The Lie That’s Killing Feminism

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.

Pink Couch Convo

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.”

Rising From The Grave

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!

In The Backyard

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!

Bandaged

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.”

Vampire Standing Victim Kneeling

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.

Go Make Sammiches

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.

Exulansic And The CAIS Of The Phantom Censor

Recently, the Gender Critical community was rocked by the sudden removal of a prominent voice from a prominent platform.

Stalker

Can’t you just leave us alone??

“I do plan to keep making this content, because it’s more important now than ever to keep speaking out.” 

The Case Against The Case Against CAIS

Exulansic made her well-considered views known regarding whether individuals born with the anomaly of sexual development known as Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome should be counted as women. There was some passionate disagreement, but she stood her ground and even won over a few people.

Debate sputtered when a newcomer to the fray stepped in and dragged it to a grinding halt – Someone who had to make sure everyone knew the Intersex Truth.

His response video makes up fifty percent of the content on Intersex Truther’s brand-new channel. Blowing through the studies Exulansic cited with, “Gish gallop!” guarantees him a spot in the Mansplaining Hall of Fame. Still insecure in his infamy, he also commissioned a rap song calling her a bigot. And an unflattering caricature. Just normal Alpha Male stuff, you know.

Exulansic responded promptly with an analysis of the caricature, tracing echoes of classic anti-Semitic propaganda. YouTube shut her down a few hours later, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Personal Bias And Image Management

Don’t worry, I’m not going to offer my personal opinion on the intersex debacle. I believe it’s a distraction that’s taken time and airspace away from our real fight. It adds nothing to the immediate debate surrounding women’s rights, and has the Gender Critical community taking sides over something irrelevant to most of us. It has served as cover for the sabotage of our movement, and I am not going to add fuel to the pyre in the form of my two cents.

Private Letter

My personal feelings are beside the point!

I won’t be naming the highest-profile person involved, either. Whether you agree he has the kind of clout to take down entire channels, this person has absolutely zero flotsam online. None. I’ve been researching all kinds of people for these posts for years, and everyone over 30 with any clout has some random articles from ten years ago. A couple awkward photographs. At least one snarky, dissenting op-ed.

Not this guy – I searched through eleven pages of Google results. Make of this what you will, but I’ll be referring to him as Benedict Arnold in the hopes of avoiding digital oblivion.

But the basis for Exulansic’s video – The one that triggered Intersex Truther and sparked the whole chain of events – was a Benedict Arnold interview featuring an intersex individual.

He threw some strong words at anyone stepping up to support Exulansic, and she has said she felt threatened with cancelation. But he’s also been known to sling slurs, then laugh off anyone reacting seriously. Karen Davis over at You’re Kidding, Right? has provided receipts for his free-wheeling language. However interesting his interview choices, I don’t think Old Benny is a friend to women’s liberation.

But I don’t think he’s responsible for the demise of Ex’s channel. For one thing, he’s interviewed her more than once and they seemed to get along. Karen Davis is a big proponent of this idea but, if Benedict could do such a thing, seems to me she would have been first in line during the Great Whore Debacle of Summer 2021. Mr. Arnold seems to roll on from our criticism just fine.

Rise Of The Machines

YouTube, on the other hand, will censor certain words without notifying anyone not to use them. One of my first videos – A takedown of medical professionals attempting to discuss the affect of COVID vaccines on menstrual cycles without saying the word ‘woman’ – was itself taken down. The V-word keyword has become common knowledge, but how many words do you suppose we don’t know about?

Chloroform

Some people are just ruthless!

The increased prominence of extreme right-wing groups has reminded us that anti-Semitism never really died, and I suspect YouTube (among others) has set up bots to squelch any mention of it outside official sources.

Ex is a rabble rouser, her channel ruffled many delicate feathers. Before her Patreon was also taken down, she told her patrons YouTube removed her for ‘inciting violence.’ I must have missed that bit listening to her caricature video while making dinner that night. But the invocation of anti-Jewish hatred – and actual Nazi propaganda – may have just been the massive final straw.

The case for a political hit job is compelling – Karen and Ex discussed it explicitly. Karen has stated many times she believes Benedict Arnold is responsible for the whole mess, and Exulansic supplied incriminating details. Cluniac makes his own argument for sabotage, pointing the finger at Intersex Truther. Both assume an organized team of trolls behind the scenes, and it’s not hard to imagine in our age of the Twitter Mob.

