Culture Archives - Brazen She

The Lie That’s Killing Feminism

April 17, 2022 by Brazen She

Internalized misogyny runs deep. Even insightful women may find themselves suspicious of women-lead movements.

Van Badham writes for Guardian Australia. In addition to the coolest name in journalism, this week she has some sharp words about the current state of the Battle of the Sexes.

Boys are yucky, and you’re just as good as they are!

She trumpets the results of a new study from the University of Bath: “Married mothers who earn more than their husbands take on an even greater share of the housework, a study from the University of Bath in the UK has found – the more they earned over their partner, the more housework they did.

“Women who earn more than men do more household labour, it concludes, because the situation implies a gender norm variation for which women feel obliged to compensate.”

She’s playing his role, and centuries of debasement mean he can’t bring himself to adopt hers. But the laundry ain’t gonna do itself.

“Why obliged? The study says conceptions of masculinity are near inextricable from the ancient ‘male breadwinner’ role.“

Oh, come now! Can men really be expected to adjust? Those creatures who forged civilization and colonized the planet navigating by the stars – Can we really expect them to behave intelligently?

Sarcasm aside, Van makes a very important point – “I’ll say what the study can’t: Women learn, as girls, there is no greater danger than a man who perceives his masculinity is threatened by them.”

Here she pokes the doughy center of every heterosexual relationship – A man’s greatest fear is a woman laughing at him, while a woman’s greatest fear is that a man will kill her. When your potential partners are also your biggest potential threat, not all the tension is sexual. You don’t need to shoot a gun to know it’s best to treat them all as if they’re loaded.

But, rather than dig into this power imbalance and why it lingers despite economic changes, Van blurs micro and macro to basically blame ‘society’: “Straight domestic relationships are where the deeply ingrained gender stereotypes go, like vampires, to feed on women’s blood and maintain eternal life.”

No! My instincts died with my innocence!

Why are these gender stereotypes so ingrained?? Could it have anything to do with the inevitable interactions of mechanistic material dynamics? Making six figures won’t make you stronger than him. The sweetest man in the world cannot gestate your child for you. If we’re talking about the mundane frustrations of family life, we must acknowledge the whole, gritty picture. Otherwise we’re just feeling sorry for ourselves.

Alas, Van’s deep digs at Liberal Feminism belie her ignorance of anything happening outside of it – “A mutant alliance of conservative radicals and biologically-determinist feminist separatists…”

Wow, you sure got my number there, Van. My husband will be very interested to know I’m not speaking to him anymore, right after you finish explaining what ‘biologically-determinist’ actually means.

“…are out to insist that the greatest threat to women is not the intimate partner violence of fact, but the swim-champ trans women of fiction.”

A link takes us to a denial of Lia Thomas’ physical advantages. Here we have an explicit demonstration of the limits of LibFem analysis – Van can’t address the physical, material factors that shape women’s domestic lives because she’d have to admit that we are different from men, after all.

Liberal Feminism long ago gave away the Different But Equal card in exchange for entrance to the Cool Boys Club. To highlight the distinction of femaleness is to admit we don’t belong.

And while chiding LibFems, Van is singing the same song, “An avalanche of actively anti-trans legislation in the United States” Pause for the obligatory reminder that outlawing the mutilation of healthy children is pro-children, not anti-trans.

“…is not an ‘over there’ problem when its scare-campaign talking points – always directed at women – are echoed both by Australia’s conservative MPs and the ambitious boys of its liberal Greens.” Leaving aside Aussie politics, it’s pretty rich to complain about scare-campaign talking points right after regurgitating one!

All this feels strangely familiar!

Perhaps these campaigns are aimed at women because there’s a movement afoot, Van. And there’s always room for a smart woman like you.

“Dare I suggest that the aggressive scapegoating of transgender women by an invested, patriarchal hierarchy is a cunning misdirection, given that more money and more power for the lucky few has still not provided women with gender equality in the home?”

Observations this astute tend to get a person labeled a conspiracy theorist. But who put the transwomen there, Van? After so many feminist gains, why are we defending the very definition of the word ‘woman’ in public discourse and law?

“’Woman’ is a problematised term not because of any transgender activism.” Really? Because ‘inclusive language’ is kinda their thing. “It’s because the modern expectations of what it means to be a “woman” are so demanding, contradictory and structurally unsatisfying, they are impossible for everyone.”

That’s why the gates are left undefended – We’ve gotten so busy pushing ourselves and hating ourselves and dumping our negativity onto other women that we’ve forgotten what it’s all for.

And Van points this out- It’s really nice to finally see someone else bringing this up. She describes how we’re immersed in a “culturally mainstreamed, ‘go girl’ liberal feminism that has massaged ‘girls can do anything’ to mean ‘girls should do everything, all the time’.

“You must have #nolimits – especially when it comes to sexual experimentation – and yet confidently enforce boundaries, ‘dump the motherfucker already’ but have #couplegoals!” Yep, those double standards are a bitch. But when even adult human females struggle to be women, the temptation for fellas to show us girls how it’s done must be overwhelming!

Oh, you’re definitely a better shot than me – I don’t even know how you did that!

Van tears into Liberal Feminist messaging with a vengeance that feels personal, “The most important job in the world is still being a mother, so be an active parent, but not a helicopter parent. You should pursue your own dreams, but think outside the box, achieve a work-life balance but also lean in, ask for that raise, #BelieveAchieve and smash the glass ceiling. With your perfect face.“

A line truly worthy of a cathartic spit-take.

“It’s the old paradox that insists the apex of womanhood is to be simultaneously virgin, mother and whore – except also now do this backwards in heels, making six figures on a keto diet at yoga while vacuuming and everything’s live on Instagram.”

Just reading that leaves me breathless – And she didn’t even mention the kids! The relentless spinning of the modern woman, our perpetual multitasking, keeps us drained and preoccupied. Which suits those who benefit from our current system just fine.

“Culture is not encouraging this because it reflects any aspiration of the modern woman to be exhausted, strung out and burdened by feelings of performance failure. It’s because the patriarchy has realised Liberal Feminism’s potential to leave women so individually overburdened, stressed and anxious they don’t revolt against the vampiric masculinities in their lives.”

Holy shit, Gary! Close the door, it’s freezing!

That, and we all have a vampire we know and love. Tearing down the patriarchy cannot begin with tearing down our homes.

Working with men to end patriarchy may seem like a paradox, but I’m starting to think it’s the only way. No one said marriage was easy. Straight women are down in the trenches on the front lines of the Battle of the Sexes, with no clear strategy and no reinforcements. If we coordinate, we can push for the basic equality we all want – Freedom from fear.

Van is good at identifying problems. Resisting the urge to put the onus on individuals, she waves instead toward the nebulous evil of ‘patriarchy.’ Because patriarchy makes women more detail-oriented and gives men a narrow pelvis… They never quite think it through, do they?

Because to do that would be to admit defeat in Liberal Feminism’s most precious skirmish – That men and women are exactly the same (aside from the obvious external differences). That femaleness is so insignificant, it has no material impact on us whatsoever.

This is the blatant lie that’s killing feminism. Adhering to this lie makes any real analysis of our lives impossible.

It blinds us to our situation. It keeps us from seeing our shared problems. Giving in to this unearned ancient shame keeps us isolated and trapped in a man’s world.

I told you, babydoll, this is a business meeting! Go and fetch me and the guys some drinks!

Sure, a lot of the crap between women and men is cultural static. But a lot of that static emanates from hard realities of material existence that no amount of Leaning In will change.

Tuning out that static is important. But those of us on the front lines have a duty to trace it to its source, to stop allowing ourselves to be distracted from what our instincts are telling us.

This vital discussion can’t be had while smart women like Van Badham are still willfully ignoring the obvious. Collective amnesia will continue to ensure life’s traps ensnare all of us, one by one.

Unless we can forgive ourselves for being female, feminism is doomed.

Filed Under: Marriage, Unpopular Opinion, Women’s World Tagged With: Culture, Feminism, gender roles, Liberal feminism, Marriage, radical feminism, Relationships, sex differences, sex roles, Women, Women's liberation, women's oppression

Carrie Bradshaw Regrets

January 23, 2022 by Brazen She

Two very interesting creators sat down to have a conversation. Well over an hour long, I was prepared to settle in for a while.

But 20 minutes in, one of them takes a tangent from their discussion of male and female archetypes, “The girl who wrote ‘Sex and the City’ is now like 50, and she’s alone. And she writes that she actually regrets being alone and not having kids.”

I’ll be right back – I need to go check this out!

Naturally, I had to go find out if this were true. Reading while listening to Jungian theory being too much for me, I had to dip out of the video before it really got going.

Ms. Bushnell Regrets

Searching for ‘Candace Bushnell regrets’ took me straight to her Twitter. Dated 29 July, 2019, Candace responds, “Hahaha! The opposite is true: I’ve never regretted not having children and I’ve felt compelled to have a career since I was a child.” Not slowing down enough to examine this, she goes on to plug her latest book, Is There Still Sex in the City?

Her tweet quotes an American journalist sharing The Daily Mail, itself a description of a London Times article hidden behind a paywall. As fortune would have it, this is the only subscription I have bothered to keep up with. Lucky us, right?

So, does the woman who singlehandedly made single life aspirational regret her choices?

The Daily Mail sure thinks so. Their headline – Sex and the City Writer Regrets Choosing A Career Over Having Children, is downright blunt.

But did she really say that? The issue lies in the characterization of Bushnell’s responses in the Times interview.

London Times Fangirling

2019 feels very distant now, but even before lockdowns and mask mandates Bushnell’s attitude had aged about as well as her fictional avatar. The write-up by Laura Pullman is glowing – They sent a fan, lest the Times have to edit out any critical thought regarding Bushnell’s cultural legacy. Despite this, her negativity and entitlement leap off the page.

The evident push to make her likeable is undercut by her obvious, fairly generic Boomer privilege: “Bushnell enjoyed a comfortable, horsey upbringing in Connecticut with her two younger sisters and her rocket scientist father and travel agent mother. Aged 19, she dropped out of university and escaped to New York – More specifically Studio 54, the city’s most notorious nightclub.”

A ‘horsey’ upbringing? A literal rocket scientist? But she had to ‘escape’ to the New York party scene, because… college? How edgy!

I just know there’s a meaning for my life out here somewhere!

“Sitting on the sunny balcony sipping San Pellegrino, she talks about coming of age in a ‘free love kind of way’ before the AIDS crisis hit. ‘People were so interesting. The sex was good. The men made an effort. Why was it that in 1980 the men seemed really focused on making sure the woman had an orgasm?’”

I can’t say, but this didn’t die with disco. I have to wonder if it had anything to do with finding some success in the New York professional world. A drug-fueled fling is there in the moment with you, but a professional is probably looking for someone to further his own reputation. Different pools, different fish.

