The Queering of Feminism and the Silencing of Heterosexual Masculinity

Posted on | April 16, 2016 | 66 Comments

 

“Women are an oppressed class. . . . We identify the agents of our oppression as men.”
— Redstockings Manifesto, 1969

“We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy. We have been f–ked over all our lives by a system which is based on the domination of men over women.”
— Ginny Berson, “The Furies,” 1972

“Men are the enemy. Heterosexual women are collaborators with the enemy. . . .
“We see heterosexuality as an institution of male domination, not a free expression of personal preference.”
— Leeds Revolutionary Feminists, 1981

“It is the system of heterosexuality that characterises the oppression of women and gives it a different shape from other forms of exploitative oppression. . . .
“Sex roles originate from heterosexuality. . . . Sex roles must be created so that no human being of either gender is fully capable of independent functioning and heterosexual coupling then seems natural and inevitable.”
— Sheila Jeffreys, Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution (1990)

“Men affirm male superiority through use of the penis as a weapon against the female. . . .
“Because men want women’s sexual services for themselves only . . . men make women’s heterosexuality compulsory.”
— Dee Graham, et al., Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives (1994)

“From the beginning of second-wave feminism, sexuality was identified as a key site of patriarchal domination and women’s resistance to it. . . .
“While heterosexual desires, practices, and relations are socially defined as ‘normal’ and normative, serving to marginalize other sexualities as abnormal and deviant, the coercive power of compulsory heterosexuality derives from its institutionalization as more than merely a sexual relation.”
— Stevi Jackson, “Sexuality, Heterosexuality, and Gender Hierarchy: Getting Our Priorities Straight,” in Thinking Straight: The Power, the Promise, and the Paradox of Heterosexuality, edited by Chrys Ingraham (2005)

“Heterosexism is maintained by the illusion that heterosexuality is the norm.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

“Heterosexuality and masculinity . . . are made manifest through patriarchy, which normalizes men as dominant over women. . . .
“This tenet of patriarchy is thus deeply connected to acts of sexual violence, which have been theorized as a physical reaffirmation of patriarchal power by men over women.”
— Sara Carrigan Wooten, The Crisis of Campus Sexual Violence: Critical Perspectives on Prevention and Response (2015)

“Feminism is about the collective liberation of women as a social class. Feminism is not about personal choice.”
— Anita Sarkeesian, 2015

Why does a man love a woman? What makes women attractive to men? If you are a woman who is interested in men, questions like this may be worth considering, and perhaps heterosexual men could tell you something about this subject. However, if you’re a feminist, you never want to hear anything a man has to say, especially not about sex. Feminists believe men know nothing about sex. Everything men say or do about sex is bad and wrong, according to feminist theory, which condemns heterosexuality as an oppressive “institution” forcibly imposed on women by the social system of male domination known as patriarchy.

According to feminist theory, all social and behavioral differences between male and female (i.e., “gender”) are artificially created by patriarchy in order to oppress women, to subjugate them under a systemic hierarchy of injustice enforced by male power.

When I say that Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, some readers may suppose that this is merely hyperbole, just as some readers may suppose that the sources I quote are “extreme” examples of an obscure “fringe” feminism. Yet anyone who cares to investigate further will discover that, however “radical” this anti-male/anti-heterosexual ideology may have been in an earlier era, it has now become so mainstream within academic feminism that no other perspective on human sexual behavior is ever expressed by the faculty in university departments of Women’s Studies. This transformation of feminism has been accomplished over the course of decades, but has especially accelerated since the 1990s, by which time many radical feminists had obtained Ph.D.s and tenured professorships.

 

Consider the example of Sheila Jeffreys, who was a leader among the Leeds Revolutionary Feminists whose 1981 tract Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism was at that time considered the ne plus ultra of radicalism. In 1991, however, she was hired as a professor at Australia’s University of Melbourne, where she taught until her retirement in 2015. Her books, including Anticlimax (1990), The Lesbian Heresy (1993), The Spinster and Her Enemies (1997), and Beauty and Misogyny (2005) are widely cited and, although Professor Jeffreys enjoys playing the martyr, claiming that she has been ignored or demonized by the feminist mainstream, her influence is not insignificant. Guardian columnist Julie Bindel is a huge admirer of Professor Jeffreys, and one may find her repeatedly cited as a source in the 2015 anthology Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism, edited by Miranda Kiraly and Megan Tyler. Being a British-born academic at an Australian university may make Professor Jeffreys unfamiliar to American readers, but as she herself has pointed out, in the preface to a new edition of Beauty and Misogyny issued in 2015, the Internet is fueling a worldwide resurgence of radical feminism.

