You Are Not Crazy
Aug 10th, 2008 by admin
This is a very fine website dealing with verbal and emotional abuse in relationships.
Heart
BLOGGING THE LONGEST REVOLUTION
Aug 10th, 2008 by admin
This is a very fine website dealing with verbal and emotional abuse in relationships.
Heart
Yes - the content is great (and so clear) and the design is brilliant.
Great list of all the evil tactics abusive men use with women.
Now if women can somehow identify these piggish creepy creeps earlier in the game, they won’t marry or date them. Surely we should be able to psych out the psychos with all this info.
But, the best bet, is for women simply not to marry or live with the creeps to begin with. It would avoid all this trouble, and women could focus on taking over the country, getting great educations, and we’d boot “dating” and all that other oppressive compulsory heterosexuality out of the school system entirely. Ah if only… And get rid of the proms, pom poms and jocks too!!
Is there a non-Flash mirror of the site, plain HTML maybe? Some women, myself included, don’t have access to the most current technology to view the site.
And can anyone refresh me on what’s available in print, speaking to a general readership, not shelter staff or other professionals? I think Lundy Bancroft is pretty good at outlining why abusers abuse, in “Why does he do that?”, and I seem to remember that Jones and Schechter cover some material on assisting DV survivors in “When Love Goes Wrong”. Haven’t read that in a while, though, and can’t get to the library right now. Susan Brewster’s “To Be An Anchor in the Storm” is now called “Helping Her Get Free” I think?
Anyone read Elaine Weiss’s “Family and Friends’ Guide to Domestic Violence: How to Listen, Talk and Take Action When Someone You Care About is Being Abused”? I know some people who really need to learn how to help survivors, as soon as possible.
Hi, una. Re flash, I don’t see that there’s a way to view this site without it, which is really too bad! The material on the site is based on the work of Patricia Evans, which imo is some of the finest work available on verbal and emotional abuse. It’s also very much from a feminist perspective. Evans’ site is here:
http://www.verbalabuse.com/indexmain.shtml
My all-time favorite book for survivors is Getting Free: You Can End Abuse and Take Back Your Life, by Ginny NiCarthy. I’ve probably bought at least 10 of these books to give to survivors, it is a very, very fine resource, encouraging, compassionate, the kind of book a survivor turns to again and again for support.
That is a great site Heart, simple yet informative. The Allies section was interesting as I had not thought of ‘lack of true peer group’ — although possibly not true in all cases.
Satsuma:
Now if women can somehow identify these piggish creepy creeps earlier in the game, they won’t marry or date them. Surely we should be able to psych out the psychos with all this info.
Satsuma, it is extremely difficult to pick out an abuser beforehand. Most abusers will not show their true abusive colours until they have trapped their victim via marriage, pregnancy, motherhood, or financial entanglement.
The signs are there, but usually so subtle, that unless you have had experience with an abuser, these signs are only marginally outside ‘the normal range’ of behaviours. What one needs to look for is a cluster of behaviours, but again, the abuser is wearing a mask during the ‘courtship’ phase, and these behaviours are incredibly difficult to spot.
Remember that it is not the victim’s fault for ‘picking a bad one’ or poor judgment, it is the abuser’s fault for being an abuser. End of story.
Thanks for the website link Heart.
Hi Stormy,
I understand fully that no woman is at fault just because she couldn’t see through these devious socio-paths. What I’m getting at is we do have a lot of pyscholigcal info on their profiles and how they work.
Women can also alert each other about who the problem people are.
I highly recomment a book called “The Socio-path Next Door” to get the full picture of how these people operate, and the tactics they use. And women can and should employ one strike policies.
So sites like this will really be helpful. I believe all women derserve better and can do things that will put them into a stronger position, so they aren’t attracted to these creeps from the get go.
It is still really difficult Satsuma, even with the knowledge, because not only are the abusers cunning, but most men are on the same continuum.
Separatism is really the only solution. I think you would be on board with that solution!
Yes, Stormy, I do believe separatism is the only solution, and that men are so dangerous to women, that no reform is possible.
Just reading this blog can be so depressing, because you just keep reading about women who are beaten and killed by boyfriends and husbands, and women keep on marrying men and keep on keeping on. Women in America do have a choice NOT to marry or live with men. There are many options to become self-supporting, and break the dependency on male income. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it can be done. And the more we create women friendly spaces, the more we write about this, and tell the truth of the evil of men, the more likely this message will fall on ears of women who need to read this and hear it.
We know men are violent, we know they won’t change, and we know they act all fakey when they are on the prowl for future slaves (wives) and girl toys (girlfirends). We know men in groups are rapists and rape inducing idiots, and we know their games, wars and lives are meaningless and dangerous to any woman who really wants a life free of threats.
We know all this, and we find sadly that a lot of women come into feminism after they’ve had the hell beaten out of them. Somehow feminism isn’t real to them unless disaster happens, and I wonder how long it is actually going to take for all the world’s women to really wake up with all of this.
I get frustrated, I get impatient. I agree that men are cunning abusers.. I know they are cunning and “crafty” which is what Sonia Johnson called them. She said men aren’t very intelligent, but they are crafty. I can see this all the time even with the men I work with. They are incredible sexist pigs, and yet women give them millions of dollars never knowing that they are dealing with a sexist charmer. Perhaps we need to have hidden cameras to put on trial the real nature of men “behind closed doors.” Just ask Elizabeth Edwards! How many women on this site thought Edwards was a great presidential candidate? Geez, he was a creepy crawly from the get go. You should have seen his slimy answers to gay marriage… just another smooth talking good old boy, who thought it was fine to run for president all the while his wife was battling the first round of cancer.
She finds out what he has done, and still she goes out and campaigns for this guy! It’s really the same endless story, and again, I don’t know what it will take before women realize we’ve had these menacing jack-asses conning women, using up their lives, making them do the dishes while they run for president.
Women are trained from birth to please and placate these monsters, and nothing I will ever say, or nothing other radical lesbian feminists will say can ever get through this huge cloud of denial over the real nature of the primitive crafty con artists known as men.
I know, it’s a rant, it’s Friday, one of my best friends told the story of how her father kicked her out of the house when he found out she was lesbian just the other day… and on and on it goes.
Yes, Stormy, I am sympathetic. All people can fall victim to con artists and sociopaths and creeps. We all are victimized by people who have no conscience, and no one is safe from cult recruitment and lies. We’ve all had varying experiences of this, and the stories could fill up a million radical women’s blogs.
It just looks so clear to me, because I don’t live with men, I have a kind of studied distance from them, and I am not in denial about how bad they really are. I see this all the time with women who come into their 60s, and their struggles, because they just didn’t know about this soon enough. Patriarchy is a very cunning system of women manipulation. The boys have got it down to a science.
Women in our kind hearted natures want to believe these guys. Just ask Elizabeth Edwards.
How many women on this site thought Edwards was a great presidential candidate?
I doubt many did, at least of the posters, though Elizabeth did claim her husband was better on women’s issues than Sen. Clinton.
Your solution will not work for most women, and you know it, Satsuma and Stormy. What is the point of claiming it is the only solution? For you, no doubt it is. Are you picking a fight with me? Women could change the world eventually simply by teaching all girls to assert themselves. If women assert political rebellion, it would make all that so much easier. Political rebellion is much easier than personal rebellion. Really, women could make a profound statement just by changing party registration. If enough women defect from the phony baloney opposition party, that would get Heart and whoever else wants to run on the ticket on the ballot, with plenty of publicity from furious Democrats. How dare women defy their claim of being a real opposition party? I discovered a neat widget for filling out the registration form, and put it with a new introduction on the Candidate Announcements page on my blog. The picture at the top of the sidebar links there.