The Heroic Victim

Candace describes the environment she found herself in, but only has analysis for how it affected her: “She recalls how, when she was on the lower rungs of the career ladder, senior men would constantly try to coax her into sleeping her way to the top. ‘I don’t want to name every publication in New York, but every newspaper and publication had men who made it clear that that’s how they helped women get ahead.’

“It’s the reason why she worked for women’s magazines, such as the now defunct Condé Nast titles Mademoiselle and Self, instead. She laments that this meant that she wasn’t taken seriously as a writer ‘for a very long time’”.

It might have something to do with being known as a sex columnist, too. Sex makes people giggle, it might not be the best topic for someone wanting to be seen as a Serious Writer.

I feel so grown up right now!

But, never fear! Candace slogged through – “Her hard work and shrewd observations have afforded her a luxurious life divided between her home in the Hamptons and her apartment on the Upper East Side, a few blocks away from her boyfriend’s penthouse.

“Now 60, Bushnell has amassed a reported $22m fortune of her own.”

Because, as we all know, sex sells.

But that victim card is too valuable to let go of – “’I often think, what would my life be like if I hadn’t had to run the gauntlet of so much sexism? How much more successful would I be? Probably a lot.’”

I imagine we all ponder this once in a while but, if you’re Candace Bushnell, you can laugh remembering how you left a Carrie Bradshaw-sized dent in the end of the 20th century, and go back to sipping your vino.

Having It All

But her lack of impact on a part of culture she totally rejected and has built a career on vilifying really gets under Candace’s skin. “Does it frustrate her that when it comes to female success, society still emphasises marriage and children?

“‘Society definitely does do that, but we all have the right to think for ourselves. We don’t have to buy that value system.’”

Speaking for myself, I got the impression growing up that women who had kids were deluded losers with no ambition. I stumbled into it and am as surprised as anyone to find myself defending it.

Refusing to roll with life’s punches leaves little room to learn from them: “Just like high-flying PR executive Samantha in Sex and the City, Bushnell has always been vocal about not wanting children. ‘I don’t want to be shot down, but now I do see that people with children have an anchor in a way that people who have no kids don’t.’”

Our choice to take part in a whole aspect of life from which you abstain is not a static thing. There are ripple effects that creep into places you’d never imagine.

Holy shit, am I… happy??

“She also writes persuasively about how, for single women with no children, there’s no set life script to follow, no comfort of knowing what’s supposed to be happening and when.” So, no expiration date, when you’re expected to just fade into the background and let the young turks get on with saving the world?

Turn And Face The Strange

“’When I was in my thirties and forties, I didn’t think about it. Then when I got divorced [from ballet dancer Charles Askegard in 2012] and I was in my fifties, I started to see the impact of not having children and of truly being alone.’”

I think this is what The Daily Mail is referring to. Candace never comes right out and says, “Wow, I sure do regret my decision to not have children!” She simply expresses that regret, in the past tense. She was going through a divorce. Framing it as if she’s desperate and lonely forever is disingenuous – She’s back in New York now and dating again.

However, it’s fair to say that’s what she’s expressing here – During and after her divorce, she really felt that silence where the voices of their children would have been. Our genes don’t just color our skin and limit our wardrobe choices – Humans have instincts just as much as any creature, and it’s much harder to ignore them in times of crisis.

And I can’t be the only one who’s interacted with some ‘childfree’ women and wanted to ask them just who they were trying to convince.

Candace is as out of touch with the zeitgeist as she is with herself, and asking about it is taken personally: “In 2019, writing a book about relationship dynamics and sex with no mention of the #MeToo movement seems unusual. Was the omission a conscious decision?

“’Well, where would I put it?’ fires back Bushnell, defensively.” Ever image-conscious, Candace catches herself, “She changes tack: ‘You have to remember that [I am part of] a generation of women who’ve dealt with so much of that.'”

Oh Bob, you’re such a flirt!

And you totally bought into the idea of male sexuality as default, leaving any uniquely female needs or instincts completely unheeded. “In the book she also delves into what she calls ‘middle-aged sadness.’

“After one close friend takes her own life, she touches on the issue of suicide among women in their fifties – ‘If your life unravels in earlier decades, you can see a future. But in your fifties, if you’re suddenly single, you’ve not worked for years and your children have left home, then a crisis of identity hits.'”

Change Vs. Abandonment

This does sound like regret to me. Candace goes on to tell us how it’s passed now, that she’s back and better than ever. Admittedly, she doesn’t name the feeling she’s describing. And she has no real analysis of why she felt that way, or why she feels better after turning 60.

Running with the comparison she made, a mother knows before her children even exist that, someday, they will leave her. That’s the idea, really – You teach them how to live, then let them get on with it. A mother can plan for this inevitability, some of us even occasionally yearn for a day without interruptions.

Divorce is different – Your husband makes a vow, possibly in front of all your family and friends, to be with you through thick and thin, till the end. Marriage has become big business, but anyone who’s had one can tell you it’s impossible not to get a little swept up in the whole thing. We still do these ceremonies for a reason, after all.

Shock is understandable when a marriage ends. It’s not the same as spending a couple decades raising up children, who naturally look after themselves more and more.

Candace may not see the personal injustice in her situation but, as always, she’s more than ready to make it about sexual politics – “‘What is hardest about it is that when a woman, especially a woman over 50, has a hard time or things don’t go right for her, everyone blames her. It’s her fault. You didn’t do something right,’ she says, raising her voice.”

Yep, it’s called being a woman in a male-centric social system. Making a small fortune reinforcing it all these years gives her complaints a ring of petulance, and it’s easy to see why people jumped on that Mail headline.

Glamourous Passivity

Candace Bushnell has lead a generation of women down the primrose path to loneliness, and she has not learned a damn thing.

This must be where all those cocktails figure in!

She obviously absorbed some poisonous ideas in her youth, unwittingly demonstrating why her approach is a mistake: “Plus, she adds, youth and attractiveness can often get you what you want, and now those tools are waning – ‘So you feel like you no longer have agency in the world and can no longer be effective.'”

Candace literally measures her effectiveness in life by the response of men! Filtering it through Personal Empowerment branding only creates a Trojan Horse for patriarchy.

“‘But the interesting thing is almost everybody seems to get out of [the middle-aged sadness stage].”

‘I was sad and lonely – But it’s not because of my choices! And anyway, I’m fine now, also for no apparent reason!’ Her interpretation is very passive, especially for someone claiming to represent female liberation.

But she’s still so glamourous! “While in town she still goes out five nights a week – to parties, dinners, premieres.”

And maybe hipper, even – Get ready for Hipster Candace! “But New York is not what it was: ‘It’s a thousand times less fun.’ At the parties hardly anyone drinks, no one smokes, the people are no longer outrageous and everything has become corporate, she complains. ‘Everybody’s being watched.'”

Yeah, that’s not creepy at all. Can we stop and address this apparent mass surveillance? Didn’t think so.

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old

Far more urgent to mourn the loss of Boomer idealism for the thousandth time, “‘Manhattan was a place where you came to be free,’ she says. ‘Everybody who did not fit in was here. People with dreams. And it wasn’t about money, it was about passion.'”

We’d all like make our passion our job, but most of us can’t pretend making a living isn’t about money, honey.

I feel this weight pressing down on me!

But rather than bite into any of the these meaty offerings, Ms. Pullman brings us the juicy deets of Candace’s new love life – “So what makes it work with her and Coleman?

“‘At this age you want someone to be nice, you don’t want someone who’s critical or demeaning.'” I have felt this way at every age!

But to avoid reflecting on whether this approach has anything to do with finding herself middle-aged and alone, these toxic ideas are framed as just the natural order of things: “‘It feels like when one is younger there can be this competition between partners. Maybe that’s part of the sexual attraction, but that kind of stuff just doesn’t work when you get older.’”

When does this stuff ever work?? Maturity brings the understanding that competing for dominance is not how you build a lasting relationship. Maybe that’s what she’s talking about.

Second Verse, Same As The First

The Times is no help here, that preppy aesthetic is just so shiny and distracting! “He has a home near hers in the Hamptons, where they spend their days playing tennis and going on long walks.” Sounds pretty good to me, but I’m sure Candace will find a way to reframe this to her disadvantage someday.

“’I think romance is something where you’re not in a rush to get to the end. It’s just about enjoying each other’s company. It’s doing things together.’” This may be the most constructive thing I’ve ever encountered from Candace. For the first and probably only time, I completely agree.

“Would she get married again? ‘I haven’t ruled it out. It’s funny that it’s somewhere in the back of your brain. It never goes away,’ says Bushnell, basking in the sunshine.”

It’s the simple things in life, don’t you think, Pussy?

It’s very like the urge to bask in the sunlight, to pause as we go about our lives and steal a moment of simple warmth. We can laugh at ourselves, remind ourselves of our dawn jog and regimen of vitamins, and go back inside. But the instinct remains, and the simple joy of a sunny day is so elemental it doubles as a universal artistic symbol.

Parenthood is similar. Existing independent of the sexual politics we pile on top of it, creating the next generation evokes deep instincts that our culture has no notion of. It’s safe to assume that not doing so eventually does, too.

Female Conditioning, Rebranded

I do feel a little sorry for Candace. Not only is there no social network to support her in anything other than enthusiastic rejection of maternity, there’s really no cultural framework in which to understand her struggle. If she did come right out and name her feelings, the shame would rain down from all sides.

Regret in general is frowned upon – We’re all living our best lives! Unless you’re caught up in a public shaming, expressing regret is seen as admitting defeat.

And Candace Bushnell admitting defeat would be news. It would be red meat for the culture vultures who circle feminism, plucking off the weak-minded. Because we have no way to understand the complex lives of older women other than to judge them.

Candace painted herself into a corner, but she’s made it so glamourous that other women still want to follow. She could be a strong voice for the truth about women’s lives, but she’s too dependent on her brand to ever admit she might have been wrong.

Candace’s shame reflects her female conditioning, and we must be unashamed. She will never learn anything, but we can begin the work of narrative-building. The current climate of clamping down only makes this more urgent!

Defy Your Conditioning

We’ve all used the anonymity of the online world to disguise our most distinguishing feature sometime, but one great thing we could do for ourselves is to just lay it out there. When participating in the public forum, don’t downplay your experience as a woman.

You mean I shouldn’t hide this??

Not to make everything about our sex, but the impulse is to downplay, disguise, disregard our thoughts or experience when they mark us out explicitly as female. There used to be an exception for Lady Things – Women’s Issues were thoroughly cordoned off from Serious Culture – And we don’t even get that anymore!

But maybe we could turn this to our advantage – Lacking any specialized spaces or resources doesn’t mean we don’t need to take care of business. We’re just gonna have to do it out in the open. And we’re gonna have to support each other.

I’m afraid Candace Bushnell can’t be helped. But women like her can serve as a good example of a bad approach. What I learned from this Times article is that it’s more important than ever not to let them dominate the conversation.