Feminism: No More Fun, No More Games

This online phenomenon spans the English-speaking world — Great Britain, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc. — and the use of social media and blogging platforms like Tumblr has helped spread radical ideology far beyond academia. The controversy known as #GamerGate, for example, has centered on feminist critics like Anita Sarkeesian, who condemns as “objectification” any portrayal of women in videogames that might appeal to heterosexual men.

 

Demonizing men’s admiration of women’s beauty (the “male gaze”) is one way in which heterosexual masculinity is “problematized” in feminist rhetoric, which seeks not only to inspire women to view men contemptuously, but also to make men ashamed of their own desires. Sarkeesian’s description of feminism as seeking “the collective liberation of women,” a movement that is “not about personal choice,” is consistent with her anti-heterosexual agenda. If some women express their “personal choice” by seeking to attract the “male gaze,” and if these women do not feel a “collective” solidarity with anti-male hatemongers like Sarkeesian, they are not feminists. Unless women share her rage against “offensive” depictions of heterosexuality in videogames and other media, Sarkeeskian’s rhetoric implies, they are not feminists, because they are collaborating with the male oppressor.

One of Sarkeesian’s earliest tastes of fame was when she did a video about the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” a stock character in certain movies:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a cute, bubbly, young (usually white) woman who has recently entered the life of our brooding hero to teach him how to loosen up and enjoy life. While that might sound all well and good for the man, this trope leaves women as simply there to support the star on his journey of self discovery with no real life of her own.

Understand that this phrase — “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” — was coined by a male film critic, Nathan Rabin, to describe a character played by an actress I never liked (Kirsten Dunst) in a 2005 movie (Elizabethtown) I never saw. Therefore I have no more interest in defending this film than I do in defending videogames. It has been many years since Hollywood made any movies I really liked, and my interest in videogames ended with Pac Man, feeding quarters into the machine at the Red Rooster Pub when I was in college more than 30 years ago. However, because I majored in drama and studied dramatic theory, permit me to point out something obvious: Just as every sentence has a subject, so must every story have a protagonist. If the hero is a heterosexual male, then by definition his love interest is female, but insofar as this is a story about him — which is what being the protagonist means, after all — well, of course this female is ancillary, her role to “support the star on his journey.”

What inspired Nathan Rabin to complain of about this, I can’t say, having never seen the movie in question, but you see how for Sarkeesian, the problem is that this female character having “no real life of her own” is somehow an expression of misogyny. The failure of the writer/director (Cameron Crowe) to give Ms. Dunst’s character a more in-depth biography, according to Sarkeesian’s interpretation, is cited as further evidence of women’s oppression under heteropatriarchy ( as if further evidence were needed). You see how, in criticizing movies as allegedly “sexist,” Sarkeesian (and other feminist critics) are actually criticizing men — not only the male writers, directors and producers behind these films, but also any man who enjoys them, and in general, the behavior and attitudes of real-life men that these movies are intended to dramatize.

How does this help explain why men who like videogames react so harshly to Ms. Sarkeesian’s criticism of their hobby? The raging fury of #GamerGate reflects an intuitive understanding that Sarkeesian’s criticism of “objectification” is actually a condemnation of male sexuality. Guys like good-looking women, and so the makers of these games give guys what they like. This makes guys happy, and Sarkeesian doesn’t want guys to be happy. Like all other feminists, Sarkeesian’s goal is to abolish male happiness. Sarkeesian’s attitude — anything that makes men happy must be wrong — is so typical of feminism, and feminist attitudes have become so commonplace, that most people do not even question it, in the same way that most people who saw Elizabethtown probably didn’t feel offended by the shallowness of Kirsten Dunst’s character. Maybe it was a lousy movie, but was it a social injustice?

