Women’s Space

90 Responses to “You Are Not Crazy”

1. on 11 Aug 2008 at 10:58 pm1Professor Zero

   Yes - the content is great (and so clear) and the design is brilliant.

2. on 12 Aug 2008 at 2:01 am2Satsuma

   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!!

3. on 13 Aug 2008 at 10:37 am3una

   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.

4. on 13 Aug 2008 at 10:51 am4una

   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.

5. on 13 Aug 2008 at 11:30 am5admin

   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.

6. on 18 Aug 2008 at 2:39 am6stormy

   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.

7. on 19 Aug 2008 at 5:02 pm7Satsuma

   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. 

8. on 20 Aug 2008 at 2:07 am8stormy

   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!

9. on 22 Aug 2008 at 4:35 pm9Satsuma

   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.

10. on 24 Aug 2008 at 2:55 am10Aletha

    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.

11. on 25 Aug 2008 at 1:36 pm11Satsuma

    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!

12. on 26 Aug 2008 at 1:18 am12Aletha

    …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.

13. on 26 Aug 2008 at 2:56 pm13Satsuma

    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.
     

14. on 27 Aug 2008 at 12:31 am14Aletha

    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.

15. on 02 Sep 2008 at 11:20 am15bonobobabe

    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.

16. on 03 Sep 2008 at 1:29 am16Aletha

    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.

17. on 04 Sep 2008 at 11:20 pm17Satsuma

    I could say something…. but I won’t

18. on 05 Sep 2008 at 8:38 am18Mary Sunshine

    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.

19. on 05 Sep 2008 at 3:23 pm19Satsuma

    In this  weird week “devout heterosexual women” had me rolling with laughter Mary Sunshine!  I sure needed that :-) :-)***

    Give it the old triple smile!

20. on 05 Sep 2008 at 5:48 pm20Branjor

    ***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.  

     

21. on 05 Sep 2008 at 6:49 pm21Laur

    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?

22. on 06 Sep 2008 at 12:38 am22Rain

    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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?
    .
    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.
    .
    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. 
    .
    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.
    .

23. on 06 Sep 2008 at 1:23 am23Aletha

    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?

24. on 06 Sep 2008 at 12:13 pm24Branjor

    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.   
     

25. on 06 Sep 2008 at 4:03 pm25Satsuma

    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
     
     
     
     
     

26. on 06 Sep 2008 at 10:27 pm26Aletha

    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.

27. on 07 Sep 2008 at 6:42 pm27Satsuma

    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!
     
     

28. on 08 Sep 2008 at 1:59 am28Rain

    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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).
    .
    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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. 
    .
    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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.”
    .
    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. 
    .
    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. 
    .
    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.
    .
    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).
    .
    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.
    .

29. on 08 Sep 2008 at 8:44 am29Aletha

    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.

30. on 08 Sep 2008 at 12:39 pm30Satsuma

    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
     

31. on 08 Sep 2008 at 3:52 pm31Branjor

    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.

32. on 08 Sep 2008 at 11:16 pm32Aletha

    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?

33. on 09 Sep 2008 at 1:37 am33Rain

    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?
    .
    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    Maybe one strategy will prove over time as being “a better way” than the other one? Maybe neither, maybe we need both in parallel?
    .
    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.
    .
    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.
    .
    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.

34. on 09 Sep 2008 at 2:12 am34Satsuma

    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

35. on 09 Sep 2008 at 9:00 am35Branjor

    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.

36. on 09 Sep 2008 at 8:06 pm36Satsuma

    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.

37. on 09 Sep 2008 at 9:01 pm37Laur

    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.

38. on 09 Sep 2008 at 11:01 pm38Aletha

    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.

39. on 10 Sep 2008 at 1:19 am39Satsuma

    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.

40. on 10 Sep 2008 at 9:03 am40Branjor

    ***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?

41. on 10 Sep 2008 at 9:36 am41Branjor

    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.

42. on 10 Sep 2008 at 1:14 pm42Mary Sunshine

    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.

43. on 10 Sep 2008 at 4:42 pm43Satsuma

    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

44. on 11 Sep 2008 at 2:19 am44Aletha

    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.

45. on 11 Sep 2008 at 7:33 am45admin

    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.

46. on 11 Sep 2008 at 8:44 am46Mary Sunshine

    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.

47. on 11 Sep 2008 at 11:36 am47Branjor

    ***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.

48. on 11 Sep 2008 at 11:49 am48admin

    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.

49. on 11 Sep 2008 at 12:09 pm49admin

    ***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.

50. on 11 Sep 2008 at 3:27 pm50Mary Sunshine

    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!
    

     
     
     

51. on 12 Sep 2008 at 1:47 am51Aletha

    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.

52. on 12 Sep 2008 at 7:54 am52admin

    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).

53. on 12 Sep 2008 at 10:07 am53Sis

    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

54. on 12 Sep 2008 at 10:34 am54Sis

    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 representative in Canada (so therefore his award is as if *from* the Queen) for his act of bravery in 2005.
    How MJ will be able to smile and congratulate him as she pins his award on his lapel, I do not know. This is a woman who, with her family, fled a dictatorial regime in Haiti, and among other study and career work prior to becoming our Governor General  “Ms. Jean worked for eight years with Quebec shelters for battered women, while actively contributing to the establishment of a network of emergency shelters throughout Quebec and elsewhere in Canada.” and has received international awards for her work on behalf of battered women including the prestigious Prix Mireille-Lanctôt award for a report on spousal violence.
    In the meantime, people (men, only as far as I know, including a couple Catholic priests) who received the Order of Canada, also from our Governor General and Canada’s highest award–are returning their awards in protest against Dr. Henry Morgentaler receiving same award for his efforts to bring safe abortion access to all Canadian women.
    http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=4900467e-6b30-4067-bc2e-627ccef67c7d

55. on 12 Sep 2008 at 11:56 am55Mary Sunshine

    Hi Aletha,

    Thank you your detailed, carefully thought-out reply.

    It is a very emotional subject.

    Certainly horizontal-hostility hatred amongst women is incredibly damaging to any potential we have for creating an effective, real-time defence network against male supremacy.

    My hating men, or any other woman’s hating men, makes not the slightest difference to males, or male supremacy, or to any other female’s chances of forming alliances with men.

    However, my hating men has been used by other women to “other” themselves from me, and me from them, to better avail themselves of the crumbs of male approval and male-identified-women’s approval that are doled out for that.

56. on 12 Sep 2008 at 12:33 pm56Sis

    In hopes for all young women that they may never need to find this thread, you may e-mail to Her Excellency with your protest about the award which she will be forced to present to this rapist, unless we can make an impact with our voices of protest for this travesty to the young woman, all young women, and to the life’s work on behalf of abused women, of Michaelle Jean herself.