Filed Under: Aging Gracefully, Everyday Misogyny, Fight Despair Together Tagged With: Candace Bushnell, Capitalism, Carrie Bradshaw, Culture, Feminism, Motherhood, Parenting, patriarchy, Relationships, Self Care, Sex in the City, Women, Women's liberation, women's oppression

Men-Only Spaces: Patriarchy’s Next Gambit

December 30, 2021 by Brazen She

“I just don’t want men in women’s spaces, and I don’t care how those men identify.”

Geez, Gary – I’m not gonna marry you just because you say so!

The clip is Kellie-Jay Keen (AKA Posie Parker) attempting to converse with someone called James Max, “It’s up to everybody however they want to live their life, but when it impinges on my life – ”

“How does it impinge on your life?” Jim is cavalier in his home field advantage.

“If I want to go into a female-only space and there’s men in there who decide that they’re women, then it’s no longer a female-only space, is it?”

I snagged this one as it floated by, so jam-packed with goodies I knew I could pull something out of it. But, beyond that, this guy is so busy being arrogant he forgets to stop running his mouth!

He’s so convinced Kellie doesn’t understand the game he’s playing that he shows most of his cards: “But then, men were told that. They wanted to have men-only spaces and then they were told that was discrimination. They weren’t allowed to do it.”

Right, because everything used to be men-only! – Education, commerce, Law, the Clergy, everything. From at least the Middle Ages until within living memory, people felt sorry for a working woman because it meant her husband was failing to support her in focusing on the homestead. Working women were a manifestation of poverty, of cutthroat economic forces.

Outside of learning a trade to support her family, women were excluded entirely from huge chunks of society for centuries.

When we did venture out, Man’s World was a hostile place. The amount of hard and soft pushback has been completely out of proportion to the threat men face in recognizing women as equals. This scenario where equality means obliterating all boundaries also means scrubbing the record of how overwhelmingly one-sided the threat really is.

Oh shit, did I get played??

Kellie recognized this, of course, “So, men are more unsafe now that they can’t have their golf clubs?”

“It’s not a question of safe. It’s cake-and-eat-it, isn’t it?” Jimmy’s smugness betrays a deep ignorance of a life where you’re romantically and sexually attracted to people who could easily kill you, should the mood strike them. He comes across as one of those guys who thinks a broken heart deserves a broken arm.

“It’s a question of safety for women.”

“So, all men are predators?” This is absurd. But all men are male, regardless of any medical intervention.

“No, not all men. Some are, and we don’t know which ones they are. That’s why we have segregated spaces.”

Everyone knows this. Even if Time started over in the year 2000 and Kellie, Jim, and I all forgot the first few decades of our lives, the story continues – Sarah Everard was killed by a man she didn’t know, distracting from the thousands of women every year murdered by someone they trusted.

But Jim blithely assumes a paradigm that finds equality a great loophole for shoving these skeletons back in the closet. He literally shakes his head as he says, “Right. I mean, isn’t it better that we train all people to be a bit more respectful to each other?”

Can’t we all just get along? I dunno, Jimmy, can women just have some privacy?

“Well, when we don’t have any men committing sexual assault, rape, and domestic violence, then I will totally agree with you. But, until that happens, I’m afraid…”

“So, women don’t commit those crimes as well?” Interrupting her to accuse women of violence without evidence. Is there some kind of Man-Splaining award he’s going for?

“Not at the rate of men, no.” Not by a million miles. Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark, in the same town, in the same fucking country, dude. This has been known since the beginning of time, it was the rationale for women being kept at home – To keep us safe! You know, from men.

No, really, that’s what he said – I need a man to defend against men!

“Right. OK. I am slightly staggered by your views.” He stammers theatrically for a moment, as if she’s just told him men should be exterminated from the face of the earth.

“That biological sex exists?”

“I may have to change my mind – Maybe it was right that, if you take those views, maybe you should be canceled.”

“Wow.” My thoughts exactly. Kellie doesn’t get defensive at this incendiary statement. She brings her tone down and takes a breath. “You’re on talk radio, right?”

“Yes.”

“OK, and you think people should be canceled for – “

“No,” He cuts her off several times through this exchange, “I don’t think people should be canceled, and I would like people to have different views, but – It’s just – I find it staggering that you would want to have this kind of discrimination perpetrated against people who are born different from you.”

Those poor, beleaguered transwomen! Stuck in private spaces with pigs like Jimmy here, that’s gotta be a bitter pill to swallow. If such a creature existed, they would inspire great pity for such a predicament.

But Kellie isn’t distracted, her sights fixed on calling out this rhetorical imposter.

“No, I want men out of women’s spaces. That’s not ‘born different.’ That’s a biological fact, and that biological fact determines whether someone is a risk to women.“

And, just like that, we watch him drop the pose of Concern for Transwomen as soon as she calls out their real name! His direct response to this is, “So, is it OK if men said that they wanted women out of their spaces?”

And what would you say qualifies as ‘Men’s Spaces,’ Jimmy?

No crystal ball required to see where this is going!

“Do you mean like private spaces, like toilets and places where men might undress?”

He gives a coy little shrug, “Might be.” Might not be. Might be Parliament. Jimmy can’t tell the future.

“Absolutely, of course women shouldn’t be in those spaces.”

“OK, and what about other places?”

“Like what?”

“I dunno – Bars, restaurants, or anything else. I mean, can we just go back to segregated society?” Then we can stop wasting time talking to women.

I think Kellie gets a bit flustered by this idiot so boldly talking out both sides of his mouth. She kind of fumbles the next part, failing to concisely convey how the world used to be a men-only space, and why that had to end.

“The reason feminists of old decided that they wanted to eradicate some of those men-only spaces is because, in those corridors of power, that’s where important conversations were taking place. And women, by not being allowed in those spaces, were out of the conversation.”

Government made decisions effecting women’s lives all the time, usually with no input from us at all. We were bound by rules we had no hand in making and, eventually, we had enough. This is why suffrage was the first organized push of Women’s Liberation – If we’re not in Government, we’ll never get anywhere else!

Jimmy doesn’t bring this up directly, but his angle is understood. Jangling this old chain rattles Kellie a bit, and she doesn’t call him on essentially admitting that transwomen are men with his if you can keep us out, we can keep you out maneuver.

“That is a very different thing than wanting to keep men out of women’s spaces, like where women are undressing.” It sure is! How did we get here, anyway? He was arguing for men all along, and we’ve gone from poor transwomen using the Ladies Room to men-only clubs in a single step.

Refocusing, Kellie returns to the center of her fight: “Does my 15-year-old daughter have the right to go in a female-only space and expect there only to be females?”

And Jimmy, for his part, returns to Start as well – “If somebody is, or if they have transitioned, then they are a female.”

No. That’s the simple answer here. No, they aren’t. Kellie humors him with some stats before getting there: “Well, ninety percent of men who say they transition have no intention of taking hormones, or losing their genitals.”

Not the point. A man can have all kinds of surgeries to look like anything his heart desires, but those desires betray their source. A man madeover into a woman is only and forever that, nothing more. Full stop. How many of which surgeries he’s had is irrelevant.

I’m sorry, Reginald – I can only see you as a pigeon!

“And so, as far as I’m concerned… You don’t transition anyway, there’s no such thing. Nobody ever changes from one sex to another.”

This is where this ploy ends. And Jimmy was kind enough to tip his hand and show us what this Male Supremacy movement’s next move might be.

But Kellie is thrown off by the cocky gamesmanship, “What we’re talking about, predominantly with men, is men over the age of forty deciding that they want to dress as women. It’s what we used to call transvestites.”

She tries to bring it back together as the segment ends, “This whole ‘transgender’ [thing] just totally loses the fact of what’s really going on. Most people who call themselves ‘trans’ are not transsexual, they’re transgender. They’re transvestites, in old language.” But Jimmy’s only too happy to cut her off.

“Right. Ok. Well, then, let’s leave the old language.” You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It’s amazing how redefining everything manages to erase so much progress.

This short video speaks volumes, most of it not from our side. I don’t fault Kellie for anything she said, she was factual and goal-oriented. It didn’t matter anyway, Jimmy blocking her with the customary accusations of bigotry.

But the arrogance on display here is truly next-level. He didn’t just dismiss her outright – He toyed with her like a sneering, spoiled child, before tossing her away as she sputtered. I’m not sure what Kellie expected, but our pal Jimmy obviously never had any intention of engaging with anything she was going to say.

His argument boiled down to, Women shouldn’t have private spaces away from men. And, if they do, men should get whatever spaces away from women strike our fancy. You want private bathrooms? We want private clubs.

And, again, the subtext is clear – Let us in, or you will pay dearly.

The male ego will be appeased!

And when Kellie discarded the ‘True Trans’ ploy, sweeping away the whole argument and clearing the board by insisting they’re all men anyway, Jim didn’t demure like he was supposed to. Instead of retreating to the fallback stance of Trans Advocate, he went in for the kill. That’s masculine aggression for you.

Writing afterwards in The Spectator, Kellie quotes Jim as saying, “I just get the impression she hates men.” She explains this away as sleight of hand, to cover his lack of rational arguments for the destruction of women’s rights.

I think it’s more devious than that – Some men yearn for the good old days. They hate our independence, blaming us for a lack of control in their own lives. By smearing that hatred onto us, they can destroy us and pretend they are justified. Burn the witch!

To claim a woman married to a man hates men carries an insurmountable burden of proof. Kellie just isn’t worried about protecting transwomen, the ultimate straw man. She wants those men out of what were once women’s private spaces!

Jimmy Max acts like his world is ending and Kellie has her finger on the button, just like any child throwing a tantrum and blaming his trigger. She made me do it! Cancel her!

The recent boldness of smug men like Jimmy is frightening. But if we listen to him where he refuses to listen to us, we won’t be surprised by the tricks up their sleeve.

Filed Under: Feminism In Action, Wokism, Women’s World Tagged With: Culture, Feminism, Free speech, Gender Ideology, Politics, trans rights, Transgender, Women's liberation, women's rights

Gender Dysphoria Is Normal

December 11, 2021 by Brazen She

“Being a girl and hitting puberty is so traumatic.”

Can I just de-blume the blossom?

An anonymous Tumblr post expressed a common shame in simple words. It rippled through Gender Critical social media in the form of screenshots after the original post was quickly deleted.

Her spurt of stifled frustration struck a chord, breathlessly relating a firsthand account of female suppression: “You go from being a genderless little free thing to being hit with shaving and makeup and growing breasts and skincare and menstruation and suddenly being sexualized,

“When like a few years ago you could take your shirt off to play in the stream and trade cards with the boys and come home covered in mud and not even think about it.”

But eventually you realize everyone around you is thinking about it. Compliments focus on appearance or social skills, while questions often get uncomfortably personal. The sudden societal burden can combine with newly dawning self-awareness to create a perception of generalized critical observation.

