[NOTE: Posting this in two parts to make it at least somewhat readable.]
Men Are Not Broken [Part 2]
The evidence for male love for death and destruction is overwhelming. But it would be wrong to assume that this is the end of the argument, that we just have to accept men’s natural dangerousness and adjust to it.
This we do anyway: taking self defense classes, keeping separate bank accounts when married, telling girls not to go with strange men. This is something even the most right-wing women do, however illogical and ineffective their precautions often seem. This is nothing particularly feminist. To – literally or metaphorically – carry a weapon in a world of predators is the bare minimum, not radical. (Many right-wing women carry literal weapons, something radical women should take in consideration for themselves as well.)
But unlike right-wing women and collaborators who simply accept male behaviour or at best demand cosmetical, individual change, Radical Feminists dig deeper. Beside the overwhelming evidence for male dangerousness we also find overwhelming evidence that men actually control their dangerousness when it suits them.
The picture of the man who just can’t help his nature is peddled by patriarchal apologists: The poor man was nagged and mocked by his shrew of a wife and couldn’t take it anymore. The poor man only follows his evolutionary instinct and raped her to assert his dominance. The poor man is the victim of political oppression, he just had to attack women to cope with his feeling of powerlessness. But women’s experiences make it very clear that men are highly selective towards whom they are ?losing control?.
Abusive men don’t attack their nagging and mocking male bosses with their fists. They don’t ambush their male boss on the toilet and rape him to get back at him. When they are oppressed and exploited, they don’t kick the boss from one corner of his office to the other. When their favourite team loses, they are not seeking out the quarterback to use him as a punching bag for their frustration. In a crowded train, they are not driven by some evolutionary instinct to go for the throat of their fellow male who enters their personal space or bares his teeth to them.
Men also are perfectly able to dose their violence. Male violence against women and children follows an escalating cyclic pattern. The escalation is a conscious strategy: How much will she be able to take? How far can I go? How many of my depraved fantasies can I make come true? (We observe the same deliberate escalation in sadomasochism. It is embraced there as ‘slave training’.)
Men are planning their crimes and they are able to cover them. Losing control is adverse to both. Someone who loses control does not build an air-tight terror regime in his own home, by and by cutting off his wife’s and children’s means of refuge and lowering the bar of ?reasons? for his violent outbursts. Someone who loses control does not take upon him the logistics of building torture chambers or digging up graves. Someone who loses control does not buy a new hammer before he goes out again and again to prey on women.
Men can control themselves just fine. They make the active choice to act on the impulses their faulty nature gives them.
So, where does that leave us?
Right-wing women openly collaborate to secure their individual position. If they are just compliant enough, they think they will be allowed to sit at the men’s table. If they are just submissive enough, they will be taken care of and be rewarded.
Many liberal feminists de facto do the same in a more hidden manner, while they are touting an empty ideology of equality. For them, maleness by and itself has worth. Therefore, to them, males can be potential allies, partners, lovers, teachers, people worthy of shaping society. They can even be women. If only they were a bit more friendly, a bit more peaceful, a bit more loving, a bit more loyal, a bit more equality-oriented.
This is nothing new. Contrary to anti-feminist propaganda, ever since feminism came into being – even more so, ever since women started to take action against their miserable situation, pre-dating organised feminism – an overwhelming majority of women preferred the equality approach, the liberal approach. Suffragettes argued that mothers were bringing voters into the world and thusly should be able to vote (6). ‘Bread and Roses’, one of the old songs coming out of the leftist women’s movement, includes the lines ?As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men; for they are women’s children, and we mother them again? (7). Second-wave ?women’s libbers? won out over their radical counterparts, enabling the backlash, sex positivism and the modern mantra of ?I choose my choice!”. Modern third/fourth-wavers with their love of sexual submission, trannies and He-For-She bring this sucking up to men to a logical conclusion.
Many women do this deliberately. They are sell-outs or anti-feminists making use of a liberal feminist mien to gain something from it. TV show creators like Shonda Rhimes or Lena Dunham make good money by catering to a certain urban, slightly feminist, female audience.
Other women are too much invested in the personal privilege they obtain for being compliant to patriarchy: They get to call themselves feminist, without having to change their personal lifestyle or to risk income, while they can keep any convenient patriarchal mind blankie, from religion to sadomasochism. A sizeable portion of these women explicitly doesn’t want to be any more radical. They want to have the privilege AND the sisterhood, without seeing the fundamental contradiction between the two.
But some of them are just not aware of what they are doing. This is an impression I got in the last years. There are plenty of campaigns on Twitter and in the blogosphere (like e. g. #Yesallwomen or Project Unbreakable) documenting the horrors women experience under patriarchy. The thousands of testimonies show two things: Women are reliable, sharp and precise observers of their own lives – and many women are somehow unable to draw radical and long-term conclusions from their experiences.
Instead, they are desperately begging men to be nicer to them because they want to be able to love them. Many liberal feminist suggestions aim in this direction, e. g. trying to make men not use pejorative language. As if a man who does not call them a bitch, a cunt, a whore or a dyke to their faces was somehow rendered incapable of thinking these things in his mind. (Personally, I prefer to be called names, because I instantly know whom never to turn my back to.) On the other hand, liberal women try to achieve their goals by appealing to men’s interests, e. g. when they declare that a ?liberated? feminist is better in bed that those other prudes. Their approach is to be inclusive, as if the oppressed class could make the oppressors relinquish their power by being nice.
These women are actually the ones I expect to do better. Women as a group are not stupid or naive or even close-minded. There is a reason why women are to be found at the forefront of every social cause imaginable. Women as a class – unlike the patriarchal lie of the ‘conservative woman’ proclaims – tend to be more open to new things and ideas than men. They are deeper thinkers than men, capable of understanding the ma-trix rather than the mechanics.
Women have to WANT to think, though. Hoping and wishing and begging is not enough.
The only realistic way for us to shape freedom for girls and women is seperatism. We as women need to put other women – any other woman – above everyone else. Men do that. Men can hate each others’ guts, but they will always close ranks towards women. It is time women do the same. This is the only way for women to make a better future: Stop catering to men in any way. Don’t make them lunch. Don’t listen to their problems. Don’t pick up their dirty coffee cups at work. Don’t have male friends. Give up male family. Don’t have children. Don’t talk to men at all if you are not forced to. Don’t live with them. Don’t sleep with them. Don’t step aside on the street. Don’t take gifts from them. Don’t interact with them online. Don’t imagine the ?perfect? man. Het women do that and when they don’t find any man living up to their ideals, they come to the conclusion that all men are scum while still clinging to their mental image of the perfect man. But the truth is, even the ideal man still is scum.
Start with a small change, e. g. not talking to the creepy neighbour anymore, and work your way. You will realise, the less interaction you have with men, the easier you’ll breathe. This also doesn’t make you more vulnerable. Think about the statistics. We are most likely to be attacked and/or raped by men we know: Family members, boyfriends and husbands, friends, acquaintances. Random attacks by strangers do happen, but they are nowhere as likely as becoming the victim of a man we already know. Living with a man, spending time with men, this is what endangers women most. We have been told the opposite, so this seems counter-intuitive. But it is a fact that the biggest threat to a woman, statistically speaking, is the man whom she thinks of as her protector.
Put women above everything else. Live alone or build separatist communities. Show solidarity. Look for hobbies done in female-only groups. Find the beauty in every woman. Stay away from men and their empty promises.
This is what I do. Cutting one man after the other out of my life. Prioritising Lesbians and women and girls. And I will keep writing about how liberal feminism hurts all of us, because for liberal feminists I still have hope. Not much hope, admittedly, but still hope.