OK, do you suppose the average guy who spends a lot of time playing videogames is going to write a persuasive essay rebutting Sarkeesian? It’s absurd to expect such a thing. You don’t learn to write persuasive essays by logging endless hours playing League of Legends. Well, do we expect these gamers to do what I’ve done, spend upwards of $1,500 acquiring dozens of books of feminist theory and history, then spend hundreds of hours reading these books in order to develop an informed critical analysis of feminist ideology and rhetoric? Of course not. So while these videogame guys correctly interpret Anita Sarkeesian’s work as profoundly insulting to themselves as men, very few of them are prepared to confront Sarkeesian with a well-informed rebuttal. Instead, these guys just call her ugly names or otherwise “harass” her, as she is wont to complain.

The great Anita Sarkeesian of @femfreq reflecting on what she couldn't say during #GamerGate and her silencing: http://t.co/6JYxcnvp2h

— Plashing Vole (@PlashingVole) March 11, 2015

Sarkeesian claims that this “harassment” is “silencing” women, but has she ever debated any man who disagrees with her? No, Sarkeesian and her feminist allies strive to exclude their opponents from academia and media, to silence feminism’s critics and, most especially, to ensure that no heterosexual male will be allowed to defend his own point of view. Any man who musters the courage to step forward to argue for the legitimacy of the heterosexual man’s perspective is automatically condemned for daring to say anything in his own defense.

Sexual Anarchy: Bellum Omnium Contra Omne

What kind of women do men like, and why do they like them that way? Or what can a young woman do to increase her chances of romantic success with men? Good luck finding answers to such questions in a world where men are effectively forbidden to speak on their own behalf.

 

According to feminist theory, male sexuality is inherently oppressive to women, and there is no reason why women should attempt to understand or sympathize with men. Feminists condemn any expectation that women naturally desire heterosexual relationships, and therefore might wish to make themselves appealing to males. Heterosexuality is “an institution of male domination,” as Sheila Jeffreys and her colleagues declared in 1981, and it is an “illusion that heterosexuality is the norm,” as Professor Shaw and Professor Lee more recently declared in their popular Women’s Studies textbook. The penis is a “weapon against women,” as Professor Graham explained, women are victimized by “the coercive power of compulsory heterosexuality,” according to Professor Jackson, and masculinity causes “sexual violence . . . a physical reaffirmation of patriarchal power,” according to Ms. Wooten.

“Fear and Loathing of the Penis,” as I have dubbed the fundamental message of feminism’s anti-male/anti-heterosexual ideology, has fueled the phony “campus rape epidemic” hysteria on university campuses. If you take feminist rhetoric seriously, you must believe 1-in-5 college girls are victims of sexual assault and, because fewer than 1-in-5 male students are expelled, these heinous crimes usually go unpunished. Should you express doubt that this “epidemic” is as widespread as feminists claim, or point to cases where accusations of sexual assault on campus have been proven to be hoaxes, feminists will call you a “rape apologist.” It is dangerous even to make the most common-sense remarks about this situation. If you point out that a lot of these cases seem to involve drunken hookups, suggesting that maybe young women should be careful how much they drink and who they hook up with, you will be accused of “victim-blaming.” Feminists now exercise hegemonic authority over discussion of sex. Feminists decide what the facts are, and also decide what arguments are permissible, and this means that the only ways a male can participate in the discussion of sex are (a) sitting in mute silence, (b) accusing other men of sexism, or (c) engaging in self-denunciation.

 

What has happened, it seems, is that our culture has descended so far into moral decadence and social anarchy that there is no longer any mutually understood script by which young people navigate their romantic lives.

What do they want and how do they go about getting it? Three or four decades ago, the differences between men and women were understood in a rather simple fashion — men wanted sex, women wanted love, and this was the basis of negotiation for each party to gain by voluntary exchange. Were men more emotionally vulnerable than they liked to admit? Sure. Were women more lusty than they liked to admit? Sure. In general, however, it was understood that women had a greater investment in the emotional aspects of love and romance, whereas men’s interests were . . . uh, more pragmatic, you might say. Perhaps we could interrogate the “is”/”ought” distinction here, but why bother? Whether or not this was how things should be in an ideal world, this was how things actually were in the real world, and most people coped with it somehow.