Others have expectations you can’t meet, and a young person might not consider that those expectations are unreasonable. Especially when most people they know seem to be doing fine. Suppressing stories like this one furthers the myth that most girls are just fine with ‘femininity.’

“And then you spend years hating being a girl and hating everything puberty did to you and wishing you could be a boy or be completely genderless again and it takes you many years to come to terms with yourself,

“Or you simply try to Lean In to everything and do makeup tutorials on YouTube and claim it’s for fun. How can this be treated as normal?” This hatred-denial continuum seems to mimic the classic whore/virgin dichotomy, doesn’t it?

We’ve been over this a thousand times!

The bitter invocation of Cheryl Sandberg taps a deep well of bile from digesting many betrayals. Powerful women often become so by learning the boys’ game, which many of us are just not very good at. They join in the elite chorus of supposed meritocracy, clinging to their ego-driven narrative as tightly as any man.

Naturally, the framing of this as a Women’s Issue had to be squashed: “To be honest, this sounds like the kind of thing a transgender or non-binary person who is AFAB might feel once puberty hits. I mean, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that, but it’s just what comes to mind.”

This person admits to not knowing what they’re talking about, but feels free to weigh in on this young woman’s life. And irony and misogyny continue their slugfest for supremacy.

But there were some responses claiming more authority: “100% this. I am trans, and this is what dysphoria feels like.”

“This is gender dysphoria.”

Let’s assume, for a moment, that this is true. If gender is a social construct that’s imposed on us, it makes sense that a one-size-fits-all approach will cause some people issues.

“I suppose it could be. Is it also possible that cis kids could struggle with puberty?” A reasonable suggestion! Let’s see how they disregard it –

“Sure it is, and plenty of cis girls complain about how society’s perception of them changes and the pressure put on them to act a certain way increases. They don’t, however, spend years hating their bodies and never fully recover,” Thanks for the heads-up that you have absolutely no firsthand experience with this topic. Women’s body issues are their own cottage industry!

Ugh, I’m hideous!

“…looking back and wishing they had never gone through puberty and that they still looked genderless. OP is trans/nb, 99%.” Oh, right, I forgot gender is innate and springs forth from deep-seated personal essence. It’s so easy to get confused when they oscillate more than Brian Eno.

And, of course, someone stepped in to tell her what a weirdo she is: “Look, I agree puberty isn’t fun but this is not a normal reaction to it. The person who wrote this seems like they are probably trans or nonbinary. Most people (regardless of gender) struggle with some aspects of puberty but it doesn’t make the majority of us hate who we are/our gender.”

Struggling with sexual stereotypes is the basis for a lot of friction and static in women’s lives. Far from demonstrating a lack of womanhood, it may be the most common shared experience. It speaks to the shame surrounding it that this sensation was only recently named.

But someone else came right out and said what they were all thinking: Fresh meat! “Maybe you are just a boy/genderless? Plenty of cis women can probably relate to not liking gender stereotypes or oversexualization but cis women don’t hate being women lol”

Plenty of women hate sex stereotypes and still find joy in womanhood because we’ve learned not to take them personally. We understand that stereotypes are like Bigfoot – Lots of sightings but very little proof. We understand that our culture’s idea of what women are is generic and shallow, disconnected from the reality of our lives.

I hope the young woman who wrote this has found a more understanding audience, but I was glad to see it floating around. The more stories like this are shared, the more obvious it will become that ‘gender dysphoria’ is a normal part of growing up.

Leave me alone – Today I identify as wallpaper!

Individuality is our strength, but conformity makes us disposable. This is exactly how Patriarchy wants to see us, and normal mental development plays right into its hands.

Part of it is the shock of sudden self-awareness that strikes with puberty. Younger children are less conscious of how they are seen by others, dwelling blissfully in the warm glow of their own ego. Around the age of 12 or so, neurological development reaches the conceptualization of those same passions in everyone else. Suddenly the world is looking back at you, and just when you’re least prepared!

In the cataclysmic shifts of body and mind, chunks of once-established reality come into question. Social pressure can be one of few beacons of certainty.

The gender industry relies on these stories remaining shameful secrets. This young woman’s experience may be more extreme than some, but these commenters used women’s isolation in suffering to tell her she was alone. Divide and conquer. Rinse, repeat.

It’s normal and rational to get jetlag on the trip from subject to object. It’s painful to squeeze an entire human being into a shallow stereotype. If this is gender dysphoria, we all have it.

Sometimes all these layers feel so stifling!

Embracing this would defang it, robbing this discomfort of the power to overtake our psyches. Rejecting the stigma of failing to adhere to ‘feminine’ ideals is an important step on the road to liberation, and it would show young women that we all carry this burden.

Struggling as most women do doesn’t make you less of a woman, and we are stronger together.

Filed Under: Everyday Misogyny, Found In The Wild, Queer Ideology Tagged With: Anxiety, children, Culture, Dysphoria, Feminism, Free speech, Gender dysphoria, Gender Ideology, Mental Health, patriarchy, Women, Women's liberation

How Feminism Fails

November 27, 2021 by Brazen She

“Among the ‘strong-minded women’ who met to attend the convention was Amelia Bloomer – The lady who goes in for breeches and buncomb.”

Sir, thou dost wound me mightily!

Dress historian Abby Cox quotes a catty article from 1853, describing feminists as women who subscribe to pants and nonsense – You know, that crazy stuff about women being full people who deserve rights.

“I didn’t actually wanna bring it up, because of some personal biases towards it. It gets brought up a lot when people talk about feminism and clothing in the 19th century, so [it was] kinda me being like, ‘Ugh!’

“I also just kinda hate the 1850s as an aesthetic period, so I’ve never really been interested in studying it.

“However, for this discussion, it is important. It was a brief moment in sartorial history. It happened in the United States, it was tied into women’s rights at the time. However, it was a failure.”

Learning from feminism’s failures will keep us from repeating the past. No one remembers the 1850s for the drastic shift in women’s attire. Women’s pants came almost 100 years later, modeled by movie stars during the Great Depression.

Abby’s flustered, but she tries to explain why Bloomers didn’t change Victorian fashion, “They were too contrarian. They were too shocking, and so people didn’t take them seriously.

“By not operating within a broader social acceptability, how can [they] make any sort of progress towards equality?” Dropping out doesn’t solve anything – Just ask your nearest Baby Boomer.

Well, my bottom line is doing just fine!

But in the 2021 hustle economy, everyone’s a salesman. We’ve learned to sell ourselves to college admissions boards, to employers, to potential clients and subscribers, and to each other. Branding is the name of the game, and Bloomers were terrible branding.

We can do better.

The Medium Becomes The Message

“I’ve been reading news articles from the 1850s, and what’s interesting is that when these newspapers are talking about Amelia Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony, and this reform movement, they don’t ever actually talk about their points – The messages that they stand for.

“What they talk about is what they’re wearing, specifically the Bloomer outfits with the tunics and the trousers. So, they’ve gotten attention, but it wasn’t the attention that they wanted. It wasn’t the attention that worked.“

My heart ached for the sweet Aussie lady in my video this week, pleading for empathy from Katy Montgomery. She spoke from basic truths but stumbled defining her terms, and Katy’s fidgety obfuscation was a perfect example of the kind of willful misunderstanding we’re dealing with.

The kind of willful misunderstanding that broadcasts ulterior motives.

To actually make progress toward the liberation of female people from invisible cages, we gotta sell it: “Susan B. Anthony stopped wearing this outfit. It was distracting from the actual message and what she wanted to promote.”

Flexibility of method is imperative in support of the message, because context is queen. We gotta know our position backwards and forwards, but we can’t assume that being right is going to be enough!

But it’s not fair!

Style Over Fashion

When we come prepared, the debate is short – Bad behavior follows the exposure of logical inconsistency, and the reasonable party becomes readily apparent.

“This whole contrarian idea, it doesn’t work in this society – You have to fit in, and then make changes. This whole Bloomer thing is a perfect example of that. These clothes turned them into, for lack of a better term, a bit of a freak show.“

Abby means this quite literally. She quotes the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 4 February, 1853: “During her stay in the Capitol, she called on a tailor and got measured for three pair of tight-fitting cassimere trowsers. The tape with which he took her dimensions is kept in a glass case, and exhibited to bachelors at a shilling a sight.”

Nothing if not for your pleasure, right fellas? Gross.

Abby argues for practicality, “The original idea of creating the Bloomers could have come from this very genuine place, and I can see where, initially, getting the attention could be a viewed as maybe a good thing.

“But then, when they’re not making headway and people are not moving past their clothing, then the message of equality is lost. Susan B. Anthony made this realization, and she stopped wearing the outfit.

“She started wearing a red shawl, and she became known for that, that was how you recognized her.” Ironically, it was Contrapoints who I heard say something about creating the taste with which you are to be enjoyed, something like that.

Refusing to accept the cover story we are fed is not enough. We must create our own context for our side of the human story. We can shift the angle by keeping our balance and refusing to be moved.

You Catch More Flies With Honey, Honey

“The Bloomers thing is something a lot of people like to hold onto because it’s this interesting thing, but I think it just doesn’t fit into the context of the female experience.” The strongest forms of feminism grow from the seed of women nurturing ourselves, rather than the embers of our patriarchal trauma.

…Did you say something, Gary?

Abby tells us the story of the Pattle Sisters, “Notorious for their artistic and eccentric friends. They wore clothing they created themselves that went against standards of the time.

“It wasn’t masculine clothing that they were wearing, they were just designing their own kind of scandalous dresses. And they pursued their own artistic and creative endeavors,” such as early fantasy photography.

As a bonus, she also explains away the bogeywoman of ‘White Feminism,’ apparently without realizing it – “Their social position gave them the space to be this way. Historically, we see women in higher social positions having room to be more eccentric, and pursue progressive agendas. Once the upper classes accepted these ideals, acceptability would trickle down to the middle and lower classes.”

Today’s scandal is tomorrow’s old news.

Context Is Queen

Looking through the lens of Class is illuminating, but the lesson these stories teach us defies social hierarchies. It might be easier to shake things up using your social clout, but sometimes an idea just doesn’t fit.

Akhenaten was Pharaoh of Egypt when he launched his new monotheistic religion, but his ideas were buried after his death in 1334 BC.

Divers pulled the first computer from an Ancient Greek shipwreck, its devastated designer’s name long forgotten.

There are piles of good ideas whose time or place had not come, dooming them to history’s trash heap.

And women are not ideas!

“Forty years later, we have split skirts for sport. It’s not like women didn’t wear bifurcated garments in the 19th century, it was the context of how they wore them that matters.”

Exactly. Feminism should be built in the context of women’s needs, not as a reaction to men.

Women Are Not Men

The Bloomers Revolution was undercut by the very notion that imitating men would bring freedom. We still seem to buy into the inherent assumption that women should be more masculine to be taken seriously. Many sacrifices have been made pursuing men’s vision of freedom, precious skills and knowledge wasted on a fundamentally flawed goal.

