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Patriarchy is alive and well in 2016. Let’s head over to the Olympics – Exhibit 1:
Oh, look who owns her. Her position of ‘wife’ is obviously relevant information as to HER Olympic achievement.
Ooookay. Maybe this is just a fluke this isn’t a implicit patriarchal norm – we just need to find all the stories that mention a man’s status as “husband” first then his achievement… (good luck with that).
Surely in swimming it must not be the case:
Ah, because the man-stroke is the only stroke that could possibly be responsible for her achievement. Not her ability, her talent, her fucking grit – nope nope nope – manstroke for the winz.
Seeing a pattern here? The systematic denial of female agency and achievement – and attributing said achievement to a man. Feeling the 2016 equality yet?
May as well be, if you happen to be female and good at something. :/
“Oh Arb!” says my skeptical male readership, “These are just rare incidences and are in the realm of sports – sports are known for their male bias you shouldn’t be making hasty generalizations about society based of a few sports clips.”
Maybe popular magazine covers?
Apparently only the male face is appropriate for Magazine covers, females though, as long as you are almost naked, then you are allowed to have a head.
Nope…popular magazine are still all-a-board the patriarchy bus.
Okay dudes, lets change the channel, how about leadership of the Western Free World? Certainly the framing of female success through the patriarchal lens won’t happen here! (oh wait…)
Correction – First female to win the nomination to be president of the US. What do the papers record – her husband at HER nomination victory. I can’t wait to see the pictures if HRC wins the presidency, more pictures of Bill?
Yeah, sooooooo… When you hear people (mostly dudes) prattle on about society becoming a matriarchy or that we’ve achieved equality, kindly refer them to this post and maybe help explain to them that their cluelessness is really quite embarrassing.
Why is it hard for women to achieve in our society? Partially because of the systemic shit like this that denies women their role models and examples of success – you can’t be it, if you don’t see it. So let’s not discount effective feminism and the work that still needs to be done by radical organized groups of females working together to dismantle the patriarchal superstructure that harms women and men.
The feminist tag in the wordpress reader keeps sending me these reality defying, stomach churning, polishing of turding, decidedly bad-will gifts. Aggrieved man children are now, during this very second, writing inspirational insipid posts about how terrible it is to be a man and how getting back to patriarchal standards is the *only* thing that will save society from degenerating….(to what state – egalitarianism? the horror). I can’t review the entire post, a tip of the hat to Talon’s Rest for making the notion of word diarrhea come to life, the fail is much too thick for that, let’s delimit our topic to one putrid subheading:
“The Birth of The Manosphere and Neomasculinity”
(Well since it is known that men cannot give birth, thus we can assume that the ‘birth’ of the Manosphere and Neomasculinity entered our world with a wet plop and we can now examine these floating nuggets of wisdom in the sombre light of day.)
“However as the body of Red Pill knowledge and thought expanded, Red Pill men started to explore issues beyond simple inter-gender dynamics to get success with women and realised that Red Pill truths had plenty of implications for everything from culture, to soceity, and eventually civillisation.”
(Fuck, I don’t know about you, but I’m breathless already. This is such an artful way of saying entitled dude shitlords got together for a whinge-festival about how fucking sad-pants they are that women are being treated less like fuck-toilets and more like human beings.)
“This led to a formative set of ideas that rose to encapsulate what we know today as Neomasculinity, an idealogical framework that combines Red Pill truths on biological human nature, traditional wisdom and masculinity […]”
(Biological human nature? What in heaven’s name is that? Are some dudes still fapping on about the giggle fest that is ‘classic’ sociobiological roles – man=hunter woman=gatherer – thus we should emulate primitive society because it’s right(?) type thinking. Sociologists have this other theory – socialization – that you may want to consult before wheeling out more ‘hard hitting” (un)truths.)
(Traditional wisdom and masculinity? OH! You mean patriarchy? The shit system we live under that both women and men suffer under? That is the traditional system you are referring to, you complete and utter lack-wit. Celebrating the oppression half the human race as the method of maintaining your position in the dominant class…way to go douche-canoe. )
“to aid men in making their way in the modern world where regressive progressivism has all but destroyed old-school patriarchal masculinity, seeking to help the masses of men left aimless and confused by it’s destruction.”
(Good old school patriarchal masculinity is shit. So is the current school of masculinity that is floating around. You see, my half-witted friend, masculinity is a condition that can only exist if there happens to be an inferior class to kick the shit out of, in this case femininity. Nothing says ritualized submission like femininity. To pine for a return where these values are more strongly codified makes you a horrible person, as in, Ebola just called and wants to talk about you about an image makeover. )
“Unlike the MGTOW who believe in opting out and giving in to the decline, the PUA who recede into nihilistic hedonism, and the MRA who futilely seek to reform an unreformable system,”
(Oh my stars! MRA’s wanting to reform the system…the lolz just keep coming!)