But it’s too easy to explain too much using only YouTube’s mindless self-interest. Association with Nazis is bad for market share, and my embarrassing depth of experience tells me this topic is essentially absent from the platform.

That Feeling Of Being Watched

But can so many intelligent women be seeing a phantom? Why does Exulansic’s cancelation feel so targeted?

The online world can be a tricky thing; Digital engineers have spent the past decade completely remaking the back end, meanwhile the interface remains largely unchanged. Your old friends look the same, but they’ve all defected to the other side. It sounded paranoid 20 years ago, but everything we do is tracked and logged in some massive mainframe… for some reason. Uses for this level of information and technology are limited only by the imagination.

More mundanely, the Trans Femme are extremely over-represented in tech. Even I have a former in-law who fits this trope perfectly. It’s not hard to believe they would rig their own platforms in their favor, just like they try to tilt everything else.

Vampires

Can we just get this over with, Gary?? You look absolutely ridiculous!

I’m not a programmer, but I know enough about computers to know I don’t know that much. Most of us don’t really know how all this shiny shit works, but we shouldn’t have to – Modern society encourages individuals to specialize, reaching new depths in a narrow field of focus. A high population ensures a cornucopia of topics in development. I don’t know how to fly an airplane, either, and I shouldn’t be expected to.

I may not be a pilot, but I can recognize a dangerous trajectory. Ignorance of flight protocol doesn’t mean I can’t see a crash coming.

Haters Gonna Hate

Just a few years ago, with #MeToo in full swing, even the passing thought that women were being targeted and censored for stating banal facts would have felt absurd. Now, we have Slightly Twisted Female and others pleading for the community not to fracture further, as we frantically hunt down the source of our anxiety.

Supporting Exulansic and anyone like her is important enough to venture into new platforms, but I worry about stretching ourselves too thin. I can hardly keep track of things as it is, and I don’t even have an Instagram!

Seems to me that any organization of any decent size is bound to have a mole. I’m not ruling out Benedict Arnold and his freaky-clean vibe, but I’m content to leave him to his trolling. Focusing on supporting those whose work I do admire and appreciate will help build momentum towards the liberation of women from the rule of men, and anyone who joins me is welcome.

Presenting a united front on this point is absolutely vital, because there does appear to be a guided effort to fracture and discredit Gender Criticism through stoking in-fighting and paranoia. Just like so many radical and leftist groups before us. But women know who we are.

And we know that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. But if they’re coming for us, let them find us hard at work.

 

Carrie Bradshaw Regrets

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.”

Brb

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!

Trench Coat

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.

Teenage Party

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.

Mother With Children

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.'”

Overshadowed

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.

Martini

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.

Demons

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.”

Ginger Tabby

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.

Let Your Light Shine

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.

Men-Only Spaces: Patriarchy’s Next Gambit

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

Pushy Dude

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.

Georgian Card Player

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.

Tea Party Chatter

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?

Crystal Ball

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.

Date With A Pigeon

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.

Snuffed Cigar

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.

 

 

 

Gender Dysphoria Is Normal

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

Flower Eater

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?

Frustrated With Flowers

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!

Mirrored Yellow Shawl

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.

Grumpy In The Corner

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.

Noble Sigh

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.

 

How Feminism Fails

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

Bird On A Wire

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.

Mama Says

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!

Mourning

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.

In Love

…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.

Into The Distance

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.

Female-Presenting People: What Leftism Isn’t

“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.

0passed Out On The Stairs

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.

Wistful Moor Girl

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!

Red Book

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.

Runner

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.

Pussy

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.

Laurie Penny: Love & Hypocrisy in the Time of Covid

*This week’s post about Women’s History is taking longer than expected to research. I don’t want to give you something half-baked, this came across my desk and I just had to…

Laurie Penny’s squandering of talent and privilege comes from the same pain we all feel.

Exasperation In Paris

Ugh, material existence is such a pain in the ass!

Another 80s baby, Laurie used her degree in English to build a personal brand from the remains of 90s Girl Power. She’s somehow been composing feminist screeds for major publications since her mid-20s, possessing an enviable list of credits and media awards.

