Rage Against the Man-chine

Since it’s the weekend, I thought I’d share something partytastic with you all, a video I discovered a year or so ago that has recently resurfaced. Some dude that was in Pantera (what’s funnier than metal cowboys?) and a few other dudes who were in some other hilarious bands whose names I can’t remember were partying for some reason last summer, maybe because they’d just started a new side project called Hell Yeah (I swear) and had recently put out a single called “Alcohaulin’ Ass.” If I’d thought that shit up, I’d be partying too.

They decided that in order to party properly, they’d need some Jagermeister. And not like a few bottles, but a thousand dollars’ worth of Jagermeister. I’ve often said that there is no drink that marks someone as an asshole better than Jagermeister, but I think I may have been wrong. These guys are obviously unintentional comedic geniuses, and they’re into Jagermeister, so it has to be cool.

They staged a trip to a suburban booze emporium called Daddy’s Liquor. On the way there, the Pantera dude introduces us to Hell Yeah’s assistant, Bri Dog, who has a beard that, braided, could put Scott Ian’s to shame. I suppose that’s no surprise, since I’d be willing to bet that the Anthrax dude can’t even handle Jager. Bri Dog, like the other band assistant, Video Fuckin’ Bob, has on a Jager t-shirt. That alone tells me he’s pretty much the baddest dude in town, but he proved it when he said what may be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard when the camera hit him: “I can’t wait to wrap my lips around that dark green bottle and get me a full gulp pull of me some Jagermeister.” Fuck yeah.

They went on and on in the car about how hard they were going to party, how awesome Jager is, how much money they were going to spend on it, and how awesome Disturbed is for being a “Jager band.” (How does one know when a band is a Jager band? I want to start a Jager band. I think it’ll be called Full Gulp Pull. Anyone in?)

They got to the liquor store and bought $992.99 worth of the elixir (weak sauce - why not actually break $1000?), then headed out to the parking lot to get started on the full gulp pull. Because the sun sets during the clip, it’s obvious that they hung out in the parking lot for quite awhile. They were there at least long enough to accost two random black dudes and ask one of them if he’d be willing to do a rap about Jager. You know, because all black guys can rap. The dude didn’t rap, but he did do the full gulp pull on a shot bottle of Jager for the camera, a demonstration that the Pantera guy dubbed “drinking lessons 101.” The guy was pretty good.

Pantera dude, apparently saddened by the fact that no rap would be provided by the black guys, did his own: “I’m a mother-fuckin’, titty-suckin’, two-balled bitch, your mama’s in the kitchen cookin’ red hot shit.” He also lamented the fact that Dime Bag Darrell couldn’t be there to do the full gulp pull on $1000-worth of Jager with them (seriously, bro, that fuckin’ sucks, dude).

This video is basically the most amazing thing I’ve seen in years. (I mean, it’s almost as good as Trapped in the Closet.) You might wonder why it exists, you might wonder what the fuck these guys were thinking, but that’s just because you don’t know how to party. These artists sat down, thought this out, probably wrote a script, carried the trip out, then edited and distributed the footage, all to let us know how fuckin’ hard they party. I recommend you watch it at least 5 times (10 would be better) to get the full effect.

• But I don’t really see how porn is a feminist issue!

Porn is a pressing feminist issue because it is anti-woman propaganda, pure and simple. It reduces women to a set of holes and completely erases their humanity and their sexuality (porn is about men’s sexuality, not women’s). Mainstream porn has always degraded and objectified women and taught men that women are to be used as objects, but now it carries the added message that women are vile trash. (See the name-calling, ejaculating onto faces, and choking that are ever more common in mainstream porn.) I fail to see how that is not a feminist issue, how it is not a feminist issue that a huge proportion of men are tying orgasm to seeing women humiliated and dehumanized.

• Porn is pro-sex! What, are you anti-sex?

The argument that porn is pro-sex is faulty. The equation of women with temptation and sex and thus evil has led to a lot of the misogyny in our culture, but porn is an expression of that, not a rebuttal to it. In porn, women lose the power they supposedly have over men, the power to decide whether they will allow sex to occur. The women in porn are punished for the “prudishness” of other women. They are used, abused, and denigrated. There is no affection, no care, no respect. There’s not even any sense that the performers are attracted to each other.