I posted a very long critique of Obama this week. Friday I started a poll about it over at Obamaland. Four people voted so far, and nobody has taken up my challenge to defend your champion, if you can. The poll is here. http://forums.therandirhodesshow.com/index.php?showtopic=6838
Only registered members of the forum can vote. Three of those voters think I write right wing propaganda.
How do you think men can so effectively continue to rule the world? Who enables them? Who raises their children and cooks their food? Really, Stormy and I do have a very good solution, and if you compare women’s ideas in 1950 to the ideas that radical lesbian feminists brought to the table in the 70s - 90s, you’d see that it was lesbians who started the rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters. It was lesbians who started almost all the feminist groups in Japan in the 70s and 80s. I was there, I saw how little work straight women did. None of them volunteered to do work for the first Rape Crisis Center in Tokyo, none of them donated money. They’d show up at meetings wanting to bring their boyfriends to a feminist meeting for goddess sake!
Once lesbians walked out of an organization, the straight women who took it over ran it into the ground. Without lesbian fuel, the car died on the road. I remember all this. I was there.
For such a small group, we have produced volumes of practical and visionary ideas, and yet women still think that living with and marrying men is viable. I’m amazed, and yet I know that this eternal addiction to men makes the machine run.
It begins in the home, and it goes out into the world.
The real danger now is the propoganda of liberal straight people who will try to undermine our institutions, and try to make lesbians “just like everyone else.” This assimilationist yuck makes me sick, and I do believe the radical hard line lesbian feminist politics is exactly what we need to keep speaking up about loud and proud. And no, we aren’t going away, we aren’t going to validate the woman draining heteropatriarchies of the home, we aren’t going to go along with this.
We are the alternative to a very corrupt hetero system, that has been enshrined and worshipped for centuries, and we know it doesn’t work. Even that ridiculous institution of marriage is falling to pieces in the U.S., and now lesbians and gays are dumbing down and falling for it. Oy vey, so many dangers, so little time!
…we aren’t going to validate the woman draining heteropatriarchies of the home…
Who is? I know you think Heart and I are impractical dreamers, Satsuma, but I could throw that right back at you. You completely missed my point, as usual. Your solution is fine, for you. Do not try to imply my solution is validating heteropatriarchy of any sort. Yours is not the only alternative. I look at your claims and wonder whether to laugh or scream. You cannot expect me to take you seriously when you claim to have the only way, a way not remotely in the realm of possibility for most women.
Really, Satsuma, the idea that women can end heteropatriarchy by giving up on men would be amusing, if I did not know you believe it. At least lately you try to make a rational argument. Most women will never consider separatism, but they may consider becoming more assertive. If girls stop learning to defer to the male, men will have no choice but to learn how to deal with women as partners. If women stop deferring to male politicians, that will happen so much faster.
I have low expectations about women kicking the oppressors out of the home. I do support women getting self-defense training and learning to kick boys’ heads in on the school playground. I used to do that, and they kept their distance. I know that men understand one thing, a swift kick to the head. I never bother reasoning with the pigs anymore, they know it, they keep their heads down and their mouths shut around me. It works.
I just think it is stupid for women who weigh 95 pounds to marry men who are giant over 6′ monsters. I find women caring for men constantly to be a huge issue. How do they think men are able to have all this time to cause all this trouble in the world?
No, women aren’t going to give up their addiction to men, and men aren’t going to change. I know this absolutely and positively, and nothing is going to change my mind as I watch yet another woman get up there list wife, mother, daughter, at the expense of who SHE is. It is heteropatriarchy celebrated, and what makes this any different ever? Now is it different? It isn’t.
I’m not a dreamer, I’m a realist. I know how much free labor women contribute to the care and feeding of my enemies. Thousands upon millions of unpaid hours, all this effort trying to “get” monsters to change. It never ever works, and we should all just know this by now. But hey, Aletha, hope springs eternal, I’m just not buying it that’s all.
And you’re not getting what I’m saying. Women cook for, clean up after, and take care of children by the millions. They step out of high paying careers and pretend this is 21st century. They continue to do this, they continue to do this expecting men to pay the bills. We have a 50-60% divorce rate in CA and still they’re doing it. And it shows. It’s hard for women to really see what this is all about. They want to deny this reality, they want to justify it, or put Michelle up on the podium saying things that are exactly the same thing women of the 1950s might have said. The only thing that makes it worse, is that now they really do have Harvard educations, now they really did SUPERVISE the man again, only to keep house while HE runs for president. If this isn’t the biggest feminist joke on earth I simply don’t know what is.
Thank goddess I don’t have to craft the apologetics for men school of feminist thought, and bend my mind around NewSpeak yet again, when it’s really just OldSpeak. What’s so hard about this line of reasoning? It’s quite simple. But this is not for the faint of heart, do I hear yet another wedding bell ring for yet another shame slavery creating “marriage”– ding dong bell, woman beaten and dumped in to patriarchal well. Sheesh!
Someone’s got to say this stuff, might as well be little old me yet again. But hey there are women out there who will read this and something will click. One or two or maybe half a dozen. This option and brutal simplicity needs to be put out there for those who understand it and get it. Not every woman gets it. But a few do.
Satsuma, this is all complicated. Times have changed, and yet they have not. The same is true of men, and of women. It is not a black and white thing. Is any of this change significant? It depends on your perspective. I would not want to go back to the fifties. I was growing up during the explosion of feminist literature. It made me resolute never to be a slave, or to defer, to a man for a relationship. I found men willing to accept that. Some do exist. I find that significant. I do not expect you to, or even to believe me.
It is not that I do not get what you are saying, but as we all know, you like hyperbole. Sometimes that bothers me. Your persistent use of the phrase, addiction to men, bothers me. Would you say, you are addicted to your SO? If not, what exactly comprises the difference? Masochism is addictive, by its nature. The battered woman syndrome is addictive, by its nature. Heterosexuality is not analogous, not by its nature, however addictive and destructive to women its common forms are. We all know who is served by maintaining the common illusions of heterosexuality, but this does not make other ways of relating impossible, just rare.
I personally think that separatism is a perfectly valid solution. Why will it not work for most women? Because most women are straight? Marriage and sex are not behavioral imperatives. Just because one is straight, one doesn’t HAVE to get married and have sex with a man and make babies.
And simply being assertive will not work. If one is too assertive as a woman, she won’t get any man to marry her or stay married to her. Or the guy will stay married but cheat off and on over the years.
Is separatism not a solution because some women don’t make very much money? That’s a serious problem, being poor, but there are ways to get more education and get a better paying job. And in the grand scheme of things, the amount of work one has to do to get more money isn’t half as bad as all the ongoing work to stay slim, have a pleasant personality, not be too disagreeable, always willing to suck cock or be fucked, etc. And at least an education can’t be taken away. But despite all the hard work, a woman can be dumped by a man for any slight infraction, leaving her back to square one. Not much money, and after years of sponging off a man, STILL no education and decent-paying job.
Bonobobabe, it is hard for me to take your comment seriously. There is no need to choose between separatism and an imperative to marry and procreate. The simple fact is that most women will not give up sex with men. No way, no how, no matter how severe the price we may have to pay for it.
About being assertive, I said: Women could change the world eventually simply by teaching all girls to assert themselves. Did you miss the word, all? Or eventually? Are you saying men will give up on marriage if women become too assertive? They might have to, because women would not want to get married, at least not as marriage is conventionally understood, or might change the meaning to such an extent it becomes unrecognizable, as my best friend did, over twenty years ago. Monogamy is a different issue. I severely doubt how assertive a woman is has any bearing on whether her lover will cheat on her. You seem to think men find assertive women unbearable, or unsuitable for a committed relationship. Many men do, but not all, and if all women unlearned the imperative to defer to men, men would have no choice but to learn to live with it.
