June 28, 2011
Fashion is persecution
June 27, 2011
Radfem perspectives on marriage
I am a married lesbian. Let’s just start there. I blame health insurance, ok? A woman needs it and marriage is considered a “qualifying life event” in the insurance world. Our one year wedding anniversary is coming up in a few weeks, and my home state of New York just legalized same-sex marriage on Friday night. Oh joy!! So let’s talk about MARRIAGE, huh? And yes, please be forewarned that this will be a US-centric post because that’s my context.
June 26, 2011
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” Author Witnessed Real-Life Gang Rape, Never Reported It
the international best-selling “the millennium trilogy” and its author, swedish journalist stieg larsson, are making headlines again, after his life partner of 30 years revealed that larsson left behind an unfinished fourth novel when he died unexpectedly in 2004…without a will, and leaving her nothing except an ongoing bitter battle with his father and brother over his now-considerable estate. gee, thanks dood!
better known as ”the girl with the dragon tattoo” series, the first book (in swedish) was originally called men who hate women…
June 23, 2011
Casey Anthony: Judged Guilty by Cultural Prejudice?
Medea by Delacroix
Real crime TV shows are rapt with the Casey Anthony case and have been since the first 911 call was made. Crime show hosts and commentators, normally neutral, are actively prosecuting Anthony, ridiculing her every move in court. Did she wipe away tears? Fake. Fraud. Was she stoic? Heartless psychopath. Did she laugh along with everyone else? Monstrous.
Filicide — the murder of a child by the parent — is a horrid crime, but does this case merit relentless coverage? If so, why?
June 19, 2011
Hef’s Fiance Runs Away; Bristol Palin Lost Virginity While Drunk
i was tempted to call this piece “this week in rape culture” but unfortunately, these two stories, as noteworthy as they may (or may not) be, dont even begin the scratch the surface of rape culture, or what has happened this week “in rape culture” that we do and do not know about.
first, playboy mogul and liberal-dickwad patriarch hugh hefner’s fiance crystal harris calls off their wedding at the last minute…
June 19, 2011
Re-Membering
“Continual complicity in the crime of Goddess-killing is mandatory in the Man’s world. Our refusal to collaborate in this killing and Dis-Membering of our own Selves is the Beginning of Re-Membering the Goddess –”
Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Mary Daly, (1978)
“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that… You say you have lost all recollection, remember . . . you say it does not exist. But remember.
Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent. “
Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig, (1971)
June 17, 2011
Defining WOMAN.
There is lots of talk about what “woman” means. It’s practically a cliche feminist topic! But the debate takes on new meaning in light of transsexuality’s destructive “gender” conservatism. Post-modern anti-essentialism seeks to dismiss the experience of womanhood by claiming that anyone can choose to be a woman and, in any case, we are too diverse to be generalized about. This is not true. Women are all subject to the tyranny of compulsory heterosexuality that dictates the sexual-ized behavior of humans according to the mutually exclusive classifications of “man” and “woman.” Women have shared life experiences as “girls” and as “women.” Radical feminist theory seeks to expose the ways in which trans theory, like patriarchal reality, denies female self-determination and imposes upon women their own false (read: male-serving) definition OF “woman.”
read more »
June 16, 2011
Creating women’s culture
Inspired by two posts, On Feminist Writing, and I’m tired of Being the Token Woman, I’ve been thinking about what it would take for women to reject malestream culture en masse and create their own.
Women have traditionally had two choices when it came to the arts: to express truth, or be acknowledged.
June 13, 2011
Queering Women Invisible
Guest Post by AMAZON MANCRUSHER
This post is for all of my sisters, but in particular my sisters who are involved in queer activism. Like most of my recent radical feminist writing, it won’t be popular with queer identifying people, but I believe it important for me to write about my perceptions of queer culture, because I do not believe queer will liberate women, anymore than any other patriarchal culture. For me, queer culture almost eliminated me as a woman.
