticing the rigidity of the psychological defense mechanisms involved. Dress it up in all fancy jargon you like — try reading Judith Butler sometime — and feminist theory is still a whirlpool of childish narcissism, an explanation of personal unhappiness inflated to the grandiose scale of a revolutionary creed. It’s not just the lesbian feminists who blame the patriarchy for all their woes, but also embittered heterosexual women like Jessica Valenti:
I wrote in my diary at the time, I’m so ugly I can’t stand it. I have a big gross nose, pimples, hairy arms. I will never have a boy like me or a boyfriend. All of my friends are pretty and I will be the one with no one.
All men must be made to suffer for her adolescent misery, you see.
What is Jessica Valenti’s feminism except an elaborate revenge fantasy? And how is her vindictive hatred of men different from Suzanne Pharr’s? On the one hand, the lesbian feminist Pharr asserts that heterosexual women are all victims of violent male domination, whereas on the other hand, the heterosexual feminist Valenti recounts all the horrible abuse she’s suffered from every man except the handful of men she personally likes. Pharr asserts that 100% of men are bad, and Valenti merely reduces this figure to 99.9999%, to exempt from condemnation her husband and a few ex-boyfriends she remembers fondly. A Venn diagram:
To heterosexual feminists like Jessica Valenti, “sexist” is really nothing more than a synonym for a guy I don’t like, whereas to lesbian feminists like Suzanne Pharr, “sexist” is simply a synonym for male. Why are men expected to tolerate insults from emotionally damaged women who want to use us as scapegoats for their childhood resentments?
We can define feminism as an “irrational fear and hatred” of men. Why aren’t all feminists lesbians? This is the great mystery. If feminist theory is true, then Jessica Valenti is a victim of patriarchal power and also a willing enabler of oppression, since she is forcing her own daughter to be raised under the tyrannical male authority of her father.
However, the phrase “if feminist theory is true” signifies a speculative hypothetical, requiring us to imagine an alternative universe. Even I am not crazy enough to understand what the world would be like if feminist theory were true. And thank God, it’s not.
Patriarchy — an enforced belief in male dominance and control…
Who’s enforcing that belief except the feminists?
The entire pity party rant is ill-conceived and asinine. There’s that word again: “homophobia.” I’d like to notify all homosexuals that people don’t fear them. Well, maybe people would fear one that is ordering them to “rub the lotion on its skin.” Frankly, accusing someone without proof of sexism, rape apology, patriarchy, and “harming women” is not a really good way to make friends and influence people, including employers. Just fyi, feminists.
The point is, normal people are generally uncomfortable around those who are dramatically different, and for all we know, may suffer from mental pathologies. Oddly, we’re also not “tatphobic” because we choose not to hang with a dude with grotesque amounts of bizarre skin art and ball-bearing implants.
But hell, @nero is fairly flaming, and I like him, so where’s the “phobia” now?
When she suggests that…
…that’s also asinine crazy talk. Who’s like that, besides Muslim men and Marvel villains?
You’re only saying that because you’re a patriarch.
Before humans could write and knew lots of multi-syllable words—like back in the pre-stone age when everything was made of wood and mud—how did males figure out the advantages of organizing a patriarchy? I mean, instead of being a plot did it have anything to do with biology, such as men being bigger and stronger?
Because if it did, the only long-run hope for feminists is for a lesbian scientist to attach a dominant weakness gene to the Y chromosome.
“(H)omophobia with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosexual”
98.5% of people are naturally heterosexual and the Almighty has seen fit to give heterosexuals the exclusive ability to procreate the species. That’s not homophobia, that’s nature. That’s reality. That’s truth.
Also, whenever someone starts talking in six-syllable words like “heterosexism” it usually means they have nothing to say.
BTW, when did David Brenner become a feminist?
Alas, the question “Is it true” is becoming increasingly irrelevant and for many people nonsensical. The concept of “Truth” has been diluted by “feelings” and “personal narratives” and “power structures” to be meaningless. Whether an assertion of fact is true is now solely dependent upon the identity of the person making the assertion. The Left’s greatest success is/was in removing the absolute nature of Truth in favor of pure will to power.
Lucky for you, no feminist would be able to figure out how to do that, on account of not being able to differentiate fact from feeling, and you know, thinking biology is fictional and all.
Holy schnikes, separated at birth.
Damaged people are a commonplace and unavoidable in a society made up of human beings. The scandal here is the professoriate. They pretend the rants of damaged people constitute an academic discipline.
I was playing mini-golf against my wife, and we both fell into a the eighteenth hole, which was kinda strange. When we climbed out, I felt….different. Power coursed through my veins.