    Even more horrific, Her Excellency heads a program which she started and runs, to ‘empower’ Canadian youth.
    http://www.gg.ca/gg/youth/index_e.asp

    info@gg.ca    is her secretary’s e-mail

    The proper form of address:

    Her Excellency
    the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D.
    Governor General of Canada

    The woman you are writing to:
    http://www.gg.ca/gg/index_e.asp

57. on 12 Sep 2008 at 12:54 pm57Satsuma

    I would actually agree with you Aletha (:-)) that there is value in men teaching other men about feminism.  But I also think women waste an incredible amount of time trying to get through to men, and I don’t see this really working as far as social change is concerned.

    A group of men might actually get it, but then they die or move on, and the wheel is invented all over again.  Just seeing the vicious sexism of liberal men over Hillary Clinton proved to me that they are just as  bad if not worse than ever.

    So it is this huge waste of energy that I question, with so little in terms of a good rate of return on that investment.

    Every male revolutionary throughout history has said that you don’t reason with tyrannts.  You push hard to overthrow them.  Power doesn’t concede without a fight to paraphrase one of the few men in history I’ve ever admired — Frederick Douglas.

    I think those of us with a separatist bent just get frustrated at the constant catering that women do for men, their constant belief that “my guy” is different.  It goes on and on and on like this, and it seems that one generation of hetero women never seems to pass on these lessons to the next.

    The hetero conditioning machine just keeps up and running.

    Radical lesbians do know about men, we do know how phoney and crafty they are, and we do see them as consumate con artists.
    We know that women often have a hard time with the concept of learning to be self-sufficient in the first place, and this is undermined by catering to men from an early age.

    I think if you hate men, you should say this.  Women are really out of touch with anger to begin with.  They often seem to not know it is a real human emotion, and that hatred of an oppressor is completely and utterly justified.  Until I see all the male religions of history really come down on MALE hatred of women, I don’t think you should shame women for being honest about HATRED itself as a real felt emotion.  Take away anger, take away hatred from women, and what do you have?  You have potted and pastic passions, which a lot of women dwell in for almost their entire lives.  I’m thinking of the fake nicey nice of fundamentalist christian women, or that saccarine atmophere that wealthy women often exude– the ones who don’t work and have married wealthy men.

    We would be a lot farther along in freedom for women worldwide if women did less catering to men, less trying to get them to do things.  Heck, it’s very hard to get women to even vote in their own best interest or even fully support women candidates, as we all know here.

    I really don’t think most straight women ever hear a knock down drag out radical lesbian message most of the time.  We are rare.  Most of us don’t even bother to tell this to straight women anymore, because we often see them as too colonized.  It’s kind of how free blacks in Boston would see enslaved blacks in South Carolina circa 1783, for example.  Not a pretty sight.

    To see this servile and cowed nature of women out in the world is truly upsetting, especially when the colonized seem to be sleep walking.  And this is a real way we radical lesbians do see the futile attempts of straight women to “educate” feminist men.

    I know, unpopular views here, but I do get frustrated, and I do know that straight women tend to dominate all feminist discourse out there.  This is the minority opinion, and I’ve watched this stuff unfold for my entire life, and still it seems the same.

58. on 13 Sep 2008 at 12:01 am58Aletha

    Satsuma, are the colonized sleepwalking, or resigned? I imagine it depends on the woman, but I think many women are resigned, anger seething beneath the surface with no way they can see to express it. Or they may snap suddenly, as hundreds of desperate women in Afghanistan have, setting themselves on fire. The Guardian just did an article on this, Terror of a different kind, which I posted on my blog. George Bush claims to have liberated those women from the Taliban tyrants, but they do not feel so liberated. Obama promises to escalate that war. This will not help the women. I suggested in my commentary that perhaps the best way to help them is to pull out, offering asylum to any woman who wants to leave with the troops.

    You say, Take away anger, take away hatred from women, and what do you have? I think this is an unwarranted juxtaposition. It is true enough that women are taught not to feel either, and many become depressed, masochistic, or suicidal as a result. However, I think fury is less likely to be turned against women than hatred, both internally and externally. This goes to my point about clear vision. Women should be furious at men, for more reasons than I could list. My article Why Women Are Revolting is a short list. Fury can be entirely rational and channeled constructively, and if so, it is a great motivator as well as a powerful and fearsome weapon. Hatred is more of an ambiguous word, but it implies irrational distortion and blindly lashing out. This may or may not be accurate, depending on how well the hater can manage the emotion. There have been times in my life when I felt consumed by hate. It was not good for me. I was stuck in a vicious circle, which only broke when I resolved the raw emotion into fury. That I can channel constructively. I do not know if I am making this distinction clear. I am not shaming anyone for honest emotion, or trying to say women should depend on men for anything, but I am trying to point out unintended consequences of hatred out of control. If fury and hatred are interchangeable for you, Satsuma, why call it hatred? The word is too charged, loaded,  ambiguous, and easily distorted by enemies. Is its punch worth it? I think not, but that judgment is colored by my own experience of having hatred sap my energy and distort my vision. I had to let it go to see a way forward.

    I do not think it makes sense to hate people based on their biology. If male biology determined their behavior, inevitably made them monsters, that would mean they could not possibly be otherwise. People have free will, even men. I think monsters are fully responsible for their behavior. They do have a choice, hard as it may be for them to rebel against everything drilled into them from day one. I see no reason to let them off the hook, which is an unintended effect of saying they are all the same and cannot be otherwise. Boys will be boys, men say to rationalize their atrocities. No, they choose to be the way they are, even if that choice is unconscious, conforming to the norm by default.

59. on 13 Sep 2008 at 12:47 am59Rain

    satsuma: To see this servile and cowed nature of women out in the world is truly upsetting, especially when the colonized seem to be sleep walking.
    .
    I *hear* you satsuma. It is mostly grief with seeing a lifetime of the spending of female energy, and many of us lesbians do feel frustrated and impatient, because we care - but I just let it go a long time ago.  Many of us “choose our battles”, and I chose not to engage in that one too much.  Yes, there are good men, and even pro-radfem men’s groups, working on, working with men. They may be allies in the struggle, but for the most part keep the ‘public face’ of political activism in separate spaces - in some activist circles, we may high-five, or nod politely in mutual recognition and respect, but from a certain distance.  Men need to work out their issues with maleness/masculinity, as we need to work out ours with femaleness/femininity.  They need to work on issues of father/son/brother relationships, male-specific racialisation, forms of male-on-male violence etc. 
    .
    Some of these men, (eg John Stoltenberg), have written that women should not promote or give energy to such men’s groups etc, by continuing to give them public kudos, mothering and celebration etc - as this feeds into male privilege and reinforces the system, and has a bad habit of silencing and erasing other women (especially lesbians). For next thing you know, these guys end up as the “heroes” and they are - in their own way - trying to stop being put on pedestals as male “heroes”, precisely because they do *get it*.
    .

60. on 13 Sep 2008 at 2:18 pm60Satsuma

    I guess I am not precise in using words like “hate.”  It is a word I think is an honest description of anger or fury.  So when I hate something or someone, it is a very honest emotion, and almost always provoked.  I find hatred a fueling energy, not a debilitating thing, and I “hate it” when women are assigned the plastic “nice” emotions, when out there anger and hatred are really what women might need to access.

