SILENCED!
During most of last month, this site and the home site of our candidate for President have been shut down by the service providers, because a bunch of Internet hoodlums thought it was funny to use up our bandwidth. This site has been moved, and so far has survived a few waves of assault. The links to the home site for Heart, her labor of love constructed long before her blog existed, then extensively redone about the time she started blogging, are broken until she can restore her site. That will happen, sooner or later. The attack on Heart was multi-pronged. First her forums got hacked, taken over, stuffed with taunts, threats, links to pornography. I personally, with a witness, watched this happening. The malice and glee in the ravishing were palpable. Heart wrote about the initial wave of attacks here, here, and here.
This was vandalism, wanton destruction, total violation of privacy and freedom of speech, not just of Heart but all the participants of her forums, whose vulnerable email accounts got hacked as well. Yet this was only an initial volley of blows for Heart. Threats of rape, mayhem, murder, and then after she had nearly finished repairing the damage, her site got shut down by malicious overload. She tried reopening it, only to be met with fresh attacks. I tried that too once, same result, so I had to move. Heart, I, and selected friends with our own sites got at least this overloading treatment. I could watch it happening, the access log growing so fast, some hits carrying assaultive messages. The term the culprits use is raep. It did feel like a sexually charged assault, ripping my moorings out from under me, swarming me to force my voice, my way of fighting back, off the web. I call these attacks terrorizing, intimidation, low blows, unfair competition, dishonorable bullying, misappropriation of public resources for malicious purposes. This Anonymous group of hoodlums claiming responsibility says it is all done for laughs, pleading apolitical humor. A sense of humor entertained by silencing and terrorizing women is all about politics as usual. They piled onto the attacks on women bloggers by male rights activists who have been hounding women bloggers for years.
The reasons given by those claiming responsibility are elusive if not silly, all demonstrating contemptuous disrespect for women and freedom of speech. Bottom line, rebellious women are seen as fair game for a few varieties of mayhem. Heart got illegal as well as technically legal floods of traffic. This site has not been hacked and received no direct threats. Heart is still getting vicious threats, death, rape, mutilation, you name it. This site is seen as fair game as Heart’s campaign site, though this party was started thirty years ago by myself and a few friends, and most of the home site has been on the web since just before Y2K, this blog only this year. I do not know Heart in real life. Most of my web friends I first encountered at the Ms. Magazine forums, shut down in 2004 because of trouble with trolls. Only one web friend knows who I am. Heart and I have many opinions, influences, and interests in common, but vastly different experiences. We have issues, do not agree on everything, but that is true of everyone I know. We are individuals, diverse, deep thinkers, and the friends of Heart more diverse, far from monolithic, dogmatic, rigid, frigid, maniacal, hysterical, irrational, fanatical, impractical, or whatever else uncomprehending souls think.
Radical feminists are accused of many things that have nothing to do with truth, but much to do with deliberate distortion, such as unjustifiably hating men. Anger and hate are not the same. What men call hate and what women call hate are not the same. I could define the word to fit my anger with men, but that is too vague for me. Besides, my intimate partners happen to have been male. Sorry to have to say the obvious, radical feminists have so many variations men do not want to understand. Not as media or any of our enemies portray, radical feminists are revisioning perspectives, developing different ways for everything. Conventional ways are not working out. This planet may already be past the point of no return, and climate change may not be the worst of the consequences of male ways of doing business. Women have too many reasons to be angry with men. Some radical feminists have no use for men at all because of all these reasons. I am disinclined to go that far, but I will not support male candidates for office, at least until women achieve too big a majority. That could be called a boycott, but I call it skepticism. I do not believe men on a political level. There is too much the best of them do not understand. I do appreciate when a man makes a good faith effort to leave the male value system behind, but for me, I am part of a feminist revolution, which cannot be represented by men, though if men want to contribute, I will not say, do not bother trying to help. I believe decent men could have a role to play in educating old-fashioned men out of their willfully ignorant vicious contempt for women. Perhaps if enough men renounce the ethos of dominance, violence, and cutthroat competition, that could put some pressure on men to change their ways. I think it more likely men will change their ways only when they lose their power over women, which I believe can only be taken from them by political means. The male ethos is suicidal, not practical. Women have different ways, life-affirming ways, ways to coexist harmoniously with Nature, and with men, those few and far between who will reciprocate.
I do not expect any of my enemies to read this, let alone understand what I am saying, or read carefully between the lines. This could be an olive branch to male potential friends, or a throwdown to enemies, take your pick. I believe men can be partners with women. Most men would disagree, or see intimate partnership in ways I consider condescending or meaningless. Men may choose to remain stuck in their rotten ways, but I will not accept that means I must defer to men in any way, though I cannot live that way and keep a job. I make bitter deals with men to survive at work. Most women are in that boat. Some own businesses and have more freedom. Men are insulting, expecting women to keep supporting them politically. Women now have alternatives, and men take loyalty for granted at their peril.
Being silenced for over two weeks felt infuriating, stifling, imprisoned by gang raepists just waiting for me to try to get up from underneath their weight so they could stomp me down again. This was not fun or funny in any way for me, however much merriment the practical jokesters and desperate foes are having at the expense of Heart and her allies. Heart has had her blog, but her Wikipedia article got censored, broken and mislabeled links are on another referencing her, and as of this writing, threats are marching into her now heavily moderated blog, sending comments from me and other friends into moderation, and womensspace.org is still down. Heart is busy making a living along with everything else she does, like most women, but she will get her home site back up. Then her campaign will kick into high gear. In the meantime, I and others have felt forced to exercise restraint. Mine will soon disappear.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Originally I was going to sign up with my fellow Anon on this matter. Originally I was just going to leave a malicious comment. Why? Well, I’ll get to that right now, I suppose.
Do I expect you to read this? Well, yes, I suppose I do. I had the decency to read your views in full since you had more sense than your average Femnazi, so I would expect equal respect in return.
You see, this may be difficult to understand, but Anonymous is about freedom. That’s the entire basis. You claim you fight for freedom, yes? Even if, in many eyes (including my own) women already have freedom and beyond (more on that in a moment), freedom is what you fight for. Well, we also fought for freedom. That probably sounds silly to you considering your views, but trust me, we have fought for it. You can see it in the censorship of everything that Generation X enjoys. TV, music, videogames, the lot. The feeling I had when I first saw a pair of naked breasts in a video game was an ecstatic feeling for me; and no, it had nothing to do with the breasts themselves. It was about the fact that the game was able to do that. I actually have a major vendetta against fan-service of any kind, especially using sex to sell, but that wasn’t the point here. It wasn’t using sex to sell, it was doing it simply because it could. Like engineering a supercar only to go fast, or engineering a bridge only to be tall; aiming, not for efficiency, but for transcendance. Human nature is about surpassing our limits time and time over, and censorship, for many, was a big one of those limits.
And that’s what Anon is about. I’ll be flamed to hell for this but the urge struck me to try and show you OUR ways, which are difficult to understand when such a big part of our ways are making it hard on those who don’t understand our ways. We find it amusing. Quite a similar feeling to our unique blend of freedom would’ve been felt, I imagine, by the first females to get into the voting booths. We are pioneers. Whether we’re opening the doors for an age where everyone can speak their mind without fear of being arrested for a hate-crime, or for a government crackdown of massive, tyranical proportions, is unknown. But pioneers we definitely are.
Anyhow, that’s my first point. Anon is about freedom, that’s the main point. Saying that Anon’s raiding you is a breach of your freedom of speech is hypocritical to the definition, as Anon is the very personification of freedom of speech. A show of exactly what makes the internet such an amazing technological leap; it’s the only thing that isn’t destroyed by censorship and political correctness. It also doesn’t help that you claim this is a breach of privacy when you were the ones who set your blogs to public. Your privacy is in your own hands, and you cannot call foul when someone chooses to use the right that you yourself granted them. By setting your blog to public, you give anyone permission to comment on it, good or bad. This much, I had hoped, was common sense.
Onto my second issue. And that’s one I’m sure you’ve heard a hundred times over, but I’m going to restate it because maybe you’ll realize that, despite me being Anon, despite me being a male, my logic is sound.
Females do not have it bad in the first world.
Quite the contrary, they have it very good. While it is true that the female gender has its downsides – some people refuse to take them seriously, others look down upon them completely – the pros far outweigh the cons. A woman can get away with murder in this society, simply for being a woman. If it involves a voice or being in front of people, a woman will get the job over the man, and will be paid better – I work in hospitality, I know this very well. If it is her word against a man’s in front of a jury in a court room, who will the jury believe? The female. Unless maybe you’re in Kansas, but that hardly counts.