Sex in porn is a commodity, something that the ones with means buy from the people who have to sell it to survive (whether survival consists of having enough money to live — almost all porn actresses are relatively poor, so don’t bring up the three that have made some money — or making an ill-advised attempt to get desperately needed attention and ephemeral power by allowing oneself to be objectified and exploited).

Porn, instead of being pro-sex, is pro-sex-as-a-tool-of-power. If you can find me a single example of mainstream porn in which an obvious power differential is absent, I’ll give you $1000. It doesn’t exist. Mainstream porn has NOTHING to do with women’s sexuality. Women in mainstream porn are fuck objects, and their sexuality is presented as consisting solely of serving male sexuality (and a fairly cheap and shallow representation of male sexuality, at that).

Sex in porn is honestly pretty lame. No matter what the people are wearing, no matter what they are saying, no matter what they are doing, they are acting out the same scenario over and over: female humanity being subordinated to male desire. That may very well be one way to conceive of and “do” sex, but it’s certainly not the only, and definitely not the most desirable or interesting, way. But that’s all we see. So I would not say that porn is “pro-sex.” I’d say it’s anti-sex. It’s anti-sex in that it severely constricts the ways in which sexuality can be expressed.

Unless you define sex as a commodified exchange of power, sex doesn’t exist in porn.

• You’re demonizing sex workers! Most women in porn choose to participate in it. By saying they’re all being coerced, you’re diminishing the importance of real rapes!

The greatest obstacles to limiting coercion in the porn industry are the lack of regulation in the industry (I know that regulations exist, but are they enforced? When was the last time “the feds” showed up on a porn set to enforce regulations?) and the lack of ethics on the part of the consumer.  If men cared about women’s human rights, they would not use porn. The fact is, no one can be sure that the porn they are watching is not footage of a rape, and it is therefore unethical to consume pornography.

As to the issue of choice, I’m not all that concerned with blurring the distinction between voluntary and involuntary participation in sex work, because there really isn’t such a thing as voluntary participation. If women’s choices weren’t so limited by how far we have left to go in the struggle for equality, they wouldn’t need to turn to allowing their bodies to be exploited for money. I know that there are plenty of women who have bought into the idea that objectifying themselves is a source of pride and power, but the fact that they fail to see just how limited women’s sources of power and prestige are in our society doesn’t mean that the reality isn’t there. I do not wish to stigmatize sex workers, but nor do I believe that we ought to be looking up to them as seems to be the trend these days. I’ve never once exaggerated how sex workers are different from other people, nor have I claimed that they can’t be raped. They are raped, constantly, and if we actually cared about that fact, we wouldn’t support the industry that does it to them. The fact is, it is impossible for a woman who has been abused on a porn set to prove that she did not consent to what was done, and that means that women in porn have no recourse in the event that they are forced to perform acts they are not comfortable with.

• Using porn is like eating meat or wearing clothes made in a sweatshop. I know I shouldn’t, but my decision to use porn or not to use it doesn’t really have much of an impact, and it’s easy to justify, just like it’s easy to justify eating meat or wearing clothes made in a sweatshop.

While I understand the arguments porn users make analogizing porn use to eating meat or buying products made in sweatshops, they’re not really good ones. When you buy clothes from a sweatshop, you are not looking at a picture of the person who made your jeans suffering. When you eat a cheeseburger, you are not looking at a photo of a cow being slaughtered. When you look at porn, however, you are looking directly at a human being who is being exploited. If you have the capacity to turn off your sense of empathy long enough to have a wank, congratulations. I don’t, and I wish men weren’t so selfish, didn’t feel so entitled to the use of women’s bodies, that they could do so. Our culture is absolutely saturated with images of women’s bodies being used for various purposes, so I understand where a lot of that entitlement comes from, but I still argue that men, if they really want to be able to claim to be thoughtful human beings, ought to feel pity, not titillation, when they see a woman being degraded.

• I read a study once that said porn does not increase the incidence of rape.