    Setting yourself on fire for women in Afghanistan is NOT as good as killing Taliban men who have beaten your or raped you, for example.  In a war, women are rarely armed.  We have all these male armies and all the men have the guns, then a civil war errupts and women are left holding the bag.

    I often get the feeling that women are living in a lot of fear just of having blunt out there opinions, without all the passive aggressive behavior and hemming and hawing, which as a lesbian drives me NUTS!

    If anger and hatred aren’t modeled, women will be stuck in their servile selves forever, and you can’t tell me that you don’t see this type of behavior everywhere.

    For example, a man CUT right into line at a Starbucks, in front of a couple of women.  Nobody says or does anything!  Every now and then, I just yell out, “Get to the back of the line you god-damn pig!”  Wow, that gets their attention.  I am prepared to back up the yelling, and those idiots know it.  Women stand aside, speak softly, marry jack-asses and wallow in this second class behavior.  Radical lesbians just don’t do this, so there is a qualitative difference in how we see and experience the world.

    I’m not letting men off the hook at all.  I think if they feared women, they’d respect women.  Right now men think women are a big servile joke worldwide. 

    I’ve never understood how half the world’s population never even takes a self-defense class for the most part.  It’s weird, and I think a huge symptom of the denial women live in.

    You do have to choose battles, but I think all the powerful emotions like hatred, anger and brutal yelling are helpful to women.  And when you do defeat a man in hand to hand combat that is a big plus.  There are animals and oppressors out there, they don’t give a damn what they do to women.  I don’t tolerate this public male behavior the way straight women almost ALWAYS do that’s all.

    This shouldn’t be a big revelation here.  It is a big danger for women to support men, or even congratulate them for acting the way human beings should supposed to be acting.  Out in the world, it’s how I see women a lot of times. 

    I think this might be a huge difference in how radical lesbians are in the world compared to straight women.  We do think men are garbage, and we do want them off the streets at night.  We don’t like or trust them, and we don’t like to see generation after generation continue marrying them, bearing their children and getting beated up and taken advantage of.  We think the whole idea of straight marriage (funny how I have to define this word now) is horrifying.  But maybe only lesbians can understand this, because if you sleep with the enemy, I don’t think this can ever quite be known.  Again, far from a mainstream opinion, but it is what I believe.

61. on 14 Sep 2008 at 8:01 am61Mary Sunshine

    Satsuma,

    High five ^^^^^ for telling it exactly like it is.

    If even 5% (instead of the .005%) of the female population had that spirit, women would not be where we are today.

62. on 14 Sep 2008 at 2:43 pm62Aletha

    Some of these men, (eg John Stoltenberg), have written that women should not promote or give energy to such men’s groups etc, by continuing to give them public kudos, mothering and celebration etc - as this feeds into male privilege and reinforces the system, and has a bad habit of silencing and erasing other women (especially lesbians). For next thing you know, these guys end up as the “heroes” and they are - in their own way - trying to stop being put on pedestals as male “heroes”, precisely because they do *get it*.

    I agree with this, but this argument started about the only solution being separatism. I do not go around defending men, even if I like many of their ideas. I might make an exception if I have to make a point. I do go around defending Sarah Palin against lies, such as her ideas on sex education differing from Obama, even though I do not like most of her views. That is not my point, to make heroes of men. I have to broach the subject when that sort of idea comes up, though as a journalist, I have no trouble citing an article or film by a man I consider a good source. On this blog I will contest the idea of an only solution. I will also correct the record when I feel compelled. That is how I usually post in liberal territory, to protest something or correct the record. I hope for intelligent conversation among the din of derision. I hope for more here. Is that naive? I think not, but I wonder sometimes. I also wonder why people underestimate. It is just strange to me. But then, the media is strange to me, missing the point or plain wrong most of the time, but at least I can find stories to comment on for my blog.

    Satsuma, what distinguishes hatred from fury? Anger sounds relatively tame to me. You avoided my questions, as usual. I could think of you as a Fury in all her glory, but you make such extreme statements I have to protest them, not your fury. I do not think radical and extreme are necessarily correlated, but it is a matter of definition. I do not define any of these words like you do, obviously.  I certainly do not consider hatred an accurate description of anger or fury. Hatred is something else, as you exhibit here at great length. I do not get it, this attachment to such a charged word when to me you look like a Fury in all her glory, getting out of control with her extreme language. I am sorry, it got to the point I had to protest, but on this blog I will defend my own visibility. Nobody has to agree with me to post on this blog. There is no party line here, but Heart and I and everyone has our own ideas about solving problems. I expect to get attacked when I post off my blog. It goes with the territory. I have to have a thick skin, trying to get publicity for Heart. I felt you were shaming my honest feelings, so it seems you should not attack me on those grounds. That is not what I have been after, and I think you know that. I am not so sure about your intentions. I think I am in the minority, here on this blog. Sleep with the enemy, huh? So it is all about biology then for you? What does that make me? Are you declaring yourself a political enemy? I think I have made my point, and will leave it at that, at least for now.

63. on 14 Sep 2008 at 3:11 pm63Satsuma

    Well Mary, someone has got to say this, even on a feminist blog
    :-)  I don’t know what else will wake women up.  I just don’t know what it will take sometimes, other than to present this as a possibility.  Remember a time when you were not slaves, and failing to remember…. Invent!

64. on 15 Sep 2008 at 9:32 pm64julia

    Satsuma, this is brilliant stuff. Your writing is deep poignant, thoughtful and keeps me cheering.

    I am a straight woman and I agree with you. I should add that I’ve been a feminist since age 4, and I have chosen to have very few relationships with men - friendships, yes, although right now I could imagine a life made up of just women. Talk with women is broader, laughing is easier, work - much easier. So is compromise and communication when women are willing to be really honest with one another.

    Is there a price for me?
    Yes - first, everyone expects me to have a partner, and when they find out that I’m straight and choose to be conmigo (with myself) they feel uncomfortable, defensive, etc. I’m sure some of my family and friends think that there’s something psychologically wrong with me.

    The other price - physical affection. The best part about a relationship, to me,  is sleeping cuddled up all night. But  once I feel that a man has too much of my mind, too much of my energy and caring and psychic space, the last thing I want is  him in my bed. Or even in my apartment.

    The best part: my energy is mine. I have never felt so clear. mentally and spiritually, and that would be impossible if I were
    living with or even dating a man.

65. on 16 Sep 2008 at 5:15 pm65julia

    I don’t know if I came into this discussion too late. I don’t have a computer, so my online time is limited and I just found this thread yesterday. 
    Everyone must make her own choices, but I think it’s important to talk about them. Not for approval, but to expand the knowlewdge of each other’s lives.
    If there are some feminist men out there, that’s great. The problem I see is women looking for them their whole lives and thinking they didn’t do it right, didn’t do enough (therapy, ritual, healing) they end up blaming themselves for being alone.
    A frank discussion of the good and bad of relationships with men at least keeps things clear.

66. on 17 Sep 2008 at 12:51 pm66Satsuma

    Thanks Julie for your comments.  I do think women waste an inordinant amount of time in the search for the dodo bird (I mean male feminist).  And I do wonder at a society that ties so many benefits and tax advantages to people who must be “married” to men.  We have an entire married to men social structure.