A woman being charged for rape is nearly unheard of, same goes for domestic abuse. I’ll cut a potentially very long story short by saying that many of my girlfriends have comitted civil crimes that, if roles were reversed and they were the male, I could’ve quite easily sued the shit out of them for. A nice highlight was being socially exiled from my highschool because of false rumours of rape, spread by a malicious ex-girlfriend.
On top of this is the current generation’s anti-mainstream-mainstream, as I call it. Many people in the 16-24 age-bracket simply love to stand out from the norm, and I think that male feminists have never, ever been even CLOSE to as common. ‘Metrosexuality’ is at a ridiculously high level in this age bracket, to the point where being masculine will put you in the minority. Protestors haven’t been as common as they are now since Vietnam, and people will look anywhere for an excuse to rebel, to try and stand out from what they perceive as the norm without even realizing that they’re following the protestor in front of them. Hillary Clinton’s place in the whitehouse is assured; you have more support than you try to convince yourselves.
To sum all this up, much of your talk is simply illusionary. Rape? A horrible crime no doubt, but nothing self defense can’t fix. True, being at the mercy of a knife makes things more difficult, but I can say the same thing for being mugged, beaten near unto death and left in the gutter for the night – a situation as equally likely for a male as rape is for a female. Power? I must agree with feminist claim that men are gullible and shallow. A large bust measurement can have them clucking like a chicken should the average cunning female wish, and through this females have just as much, if not significantly more, power than men.
Money? Employment for a female is dirt easy for the same reason as above; men are suckers for eye-candy. And, respect? Well. Employment, income, skin colour, sexuality, fashion sense, music taste, accent, strength, upbringing, neighbourhood, hair colour… The list goes on. There are many, many, many, many, many ways someone can be discriminated against, acting like gender is any worse than any of the above is foolish.
The problem here is quite simple. Females want ‘equal rights,’ but that’s just not possible. As you yourself admit, the male and female minds work very differently. Personally I think that females are ahead in this equality struggle, simply because they have almost the same rights as men, with the added bonus of being able to manipulate everything in a mile-wide radius simply with a pout, a puffed-out chest and a flutter of the lashes. And yet even with all this, feminists still want ‘equality’. Which is a blatant lie. What feminists want is superiority.
Am I generalizing here? Yes, I am. But come on. A male tax? Assurance of females in the white house? All this on top of the rights that you’ve already secured for yourself, but refuse to admit? Court cases, certain jobs, manipulation, you have huge advantages in all these things and so much more, yet still, you refuse to admit you’re equal? If you can’t see that much then this last twenty minutes has been wasted on attempting to shed some light on someone whose eyes are closed.
Oh, and just for the record; any good psych will be quick to tell you that pornography is a completely normal thing for a child of this generation, and depriving a child of it is quite possibly the single best way to have him either foolishly get a girl pregnant or become a rapist.
But really, I think you just need to read over your ideals. You’re underestimating your so called ‘enemy,’ as, I must say, is typical of feminists. We’re not trying to ’silence and terrorize’ women (Anon will argue with me on this though it will all likely just be for lulz), we’re trying to make you realize that you have your equality, and that your blind march for power has just kept on going until you want men to become the oppressed ones as females once were. I can’t blame you, in a way; when you’re in an underdog position it’s near necessary to take an extremist stance, to blow up your ego and elitism or you simply won’t be heard. But now men with enough brains are trying to shout out and stop you before you go too far.
Your other section on what hate means to ‘radical feminists’… Well. You claim we don’t want to understand. It’s more we can’t understand. You jump from idea to idea so quickly that most men are cynical that even you radical feminists understand what your idea of hate is. Or anything else. But when you use terms like ‘educating,’ ‘old-fashioned,’ ‘willfully ignorant,’ cutthroat competition,’ etc, you do only one thing. You try to boycott men, exactly as you say your companions have done. I back Darwinism in its entirety; I believe that cutthroat competition is the way that the strong rise above the weak. I’m sure Oprah would agree that you need to be strong, and difficult competition is exactly what it takes to make someone strong. That’s just one way you’re alienating not only all men, but maybe even fellow women who think the same way as I do. Not every woman sides with feminism, y’know.
Your next section is one of the most interesting, to me. You claim that you are forced to defer to men. That you must make bitter deals, to survive at work. I’d ask exactly what these are? Working for a male manager? Receiving a pay check from him at an hourly wage? Men expecting loyalty for your paycheck? This is not oppression, and this is not gender descrimination. This is the work force. This is how it works. I’ve seen my fair share of female managers and they operate no differently. If you think that having a male as your manager is a sign of oppression than you are most likely far too gone into fanatatical feminism to even have properly read my response thus far. I hope I have misinterpretted you there.
I hope this gives you some food for thought. Some insight into the mass of freedom that is Anonymous, and some insight into how a logical, rational male may see your arguments.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
You call yourself a logical, rational male. Sorry, guy, I know a few males I do consider logical and rational, but you do not qualify. Go read some feminist literature if you want to know why I say that. I will give you a couple of clues, just for the hell of it. I have no time to refute you point by point.
There may be a few women seeking superiority over men, but to most feminists, the concept of domination is the problem, so reversing roles is no solution. Neither is Hillary Clinton for President; I see no significant difference between her policies and mainstream Democratic policies. I boycott men politically, but this is irrelevant to my sexuality. Do you think to flatter me saying I have more sense than the average feminazi because I am heterosexual? Feminazi is a contradiction in terms. No feminist has the power or desire to ape Nazism. What you call female power to manipulate men through sexuality is not what I call power, and certainly does not compare to or compensate for male power over women. Men notoriously manipulate women through our caring for our lovers and children.
Hacking a forum and the email accounts of its participants, as was done to Heart, certainly is a breach of privacy. I have no idea what privacy means to you if you call that assertion hypocritical. Forcing her home site and this site to shut down certainly is violating freedom of speech, or is that a privilege reserved for you pioneers? Your leaps of illogic are pathetic. A blog in the public domain is not open to all comments, good or bad. A blog can be open to the public so anyone can read, but opening it to bullshit serves no purpose. I was dubious about allowing your comment through, but I decided it was revealing enough to be worthwhile. In a way, you are making my case for me. To sum all this up, much of your talk is simply illusionary. Sorry to turn your words on you like that, but you asked for it.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
If you would like to have an intelligent debate, I’m up for it.
First off (because it is most glaring to me), the argument about what blogs are open to on the internet.
When you make any form of media accessible to the public via the internet, it is foolish to think that it is not open to criticism. Not only foolish, but judging from how you so righteously wave the flag of free speech, a hypocrite. Then again, for some people, it’s difficult to learn the rules of the internet, if it is indeed at all possible to learn them.
As for shutting down the homepage, that was not the act of some legion of ‘internet hoodlums’; with the right tools (easily accessible), a group of 10 could easily take down a site such as that. Not all of us took this action, but generalize if you must. It’s much easier, and safer, I’ve discovered, for the mind to group various people together into tidy lots. And isn’t it just a time saver? But whatever you decide to do regarding it, remember that we’re not all rallying to overload bandwidth. I myself am hoping to find some form of debate here. I am hoping.
Now, I am not much of the same type as to fully understand the mindset of the attackers, but I can almost guarantee a mixture of two motives: for the almighty lulz (I don’t expect you to understand that one), and another one I think you misunderstand greatly. They do not attack because you’re an uppity wimminfolk, trying to step out of line; they gigaload because, plain and simple, they take most of your sermon as plain bitchiness. You would be surprised at how many of these attackers care little about your gender. True, there are misogynists among ‘us’ (I hesitate to use such, as I barely associate with the group in question), and more act as such (purely for the lulz, you understand), but when it comes down to it, more people care about what you’re saying, rather than who you are.
Now, on to the meat of my argument: gender itself.
