http://bermudaradical.blogspot.com/

i need to get to reading this blog. it's a friend of mine's. but i hafta catch up on lj first tho. i've read a few hundred entries already, only about 400 more to go! :P

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=89Qulebjq1Y

this is a fantastic video, calling for the inclusion of transwomen in the michigan womyn's festival

i keep on going back and forth on this issue--i agree with much of both sides (wimmin-raised-as-girls-only vs trans inclusion)

i definitely believe that if transmen are allowed, transwomen should be.

it's hypocritical to let in a group who id as men, yet exclude a highly victimised group who id as women who have even LESS space than wimmin-raised-as-girls do.

it's a load of crap.

to expand, it's a scientific theory by rich, educated by patriarchal western systems, white men to justify the continuation of the systems that privilege them in the first place (eg sexism and misogyny, racism, classism). evolutionary psychology, natural selection, and so forth would be interpreted radically differently from how they currently are if women of all races and men of colour were the ones cultivating these theories.

here's a couple examples:

rape - they try to argue that the desire for rape is biologically inherent within men as a result of natural selection so they can "spread their seed" to as many women (read: vaginas) as possible, thereby increasing chances of reproducing their genes, and demonstrating their "potency." one particularly notorious offender is the excuse of a book called "a natural history of rape" by thornhill and palmer (http://www.amazon.ca/Natural-History-Rape-Biological-Coercion/dp/0262700832/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216503770&sr=8-4)

this is one of the worst examples of it's justification of misogyny and rape. the vast majority of rape doesn't even have the chance of resulting in pregnancy, consider many of the victim groups of which this almost always is true:

men (1 in 9 of all reported adult rapes, 98% by men),

boys (1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by the age of 18, about 85% by men),

prepubescent girls (nearly 40% of girls will be sexually abused by the age of 18, 95% of the time by men, with the average age being 11)

menopausal women (no longer fertile; see below because the rate of victimization for women 40 and older is not that much lower than for women in their 20s and 30s)

menstruating women (not fertile during menstruation; see below)

2/3 of women will experience sexual assault during their lives; US statistics on rape as legally defined range from 1 in 3 to 1 in 8, depending on sample group, which legal wording/definition, etc)

transpeople, esp transwomen (have victimization rates comparable to or slightly higher than the rates for women, and far higher than the ones for men)

rarer groups that are targeted for rape include: corpses, animals that are usually female, and babies of either/any sex

Now, compounding the above is the fact that most rape isn't vaginal penetration with the rapist's penis--such as orally, anally, with the rapist's hand, objects such as bottles, broomsticks, pool cues, dildoes, tree branches, knives, and guns--one is left wondering:

how can all this result in pregnancy?

the additional fact of women using birth control pills, the morning after pill, and abortion to control their fertility--and which can be used in the result of a rape--really "problematises" (read: calls bullshit) on the theory that rape is

but, you may say, birth control didn't exist thousands of years ago, when this primitive rape instinct developed in men. but it did--contraception dates back over 4000 years, abortion is even older, and infanticide is the oldest.

i would also add: what about the rapists who, in spite off all those classes of victims and types of rape listed, went with the less-common-than-believed form of rape regarded as "actual" or "real" rape (penis-in-vagina) with a woman who could be fertile, use a condom?

but, but! someone may have the gall to say, rape is still an instinct within men! if it were, wouldn't the vast majority of men rape, if "sex" (read: penis-in-vagina "thrusting") is an "instinct" as strong as hunger and the avoidance of death(!), and rape is instinctual, too, wouldn't all men be slavering rapists? or at least, most of them? and why would men visit prostitutes, one of the most abusive uses of women, children, and men that the johns most decidedly do not want to result in any consequences for them, including children. if men are as awful as the theory suggests, wouldn't men be better off killing themselves off? why should women put up with men biologically programed to be rapists?

i guess that's what makes feminists the manhaters--the belief that women shouldn't have to endure rape as the price of men existing, the view that the theory serves to excuse men's choices, conditioning, and benefits within a rape culture.

I'm not all that interested in writing about Kyle Payne, or what has been going on with him. What I more wanted to point out was that...this is not the first time this has happened. This is not the first time men have claimed to be 'feminists', have been active in the feminist movement, and have then later proven themselves to be misogynists who are no friends to women.

One example of this phenomenon can be observed in Warren Farrell. Farrell was active in the feminist movement in the 1970s, speaking at meetings and gatherings, supporting NOW, and doing work on critiquing masculinity. In 1974 he published a book called The Liberated Man, Beyond Masculinity: Freeing Men and Their Relationships, in which, according to R.W. Connell, he argued that "the male sex role was oppressive and ought to be changed or abandoned," drawing heavily on feminist critiques of masculinity and male power. (Masculinities, p. 24). Furthermore, in some of his early papers, Farrell "did not hesitate to call men 'a dominant class' who needed to renounce their position of priviledge." (Masculinities, p. 208). Later, however, Farrell changed his perspective. He decided that feminism was going too far and eroding men's rights, and in 1986 published Why Men Are the Way they Are, which was followed in 1993 by The Myth of Male Power. Both of these books attempt to justify male dominance over women through biological essentialism and pop-psychology, and the latter book in particular claims that it is in fact men who are being oppressed in the modern age, by those nasty evil feminazis. He allies himself with Robert Bly, leader and founder of the Men's Movement, whose book Iron John: A Book About Men (1990) was a huge success.