The fact that one study (and is it even reliable one, or was it put out by MRAs?) says that porn use doesn’t increase sexual violence among “most men” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t do so among the most dangerous of men, and it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t lessen the sense of empathy in most men. It doesn’t address the fact that porn changes men’s attitudes toward women, whether they realize it or not, as many other studies tell us. Even if the fact that porn causes sexual aggression may still be up for debate in the minds of a few holdouts (just as Rush Limbaugh and 3 other assholes don’t believe in climate change), the fact that it changes men’s attitudes toward women and their status as human beings is not. When porn causes men to disbelieve women’s claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault, how can anyone argue that it has no net effect on women’s right to not be sexually assaulted?

Apparently, the Indian Supreme Court has decided that a victim’s testimony is sufficient to convict a rapist and that no further corroboration should be required. From now on Indian women who have been raped will (supposedly) not have to prove that they broke a constant legal state of consent when they go to court. The Indian Supreme Court, you see, has decided that the trauma involved in going through the investigation and trial will most likely weed out any false accusations. There must not be any MRAs in India. From the article:

“She would be conscious of the danger of being ostracised by society and when in the face of these factors the crime is brought to light, there is an inbuilt assurance that the charge is genuine rather than fabricated,” the bench said.

It also said that the deposition of a rape victim must enjoy the same level of court’s confidence that the testimony of an injured person enjoys about the physical assault.

The bench held that even if a court is not able to believe the deposition of a rape victim, it should at best seek some evidence to assure itself of the deposition, instead of seeking independent corroboration.

You hear that? In India they afford rape victims’ testimony the same weight they give to that of assault victims. What a revolutionary idea.

I know India is a vastly different country than the US, and I know that there are serious social and financial consequences attached to admitting (Hear that? ADMITTING!) to having been raped, since doing so means admitting one is not a virgin (that such a thing is a concern is a problem in and of itself), but I find the legal reasoning behind this decision to be of interest considering the fact that in our own legal system 6% or less of rapes end with the rapist receiving any punishment.

I suppose I’ll start calling India a feminist utopia when we no longer hear of bride burnings, sati, dowries, and the fact that women are ostracized for having “lost their virginity” by being raped, but, on a few fronts, they’re still making us look bad.

What I mean by that is that I am never, ever bashing any group of people that isn’t harming women.

A few weeks ago, two posts appeared on Renegade Evolution taking me to task for my anti-porn views and for some purported mischaracterizations of the sex industry in my porn series and on my about page. I don’t expect that Ren and myself will ever agree on the abstract ethical issues involved in the porn industry, but I do think there is some common ground that can be reached, or at least that we can use each other to clarify our own positions. At least that’s what I plan to do.

As a result of the Kyle Payne incident (Kyle - if you’re reading this, KILL YOURSELF), I’ve been reading a few blogs lately that I’ve never read before. I can’t say that I’ve been persuaded of much, but I can say that I’ve developed a somewhat more nuanced view of some of the positions/arguments of a few of my opponents in the porn/sex work debate. Either that or I’ve figured out how better to respond to them. Anyway, I hope what I’m about to write doesn’t turn out to be too nice and disappoint my readers; I promise I’ll try to throw in some broad generalizations and insults, but this is about as likely to be funny as Tim Allen at a time-share owners’ convention.

I admit that I make a lot of generalizations when I discuss the sex industry. I have to. It’s a huge topic. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when people make generalizations about radical feminism or even about me based on a small sample of what I’ve written. As such, I didn’t really have a heart attack when I read that Ren and some of her commenters thought me guilty of slut-shaming, transphobia (funny, since I’ve never mentioned trans people, EVER), and sundry other uncool things (including, to my dismay, faulty logic!). In one post, one of her commenters even accused me of violating Rage Against the Machine’s copyright and trying to ride their street cred to some kind of uber-rebel status, which is fucking hilarious. First off, I’m way more radical than those assholes. I don’t need to get dreadlocks or jump up and down with black socks on to prove that I’m fighting The Man. Radical means outside the mainstream, and way more people know about the uber-corporate bullshit funk “music” of Rage Against the Machine than know about my totally indie blog. That means I’m way more radical than they are (har har). Besides, I saw that singer guy Zac La Cucaracha at Aron’s records in LA when I lived there, and he didn’t look all that radical to me. He was probably buying a Radiohead CD or something. If he was really a radical, he would’ve stolen a bunch of Rudimentary Peni CDs and kicked a cop’s ass on his way back to his skateboard, then ridden back to the squat he shared with GG Allin and Wendy O. Williams. I mean, that’s what I did that day.