Her 2016 entry Is Marriage Worth It? is a serviceable example of Laurie’s writing and philosophy. The humblebrag is strong: “I had been struggling to find language for my growing anxiety over the fact that, at almost 30, I still have no desire to settle down and form a traditional family.

“I’ve been waiting, as open-mindedly as possible, for a sudden neo-Darwinian impulse to pair up and reproduce. And yet here I am, and it hasn’t happened.” Having presented herself as the exception, there was always the risk that falling for someone would seem to prove the rule.

Providing evidence that feminist agitation is cured by meeting Mr. Right would be quite the embarrassment!

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Laurie’s Wired article from last December – My Highly Unexpected Heterosexual Pandemic Zoom Weddingdelivers everything the title promises. Drawing upon all her propaganda experience, she weaves her words into a descriptive fabric she hopes is thick enough to obscure the corner she’s painted herself into. 

She tells us her adorkable love story to explain why she’s not a hypocrite – “Romance matters, and right now everyone I know seems to be understanding that in a new way. Everyone needs romance.”

I don’t disagree, but her only reasoning for abandoning her principles is to blame circumstances: “This year, though, the colliding catastrophes …  have made the entire question of normality somewhat moot.” 

“Nobody was more surprised than me when I suddenly caught the ball, in the shape of the heart of the kindest, most brilliant man I’ve ever met who somehow, inexplicably wants to hang out with me all the time, and there was nothing to do except run with it.”

Snarky Typist

Yes, it sure is cute how you keep failing up!

Laurie has a long way to run to feel comfortable in her good fortune. Stuck in the opposition, she’s preoccupied with framing this essential human experience as ‘deviant’ – “The most deviant commodity on the modern internet isn’t sex, it’s sincerity. It can’t be manufactured, and it’s difficult to replicate and resell, both of which make earnest enthusiasm suspect.”

But Laurie found her some! She’s just that edgy!

For someone so relentlessly defiant, she sure is worried about being judged: “I had begun to do things that confused those who know me well. Things like wearing bright colors and going outdoors to enjoy the sunshine.”

And just in case anyone mistakes her for Like The Other Girls, Laurie pathologizes pair bonding with everything she’s got – “While I have never had a manic episode, I feel obligated to inform the relevant medical professionals if I’m ever planning to do anything that sounds like someone in a manic state might conceivably do.”

…Like fall for a guy she barely knows. Has this woman somehow missed every single Romance film ever made??

Twitterpated

But this sweet, relatable story is very off-brand for Laurie.

I guess I’ve missed her because most of her work has been in the UK. Predictably, Laurie first caught my eye on Twitter.

Responding to someone identifying as, “former CEO of an LBG&T voluntary sector organization” asserting that there was an “overarching, coordinated ideological programme” after adding Trans representation to the their list of concerns, Laurie’s response was straightforward –

“I’d like to know more about this.”

Sly Smile

So you can figure the best way to bury it, amirite??

Good! I thought. Everyone needs to know more about this. Maybe someone’s journalistic curiosity has finally gotten the better of them.

Having looked into it, I think it’s pretty safe to say that’s not the case. The chorus of wry sarcasm flowing from that comment tells me I’m late to the party.

At first, I took her for about a decade younger – Black pleather and magenta hair combined with trendy defiance give the impression of a precocious newcomer to sexual politics. But Laurie is old enough to remember the Before Times. I’d even argue she’s used her status as a woman to build her reputation.

Getting in on the ground floor of blogging in 2007, her first wide exposure seems to have been the English arm of Occupy Wall Street. She gave several interviews in 2011, but my amazingly in-depth research yielded no obvious reason for Laurie as mouthpiece for Occupy.

Regardless, she went on to publish several heavily feminine-coded books. A 2012 collection of blog posts carries the title, Notes From the New Age of Dissent. Laurie has established herself as a dissident and rabble-rouser, that edgy bitch who’s a step ahead of the rest of us.

It must have been terribly embarrassing for her to fall in love! And with an opposite-sex partner from a similar background, no less! How mundane. How positively vanilla. How totally un-oppressed, how non-marginalized. How mainstream. How normal.

Identity Springs Eternal

The Wired article looks very much like Laurie trying to get in front of accusations of hypocrisy: “As I put it to him early on, and this is an exact quote: “I may be a wild and untamable trauma-twitchy anarcha-feminist fundamentally personally and politically opposed to het partnership as a social organizing principle,” but everyone wants romance! Feminism!

