I’ve always had a peculiar talent for building alliances with people in the corporate world who really do want more than conformist sterility.  And I told myself that I would never settle for anything less than my authentic self in the world no matter what.  That and the fact that applied radical feminism gives you an unbelievable advantage in business, and it is a secret or not so secret weapon that I am surprised a lot of other radical feminists haven’t really explored.  Nobody talks much about bringing revolutuionary women’s consciousness to whatever office or job we’re in, and I find this omission rather odd.  There is much talk about opting out of the big world, or living in the country, but I believe the powerful battle we can wage is right in the hallways of corporate power, right in the middle of it all.  That kind of radical feminism can do amazing things.

Again, it takes courage to be very real, and to always know that not everyone agrees with everything we may say, but speaking the truth helps you locate allies, and that’s who we are searching for.  Enemies we can dispatch with the labyris of power, but these women allies in the woodwork are sometimes the very hardest to find.

One big secret that a lot of women don’t know (everyone here probably does) is that you don’t have to kow tow to men, you simply have to concentrate  all efforts on women’s revolution.  It has absolutely nothing to do with men, it is about the consciousness and growing power of women worldwide that will create this longest revolution.  Once women realize that men are superfluous to this revolution, then things will change, and I have always said that if women came into their full consciousness suddenly all over the world, everything, and I mean everything, would change over night.

The challenge is for women to realize this.  And that’s a very hard thing to struggle with.

I take my hat off the you then Satsuma. This is certainly not been my experience. I have been laughed at, mocked, called names and once was even shouted down by my workmates for my opinions. I also believe that there shouldn’t be a separation between your work self and your Real self. But that belief has never panned out in practice. In my life outside work I am pretty much uncompromising in my politics. And most women can’t handle it. Generally they will like me but just find me a bit too intense. But sometimes recently, I have noticed myself biting my tongue. I hate doing it, and I hate myself for not speaking out, but sometimes it isn’t worth it.
Hugs back Maggie!! I’m not particularly distressed at the moment about this stuff. I’ve been subjected to ridicule and determinedly vapid women my entire life. I’m not going to start getting upset and hurt by it now.
And as to the original point of the post (sorry for the derail Heart), I also wholeheartedly agree with what Heart has written here. Women’s revolution is women’s business. It would be nice if men followed our lead but not particularly necessary. Women do not need men.  

Payne was secretly a pro-pornography man anyway. Another misogynist scumbag, but this one tried to use radical feminism as a venue for his own male privilege. Sickening! I call this misuse and misunderstanding of what radical feminism really is. (To pro-rad fem males): If you really are a pro-radical feminist male, don’t rape or abuse women and don’t be a secret pro-pornography man, and do give up on masculinity (i.e. social construct).

Men will have to change themselves and help other men to change, calling them to account for their misogynist beliefs and acts,  if there is to be real revolution so far as men  are concerned.  We can make revolution for ourselves as women, without men’s support or participation and without men changing.   It would be great if they changed, of course.   But as a practical matter, that’s not up to us, as women.  And whether or not men change, we’ll be making revolution for women, our own people, no matter what.

I couldn’t agree more, Heart.

p.s. Allecto, I’m so sad to hear you’re goin’ through all this distressing mess. :(  I agree with what Satsuma said: What you wrote, Allecto, also really rings true to me. (((Big Hugs)))

We still have basic work to do with Feminism 101, and I believe media saturation is really a kind of “5th column” so to speak to derail woman centered understanding.  Market the hell out of useless products, saturate women with the beauty myth, and somehow keep women separated from each other.

It is absolutely true that I meet so many women who will NEVER bring up a political topic on their own.  It’s hard to get the average woman to even talk about international politics or war or Bush or gender/race issues.  Now I know people get upset when i write these things, but it is really true that you can listen to a lot of women for HOURS and they will talk on and on about absolutely nothing.  I’m not kidding, this is everywhere out in the world.  And it’s odd to me.

But I’ve noticed this for decades; even when I was a little kid I saw this kind of disconnected “personal world” that women surround themselves with.  It’s not necessarily a critique, its more a perplexity that I feel about this.

But, things open up.  I met with one of my favorite clients, an 85 year old woman, who very much made a life for herself.  We talk about all kinds of things besides the business at hand.  She is filled with a powerful energy for the advancement of women, and creates a kind of feeling of “sisterhood” just to talk with her. Right now, she invited me to help out her daughter with advice, and I felt pleased when the daughter said, “Oh, my Mom has talked about you for years!”  That felt like such a lovely validation!