Anyway, I’ve decided to spend my Monday evening correcting some of the misconceptions some people have about radical feminism (well, actually, just of my kind of radical feminism, which I admit isn’t necessarily representative) and getting a little more specific about my ideas on porn, promiscuity, sex positivism, and the trans issue. In the spirit of this week’s climate of non-assholism between feminists of various stripes, I’m going to do a lot of qualifying, but I suspect I’ll still be forced to make generalizations here and there.

People assume that radical feminists have a problem with sex workers, or at least that we have paternalistic attitudes when it comes to sex workers and that we deny them any agency when making our arguments. That, my friends, is bullshit. I’ve got nothing negative to say about sex workers, but I’ve got a problem with the sex industry. There is, after all, a difference between the two. I’m not trying to speak for sex workers, or tell them that their experiences aren’t what they say they are. That would be presumptuous, and if I was doing that, I’d deserve the shit I get from sex-positive types. What I am saying is that the sex industry is not a feminist industry. I don’t give a fuck this way or that what individual women choose to do with themselves. I’m not here to tell people how to make life choices. I do have sympathy for women who suffer within and because of the sex industry, but I’m not in the business of telling those who are happy with what they’re doing that they shouldn’t be doing it.

I’ve read that it offends pro-sex-work types that radical feminists supposedly take it upon themselves to pity sex workers. That shit would piss me off too, if it were the case. I’m not going to tell you I pity sex workers. I pity women who are being abused and I pity women who are stuck doing something they do not want to do because they need to make a living or because they’re being coerced into something. Women who are doing something by choice I don’t pity, because I’ve got no reason to (but we’ll have to talk about “choice” later). Why would I pity someone who isn’t unhappy? I’m not sitting here telling sex workers that they’re deluded, that they don’t see what I see and that I feel sorry for them in their ignorance. I’m simply laying my theoretical and ethical issues with the sex industry out and asking people to consider them. If you disagree, I don’t feel sorry for you, I just think you’ve got different priorities. I’d ask for the same in return. I’ve read a lot of comments from people in which I’ve been diagnosed with all manner of emotional problems. I don’t have emotional problems, I have ethical objections to what I see as an inherently problematic industry.

No arguments yet? Good. Here’s where the problems start. Get naked, hump away, take pictures, make a video, party down, but when you’re done, don’t come and tell me that what you’ve been doing is a feminist act. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, as it were. Working from within an industry that is inherently anti-feminist, one cannot create a feminist product or further the feminist cause. I’m going to have to drop the p-word here — in a patriarchy, women are valued for their usefulness to men. One of the ways in which women are useful to men is as sex objects. When women choose to allow themselves to be treated like sex objects, they are acquiescing to the patriarchy, not fighting it.

Oh! Wait, wait, wait! What about lesbian porn? And I don’t mean the fake kind dudes like, I mean, like, the real kind! Gender Studies 101, my dear. First off, gender binaries hold in most same-sex relationships, and porn is usually no exception. Even in the case that one can’t pick out a “top” or a “bottom” in same-sex porn, the element of objectification persists, and objectification is outside of the realm of feminism.  There isn’t really a consensus on what feminism is, but I’ll bet that no one would argue with the proposition that, at a minimum, feminism is about gaining recognition for women’s humanity. As such, it can’t mesh with pornography. You see, when we use pictures of human beings to masturbate, we are turning human beings into objects, and objects are not human. The social contract involved in human interaction is obliterated, never exists, which is why people use porn, for its convenience. Making people objects is easier than treating them like people with feelings. It is OK to use objects, but it is not OK to use human beings. That is why turning human beings into objects is not OK unless you are ready to admit that what you are doing has nothing to do with feminism.

I realize that sex work is one way that women can gain power in a patriarchy in which their sources of power are limited, and so I rarely call sex workers sellouts, but I don’t need anyone who is participating in an industry that pumps out anti-woman propaganda telling me that what they’re doing amounts to feminism. That’s reductionist and insulting. I’m not tremendously happy that women participate in the sex industry. I’d like it if they didn’t need to, or didn’t want to, or if the industry didn’t exist, but we live in a culture in which those conditions are unlikely to develop this week. Still, I’m not labeling every sex worker an Uncle Tom, and I’m not saying that the term “feminist sex worker” is an oxymoron.