“Neomasculinists believe that the best way to go about giving the modern man a future is to build tribes of strong masculine men from the ground up,”
(What is up with putting caveman ethos on a pedestal? Building strong tribes works so amazingly great just look at the harmony in Syria, it’s a productive love fest for all involved and an example to be followed for the betterment of humanity. Sectarianism is actually good for us… (!))
“resisting the spread of degeneracy as social insurgents against the numerically superior regressives as first, and later as a dominant social force when the tide of strong masculine men finally reaches a critical mass.”
(You never define degeneracy. Moving toward a world without patriarchy means the end to the explicit and implicit oppression of women. We can give egalitarianism a chance instead its current status as ‘clueless liberal dude pipe-dream’. I cannot even fathom how you managed to make out the dissolution of patriarchy as degeneration. Or could it be that you’re scarred spit-less that your once iron-clad entitlement to the best of everything in society is under threat? Naw, couldn’t be that, the masters are always happy to give the slaves a helping hand up and share the wealth…)
“The aim is for masculine men is to be the best that they can be, and to slow, or even reverse the slow slide of their civillisation into degeneracy. If the slide cannot be reversed, these masculine men will then seek to gather their tribe to build a new one.”
(LoL. Shitlords must be shitlords to stop the corruption of a society moving toward a more egalitarian future. Hurrah! Bonus points for ‘reforming’ society after it all goes down trope . Who gets to be Mad Max – oh fuck bro, no can do anymore – the more important question now is who is Furiosa!)
“As a countercultural movement these ideas were largely found their place in the internet on blogs, chat forums and social media. This collectively became known as the Manosphere, a place where male interests and issues can be discussed by like-minded men.”
(In other words, arrogant man-babies gather to take the piss and moan about the evilz of women and their sooper-sekrit feminist movement that is hell-bent on the destruction of man. )
The manosphere – the gift of sad hilarity that keeps on giving.
I’m not sure what the author of the review was thinking… Actually, on second thought I might have an idea – this is the liberal left dude deciding to be ‘edgy’ and take on an issue that feminists, especially radical feminists, like to rattle on about. One would hope that with a title of a book like ‘Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth – From Steubenville to Chad Evans” one might, at the very least raise a cursory skeptical eyebrow at the presumptive nature of the work. Perhaps this is just my own bias showing through, but I think that it would be a good idea to least familiarize oneself with the topics at hand before presenting a review that would have worth to someone outside the liberal circle of ‘progressive’ dudes who think that they ‘get it’ and can speak with authority on the topic(s).
So there are two dimensions to this review of a review, the tone deafness of the review and the astonishing amount of cluelessness posited by the author of the book in question. Both will be tackled as the cocksure nature and faux-authoritative pronouncements being made about the experience of women in patriarchal culture – as interpreted by men – in this ‘review’ sadly illuminates how far we have to go to becoming a decent culture, and one that doesn’t rely on marginalizing half of the population based on their private bits.
The RPOJ cometh for thee.
The Red Pen of Justice has been under wraps for a very long time now and has been agitating to let loose once again on the blogosphere. I cannot deny the RPOJ discontents anymore, so gentle readers, suit up, sit back and prepare for a radical feminist analysis of the important words going on over at David Marx:Book Reviews.
“It has sometimes been said that sex and intimacy can mean what we ultimately want them to mean; which, for all intents and self-gratifying purposes, can more often than not entail the go-ahead (regardless of one hundred per cent consent). The ‘go-ahead’ that is, amid a resounding variant of ways in the eyes of the law, not to mention society at large.”
*Blinks* On first reading I have no idea what the fuck he is saying. Let’s look again… Okay, this requires further parsing.
“”It has sometimes been said that sex and intimacy can mean what we ultimately want them to mean; […]”
Who said this and when? I think this defaults to what David Marx thinks on this particular topic, as no references are made to any relevant sociological source. This could be interpreted as David, with artless academic-ese construction, trying to authoritatively make a point.
My eyebrow raised because it looks like David is making the case for non-consensual relations somehow being a-fucking-okay because we can define consent out of the occasion. Funny how a review about the purported mythological status of rape culture is actually affirming its existence.
“The ‘go-ahead’ that is, amid a resounding variant of ways in the eyes of the law, not to mention society at large.”