“…But I’m also not a fucking fool.” Bravery is laying out your principled perspective, then admitting you’d be foolish to follow it.

To be fair, she admits she never expected to face the predicament of Going Steady, “My whole life, the whole of heterosexuality has felt to me like a school sports game I’ve been reluctantly made to play, and nobody wants me on the team.” The reader is left to wonder how she managed to experience the whole of heterosexuality, especially if she never got picked!

Smokin

There are other ways to pass the time, you know…

These days she calls herself Genderqueer, but doesn’t claim to be anything other than straight. All I could find were repetitious iterations of Relationships are weird!

She’s even written a few things critiquing the sex industry, but that’s not on-trend anymore. Gender ideology has taken the place of any feminist ideas in Laurie’s relatively large, public body of work –  forming a nifty case study in the trajectory from Feminist Firebrand to Genderqueer Guerilla.

And, at the risk of riding my own biases, it’s what I’ve suspected for ages – Cognitive dissonance rots your brain!

Form Over Dysfunction

I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the 5th grade. I’m not bragging, but I am a nerd. My grandparents had bought me a whole set of classic books in cheap paperback for Christmas, and that was the year I learned what ‘unabridged’ meant.

Most of them went unread, but I’ve always been attracted to Horror and the unexplained. Mr. Stephenson’s accessible writing was a pleasant surprise.

I sometimes wonder what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t read that book at that moment. In it, I saw a man consumed by his rejection of his less-flattering qualities. I saw an obvious metaphor for mental dysfunction, and to this day I’m not sure if Stephenson meant it that way.

I may have been seeing what I needed to see, and I’m fine with that. I’ve spent the years since learning to practice radical honesty, if only within my own head.

Elder Millennial

The demands of practicality are seldom pretty!

Jekyll & Hyde was horrifying on a level few stories are. Creeping terror inhabits not just the words on the page but the subtext as well, which I couldn’t really understand. Ignorance worked in my favor for once, adding to the otherworldly atmosphere of the novel. 

It shook me, and it taught me a lesson – Shine a light on your flaws, because they only grow in the shadows. And, eventually, they can overtake you. This idea stuck with me as I got older, and I began to recognize it in the world around me. Adult life even has a simple word for it: Denial.

All You Need Is Denial

Allowing cognitive dissonance promotes mental static. Many people appear to deal with encountering contradictory thoughts by championing one and ignoring the other. Things escalate quickly when the unpopular idea refuses to be ignored.

You have to repeat this choice over and over and over to make it stick, performing a type of self-hypnosis. As if changing your personal perception might actually change material reality.

Too much of this makes authenticity impossible, acting without thinking risks breaking the spell.

The most useful emphasis is on being a functional person, rather than vexing ourselves about something untestable like ‘Good.’ It’s pretty easy to tell whether your state of mind is functional or not.

Stumbling into a core human experience shouldn’t threaten to bring your paradigm crashing down. This is a good sign it wasn’t terribly functional to begin with, Laurie my dear.

Oppositional defiance doesn’t work if daily life becomes pleasant. Defining yourself by The Struggle carries the hidden cost of pathological fear of success. If you’re not a warrior for the downtrodden, what’s the point?

Purple Drinker

Without external validation, I’ll have to find meaning in life on my own!

All this points to some pretty dark beliefs – Making your life about The Struggle demonstrates a profound pessimism that it will ever actually end. Insisting you’re on a Holy Mission only hints at a lack of personal meaning. 

The Personal, The Political

Near the end of about 2,000 words explaining why it’s OK to fall in love, Laurie stumbles upon an excitingly relevant question, “What does partnership look like when gender roles and domestic norms are collapsing along with every socioeconomic certainty?”

Feminism has little to say here, and Laurie is no help: “For us it looked like watching the election results come in from Georgia on the television in an Airbnb, clinging like a barnacle to the rock face of central Los Angeles.”

When the rubber of theory meets the road of life, Identity Ideologues find they have no traction. Laurie’s 15 years in Journalism and feminist discussion left her completely unprepared for the rudimentary milestone of adulthood: “After a lot of Googling, it became clear that the only way for us to see each other before 2021 was for us to somehow become each other’s immediate family. He asked how I would feel about the two of us becoming kin.