I will say that the term “feminist porn” is one. Someone can be a sex worker and also be a feminist, but they can’t logically say that sex work is a feminist act. Women may create pornography, run their own brothels, or own strip clubs, but what they are doing is acting as agents of the patriarchy, not as its opponents. People often argue that, in producing porn, women are transforming themselves from objects into subjects, but subjecthood that is defined by outside forces (the P) cannot truly be deemed subjecthood. I don’t argue with the idea that many of the women who create, participate in, and consume the products of the sex industry are exercising their agency, but I do think that they are doing so within a limited set of parameters, parameters that preclude feminist action.

I’ve been told that I’m missing the point when I don’t see that women like Jenna Jameson are feminists because they have taken control of some aspects of their own participation in the porn industry. I understand how someone could construe women taking leadership roles in any industry as a gain for feminism, but I don’t see it that way. If Jenna Jameson was a feminist, she wouldn’t participate in the creation and distribution of a product that harms women, or she’d at least realize that her participation in that industry was a thing completely separate from whatever kind of feminism she’s claiming. Saying that women working in porn are feminists requires taking a very myopic view of the world and women’s place in it. Let’s say there was a right-wing men’s organization that wanted to fight to keep women out of higher education. Would a woman attorney working for that organization be a feminist just because she’d reached a lofty career position within her field? Or would the actual results of her actions matter more in the grand scheme of things? Pornography has a net negative effect on women’s lives, on our chances for equality, and on our personal relationships. I won’t argue that there is no such thing as a woman who is into porn, who thinks it’s been a force for good in her life, but most women do not see pornography as a boon, because on the whole it isn’t one.

Let’s talk about this term, “sex industry.” Is it just me, or is that kind of a gross combination of words? I’ll readily admit that I’m all for regulating the fuck out of capitalism. Let’s get that into the open up front. Free market fundamentalism is either naive or heartless (likely a bit of both), and the only way to protect the many from the predations of the powerful few is to control the capricious elements of capitalism on behalf of the many. Call me a socialist, whatever.

That means that there are a few realms of human existence in which I think the concept of the primacy of profit is obscene and immoral (e.g. war, health, and sex). We all see what the primacy of profit does when industry and government get together. I know it’s a cliche at this point, but Eisenhower was right about the military-industrial complex. When war equals profit, those who stand to profit will push for war, and when those in charge of deciding whether to go to war stand to profit, either directly or in the form of campaign contributions, war is guaranteed to happen and to continue indefinitely.

That profit supersedes everything else should be recognized as immoral and unacceptable, but people in the US seem very, very reluctant to question the wisdom of men who, three hundred years ago, thought absolutely unfettered markets were the answer to all the world’s ills. Never mind the fact that we’ve yet to ever allow markets to operate freely, that our government has intervened in the operation of free markets constantly and consistently for centuries. We’ve fought wars over tariff practices, we’ve used our military and intelligence apparatuses to back American corporations’ agendas in foreign countries against the wishes of the people in those countries, we’ve used governmental policy and funds to promote certain industries and suppress others, we’ve subsidized farming, oil, electronics, and scads of other industries at various times because of their perceived importance to our greater goals. Government does not leave markets be. Government interferes with markets on a daily basis. What we ought to be paying attention to is not whether markets are interfered with, but rather how we choose to interfere with them, to what end, and for whose gain.

Profit should not be more important than the health of a medical patient. Profit should not be more important than human life. Profit should not be more important than human rights. But it is, and that’s the foundation of my objection to many of the things I think feminism is and should be here to address (porn, misogynistic advertising, sexist entertainment media, etc.). Corporations have the rights of individual human beings but lack our sense of right and wrong, and that is where the problem lies. We are asked every day to trust amoral corporations with our physical, mental, social, and financial well-being, and it’s quite foolish of us that we do so. Corporations are responsible to their shareholders, to their bottom line, not to the consumer or the general public. Why would we trust the most important things in human life to amoral corporations? Why would we view their activities with anything other than extreme suspicion? And when they are providing goods and services to a market that is inherently misogynistic, why would we ever assume that they are putting out a feminist product? Simple economic thought tells me that, in the absence of demand for a feminist product, one won’t be supplied.