    If we had a neutral policy, we would have social security survivor benefits go to a designated beneficiary, and it would not have to do with marital status at all, as one small example here.

    The amount of energy women waste on men would have easily fueled huge social change in America and the world.  So as long as women do the care and feeding of men, the rest of us will be on the hamster wheel trying to get the world off patriarchal time.

    There is this huge propaganda machine that tries to brainwash girls into this system.  Think high school proms, girl beauty pagents etc.  The fact that heterosexual conditioning is so all pervasive, and gender role conditioning is so all pervasive should be an early warning sign for women.

    Unless you have a huge separatist stance, you really will be stuck in colonized lands, and not have the chance to develop a consciousness separate from day to day at home garden variety male supremacy.  But feminists will argue here that this is possible.  Seeing things as I do, I don’t believe this is possible at all.

67. on 17 Sep 2008 at 2:39 pm67julia

    Satsuma, I agree.

    This is why I find myself writing ‘a revolution will never happen with the women I know’ on this blog: they are too busy caring for their men.

    The hetero programming is immense. Reading your posts on this thread helps me make sense of my life. I was against marriage since I was 4 or 5 and knew I would not have children. I have never had the slightest desire to have them.  This has given me loads of time, and although I haven’t made lots of money, I have lived my own life and it has truly been mine.
    Mainstream society would never accept this.

    You have to be willing to go hard against the grain to be straight and live alone: there’s no one to hold you,  no one to run home to, you will never get the respect that a married woman gets, you’re  seen as a threat at parties or social gatherings.  I was
    turned down for an apartment rental once because they ‘preferred
    the couple’.

    The propaganda machine that brainwashes girls and women is pervasive: fairy tales, children’s games and toys, movies, magazines, television, novels, literature, ‘psychology’, and the list goes on….

68. on 17 Sep 2008 at 10:53 pm68Aletha

    Unless you have a huge separatist stance, you really will be stuck in colonized lands, and not have the chance to develop a consciousness separate from day to day at home garden variety male supremacy.  But feminists will argue here that this is possible.  Seeing things as I do, I don’t believe this is possible at all.

    Satsuma, if I did not know you were dead serious, I would find this hysterically funny. You really do live in a black and white world. A woman must be either a separatist or a slave, no shades of grey are possible at all, huh? Are you going to answer any of my questions? You need not bother, doing such a splendid job of proving my points.

69. on 17 Sep 2008 at 11:31 pm69bonobobabe

    I forgot I had commented on this thread a while back.

    I like Julia’s comments.  I think there is a misperception that all separatists are lesbian.  I am not a lesbian, and I have a very strong libido.  But I am a separatist.  I miss physical intimacy, but I’m not going to compromise myself for a little slap and tickle.  Even in the relationships that were “good,” I still felt like I was compromising myself, even though I would have been hard pressed to articulate just how. 

    <i>I do think women waste an inordinant amount of time in the search for the dodo bird (I mean male feminist).</i>

    Exactly, Satsuma.  There may indeed be some nice guys out there.  But sometimes I feel like women brandish their nice guys as weapons.  Just another thing to make us feel inadequate about.  There are feminist men out there; what’s your problem that you can’t find one?  I’m not saying that anyone commenting in this thread has done that; it’s just a vibe I get from the world at large.

    There are so many good things, important things, and fun things out there for women to spend time on.  Why must they worry about finding the needle in the haystack? 

70. on 18 Sep 2008 at 1:41 am70Satsuma

    I think it takes quite a bit of courage to be your own woman on your own terms.  I actually am surprised that most groups (lesbian and straight) consider single women some kind of threat.  Again, it’s conditioning.

    We try legal solutions, and political solutions, but we have to delve even deeper.  There is the conditioning directed at women and men to NOT rock the boat, to go along, to not radically think how life could be.

    I just finished one of the most horrifying books I have ever read called “Escape” by Carolyn Jessup.  She escaped a polygamist family with eight children in tow.  It is the most horrifying story of patriarchy in America that you will read for a long time.  She grew up in the cult and was married off to a man at age 18–he was 50, but somehow she woke up and escaped.  This is an extreme example.

    How we use our time as women is a radical choice.  Most women have their time consumed by menial tasks, other people’s needs and care taking….  when a woman steps out of this mold the earth falls in.  Witness the attacks on Gov. Palin just because she chose a demanding career AND had five children.  Somehow women are never supposed to being doing this ever.  We don’t quiz and humiliate men to death over their neglect of families, and the very definition of the male in a family is one who spends very little time with children.  Some male readers here will carp, but we need to monitor men’s actual time 24/7 in homes across America to debunk their inflated sense of child care.  They lie.  A man does the dishes once in 10 years and calls himself a feminist…

    But I’m digressing here somehow.

    When women say NO MORE of this, our time is 100% our own, we want to spend it purely on education and culture and everything that is elevating, while at the same time not spending one minute on anything that doesn’t take women farther than they have ever gone mentally, we’ll have this revolution overnight.

    Nothing we are doing now (over 50% of the U.S. population) is really thinking about this at all.  I don’t think a lot of women realize just how much of their life gets used up by men, and this creates a snow ball like effect on the individual souls of women.

    It’s why it’s taken so long to produce a Mary Daly, for example.  You don’t get that kind of a mind or that level of scholarship EVER if you are raising children or cooking and cleaning for men.  There is not enough time in the day.  Her breakthrough work in feminist philosophy is not the same as a woman running for office.  We’re talking about a power intellectually of inventing fire.  Incidently Mary Daly once said that combining lesbianism and feminism was akin to the discovery of fire.

    That’s how hard it it.  How will women break free mentally from bondage?  I actually don’t know.  I’ve been watching these compromises for so long, and I’ve seen so little progress.  The only thing I can think of is that hetero programming is like massive cult mind control.  And this spell could be broken and the cult revealed.  Sometimes I think it is my stubborn duty to constantly write of this possibility, because someone has got to say this, no matter how unpopular it might be.  Perhaps this is THE only thing I am supposed to do on earth, who knows?