“I panicked and went to bed with my phone for the rest of the day. “

In 2016, Laurie was prepared to spend her life alone: “Marriage and babies have always been way down my list of priorities, and they’re close to being nudged right off. There’s too much else I want to do. I’ve made the same choice that men my age have been able to make for centuries without being scolded by society, or even having to think about it too much.”

But women are not men! 

“I had in fact specifically designed my life so I would never be obliged to shape it around a man, and was open enough about that fact that the issue had so far failed to come up.”

But neglecting to consider you might have different needs turned out to be a mistake.  Been there!

Steak

How did he make this look so fun??

Like many of us left to figure things out for ourselves while our parents deconstructed society, Laurie wasn’t aware of the startlingly mechanical nature of authentic chemistry – “The distance helped. I could tell myself that I wasn’t really falling for him, and even if I was, there was no danger of that interrupting all of my carefully laid plans. 

“We started sending each other cakes and tiny treats, getting friends on the other side of the world to facilitate deliveries. By July, it was becoming horribly obvious that it wasn’t just the distance that made this different.”

“It was safe to be vulnerable, to be enthusiastically non-neurotypical.” Well, yeah, you gotta make sure your weird is compatible with their weird! “It was terrifyingly safe to start to care about him, and what to do next was unexpectedly obvious.”

Love Vs. Politics

Old folklore describes love as a sickness, a syndrome with recognizable symptoms. Considering our rosy modern estimation of it, you’d think our society would have something useful to teach us.

But 2016 Laurie reminds us, “The burden [of family life] has fallen on women to such an extent that it has been naturalised, made invisible by the assumption that women and girls are just built to take care of all this stuff, if not by God then by nature, with a great deal of pseudo-scientific handwaving over the specifics.”

Laurie reanimates this ungainly concept by reversing the polarity: “The idea that we might not be, and that we might furthermore be fed up of doing so thanklessly and for free, is profoundly threatening to the smooth running of society as we know it.” To be single is to be subversive.

This is why a proposal from her sweetheart sent her into a panic. Laurie has dedicated so much energy to her tapestry of dissent, she never bothered to really look into what she was rejecting.

Witch Flight

Ooh, I’m telling Dad you went out like that!

“I have no idea what’s going to happen next, any more than I can explain why every bizarre thing he does is brilliant.” Welcome to life! It’s unpredictable and unfathomable. No amount of philosophy will stop it from demonstrating that.

But the jagged pill at the core of all this posturing and denial is that Laurie Penny has been helping discredit feminism for 15 years. She is a loud voice in the chorus proclaiming gender critics right-wing conservatives, and not to be trusted.

Substituting virtue-signaling for ethics means she does what she can to keep other women from discovering alternatives to the philosophy that boxed her in. This sudden Romantic turn feels like a final blow struck as she exits the stage, damage done and profit in hand. 

But I don’t see it that way. Laurie has discovered the embedded trigger that is love. I don’t think this proves a feminist just needs a man, so much as it demonstrates how untrue the supposedly feminist approach to women’s lives really is.

Maybe that newlywed glow will carry her past the vista of her own cognitive dissonance. But I hope she gets a glimpse, I hope it haunts her until she has to figure it out. She’d probably write about it.

How romantic!

TERF Connect-The-Dots: Lose A Word, Gain A Movement

“I do like the decision to make Janice Raymond sound like an evil witch…”

I’ve spent some time tracing the line Wokists have drawn between feminists and the Right Wing, but this node in the TERF dot-to-dot has a few things that make it special.

Surprise

You’re going along, minding your own business, when suddenly…

Credit is due to YouTuber King Critical, whose encyclopedic knowledge of literature brought this misdirection to light. While reacting to Jessie Gender, he spotted a misquote that changes the whole meaning of the referenced passage. Jessie tweaks a sentence in a foundational text, and uses it to smear radical feminism.

Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire pulls no punches, and some of the more scathing lines are perennial favorites of those looking to paint feminists as judgmental bitches. Janice does a fine job crafting aggressive arguments without Jessie Gender’s help.

But, true to form, Jessie is keen to help anyway. He offers us a choice cut, “The problem of transsexualism would best be served by mandating it out of existence.”

Our guide King Critical is ready to roll right along, “I mean, that’s kind of true, right?” But a closer look at the line stops him in his tracks. “…Am I being weird? I feel like there’s a word missing here.”