I don’t suppose that any pro-porn feminist would claim that rape porn is feminist in nature, or even that most mainstream porn is feminist in nature, but I’d bet that plenty of them would tell me that there is such a thing as feminist porn, and that’s where we come up to the wall. I don’t think it exists. If we lived in a world in which women were as human as men, we wouldn’t get excited about seeing women objectified, just as we currently don’t get excited by seeing men objectified (on the whole — I know exceptions exist, but that’s what they are, exceptions).

Porn is misogynistic. I know that a lot of pro-porn types will tell me that such is not the case, that a lot of the performers are actually into what’s going on, but that isn’t what I am talking about. I’m saying that, despite what the sex workers involved think, porn is inherently misogynistic. If you want to try to provide me with an example of porn that is not misogynistic, go ahead, but I’ve never seen nor heard of such a thing. Pornography is about power as much as it is about sex, power that has itself been sexualized. When male dominance and female submission is sexualized, misogyny has been sexualized, and depictions of sexualized power are thus misogynistic. Bring up same-sex porn all day, tell me about BDSM in which women are dominant, but remember the gender role binary that still exists in same-sex porn, and remember who is paying for depictions of women dominating men, remember who is playing a role at whose behest.

I’ll get to the idea of consent and regulation in the sex industry,  my ideas on promiscuity, and the trans issue tomorrow. I’m tired.

To be continued…

Is anyone but me pissed that this fucking gutter ball is still on the internet pretending to be a feminist? I don’t want a goddamned convicted sex offender associated with my movement. I’ve sent him a few… ahem… strongly worded comments telling him I think he ought to do the decent thing and take down his site (or at least the sections of it in which he claims to be a feminist activist), but to no avail as of yet. He did eventually remove me from his blogroll after I requested that he do so, which I suggest any of you who he has linked to do as well, but that doesn’t seem like enough.

He knows we don’t want him on the internet posing as someone who cares about our human rights, but he thinks he knows what’s best for us when we don’t. He’s decided, on his own, that the greater good will be served by him leaving his site up. To help women, you see. Because he knows what’s best for women, knows better than we feminists do.

Am I insane, or is what I am asking reasonable? Is anyone interested in starting some kind of comment/e-mail campaign to try to convince this shitbag to do the right thing and take his filthy mockery of a site down?

I’ve had a few commenters balk at the suggestion (which I hadn’t made) that men can’t be feminists. I have yet to really weigh in on the subject because a) there are very few men who try to identify as feminists, and b) I never really gave a shit. That last one changed today.

I once discussed the idea of male feminists with Davetavius, and he agreed with my suggestion that men who call themselves feminists are a little weird. He’s as feminist as a dude can be without arousing my suspicion. What does that mean? He thinks a lot about gender issues, he recognizes male privilege and misogyny when he sees their manifestations, he’s open to discussing and considering anything having to do with gender (no matter how seemingly bizarre — Deuce’s Law arose out of a discussion with him), and he calls out the overtly and implicitly sexist behavior and assumptions of the people he talks to. He even asks people to reconsider their belief that there’s no harm in watching a little porn. He does not, however, call himself a feminist, nor does he try to tell me or anyone else what feminism is or should be about (though he’s not afraid to argue with me if he thinks I’m advancing something that doesn’t make sense). I’d call dudes like this ace blokes.

Then there are the dudes who will agree with everything I say about the subject, deferring to any opinion I might express on gender issues because they’re not confident enough in their intellectual positions to be sure that any objections they may have aren’t arising from some sort of residual undetected male privilege (that’s fine — it’s vastly better than being a presumptuous boor). They make a point of discussing feminism and gender issues with people, and they are generally a benefit to the cause as they tend to be thoughtful dudes who people will listen to. These types may call themselves allies, sympathizers, or even feminists (though most of them, having read arguments that men cannot actually be feminists, would probably hesitate to appropriate that label). I’d call dudes like this allies of the movement.

I know a few dudes who are for the most part good guys who are sympathetic to the cause, but who will argue with me about some of my more radical opinions, not because my opinions don’t make sense, but because the implications of my opinions make them uncomfortable. I’d call dudes like this sympathizers.