Yes, Anon is all about the lulz, but we’re not limiting ourselves to just women; if you could see our long list of raids of the past, you would see we’re a very indiscriminating group. If we can get laughs out of it, we go for it. Anonymous is a powerful thing; we are not afraid to voice our opinions, to do what we like (which is a whole other can of morality I hope we won’t get sidetracked on), to be ourselves. Many of our members do so because they have little choice in the real life; whether it be from physical weakness, being deemed ‘ugly’ (in any number of definitions) by society, or from suffering the pressures and restrictions placed on us all by our peers and ‘betters’. Ironically, Anonymous is our way of escaping from the crushing pressure to live a life expected by our elders, and the ridicule of those we know, or maybe even hold dear. Nearly every person living life today suffers from this, to varying degrees, and we all handle it differently. Sometimes, we do not react in ways that are beneficial to ourselves, the people around us, or the situation itself. All of us can be guilty of it, and most people will be at one time. I wouldn’t like to assume, but I’m going to speak my mind; I believe that you dealt with it by falling into the trap of the Discrimination Card. I’m not saying there haven’t been men oppressing you. What I am saying is that if they were women, or if you were a man, you would suffer all the same. I myself have suffered in my life; the home I grew up in was taken from me by the simple fact that it benefited someone financially, and ever since, my life has been a montage of bad homes and moving. Ever since, my family has been fucked over relentlessly by those chasing a buck, and I hate to say that the quality of our bonds has been stressed because of it.
I am in no way trying to rival your hardships with my own. I do not even know what hardships you’ve been through. I am trying to point out that the old saying is true: life fucks us all. We are oppressed, but it’s not always (and I hesitantly venture to say it is mostly not) because of our gender, our race, or anything like that. To put it quite bluntly (and horribly , when you understand the implications of it), they simply don’t care enough. To anyone in power, we are either dollar signs, or support to get more dollar signs. Aside from those twisted enough to hold a vendetta against, and gain some sadistic satisfaction from pursuing the vendetta, people of specific persuasion, it simply wouldn’t be cost effective to hunt them down, to build laws against them, to oppress them without personal gain at every corner.
I do not pretend that females are without specific oppression, but I do claim that nearly every group is. Females are seen by some as sex objects, are simply inferior. On the flip side, cities with large populations of minorities get shat on by the people with the power to help change the horrible conditions they suffer (and living in cities such as those for the majority of my life, I could verse you all day about it). I do hope my point is getting across (and also that my point is met with nothing more of a counter-point than a suggestion to read feminist literature; I’ve seen many debates stutter and fall flat, when valuable points could have been made, when those on the side of feminism decide that (in an extreme example) anyone who is opposed to neo feminism doesn’t even understand what they are opposing, a saddening logical fallacy), though I know my mind doesn’t enjoy focusing for extended periods of time. I hope I was able to put my point down at all, in a comprehensible manner. I hope that you decide to put this comment through; it is not trolling, flaming, and it is a great attempt (trust me) of putting my thoughts on the matter into words; I hope that is a good enough reason for someone on the other side of your opinions. And if you decide as to let it in, and to debate it, I hope it is a bit more comprehensive than what you’ve shown in the last post, and I hope that I have provided the material to produce such.
If you decide not to, I ask you to at least email me with a reason as to why you decided to suppress my voice, and possibly to debate in private.
Good day, and blessings.
-Red
September 26th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Red, there is a huge difference between legitimate criticism and bullshit. The previous commenter said point blank, what feminists want is superiority. That is bullshit, pure and simple, and I have no patience with that line of argument. Since that seemed to me to be the main point of his argument, I felt no desire to debate in any sort of comprehensive manner. There may be a few exceptions, but most feminists do not believe in one sex being superior to the other. Got it? I really do not care whether enemies of feminism believe that or understand what I mean by it.
Your dissembling about who took down this site and womensspace is disingenuous. I looked at the logs while it was happening. It was far more than ten people, and I suspect womensspace got hit a lot harder than this site. Not to mention, the site which claims to document the lulz puts the lie to your claims as well. What the hell are the rules of the Internet? Are you aware that site I just mentioned said this site has been taken down by the Internet Police? I have not been over there in awhile, but that is exactly what it said. Not a gang of internet hoodlums? What would you call them?
I could care less if they take my “sermon” as “bitchiness.” I am a thoroughgoing skeptic, especially of religion, and find that description offensive. Regardless of how anyone feels about what I say, that confers no right to silence me. I happen to care about freedom of speech. If I did not, I would not give you or the previous commenter the time of day. However, despite my profound objections to your arguments, I acknowledge you and the previous commenter did put some thought into what you wrote.
I agree most people are oppressed. That is one reason I find it ironic that those who feel oppressed, such as your comrades, would take it out on feminists fighting all forms of oppression, such as Heart and myself. It hardly matters that Legion has had its fun raiding all kinds of people. Sexism is often an unconscious form of oppression, as racism can also be. This culture indoctrinates both into everyone. I am trying to say, it does not take deliberate intention to perpetrate sexist or racist acts. On the contrary, it requires deliberate intention to avoid acting in sexist or racist ways. This is true even for women. This culture rewards women for selling out other women. Feminists have battles too, sometimes nasty ones, though those outside seem to think we are all alike.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
“We’re not trying to ’silence and terrorize’ women ….. we’re trying to make you realize that you have your equality…”
It is your job to *make* women realise that they have independence and autonomy, is it?
October 25th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
It seems that the boys are up to their old tricks again. They are not accustomed to having so many women in so many countries rise up, and challenge the global system known as male supremacy.
Calling women Feminazis is the term coined by the conservative ideologue Rush Limbough, certainly no friend to freedom or equality. Feminism in its modern form goes back to the 19th century, when men fought tooth and nail to prevent women from getting the vote. You need to look at the real NAZI and what they did. I don’t see women raping and killing in massive global programs, and I don’t see women building concentration camps like the real NAZIS did. Our crime in your eyes is to simply challenge you, to fight back, and to take our rightful place in the public sphere.
I think most men have no idea what the lives of women are really all about, and they are not a very curious lot. They did everything in their power to prevent women’s history programs from gaining ground at universities, they have blocked women’s entry into professions and still do this, and they rape and kill women to a degree that this would be called genocide if men had been subjected to this.
All of this is statistically obvious. Men are accustomed to this privilege and enjoy attacking women personally. Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, you name it. Men call rape humorous, pornography fun, and sex all about domination. It’s just who men are. Any challenge to their authority will be met with constant attacks, and I found the best way to deal with them is to not bow down to their arrogance.
They expect women to be compliant and silent. But we aren’t. They have tried for years to hail the “death” of feminism, but in every country of the world, things are changing.
You’ll find women starting to surpass male college graduates, and for the first time in his-story, Harvard will have more women graduates than men. In a short period of time, women have excelled in the very professions men tried so hard to keep us out of. The father is a disappearing figure in the American family, and thus that model of patriarchal control of women will be gone.
Men out of their terror will attack women, and try to shut down our websites and derail our Internet presence. That’s what they do. The male brain is primitive and reptilian, and all men began as females in the womb.
They can whine all they want, but feminism is here to stay, and its many forms are mind boggling.
Women excell at complex communication, while men wallow in retitive games such a baseball or basketball. Men are easily exhausted in a complex political discussion if its not about them. When women run the show, there is more of an egalitarian spirit to the enterprise.
In Southern California, there are more women run small businesses than just about anywhere in the U.S. and their innovative programs are complex and interesting. Think of the collaboration on Ebay, for example.
The truth is, men have coasted and never had to really work every hard as long as they had the old boys clubs. They were dependent on privilege to advance in the world, and are unaccustomed to women becoming serious players in the professions. All the men recruited for work at my office are long gone — they couldn’t cut it, for example. Even with the advantages they have of creating a male friendly work place, they can fall behind.
Women have assets and considerable power, and we need to know this. We can be of infinite help to each other. Our businesses can serve women and empower them.
You can get a good idea that you are dealing with enemies in men, men who are petty, mean and envious of the freedoms women won. We didn’t fire a shot in the feminist movement, and I can’t say that about any movements for your freedom. We do things very quietly and non-violently.
Our movement for human rights ennobles the world. We can negotiate and mediate.
Women have to throw off internalized sexism, and that’s a big issue for us now. So when women unite in these discussion rooms, and create Internet space for ourselves we have the thing that men have long denied us — technical power of the “presses” so to speak that men cannot control anymore.
So you are the men in weakness, the men in violence, the men in your pathetic addiction to pornography and violence you call fun and sex. I condemn your species for its incredible cluelessness, its cruety– think witchcraze in Europe and America, think Hustler magazine, just think about the utter trash you turn out in Hollywood movies, with all your action toys and violent video games.
The times they are a-changing, and these woman hating posts are good for other women to read. It’s good for women who believe men to be saints to see you for who you are–envious of the great variety of lives and lifestyles women create for themselves and their families.