KC is leaping quickly from one idea to the next,  because he has already done his homework – “I think that a word is missing. Let me just check this, I feel like this is just – That was a lie.”

Maybe I’m tired, but I was impressed with his ability to catch this poisoned arrow mid-flight: “I’m pretty sure that should say, ‘Best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.’ And, if so, this is really interesting to me.”

Never one to make hollow accusations or not bring receipts, KC pulls up the PDF already on his computer, “This is fun, because – Literally – This is a complete misrepresentation. And it’s really funny.”

That’s a word for it, I guess. 

He walks us through the actual quote from Raymond’s book again, scoffing at having stumbled upon something so blatant. “That’s a big difference, isn’t it? Because, if you say -” KC has to pause for a breath, hands flying to his forehead, “It’s so transparent! And this is so fascinating.” 

Thorough to a fault, he even double-checks Jessie isn’t quoting a different edition. “I’m just gonna make sure that I’m not being silly … Because I’m actually kind of shocked to think that this could be totally misrepresenting the quote.” 

Oh Come On

Oh, you sweet Summer child!

But, sure enough, every source he can find agrees with his version.

“And that is huge. Basically, what this is – It’s a misrepresentation and a tremendous lie. Genuinely, this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my time doing these videos.”

One word might not seem like such a big deal, but this word changes a core concept of a core text of radical feminism. “What must have happened here is that the exact quote was written out, and it was realized if you include ‘morally,’ that changes the meaning of the quote.”

He tells us about The 99 Rule, crediting David Wood with the idea that most people just aren’t paying attention. “The attitude of, if you say something, only like one percent of people will actually bother looking up what you said.”

“Therefor, a lot of the time, it’s to your advantage to just lie.” He calls Jessie’s transgression a literal example of this. KC seems so perturbed by Jessie’s clumsiness he feels compelled to find an explanation for it.

And just when we might be worried the tangent ran away with him, he brings it all together: “So, let’s just clarify this case – What is the actual distinction?”

“Mandating something out of existence implies using the law to make something illegal. Morally mandating something out of existence means changing the public perception of morality so this thing is no longer acceptable.”

The rush of discovery wearing off, KC begins to process the ripples of what Jessie is saying. “That phrase, ‘morally mandating out of existence,’ is a term that I use a lot.” For whatever reason, the first example he hits on is tipping, and what a shitty custom that is. “We should change our attitude toward tipping, in order to make it no longer exist.” He adds fascism as another good candidate for social extinction, alongside gender ideology.

And he can’t help but pinpoint the irony of it all, “And, by the way, I’ll point out that Jessie Gender wants gender critical beliefs mandated out of existence.” 

KC runs through the situation one more time, not quite believing what he’s heard, “To morally mandate something out of existence is to so firmly establish in the zeitgeist the idea that something is immoral that it ceases to even exist.

“That is radically different from mandating it out of existence. That implies government intervention, which is not what Janice Raymond is talking about.

“I think that’s absolutely fascinating, that such an obvious perversion of what Janice Raymond was saying… [She] was talking about changing people’s minds using logic and reason. I think that’s such a powerful idea to describe how we should approach all horrible, evil things in society.

The big thing that makes this stop on the TERF Express special is it explains much more than a simple word change should, at first glance. I think this gives us a motivation for the sweeping legal changes happening all over the world – It’s a preemptive strike.

Poison

Nobody gets the drop on me!

“The way that Jessie presents it … changes the entire basis for what this is saying.” KC explains that Janice is arguing for using limiting legislation to establish transition as something worth limiting. 

Jessie’s tweak makes Janice’s proposal into authoritarian eradication. Jessie dances with his straw man, telling us this sneak attack is not just an intellectual exercise. 

KC hits back, “It was! – Morally mandate it, change people’s minds – You’re arguing in a really disingenuous way.” 

He expresses disappointment with how bad Jessie’s tactic is, but lets him continue: “The intention of TERFs is … to have actual real-world ramifications for transgender people’s daily lives.” Effective legislation? The horror!

KC jumps on this, “Well, of course. We’re not just doing this for our health.”

We believe that gender identity extremism is harmful, and should be opposed. I like how it’s being presented as the Big Reveal.”