This brutal (and, again, seemingly willful?) oversight is not some historic relic. There are destructive consequences when the gaping holes in current feminist philosophy become doorways for those curious enough to go looking for them. Waiting on the other side are some pretty savvy right-wing weirdos, ready to validate whatever instinct is bothering you.

The Prattle Sisters’ fairy pictures are more fun than Suffragettes in their underwear – And they don’t force you to into awkward situations! The humanity of women is a basic truth, and it should be an easy sell.

Feminism should be piecing together women’s vision of freedom, but we have lost the thread in the hustle and bustle of the larger cultural argument a long time ago. Many of us aren’t even sure exactly what we’re fighting for, but we’ll know it when it’s gone.

Filed Under: Everyday Misogyny, Women of History, Women’s World Tagged With: Abby Cox, Amelia Bloomer, Culture, Feminism, history, Networking, Suffragettes, Suffragists, Women, Women's liberation, women's rights

The Friendly Face Of Propaganda

November 20, 2021 by Brazen She

The new Daily Show is pretty bad.

Hon, do you have the clicker?

Jon Stewart recently rejoined the conversation on his own non-network show, a little grayer but with his signature energy intact. He’s back to his consciousness-raising schtick, covering topics like gun violence and economic inequality with the deft balance we came to expect during his 16-year tenure in the Daily Show anchor chair.

Your Replacement Is Here

Trevor Noah has always seemed more scripted to me. His tone changes pretty drastically when he’s off-script, his natural rhythm peeking out to reveal a softer, even pensive style. Ironically, these are the moments he looks most natural as Stewart’s successor – Trevor is also kind, but firm. Jovial, but principled.

But this tonal shift doesn’t happen very often on the show. Jon would sometimes chuckle underneath his lines, a winking acknowledgement of some personal discomfort. He came across as struggling to recite things he didn’t believe.

Trevor is more professional. When he’s on, he’s on, delivering his lines with the same bouncy energy regardless of their content.

This week he came in hot, hopping quickly from one cherry-picked blurb to another. Punchlines fastened to the end of each factoid according to the familiar formula. Jon Stewart could be a bit predictable after absorbing his style for so long, but watching Trevor reminds me it was also because Jon let events write the jokes.

Step Into The Wayback

As a random example, let’s check out Stewart’s Daily Show’s coverage of that time Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face (Original airdate 13 Feb. 2006): A few quick news clips roll by, and when the camera cuts back to Jon his expression alone gets a laugh. He lingers there, eventually only muttering a tongue-in-cheek “Thank you, Jesus!” for the comedy goldmine.

Having let the initial moment land, Jon then launches into his summary, “Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt at a political supporter’s ranch – Making 78-year-old Harry Wittington the first person shot by a sitting VP since Alexander Hamilton!” This absurd fact functions as the punchline.

There’s a natural rhythm if you go with the flow!

After some laughter, Stewart continues, “Alexander Hamilton, of course, was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington was mistaken for a bird.” Punchline number two is more humorously-worded facts.

He mocks the eyewitness’ tone-deaf storytelling – ‘The Vice President took aim at the bird and shot and, unfortunately, Mr. Whittington was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty well.’ Again, Jon’s face tells the tale before he opens his mouth. “‘Peppered,'” he repeats through a smirk, “Yes, there you have it – Harry Wittington ‘seasoned’ to within an inch of his life.” This simple pun was practically handed to him, a simplicity Jon acknowledges by stealing cheeky glances heavenward.

Nothing To See Here

Compare this to Trevor Noah’s news monologue this past Thursday: “There’s a lot going on today – The new Adelle album drops at midnight, which means you’re about to be able to tell who’s going through a breakup through your walls.” Nothing inherently funny about Adelle putting out an album – But her music is so sad!

“The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial took a bathroom break and let Kyle be the judge while he was gone, which I’ve never seen before but he swears is totally normal.” A made-up story meant to illustrate the judge’s bias. Invoking imaginary events just robs the segment of any power to criticize real ones.

“And two men who were framed for the killing of Malcolm X fifty years ago were finally exonerated.” Ok, this is kind of a big deal, right? “Which means the real killer could be anyone in this room,” says the 37-year-old. He pauses and looks around, acting spooked as a creepy sound cue plays.

Then he picks the patter right back up without missing a beat. “But, while American news is always breaking, it’s also good to remember that other countries have news, too.”

Shit, now you tell me!

Fair enough, but so far we’ve seen one non-news story, one made-up story, and the only interesting thing was presented last with no analysis whatsoever. Not even so much as a reminder of what happened all those decades ago.

And Now, For My Next Trick

A flashy globe graphic flies by, carrying us into the international round-up bit. Russia is sabre-rattling again. Migrants are crossing borders. Trevor gives some facts about the situation in Belarus, then compares a dictator weaponizing desperation to, “When your parents start cooking with peanuts to get you to move out of the house, because they know you’re allergic. It’s a dick move!” This joke borders on irresponsible, considering peanut allergies kill around 150 people in the US every year.

But the nonsense just keeps flowing – “We can’t let anything happen to Poland – That’s where all our water comes from!” Cue a random bottle of Poland Spring whooshing past. This pun is a non-sequitur, Americans’ continuing obsession with bottled water is not relevant to European politics.

The facts feel sharp, but the comedy reads like an afterthought. Connected to nothing, it illuminates nothing.

Moving right along, Ethiopia is collapsing and any Americans there are on their own. Trevor goes for Jon’s old rhythm here, mockingly paraphrasing the State Department – “In Afghanistan, the US government staged an all-out airlift. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, they’re like, ‘might we suggest Priceline.com?’

“What do they mean when they say the State Department will help you book a commercial flight out? That’s not helpful – people know how to book flights! That’s like going, ‘Hey, do you need a ride? Open Uber on your phone, then you hit Request A Ride. Best of luck, buddy!'”

But Trevor is from Africa, you know. “Please understand, this is a complicated and sensitive story.” You might have started with that! The writing on this Daily Show is inverted, burying anything interesting under layers of saccharine fluff.

It’s real, if you just believe hard enough!

The Callback

A female voiceover tells us India’s capital is choking with smog, “According to a report from the University of Chicago, this toxic air is ten times worse in Northern India than anywhere else in the world.”

Trevor compares it to the steam vents in New York City, “Which, by the way, what is that shit? I’ve lived here for many years, and I still don’t understand what that is.” You just called them steam vents, dude!

Sometimes, he just seems really clueless – “One detail I like from this story is that the Indian government put together an environmental ministry panel on air pollution, who confirmed that the air was, indeed, polluted.” That clip clearly said University of Chicago! These people make too much money for this level of incompetence.

And the commercial tie-ins are crammed in so tight, this one took my breath away: “This is a great example of why we all need to move to cleaner energy. It is expensive, but it’s also hella expensive to shut down your economy whenever your city turns into a sandstorm from ‘Dune.'” This level of shilling is sort of impressive, in its own twisted way.

He pivots hard, dumping us unceremoniously into the segment’s last spot, “And, like most things in the world, this story was made in China.” Hmm, do I detect a hint of satire? It’s like being haunted by something forever at the edge of your vision.

Finally, The Real Story

At eleven minutes in, we learn that international Tennis star Peng Shuai is missing. After accusing a prominent politician of raping her, Shuai’s social media account was quickly locked down, then deleted. She herself hasn’t been seen in weeks. A CNN clip tells us, “censors have all but scrubbed this woman from the Chinese internet.”

The supposed email released by Chinese State media has strong Old Soviet vibes: “I’m not missing, and I hope Chinese tennis will become better and better.” You’d think Shuai’s continued participation would be the best guarantee of this, but I won’t be surprised if we never see her again.

Trevor appears appropriately appalled. “This is really disturbing – Someone speaks out about sexual assault, and then China’s government just makes them disappear?” This seems to be what happened, yes. Bare minimum achieved!

Great, great… And they pay you how much for that??

But his little rant is interrupted mid-sentence, replaced by a graphic and Chinese voiceover informing us Trevor has gone on vacation. Hilarious.

The laughs have been few and far between, but the very end is where Comedy Central’s true colors bleed through – “It’s one thing for your government to come after you, it’s another thing for them to make you just never exist!

“They scrubbed the Internet of anything about this Tennis player. Do you know how hard it is to get stuff off the Internet? Only China can do that!” Exactly how sure of this are we, anyway?

“If you have embarrassing pictures online, just move to China and talk shit about the Communist Party. They’ll clean up your reputation in no time! I mean, yeah, you’ll be locked in a basement somewhere but, hey, at least you didn’t get canceled.”

But isn’t that exactly what happened?? Peng Shuai said something the Establishment in her country didn’t like, and they silenced her! They were just extremely thorough about it.

“This also really puts into perspective when people in America complain about being ‘censored by Big Tech.’ Peng Shuai literally does not exist on the Internet anymore! Yeah, maybe Trump can’t tweet right now, but you can still Google him.” How lucky we are, to still have access to information!

I Like Big Brains

Trevor references a rap song from 1990, abruptly ending the segment in a last blast of irony.

Rap music pushed the censors, testing competing loyalties to money and propriety. Money won handily, record companies slapped stickers on the albums and raked in the cash. It was said we were sliding down a slippery slope of indecency – If you let black men express themselves, who knows where it will end? They might be hosting talk shows someday!

But Trevor does rappers and other comedians dirty with this argument – Censorship isn’t great, but at least it’s not kidnapping!

Where exactly is that line? In the UK, people are being summoned for questioning by the police over their social media posts. The dubious legality of this is almost overshadowed by the implied threat of detainment – Police have been known to shoot first and ask questions later, figuratively and literally. If you go in, there’s a chance you won’t come back out any time soon.

Sure, the implied threat of something isn’t the same as it actually happening. But is that single step enough insulation for a free society? The slippery slope has been declared a fallacy, but we might want to revisit that. The Chinese government doesn’t have any legal right to disappear people, but the widespread fear eliminates the need for such niceties.

When you feel safe turning your back, that’s when they’re most dangerous!

Belittling the sense of injustice Westerners feel watching today’s creeping authoritarianism is akin to telling little girls to ‘just not look’ at the penis in the locker room. Your discomfort is your problem – It’s certainly not induced by any changes in the environment, and it’s definitely not justified. Whatever stirring you feel is probably some kind of phobia, and your fear is invalid.

Ten years ago, Jon Stewart’s viewers polled as more informed than those who watched the Actual News. Trevor Noah’s Daily Show is a transparent exercise in propaganda, trading on the reputation Stewart built. I can only assume that most of his viewers are too young to see what’s changed.

And this is just one obvious example. As much as I don’t want to see it, our whole environment looks curated, consciously directed toward some things and away from others. No one’s gonna convince me there isn’t at least as much comedy gold out there!