I could say something…. but I won’t
Satsuma,
I was thinking about this a couple of days ago and decided that both separatists and devout heterosexual women live in fantasy land.
Pie in the sky pie bye’n'bye.
Just different flavours of pie.
In the meantime, women get to eat dirt.
In this weird week “devout heterosexual women” had me rolling with laughter Mary Sunshine! I sure needed that
:-) :-)***
Give it the old triple smile!
***The simple fact is that most women will not give up sex with men. No way, no how, no matter how severe the price we may have to pay for it.***
Do you know that a fact is not necessarily true? “The moon is made of green cheese” is a fact. But it’s not true. I don’t think your “simple fact” is necessarily true either, at least not eternally and over time, as your dogmatic statement of the fact seems to indicate you believe.
satsuma,
I always enjoy reading your posts, but I’ve become a little confused; are you “for” lesbians or for ALL women, whether partnered with men or not?
Methinx women can’t give up men, because of dependency on men for any access to any social privilege - that goes the same in the workplace, as at home.
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Like Andrea Dworkin said along the lines that All women are just one man away from welfare, and all women are dependent on making a contract, or making a deal with menfolk, in return for access to a set of privileges, and some social safety-net in status, security and even survival, at home, work or wherever.
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Just my view - but if you end up getting a good deal, (whether marriage, mainstream career, sex-work or whatever) its just luck and chance, not an individual woman’s ability to make a good deal, or feminism’s great social revolution.
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To me, Happy Wife=Happy CareerWoman=Happy Hooker etc, we all make a deal, and make the best of it. If we’re lucky, we’ve been given limited access to some privileges by “nice guys” as husbands, and/or as career mentors/enablers, and/or clients/pimps who honour their end of the contract.
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And then totally Divided & Conquered by the ” If I can do it, any woman can” whatever deal we struck. Husbands in particular, are handy accessories to have, life is much easier with one, than without one. Those of you with “good ones” - Care to Share?
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But there are going to be more losers than winners on all those deals - check any DV shelters & divorce court statistics for the marriage body-count. Same with career-women, a handful of winners, wont balance up the large numbers who no-matter-what-they-do end up as low-grade, low-paid insecure wage-slaves in ‘pink ghettos’ (check any industry or union stats for the working women body-count). A handful of happy women who have done well in the high-class big $$ ’sex-trade’ with the “nice guy” pimps and brothels, or going solo with carefully chosen, select, nice guy regular clients etc, don’t make up for the body counts of the lifestyle and industry in general. And there’s a huge body-count in all three areas, including marriage.
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And women’s ability to strike a better deal for themselves, varies enormously across cultures. In some countries, women are given access to a few more rights under law, than others, in marriage for example. But even in countries where women do have some rights in marriage, its been a very recent introduction, and many women still lose out badly in large numbers, when they try to exercise those legal rights.
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Separatists are trying to live their lives as a “No Deal” operation, but that means giving up some access to those patriarchal privileges. For some, this is a trade-off, seen as no big deal, but I suspect that many women would not see it that way, and hence is not an option available to many women.
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Branjor, a fact that is not true is a misrepresentation of reality. One definition is a piece of information presented as having objective reality (Merriam Webster online dictionary). I do not think I am misrepresenting reality. I find it ironic that lesbians decry the blindness of most heterosexuals to lesbian reality, rightfully so, since it appears lesbians are also capable of blindness to heterosexual reality. Actually this surprises me. I would have thought lesbians would know better, and I know many, if not most, do know better, at least enough not to expect separatism to be a viable solution for the vast majority of women.
Call it fantasy to think women might teach daughters not to defer to men, but it will happen eventually, despite all the cultural pressure maintaining male power. As much as I disagree with her politics, if Hillary Clinton had become President, that would be a huge step in that direction. If Heart gets enough votes to make the news, that would also be a huge step in that direction. It is easy to look at the world and say, it is not happening and will never happen. I think that is a fatalistic attitude that lets men win without much of a fight. If Hillary Clinton believed that, would she have bothered to run at all?
Re lesbian blindness to heterosexual reality - it (heterosexual reality) is all around us, in our faces, everywhere we go, unlike lesbian reality, which is usually hidden. In spite of that I can’t wrap my mind around the concept of women who wouldn’t eschew sex with men “No way, no how, no matter how severe the price we may have to pay for it” (your quote). What??? Even if you pay with rape, battering, physical and mental death??? Such a creature feels alien to my soul. She also makes me feel, if that indeed is what “most women” are like, I’d almost be prouder to be an Afghan Hound than a woman. Sounds harsh, maybe, but those are the type of feelings your statement aroused in me. I just can’t wrap my mind around it. So maybe the lesson is not to overestimate how much lesbians can get inside of your reality just because it is so “out there” in society.
Actually, I don’t think sex with men would go the way of the dinosaurs though, even if ”most women” were like me. There is reproduction to consider, which I have considered but decided against for reasons other than that it involved sex with men. That is, a man might possibly at one point have gotten a lay out of me, but he wouldn’t have gotten ME, if you know what I mean. I never considered artificial insemination as the rate of male births is inordinately high by that method and no way would I have considered any of the other dangerous and exploitative reproductive technologies.
Why would lesbians know much about heterosexual women’s reality? Most of the time these lives just seem insane to us, and we have our own worlds to build.
I have very low expectations that straight women will understand a pure lesbian point of view — the rare die hards who never ever had sex with men, did not date men, and were off on our own journeys from a very young age.
What we do see is the slave-like smiles straight women project in public, faces plastered with make-up, shoes that are unhealthy for feet and actually dangerous to wear in a big city. We see women who marry men we wouldn’t give the time of day to, and women who “give up” self-sufficient careers to marry these men.
We see this constant catering to men that is incomprehensible to me at times it is so all pervasive and overwheling to watch.
Today, I heard a wholistic doctor talk about safe foods and health care for women. Her lecture was excellent, and one part of her lecture mentioned (among other face products) that red lipstick contained lead. I looked around my table, and ALL the women there, except me, was wearing some shade of red lipstick. I could see their faces kind of glassing over. The doctor giving the speech did not mention that it was patriarchal conditioning that was the cause of all of this.
I don’t know why straight women who are feminists keep defending this status quo, and keep thinking that it is “natural” for women to marry men or even to have sex with them. No it isn’t, it is the behavior of a deeply colonized people who don’t want to give up the perks of slavery. It’s been going on for so long now, that it is virtually impossible for most women to truly imagine that this state of affairs is about as attractive as being a dog in a home with a good owner. Good dog treats, regular meals, a nice little doggie bed to sleep on at night, but still the dog is a dog, and it is owned by the ower, just as heterosexual marriage is about ownership. Only now, like a cotton soft doggie bed bought at Petco, they sugar coat this a bit, so that women will still foolishly “marry” the masters yet again.
It’s a horror show that is a favorite feature of heterosexual women, and no amount of rape stories, attrocity stories or a 50-60% divorce rate, can seem to disuade women from marrying these guys. Branjor, I just scratch my head in absolute amazement, and the only thing I can imagine is that we are dealing with mass delusion so deeply ingrained that no one can dislodge it. Red lipstick and hair dye indeed
I must concede, this issue does push my buttons. I had to think about why I was getting so emotional, defensive, and making wild statements. Then I see here some of my own thoughts. Rain’s post and mine were in moderation overnight.
It is always complicated to propose solutions to such deeply ingrained problems. How relevant are practical considerations when discussing ideal solutions? It is true enough that if women had truly free choice, were not compelled by economic and cultural imperatives to be in relationships with men, my statement that Branjor took such exception to would be greatly overstated, or flat out wrong. It does vary greatly across cultures, but even in the most enlightened countries many women get little or no satisfaction from sex with men, and in some cultures the idea of women deriving pleasure from sex with men is inconceivable, made impossible by genital mutilation, or totally besides the point. Whatever fulfillment women are getting from relationships with men is all too often through children, or sense of duty. So if these women could survive and have children without having to live with men, most of them might well jump at the chance to separate from men.