We have gone way beyond our assigned roles in the 1950s to extraordinary achievement. What have you men become? Still the rather dull worker bees you’ll always be I guess. Still the same dull suits, still the same bland “presidential faces” — patriarchy leaves something unique to the male world — boredom. Ultimately you bore us and we yawn at your pathetic attempts to destroy women.
Think Ayaan Hirsi Ali, think of the feminists in Middle Eastern countries, think of Queen Elizabeth I and the golden age. Women heroines have complexity and moral delight. What do men do as heroic–”get medals” for killing people! Fighting wars that destroy whole societies, create yet more weapons of destruction. This is the legacy of many men in the world, and then there are the rest of you who just sit back and let your evil brothers contaminate the earth.
You lie about freedom, you lie about democracy and you think you can lie to women endlessly and we’ll fall for your idiocy yet again. Your time in history is up. You need to retire your old routines. Yes, you’ll still call women names, you’ll still attempt to pinch butts at parties in people’s homes, and you’ll still rape and brutalize women at the cinema and in real life and call this entertainment.
You are what you are. But women are on to something new and creative and exciting. You could really listen and have fun and come along for the ride. You could actually learn to be better conversationalists, but our freedom is just too much for you.
Perhaps you hate free women so much, because your real fear is that we will take over, and we will do to you what you have done to us. Straight men fear gay men, they fear being “treated like women” but you never question treating women badly. No you fear our power and our wisdom, and you try to destroy it.
Women read what these men say about us and our desire for freedom. Read what they say about the non-violent human rights movement that was about half the world’s population. From Rachel Carson and Silent Spring to Mother Theresa, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Vita Sackville-West, to the women of Wimbledon who finally are getting paid wages equal to the male tennis players. To good old Billie Jean King…
I salute the great women who have inspired me, and I enjoy the power and income I fought hard to get. There were good male allies in all of this, but you pathetic bloggers give all men a bad name. When you go along with these men in silence, you too become their victims, you too collude in the violence, you too would be considered accomplises in crime!
October 25th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Satsuma, thanks for your profound rant. A couple of fine points. I do not know if the male commenters to this entry are bloggers; at any rate, they did not leave any link to a blog. I find it telling they came here apparently looking for discussion, but had no response to my response. Also, I think men make their brains primitive and reptilian by what they value and believe.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:36 am
I owe Satsuma something of a response to her comment here, and challenges she has posed on the womensspace blog. Heart had to close a thread that got too far out of hand. For those who do not know, Satsuma has created a stir at womensspace for, I shall say, caustic observations of heterosexual women. Is Satsuma in all this trouble with affronted women for them taking personally her literary device, attacking heteronormativity through her anger with all the heterosexual women in collusion with the enemy? Is heterosexual woman meant as all, or in general, or what I call her role stereotype? When I mean to say all, I say all, but by default, men means men, in general, as a rule. This is a literary device, not an absolute statement declaring something inherently true of all men. I see Satsuma describing heterosexual women she observes, directed at those her description fits, not rebels, not even those rebels who refuse to look at what is being said, preferring to feel insulted over angry words not directed their way, or defend what needs no defending. I think the role stereotype of women is far from the truth of most, but men are more sheepish, likely to follow the roles they learned to play. Women act differently in public, depending on audience, how trustworthy the present company is considered. Women are so far from safe in the world at large, our paltry share of representatives playing it safe, tokens allowed to play the game of politics with the old boy network. They may represent liberal feminism, the brand of feminism of Hillary Clinton, representing reforming the system with a female touch, not to rock the boat for her well-heeled backers. The divide between liberal and radical feminists is a major hurdle for the movement.
Men get off the hook too easily if it is assumed they cannot change. The truth is closer to, men can change, but it is difficult and demanding and most cannot be bothered, think the suggestion offensive or worse, some variation along those lines. I think it is much worse than laziness, it is deliberate and malicious for men in this day and age to believe they are superior to women in any way beyond literal individual physical distinctions, like size or upper body strength, usually more developed in men than women, though that, like all men have created, is subject to change. I do not expect men to take the initiative to make the effort to change on their own. Women are revolting against all that, so will get around to changing everything. Male fear of this is their problem. Let them demonstrate if they are so upset at freedom of speech. Not every man on this planet has that problem. Men, you are not stupid. Think about what I am saying! Why do you resist, hold on so hard to your ideas and beliefs? How can you believe you deserve any better than women? Is it religion, or something deeper? Whatever it may be for any given man, I am sure it will block most men from thinking twice about why women might feel like revolting.
The onus is on heterosexual women to revolt. Lesbians may have starker choices, but their numbers are too small to affect the political power structure directly. The forms of what I call collusion vary in degree and kind, but are all bad news for women. What I mean by heterosexual women colluding with the system is going along with such male inventions, accouterments of imposed femininity of woman defined as subordinate sex object as:
Breast implants. Hormone replacement therapy, still taken by millions. Toxic hair dyes and cosmetic ingredients. Wearing high heels, makeup, fashionable clothing beyond workplace requirements. Unnecessary surgeries, including reproductive. Unnecessarily dangerous birth control. Food bioengineering, mutating crops, destroying biodiversity, environmental quality, and food value to make a few corporations more money. The mockery of the idea that Hillary Clinton represents the interests of women. Sexual harassment and hostility to women in the workplace. Perversions of sexuality like sexualized violence sold for profit, doing big business on the web, stoking and normalizing men terrorizing women. Beauty and fashion industries, in principle. Unhealthy diets and eating disorders in the quest for male approval. Competing for male approval, in principle. The acceptance of male expertise despite their long list of disastrous errors. The list goes on, could be taken more generally, as in Why Women Are Revolting.
Many women feel they must conform to some of those forms of standard male philosophy, designed for male comfort and convenience at the expense of women. Why are more women not revolting? Why do women put up with all the crap? I think it all boils down to fear. Men, in general, get angry when their authority is challenged. Male anger is intimidating because men get violent, rape, beat up, kill women on a regular basis. It may be awhile before women en masse can revolt against any or all of those. If girls learned self-defense in school, that could force males to think twice. Heterosexual women have sufficient reasons and numbers to carry out a revolution politically. Lesbians have their own reasons and ways of seeing and expressing things, but not the numbers, so they have another culture many people have no idea exists. I do not have to agree with an idea to find it or the perspective behind it interesting. I can always learn from other worlds I cannot know directly.
Independent political action in the form of a feminist political party was floated by NOW briefly, but dropped in the face of widespread derision, just before Ross Perot jumped in, getting Bill Clinton elected. I see most women as underground rebels, not confident enough to show that face except around trusted friends. For many, I suspect part of the reason is not wanting to lose what could be lost, like a job. I am relatively subdued myself at work. My revolutionary side is not visible or suspected. Why am I willing to hide this way?
I think it is because I feel I have no representation, no way to trust the system to stand up for my rights or freedom. I do not feel represented by Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton. Not even close. They are part of the system, not revolting against it. Impeachment is off the table, indeed! Republicans had to intervene to rescue the Kucinich resolution to impeach Cheney from summary dismissal! Instead it is sent to committee to die. This is just another betrayal, nothing new, really. I expected no better from a male-dominated liberal political party. Leftists have some ideas of some interest, but are hopelessly divided, disorganized, lukewarm profeminist at best, unlikely to influence politics despite the public disgust with politics as usual.
This creates a huge power vacuum, which in a way has always existed, but not so starkly as now. Women could step into that void and claim rightful representation. What is stopping us? What would happen if women revolt openly? Would we lose jobs and relationships? Personally I think relationships not able to support open expression are not worth the trouble, but it is not easy for women to walk out of a relationship, even if children are not involved. It is easy to say women should be financially independent, but in practice, the system deliberately makes that difficult. This is all tied in with how women are valued by men, and by other women. Women may seem timid for keeping rebellion underground, but where is the outlet? Perhaps with trusted friends, like the consciousness raising groups of old. Some women join groups. Most still probably have never heard of Heart, the Free Soil Party, or any kind of attempt to organize feminist revolution. The plans were delayed by the antics of Legion, but there may be a sneak preview of a platform soon which might create a stir in the media.