That pragmatic approach to male/female relationships, however, seems to have become inoperative after two generations of social upheaval, which has not only swept away the Judeo-Christian moral code, but has also destroyed nearly all hope that when boy meets girl, they might fall in love, and proceed toward the kind of happily-ever-after conclusion that was once celebrated 24/7 by pop music on Top 40 radio. Young people who grow up in fragmented families — where Dad never bothered to marry Mom, or where they divorced after a kid or two and then remarried to create networks of step-parents, step-siblings and half-siblings — seem to have very little romantic idealism. Many of today’s youth believe there is no such thing as moral virtue as regards sexual behavior, and the only “ideals” which concern them are maximizing their own pleasure, boosting their own ego, and enhancing their social status. The sex scene on the 21st-century university campus looks rather like bellum omnium contra omnes, the Hobbesian “war of all against all,” a chaotic and ruthless competition with no recognized rules of conduct.

Feminism cannot solve this problem, mainly because feminism has played such a large part in causing this problem. We find feminists advocating shameless promiscuity — “I’ve gone down and dirty with strangers,” Jaclyn Friedman boasts — while simultaneously scapegoating men for every predictable consequence of such behavior. Feminists launch social-media campaigns to announce the sexual diseases they’ve contracted through heedless fornication (intending to end the “stigma” of these diseases) and then complain about “harassment” when everybody laughs at the stupidity of their arguments. And, of course, the alleged “campus rape epidemic” is entirely men’s fault, as if drunken teenagers who stumble into bed together at 2 a.m. could be expected to conduct a careful point-by-point negotiation of “affirmative consent.”

Much of feminist rhetoric is a form of psychological warfare against men, employing a propaganda tactic in which atrocities (e.g., Rodger Elliot’s murder spree in California) are used as an indictment of all men. “Toxic masculinity!” screamed the feminists. “Misogyny! Male entitlement!” Suddenly, every young guy who ever read a pickup artist (PUA) web site in an attempt to improve his luck with the ladies was deemed complicit in murder. The SPLC even branded pickup artists as hate criminals.

This atrocity-as-representative tactic — where the very worst thing any man ever does is attributed to all men collectively — is simply a method of hate propaganda. Using this kind of irresponsible rhetoric, we could demonize almost any group and justify any measure to punish them. Are lesbians teachers committing sexual crimes against students? Ban lesbian teachers! Or better yet, abolish public schools!

Here’s a headline: “Girl goes on one date with a guy, chooses not to hook up, and gets sent an insane text rant.” This guy named Endri traveled a good distance for a first date with Arielle, a girl he met via the dating app Tinder. After meeting him in person, Arielle decided Endri was creepy, so their date did not progress to, uh, intimacy, and Endri then went berserk, sending a series of foul and abusive text messages to the girl.

Now, from my perspective, the moral of the story is, “Never use Tinder, or OKCupid, or any other kind of online dating service.”

All such services are for creeps, weirdos and losers, because if they had anything going for them, they could meet somebody in real life, and wouldn’t be cruising for dates on the Internet. Is that generalization unfair? Perhaps, but after you hear a few of these horror stories (“Hit It and Quit It on Tinder”) it only takes a little common sense to see why dating apps are a bad gamble. Just “swipe left” on the whole thing.

However, queer feminist Melissa Fabello has other ideas:

“This is most men”? Seriously?

No, maybe this is “most men” of the kind a woman is likely to meet if she’s still unmarried past 25. As I’ve explained previously, the good guys tend to get coupled up at a young age. They might change girlfriends a few times before they get married, but they usually don’t spend too long “on the scene.” A woman who is still single at 25? Good luck finding a real quality guy who doesn’t already have a serious girlfriend.

The median age at first marriage in the U.S. is about 26, and most couples marry after at least a year or two of dating, so if you’re in your mid-20s and aren’t married yet, why? Is it because “most men” are jerks? Or is it because all of the quality guys are either (a) already married or (b) in a serious relationship?

Am I willing to believe that “most men” Melissa Fabello has dated are selfish jerks? Yes. Am I willing to believe that women are unlikely to meet Mister Right on Tinder? Yes, again. But does it make sense to blame this on “male sexual entitlement”? On “patriarchy”? No and no.

If these men have a sense of “sexual entitlement,” why? Where did Endri get the idea that he can find a girl on Tinder, drive all the way to New Jersey to meet her and expect to get sex right away? Maybe because such trysts quite commonly happen that way nowadays? It takes two to tango, and if any substantial number of girls are hooking up with random dudes via dating apps, why should we blame the random dudes if they start taking this kind of casual sex for granted?