The point I was trying to express by my wild statement is that there is a biological component to heterosexuality. The desire heterosexual women feel for men is not just a symptom of colonization, though the customary accoutrements are. Nature implanted the desire for sex with the opposite sex in all species of animals that procreate sexually. Obviously the strength of that desire varies greatly among women. Lesbians are immune to it, and on the other side of the scale, it can range from feeling compelled to put up with it to wild passion. The desire gets shaped by the quality of the relationship.
Another consideration is that if women really did have free choice to live without men in the picture, with or without children, that would be a position of great power relative to what women have now. To some extent this is true for professional women, but not for the majority. If it were true for all women, there could be a true balance of power between the sexes. In that case, which would require a radically different economic and cultural model, decent relationships would not have to be a matter of luck. Women could demand what we want from men, because we would have the option to walk out. Possibly this could be brought about by separatism. I think it is more practical to bring it about by political separatism. I would not argue that there is any solution short of some kind of separatism, though it is conceivable that some kind of ecological disaster could force men to change their ways. By that time, it would probably be too late to prevent total ecological collapse.
I apologize for reacting so emotionally and defensively. I should know better, because it has happened before. Satsuma, I can understand why you would laugh. What puzzles me is why you seem to refuse to acknowledge the biological aspect of desire. It is not insignificant, and there has been a huge controversy over whether being lesbian or gay is a choice, or a matter of being wired differently. I cannot speak to that, but it is not a matter of choice for me. There have been times in my life when I have been extremely motivated to give up on men. My body would not cooperate. Yes, this could be due to remnants of colonization I cannot shake, but I cannot shake the feeling it has something to do with biology.
Thanks for this long and thougtful post Aletha. I think sometimes straight women get mad at radical lesbian feminists. We are very hard line, and we don’t go along with all that stuff that straight people think is so “natural.” Male pleasing is just not our thing. Men generally bore us to death, and we don’t know why women can’t make themselves economically more self-sufficent.
I believe there is a biological component to straight people. There must be, why else would women be insane enough to move in with monsters? Why else would straight women act so gooney around men? Why would they objectify themselves and chase after men? Why?
Where I am suspicious about biology comes in because it is over stated. I have never felt biologically like anything that straight people constantly pontificate about. I hated boys from birth, I did not have “raging hormones” when I was a teenager, and I didn’t care for the dating scene ever. I was interested in intellectual pursuits and in feeding my ever curious mind.
I really did have NO interest in children, even when I was one.
Despite ALL the straight propaganda directed at me, I was very uninterested in the world straight women lived in. Like a lot of lesbians and gays, we were off to see the world, we created things that didn’t exist, we kept up with our studies, we were not interested in the social world of straight people. I don’t care about people’s straight families, or their obsession with grandparents and grand kids and my this and that off spring.
So perhaps my distate for everything straight is my biological response to what I see as a colonizing tyranny and arrogance that straight culture is. Who knows.
What is happening is that with reproductive technology, straight women are having kids without men. They say they can’t find the right man (no surprise there) and so they want to have children. They have the money and education to do this now, and it’s a significant social trend.
There is a biological component to straight identity. This is obviously true, but it isn’t as big a deal as straight people make it out to be. Otherwise, why the propaganda all the time directed at lesbians who hate this stuff? How could gays and lesbians emerge as a powerful force in America using this argument? In the U.S. we rose as a people starting in the stiffling straight 50s, as did every social justice movement of the last 100 years.
I believe we became a people because we were the alternative to over population. The earth was being destroyed by people having way too many children, and having children they could not afford.
Lesbians have always been out there, and we are the great intellectual change agents throughout herstory. We are the college presidents, we do get women the right to vote, we do create women’s centers and we do have a brutal critique of straight hegemony. We have no use for men, we hate voting for men, we hate kow towing to them, and I’ll speak for myself here, I hate having my taxes go to heterosexual families and their endless need for social services!
Is this a biological hatred? Or is it just our idea that all this biology doesn’t apply to us at all. The radical lesbian feminist is a unique species in the world. Women who have never had sex with men are the unique powerhouses of all herstory. I actually believe that sex with men destroys something in women, and that men fear women who don’t need or want them in their spaces.
Striaght women do get upset about these ideas, just as I get upset at the degree to which straight women cater to men. When you see the degree to which this goes on, and the degree to which women give up their brains for these monsters, you have to admit that we do have a point and purpose in the world.
I don’t like straight social norms, and I don’t like straight dominated spaces. I want my own country and own world, and I do like spaces where women have never had children and are powerful women without any men ever being in their lives. That is a very exciting thing to me Aletha.
Surely there is enough room in feminism for women who want this world free of men, children and hetero chit chat to say the least. I think women don’t often ever see this alternative, so they don’t know they have a choice. They think that men are the only game in town, or perhaps women are lazy, they want men to pay the bills and they don’t like to work outside these sheltered homes. That could really be true.
All I know is that biology is not as powerful as you think. It most certainly is not my destiny. I don’t intend to populate the earth, and I don’t care about straight people’s linages and grandchildren, I care about my life today. I care about lesbians having more space to themselves, and more personal power.
I want lesbian identity to be so common and so out there in the world, that women really do see that straight is not the only thing available to women. When this is widely visible, then we’ll see just how attracted to men women really are. But until this day comes, we’re still living in a world where lesbian self is a strongly socially punished category. And we all know how socially timid and fearful of going against popular codes of conduct women really are. Straight women are very fearful, and their social fear holds back revolution in many ways.
This is not a popular opinion here, but again, I am a radical lesbian and I’m not interested in the concept of popularity to begin with. It gains me nothing in the world, but a focused anger and desire for freedom drives me on and on. It’s what makes my life worth living, that and a fine dinner somewhere where children aren’t allowed in the door. Keep that biological imperative as far away as possible!
The point I was trying to express … is that there is a biological component to heterosexuality. The desire heterosexual women feel for men is not just a symptom of colonization… Nature implanted the desire for sex with the opposite sex in all species of animals that procreate sexually.
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So Biology-is-Destiny then? Its hard-wired. Its in my Nature - I just can’t help it. Sounds vaguely familiar to me - where have I heard that before? oh, thats right, from men.
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Sexual reproduction is quite simple really, doesn’t take long. As Germaine Greer once wrote about her cat, the tom may have had his 10 minutes of biological ecstasy, but her cat purred for the next 6 months (with no tom cat anywhere around).
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In many sexually reproducing species, it is just that, a simple and very quick biological act where desire only happens in its own season. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it. The other 99.999% of life goes on quite merrily without heterosexual intercourse.
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And as for Nature, sexual life pair-bonding is very rare in mammalian species. Almost by definition, as mammalian offspring are born live & immature, they need long periods of care. Hence many mammals live in groups for communal care of offspring, not pair-bonded nuclear families. Herds, packs, pods (the list goes on). Safety in numbers. Many hands make light work.
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Pair-bonded marriage and the nuclear family is an extremely recent “invention” for humans, completely 100% socially constructed, for the benefit of males. There is nothing natural or biological in it, unless you accept men’s propaganda and lies that it is.
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Historically, marriage didn’t appear until well after the first agricultural settled communities, and then for centuries after that, only practiced in upper-class propertied peoples, royalty and such-like. Always a business transaction too, a piece of property to seal a contract between rival or allied patriarchal clans. No romance or even lust in the literature or arts. Not until the early middle-ages in Europe do we see romantic literature, and most of that was about extra-marital romances, it was still completely understood that the marriage itself was a business transaction, and if you wanted lust and passion and desire, and even heterosexually bonded love, you did it outside of marriage.