Bad nights like Trevor’s seem to offer a peak behind the curtain, implying none of it is an accident. But just relax and watch the show! Everything is ok as long as the funny man is cracking jokes, right?

Filed Under: Found In The Wild, Politics, Pop Culture Tagged With: Comedy, Comedy Central, Culture, Free speech, history, Jon Stewart, Politics, Propaganda, The Daily Show, Trevor Noah

Progressive Growth – A Race To The Fascist Line

November 13, 2021 by Brazen She

“Of course people are gonna challenge these ideas. There’s nothing really holding these ideas together, is there?”

It’s a lovely picture… What is it??

King Critical argues in a recent video that straying from Liberal orthodoxy does not a Conservative make. He describes the arbitrary groupings with panache, walking us through how going to the source material first started him asking bigger questions.

“So, I looked into Islam and I came to an uncomfortable conclusion – I literally could not believe Islam is true. Because if I did, I would have to believe lots of horrible, horrible, evil things.”

“And I wanna stress this – I don’t mean these things were the *apparent* meaning.” He tells us he read the Koran all the way through, along with official commentaries. As always, he wanted to double-check before making up his mind.

“I don’t mean that these things were the most obvious reading, or the most mainstream reading, or the most scholarly reading. I mean these things would be the *only* reading.

“Really looking towards proper Islamic scholarship, I arrived at a conclusion – Which is no! Context doesn’t help! Interpretation doesn’t help.

“There’s no way to interpret ‘fight the unbelievers until they feel themselves subjugated, because they want to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths’ other than, ‘Don’t allow people to criticize Islam, use violence to make them so subordinate that you can just impose your will on them.’

“I don’t see any other way to read that.“

Hitting a wall like this will sound familiar to anyone who’s had a ‘Peak Trans’ moment. When you reach the inescapable conclusion that you are mistaken, the reasonable person will take a step back and have a long think.

Michael says all this to illustrate how quickly party orthodoxy begins to unravel once you start asking questions. “It’s kind of weird that me having a different interpretation of the Koran came to be such a monumental political event for me. Why would that be the case?

“What on earth is the association between believing in man-made climate change and believing that Surah 9:29 through 32 is actually not commanding the subjugation of all non-Muslims?”

I don’t think he means to imply that man-made climate change is nonsense. It seems to be a random example, and maybe that’s the point: “There’s no association between those two things, and yet they’re connected.

“It’s simply because ‘Progressivism’ – as some big, amorphous blob – just decided collectively to be wrong about Islam. The result of that is, when I looked into it, turns out Progressivism is wrong.

Has the cheese slipped off his cracker??

“Similarly, it seems like Progressivism has just *decided*, ‘Let’s believe that biological males can be women if they say so.’ It’s so self-evident that this is nonsense.

“How could anybody possibly be surprised that a critical thinker is not going to be one hundred percent progressive – Or, indeed, one hundred percent conservative?” But the ubiquity of this inclination highlights the dearth of critical thinking out there.

Michael keeps ploughing forward toward his larger point, but his bramble of a question snagged me – What connects the ideas of so-called Progressive parties? And the answer was obvious – Money.

Down The Moneyhole

Progressive politics is all about moral mandates, more concerned with doing the ‘right’ thing than making any sense.

Despite this, after September 11, 2001 and in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq, objections of a more intellectual bent were growing from the general atmosphere of anti-Muslim sentiment. Christopher Hitchens was a particularly loud, articulate voice, insisting the ‘religion of peace’ was really determined to convert the whole world.

He’s dead now, and his sentiment has long been drowned out by popular repetition of the Good Muslim trope. Conflicting interpretations are a common-sense explanation in a world shaped by Protestantism.

But, as Michael said, “Finding out Islam isn’t true, well, that’s no big deal.” It’s just awfully convenient how this narrative flows right along with the oil contracts we’re all pretty sure Iraq was actually about.

We have seen how the policies of each successive administration don’t actually differ all that much from their predecessor, whatever they may say. Once again, we have to break down the words they use – Neoliberalism by any other name is just as Randian, and actions tell the real story.

Progressive generally refers to social progress, lifting up citizens’ standard of living through technological and bureaucratic innovation.

But progress also means growth, and this begins to bring things into focus.

Is this what he meant when he said he’d keep me tied up all weekend??

An Oily Business

Exxon knew they were screwing us all back in 1982. Their own scientists expressed concern about what their business practices were doing to the environment, and their models looked pretty bad. They tried to cover it up, but by the end of the decade it was widely accepted that greenhouse gas emissions were a problem.

By 2003, the board had been tilted such that George W Bush removed carbon dioxide from the list of regulated pollutants altogether. It’s probably the methane from all those damn inefficient cows, right?

Along a similar timeline, plastics went from modern miracle to environmental disaster. Recycling was everywhere – A system so official, I know plenty of people who saw the reports about Chinese landfills, but still manage several bins as they cling to that sense of control.

Visiting South America in 2003, filmmaker and author Naomi Klein found herself with the vista to see a bigger machine in motion: “If we look at the history of this really quite radical economic model – of privatizing key state assets, deep cuts to these social assets that people tend to protect like healthcare and education – When politicians try to do this under normal circumstances, people tend to organize and resist.”

Pesky populace, wanting their fair share of resources!

“So, the use of crisis for political ends has been a part of the advancement of this ideology.” Naomi laid out her ideas in a book she called Shock Doctrine, “The shocks are getting bigger, a debt crisis isn’t enough to disorient a whole society and convince them to accept their bitter medicine. Crisis is required to rationalize policies that would be rejected under normal circumstances.

“The legacy of this economic system is tremendous inequality.” Traditionally, inequality begets instability.

Leviathan Sheds Its Skin

Naomi’s distant perch and well-developed political vocabulary presented her with an opportunity to connect the dots, “There were all these things going on in Latin America that were all connected in rejection of this economic model. They saw a real connection between their rejection of these policies, and the fact that the same economic program was being imposed in Iraq through tremendous violence.

“You really saw and felt those connections – Bechtel, just thrown out of Bolivia, suddenly shows up in Iraq with the exclusive to rebuild their water system.” How convenient! “It felt like this model that had been imposed peacefully – through the International Monetary Fund, through the World Bank, through the World Trade Organization – that wasn’t working anymore.

“The legacy of inequality was so dramatic that the sales pitch of, ‘just wait for the trickle down’ wasn’t working anymore.” Not only is the trickle not coming, the top layer is designed to absorb it. People decided they were sick of this shit in the 19th century! But the demand for infinite growth means infinite consumption – And eternal colonization.

Jesus, Gary – What the hell did you get us into this time??

“Now there was this new phase – And it wasn’t even asking, and it wasn’t even negotiating, it was just imposed through raw violence. We’ve entered this phase of disaster Capitalism, using a shock to impose what economists call ‘economic shock therapy.’ Austerity measures we know are hard on the poor, but sacrifices must be made for the bottom line. And anyway, if they were productive workers, they wouldn’t be poor!

“Water privatization, electricity privatization, displacing poor people on the coast with hotel developers – A social re-engineering of society in the interest of corporations, which is what we’ve been doing under the banner of Free Trade.” Rolling in elements of social control has allowed the same colonialist consumption mechanism to keep running in the background, an escalator to nowhere.

“But now, it’s under the banner of post-disaster reconstruction.” This always seemed like a weird flex after decades of fearmongering about over-spending, but it’s all about emphasis – In an atmosphere of anxiety, logic gives way to instinct and we become easily lead.

Atmosfear

We have to cut the school lunch program – Do you want your kids to be owned by China? We had to invade ~~Saudi Arabia~~ Iraq because ~~our guy~~ Saddam wasn’t ~~doing what we wanted~~ playing by the rules! Clearly, a bad apple…

This angle makes the old-fashioned theocratic aspirations of the right wing look almost quaint. Trump’s tendency to tell on himself by accusing his opponents of his own tactics might suggest so-called ‘Progressive’ politics should be scrutinized for their obsession with moral mandates. Single-sex spaces were only ever really a moral mandate, unenforceable as our Trans friends have made a point of demonstrating. And when the narrative began to shift, we took too much for granted.

Because there can be no dissent if you don’t ask for consent. Innovation – the very Future itself – is at stake! Climb aboard, and take the endless ride to nowhere.

And I think that’s the twist – A lot of us missed it because the fascist’s mythical shared past has been replaced with a mythical future. The strip mines were necessary, you know – We needed the minerals to power our space-ready gadgets.

Innova-shunned

Most pro-Capitalist arguments are made by those who believe wealth drives innovation. They must have some of their own hearts propped up with this idea, because innovation is part of the human psyche. Innovations in trade and commercial enterprise is what got us here.

True innovation is a group-level effort. Materialists appreciate that real, lasting social progress requires a collective push. ‘Progressives’ may twist language in knots and say anything to feed the bottom line, but they understand the importance of materials.

If we make them pretty colors, they won’t notice they’re all the same!

Opposition is strangled in the cradle as the ultimate narcissist in our midst rationalizes away all the bad thoughts. The right wing wags its finger at you, but their God is waved away as easily as they invoke him.

‘Progressives’ are delivering us to their very real corporate overlords with a smile. Borrowing from power grabs past to dampen dissent, they reassure us while Capital continues to evolve and spread.

What can we do? For now, I think it’s important more people recognize we’re being played by both sides. Yes, Republicans want to take away women’s healthcare. But Democrats are doing their part to make even discussing such things impossible.

Will we be forced to bend the knee for Abraham’s God or Uncle $am? It’s a race to the Fascist line!

Filed Under: Fight Despair Together, Politics, Wokism Tagged With: Capitalism, Culture, Economics, Fascism, Free speech, King Critical, liberals, Naomi Klein, Politics, Progressives, Shock Doctrine

The Cure For Victimhood

November 6, 2021 by Brazen She

There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. Why? Because, while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.

My DVD copy of V For Vendetta froze about halfway through, not so much as a smudge on it. Not currently available on any streaming service, the eloquence of the fictional freedom fighter was out of my reach.

I almost saw it!

Strangely fitting for this Guy Fawkes Day, when even words have fallen under suspicion. Transwomen are women, and women are birthing people.

Words offer the means to meaning and, for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?

As ravenous Capital tightens its grip, controlling the narrative becomes more imperative. Censorship methodically blocks off neglected corners of culture, authoritarian crackdowns increasingly enabled by the nasty – but very quiet – contagion of learned helplessness.

Freedom of speech is the bedrock of a free society, but saving it won’t accomplish much if we are unable to speak.

Existential Agency

New research brings new words that may be the right reinforcement for our crumbling collective consciousness. In a recent interview, podcaster Chris Williamson spoke with an expert in the emerging field of existential psychology.

Dr. Clay Routledge’s work, “examines how the human need for meaning in life influences and is influenced by different cognitive processes.” He tells Chris how fascinated he is with “existential agency” – The belief in our own ability to determine our life’s meaning. “You need to feel like you have the ability to take action,” rather than just accepting an externally-imposed purpose.