Sentences missing objects/clauses don’t make sense. Charitably, I think David means that the ‘go-ahead’ or consent is somehow related to what is agreed on in society.
“Either of which can, and often does trigger dire and detrimental consequences.”
I’m done playing parse the sentence fragment – make your best guess here – thanks Dave for being unfathomable in your writing style.
“That we live in a society, where so-called honour killings (usually by men) are on the unfortunate rise; and a vacuous dirt-bag of Tunisian descent feels it’s in his right to attack a mother and her two daughters with a machete at a summer resort in France – because, in his eyes ”they weren’t wearing enough clothes” – is a both a sad and a very, very serious indictment of today’s moral fabric.”
Almost always by men, as they are upholders of honour/subjugators of women. Why mention that the killer dude was Tunisian? One should try to curtail the impulse toward xenophobia and racism in a serious review. And how is this one incident a serious indictment of anything other than horror we all know and love as organized religion; the big three and the various tributaries of fail almost always reinforce the patriarchal status-quo. Name the problem Dave.
“The fact that such vile and callous behaviour is entwined with varying degrees of religiosity, only accounts for the latter being something of an idiosyncratically laughable indictment.”
So you spend the words to make a point and then dismiss it as ‘idiosyncratically laughable’ in the next paragraph? Coherence is a thing Dave, more of it would make what you’re trying to say easier to understand.
“Yet as Luke Gittos points out in Why Rape Culture Is A Dangerous Myth – From Steubenville to Ched Evans: ”The argument that we live in a rape culture encourages a deeply harmful notion of inherent vulnerability, which adds to a worrying problematisation of intimacy in wider society. This is likely to have a significant effect on the young, who are often taught that intimate relationships are potentially dangerous”
What? A Jaw dropping non-sequitur after a word salad of an introduction, this review has legs!
Let’s look at the content after you massage your jaw for a bit, I should have warned you gentle reader, limber up those oral hinges it only gets worse from here.
“”The argument that we live in a rape culture encourages a deeply harmful notion of inherent vulnerability, which adds to a worrying problematisation of intimacy in wider society.”
The fuck it does. The argument we live in a rape culture threatens the status-quo notion that women should always be sexually available to men. Rape culture threatens the normative idea that women are not really fully autonomous, that they do not share the same rights to their personhood and autonomy, rights that men, under patriarchy enjoy by default.
Problematisation? Is problematic too ordinary a construction for you? Jeezus. A dudes ability to fuck females with impunity is not synonymous with ‘intimacy’. Luke Gittos is riding high on the Misogyny Train, and a decent review would call his shit out for what it is.
Tell me Dave, how is treating a woman like she has rights and a full human being a fucking problem with regards to intimacy? It’s only suffers from ‘problematisation’ if you are in favour of the current toxic environment that women are forced to inhabit.
“If such is the case, which, throughout various parts of the world it most certainly is, does this mean intimacy and ultimately love, should be denied?”
If love and relations can only be had with the shitty patriarchal overlay that shafts both men and women, then yes it should be denied. But you are not arguing that, are you Dave, your faffing on with Gittos about how denying women their agency (consent) is making it hard for dudes to feel intimacy. This is a primal man-baby argument – if we can’t have sexy times *my dudely way* then everything is wrong with the world and the feminist sponsored end times are here.
“Immediately prior to the above, Gittos also writes: ”Recent decades have seen the expansion of the law around rape to cover many new areas of sexual behaviour. The impact of the hysteria around rape has been the shutting down of debate around this expansion and the demonisation of anyone who seeks to question it.”
Hysteria? Man-children really can’t help themselves when it comes to patriarchal tropes. But let’s get back to what he’s saying – the broadening of laws to protect the integrity and autonomy of women is making his boner sad. Gittos (emphasis on ‘git’) is also sad that he gets shit on for harkening back to the good ole’ days where beating and raping your wife was just the norm and everything was hunky dory – if you happened to be in the same class as Gittos…
“That the ”hysteria around the rape has been shutting” down it’s ”debate,” is surely cause for alarm, which to a certain degree, these 140 pages do tackle head-on. But, as Graham Matthews recently wrote in Will Self and Contemporary British Society: ”The language used in rape cases is of the utmost importance since, according to Lyn Higgins and Brenda Silver, ‘whether in the courts or in the media, whether in art or criticism, who gets to tell the story and whose story counts as ”truth” determines the definition of what rape is.”
Why in a review of the GIT are you talking about Will Self and Contemporary British Society? Is foisting non sequitur after non sequitur on your reader a stylistic choice? It’s a bad one, let me assure you.