71. on 18 Sep 2008 at 5:47 pm71Satsuma

    Sorry Aletha, I missed your above post #65.  Somehow, I thought it was a previous post, and I think one of my other posts is being moderated.
    But anyway, I see hatred, fury and anger as all related.  I don’t see the word “hate” as charged at all, I think of it as a real emotion that most women want to suppress all the time.  Women seeth inside, they swallow anger the way a fish swallows a worm on the end of a hook.  It is very much a hallmark of mainstream straight women to “pretend” they are not angry, and to pretend “love.”
    I am very honest about my emotions.  When I say I hate men, I do hate them.  I hate what they do to women, I hate their duplicity and sexism, I had their leftist pretentions, and I hate how they brainwash, beat, underpay and rape women.  This is what men do, and not a day goes by when I don’t see them at it.
    As weird as this may sound to you Aletha, I don’t get why women marry, cook for, clean up after and enable men, my sworn enemies to function out in the world.  Would we encourage someone to keep pouring an alcoholic drinks, thinking that the situation will change?  I have never ever understood this about women.  Perhaps as a lesbian, this just looks completely crazy to me.
    Men are responsible for their actions, and I expect them to get out there and end rape etc., but I don’t see anything at all changing as long as women continue to support men in intimate worlds, thus giving them energy to go out in the world and destroy women.
    A lot of women who have married men seem to be in complete denial about exactly what their husbands are doing out in the world.  I call it the Gini Thomas Syndrome.  Or are some men consumate play actors, and act like nice guys at home, and sexist pigs in the office?  I know, it’s extreme language, but I am extreme.  This is not a plaything to me, I am blunt, I am intolerant of men and I am extreme.  I have been known to take a man out in the hall and grab him by the throat for making a sexist comment.  I don’t tolerate this common behavior that men indulge in, and most men know it.  I’ve seen women sit at tables while men call women bitches, and do and say nothing!  I’m not like this.
    So what is the big deal?  I think we all know trying to reason with men is a complete waste of time.  I don’t think men even see women or are able to understand women most of the time.  Otherwise we wouldn’t have all these articles about Obama and his persistent sexism.  — Carol Christ article on another thread is but the latest example.  Of course he’s a sexist idiot, and of course people say “Oh Michelle is smarter” but SHE isn’t running for president.  Oy oy and triple oy with peaches and cream
    When women get up the gumption to claim one major town of 500,000, or a small country, or some place on earth that is all theirs, well why isn’t this ever happening?  Straight women and lesbians are welcome in this country or large town of women.  I do worry that straight women wimp out every now and then, and still let the scorpions slither in the front door (men), but I believe that this is a worthy goal.

    If some nut case polygamist cult can set up a complete town in Colorado City, AZ, what is it with women?  Nut case men go out and “found” towns, cities and countries all the time.  They corral women and turn them into child bearing beasts of burden! 

    What holds women back from creating a world or a place where no men are ever allowed to tread, and where feminist ideals and practical realities can be tested out for decades, if not centuries?

    We know the Beguines of Europe and the marriage resisters of China, and we know women controlled medieval  towns and commerce.  We know men try to destroy this herstory of women all the time, and we know that women radicals have a very hard time passing on this wisdom to the Britney Spears generation.  We know this, we know the tactics, we know how predictable it all is.

    We know left wing men are jerks, sexists and a waste of time.  We know all this.  Or as a recent book by Bill Cosby said: “Come On People!”  I can quote men, but I sure as heck would not want to live with them.

    You can have liberal feminism, and what I call women’s fantasy businesses (another topic for another day), but do we really have change?

    So, yes, I hate those oppressors, and I don’t mince my words.  I think men are cruel and sexist, I think they don’t get it, and when men are criminals and rapists, well, I advocate the same extreme that Andrea Dworkin did.  I think Heart dislikes this solution, but I really am paraphrasing Dworkin here.

    If we have a system of oppression so monumental and a propaganda machine extolling the virtues of heteronormative life that is in extreme overdrive 24/7, then why should my musings be all that strange?  I am a lesbian feminist, I don’t like collaboration with “Viche France,” and that’s how I think and feel.

    I’m not being mean or even black and white, I just call it as I see it.  And I think women are in big trouble a lot of the time.  I see the poverty, the exhaustion, the cowering fear, the made up faces, the despair  behind the $28,000 face lifts…  I see it all.  And so is it any wonder why I think that women have got to be crazy for living with these animals, and buying into high fashion at best, and marrying into a war zone at worst?

    I’m putting it out there— women, we can form a large city or a country.  Every woman within a certain age range can have a legacy of at least $1,000,000 or more to build the kind of endowment that would help make all of this happen.  And when we are dealing with monsters, we have a perfect right to hate the very ground they walk on.  Hate!  I hate my oppressor, it’s as simple as that.  Or maybe people here prefer a less direct word “fury” or whatever, but my word of choice has always been simply hate.

    I am writing this because I just get tired of it all.  We get to read about all these women who flee and come here after they have married battering men.  Again and again and again.  Now what is the common denominator?  Are men safe for women to be around? I don’t think so.  When Heart told about a whole stadium full of women in New Orleans, it was different.  Just as it is different in Michigan.  Think of all the women out there who have never been in a stadium filled with 20,000 women and no men.

    Heck, it’s hard for me to find rooms filled with more than 30 lesbians, and believe me, the times when I’ve been in auditoriums with 200 lesbians, it’s VERY different.

    Perhaps a lot of women have never experienced this, and so they think there is no other solution than to live with the enemy.  I can’t tell, I don’t know, but I do have to question this and wonder what the reason is.  I know there are a million reasons, but I’ll never get any of them.

     
     
     

72. on 18 Sep 2008 at 7:17 pm72Julia

    Crystal clear. I have never been in a stadium with thousands of women, or even in a room with one humdred women, but just reading about it makes me realize that we can create a whole world for women. No wonder patriarchy teaches women they can’t trust each other  - look at what could happen if we always had each other’s backs.

    Bonobobabe, nice to know I have company !

73. on 18 Sep 2008 at 9:52 pm73Satsuma

    P.S. Heart wrote about the stadium full of women where they did a healing ceremony (post Katrina I think???)

    I don’t think women create enough events that are huge and out there and women only.  Think football games, baseball games and basketball games with thousands of men screaming and yelling, drinking vast quantities of beer, buying prostitutes afterward, and raising havok in towns where their team wins some damn trophy.

    Think of it.  Men create giant male dominated spaces.  Women are often trapped in the individuality of the home, not free to associate with large groups of women regularly out in the world.

    It’s why it’s so hard for a lot of women to even develop coherent thoughts on advanced economic issues or even political candidates.  They back off in fear if you bring up serious subjects, and I think it’s the lack of experience with large groups of women that stunts this organizing impulse.  Now not all women, but I’m sure a lot of women here can testify to the rarity of feminist discourse out in general public land.

    So groups together — large… first step.  Follow up with more women only events.

    A big breakthrough   “The View” — although sometimes superficial, I believe it is the ONLY show where all the presidential candidates had to chat with an all women’s group on TV.  They struggled, but it is being done.  Now let’s have these boy presidential candidates in a big woman only town hall meeting, with women guards, TV crew and maybe five hours of Q and A.
    I don’t think these men have ever had a five hour conversation with any woman other than their wives, and even that is pushing it.

74. on 19 Sep 2008 at 1:18 am74Aletha

    Thanks for that answer, Satsuma. You make more sense to me than you might think. I think you missed my previous post because ours were both in moderation for awhile.
    
    As weird as this may sound to you Aletha, I don’t get why women marry, cook for, clean up after and enable men, my sworn enemies to function out in the world.