These subjects are difficult for women.  I don’t feel my radical feminism makes people think I am weird at my office.  I’ve always been very honest about my political views with all types of people, and I believe there should be no separation between your Real self and your work self.  Coming out of the closet all the time in conservative corporate environments is kind of my specialty, and I get support for some of my stands.

To me, my politics guides me.  It leads me to good people and potential allies.
It can often be very hard for me to understand a lot of women’s lives. Marriage to men— a shocking mystery to me.  “Why would they do that?” is a question I often ask, and I actually mean it.  What is it that women actually see in men?  And we all know that male supremacy is deeply engrained in everyone, and these structures have the “appearance” of holy writ.
As I said before, in an earlier post, feminism just opened the doors for ambitious women who wanted a choice from oppressive homemaker roles.  We pushed hard enough for a lot of women who wanted out of that world, and in to a world more condusive to a new reality.  Then there were the millions of women who just weren’t interested at all.  They were fine with marriage to men, and fine with children, and seemingly did not feel bored at all with these roles.
It could very well be that radical feminism is only for the few, the driven, the ambitious.  I don’t know the answer, but I believe an authentic feminist self does give the women of my office courage.
When I am this authentic me, a lot of people seem to connect with me as if by magic.  And this “magic’ special something is what really gives me hope.

Rare in human history is the human being who really longs to get rid of chains.  Our whole history of the human race is a record of the tyranny of the few over the many, and changing this will take the strength of Egyptians moving boulders to build pyramids…back breaking work at the time, but how we do marvel at them now!

I’d like to thank all the women of courage who post here, and aren’t afraid of a strong and focused political self.  We are the salon of a new world!
 
 
 
 

And my sisters and brothers are saturated by malestream media. Aside from dragort, none of them know how to read and are not interested in reading for knowledge. The malestream trash on tv and at the cinema is all that they are exposed to. My younger sisters (18 and 13) read those terrible Dolly and Girlfriend magazines. They follow all the crap that goes on with tv and movie stars. My 13 year old sister loves these really horrible music by emo boy bands that have really misogynist lyrics. I point it out to them of course but they just think I am strange and weird. My 18 year old sister understands the stuff I’m talking about but those movies and tv shows are what life is to the majority of people. And they have to embrace it as life because they don’t see they have an alternative. And really I don’t know that they do. Having an online existence is fine for an introvert like me but my sisters want more, which is fair enough.

So far only one of my sisters (23 year old) has gone down the path of getting an abusive male partner and moving in with him. And that is bad enough. I don’t want to have to watch my other sisters go through the same thing. But enough complaining from me.

I do work in childcare so that is probably why I’m see a lot more of this stuff. I do find that women will talk about social issuses, but like Satsuma said, only if I bring it up. I have very, very rarely been involved in a political conversation that I myself haven’t started. I remember when I was working with kids with Special Needs I would always be the one that brought up political topics for conversation. I very, very often would have to leave the staff room because the conversations that the women were having were sickening to me. An example, one of the women brought in her daughter, who was less than 10 months old and she was introducing us to her. One woman commented on her gorgeous chubby legs and the mother replied saying something like, ‘yes I hope it is just baby fat, I’m a bit worried that she won’t lose it, it would be terrible for her to have fat thighs’. Or something along those lines. All the women assured her that it was just baby fat and that her daughter wouldn’t grow up fat.
At one stage I remember giving up on eating my lunch in the staff room and I started taking a book to work so that I could avoid the conversations. I was known as the man-hater, and that was when my politics was much more watered down than it is now, and I have never been one to wear radical feminism on my sleeve. Apart from anything else I wouldn’t have a job if I did.

It was really sad though because I really liked most of the women I worked with. We got along really well. We were very emotionally supportive of each other. They were kind of like my family but there was just this gulf that separated us. My awareness of the world and commitment to women and their determined superficiality and commitment to maintaining male supremacy. Because they were completely commited to that. And my ‘man-hating’ was difficult and dangerous.

Some of the younger women I work with at the moment are happy to discuss issues of race and gender. As is one of the older women but it is still just a secondary concern to them. They are concerned about the state of the world and the sexualisation of girls and women, etc but they aren’t disturbed enough to take any action or withdraw energy from men or anything. All of them are married or coupled.

I tend to talk to a lot more people than the average woman I think, and I ask a lot of questions, so that’s how I find out that feminism is very rare out there.  I get the sense that women are really beaten by husbands, or are somehow controlled in ways that it is hard to imagine.

Just reading your essay on being an introvert surrounded by people is challenging.  I am an extremely extroverted person, however, I do need hours each days in which to write, think and read.

What women often lack is time just for themselves, and this isn’t changing much.

Now there are huge opportunities for women now that didn’t exist when I was much younger.  So change has happened, but the biggest consumers of entertainment– People magazines, movie star gossip, and this whole idea of romance really are women.