But, for Jessie’s audience, it probably is. He’s going to get away with the lie, but I bet he didn’t come up with it himself. This idea fits nicely into a gap in my personal understanding of what we’re up against – Wokists are very litigious zealots.

They have prioritized legislation in their favor in a way I don’t think any of us saw coming. Like any cult, they are heavily insulated and limit the flow of information. But anyone can watch a YouTube video, and we engage a lot more with their content than they do with ours.

Knowing our adversaries is the first step to beating them. Gender ideologs keep their defensive stance and shout ‘Bigot!’, refusing to actually engage with anything we say. 

This gives us some hope of outmaneuvering them, and I think I’m seeing a silver lining to their insistence on lumping us with the Right Wing. They have no idea what they’re talking about, but we’ve done our homework.

 

Not Like Other Feminists

The Internet can be a dangerous place, but the rabbit hole I fell down this week goes much deeper than I anticipated.

It all started with Abby Cox. She’s one of my favorite YouTubers, and she put the brakes on her whole video concept this week to address a glaring issue she found in her research.

You Won't Believe This

You won’t believe this – Women are being undermined in media!

Girlhood As Internalized Misogyny

Abby is an historical costumer with several years in a living history museum under her belt. In comparing recent remakes of classic historical fiction to older productions, she noticed an uncomfortable trend: “I’m frustrated,” she tells us, “by the reliance on ‘Girly-Bad, Boy-Good’ clothing defaults that our feminist characters are shoved into!”

Abby focuses on Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, showing clips illustrating the recent masculinization of Jo and Anne. “In the 2019 version, we have Jo looking like she slept in a barn! And [she] is wearing distinctly masculine clothing on top, with just a skirt on the bottom.”

At first glance, this looks like historical costumers in film have lost the thread. 2019 Jo wouldn’t look out of place on a modern college campus, which a real Victorian lady certainly would!

But Abby’s impassioned pleas rang in my ears for days after I watched her video, bringing me back to a fight I’ve had with myself as long as I can remember.

I think we do a disservice to ourselves and everyone else who grows up female if we write off the Othered Girl without taking a long, hard look at her, and why she has been with us for long.

I’m Not Like The Other Girls

There’s something thrilling about boldly doing things women were forbidden from for centuries. For too many during Jo’s time, being Not Like The Other Girls got you committed. In later decades, there was a good chance you’d be lobotomized, too. The infamous case of Rosemary Kennedy is a late entry in a long tradition of ruthlessly crushing women who were just a little too smart.

It all starts to add up when you learn that ‘schizophrenia’ was once a catch-all for difficult patients.

This history may not play a direct role, but I think most young women go through this to some degree – The urge to hide your ‘girly’ hobbies or inclinations in order to be taken seriously. And, later, just to avoid being seen as an object.

I don’t think that we have come out on the other side of this yet, collectively. That we are still using masculine as shorthand for intelligent after 200 years shows just how suppressed women truly still are. And it’s also kind of embarrassing.

Embarrassing

Can you still respect me, now that you know my shameful secret??

Other Girls Are Dumb

All things feminine are still routinely rejected and put down in our culture. Powerful female politicians cut their hair short and wear boxy pant suits – Like they’re admitting they don’t belong, and are trying to blend in! 

Visual media has been flirting with pornography for ages, only recently making some self-conscious adjustments. So, instead of the Damsel In Distress, we see her reciting the Hero’s lines. As if there are only two options.

Music and fashion are even worse, the role of sex icon is assumed for women there. To challenge this is to play Russian Roulette with your career.

The overall message is very clear: Girly = Bad, Boyish = Good. The term ‘girly’ often just means ‘frivolous.’ ‘Girly girls’ are seen as shallow and vain, sometimes even evil!

If this tainted messaging were limited to high heels and tight skirts, there’d be nothing to talk about. But the ‘girly’ label extends to lots of things, many of them skills with roots in women’s history. Certain personality traits, even entire categories of emotion, have all been tagged ‘feminine’ and shunted to the margins of our culture.

Basically, anything patriarchy can’t use to generate wealth for itself is classified as a potential threat and squashed.

Even the lovely Miss Abby Cox – Who devotes the first three minutes of this video to Woke disclaimers – can feel the cringe: “As much as I love and appreciate the resurgence of historic costume dramas, I just want to beg the writers and designers to stop playing into this ‘Not Like Other Girls’ trope for the progressive female protagonist. 