Looking at her, I saw she trembled, so I hugged her to console her.
“The world is so scary.” She said. I, on the other hand, looked out at the clouds, and felt as if I could reach out, and move them in the sky, as if I could reach beyond them to the stars, and snag one in my bare hand.
Strange. I made a note to avoid drinking Orange Fanta and a Caramel Frappe at the same time in the future.
“Let’s go pay up. Good game, by the way.”
“Yes…m…mmmaster.” She said. I laughed at her joke, and it seemed as if the ground shook.
One step for me, and many, many for her, and we were back at the cashier. I thought she overcharged us, and the cashier girl began weeping.
“Math is so hard. I only took Remedial Calculator in the first grade before I Girlmathed out.”
I decided to pay the overcharge anyways, but the manager rushed out, took the girl aside, refused my money, and gave me ten bucks in credit.
OK.
Slightly bewildered, I drove my van off the lot, and out into a mostly empty road, but right in front of another crossing driver. My fault. I was weirded out, but not a good enough excuse. Thankfully, the woman driver had superior reflexes, twice as good as I had, and had only clipped my nose, and her side, so the damage was not too bad.
I got out, after checking if my wife was okay, and went over to begin apologizing. However a policeman on a motorcycle had seen it, and he began dressing the lady driver down in the most harsh language, and telling her that she was going to have to pay for a brand new vehicle for me, if I decided to be generous and not just take her house, her car, and her drivers license.
“Uh, whaaaa?” I said. And the cop gave me a cold, steely glare.
“Are you going to Enforce the Patriarchy, or not?” He said. I swallowed, looked up, and moved one of the clouds by my will.
Then I looked back down at him.
“Yes, a new car would be nice.”
And all their little gods help them if they figure out that “bigger and stronger” was only part of the reason.
You need to avoid those Pizzas with Mushrooms and Anchovies close to bead time.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to get my head around the concept of reality not coinciding with someone’s ‘personal truth’. I know, I know – that requires understanding the concepts of logic, and reality. And those are clearly part of the patriarchy – since they conflict with the narrative…
Women have always enforced it. They are the primary beneficiaries of Patriarchy, even before the kids.
Everybody in a Patriarchy knows that gays are more empowered than lesbians.
Just ask anybody in Silicon Valley.
Methinks Mz Pharr is confusing “Homophobia” with her observed “Lesbophobia”, merely to enlarge huir victim group.
Our esteemed host asked:
What makes you think that I wish to prove my innocence of such? Why shouldn’t I be proud of my beliefs?
Mrs Messenger wrote:
And just what makes you think that the feminists are really interested in making friends and influencing people?
Dominance and control count as influence, right?
Where do these idiots think they come from, if heterosexuality is an oppressive construct?
Have they never noted the paucity of turkey basters and fertility clinics in nature?
Even with ‘turkey basters’ and the like, the participation of a male is still required.
Just because I’m a patriarchal son of a gun
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJICBbtqdNY&w=420&h=315%5D
The lovely Dr Pharr wrote:
Note that Dr Pharr has exaggerated the incidence of homosexuality by a factor of ten, or more, homosexuals making up about 1.6% of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
And therein lays the problem: the homosexual activist is a person attempting to persuade not only others, but himself, that homosexuality is normal. If 10 to 20% of the population were homosexual, we might well consider such numbers to be part of the range of normal, but when they are less than 2%, all of a sudden, homosexuals are at the extreme end of the sexuality spectrum. The incidence of pedophilia is guesstimated higher than that, at 4%, and if pedophilia is abnormal, then a sexual preference which has an even lower number must also be abnormal.
What I am seeing in all of these articles you are researching and discussing for us is the plaintive cry, “But I’m normal, when, deep down, they understand that no, they’re not. Heck, I’d even say that they’ve done a better job in persuading others that homosexuality is ‘normal’ than they’ve done in persuading themselves.
“For example, most people consider obesity unattractive, but this widespread attitude makes fat people unhappy, and so we have the “fat acceptance” movement insisting that “all bodies are beautiful” and feminists demanding equal representation for fat women in fashion ads.”
I actually think this is great, and have begun the “middle-aged pasty honky with love handles acceptance” movement. Expect to see me in a speedo on the cover of Sports Illustrated in some not-too-distant February….
Ah, but he doesn’t have to be heterosexual! They could waylay some guy and forcibly take his sperm!
I bet there’s a dozen or more lesbian feminist comic books with that same plot device.
There’s also the fear and danger part. Outside of the Muslim world, gays live openly.
And very loudly.
Maybe you can share the Swimsuit Edition with Kaitlyn Jenner?