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And the masses of poor for many centuries, did not get married, as they had no property to transact, so why bother? Babies got born to unwed mothers in the peasants villages, by various fathers, quick roll-in-the-hay one afternoon, and he disappears after, well into the 18th century according to the European literature, and nobody cared much, except the church. The children were cared for communally, in the mothers home village and extended families. Whether the father stayed around or not, was totally irrelevant.
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Religions had a lot to do with that I suspect. Each male must have a “right” to his own household property, and one man has one woman for his very own personal property. If it was so “natural”, then we would not have needed so many huge tomes of laws, laws, laws and more laws, taboos and myths and rituals surrounding it. Like Mary Daly says, it needs to be Reinforced with Force. If it was natural and biological, it would just happen in due course.
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And maybe some women said what a silly idea, just because I might like to have a bit of heterosexual slap & tickle once in awhile, doesn’t mean I should dedicate all the other 99.9999% of my life to the maintenance of his well-being. Such independent heterosexual women, probably found out the hard way, that it is “Better to Marry, than Burn.”
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To support it, you need wide-spread social conditioning towards heterosexuality and sex addiction (it can be physically addictive, and for some going without regular sex is like giving up smoking), and also inserting a socially conditioned “Yuck” and puke factor against female homosexuality.
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As for baby-making in Nature, its not a hard-wired thing in individuals either. Human ancestors were poor breeders, malnutrition and heavy physical activity just to survive on a daily basis, meant a large proportion of females never conceived. Also meant high infant mortality and miscarriage rates. The barefoot and eternally pregnant stone age female eternally pregnant is pure male mythology and propaganda. The Natural, high male die-off rates in adolescence meant a lot of males never sired either.
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There were women who became mothers - but it was just a *part* of their life - NOT their whole reason for existence -and there were also plenty of women who did not at any time, and plenty of women who always, and still do, live longer then men and long beyond any child-bearing biology. In Nature, humans, like many mammals are supposed to be around 60 to 40 ratio of females to males, because males are supposed to naturally die-off younger and in larger numbers, than females.
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Maybe this was where the “three” faces of the Goddess spirituality comes from, all three major groups of women, (2 of which are non-child bearing) were important to the whole. And not one of the three, were dependent on menfolk (but the other way around, males are dependent on females throughout life).
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At some point, males must have figured how redundant they really are in the Natural order, and had to ensure their own survival by forcing/coercing female dependence, including female sexuality.
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I have to run, but have to ask, why do either of you think I used the word component? You gave a nice herstory lesson, Rain, but you raise a straw man. I am not defending traditional marriage or biology is destiny, not by any stretch of the imagination. I do not know who you are addressing, but it is not me.
Component?? Somewhere in post 47, Aletha, you said that somewhere there was a biological component to heterosexuality.
That’s why I referred to “component” in my commentary. Also, I kind of like the word itself
I think she’s saying she used the word component to say that biology is only a part of it.
At first I thought what you thought, Satsuma, that Aletha was saying she hadn’t used the word component and I went back and found it in her post.
Sometimes it is hard to believe my words can be so thoroughly misread, but I should know better. I did not ask why you used the word component, Satsuma, I asked why you thought I used it! Branjor figured that out, so it could not be so mysterious! Rain quoted me using the words biological component, so she could jump to her own conclusions about what I must mean by biological, ignoring the word component and most everything else I said because it would not fit those conclusions.
It is always so nice to be told my reality, experiences, and feelings are all patriarchal bullshit delusions. Nobody who understood what I meant by heterosexual reality is commenting. I was not talking about surface manifestations, the symptoms of colonization, which is, I suppose, all some can see. I was referring to what it is like to deal with men on an intimate basis. Rain asked, Those of you with “good ones” - Care to Share?
Why on earth would any woman in her right mind with a decent man in her life want to share anything of her intimate feelings here when it is so obvious those will get dismissed as patriarchal bullshit? I did it to prove a point. I have a very thick skin and do not particularly care what most people think of me. I am creating a radically different reality. Some think what I am describing is impossible. Where have I heard that before? Some think the idea that men can be good companions for women serves men. No, it is a challenge to men! It so happens that companionship is a better model for a relationship than men dominating women. Oh I must be kidding myself! I am a slave, too stupid to realize how I am playing into male hands!
The idea is, if one man can be decent and treat his mate right, all men can. They just do not want to. They think it is not in their best interest. As long as they see their best interest as maintaining their power and control over women, they are right, reciprocity is antithetical to that. Men who open their minds and encourage women to be who we are may discover, companionship is better for both men and women. Is this serving men at the expense of women? Are male and female interests intrinsically hopelessly at odds? I say to think that is to buy into the conventional wisdom about heterosexual relationships, which evidently some confuse with heterosexual reality. There is nothing intrinsically real about conventional wisdom, what men have created to keep their power over women. I exist to defy and abolish all that. But I must be kidding myself, really all I am doing is reinforcing the patriarchy, feeding the delusions of foolish women who want to believe there is a better way. Right?
No, I dont see as much division and conflict as you think Aletha. To me, your views are similar to the liberal feminist line, and while liberal and radical feminism are very closely allied in many areas (and with common roots in herstory), and both seek the same ultimate goal, they do differ in some places. Same theory, but a few different practices maybe?
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Liberal feminism argues to work for change in conjunction with, and engagement with, and negotiation with men, by working from “within the system” to “change the system” so to speak. See change as an outcome of social evolutionary processes based on communication/education. Also aligns with the philosophies of socialism, anarchism and Marxism etc.
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Liberal feminists sometimes see separatists as cop-outs, who do nothing for the cause of women by their refusal to engage, or lazy pie-in-the-sky utopians. Some separatists on the other hand, see the liberal feminist strategy as as a losing one, and grieve for the casualties of energy burnout.
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Maybe one strategy will prove over time as being “a better way” than the other one? Maybe neither, maybe we need both in parallel?
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Just speaking for myself, I don’t see them as mutually exclusive or necessarily in conflict with each other. Some areas of my life are quite separatist, other areas I spend a lot of time working with heterosexual and lesbian liberal feminists, in trade Unionism for example, in main(male)stream local politics, with mothers and children, and also in mainstream corporate career line now my kids have grown ie. very much “within the system” in my daily life.
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but, like many separatists, I still think its a losing battle in the long-run and doomed to failure, but its like socialism (to me), its the next best thing, and liberal feminist strategies can help enormously, in reducing the worst impacts of oppression on women, in the here-and-now of daily lives.
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And I could be very wrong, and it might work out just fine after all, however many years or centuries in the future it might be - But - I also really like the idea of a Backup Plan B , for “just in case”, or “when all else fails” — and separatism offers that for women.
I suppose heterosexual women really want to believe all this stuff. I just don’t that’s all. I believe men are beyond redemption, and that it is a waste of time to try to explain this stuff to them.
I see no change whatsoever in their behavior worldwide, and with this election, I’ve actually heard them speaking out in a more rotten and sexist way than ever before.
We won’t know what women are really capable of doing unless they have complete economic, cultural and social freedom to NOT have any men in their lives. Otherwise, it is just the cop-out of the majority yet again, and women desperately want to justify “Some men are good.” No they aren’t. Just ask the neighbor whose husband raped her. Just ask the grand child who’s grandpa raped her. Most women have no idea just how rotten men are behind closed doors. The cunning slave owners are very good at acting in public. Just ask O.J. Mr. Charming Simpson.
There will not be a better world for women as long as they keep serving the masters. Just as there was no freedom for India until British colonial rule was banished, and then it was Indian men only.
The colonization takes place in the home, which is why sexism is so all pervasive, and women are so snowed over by it all.
