It might seem out of place to centre a man’s work in the final part of this book review; but Kate Millett chose to conclude Sexual Politics with an analysis of Jean Genet’s plays (which is not the same thing as a general critique or ”appreciation”) , and I’m glad she did, because it makes for an electrifying climax. The last chapter will send chills down your spine.
January 17, 2012
Sexual Politics (Part II)
This is Part II of a three part post. Part I is here.
I’m still trying to fathom how to break down this masterpiece; hopefully by Part three I will have worked it out. Meanwhile I’ve summarized Chapter two, because this is the part that makes me want to dash out immediately to order some T-shirts or print out some bumper stickers…
January 3, 2012
Sexual Politics (Part I)
I’ve decided to kick start the New Year with a three-part review of the mother of all radical feminist works : Sexual Politics by Kate Millet.
When I first read this book I knew I had found the work of a true intellectual; no pretensions, just genius. The majority of the non-feminist Great Works of political or literary theory I’d read up until then were suddenly revealed as fakes. Later, I would enjoy the work of other radical women, but most of them acknowledge Sexual Politics as being influential, if not foundational, to their own writing.
December 18, 2011
Can Women Escape from Men?
If women as a group were able to escape male violence, we would not be men’s victims. Women as a group have obviously not yet found a way to stop or escape rape, wife abuse, incest, sexual harassment, or other forms of male tyranny. (Dee Graham, in Loving to Survive)
A new survey released in the U.S, entitled The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, details the extent and effects of male violence against women. It is a nationally representative survey that assesses experiences of sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence among adult women and men in the United States and for each individual state.
December 10, 2011
British women protest FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)
A march took place in London Harley street today to raise awareness of the increase in gynaecological cosmetic surgery.
In Western countries FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) is associated with tribal cultures and Islamic extremism. Articles inviting us to express horror at the primitiveness of other cultures and religions proliferate in the media. This emphasis diverts attention away from the fact that FGM is also a highly prevalent cultural practice of Western countries.
November 9, 2011
Great American machinations revisited: W. Burroughs’ plan to eliminate females
William S. Burroughs was a great American intellectual, novelist, poet and essayist, considered to be “one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century”. He is something of a cult figure, having had eighteen books published, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, excluding the books in which his interviews and letters appeared. He also recorded with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
Burroughs held a strong belief that women were superfluous and should be eliminated. He wrote seriously on this issue, which I will address in a moment. But in case you are under the impression he was being ironic by promoting this grand plan of his, it’s worth pointing out that he “eliminated” his own wife with a gun, getting away with it, unpunished, on the grounds that her murder was “a sex game gone wrong.”
November 3, 2011
Women Make it Up, say politicians
The British government’s attack on women.
It’s no longer a secret that the British coalition ConDem government (Conservative/Liberal-Democrat, for the non-Brit readers) has been making a steady and concerted effort to put the women’s liberation movement back twenty five years. Think I’m exaggerating? Read on.
The Lib-Dems received a lot of support from the female electorate, women who would never have voted for the right-wing Conservatives, but were disillusioned by war-mongering New labour.
So let’s take a look at the way women have been treated in return for their troubles.
Shortly after being elected, the ConDems prioritized a proposal allowing anonymity for rapists.
October 3, 2011
From S/M & Love to Activism [BDSM Part III]
**This is part III of a three-part post. Part I and Part II are here.
S & Love
After diving into the complicated depths of female masochism, addressing sadism is like coming up for air. Due to its simplicity. Because a woman should never forget that whatever her personal feelings on the matter, and whether or not she gets off on pain and humiliation, the inescapable truth is that she is with a man who enjoys hurting her.
This may sound obvious. But many women seem to be in complete denial over the fact that men really and truly do want to hurt them; despite the fact that the patriarchal propaganda of porn has now permeated the entire world. Turn on the TV any night of the week, watch almost any movie, and it will invariably involve men hurting women. In a brilliant Orwellian coup, men have somehow managed to convince women that hate is love.
read more »
September 26, 2011
The Mind/Body Split [BDSM Part II]
**This is Part II of a three part post. Part I is here.
Trauma Bonding/the Mind-Body Split
We cannot know for certain how many women in the BDSM scene have experienced rape or childhood abuse, but in the context of asking ourselves why women should fuse pleasure and pain perhaps it hardly matters when we consider that women are conditioned to masochism by the wider society.
It could be one incident, one boundary violation, one man taking more than he should, one rape. Or it could be the drip-drip of marketing messages depicting women tied in chains and ropes, found in the most innocuous places such as between the glossy pages of teenage-girls’ magazines, and reproduced in popular culture as far as the eye can see. Images beamed out to the masses from highway billboards, high-street clothing stores, and the silver screen, all parrotting the Big Brother message that an immobilized and bound woman is a beautiful one.
That these distorted depictions of female sexuality are today regarded as normal, reasonable and good is reminiscent of another collective societal psychosis that once took place elsewhere, one that Chinese women bore the brunt of for a thousand years: culturally condoned foot-binding.
read more »
September 18, 2011
Create the Problem, then Offer the Solution [BDSM Part I]
**This is Part I of a three-part post.
The measure of a group’s oppression is not how well their oppressors can convince them to accept their lot, or how completely they give up hope of rebellion; nor is it the extent to which their sense of self becomes so thoroughly annihilated that they lose awareness of the very fact they’re oppressed.
No.
The measure of it, is how well you can convince them to enjoy their oppression. To revel in it. To seek it out. To regard subordination and pain as a path to freedom. The measure of it, is how many women you can get to embrace the belief they are being subversive when they are permitted to glorify their degradation.
August 24, 2011
Book Review: Being Married, Doing Gender, by Caroline Dryden
Being Married, Doing Gender is a little-known book with a decidedly Radfem feel. Dryden illustrates how marriage has been ignored in mainstream psychology to a suspicious degree. The field has traditionally been dominated by behaviorism, namely the study of rats, followed by cognitivism, the study of innate differences between the sexes. And that’s about it. Emotional experience has been completely overlooked and in her 1999 research she set about changing that.
July 23, 2011
The Perpetual State of War that is Patriarchy
There is hardly a sadder virtue than Resignation (Simone de Beauvoir)
A woman lays down flowers for the victims
Today, a man dressed in police uniform went to a youth camp full of teenagers, rounded them all up as though he was about to give a talk, then open fired with a machine gun killing 91 and counting.
Some of the kids lay on the floor playing dead, but being the systematic patriarch that he was, Anders Breivik didn’t miss a trick and walked up to each cowering body, shooting the heads one by one. Some tried to escape by swimming away, so he shot at them in the river, where the search for bodies continues.
July 8, 2011
Polish Government proposal: Submit to compulsory gynecological examinations, or be fired
cylindrical metal speculum for examination and treatment in Sims posture
“The Polish government wants to give an order so that women would be forced to undergo cytological, gynecological examinations (also called cervical smear tests). In other words, the Polish government intends to make such examinations obligatory. The Polish Minister of Health wants to make women devoid of their work if they refuse to undergo these cytological, gynecological examinations.” (Quoted from a petition currently being organized by Polish women).
“Devoid from their work” means they will be fired.
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.
May 18, 2011
Give her honour, you fools, not reverence
“Women’s liberation must be mothers liberation or it is nothing.”
Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman
[As I finished writing this article it struck me how imortant it was to preface it with some context.
Briefly, I am from a working class background in the UK. My grandmother worked full time in a factory while my grandfather minded their seven children at home (After the Welsh collieries were shut down he never found work again) My mother worked full-time while raising five children, eventually out-earning my father.