In the lives of heterosexual women is the seed of rebellion. The philosophy of the system is mirrored in how men mistreat women, all about winning, dominance, men feeling macho. Can women afford to call men on this? Can women afford not to? I think not, but I can only see it happening through sheer numbers. A woman can nurse her sense of self and rebellious feelings underground, but still vote for representatives of feminist revolution. Once women feel we have representation, those rebellious feelings can begin to surface. Men may react badly, but once decisively repudiated politically, men would really have no legs to stand on, protesting women speaking freely. In the meantime, women have to weigh what rebelliousness may cost. Many find no outlet for anger, so it turns inward, keeping the woman locked in a box clawing herself. The average relationship or work environment is still unfriendly to women, hostile under the surface if not openly. Any form of defiance can be costly, unless one is in a position to challenge reactions.
I cannot be angry at a woman for colluding with the system out of fear, if she is only a rebel underground. I suspect the vast majority of women are underground rebels, at least in some respects. My anger goes straight out to the system making it seem natural for men to control women with the threat of violence, or other abuse of authority. Women have the power to call male bluffs. It may seem reckless, but it is more reckless to let men continue on their merry way. They do not know how reckless they are, and the extent of the destruction they have wreaked is unimaginable, growing every day, running from the most intimate and personal matters to the capacity of this planet to sustain life. Women must revolt. Our lives and the lives of every living being down the line are trashed more severely all the time. If a woman cannot rebel overtly, she can still vote for representation. This is where liberal feminists complicate matters, more likely to stand in the way than be of any help in a feminist revolution. Some liberal feminists may be open to radical ideas, others antagonistic. Some are too comfortable with their place in the system. It is such collusion with the system that makes me angry, not collusion that seems necessary to survive in this world.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:50 am
I read Heart all the time but never comment there. One of the reasons I don’t comment is that any new appearance of a new name is suspect there, especially if the new person has a viewpoint that differs from the majority. I find it ironic that in a place that is supposed to be inclusive and supportive of women, I never felt I could comment unless I was willing stifle my own opinions in an effort to gain approval from the masses there.
But Heart is not my reason for commenting. When Satsuma first appeared on the scene, I expected Heart to treat her the way she would treat anyone else who came to her blog and spoke disparagingly about other women and yet that never happened. Heart stepped in and asked that everyone give her a chance because she was new at this “blog thing.” Heart asked that we view Satsuma’s writing through Satsuma’s eyes and Satsuma’s life experiences. From the beginning, that was nearly impossible to do, especially if you were one of the straight women that Satsuma despises so viciously. It’s hard to take a step back and view things rationally and emotionlessly when her words are littered with hate for heterosexual women.
What truly amazed me, however, was Heart’s willingness to support Satsuma knowing how she was coming across to a lot of her loyal readers. Satsuma is clearly a misogynist and anyone who disagrees needs to go back and read her words from beginning to end to confirm this. One reader suggested that Satsuma acted (wrote) exactly like the men she claims to abhor and wants to rid the earth of. And I agree with this. She takes all of the vile things that men do (berate and belittle and try to silence) and she does them herself in her writings on Heart’s blog but it’s ok to do them because she is a lesbian woman? Is that the message Heart wants to send others? Because that’s what she is telling us.
The one line that really sealed my confirmation that Satsuma does indeed take on the personality traits of men was her response to one of the woman there. She told the woman that she was being “too sensitive” or oversensitive to Satsuma’s posts. It reminded me exactly of my husband when I am attempting to tell him how I feel about something. Sometimes if I get upset about the way he speaks to me and I tell him this, he will tell me I’m being “too sensitive.” It’s not ok for him to dismiss my feelings and it is not ok for Satsuma and Heart to dismiss them either and to bob and weave with the explanations on how we’re not really reading what’re we’re really reading as though we are complete idiots and need them to translate for us. That is offensive and insulting and why Heart condones this is beyond me.
I’ve always found it a little bit strange how certain lesbians claim to hate men and yet some of them walk around looking like men and speaking exactly like men with their abusive language. I would think if you hated men you wouldn’t want to look like them or speak like them but maybe I’m wrong. All I know is that Satsuma looks like a user and a troll to me. She uses someone else’s blog to pop in and out of to cause drama then sits back and watches the fireworks and asks what the heck all the ruckus is about. She contradicts herself from comment to comment and has to get in at least one zinger per post directed at stupid straight women
And just in case you missed Satsuma’s abusive, misogynistic language directed at straight women, here are exact words and phrases she uses to describe straight women (just a quick perusal of a couple of posts:
whining, stupid, too sensitive, airheads, slaves, silly slave-like, when women marry and have children their brains go into decline, superficial, pitiful, bathering, yelping and wailing, cowardly and afraid of confrontation, incredibly afraid of serious discussions, living in la la land, our words lack in integrity, crabs, weak, make excuses, het women go like this giggle, giggle, tee hee, baby-making machines. And the list goes on.
Satsuma calls this “speaking her truth.” Nice. And when someone calls her a King, she says SHE’S insulted? LMFAO.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Carol, I used to feel similarly about Satsuma, but it became clear she was speaking about heterosexual women she encounters, not all of us. How accurate her perceptions are, I cannot say. Some women do exhibit such behaviors. She may think her perceptions are representative, whereas I think they are more representative of the female stereotype, or of how women hide around people not trusted, than of actual women. I do not think she is like a king, or a man, and describing lesbians that way is insulting. As a woman who has always felt like a tomboy, I do not even know what that is supposed to mean. Satsuma has strong opinions and complex feelings, likes hyperbole, and is furious with women who support the system. She has also acknowledged knowing little about the lives of heterosexual women, beyond what she sees.
Your perceptions of womensspace are surprising to me. There have always been widely varying opinions there, at least the way I see it. Why did you feel you would have to stifle your opinions there?
November 29th, 2007 at 11:50 am
whining, stupid, too sensitive, airheads, slaves, silly slave-like, when women marry and have children their brains go into decline, superficial, pitiful, bathering, yelping and wailing, cowardly and afraid of confrontation, incredibly afraid of serious discussions, living in la la land, our words lack in integrity, crabs, weak, make excuses, het women go like this giggle, giggle, tee hee, baby-making machines. And the list goes on.
I agree Carol. Satsuma is a perfect model for the examples in a verbally abusive relationships.
Yet people I once admired and respected allow her to continue and make excuses for her.
Aletha, you cannot, CANNOT claim Satsuma is talking about heterosexual women she has met in real life when she responds specifically to the person who called her out, i.e. Miranda. Miranda asked Satsuma to reply and Satsuma said you wimpy women. So even though she is responding to Miranda, everyone should understand she is not talking about Miranda. Right, that is some apologist’s bullshit and you know it!
You know I suspected all along that that little group over there had secret meeting spots that never included me, even though I was told that I was included. I suspected that many of its members did not think highly of me, and that many of its members have betrayed me in one form or another, but I never, NEVER, would have thought so called radical feminists would sacrificed other women who have been along all this time, for the attention of a lone King. To be honest all the stepping and fetching and idolizing Satsuma reminds me of some stupid playboy bunnies vying for Hugh Hefner’s attention. It is sick and I will not deny that when Satsuma hurts one of you that I will not have to force myself from saying “I told you so.” But fuck us right. Fuck other women, THE KING HAS SPOKEN! Long live the King. And this is what feminism and unity is supposed to be about? Worshiping a KING while others are fucked over, or should I say FUCKED IN THE ASS THE WAY A MAN RAPES A WOMAN!
But go ahead, dismiss the stupid heterosexual women who do not fall in line with the King, the seduction of the King is obviously just too fucking irresistible. What do we know, we are just dumb old women.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Thanks Althea for the kind words. Everyone is free to write on the Internet. It’s a place for all women.
I’m looking forward to knowing and understanding more about my courageous writing sisters out there! Isn’t this grand!
November 30th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Say, Kitty, I went looking for that whimpy women rejoinder, to see if it was a direct response to Miranda, but I could not find it. Where was it? I think I remember Satsuma using that phrase, but where?
How is it you do not seem to think your recent comments are abusive? Or is it all right by you to retaliate in kind? I am sorry to see you making such wild accusations. You are not doing your case any good, especially with this nonsense about King Satsuma. Now it is those who stand up for her right to free speech are seduced by her? What is wrong with you? This is a matter of principle! There is no such thing as safety on a public blog, and to say only lesbians are welcome at womensspace is such a crock, I cannot believe you would stoop so low!
November 30th, 2007 at 4:17 am
“Say, Kitty, I went looking for that whimpy women rejoinder, to see if it was a direct response to Miranda, but I could not find it. Where was it? I think I remember Satsuma using that phrase, but where?”
It’s no longer there but it was the last line of comment number 72 of this blog post, which was, “Whimpey (sic) women!”