Lesbians, being outside this dreadful “household system” really see it for what it is, and we don’t support it. Well I suppose some “liberal” lesbians do
Some of the men who were most awful to me during my tenure as a mental health patient, vicious and deliberately sabotaging my treatment, being damn sneaky about it in the process, were men whose wives/other female associates thought they were decent and loving. When I complained about them, it was all blamed on me. Over several years they built an entirely fictional picture of my personality/character which they simply “pasted” over me like you would paste one photograph over another. Don’t doubt that it really can be and is done. That’s the problem I have with women who say they have a decent man and loving intimate relations with him. Men can be decent and loving with the women in their lives if they have another, usually marginal female population they can savage. They are very skillful at covering up what they are really doing and smearing the victims to the seventh level of hell. They don’t have to be wife beaters in order to be monsters.
Finally Branjor the truth comes out! Yes, we lesbians do get to see these “darling wonderful men” every day at the office. We get to see their sexist monster selves all tbe time. Then the wives show up seemingly unaware of who they actually married. Mrs. Hilter, Mrs. Stalin, Mrs. Tolstoy… really great guys they married. Herr Hilter even had a soft spot for lovely Viennese pastries and enjoyed them each day with his secretaries and chauffeur. They’re all nice guys.
It’s why I get annoyed at straight women because obviously they don’t work in offices with these dolts! I often think men deliberately do this so women won’t ever figure it all out. If you marry men you are supporting MY enemy. You are doing this for your own benefit at my expense, and I have a perfect right to hate the living guts out of these male monsters in the work place.
But hey, “stand by your man,” — great old song.
When I look at the situation of women globally, I realize I want to support women, all women, and I believe that when women have the basic economic means and are somehow have a sense of self not utterly destroyed, with support of other women they will figure out what is best for themselves. And I trust them to do that.
I really support the goals of lesbian separatism, but I’m not going to start telling women they will not be truly free unless they cut off all ties with men. I guess I believe if lesbian-separatism becomes a truly viable option for most women, then, when women who have the economic means and a sense of dignity will figure out if lesbian-separatism is for them.
But holding on to women-only spaces for organizing and gathering is a form of separatism that I think we, especially the younger generation, need more of in order to create more options for ourselves and other women.
Rain, I think you and I have vastly different definitions, of liberal feminism, for instance. I see a liberal feminist as someone who thinks feminists can and should work with such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Or someone like Randi Rhodes, who thinks Larry Flynt is a fine upstanding freedom fighter. I am a political separatist feminist revolutionary. I see no hope in working within mainstream politics. I have not, since I was a teenager, when my friends and I revived the Free Soil Party. Have you read Heart’s platform blog? Does that look anything like mainstream politics to you? Perhaps since you do not live in USA, it might. Here mainstream politics finds socialism, anarchism, and Marxism anathema. Heart calls herself anarchafeminist. Some of my ideas might be similar to ideas of any of those, but I am suspicious of all of them. They do not go deep enough. I think some change may have come about through education and communication, but I view that kind of change as piecemeal, haphazard, unreliable, and subject to relapse at any time. That approach certainly was not sufficient to win the vote, for instance. This is why I think nothing really substantial or lasting will change for women until enough women withdraw political support for men.
I have said many times Mona and I both consider ourselves extremely lucky to have found decent men. Satsuma and Branjor, your reactions are entirely predictable and not worth arguing about. You will see what you want to see and believe what you want to believe. That is a universal weakness of humanity. I do not think you are immune. I am not either, but I am acutely aware of it. I cannot deny having been fooled, being lucky to be alive. It is possible you are right about the savage lying in wait in all men, looking for opportunities to cut women down, but I think it is more likely you are wrong. Men are not all the same. It is not that simple. The world is not black and white. As I said before, things have changed, and yet they have not.
Laur you are right. Women really desparately need separate spaces. This is fast disappearing. I have never seen a space shared with men where women don’t get shortchanged in the discussion, ever.
As for separatism, no matter what the era, time or place, lesbians have had amazing lives without men. They made it on their own, they found work that was interesting and for most of history, they had no civil rights at all.
Because we are so self-sufficent, a lot of us don’t worry about government programs or assistance. We never were subsidized by men as adults, and certainly didn’t rely on someone else to make the money or pay the bills. The most hard line of us saw children as the route to poverty, and avoided that trap as well. We were off to a different land.
Women have never needed men to survive, they have needed passion and purpose to go out on their own. This is just something lesbians do. Go to the 1930s and you’ll find lesbian scientists, the first women’s college presidents were lesbians, Susan B. Anthony was a lesbian. When you read the autobiographies and biographies of lesbians across time, this independent spirit becomes quite apparent. It is what really makes lesbian self unique. It really does matter when you are not imprisoned in a house with men. It really does matter when you work on an independent intellectual development.
When I meet these types of lesbians, they are strikingly different. They bear no resemblance to any straight woman I have ever met.
To be completely uncolonized is significant, and no matter how many times I hear straight women try to justify life with the oppressors, the truth is in the power of lesbian life throughout time.
Read the books, read the herstory. We are nothing like straight women at all, we are our own separate people. We can’t stand the life straight women settle for. It is the same pain I think that African Americans who were free probably felt when they gazed at their enslaved sisters. Or perhaps you can compare it to a country under a brutal dictatorship vs. a country like Canada. Sure all the people were fine in Romania under communism, but look at what happened when they finally overthrew the tyrant. No comparison at all.
Remember, most lesbians have grown up in straight families, and we have seen the difference, even in the best of homes. We have seen it and lived it, straight women have not grown up in lesbian homes (except perhaps quite recently with the situation now), so how would they know the difference? It’s why they seem to think we are crazy for pointing out that women under a male dictatorship are not free, never have been. Call it black and white, but having seen both types of homes close up, there really is a VERY big difference.
We need more women only space, as much of it as we can get! It is imperative now! Don’t let this idea slip away or fall for that false idea that all of us are the same. We aren’t.
***Satsuma and Branjor, your reactions are entirely predictable and not worth arguing about. You will see what you want to see and believe what you want to believe.***
Excuse me, Aletha, I tell you the truth about some of the most painful experiences of my life and that’s what you have to say?
Also, you have some nerve lumping my post in with Satsuma’s. I was talking about intensely painful experiences which were highly destructive to my abilities to deal with life and thus my life chances, experiences which are more analogous to Heart’s beatings and experiences with the religious right than to Satsuma’s opinions of her office idiots. If you can’t see the difference between those, then *you* are not worth arguing with. One definition of stupidity is not being able to learn from experience. Well, my very real experiences have taught me at the very least to be highly skeptical of women’s claims as to the goodness of their men.
If I, as a separatist, can know that I am, in fact, living in la-la-land, then why is it so outrageous for “equality” feminists to have the suggestion put to them that they, also, are living in la-la-land?
When the hi-tech petro-patriarchy collapses, women aren’t going to find ourselves in a significantly different position vis-a-vis males at all.
We’ll just carry on as the sexual and reproductive slaves of violent male warlords, only this time the male weapons will be sticks and stones instead of guns and money.
One difference will be that we will have fewer illusions about what our viable options actually are.
I have always thought the male apologists were in la la land as well. Well I REALLY live in Los Angeles, so La La La.
Branjor has her life, and although we are quite different I’m sure, I do see this extraordinary denial that straight women keep themselves in. They seem NOT to really know how their husbands act at the office. Just ask Gini Thomas about her famous husband!
it is a very serious issue of how the patriarchy machine keeps on going and going. I see the public face of men and even though we live in a society were women need never depend on men for financial survival, in fact, they are a hinderance to women’s ultimate success in the world in my opinion, they still opt for this servitude. No matter how many horror books come out, no matter the rape statistics, the abuse statistics, the economic peril of women depending on men, it still goes on.