There’s another type, though. There are dudes who call themselves feminists or feminist advocates and who argue vociferously for what they think are feminist causes, who attempt to place themselves at the center of the movement and to speak for women as “protectors.” I’d call dudes like this assholes.

Kyle Payne is an asshole. Feminists may sometimes overlook the little red flags in the writings of guys like Kyle Payne. We’re happy to have men on board, happy to have a few agents on the inside to help us out, because we know that there are some men who will never listen to us but might listen to a fellow dude. We overlook the warning signs and assume these guys are allies, taking whatever crumbs we can get from the beneficiaries of patriarchy, who we ultimately know we will need in order to succeed. I’m embarrassed to even type that.

I had Kyle Payne on my blogroll until today, when Genevieve, one of my frequent commenters, sent me an e-mail tipping me off to the fact that he’d been charged with possession of child pornography and sexual assault and has admitted to the assault. He was an RA at the school he went to, Buena Vista University, and apparently took advantage of a drunk girl, taking photos of himself assaulting her while she was passed out.  A college RA accused of taking advantage of a passed out girl? Shocking, I know. But this one was a FEMINIST ACTIVIST. He has a “radical feminist” blog. He’s been linked to by several of the radical feminist bloggers I respect most.

I’ll admit, I barely read half a post on his site before I linked to him. I’m busy, I’m lazy, and I fucked up. I was so excited to find a radical feminist blog written by a dude that I forgot to turn on my asshole meter. Now that I look back at his site, it’s tremendously obvious that he’s a self-important blowhard. If I was more careful, if I had read the fucking about page, I’d have noticed that he seems more concerned with aggrandizing himself than with women’s lives. His incessant references to himself as an “activist” and an “advocate” for women should have tipped me off to the fact that there was something beyond empathy motivating this guy. Had I noticed the tack he was taking, I might have picked up on the fact that he had ulterior motives or that there was something wrong with him. That he calls himself an advocate for women should have told me something about his attitude toward us. Fuck, if I had paid more attention I’d have seen that he’s a horrible writer, a trait I cannot abide. I’ll be more careful in the future.

Maybe the guy got into feminism as a result of his extreme guilt over doing something he knew was wrong. Maybe he’s like the gay preacher who rails against gays because he hates himself. I don’t really give a fuck. All I know is that I allowed myself to be taken in by a dude claiming to be an “advocate” for the feminist movement who turned out to be a fucking pervert, and that I’m now questioning the motives of every self-proclaimed male feminist in the world. This villainous motherfucker used one of the things I hold most dear in the world as a cover, as a tool, as a way to connive his way into women’s lives and as a way to wield power over vulnerable women. He used the name of a movement designed to free women from the abuses men perpetrate against us to control and manipulate women, and to deflect suspicion from himself because he’s a motherfucking miscreant who hurts women and uses images of women and children being hurt for sexual enjoyment. He used a position of authority to abuse a helpless woman, all while claiming to be a fucking advocate for purportedly helpless women. FUCK Kyle Payne and the horse he rode in on.

Why do men need to be directly involved in feminist activism? Why do men need to participate in the formulation of feminist theory? Can a man be a “feminist” activist without some kind of hidden selfish agenda? Why do men need to be allowed to call themselves feminists? Why do I need to be forced to trust men’s motives (against my better judgment) when they want to be a part of the movement or fear being accused of exclusionism? Why can’t these motherfuckers let a movement exist without trying to insinuate themselves into a leadership role within it? Where do they get the idea that we need their goddamned advice?

Even the most well-meaning of men who call themselves feminists evince some pretty strange assumptions. Men know we need them to get on board with our cause in order to get anywhere, and they come to our discussions with that in mind. And it always shows. I don’t know how fair it is of me to expect men to completely do away with a lifetime of gender conditioning, but I frankly don’t want to hear men’s opinions on feminism until they’ve confronted or are at least willing to confront their own gender issues, and even then I don’t want to hear their opinions on what feminism’s goals should be. Men can learn from feminists, they can discuss things with us, they can disagree with us, and they can fight with us. What they can’t do is tell us what our movement is about or take a leadership role within it. I know that this is hard for some of these guys to deal with, but it’s a fact: we don’t need male leadership or guidance. Know what else we don’t need? Your fucking advocacy. An advocate speaks on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves. I can speak for myself, and I can do so with much more accuracy and style than Kyle Payne or any other dude.