What are you, nuts? I’m on the line to Domino’s right now ordering a dozen!
I’d like to point out one of the millions of logical and biological fallacies by the gay fanatics. They claim, as a moral justification of homosexuality that 6000 animal species (they do not split between mammals, amoebas or other groups) have examples of homosexuality (this is obviously not true but let’s assume it is true for a second), therefore homosexuality is natural and normal, (consider that species in nature are 6 billions…). Now, point out to feminists that male dominance is a trait that occurs in animals in 99% of the species, except maybe the black widow and the praying mantis and ask them how this is NOT by nature design and completely natural and normal.
I am appalled about the weakness of conservatives in posing these simple questions. The homo-feminazi ‘logic’ does not stand its ground. Every whining of homos/feminazis could be dismissed with a laugh just by pointing out the immense number of fallacies.
The patriarchy has always been and always will be. So great is its power that it is enforced without discussion. So great is its influence that feminists wear bras in acknowledgement of it. Feminists are the born losers of the human tribe. Their rebellious lies are nothing before the power of the patriarchy. I think I may have to head down to TattleTale (where every day is Patriarchy Day) and celebrate the patriarchy.
Then you deserve all the nightmares you get. Given how you skated on your share of upholding the patriarchy, cruising around on the luxurious cruise ship, you richly deserve the loss of sleep in punishment.
That’s a bridge too Pharr.
Obviously they don’t, but crazy lady was moaning about how peeps don’t like her, so just sayin’.
Hopefuly we are.
Seems like there should’ve been some unicorns in this story.
I know I am. When some SJW accuses me of these things, I proudly reply, “Screw you, tree hugger.”
Where does the person who looks to God for guidance fall with academics like Pharr? When the consistent message of Scripture (from first book to last) informs me that homosexual behavior is a mortal sin, then am I now required to remain silent? It appears so.
Sin has now be “socialized” by elites who have usurped the power to define right and wrong from God. When this has happened in the past by people who should know better, God has not allowed it to go on for very long. This does not end well for such usurpers, nor for any society that enables them.
Extra points if your cover shot also features a sock tan and crappy rubber flip-flops. And if you really wanna go for the gold, also have a tee shirt tan in which your left arm is more tan than your right.
What makes you think I got much sleep aboard that luxurious cruise ship?
A wise man once wrote ”“What was once “The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name” has become The Alternative Lifestyle That Won’t Shut Up, and their constant yammering about it has become clichéd and repetitive.”
That’s been my line!
“The love that dare not speak its name” has become “the lust that won’t shut up.”
Commuter’s tan?
This is really so stupid. A phobia is an anxiety disorder. In this instance 1.6% of the population claims that essentially everyone else suffers from such a condition. A condition which they claim manifests itself as ‘the patriarchy.’ So tortuous is their logic in trying to quantify this nebulous enemy one might be reminded of a Patrick McGoohan television serial.So, Ms Pharr is a prisoner of her own victimhood created from her own delusional logic and nobody else should feel guilty about that.
The phrase has been attributed to various Victorian luminaries, regarding gays:
“I don’t care what they do so long as they don’t frighten the horses.”
Everybody’s crazy except me!
Better that than a bridge to Pharr.
It’s not that the questions are not posed. It is that they are ignored. Instead of having a universal “Truth,” we now have various segregated “truths” which can–ludicrous, I know–exist independently of each other. Thus, what is true in the university biology department is irrelevant to “truth” in the Gender Studies department. Thus, the feminist ignores inconvenient facts and arguments by saying that her “feelings” and experiences determine Truth.
Great gig, if you can get it.
Rather than be silent, one must be prepared to meet such academics on their own turf and defeat them. If God’s Word is true–as I believe it to be–that truth can be demonstrated logically without merely appealing to God’s authority. You and I may acknowledge that authority, but others do not, and invoking it in argument is a waste of time.
There are a myriad of arguments available to demonstrate the falsity of feminist logic. Indeed, even in a purely materialist, Darwin-esque reality, heterosexuality and its attendant social structures evolved, no? If so, they had a purpose to insure survival of the species. Thus, the feminist agenda is completely “anti-science” and God doesn’t fall into the mix, allowing an argument to degenerate into ad hominem nonsense.
’cause that’s how it is in the luxurious staterooms on Uncle Sam’s cruise ships. I know how it is – all rested and well tanned. Midnite buffets along buffets at breakfast lunch and dinner before you take a walk about on the decks to make sure the ocean hasn’t gone anywhere and the ship still floats before you turn in and sleep until the next buffet opens.
I know how it is on those ships. You can’t fool me.
Used to be, not accepting reality meant that one was insane and treated as such.