Just how badly are women committed to freedom from male domination? Well I really wonder, and so I write that this is possible, and that your life will be amazing, and that you don’t need men for any of this. There is such a huge hetero propaganda machine that it boggles the mind. La la land indeed
Branjor, the reason I lumped your comment in with Satsuma’s is not because I cannot see the difference, but that you employed a analogous line of argument to contemptuously dismiss my experiences, feelings, and perspective. The circumstances you cited are not similar, but your conclusions from them are virtually identical, and predictably so. Did I not predict them with my sarcastic references to myself? I thought those might have been slightly hyperbolic, but I see they were not.
I am opposed to all stereotyping. However, I have no problem with generalizing about men, unless someone is arguing that all men fit that generalization. I have several comments on my blog protesting my own generalizations, as if I were speaking about all men. The exceptions may be insignificant for most intents and purposes, but that does not mean they do not or cannot exist. It seems the existence of any exceptions must be vehemently denied and dismissed as heteropatriarchal propaganda. No doubt you scoffers can understand why such dismissals induce me to scoff at you. You know the reality of my life better than I do, huh? Spare me your arrogant insufferably condescending insinuations that I should bow to the superior wisdom of blind hatred. No matter how well justified that may be, it is still hatred, and hatred does not lend itself to clear vision.
Aletha: …hatred does not lend itself to clear vision.
So true. Another problem with hatred is, while a few may be willing to sift through and find whatever nuances might exist in the rhetoric of someone who hates, the vast majority will simply move on. Hating isn’t effective as a political strategy. It isn’t attractive. And neither is dismissing what women say about their own lives.
We could all do this– go about telling one another what each of us has to say about their own lives and the people in our lives could not possibly be true. But why would we do that? There’s no way for us to have any insight into that and all we would be doing is mistreating and dismissing women, which is also not an effective political strategy. If they are misled, they will have to come to that themselves. If we are misled, we will be wrong to force the issue (and we can’t know as to a particular woman’s life whether we might be misled.)
I’ve been engaging Aletha for years now and I believe what she says about her partner and their relationship. Going deeper than that, I have observed that she never suggests that because she does have a good relationship with her male partner or her friend Mona does, any conclusions about men can be drawn from that particular fact. I know other radical feminists who similarly have good relationships with their male partners. Andrea Dworkin, whom we all love, was married to a man and lived with him for 30 years. That’s just what is true. It doesn’t change the premises of radical feminism at all, or lesbian feminism, for that matter, for that to *be* true. It is still, again, generally true that men’s behavior in the world is abysmal and has been catastrophic. We develop our strategies and politics on that basis.
Although I am an anarchafeminist, I agree with you, Aletha that it doesn’t go far enough, as none of the various theories and systems and ideologies do.
The idea that the battle can be won by women withdrawing all support from men or by heterosexual women rejecting relationships with men is understandable, in a way, in its appeal. But it omits some things I think are important, one being that men are capable of being allies to women and that more and more men confronting and challenging male supremacy and male supremacists is important to revolution making.
One thing I can say is that Aletha is no liberal feminist! Having a male partner doesn’t a liberal feminist make, but if it does, we have to dismiss a lot of our most beloved radical feminist leaders as “liberal feminists” because they had male partners. I like this description, Aletha: I am a political separatist feminist revolutionary. I think Aletha has taken the time and made a careful effort to make important distinctions about an area that is tricky. Yes, generalizations can be made about men. But there are always exceptions. Hatred is not helpful. Presuming to tell women about the men in their lives and what could or could not be true about them, based on one’s own experiences, does come across as dismissive and disrespectful, no matter the intent. I know there’s this idea at times that if someone pushes pushes pushes a little harder women might be persuaded of the virtues of separatism. Well, some never will, and if they never will they can still be GREAT and completely committed and dedicated radical feminists, if they are radical feminists, to wit, again, Dworkin, there are others I could name but Dworkin has passed on and I do not want to invade the others’ privacy. I don’t think badgering women or dismissing women’s clear statements about their lives is a good srategy for much of anything. It would be one thing if Aletha or Andrea Dworkin or any radical feminist was espousing the liberating and empowering nature of relationships with/marriage to men. But I didn’t and don’t see them doing that at all. Again, Aletha has made some very clear distinctions.
Hi Heart,
I disagree that hatred does not lend itself to clear vision.
I hate rapists. How does that un-lend itself to clear vision about rape, the rapist, and the devastation wrought upon the victim?
We’re getting back to women needing to be the saints here, where males go on forever and ever being the sinners.
Here’s a question, a hypothetical question for Aletha, Heart, and all the other “partners” of “exceptional” men:
If you had a (hypothetical) daughter, and if you were to discover that your (hypothetically) “exceptional” man had been raping your daughter, what would you then think of, and feel about your male partner? What would you do?
Can you imagine this turn of events affecting your devotion to the cause of “exceptional” men?
== end of hypothesis and question ==
Heart and Aletha, you each speak with the words, belief system, feelings, and loyalties of my mother. 60 years ago my father started raping me. He was her “exceptional” man. She simply couldn’t believe it of him. She told me I was crazy. She enjoyed her experience of being married to this amazing, exceptional man much more than she enjoyed the thought of mine. She expressed her hatred of me in a very insistent and loving manner, sending me to a psychiatrist when I was 16, and assuring me of her husband’s unquestionable good character.
I’ll be very interested to hear any answers that may be offered.
Also in whether either of you think that the hypothetical events that I ask you about could ever, ever, possibly happen, in this universe, with the exceptional man with which you are now partnered, or with whom you may choose to be partnered (past, present or future.)
Am I to question my mother’s experience of her ideal life with her exceptional man? Or not, according to “radical feminist” thinking?
We have a credibility gap here.
***Heart and Aletha, you each speak with the words, belief system, feelings, and loyalties of my mother. 60 years ago my father started raping me. He was her “exceptional” man. She simply couldn’t believe it of him. She told me I was crazy. She enjoyed her experience of being married to this amazing, exceptional man much more than she enjoyed the thought of mine. She expressed her hatred of me in a very insistent and loving manner, sending me to a psychiatrist when I was 16, and assuring me of her husband’s unquestionable good character.***
Mary, yeah. The dynamics are *exactly* the same as what I described in the mental health system.
Hi, Mary,
I think hatred obscures our vision at the point at which we become unable to hear, with respect, listening carefully, what women say about their own lives; in other words, when hatred becomes a sort of filter for what women say about their own realities. So in this instance, Aletha says she has a long-time male partner (not husband) who is committed to mutuality. If in response to that, we say, “No way, it’s impossible, you’re beating a dead horse,” we are violating, I believe, a tenet very central to radical feminism which is BELIEVE WOMEN. The thing is, if we don’t believe women — even if privately, we are skeptical about what they say — then there is really nothing more for us to say to them. Aletha is not going to break it off with her partner because radical feminists/separatists doubt what she says about him. She’s going to go forward from here with the experience that radical feminists/separatists did not believe her, do not support her and have made many assertions about her life, publicly, that aren’t true to her experience or so far as she is concerned. I think that’s a problem, whether it’s Aletha or any other woman.
I don’t think it’s a saints and sinners issue. I think we can believe what women say about their lives while rejecting living as they do or believing what they believe, or especially, taking the risks that they take. In fact, I think that’s what we HAVE to do to have any sort of effective radical feminist practice. If we feel we have to counter what women say about, in this instance, their partners, with blanket statements about men — because this is our experience with them, our belief about them, our understanding of what is best for all women, our best understanding, period — then not only are we going to talk over what women say to us, erasing their realities as they’ve risked sharing them with us, we also lose the opportunity to learn from a woman or women whose experiences are not like ours. I suppose I am saying that for me building relationships with, making connections with, women is the most important thing, and in the time-honored tradition of radical feminism, those connections and relationships begin with *believing women*. Even if we are skeptical. Those of us who deal with battered women have to face this all of the time. They tell us stuff about their batterers and skeptical doesn’t begin to cover it, but we have to believe them if we are to continue to support them and help them to leave, ultimately, their relationship, because it is only in believing them and then in the discourse and dialogue that follows that the potential exists that they (and we) will begin to see more and more clearly. (Note, I’m using this as an example, this has nothing to do with Aletha or her relationship.)