    No, it does not sound weird to me. I do not get it either. I mean, I understand it, but I wish to hell women did not feel compelled to take care of men. Heart wrote a post awhile back about the myriads of ways women take care of men. This is a cultural imperative, and most men and many women never question it. In many cultures, it is unthinkable to question it. Even those men who do question it have expectations that the woman in his life will take care of his needs. These expectations may be buried, denied, unconscious, or overt, but regardless, they are insidious. A woman can try calling a man out on such expectations. He might listen and seem to understand, for a while, or it might go in one ear and out the other. So is it a waste of time to reason with men? If a man must be reasoned with, probably. If he gets it when called out right away and learns his lesson, perhaps not. I know how rare that is. I left several men because they were not learning those lessons.

    I do not think fury is indirect or any less fierce than what you call hate. I say hate is charged because it carries such charged connotations, and what you describe sounds more like fury than hate to me, by the common meaning ascribed to hate. I do not think the way men hate women is much like the way you hate men. This is a matter of definition, but I use fury metaphorically more than literally. I mean it as passionate well-founded rage. I would not dispute the reasons you describe for your feelings. Male hatred of women is unfounded, irrational, vicious, blind, full of distortions. I do not see any of that in what you are describing. The Furies were the goddesses of vengeance. As I understand the mythology, they could be cruel, but their vengeance was merited and fair.

    I imagine you are trying to reclaim the word hate. I think that is hopeless, but who knows. Men have control of language like everything else. I battle for the meanings of some words, but other words I have decided to concede to them. I could say I hate what men do to women, but I prefer to say that feeds my fury. This goes back to the idea of hating the sin but not the sinner. It is a fine point, one I would not feel compelled to make if it were not for the way men hate. It is hard enough to get clueless people to see sexism or misogyny if they have reasons not to want to see it. The Obama camp fiercely denies their sexism, for example, though to most readers of this blog, I imagine it is plain as day. They say Gov. Palin deserves everything they can imagine to throw at her, but that has nothing to do with sexism in their eyes.

    I have no objection to women-only communities. There are many reasons such communities should exist. I personally could not see myself living in one, but I can see the appeal. Taking care of men does sap the spirit, energy, and clarity of women. It does not make it impossible for women to accomplish things, but it certainly makes it far more difficult than it should be, while enabling the privileges of men, all undeserved. Men can take care of most of their own needs. Their expectations deserve no consideration, let alone dutiful kowtowing.

    Another thing that infuriates me is how men get credit they do not deserve. One of the great scientists of our time, Stanford Ovshinsky, is generally given all the credit for his inventions. He worked very closely with his wife Dr. Iris Ovshinsky, who died a couple of years ago. Since then he has taken a much less active role in his company, Energy Conversion Devices, which decided to focus more on commercializing his inventions than on research. The stock zoomed, since profits were finally in sight! He is an old man now, which is usually understood as the reason for his less active role, but it seems to me the death of his wife is the real reason. At least half of the credit for those inventions belongs to her. I do not know much about their relationship, but her contribution was far more than the usual mundane sort. They brainstormed together.

75. on 19 Sep 2008 at 10:19 am75admin

    Hey, Satsuma, I found your comment up there and unmoderated it, sorry.  It was actually NOLAradfem who wrote about the women at the stadium who were doing the healing ceremony in New Orleans, but I’ve written often about my love for woman-only spaces which I have often enjoyed by now, at Michfest, on wimmin’s lands.  There is nothing like these spaces.

    Women usually don’t realize how much energy they are investing in their relationships with men.  It’s the way women are raised, to be the nurturers, the caregivers, they take care of people in the same way they breathe and move about in the world a lot of the time.  The exceptions, of course, are women who recognized this at a young age and fought it from the time they recognized it, but they are by far the minority.  In a DV/EA/VA forum I participate on there was a thread a while ago where women described the most crazy-making thing their partners had done.  Woman after woman came into the thread to describe instance after instance of what amounted to horrific emotional and verbal abuse as though it was just an everyday thing, this is what life is for me, nothing unusual here.  We aren’t talking here about battering, rape, or overt physical violence, but about emotional and verbal batterings that all women recognize but that men steadfastly deny til their dying day and refuse to acknowledge exists.  But in this thread what was interesting was, all of the women said they didn’t realize what they had been living with until they were out of their relationships and then, sometimes suddenly, sometimes over time it dawned on them how much of themselves they had given, how much they had lost, how completely exploited and taken for granted they had been, and with that recognition came the rage and the fury and the grief.  We shouldn’t underestimate the power our cultural conditioning and the messages we receive can have over us and other women.  Sometimes it’s just not in our best interests to face up to what our lives with men really are.  Sometimes women can’t face up to this until they find a way out, get out and can make sense of their experiences with other women.

76. on 19 Sep 2008 at 3:40 pm76Satsuma

    So here we are all on the same page again.  I think sometimes the debates here get confused because of the technology delays, but anyway.

    I like the word hate, because it is often an epithet thrown at me by men –”You’re a hater!”  My response is always quite brutal, “Yes, I hate your guts, and yes if you get in my way I’m going to bash your sexist male head in.”  Usually you have to be direct with men.  They get threats backed up by fists.  I don’t think they understand anything more than that.  So that’s why perhaps I am reclaiming “hate.”  Who knows, I just plain like the word.

    Heart’s comments really explain a lot.  Since I don’t live with men, and haven’t been in the same quarters with men since 1975 (my family), I get accustomed to a lot of freedom and a complete absense of male anything.  So when I go out in the world, I go into shock at what women routinely put up with from men.  It’s as stark as night and day!!  I can see it because I’m not living in it night and day!  I’m not the fish in water, who doesn’t know what water is.

    It is true that women who are getting abused emotionally and in other ways when they are living with men don’t see it sometimes, until long after they have escaped the situation.  Most women in my opinion are sacrificing their lives in service to men.

    I’ve always hated caretaking, service, and anything else that smacks of not get paid for work I do.  It’s why I hate most volunteer work and giving away money.  I want to keep what I make, I want my taxes rock bottom low, and I feel under no obligation to fuel the hetero-normative machine.

    Women are trained to be servants and slaves.  It’s why most women hate money and high paying jobs — they’re used to the “abuse” of being low paid drones, and they think women deserve low incomes.  I HATE this state of affairs.  I hate paying taxes out of my pocket so that women can marry more men and have more children and use up my resources on this craziness.  It’s a harsh view, but I am sick to death of having women telling me that I have to have less!  I won’t settle for that.

    The other day was a huge market opportunity, but women believe the headlines and miss out every time.  I have to call women clients to get them to buy. I have to coach them to ASK FOR MORE MONEY!  I do this all the time.

    So I believe that if you are not living in home centered servitude, you see the horror of men in the world all the time.  I must see things that women have been trained to overlook.  Grab a man by the throat after he has uttered a sexist comment,  and most likely he won’t be making those statements ever again.  Reasoning with men is a complete and utter waste of time.  They either shut their sexist mouths up right now or I’m going to be vengence itself!  I have no patience at all. Most men do get threats, and they do respect women who have the power of the fist.  If you are big and strong it’s an advantage.  If you have a furious hatred of men, you can react faster than women who actually think men are ok.  They are NOT ok with me.  I assume they’re idiots.

    I guess I can get pretty frustrated with women who can’t see this stuff and have no anger, but I can understand how slave conditioning works, and how women are beaten into the ground by religion and men in their homes.