“There again, as Luke Gittos has categorically stated in Why Rape Culture Is A Dangerous Myth’s Introduction: ”this book is not about rape. It is not about the hideous criminal offence that takes place every day, and is the subject of arrests, court cases and prison sentences up and down the country […]. This book is about the contemporary panic around ‘rape culture’ that […] often bears little resemblance to the reality of rape.”
Translation: The idea that rape culture exists and is working in my favour is unpalatable to my sensibilities, thus the problem must be with the hysterical women and their risible claims… *facepalm*
“The argument of the book is that intimate life is suffering under the panic around rape and rape culture. This panic has arisen in the context of a society which is less sure of the parameters of intimate life than ever before. “
Oh consent is necessarily a roaring tempest filled with vapours purposefully designed to confuse the man-brained. The idea that women are struggling toward agency is an affront to needs of the ‘peen and patriarchy and must be done away with because my male right to unfettered access to female bodies is at stake – and this unfettered access – is what is important.
“As old narratives of intimate life die away, what has replaced them is not a new, individualised sense of what intimate life is, but a ream of laws, regulations, guidance and expertise about how we should conduct the most private aspects of our lives. This presents a serious challenge to the status of individual judgement about intimacy and, accordingly, the future of intimate life in general.”
I thought it couldn’t get worse, but Dave also seems to aspire to the swaggering, self-aggrandizing pile of mule-feces that Libertarianism is. Where white males are the only ones who can have the *true* feelings of oppression while simultaneously wielding power in society. If you cannot handle intimacy with a female that has autonomy and full human being status – then the only females of the blow-up variety will fit your particular bill. So go forth, find your inflatable Sally, and kindly fuck the hell off.
“Herein lies something of a literary juxtaposition, surely?”
*rolls eyes* – Dave, sounding smart and being smart have never been so clearly demarcated.
“For as pronounced and well analysed as this resoundingly tough and rather taurine book is, rape will always remain what it fundamentally is. Rape.”
A fucking equals A? This is the epic conclusion mic-drop you’ve assiduously been setting up. Step aside Machiavelli, Word fucking salad Dave is in the house! You are brought this review to close with a tautology? I have another for you, hold on it is earth shattering level of awesome – “stupid people are stupid people”.
And do you know ‘taurine’ means? It is a goddamn amino acid. Another meaning, common in the 17th century is ‘of or like a bull’. So is this a bullish book on rape culture, or did your thesaurus go to the dark side and led you astray with it?
“Regardless of judicial interpretation, sexual intimacy or, dare I say it, ”individual judgement.”
Did you eat alphabet soup and are just burping this shit up and then writing it down?
And also: Subjects, what the fuck are they?
The double shot of tautology and quasi-coherent sentence structure ends this review with an unsatisfying, stultifying dribble that offers offence not only to feminism, but the English language as well.
RPOJ out.
:(
My eyebrow arched with considerable alacrity while reading the title of this opinion piece from The Independent
(‘Jaden Smith as a new face of womenswear might seem progressive – but he’s on transgender territory.’) While reading and fighting the loss of my irony meter (boundaries not being respected…) said brow remained frozen in place at how amazingly silly the authors points are. Let’s get started.
“So, it’s been announced that 17-year-old Jaden Smith, son of American actor Will Smith, is to be the new face of Louis Vuitton clothes. To be more specific, the womenswear section. And I didn’t even know they had an old face – clearly I’m out of the fashion loop.”
[…]
“Jaden seems to be up for this gender-neutral, equal clothing rights thing which allows men to wear women’s clothes without any fear of ridicule. But there is another, more important issue afoot.”
Another important issue? Hmmm… Considering that a major fashion label is promoting gender non-conforming behaviour, this issue must be very important indeed.
“There’s a reason why men wear men’s clothes and women wear women’s clothes, and why they are generally so different. OK, I know women have been wearing trousers for decades but they’re usually a femme version of the male equivalent – and I’m not talking about unisex clothes like jeans and t-shirts.
I’m talking about basic clothes norms that depict which gender is wearing them, even in the modern world. Stereotypically, men wear trousers and women wear dresses and skirts. That’s the ‘norm’ and it’s more than that – it’s a uniform.”
The argument for why gender norms are good for you is about to be made. Please keep in mind that gender is a hierarchy designed to distinguish the dominant class from the submissive class and that said gender hierarchy is toxic for both women and men.
So the author states that clothes have a normative value in distinguishing between the two biological sexes.
“When you get out of bed in the morning the most important thing you have to do all day is tell the world what your gender is, because from that, everything else flows.”