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/11/14/the-religious-right-and-daughters-as-property/#comment-72762
The misspelling of the word “wimp” twice, once at the beginning and again at the end, of the comment caught my eye. That’s why I remember exactly which comment I’d read that in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“How is it you do not seem to think your recent comments are abusive? Or is it all right by you to retaliate in kind? I am sorry to see you making such wild accusations. You are not doing your case any good, especially with this nonsense about King Satsuma.”
Huhm. This is very similar to what men tell feminists and other women when they’ve expressed anger, well, angrily. “You’d be more likely to get others to take you seriously if you if you were nicer about it.” “You’ll never get what you want by demanding it instead of asking nicely for it.” In other words, Kitty should be nice to those who abuse her and then maybe they’ll stop doing it. At the very least, even if the abuse doesn’t stop, others won’t think of her as having stooped or anything like that and she’ll still have their approval.
Being nice and asking abusers politely to stop abusing has never worked before. Asking nicely didn’t and won’t prompt Satsuma to stop verbally abusing any of Heart’s other readers any more than asking men nicely has ever prompted even one of them to stop abusing even one woman.
I understand why Kitty blew up, how and why her anger grew to that point. That doesn’t mean that I approve of or would recommend the use of the abusive tone and words in her last post there, if for no other reason than that it took the focus off of Satsuma’s abusive remarks and put it on Kitty’s response. The truth is that I would have liked to have said some of the same things myself but I learned first-hand that doing so can and will backfire, leaving the abused looking like the abuser. I went off like that before and like Kitty, even though my message was justified, my angry and abusive words took the focus off of the one who’d been abusing me, making me look like the abuser and the real abuser looking like the victim.
Looking past the way that Kitty exited and at the bigger picture of exits, she’s not the first to leave or at least to stop posting at Heart’s because of Satsuma. She was just the loudest.
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When you read this, Satsuma, and you will because it’s about your favorite subject (You!), don’t presume to know my motivations, emotions or anything else about me. That you’re reading this, my first comment at Aletha’s blog, is proof of nothing except that you’ve mastered navigating the Internet and can read. The text you’re reading certainly isn’t proof that I or anyone else is afraid of you. Your presence at Heart’s has rendered commenting there pointless, not frightening, like arguing with a fencepost. Limiting us to only one comment in response to you per day is Heart’s way, whether she knows it or not, of saving us from spending too much time beating our heads against a wall.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Yes, try to shame me with your words of accusing me of stooping so low. I know I am being abusive. DUH! The fucking point. When people talk the way Satsuma talked to the women (who she does not consider peers) the way she does, it provokes a desire to fight back, the whole fire with fire thing. Actually according to Satsuma’s spouting ideology if I did not abuse back I would be inferior, because you know, we should run after people and beat the life out of them. I feel insulted and I was dismissed and dismissed and dismissed, long before I became abusive, that is the FUCKING POINT!. I tried the nice and polite way, as well as Funnie and Miranda. But it was dismissed. We were shamed into silenced, talked in circles into silences or at the very least forced to take a new approach while Satsuma was allowed to continue her superior/inferior dialogue approach, never saying she was sorry. But when I gave Satsuma a taste of her own medicine, you and Heart came running because Satsuma is a lesbian, –oppressed. In other words, her oppression is more important than my oppression. We all as women are oppressed, yet other women protect certain women (my point, because some women are treated more worthy of protection than the others, and at this junction it looks like the ones worthy of protection are lesbians), but then the women who are deemed as those nasty bitches who are favored by men are used as a scapegoats, whipping post “Go ahead and talk about those bitches”. AGAIN MY FUCKING POINT! How are allies made and kept if some women are allowed to be abused and others are not and by other women no less.
The response to Miranda was there in black and white long after Satsuma was supposedly changing her approach. If it is not now, then Heart edited it out when I noted it in order to protect Satsuma. When all along, what would have suffice would have been an apology from Satsuma. But NO, we cannot have a lesbian apologise to heterosexual women (even when that lesbian have been clearly verbally abusive, you know, dismissive, belittling, generalizing, the whole verbaly abusive man like model) because she is a member of a marginalized sect, we can only force those heterosexual women to behave properly, after all those cunts get a few crumbs here and there from those menz by default assumption. Even though we all know damn well a man will turn on a woman quicker than shit.. But no! Let’s not see that point. Let’s just allow a lesbian to abuse the heterosexual women on a board that is supposedly a safe space. HAH. What a fucking joke. Safe space. LMOA! Just like men, kick the bitches that will make you feel better! That is what happened over there. Some who are staying are perhaps trying another approach, but I am sure there are others who by conditioning have fell in line, come another way to keep the man from abusing. Whatever. It should be the abusers responsiblity to not provoke the violence, not the other way around.
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/11/24/feminism-a-movement-to-end-human-suffering/#comment-72759
The wimpy women comment was in #18. But good ole Heart edited it out to protect Satsuma. It was in direct response to Miranda. PERIOD! Ask Heart, ask Satsuma, ask if Satsuma did not call Miranda a wimpy woman. Oh but I know, it was in general. Right. Whatever. Thanks for the sisterhood. You all are lying hypocrites.
But don’t worry, I know the tag line……..”forget her, she is a crazy bitch.”
November 30th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Well Aletha….sorry I must have transposed letters on your name, but I think I got it right this time!
‘Abusive” is an interesting word. How I translate it on Heart’s site — women use that word a lot there. Abusive is a comment women level at other women whom they don’t agree with. If you have a valid criticism about majorities and you are a minority, the majority labels calling out the majority as abuse. It’s the psycho babble that invaded feminism I think in the late 70s or possibly this woundology crept in in the 1980s.
Women get this crazy idea of safety. Somehow the whole feminist movement is supposed to be this cotton candy type place. There is no “safety” at all in the world. None anywhere, except that which you feel within yourself. There is no security in the world at all, except that which you create within yourself.
The genius of radical lesbian feminism, is that it invented an ideology to name things, to reveal political realities. For example, I’d always felt uneasy around all the “sex lesbian” stuff of the late 80s — On Our Backs, S & M — pornography– it made me sick, and I also felt somehow personally attacked by those who advocated feminist pornography. The whole sexual revolution seemed highly suspect to me as well. I couldn’t put my finger on this, I couldn’t name what it was that bothered me. Back in the day, this feeling of unease was labeled as “being uptight” “puritanical” etc. Radical feminism named pornography as terrorism against women’s bodies, and rape as a terrorist tactic to keep all women in line, which all men benefit from whether or not they have or have not raped any woman.
I think a lot of women have a lot of trouble with political commentary, because for the most part, they are untrained in the use of reason as a tool. Instead they take everything personally. Not all women, but I find that there are not many women who actually look at the logic of my arguments one way or the other. Straight women are the majority, and they do diss lesbians to preserve their place in patriarchy. They fear us often for reasons I don’t understand, but then again the threats that keep straight women culturally in line often have little or no affect on me.
In many ways, the power of heteronormativity creates a kind of indifference on my part. I don’t benefit from that world, so I feel no investment in it’s objectives — its perks, its seduction. Straight women are often seduced by male created “femininity.” This seduction goes into high gear in the fashion industry, the make-up industry and the multi-billion dollar diet industry, to name a few.
A lot of lesbians find this rather silly. A lot of us, not all, but a lot in my age group, are not interested in those worlds at all. We find the beauty of women something entirely different from the beauty a lot of straight women buy into. When women don’t buy into the beauty myth, some straight women go off calling us looking like men. But really, we are not looking like straight women, and most men would laugh at this. We are not at all like men, we are like lesbians — we are not straight, we don’t live by those values.
Our feminism isn’t the same as straight women’s feminism. Straight women simply have different issues and contradictions to deal with.
This type of discussion can often make many straight women in the world very uncomfortable. They are not used to the minority looking so closely at the majority’s public behavior. Yes, it does feel like the a revelation of a candid camera moment. So straight women get mad and counter attack lesbians for even pointing this stuff out.
Can women be honest about their different positions within feminism? Are women really in pursuit of freedom? Do women care about free speech?
Do most women even want to engage in a discussion of the actual issues?
We can all work to make the world better for women, but we do have to honestly deal with the isms out there. I would say that my comments aren’t abusive, they are more descriptive. It is generally true that I find majority women perplexing, and I wonder what prevents them from truly acting in their own self-interest to gain freedom in the world. This is an honest existential reflection on my part.