“It’s lazy! And harmful storytelling, with its implication that other girls are inherently not feminist.”

Here, Abby names the first problem with not being like other girls – It’s putting down others to lift yourself up.

Learned From The Best

What can I say? I learned from the best!

Women Are Men, And We’ve Always Been At War With Femininity

Little Women is about 40 years older than Anne of Green Gables, Louisa May Alcott publishing its first edition in 1868. In Alcott’s depiction of her era, Jo’s pursuit of an education and career made her Not Like Other Girls. We tend to see this as positive, because education is the great leveler.

Education enables you to see yourself as an authority in the world, and to question that of others. Male-oriented establishments of all stripes resist the education of girls to this day, sometimes with lethal force.

Abby tells us how the historical costume dramas she is upset about actually create many of our ideas about the past. Redressing the female heroines of the period as butches (Transmen??) projects our rejection of girly things backward onto them, creating the illusion of tradition. A false history.

And clothes are a really great example of how the subversion of women plays out. Fiber Arts Expert is a role women share across many times and places. We have often used this necessary, practical skill to our advantage. Our clothes are a means of self-expression, communication and advertisement. Even a lucrative career!

The advent of machine manufacturing in the 19th century enabled the male-oriented establishment to take this from us. More than that, we were enticed to give it up willingly with the promise of free time and effortless chic. The shift of mentality to the ‘modern’ lifestyle clinched the deal.

Sewing is frivolous now, too – Why spend time making something when you can just go to the store? Time is money, you know. Don’t you wanna get you some??

And another corner of women’s culture dies.

Just One Of The Guys

The second problem with Not Like Other Girls is that, yes, inevitably you are like other girls in some ways. Instead of just rejecting what we recognize as bullshit, we project these negative stereotypes onto other women.

It’s another indirect admission – Sure, women are shit. But I’m the exception!

Bararella 1

Do you love me yet, Daddy??

Competition for men’s attention gets a lot of ink, but we ignore that men have the Home Court Advantage! Kissing their collective ass gets us access to the status they hoard. Taking on masculine social signals is the tip of the hat that says, ‘No challenge here!’ 

Everyone behaves as if it’s assumed that Woman Bad. This consistent drip-drip-drip demonization of the feminine plants a feeling of alienation in us when we engage in anything inherently female-oriented, sending us crawling out of our skins to avoid guilt-by-association. We feel relief when our femaleness is less highlighted, and powerful in men’s clothes. 

But we can’t be men, and their methods don’t always work for us. And just as we began to ask, ‘What were our methods again?’, it became transphobic to talk about. 

The stress seems to be getting to us, every forum I frequent is rife with paranoia. Rigidity is setting in, and factions are forming. Which is a damn shame, because I know I’m still working on my own self-loathing and internalized misogyny. Dealing with this shit alone is getting really old.

Occasionally, someone – Usually someone on her way out – will proclaim exasperation with the whole situation. She will marvel at how women turn on each other, ‘It’s almost like they don’t want to be liberated!’

But not me, I’m not like the other feminists!

Woops! Internalized misogyny strikes again. It’s really a pity no one is keeping score, because we’re gunning for the all-time record.

Bitch Fight

Holy shit Karen, I just wanted to borrow them!

It’s the ultimate divide-&-conquer strategy – Implanted in our own worldview, Woman Bad keeps us in line from within by keeping us insecure in ourselves and isolated from one another.

Life Finds A Way

There’s some life left in us – Our survival instinct has drawn us to gather, chipping at the edges with things like Believe All Women! But it’s going to take time to undo centuries of self-loathing. Small, stable communities are forming here and there, but we need a rallying point.

To achieve the liberation of women, we have to know who we’re talking about. Some women excel in the kind of achievements men are so fond of, but many of our talents lie elsewhere. Progress for feminism will begin with an honest re-assessment of who and what we are.

We are different from men. Denial of this simple fact has cost us dearly – So much that the male-oriented organizations of the world have finally deemed us irrelevant. Outdated. Woman Classic is out of production, and Woman 2.0 is already rolling off the assembly line.

We have enabled all of this by refusing to take ownership of own definition. If none of us is like the other girls, then who are girls, anyway? Patriarchy has lots of ideas.

Only we can speak up for us. If we’re not sure what to say, approaching each other with forgiveness would be a good place to start.