Really? I thought the most important thing in the world is my first cup of coffee. Coffee addiction aside, I might suggest that the most important thing in the world is agreeing to be kind to those around you, and trying to a creative, productive member of society. Following a codified notion of gender would seem to be in sync with the sexist stereotyping feminists have fought against (and continue to fight against) for decades.
“You may think that your job is to be an office supervisor or a stockbroker or police officer but these are all human constructs. Deep down your real job is to reproduce, and showing other humans your gender is the first step on that path.”
Wow. Gender essentialism for $500 please Alex. Reproduction takes place on the idea of sexual attraction – specifically heterosexual attraction. We invented this thing we call gender on this basis and from this sprang the constructed societal norms we expect women and men to perform. These constructed roles are not written in stone, nor are they necessarily correct.
“So, to help make it plain for anyone to see which gender you are, you put on a uniform. Men put on trousers and have men’s haircuts, and women put on dresses and skirts, feminine tops and tights and women’s shoes to show their femininity and declare to the world that they are female.”
None of these ‘declarations’ are necessary. Society, as a whole, can generally identify male bodies and female bodies without the gendered stereotypes mentioned here. Again, the author sounds as if perpetuating these stereotypes is somehow beneficial to society.
“They have women’s hair-dos and they put use cosmetics to make themselves look nicer and more presentable and to reinforce the female uniform a bit more.”
Really? Compulsory femininity for the winz? I can’t even…
“Male-to-female transgender people rely on props like clothes, shoes, make-up and hairstyles to create the gender identity they want to portray to the world because most of the time their bodies alone are unable to do that. There are a few lucky ones who don’t have to do a thing to put across a female persona, but most trans women have to work hard at it.
The danger for trans women is that if wearing what are traditionally women’s clothes becomes the norm for men too, then trans women will no longer be able to rely on these props to help them display a female gender identity – and for many, that could be a serious problem.”
Read those two paragraphs carefully. The author is defending the harmful hierarchical system of gender and gender roles. Quite the conservative stance, no? Gender non-conforming behaviour (going against the system that is bad for all of us) is being portrayed as a threat to those rely on traditional gendered roles to express themselves.
If your inner rad-fem isn’t blowing a lobe by now, then Huston, we have a problem. But wait, it gets better.
“But trans people should be aware that well-known faces like Jaden Smith are starting to encroach on our territory. They’re starting to wear the trans uniform without actually stating that they are transgender, and they’re claiming it for themselves under the guise of gender-neutral fashion.”
Yep, Jaden Smith is encroaching on trans territory because he’s not conforming to the gender hierarchy. His gender non-conforming behaviour challenges the socially constructed norms of what is for men, and what is for women a.k.a actions that subvert the norm as opposed to the author’s defence of supporting the toxic gender hierarchy.
“All of which begs the question: where does that leave us?”
Reading further that question is quite clearly answered in the article from the ‘other side’ of the story:
“Jaden Smith isn’t wearing a dress because he wants to identify as female; he’s wearing a dress because he rejects strict gender norms. And if someone identifies as something other than ‘male’ or ‘female’, and they feel comfortable and happy in doing so, then I struggle to see why we should support that sort of expression being stifled.”
“When someone says “this social phenomenon is not always empowering and in fact is coerced” they are not robbing you of agency or victimizing you. Radical analysis of the functions of power is just analysis. The analyst or theorist does not harm you, power does.”
The liberal feminist response to critical and radical inquiry into the disciplinary aspect of gender norms is always “but I find this norm empowering, how dare you take that from me.” This not only misses the point, but assumes that an individualistic approach to a norm ought the trump the collective and social harm it creates.
-Quote found on “These are some things“.
- If misogyny was only just “hatred of the feminine” a supposedly mystic state of being rather than oppressive norms, women could opt out at any time by simply not conforming. This is so clearly and painfully untrue almost as if… Sex-based oppression exists
^^^👌
1a. When I choose not to perform femininity out in public, the world still knows I am female. Men know what my body looks like no matter how I try to conceal and disguise it. They know my sex, my sex is female, and no matter how I identify or present myself, I will be harassed, solicited for sex, at risk of assault, and oppressed in public because I am female. This is sex-based oppression. The world doesn’t care how I identify. I have a body and my body is female and nothing I can do will stop it from happening, even if you deny sex-based oppression just please know that it is currently happening to me and it will keep happening to me regardless of how this might interfere with your political belief that sex and gender can be wholly divorced from one another (they *should be* does not mean they are).
-Found on wombynprivilege.tumblr.com
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