Here’s what all this means: I’m not praising or associating with men who presume to call themselves feminists anymore, and I’m going to be looking at men who come to this site with a bit more jaundice in my eye. You can be down with my cause, you can think sexism sucks, you can do your part to combat it, but you can’t be a feminist. You don’t get to take on my movement’s label or represent me. Quit being such a presumptuous pud, shut your fucking mouth, and learn something, then go tell other men what you’ve learned. Argue with me if you want to, but only if you’re willing to consider the possibility that you might be wrong. If you aren’t, I’ll concede, but if you are, be ready to admit it or go fuck yourself. If you want to write a “feminist” blog, write one about how you are taking concrete measures to confront sexism in your daily life, write one about what you’ve learned from feminists, but don’t write one telling me what feminism is about, because you don’t know. If you want to do something to help out the cause, examine your own assumptions, think about what society has taught you about gender and about women, and change what you think needs changing, then be an example to other men. Treat women like human beings and tell other men they should, too. You can be a force for good, but you can’t be in charge, and you aren’t getting hired as a consultant. We don’t need your bullshit advice. Take it or leave it.

I suggest that Kyle Payne ought to get the fuck off the internet. He claims he cares about women, about the feminist movement, and about rape victims. That his blog continues to exist is an affront to all three. He ought to have the decency to disappear. If you want to tell him so, I got your back. I already did.

* See a few other takes on the case from Pisaquaririse, belledame, and Renegade Evolution.

** If you are on his blogroll and want off, you’ll have to tell him so. It took me four nasty comments to get him to remove me.

The problem these days is that men have (intentionally or otherwise) misinterpreted the meaning of equality. Men think they ought to be considered equally put upon simply because they can come up with an example of a time a man suffered. They, from their loftily oblivious position, don’t have to think very hard about the issue at hand. If they can come up with a single example to show that they, too, have at one time or another been victims, then they are off the hook and don’t need to acknowledge their privilege. They argue that if women want equality, then women have to be willing to give men equal room to whine about what they’ve been made to suffer. They don’t see the big picture, but rather each tiny incident as if it weren’t connected to larger social forces. Hence, you have men complaining about some overblown case of a false rape accusation but unwilling to confront the reality of what it means to be female in a culture in which women’s sexuality is seen as the property of men. Or you see men suing bars that have ladies’ night because it’s not fair to make men (who make more money than women) pay a cover when women don’t have to, taking no account of anything other than the “unfairness” of unequal cover charges. It’s similar to the whole, “If black people can say nigger, why can’t I?” bullshit. It’s utter tomfoolery, but it’s the crux of every MRA argument, this conception of equality that’s completely myopic (at best) and/or dishonest.

The guy who wrote this is clearly a bit of a misogynist (which is why I didn’t link to him), but if you think about it, he’s pretty spot on as to what Cosmopolitan thinks of its audience (probably because that’s what he thinks of Cosmopolitan’s audience).

I promise, I’m working on a totally devastating post debunking sex positivism, but for now I’ve got something to share with you. Tila Tequila, despite being maybe the worst person in the world (aside from the producers of her show, Bill Maher, and Doug Stanhope), is a serious poet and shit. Haven’t heard? Check this shit out:

Thunderfuck my mouth is shut. Been a while, feel like a cunt.
Can’t wait for this drama to pass.
Oh the joy…..fuck you. My ass.
Live a lie.
Tell my mind.
Over soon. I can’t deny.
You will all soon see, the truth in my eyes.

Smile on my face, the loving embrace….but instead I’ll punch you in the face.
For a long time coming….I let you touch me….now that it’s over bitch….You better start running.
Pent up inside….telling these lies….this has gone too far…..the world will soon die.
Only 1 more day. To feel this way. Tomorrow I smile….brings another day!

Back to myself. Nobody else. Fuck all this bullshit. I’m back to myself. Yes. Thank the fuck God.

Is she going to do a school shooting tomorrow? Sounds like it. Either that or she’s trying out to write the lyrics for the next Trapt record.

L is doing humanity a good one. She’s got a radical feminist forum going, which I highly recommend all y’all check out and get on board with. Get over there and sign up. Don’t fuck this up.