One of these days, I am so out of here!

“This is very, very early work, but it seems like people who have a strong sense of existential agency are the most motivated, they’re the most driven, they’re the most resilient. They feel like, when life feels meaningless, they can change it.”

But he’s not talking about some bootstrap bullshit wrapped in statistics – “This isn’t to take away from real structural challenges that people face. But if we’re only talking about those things that we think of as outside of people’s control, we’re neglecting the fact that humans have all this cognitive horsepower.”

Chris Williamson latches onto the inspirational implications of this and runs with it: “I think that people intuitively are aware of it. Think about why anyone finds it emotionally fulfilling to see those transformation photos – They’ve done that through their own agency.”

External Control

The last few years have seen the inspirational narrative of transformation being subsumed more and more by the concept of transition. The story of finding the True Self through long-term medical assistance has been framed as the path to Salvation.

And where once, you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

Your True Self isn’t within you, it’s in a surgeon’s office.

Dr. Routledge addresses this more broadly, “Part of the reason I wanted to really start to figure that out is because I feel like we are increasingly living in a society where people are acting like you’re not in control of anything.”

You don’t understand – She made me hit her!

“There are privileges and advantages but, regardless of that, there’s something going on within humans that gives us a great deal of cognitive freedom – If we choose to act on it.”

Getting excited, Chris fills in the rest – “The victim mentality outsources existential agency. And if Man can make a Heaven of Hell and Hell of Heaven, then your ability to interpret the world is more than fifty percent of the battle.

“You have people in terrible situations who are able to be relatively fulfilled, and people that seemingly have everything that kill themselves. Your material situation is an influence but it’s not a determinant.”

“It predisposes but it doesn’t predetermine.

“I think framing things that way – ‘Take advantage, take control of the direction your life is going’ – I think that’s a smart area of research.”

Science For Better Living

Dr. Routledge is gracious, bringing the discussion back down to earth. “You summed it up perfectly. Your example’s a dramatic one, but even little things – There’s lots of little things that people do every day.” He uses the example of simply deciding to walk more, or take the stairs instead of the elevator.

But he also pulls in some heavier stuff: “The victimhood narrative – which you see a lot – is, ‘alcohol abuse isn’t really a choice because it’s a genetic disposition, and it’s a disease.’ But, thanks to our scientific understanding of genetic vulnerabilities, you just armed somebody with information.

“Learning about genetics gives me information about my personality, my vulnerabilities. That doesn’t mean you’re just being pushed around by these external causes, they’re information that can help you make choices to live a better life.” Except that self-reliance is out of fashion. Independent thinkers tend to be subversive, and not very kind!

I have opinions, and I’m not afraid to use them!

“But my feeling is, that’s a minority position in modern day Western scholarship. The more we learn scientifically about that, the more people intuitively seem to think that you have no control over it. People seem to think, ‘here’s another reason why it’s not your fault.'”

Thing is, if it’s your fault, you might be able to fix it.

How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But, again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.
I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease – There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense.
Fear got the best of you.

Fear Of The Unknown

The pioneers on the frontiers of human understanding are just beginning to conceptualize existential agency, and not a moment too soon. As communication has become easier than ever, the deluge of information was infused with contaminants. Bedrock has been eroded and our course has become murky.

Preserving a popular sense of our ability to write our own stories may be the most effective tool against external control.

Our authoritarianism is gentler, with no High Chancellor to rally against. But those who would control us for their own ends benefit from every unasked question, every unpondered thought. Controlled speech is controlled speech, whether the mechanism is shame or black bags.

Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people…

…We can change the world.

Handing over our agency in exchange for safety never works. Putting everything in the hands of authority just spreads the insecurity of relying on others for meaning. We have all lost something of ourselves to the growing climate of fear on all sides. Many of us have even lost our words.

…For now. Material reality is still out there, and a rose by any other name will still prick you. New terms like existential agency can help us find our way through choppy seas to make our stand on solid ground.

Filed Under: Aging Gracefully, Fight Despair Together, Politics Tagged With: Capitalism, Censorship, Culture, Free speech, Language, Mental Health, Personal Growth, Politics, Self Care, V For Vendetta

Female-Presenting People: What Leftism Isn’t

October 30, 2021 by Brazen She

“We define our sexual orientation as one thing and you’re changing it to another, and that’s the issue.” Self-described “old-school lesbian YouTuber” Arielle Scarcella sits stubbornly at the center of our cultural confusion.

I shall not be moved!

“Now we have people telling us things like we have ‘complicated relationships’ with genitals? I don’t think me being a lesbian is a complicated issue. I think it’s just me being attracted to females,

“…Or female-presenting people.”

Posted back in December of 2019, Arielle becomes unusually quiet here. She hangs her head and mutters, “There’s nothing complicated about the fact that I like – that, that I’m attracted to boobs and vaginas. I mean, it’s that fuckin simple sometimes.”

She tries very hard to keep it that simple.

I don’t mean to imply that Arielle is somehow not really a lesbian. I was touched by her confusion and pain – It’s a pain straight women have been feeling for a long time: I’m attracted to men, I just don’t like them very much!

Arielle wants to see her sexuality as straightforward – Being attracted only to other women makes her a lesbian. We’re about the same age, I remember when this was assumed. Homosexuality was a fact of life, and female homosexuals were called lesbians. A straight man being a lesbian inside was nothing but a cheap punchline.

Although she’s been on the scene since 2009, Arielle is fairly new to politics. She built her personal brand on frank talk about lesbian sexuality, assuming a liberal social environment that’s beginning to dry up. After making waves when she “left the Left,” she still spends a lot of time critiquing them. The ‘Woke Left’ is the ex that Arielle just can’t get over.

I wonder what Bernie’s doing right now!

Which is weird, because she doesn’t seem to know who she’s talking about.

Which Way Is Left?

According to Brittanica, “Left, in politics, the portion of the political spectrum associated in general with egalitarianism and popular or state control of the major institutions of political and economic life. The term dates from the 1790s, when in the French revolutionary parliament the socialist representatives sat to the presiding officer’s left.”

Fun fact – It’s not random, arbitrary directions or concepts!

But Arielle talks about ‘The Left,’ ‘The Woke Left,’ and ‘The LGBT Community’ interchangeably as she describes distancing herself from all of the above: “I don’t think like these people, and I no longer want to be associated with them.”

Fair enough, right? But then she says things like, “The Left is so far left at this point that they are suggesting conversion therapy,” such as insisting anyone with a sexual orientation is a ‘genital fetishist,’ “and hiding it behind the idea of ‘queer progressiveness.'”

…The egalitarians are so egalitarian, they’re using social pressure to enforce conformity? You keep using that word – I do not think it means what you think it means. And she is far from the only one I have heard use it this way.

Britannica continues, “Leftists tend to be hostile to the interests of traditional elites, including the wealthy and members of the aristocracy, and to favour the interests of the working class. They tend to regard social welfare as the most important goal of government.”

Taking a Political Compass quiz, Arielle and of one of her new ‘right-wing’ friends casually agree that taxes are useful because they fund government programs. Arielle says she supports things like publicly-funded museums, because “Art is important.”

Sage wisdom, indeed. And upon discovering she qualifies as a ‘Left-leaning Centrist,’ Arielle still fails to find any definition for any of these words!

The book matches my dress! Cute, right??

She also glosses over the binary axis of the quiz – Social is laid across Political to arrive at a grid point, allowing extremes to cancel each other out. Someone who wants to drown Government in the bathtub but doesn’t give a shit who you sleep with comes out as a moderate on tests like this, too.

No True Authoritarian

Arielle repeatedly ignores giant clues that she’s not dealing with Progressives at all – “Why is it that the only things required to include all people start out female-based? ‘Feminism’ equals ‘equality for all,’ and women are expected to just sit back and take what’s given to us.”

“Shaming women for their sexual choices is not activism,” Depends on what you’re agitating for. “And it’s certainly not progressive.”

Ding ding ding!

But Arielle resists making inferences about the movement she helped build, “I don’t think the trans community at large is doing this, it’s the loud extremists. But those are the ones being heard, unfortunately.” She doubles down on the ‘few bad apples’ hypothesis before admitting it’s taken her a decade to speak up about it.

As for why that might be, she answers this in a video from a year earlier, in 2018 – “What other lesbians, and even gay men at this point, aren’t telling you is that they are fucking terrified to even touch on any trans topics; How often other LGBTQ YouTubers agree with what I’m saying but avert their eyes and don’t say anything, because they’re terrified of being labeled a transphobe.“

But in taking the long way around, Arielle seems to have missed this connection. She claims, “No one wants to talk about the fact that trans activists are making shirts with slogans like, ‘Kill All TERFs.'”

…There are evidently some corners of cyberspace Arielle has yet to discover – Plenty of us are talking about it!!! But that Cancel Culture censorship your friends are all terrified of keeps most of us from ever being heard at all.

Female-Presenting People

Navigating by instinct, Arielle seems to be caught in the false dichotomy of Right vs. Left, conservative vs. liberal. These simplistic labels blur social and political concepts, turning social liberals into political conservatives when Gender Studies overtakes Poli Sci.

I’ll be good, I swear… Just let me sit down!

Arielle’s relaxed social views are intact, but she only has her own perspective to defend them with. Underneath all her steadfast posturing, Womanhood for Arielle is determined by her own impression. This reasoning falls apart under the slightest pressure – It’s very White Feminism to insist you support transwomen, so long as they spend thousands on hormones and surgery!

Arielle’s impassioned defense of ‘gatekeeping’ and boundaries is undermined by her self-serving adherence to presentation. If you pass, you get a pass!

She even pulls Rose of Dawn in to tell us why the female gender role doesn’t need redefining – A hypothesis that any brand of Feminism would disagree with! Liberation of female people from our oppressive social role was the whole point of all this, remember??

But Arielle is happy to let Rose cling to the very traditions that oppress him, because Good Trans keep the questions at bay. She seemed to be on the edge of something in December 2019, right before she ‘left the Left.’

But she hasn’t changed her views much, remaining pro-choice even as she grows more pro-gun. She just stepped back from the community she helped build, filling the space with criticism. Arielle is reinforcing a refuge of reasonableness for herself as the stability of her position is assaulted from all sides.

Having founded her identity on her membership in the LBG(TQI+) community, she’s tethered to the sinking ship. Deeply enmeshed in the performance of her sexuality and unwilling to face her own contributions to the current situation, Arielle is still following the will-o-the-wisp that found her surrounded by “the mentally unstable.”

But if she admits that even the most attractive transwomen are men, Arielle has to ask herself some uncomfortable questions. Her advocacy will always be shallow because she contradicts herself on a fundamental level.