Many other men have since followed in the footsteps of these champions of men's rights, all of them making arguments for why the status quo between men and women must be maintained, all of them placing the responsibility for men's behaviour onto women, all of them arguing that men need to be given more rights and freedoms by women unfairly intent on 'controlling' them. And many of them claim to be supportive of feminism, such as the Australian Steve Biddulph, who brought us classics like Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different (which should more rightly be titled How To Brutalize Boys And Turn Them Into Violent Men) and Manhood: A Book About Setting Men Free (which should more rightly be titled Let Us Do Whatever The Fuck We Want Women, Or Else!).

So yeah...none of this is exactly new, or unheard of. Also to clarify: R.W. Connell's book Masculinities (1995) is not a radical feminist text. Connell is an Australian sociologist who is considered 'progressive' and does a lot of work on gender, but I do not believe he has any real interest in ending patriarchy, only in renovating the current system in order to give a greater appearance of 'equality.' This is strongly suggested to me by the fact that Connell critiques the work of pro-radical feminist men like John Stoltenbeg in Masculinities. So I would say that Masculinities, though considered a progressive text, still has a number of problems. I quoted from the book because Connell has a good discussion of the history of men such as Warren Farrell who started out being in the feminist movement and later became advocates for men's rights, but I do not agree with Connell's conclusions about why men like Farrell behave as they do.

Comments: Sorry, very busy and not really up to managing comments right now. Comments from those on my LJ friends lists are enabled, all other comments are turned off. Not trying to shut anyone down/out, just busy. Comments will be turned on again at sometime in the future when I have more time.

I cried tonight. 

Copying allecto, but oh well…

I like putting together lists of books I’ve read over the last few months; I always feel so virtuous and accomplished. This list is shorter than normal because I’ve been doing a lot of stuff in RL, but here it is anyway:


The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody (the 5th book in the Obernewtyn Chronicles) – I’ve been waiting a looong time for this book. Nine years, in fact, since 1999 which was when the forth book, The Keeping Place, was published. It was well worth the wait, but I hope I don’t have to wait another nine years for the next book.

The White Garden by Carmel Bird – This novel was a little disappointing; it could have been a lot more powerful than it was. The author had very important and truthful things to say about the abuse women experience in the so-called mental health system, but she wasn’t quite brave enough to say what she should have. Rather than looking at how the whole system itself is woman-hating, she kind of just said, well, there’s one or two bad apples in the barrel, and that’s so sad because then the women who ‘need’ help from [patriarchal] medicine don’t get it. Huh. Yeah. Well, we all know what Mary Daly thinks about the/rapists, and I’m with her on this one.

The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson – I always love Richardson’s writing for her complex understandings of the social and psychological forces that impact so heavily on women’s sense of self, and this book was no exception. Very satisfying read, and a hopeful ending.

Vanishing Points by Thea Astley – Since I read it, I think this book has taken up a place as one of my favourite Australian novels. Stunning writing, and…well, I don’t really know what else to say without giving it away. I guess the crux of Astley’s argument in the novel is that men, if they go on as they are now, are on a futile course into oblivion, and that it is only the power of community, especially of women’s communities and Indigenous communities, which has the ability to 1) defeat male destructiveness, and 2) build a positive future in harmony with the natural environment.

A Boat Load of Home Folk by Thea Astley – This reminded me a little of a Christina Stead novel, at a tiny fraction of the length. Psychologically intense, and very critical of human relationships. It’s one of Astley’s earlier novels, and its ethics were a bit doubtful in terms of feminism and race, but I still enjoyed it.

Oh Lucky Country by Rosa R. Cappiello – Very dark, and very funny. This book deserves to be far better known than it is. Sadly, I don’t think it’s even in print anymore, and I doubt the English translation was ever available anywhere except Australia.

The Wandgerground by Sally Miller Gearhart – beautiful and thought provoking. I read this book on a long train ride in the space of two or three hours. Un-putdownable.

The Sylvia Game by Vivien Alcock – A UK children’s author who I used to read when I was younger, and still enjoy. Her books are quite dark, and walk a fine line between fantasy and gritty realism. I read this book one stormy Sunday night, which was highly appropriate.

Beloved by Toni Morrison – This novel was really fantastic, except for the ending. I had my suspicions it would turn out the way it did, but I really hoped it wouldn’t. I don’t mean it was a problematic ending in terms of being depressing or whatever. More that, to me, it was ideologically a very problematic ending, and one which to some extent undermined the amazing work Morrison did in the earlier parts of the novel. Still highly recommended; the bits of the story I disliked didn’t come about until very near the end, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll just rewrite the ending anyway.

Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress by Shere Hite – Shere Hite. What can I say, other than that she is brilliant, and I don’t know where we would be without her.

An Ethics of Sexual Difference by Luce Irigaray – This is a book I wish I had read before now. It clarified a lot of thoughts I’ve had for a long time but couldn’t always put into words, and I foresee myself quoting from it a lot in the future.

Anticlimax and The Lesbian Heresy by Sheila Jeffries – Jeffries takes apart the patriarchal field of ‘sex therapy’ at satisfying length in these two books. In The Lesbian Heresy she also discusses the patriarchal ideologies then starting to colonize the conception of lesbian sexuality, which, alas, has continued on since the early 90s despite her book and grown much more dominant.