Actually now I am kind of laughing at being called King Satsuma; guess I’ll have to find where my kingdom is out in the world
Or maybe I am Queen Satsuma, we may not know her country we may not know her queen… but we vow to thee our country all earthly things above perhaps.
I don’t respond to people who just go nuts calling me names. But I am interested in the women who are bright enough to see my larger arguments. Yes, it does take a lot of intelligence for straight women to even begin to get lesbians. I know it’s hard, you don’t usually have much access to our groups or culture. We’re off on our own, and a lot of us “blend in” in order to be able to function in so-called “women’s organizations. I say so-called because “women’s” is a code word for “straight women only.” If you’re not the out group, you can’t imagine why lesbians would be so critical of majority women. You get all bent out of shape because you’re used to running the show or the movement or whatever.
When lesbians gain more power, and create more publically available spaces, straight women are welcome to come into our culture, or become a part of our spaces. You’ll be the minority in our majority, and that’s where the most insight and learning occurs. It’s the same for white women who live in non-white countries — that way they begin to “get” racism, for example.
Since lesbians grew up, for the most part, in straight families, we know a lot more about you, then you know about us. When you insist that we communicate and walk on eggs to protect your delicate selves, well this gets a little exhausting. It’s the same thing men say about women: why don’t women act more like men to “get ahead.” That sort of thing.
There are women who find my words very refreshing. A lot of lesbians probably are afraid to speak out as directly as I do, because they actually fear the straight “masses” jumping on them and piling on. I guess, I always look for the few allies out there, and since straight people have been picking on my all my life, I have come to have very low expectations of both straight men and straight women in general.
Lesbians created a world we felt validated in. We created a feminism that made us feel powerful. We created the tools to make a better world for ourselves, and I can say that this made a huge difference in my life.
Suddenly I was free to pursue my dreams, and I didn’t have to bow down to heteronormativity at all. I never assimilated into that world, and yet I made my way out of cleverness and study, and just plain fun.
I rose despite straight people, not from any help they gave me. I took feminism farther than straight women really want to take it a lot of the time. Of course you’re going to get irritated when I point this out, but you can’t deny that our body of work and its influence world wide. That is if you have ever read any of our books to begin with. I am sure most of the straight women here have done extensive reading in radical lesbian feminism, and you understand well our critiques of heteronormativity. I assume great knowledge on your part, and I’m sure you’ll demonstrate this well in your commentary and points and counterpoints both here and elsewhere on the bloglands.
Helpful hint: words like “abusive” strike me as evasive, there is no such things as safety on blogs — intellectual virtuosity yes, uplift and power yes, but safety — well I don’t think straight women are very adept at “creating” safety for lesbians, but then again I simply don’t ever think you’ll do this. I don’t want to waste time on safety, but I love ideas and the power they give all women who sincerely want freedom without any compromise.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I keep missing the blog commentary here and there. Things get added I think after I’ve gone past a commentary. But this gem below just had me laughing so hard that I had to comment.
Being compared to Hugh Hefner, since I have always been against pornography, really takes the cake as best outrageous anti-Satsuma Cobra venom bite of the year (or possibly of the decade). People used to call me puritanical, but nobody I ever knew would even remotely consider calling me Hugh Hefner. Love the logic of women sometimes. It’s just name calling, but it bears no resemblance to an actual political or sociological belief. This one I’m going to retell as a great story. To my friends, I am THE most uptight, anti-sex, anti-pornography, puritanical 19th century type you could ever hope to meet. I even cringe when swear words are used in my presense. I had to tell friends who smoked pot to not do it near me. I’m just this person who hates those words, worlds and things everyone else always says: “But EVERYONE is doing this!”
Calling me Hugh Hefner, would be as outrageous as me calling straight women prostitutes for selling their bodies to men in marriage. That would be an ugly untruth, UNTRUTH for the internet deaf out there, and I would never ever think this. I’m just drawing a parallel between the name callers and their line of logic. You really have to be aware that I am observing the public behavior of women, and I am trying to understand why we haven’t advanced a lot farther in feminism and women’s self-government — however you choose to define this.
Who holds the movement back? Who upholds the status quo and why?
Who does it privately? Who does it publically?
Poor Hillary Clinton, too bad for her that she really is going for it, but you’d never know it to listen to what women say about her here.
The presidency is not about radical positions. Roosevelt created the New Deal because he was afraid of the power of Eugene Debs, who I believe got over a million votes on the Socialist party ticket. Mainstream democrats had to face socialism in America, that’s why they stole the ideas of Socialism. That’s where social security came from, for example.
Radical unionism and communism brought us the eight hour day. Communists supported African American civil rights in the 40s and 50s. There’s a great essay on a black man from the 40s I think, who learned how to read and write and become an activist, because Stalinist agents came to America to support African American freedom. I was astonished to read the account of this man’s life, and his loyalty to Stalin, just as a lot of the American left supported the Soviet Party line for a very long time.
They all claimed later that they didn’t know. Even anti-Shah Iranian feminists supported Khomeini in 1979. One woman told me quite recently that she didn’t know either. We had a very good talk, but that’s another story.
I see feminism in the same way. We radical feminists are just pushing the boundaries. We create the grassroots power that affects the mainstream candidates. Hillary Clinton may be a very bad president, we don’t exactly. But I trust her a lot more than I trust Edwards or McCaine or even Obama. I am sick of men getting that job since the beginning of this country’s history. I think she’ll do a pretty good job.
Now if you want this to change, you’d have to create a feminist country or even a feminist state government first. This is actually doable.
Men all the time predict that Hillary will not win, because WOMEN don’t support her. But Hillary really is a feminist in my book, and has been one ever since the 1970s. She has been on very good terms with lesbians, and for sure she isn’t perfect. She’s not radical, and I don’t expect many women to be radical.
I know that Hillary represents a kind of transition figure in women — first lady then Senator. You didn’t see this before. I respect women who step out and subject themselves to the incredibly hostile male dominated process known as electoral politics.
We at the grassroots create the movement and move it forward. Mainstream women jump on board as our ideas gain currency. Just a small example here: once upon a time, girls were not “allowed” to wear pants. Very few young women even know about this today. When I was in junior high, I wore pants to concerts I played in. I was the only girl who did this. The only one. Somehow, most of the kids just let it be, and so did the conductor. My Mom told me decades later about the really nasty things she heard women sitting near her at the concerts say about me. They had no idea that the vicious insults were overheard by the mother of the child they were bitterly attacking. I think it really freaked my Mom out.
What she was hearing was lesbian-hatred in the raw, only she didn’t really fully understand its meaning. Years later, she called a woman out for homophobia at a banquet she was attending. My Mom came out swinging, and I was proud of her courage. She’s very conservative, and yet, courage comes to her. It’s how change comes about in the world women.
Incidently, my Mom hates Hillary. She’s just too threatening for that generation of women who views her as a radical, a socialist and weak on terrorism. Hillary represents the challenge in a symbolic way. Do women support mainstram women in mainstream elections? What does it take for viable women out there to get the benefit of the doubt?
I know this is going to cause a tiz out there in blogland, because I perceive Hillary hatred and bashing as a new kind of radical feminist sport.
You don’t get radical anything in the U.S. presidency, except for maybe George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, and I’m sure we can all agree that we would have rather had Abigail Adams as a president back then.
We have to decide as radical feminists what we are pushing for to create the next level of acceptance in the mainstream. I’m doing my very best to be a completely out lesbian everywhere I go, including in scary conservative business environments. It’s my personal work, because (you won’t all believe this) but I am an incredibly charming person, and I have a million strategies for dealing with the most difficult and complex people.
I do call out the conservatives on the sexism, and I do challenge them for their homophobia. I can see sometimes their feeling of personal shame, because they were afraid to defend me from the backstabbing that people engage in to discredit lesbians and feminists. The men looked sheepish and ashamed. I knew they were too afraid of “peer group” pressure among their guy friends, they were afraid to call other men in an all male group out for womanhatred. The men in a sense, were failed allies.
I know it takes guts out in the world. We fail sometimes, and then decades later we have change. My Mom suffered in silence to hear all that mean attacking hatred of me back in 1970, but in 1996 she stood up to a homophobe at a “polite” event.
This all seems a bit off some topic, and I’m not sure about what I’m trying to get at here. I’m trying to make some point, and I’m searching for the words to say something that is a little beyond my grasp, and yet I know I am getting somewhere. I’ll have an answer soon women, it’s just my personal search in the world for the answers we need to move forward, to feel powerful, and to learn from each other. It sure isn’t easy for me, but I am trying!