Some men have figured out a way to get at women like Arielle, to cloud their vision with the smoke and mirrors of ‘gender reassignment’ – Some men have learned to present as female. This disquieting spectre, and her own complicity in creating it, keep Arielle cuddled up to the pussy where she feels safe.

She’s naturally protective!

Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off

The Left ‘left the Left’ a long time ago, and anyone who stumbles into material analysis gets mobbed. Arielle could be a powerful advocate for women if she hadn’t been betrayed by her government and her community. Watching her struggle to make sense of it all reminds me of the importance of definitions.

Identity Politics has flipped the script, enforcing an oppression hierarchy and placing transwomen – Men – at the top. Those with clout have used it to create an illusion of oppression.

Arielle Scarcella is a perfect example of how entwining politics and identity leaves us vulnerable to manipulation. If she could loosen her grip on that one word – Lesbian – just enough to admit there’s no True Trans, she could become the spokeswoman lesbians deserve.

Filed Under: Everyday Misogyny, Politics, Wokism Tagged With: conservatives, Culture, Feminism, Gender Ideology, liberals, Politics, trans rights, Women, Women's liberation, women's rights

Capitalism Hates Moms

October 15, 2021 by Brazen She

This week, Senator Joe Manchin insisted any extension of the Child Tax Credit payments should include a work requirement.

Wtf does it look like I’m doing??

“Before you start saying, ‘is it going to be permanent?’, let’s see how we’re doing this. Let’s make sure that we’re getting it to the right people.“

And who would that be, Joe?

“There’s no work requirements whatsoever. There’s no education requirements whatsoever for better skill sets – Don’t you think if we want to help the children, the people should make some effort?”

Strong words from a fellow whose entire industry takes August off work like classical Versailles. But I guess budgeting has never been politicians’ strong suit.

According to Fortune, “The amount of the credit is based on a family’s modified adjusted gross income, with payments starting to phase out for single parents (filing as head of household) earning $112,500 a year or $150,000 among those who are married and filing jointly.”

Six figures! Those rich bastards don’t need government handouts!

…Except that $112,000 is almost double the 2020 median national income of $67,521. The majority of Americans will never see that kind of money, despite $150,000 being named as the minimum “to lead a good life” by Business Insider… in 2012.

Joe Manchin is using a very old trick – He’s invoking class resentment to rein in government spending, you know, on the people that government represents!

Then we have Sherrod Brown naming the elephant – “Caregiving is work.“

Because, lest we forget – This money is only being dished out to parents, assuming most of us will prioritize our children’s wellbeing. Joe Manchin’s implication that parents can’t be trusted to have our kid’s best interests at heart is horrific as well as insulting.

Some of us have a lot of practice!

But parenting is not equal, and its effects on income are well-known. Mothers earn less while fathers earn more, and we all know who does most of the shopping, housework and childrearing. It’s pretty clear who Joe Manchin is really threatening here.

Working Girls

The push to get women into the workforce has become increasingly transparent. I recently responded to an article titled American Motherhood Vs. The American Work Ethic – A bland confection of classic feminist workplace improvements that have never materialized, with a thick icing of pandemic sob stories to disguise the familiar taste.

The Market has spent decades nodding and smiling at our ideas, and then disregarding them. Instead of flexible schedules and on-site daycare, we have longer workdays and expensive institutions. Ironically, the cost of daycare keeps us working longer hours to make ends meet.

The average cost of childcare was $340 a week in 2020. Even taking the average hourly wage of $11.25 in August, 2021 (and forgetting all taxes), that’s 30 hours a week just to pay for daycare! That’s usually enough to qualify as Full Time, which requires your employer to offer you healthcare. So, most places won’t give you that many hours.

This leaves many mothers scrambling to coordinate two unrelated work schedules, along with her kids’ pick-up and drop-off times. Forget doctor’s appointments or family trips. Heaven forbid there’s ever an emergency.

And don’t ask Dear Old Dad to help with much of this – He’s stuck working even longer hours! Forty years of wage stagnation mean he’s scraping by while she’s paying for gas from what’s left after daycare.

And what help do we get? American Motherhood Vs. The American Work Ethic – The same song-&-dance they have been doing since the 1970s, feel-good solutions with no plans for practical implementation. With a big helping of shame disguised as sympathy.

Say what you will about the Biden administration, but they are the first ones in this country to put any of this into practice on a large scale. Caregiving – mothering – is work. But this slogan is having trouble finding traction, because mothering is not efficiently productive enough to be much use to the Market.

It’s pretty clear they have been trying to milk moms for ages, as we are marketed to more than any other demographic. The revenue vectors are plentiful – We want to be good mothers, appealing partners, have clean homes, do what’s best for our children and make the world a better place.

And, along with our much-discussed conflicting insecurities, we tend to make a lot of household purchase decisions.

After decades of this – Of creating needs and filling them – someone seems to have noticed that more women in the workforce meant more women contributing directly to the economy. And this might actually be good for Capital.

I’m telling ya, honey – I got a great opportunity for ya!

Women are much more productive as workers.

Revolution, Industrial-Style

…But let’s rewind for a minute. A common rebuttal to this line of thought is to point out that only middle class women had been able to stay at home, anyway. That a Friedanian, white suburban reading of class struggle leaves out the working class and most people who aren’t white.

We have the Industrial Revolution to thank for this. Before mass production, most people lived and worked in the same small area their entire lives. The home and the farm or business were the same place.

Men may have functioned as the public face of the family but, in private, they had all different types of arrangements with the women in their lives, just like today. The general recognition of this fact is only to the good, of course.

But other facets of daily life haven’t benefitted from the soulless libertine influence of Capital. As the wealth of the Industrial Revolution built more and more larger and larger companies, the rising tide did not lift all boats. Anyone who missed it was left floundering and scrambling to make a living, usually in factories. Men and women both left the home to bring back pennies, often taking their children with them.

Those with full pockets distinguished themselves from the unwashed masses by pursuing a lifestyle only they could afford.

The rampant corruption and abuse of this period shows us how rapid change can overwhelm society. The early decades of the 20th century were a direct response to these horrors – Labor laws, especially child labor laws, were put in place to keep business owners from creating systems of glorified indentured servitude.

This period gave us the concept of Full Time vs. Part Time work. Our beloved Weekend, so much a thing of myth these days, was part of a schedule theorized and designed to maximize individual health and happiness. We need eight hours or so of sleep, leaving 16 hours for other activities. This was split into half work and half leisure time, in an inspired, ahistorical recognition that people are human.

But Capital didn’t like any of this very much. Winded after The Great War, it took a different tack and tried monetizing leisure time. This is what the modern middle class was built on. The luxuries of the few were mass-produced and marketed. Advertised as necessary status symbols.

Clothes make the girl, you know!

This worked really well for a long time. Generations fed Capital their time and a small fee, in exchange for a glamourous thing or experience. But the tiger of Capital outgrows every cage, inevitably turning on whoever is silly enough to think they’ve tamed it.

Eventually, in order to keep growing and keep growing faster, monetization wasn’t enough. The shit really hit the fan in the 1980s, a market bubble we are still riding toward a sheer cliff face. The cultural pendulum swung hard in the direction of women’s independence and, in a capitalist system, that means earning our own money.

The influx of Boomer women in their 20s and 30s meant employers could offer less, both because of increased demand for jobs, and just because they could get away with paying women less. And nothing’s changed much since then.

In fact, it’s become assumed that a woman will have her own job, her own career, and this is the road to personal fulfillment. Even the pay gap has been swept away with a little fancy math! Mothering is seen as a one-size-fits-no-one affair, the job market being depicted as a wish-fulfillment generator.

They Said I Could Be Anything, So I Became A Disappointment

What do you want to do with your life? Teenagers hear this way too often, and it’s something we all ask ourselves. It’s worth taking the long view of our achievements, but that’s not really what this is, is it?

There’s an implied urgency – What do I want to do with my life right now? The present moment telescoped to encapsulate all of time, every action of great importance and meaning. Completely ignoring the way the years add up in practice.

The simple solution to most of this, and a pretty common one, is to just not pair off and reproduce at all. Go to school, get a job, get an apartment. Get together with friends, travel, read books and watch movies. There is plenty to do in life without engaging in any of these topics at all.

But this doesn’t solve the issues on a larger scale, and they just keep on getting worse, don’t they? The escalating trends from 40 years ago find many of us back facing indentured servitude to make ends meet, only this time we can’t bring the kids with us.

Don’t worry – Mama already put in the request for time off on your birthday!

Most women will have children, the average age of first-time Millennial mothers in 2020 being 26. It’s funny to me how Forbes present this as, Millennial Women Delaying Having Kids – Isn’t that just waiting until you’re fully an adult yourself? My grandmother’s generation got married at 18, so I think the stats may a little skewed here.

But the slow drip condenses into a wave of negativity toward all things motherly. Even the word is unflattering, set against the icon of the perpetual teenager forever turning his back on Mom to seek his fortune. And we’ve allowed him to write the story, trying to follow along instead of using our newfound voice to tell our own.

Mass Reproduction

And the next frontier, they’re saying, is just around the corner! Artificial wombs (and surrogacy…) will free us from the bonds of maternal flesh altogether! And won’t that be grand?? We can pay someone to make our baby for us while we’re at work, then keep on working to pay someone else to raise them! Liberation!

Once again, I feel obliged to say that, if you don’t want kids, do that. I strongly feel that forcing such a massive life choice on anyone is extremely wrong. But, ‘write what you know,’ right? Stay in your lane? This isn’t the role I expected, but I’m playing it to the hilt!

And I can’t help but notice the silence from one of the largest groups in the world. We don’t see ourselves as mothers – We see ourselves as Americans, as Gamers, as Fans, as Consumers, as Organizers and Activists. As Liberals, Conservatives, Women, Transmen, Type-A or Submissive, Christian or Muslim or whathaveyou – with mothering pushed to the corner. Taken for granted. It’s an uncomfortable fact that we don’t let define us… Or inform anything about us, we promise!

And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just give it up and be free, like men?

But what are we giving up?

I think someone said you’re the future, or something…

What does life look like without the messy, visceral, human parts? We may not be born to be mothers, but we’re definitely not born to be workers!

And I hate to say, ‘won’t somebody please think of the children?‘, but somebody should! Mothers should be unified and loud on basic concepts of parenting, like feeding and clothing them – People like Joe Manchin should get laughed out of the room for implying we don’t know what we’re doing!

We even already have a system in this country for ensuring parents are doing our job – It’s called Child Protective Services! If Joe Manchin is so worried about the deadbeat parents getting handouts, he might shore up that sorely underfunded, understaffed organization!

No, it’s sadly obvious that people like him are using the same old emotional appeals to invite us to undermine ourselves. He works for Capital, and Capital hates moms.

Filed Under: Everyday Misogyny, Motherhood, Politics Tagged With: Capitalism, children, Culture, Motherhood, mothers, Politics, Women's liberation

Brazen She