    It’s why I tell women not to marry or live with men as an ideal.  I know they’re going to do it anyway, but I’m saying you take on a greater risk to yourselves if you do this than investing in AIG right now.  The risk to women’s sense of self, their earning power, their intellectual drive, all of this is killed by men, co-opted by them and stolen from women.  It’s why we can never end patriarchy, because women cook for it and feed it all the time.

    Men can’t even ask women questions and drain women just in a conversation alone.  Ever see a man listen to a group of women and NOT say a word?  Ever go to a meeting where men don’t want to dominate and hog the mircophones all the time?  Never happens.  Men think they have the right to talk at women all the time.  They don’t shut up listen and change behavior!  So they are a waste of time this way.  Most women are unaware of how different a TV show is when it is written by men compared to female authors.  It’s obvious 95% of the time within the first 3-5 minutes of any TV show on these days.  And yet women don’t see this dominance and this control over a story line at all.

    It’s a blunt reality I don’t think women want to face, but the few who escape tell the truth of this.  Just read Carolyn Jessop’s excellent book “Escape” if you want to see a patriarchal nightmare.

    Put all the energy you once put into men into yourself and your achievement and brilliance.  Stop caring for the world, and start caring for yourself!  Do not accept second best, go for THE best always.  That’s my motto, and when things look very bad in the market — lesson 101 — that’s  buying opportunity women.  Only the poor cling to disaster headlines. 

    Women are conditioned since birth to put the needs of others ahead of themselves.  This is a system of behavior that will ensure that women never ever get rid of male rule.  It is the ace in the whole of the male world, and the male mentality.  When women stop serving men STOP STOP STOP-something will shift.  Men will be forced to do all their own work, all their own dishes all their own secretarial work.  They won’t have time to harass women, because they will be too busy cleaning the sink!  Or holding the babies while Gov. Palin gets to give the big speech.  How delightful is that?  And always, it’s the conservative women who clean up with feminism, because the feminists can’t close the deal.  Oh the pain of it all or the Palin of it all

77. on 19 Sep 2008 at 6:40 pm77Sis

    I suggest a new thread. Every woman posting must list all the stupid sexist things she saw or were directed to here, just in the past 24 hours.

    1. Doctors Without Borders is doing a huge fund raising initiative complete with a mock refugee camp and bus loads of school kids coming in to get *actual doctor lead tours* through the refugee camps. A day in the life of, so to speak.  There is no mention of the atrocity of the rapes women who are in war zones and being displaced endure, and that being one of the major reasons they need to see a Doctor Without Borders.

    2. A man in my building gets in the elevator with me. He is upset about something muttering and puffing and irritated. Nostrils flared. I want to say what’s wrong can I help? I barely catch myself. I still feel, maybe I should have…?

    3. I am waiting for the bus. A young woman, about 14 at most, weighing about 90 lbs, comes along, teetering in her absurdly high high heels. And crotch length shorts. She sits at the bus stop on a major thoroughfare applying all kinds of liner and mascara and blush (2 colours blended) and lipliner and lipstick and gloss. Once we’re on the bus, she stands talking to the driver, who flirts and ogles her bottom. He’s about 55, fat as all hell. He looks suggestively hard at her as she tries to be nonchalant. I get off before she does. I am terrified for her.

    4. I am on the bus. It is packed and people are standing. I am sitting. A young pregnant Filapina woman gets on. She is too short to reach the strap. No one moves. After about a block, I give her my seat. The young men on each side of the seat don’t budge, not even to give her and her parcels more room.

    5. It’s a clear sky, and the moon is beautiful and we might have northern lights tonight. I’d like to go out to see that, to a secluded place in the valley. I’d like to.

78. on 19 Sep 2008 at 7:09 pm78Julia

    Men listening to women. That must be nice…I’ve started cutting men out of my life who don’t listen. What amazes me are smart women who do not even notice this sexist behavior. I am usually the only feminist in the room and this must be why….

    So now I’m thinking about what kinds of women only events would go over in my town, and what I could organize.

79. on 19 Sep 2008 at 7:25 pm79Julia

    I’m thinking a lot about the invisible heros…the women in the civil rights movement, for example, who made it possible for the leaders to march, meet, speak and go to jail. If no one had been taking care of the children and the home and cooking and cleaning we may never have had a Dr King, a Reverand Vivian. I went to hear Rev. Vivian speak last Friday and I walked out of the auditorium after he said things like: “there were only two great people of the last century:Dr. King and Ghandi”.

    I used to love Dick Gregory. I read his biography when I was twelve, then in college and again this summer. His mother worked two jobs and paid for his track uniforms, ( besides raising four children alone);  he got a college track scholarship and he was ashamed to have her come see him run! She never saw one of his races. After that his wife, Lillian, supported him financially then stayed home and raised their children alone while he performed all over the country and became and activist and had the excitment of being a star and a public figure.

    At the very least, Dick Gregory could credit his mother and wife for his success. I’d rather read the biography of Lillian Gregory, at this point.

80. on 20 Sep 2008 at 1:21 am80Aletha

    Another observation about language struck me. I can think of no direct way to say something infuriates me or angers me or makes me mad, no transitive verb to express my action, whereas to say I hate something is direct language, the transitive verb, I am the subject rather than the object, the actor rather than the acted upon. Does that have something to do with why you called fury indirect, Satsuma? I wonder why that is. Is this a peculiarity of English, or does it have it something to do with the Furies being goddesses, not gods?

    I found that post I mentioned. I forget whether there was a Part 2.

    The Ways Women Take Care of Men — Part 1

81. on 20 Sep 2008 at 1:28 am81Aletha

    Here is Part 2.
    The Ways Women Take Care of Men — Part II

82. on 20 Sep 2008 at 2:49 am82Satsuma

    Fury can be a feeling yes.  But you can’t say, “I hate your living guts you sexist pigs!” — “I fury your living guts.”

    Maybe I like hate because it is direct in that example.

    My language has never been very subtle or delicate.  Friends are always amazed … “This is the best movie I have ever seen!”  I get carried away in my enthusiasm.  The worst, the best, always, never… well I’m not a literature professor.  Then other friends have told me that my extreme language has made me “born to blog.”  Hope that explanation helps.

    My mind is both extreme and driven or filled with polemic, which I know I just love WAY too much — maybe it’s the heroine of language???  Now polemic is just not in fashion…what’s an old fashioned radical lesbian feminist to do???  Boo Hoo

83. on 20 Sep 2008 at 6:18 am83Sis

    Fascinating observation Aletha about intransitive voice. And thanks for bringing forth those older posts, The Ways. They were before my time here. Interesting to see how Heart has said what she’s said there; I wonder how you might restate some of those Heart. I hear a different voice from you now. Stronger, more direct. No equivocation.