When I say we lose opportunities to learn from women when we filter things through hatred, some of us are getting up there, we’ve been around for some half centuries :), I think some things really have changed and are changing. If we don’t accept what women say about their lives, again without applying our “no it’s not possible” filters, then we are going to miss out on learning about the way feminism really has changed things.
As to your hypothetical, if we are not willing to take the risks of believing exceptional men exist — which is what you are really asking, I think, is the risk of partnering with some theoretically exceptional man worth the chance that really, he’s like your father, and Mary, what a horrible, horrible story, dear god — I think we came to our unwillingness to take those risks via a particular journey through and experience of life, and also by encountering women who believed us along the way and supported us in making sense of our lives as women living under male supremacy. If other women have not had our experiences, then they haven’t, and they cannot be expected to see things as we do. Trying to get them to is futile, so instead of that, it seems to me we listen, respect, connect, engage respecting them as women. If they came our way, there’s a reason, you know? In all likelihood they saw something in us, or about us, that they respect and like and even want. There’s an attraction there. Refusing to believe what a woman says about her life will erode that respect, the like, the want and the attraction.
There’s a situation right now, and you know who I’m talking about, but I’m not going to name her, tough luck to anybody who thinks I’m being coy or whatever, if I named the situation I’d also be wrong so neener and a million raspberries. Bttthhhweeet.
This is a woman who really has many brilliant things to say. But she really does hate men. She hates another group of people as well. She has good reasons for her hatred; it is understandable.
Everything anyone says gets filtered through her hatreds. When someone she thinks might have potential — because they agree with her about many things and share, to some degree, her hatreds – makes statements or holds beliefs which clog her hatred filter, she attempts to engage them privately to talk them into agreeing with her that her hatred is correct, it should be universally applied in the way she’s decided it should be, and that her strategies are also the only viable strategies. If the woman doesn’t come around, she stops engaging. If she’s mad enough, because a woman declines to engage her in the way she wants or requests, she attempts to discredit that woman, including by publicly attacking her, even embarking on campaigns to discredit her, including in ways that are disingenuous and really low. I think she is capable of doing this because, as Aletha says, hatred has obscured her vision. She is no longer able to respect women where they are. She is no longer able to honor them enough to accept what they have to say about their lives or partners, even if she is skeptical. She cannot be allies with women unless they completely, 100 percent share her hatreds. She creates for herself a smaller and smaller ever-diminishing very tiny corner defended out of a kind of bunker mentality in which defense of personal hatreds becomes paramount. It amounts to a radical feminism which makes one’s own hatreds and lived experiences and beliefs more important than the individual women who come to us because they see something in us that they want for themselves.
You know, I really have nothing to say if a woman wants to live that way– in that very small world in which all share her particular hatred filter. (Other than, I think women attacking women on the basis of disagreements isn’t consistent with feminism or very revolutionary). I actually understand this very well. But for those of us who haven’t yet given up on radical feminist politics as a kind of solution, it’s not good strategy. It’s not community building, it’s not organizing, it’s not grass roots activism. These latter are not for everyone and I am not suggesting they should be. I am saying I think this is along the lines of what Aletha meant when she said hatred obscures vision. I think when we can’t “see” the woman in front of us, hear her story, our vision has been obscured.
***Heart and Aletha, you each speak with the words, belief system, feelings, and loyalties of my mother. 60 years ago my father started raping me. He was her “exceptional” man. She simply couldn’t believe it of him. She told me I was crazy. She enjoyed her experience of being married to this amazing, exceptional man much more than she enjoyed the thought of mine. She expressed her hatred of me in a very insistent and loving manner, sending me to a psychiatrist when I was 16, and assuring me of her husband’s unquestionable good character.***
Mary, yeah. The dynamics are *exactly* the same as what I described in the mental health system.
Yeah, I agree that in most instances, women committed to their exceptional men (Nigels) seem determined to erase experiences of battering, rape, incest, mental health abuse of women if it threatens to get in the way of their loyalties. And of course, I hate seeing this (and see it all the time).
I think, though, that a good solution is not to attempt to erase the experiences or stated, lived realities of the women in the thrall of their Nigels. It’s too useless, it doesn’t change anything, it’s alienating. For the most part I leave these women alone. If they are interested in what I have to say, they’ll seek me out.
I think, though, that a good solution is not to attempt to erase the experiences or stated, lived realities of the women in the thrall of their Nigels. It’s too useless, it doesn’t change anything, it’s alienating. For the most part I leave these women alone. If they are interested in what I have to say, they’ll seek me out.
Bingo!
Mary, I have no issue with women questioning what I think, or being skeptical. What has happened here went far beyond that. I am wary of all men, even my SO. I cannot be otherwise, not after what happened to me. I am more than wary of their politics, even when the man is brilliant and well informed about feminism. Gary Null is another example of that. I am not devoted to the cause of exceptional men. I am devoted to combating stereotyping of all kinds, even of men. I see great variation among men. I also see despicable commonalities still holding great sway among men. Some men challenge those. I feel it is important to encourage such efforts. I cannot expect a separatist to agree, but it is important to me. I think calling this a devotion is a stretch. I appreciate male support for feminism, and think it has some significance, but how much significance is an open question. It is too rare to have the significance I would ascribe to a devotion.
As to your hypothetical, of course it is possible my SO could be another monster. If I discovered he had been raping my daughter, I would want to kill him. If I caught him in the act, I could imagine doing just that. Otherwise I would have to content myself with trying to get him locked up in jail for as long as possible. Living with a man, no matter how wonderful he seems to be, is a calculated risk. I personally am willing to take that risk. I would never recommend blindly trusting a man, and I agree that many men who seem wonderful are skillful con artists. Other men may relapse, under some kind of unusual strain, into the hatred of women drilled into them since birth. I think that is what happened to the man who nearly murdered me, but I could not take a chance that was a fluke. As soon as he let me out of his sight, I did everything I could think of to ensure he could never find me again.
Hatred is a tricky word. I used it because Satsuma seems inordinately proud of her hatred of men. I know there are nuances to that, but perhaps in the interest of polemics, those nuances seemed to disappear in this thread. As skeptical of religion as I am, I think there is some truth to the principle of hating the sin, but not the sinner. Men are mostly followers. They also see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. Most have zero consciousness of female reality, and like it that way. I think even most MTFs fall into that; they confuse the stereotype of women with the reality of women. I am skeptical of men who claim to support feminism, but I think there are a few who really do, taking the time to educate themselves and do the requisite soul-searching to root out the insidious conditioning. These men could teach other men. I think that has some value in the feminist struggle.
Moved from other thread for Sis: If I could put my two pfennig’s worth in here; my experience is they any man can, given the circumstances. And they are the ones who get to choose the circumstances. So, he helps an old lady across the icy street while on his way home, where he later will belittle, berate and physically push his wife around. Just because he can. Or he’s a revered police hero, saving two people at great risk to himself in a fire, but sexually abuses the addicted teen he is counselling as part of another cop program. (Latter, actual case in Canada, this week).
I think this story fits well in this thread. The cop will pay, but we know it was not a given that even a woman judge would bring this judgement.
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=29d64f74-1a21-4218-a0c5-80711f4c3230
I don’t know what happened there, above, Heart. Here’s what I was trying to post:
Sorry for the peripatetic posting:
I’d also like to point out it appears the cop rapist is still going to get a national bravery award from Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaelle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D. Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada,
the Queen’s represen