November 30th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Secret meeting spots — over there…. Hmmm, is there a Da Vinci Code masonic lodge for radical feminists? At the Heart of a vast left wing conspiracy…. sign me up if we’re having great feasts and fine dining!
Kitty quotes:
“You know I suspected all along that that little group over there had secret meeting spots that never included me…”
“I suspected that many of its members did not think highly of me…”
For the record, I am not a member of some secret Internet group. You may be right Kitty, many of this group’s members did not think highly of you. I don’t think highly of you because you use swear words that are the words of rapist men. But you do use them and you do use them against women. So far you are not likeable, but also somehow I forgive you.
As always, I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it! Guess whose quote I am stealing here and you get 5 points for knowledge of 18th century history
You kind of remind me of my beloved lesbian groups back in the 80s. Something would blow up, and a woman would whine “I feel excluded.” Another favorite whine of my people back then was “I feel violated.” Anytime strong women leaders emerged, the other women would just pile on with the “I feel excluded!” “I feel violated!” complaints.
Now both these phrases seem like a cute and fond memory, and I realize that it is very hard for women to work together if they come from some oppressed group. Horizontal violence they call it. So what I do Kitty, is I observe everyday life, and I call things as I see them.
I try not to take criticism too personally, and I can fully appreciate women’s anger. Your anger does carry a bit of courage to it, but it also kind of sets you up. There are a lot of women out there who probably won’t feel all that kindly to some women who uses vulgarity in such a rude manner. It usually denotes youthful ignorance, or a lack of imagination.
Either way, it will send women to the “secret meeting place” and you’ll “feel excluded.”
I’m interested in your ideas, things you’re going to do to be creative in service to the great cause of women’s freedom worldwide. Now that would be exciting, because I think you have all of this in you. Don’t just beat up old Satsuma, although you can if it makes you feel better.
Old Satsuma, oh don’t you cry for me…. I’m a comin from Louziana with a banjoe on my knee…. that’s all folks
December 1st, 2007 at 2:11 am
Way too much attention to style here, and not much substance. Surely we can all get back to ideas. But hey, you can continue to write about Satsuma if that is your latest obsession. Probably boring everyone to death here, I’m even boring myself
December 1st, 2007 at 2:58 am
Until you apologise to me and the other women for all the nasty things you said and still say about women, you are invisible. I cannot bother to read your rubbish a minute longer. When you write my name, it feels soiled, dirty, RAPED. You are no friend to women. It is not about style, it is about your hatred for women, your verbal abuse, it comes through as clear as clean glass.
Aletha, it is there in black and white, but you refuse to see it. Just read what she writes. She hates women. Women stupid, Satsuma King. It is in the words. READ READ READ! I will no longer indulge this man.
December 1st, 2007 at 3:43 am
Cool Aunt, I doubt you picked the correct comment, though you are so sure you remember it. Comment 72 was almost two weeks ago. The comment you linked to is the very last on that entry, to date. You and Kitty are insistent that Satsuma has been abusing readers of womensspace. I do not see it that way. Your comments about asking nicely are besides the point. What is the point of asking nicely? I see Satsuma responding to all manner of confrontations. I see her bending over backwards to reiterate over and over again that she is not talking about the women confronting her. She has a different point of view on collusion with the system, since she has carved out a niche for herself in which she can challenge sexism she encounters, much of the time. This is not a common experience for women. As I said above, we have much to lose, and what could be gained is often not so clear.
I see Satsuma expressing anger at the enabling of patriarchy. Her anger may or may not be appropriate from the point of view of someone else, but she specifically and repeatedly excluded those confronting her, and she has done so again here. From my standpoint, I have to be more empathetic, since I am not in a position to feel safe to challenge sexism I encounter, most of the time. In my relationships, I certainly have, and I think I have taught a few men a few things. This did not prevent my brush with death, however.
Kitty, your feelings of being dismissed and abused may make sense to you, but this is not my experience with Satsuma, and I think you are holding onto a grudge that does not do you credit. Lying hypocrites? Yeah, Kitty, thanks for the sisterhood. Indeed. Would you care to elaborate? I always prefer to be informed about my blind spots. How is standing up for the right of a woman to express a point of view I may not like lying, or hypocrisy? Did you really expect your feeling of safety at womensspace to survive a presidential campaign? Free speech is an important principle to me, and I agree with Satsuma that there is no safety in this world, and particularly not for radical women.
Satsuma, I am curious about your remark about Hillary bashing. Do you not see her as colluding with the patriarchy? She challenges sexism in some ways, true, but it is hard for me to see how her policies differ from mainstream Democratic policies. From my point of view, feminist collaboration with the Democratic Party has been a big reason why feminists were forced into a defensive posture. That party is thoroughly opportunistic and unprincipled, and I think Hillary is no exception. Your remarks remind me of what is called political reality, which is considered practical, just the way things are, but which I reject as male self-serving fantasy.
December 1st, 2007 at 9:12 am
All right. I finally know the infamous ‘whimpy’ comment that everyone is talking about. Here’s my response:
Leave me out of it.
My only concern with Satsuma’s remarks is that a woman would actually take her advice and find herself in jail or physically injured. After the year I’ve had, people calling me names on the internet ranks somewhere very near the bottom of my list of things I feel the need to worry about.
If I decide to respond further to Satsuma, then I’ll respond to her.
However, I will NOT be the excuse for this fight to continue.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:08 am
Thanks again Aletha. It appears that there is no winning here, and I will apologize AGAIN (I did this before but I guess a lot of folks missed that one) for any unintentional harm I have caused women here. Believe me, I am not deliberately trying to do anything here, I am simply trying to be as honest as I can be in the process of sisterhood and freedom. As a lesbian, I want my freedom and have to speak up. Just as straight women have to speak up to the men in their lives. We have to get at the nitty gritty of oppression and learn! And although I think it is a waste of time to defend myself, I do have to do it now and then. Stands to reason.
We just aren’t all going to agree on everything, that’s all. I’m not angry at all the passion here, but I do know I am situated differently in life. Since I really don’t know any of you at all, I’ll just have to focus on what moves me to think and act in the world, what energizes me creatively, and hope that in the long run, sisterhood will prevail. That’s the best I can do folks.
Aletha, your perceptive comments on Hillary are actually true, as is the corruption of the democratic party. Both parties have completely sold out to corporate interests and we’re in real trouble with the rise of corporate unchecked power now. Just read a book called “Blackwater” and see what they’re really doing in Iraq.
But anyway, what I’m getting at, is I don’t see Hillary as a bad bad woman. I know she is trying hard, and I know the Clintons definitely reached out to the lesbian and gay community back in the days when NO other major candidate was doing this. I tend to have loyalty to those who try, and I know when Bill Clinton talked about lesbians and gays in his inaugural speech, it really caused my family to get it, and my relationship with my family has improved a lot because of Bill. I know, this sounds a bit… oh I don’t know soft hearted Aletha, but there you have it.
I don’t see the mainstream as capable of really changing without the input of the innovators. We Aletha and others are the innovators and we do the best we can.
I respect every woman who challenges patriarchy. It’s a more urgent matter for me, and so I put this at the top of my list each day. I know work places are tricky, and not all of them are safe. Mine is not safe either, but I’ve done a lot of work to be able to serve, and not compromise my values. I have to be the pioneer, because that’s what I know how to do.
Politics these days is very complex. We have sold out as a nation to corporte power and profit. Believe me, when you’re in finance you can see this all the more. It is a sad sad thing. I rely on blogs like this one and Heart’s to keep up on things, and to challenge myself, because I don’t want to get complacent here. We can all get complacent or tired, but the energy of sisterhood is a dynamic and powerful thing. Thanks Aletha for being so patient with me. I know I’m not well liked by some and liked by others, and some people spark my attention and others don’t.
But we are in this together. We can and will advance the cause of women worldwide. What we say matters!
Thanks again and let’s all try to be better feminists in a very corrupt world. They were probably saying that in the Middle Ages no doubt
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:07 am
Thank you, Miranda and Satsuma. If Satsuma is guilty of personal attacks, I think her wishful silencers need better evidence. If it is such a consistent pattern, there should be no shortage, right?
For the record, I have not had to censor anyone attempting to comment to this thread, besides the usual spam. Nothing like the load Heart gets, but definitely annoying. Is this the calm before the storm, or has Kitty given up this confounded vendetta?
March 12th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
hi … i agree with satsuma.