84. on 20 Sep 2008 at 11:32 am84julia

    Heart, the list is brilliant! Especially #s 1-10 and 45-50.
    Most women I know think occasionally you have to have sex when you don’t want to, that’s part of marriage. No wonder I have never wanted to get married!
    I have seen the book ‘Passionate Marriage’ in so many women’s homes - one who is a Women’s Studies professor. He advocates for women to be their man’s prostitute so they don’t go looking for sex elsewhere, he doesn’t use these words but the message is clear, just like John Gray’s. Who made billions from the Venus and Mars books.
    The backlash against us is huge.

85. on 20 Sep 2008 at 11:57 am85Branjor

    From: ***The Ways Women Take Care of Men — Part 1***:
    ***refuse to hate men although it would be perfectly acceptable if they did*** (Liz, post #5) 

    This partial quote from Liz in post #5 of the “Ways Women Take Care of Men” thread, that it would be perfectly acceptable if women were to hate men, is sad and ironic given all the shaming and chiding for “hatred” which has gone on on this thread. This shaming and chiding goes on every single time separatist sentiments are expressed, showing that it’s not “acceptable” at all in many feminist spaces, but nobody challenged Liz at all on it back on the old thread.   

86. on 20 Sep 2008 at 2:19 pm86Sis

    If you hate, say so. I don’t hate men. I hate some of their behaviour, their sense of entitlement.

    Right now today, I hate that the men in my building behave like eight year old boys, making salicious comments about me to each other, if one is in the elevator with me for example, in the office, to other men who work in the building and to some men who live here.

    I hate that I feel like I did when I was 12, and couldn’t walk down the street without dirty comments, muttered under breath filth, snide remarks, smirking, laughing. I hate that one of them is the manager, and the other the owner’s pathetic adolescent 50 year old son. I hate that if I want or need repair in my apartment, they add more salacious crap to their remarks which are de facto, sexual abuse of me, who they make their living off.

    I’m 66. When does this end?

    I hate this. I hate these men, and this behaviour. I hate that I have no recourse. I hate that women who are poor have to live in places that are managed by assholes like this, without fail. It’s just a question of who they ‘pick’ for this harrassment.

    I hate that I have no choice.

    I feel better that I have a place to put this.

87. on 20 Sep 2008 at 2:39 pm87Satsuma

    Well, I have often wondered why half the population always has such a huge problem with an idea that is simple: men are enemies of women, and women are abused by men, and yet it is not ok for feminists to say point blank “I hate the g-d– animals!”  Why is this the ultimate taboo of feminist groups and blogs everywhere?

    Reminds me of how men cow hetero women into going along too, “What are you a Dyke?”  The lavender menace.  Straight women easily frightened when men accuse women of being “man hating.”  The logical answer would be to simply say, “Yeah, I hate those oppressors and rapists, I hate the pigs, I’m making a big fist now and I intend to make you pay….”  Simple, direct, and it puts men on the spot.

    Men expect women to NEVER get in touch with hatred, and anger.  The greatest sin among women is for one woman to show furious anger.  Straight women I know just fall like a house of cards, because they rarely if ever see one woman displaying explosive aggressive anger against a man who has made a blantant sexist joke.  No, women are slaves worldwide, and feminists wonder why things never change.

    Well they won’t ever change as long as men think they can get away with all of this stuff.  Men fear women’s revolution, and they fear the day when women all over the world will explode!  Just watch Obama with his “women’s speeches” now.  Squinting at the teleprompter he says, “McCain just doesn’t know about women’s issues.”  But hey, I see Obama squinting at the teleprompter woodenly reading the democratic party laundry list of “women’s issues”  then I see Palin answer a young mother’s questions about balancing family and career.  “What do you say to people who say you can’t be VP and a mother?”  Palin, free of teleprompter says: “Let’s prove them wrong!”  

    Let’s start asking Obama how he juggles “children and career.”  Yeah, let’s prove ‘em wrong!

    Separatists have often been sick of this namby pamby fear of HATRED ANGER RAGE spoken openly and without apology.  We have always hated men, we have always know they are duplicitous dunces, we have always been radical.  I didn’t have to have been beated by men or have escaped some right wing group, I always knew men were inherently evil.  Even at the age of 4, I hated those mean boys.  When I was 10, I knew how to handle them — punch them hard, kick them hard and ask questions later.  Boys were pigs, they were pigs in school, they were pigs in the work place and I wanted a world free of them.

    Just one city, one country where the pigs are kicked out forever!!  Wow, women this is pathetic that we don’t even have one tiny country yet!! 

    NO men have never changed, they are the same age after age, it is only women who ever dramatically change.  Men are mindless in their games, uninventive in their personal relationships, bored by children (well I can agree with that one), and totally unwilling to fight against porn or prostitution or pornography.  No sireee, men have not changed, and I will point this out again and again, and then some hetero woman will come on here “oh not my man, how can you say hate eeek.”  They’ll be back here in a couple of years after their husband has beaten the heck out of them…

    What can you say Branjor, we told them so millions of times.  Women really don’t want to do what it takes daily to gain freedom.
    It takes daily confronation with men to gain freedom, it means NEVER laughing at their jokes, risking life and limb to punch out an enemy if need be, and never exposing other women to the danger of teenage boys.  But hey, I’m only your garden variety hater, and I HATE MEN!!!  I HATE them for what they do to women, and I get angry at women for not fighting back at least with words here women!  At least you can get out a good I HATE them every now and then, but you can’t even do that!!

88. on 20 Sep 2008 at 6:05 pm88Sis

    I don’t hate men. I just heard from a man who, every time I hear from him, I tingle. Sorry. I’m weak. It has no bearing on how I feel about the wankers in this building, and their ilk, or any man, who behaves this way, when he does.

    I don’t hate women either, although, some have caused me a lot of grief throughout my life. I get it that’s not their fault. Doesn’t mean I have to tolerate them, or like the way *they* treat me, when they treat me not terribly differently from the way abusive men do. Usually, women aren’t in a position of power over me (physically or fiscally) so that makes it easier. Not always though. My boss. Thankfully, there’s e-mail, and call display and a choice to work at home or the office. Guess which.

    Anyone who belts anyone else is up for assault and only a very stupid 5 foot 3 inch woman is going to try to get physical with a man of any size. We don’t put up with it because we’re stupid. We put up with it because, to varying degrees related to size, age, class, race, colour, financial status we have to: we’re women.

89. on 22 Sep 2008 at 11:56 pm89Aletha

    Why is this the ultimate taboo of feminist groups and blogs everywhere?

    Satsuma, you answered your own question. You are trying to reclaim hatred, but to the vast majority of people, hate means what it means to men. Most women want nothing to do with that, and I think it is clear enough why.

    There you are throwing around that word inherently again. Perhaps you should define that as well. Do you believe in original sin? I imagine not, so how is it human biology makes one sex evil, but not the other?

90. on 23 Sep 2008 at 8:48 am90funnie

    Want to be a separatist? Be a separatist. Want to hate men? Go for it.

    Just don’t pretend it’s for ME, eh?  It’s all. about. you. And I resent being cast as some pitied stupid excuse for bad behavior and woman-blaming.

    They’ll be back here in a couple of years after their husband has beaten the heck out of them… What can you say Branjor, we told them so millions of times.  Women really don’t want to do what it takes daily to gain freedom.

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