Heck, I took an old friend to see a really beautiful house on the beach in Malibu over the weekend, and we were allowed to tour the gardens only.  Still very nice!!  But a wedding was taking place, and weddings are all about feeding a kind of strange female fantasy machine that I just don’t get!

I believe there are a lot of women I know who will actually talk about serious subjects, but I have to bring up the issues first.  They won’t ever ask these kinds of questions on their own a lot of times, and you get this kind of disconnect all the time with out lesbians in the midst of hetero women’s groups.  It is a very weird world out there for women, and again, I see some change, but the rest of it goes on as if feminism never existed.  Just makes me wonder.

Also, there is a huge difference between living out in the country and living in a large American city.  And I’m right in the big city, so i get to hear big city women talk all the time.  I’m willing to bet that a lot of women on this site aren’t really talking to large numbers of women in cities, and it may be one reason people object to my observations about what I see and hear women doing and saying… this stuff is off your radar screen.

I again wonder if some of this is age-related.  I wonder whether my young friends don’t talk about certain things around me or something like that.  I don’t know of anyone, personally — honestly — who would buy these grotesque magazines/papers featuring articles about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, etc.   There must be some of these women at work–  I work for a large lawfirm — but I just don’t ever encounter them, and that could be because I really am an introvert, I kind of stay to myself save for Denise and the few women at work I discern really do run deep, and then, my daughters and other real life friends. 

I think it’s *great* that you are doing this analysis of popular culture, Allecto!  This is important work.  I don’t understand feminists or lesbian separatists watching or liking “So You Think You Can Dance” or “Fight Club” or “Donnie Darko.”  To be around these women,  hearing them talk about this stuff, really would feel so alienating to me.    Then the pro-immunization and pro-c-section stuff, argh!  Then again, maybe I’m not seeing this/exposed to this, again, because I’m 56 and a grandma and not in the young motherhood world anymore.  I swear to the goddess on high, I don’t remotely understand feminists who stand in awe of patriarchal medicine and all of its woman-hating bullshit, stuff I resisted all of the years I was bearing and raising children, including while I was a fundie.  How in the fracking hell do feminists line up and support this woman-hating garbage?!   I don’t know.  Maybe being able to live out here in the woods, on acreage, has insulated me from this stuff that has to be so, so debilitating and discouraging to dedicated young feminist activists.

But go you, Allecto.  Your work is so important, all of it.  And hell yeah, re men being all about getting women’s attention, they so are, in every possible way.  What EVER re the race crap and men telling you who you are.  The fracking hubris.  UGH.

Well, anyway. 

xo

Heart

They talk about how wonderful vaccinations are. How casaerians are safer and better for womyn than natural birth. They watch all those terrible reality shows and totally identify with all the misogynist shit in it. Seriously. I mean I said that I liked alternative movies with strong female characters and was told to watch Pirates of the Carribean!!!! and Juno!!!! FFS

Even older (not feminist) lesbian spaces are overcrowded with talk of the fricking Olympics/and the latest poledancing club opening in Sydney etc. I know very few womyn who do not engage in malestream culture at all. In fact a young lesbian separatist I know loves America’s Top Model and So you think you can dance. She is of course aware of the misogyny but she enjoys watching it anyway.

Since writing my Whedon articles I’ve actully decided to start doing more analysis of popular culture. I made so so so many men so very very angry and that amuses me greatly. I am still getting linked to by discussion forums etc. I had two emails just today from men begging me to come and talk to them on a forum where they were debating whether I had the right to call myself Black (which I have never done) and concluded that Papuan New Guineans don’t identify as Black or can’t identify as Black or something. Black is a word that only applies to people of African heritage apparently. Anyway there was absolutely no discussion or critique of my analysis whatsoever ‘discuss’ Whedon with them. LOL. Yep, men really, really do crave female attention. 

But it is fantastic that so many men are pissed off with the fact that I dare to open my mouth so I am determined to do more of it. I love that thousands and thousands of Whedonites have descended on my blog and read my rants. It doesn’t really matter to me that radical feminists don’t really know what I’m going on about or why. I guess one of the reasons that Whedon pissed me off so much is because I used to be a devout Buffy consumer.

I think also growing up in this malestream media saturated environment gives you and understanding of the damage it can do on women’s sense of self. All of the feminists I went to uni with loved movies like Fight Club, which is a movie that glorifies male violence. And other leftist movies like Donnie Darko, V for Vendetta and Motorcycle Diaries but they are all so woman-hating. and when I’d point out the misogyny they just couldn’t see it. It was so frustrating.

See: http://charlielittle.wordpress.com/