June 13, 2011
Making Revolution: Our Radical Feminist Future
Sheila Jeffreys recently guest posted an excerpt of a speech which she delivered at the alternative conference which my partner, Amazon ManCrusher, and myself organised in response to the bullying, harassing and intimidation that radical feminists were facing from pro-sex industry activists and queer/trans activists. In brief, the Melbourne Feminist Collective formed to organise Feminist Futures which was “a conference that aims to provide a safe, supportive and active space for discussing different strategies to create a feminist future. It is an open environment for anyone interested in imagining and creating feminist futures in our community.” The conference organisers were well-intentioned but politically naive, obviously having no idea of the hot water they would be jumping into, trying to organise a conference in which “participants will have the opportunity to critically engage with issues across a broad range of feminist perspectives and agendas.”
June 11, 2011
Female infanticide & child abandonment
“It feels as if you’ve been turned inside out. You’ve just given birth and finally you feel emptied. You’re exhausted. Your breasts are painfully full of milk. And then you look at your baby. And you see that she’s a little girl. And you know that you have to kill her.” Vaira Mani drops her head in sadness as she recounts the death of a neighbour’s newborn baby. It is as if the child had been hers, for she speaks with a conviction that seems to come from personal experience….
June 10, 2011
Defining Us Out of Existence: “Transmen” Are Still Women
Guest post by Bev Jo
It says something about what a threat transsexualism is to patriarchy if fundamentalist Iran kills Lesbians and gay men, but pays for transsexual surgery and hormones. If patriarchy can’t kill us outright, then they co-opt and confuse us.
June 9, 2011
Liberal Dicks
For anyone living in the U.S., you’ve almost surely heard of the situation that New York Rep. Anthony Weiner has gotten himself (and several women) into.
read more »
June 5, 2011
Pope and Islamic leader agree: child rape is normal and men’s right
Fazlul Haque Amini, an Islamist cleric, said, “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.”
What Amini is really protesting is the Bangladesh’s government passage of laws protecting girls from rape that splits them wide open and results in death.
read more »
June 5, 2011
Steering the Sluts: Prof. Hugo Schwyzer Organizes Los Angeles SlutWalk — Update
SlutWalk, Los Angeles apparently went off without a hitch yesterday, no thanks to hugo schwyzer who as an “organizer” apparently had to negotiate a last-minute “crisis” which was caused by the organizers not making sure all their permits were in order, and that their venue wasnt double-booked, before getting thousands of women to commit their time and energy to this project…
June 4, 2011
“I wish you were just totally helpless, so I can be in complete control”
About two months ago the artist “Milow” released a new single and it has been slowly rising in the charts in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It was no doubt intended as a kind of laid-back, summer, love song. However hearing it and seeing the music video has left me feeling incredibly creeped out. Take a look:
read more »
June 2, 2011
Money is not a substitute for consent
Whenever the issue 
of prostitution is broached, people often refer to it as a “job like any other”. “Most” or “all people hate their jobs”, is the phrase that rolls off the tongue without much consideration and they ask the person who frames prostitution as institutionalized rape “would you be doing the kind of work you do if people didn’t pay you for it?” To which I can answer without hesitation “I would and I have, and I still do when a friend or relative asks me to.” This is both because I like my job and I happily do the people I care about a favor.
read more »
June 1, 2011
The Question on Nobody’s Lips
Guest Post by Betty McLellan
I’ve been a feminist for a long time (since the 1970s) and I’m still waiting for politicians, community leaders and social commentators to ask the question: WHAT IS IT ABOUT MEN?
Even in the face of horrendous violence by men against women and children (Darcey Freeman; and Tania Simpson and daughter Kyla Rogers) along with allegations of high profile men raping and abusing women (Dominique Strauss-Kahn; Silvio Berlusconi); even with all the evidence we have that something’s not quite right with the male of the species, there is still impenetrable resistance to focusing on men’s behaviour and asking: what is it about men? It seems that the only people with the courage to ask that question are radical feminists.
The ability of mainstream, including mainstream feminists, to ignore the elephant in the room is mind-boggling.
read more »
