Feminist Fred

First, there’s this list of facts about the state of women in the world today, Thanksgiving, Life and Death, and Anti-feminism. I feel the need to direct any readers I might have to this because I don’t say much about the indisputable need for everyone, especially men, to understand that being pro-feminist is just plain normal and being anti-feminist is morally corrupt and soulless.

Blue Milk informs me that today is White Ribbon Day. I grimace at the dutiful and sanctimonious wearing of ribbons and suchlike demonstrations of solidarity that are better expressed through actions than gestures, but I applaud the idea that we should all support any consciousness-raising efforts. The idea that much of the world supports violence towards women, rather than deploring it, makes these two posts must reading for those who might not understand why I go to the effort of trying to blog about feminism at all.

Men really think this is true. Yet they act as if it were the dick that really rules.

I asked my conservative dad to send me anything anti-feminist that comes his way, since, like many older people on the net, he is in the middle of a never-ending deluge of refrigerator-magnet-style philosophy, sentiment and right wing crap allegedly spewed by George Carlin and suchlike Snopes fodder and nonsense.

It brought me back to the profound belief that men hold so dearly; that women, by virtue of arousing men against their will – against the man’s will, mind you – control men completely. A trained feminist will instantly bristle at the slightest hint that a woman has any power over her oppressor. A woman brainwashed and living in denial about her position in our culture will relish the thought, and the younger she is, the more likely she will buy into it.

Men live in a world where they expect and ever-higher level of privilege and deference given to their dicks. Any reduction in the imaginary privileges they expect will result in the baby rash cries of privilege thwarted. The slightest curtailment of the deference they expect results in a feeling of being controlled, because they expect to be in complete control at all times.

If you can see this from the standpoint of a man, you can understand how the slightest effort to remove women from servitude to their needs – like doing the dishes once a week – is seen as not just balancing the scales a little but as an infringement of privilege that, if it passes unprotested, leads to a downward slope where men are wearing dresses and high heels and makeup and being fucked in the ass by other men who didn’t fall for these fiendish tricks.

Men who intuit that relinquishing privileges will lead to them being reduced to the feminine state that they consciously assert is the one in control and making the rules will fight with all the strength they have to prevent themselves from degenerating to the same state they claim makes the rules. It’s a delicious paradox. So revolting and stupid, once you think it through.

Men claim that women make the rules as a way to excuse themselves for keeping women in their place. By reminding women and other men that women make the rules, they give themselves permission to rebel against any and all attempts to curtail sexist behavior.