Why Do Winners Win? Because Losers Lose

No, Ms. Fabello, I don’t doubt that dating life is miserable for most single women. However, based on my own extensive experience and observation — having been married 26 years, with six kids, two of whom are already married and another recently engaged — I have some definite opinions as to why things are as bad as they are, but no feminist cares what a man has to say about such matters, you see? God forbid any woman should ask a man’s advice about why her romantic life is a disaster.

Women must only take advice from feminists! Because if women ever start listening to advice from men, why, the patriarchy will win!

Well, ma’am, the joke’s on you. The patriarchy always wins. No matter how feminists try to change the game, winners win and losers lose.

Speaking of losers, take a look at Feminist Tumblr where a mentally disabled 24-year-old lesbian Scorpio occultist has this observation:

I’ve been thinking about how I rarely ever hear any female-attracted men mention that they love women. As in, one of them just bursting out in how much they adore women.
I’ve legit heard many more gay men say that they really love women (Platonically, of course) than any straight man or even bi man. I think I’ve heard like. Three female-attracted men mention how much they love women in a way that’s actually loving, like genuine love. In my entire life, not just tumblr.
Instead… I hear SO MANY female-attracted men say how stupid women are, how ridiculous we are, how even repulsive we are to them when we’re not serving them as pretty f–kholes and even while they’re using us like that they can still spew how much they hate us. And yes, this includes MGA men, I’ve seen it in pretty much the same fashion.
However, in society, men’s attraction to women is seen as healthy, as natural, as normal, as good.
But whose attraction to women is universally seen as gross, predatory, repulsive, creepy, unhealthy?
Women’s.
And the thing here is that, there isn’t a day in lesbian tumblr in which I don’t see at least ONE post being reblogged by all the lesbians I follow about how much they love girls, how amazing, how beautiful, how great, sexy, strong, adorable, breathtaking, fun, admirable women are. We literally can’t shut up about it when we feel we’re safe enough to express it.
When I thought I was bi I remember bi/pan-girl tumblr being similar.
It’s already sad enough that society at large (Including straight women) thinks of us as being the gross predatory ones.
But the real saddest thing is that we believe it too. We’ve been taught that all our lives and it’s so hard to unlearn it. I still can’t truly unlearn it even though I know all this in a rational way.

Well, if this is so, why is it that men don’t praise women? Isn’t it because feminism more or less forbids men from expressing their love for women? Isn’t it because every time a man opens his mouth to say anything at all about women, feminists scream at him to shut up? What is it possible for men to say about women that feminists will not denounce as “objectifying,” “harassment,” “misogyny” or otherwise wrong? Feminists cannot permit men to praise good women. No man may express admiration for women’s beauty, nor praise women whose manners are gracious, whose conduct is virtuous, whose character is godly.

My wife? No, feminists would never say a good word about my wife, or permit me to praise my wife’s many excellent qualities, because my wife is a Christian, and feminism is implacably opposed to Christianity.

It was Mary Daly who celebrated the feminist movement as “the Second Coming of female presence not only as Antichrist but also as Antichurch,” as a “rising woman-consciousness” to destroy the “Christocentric cosmos.” Mary Daly was an influential professor, so if she declared feminism to be the Antichrist, who am I to disagree?

“Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. . . . He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that — do not listen.”
— The Exorcist (1973)

The Radical Theology of Feminism produces such demon-possessed creatures as a mentally disabled Scorpio occultist lesbian, and the same satanic philosophy also produces despicable liars like Anita Sarkeesian.

An honest enemy is less to be feared than a false friend, which is why I can at least respect Professor Sheila Jeffreys, who has never attempted to conceal her all-encompassing hatred of men, whereas dishonest feminists like Anita Sarkeesian pretend that they are victims of harassment, misunderstood and misrepresented by “misogynists.”

We live in an evil age, and feminism is among the greatest of evils. Men cannot even be allowed to praise the virtue of their own wives, nor can any man ever expect praise for his own virtuous conduct. Feminists only ever praise perversity. Feminists celebrate vice and corruption.

Sexual Fluidity: Queer, Straight,
And Anything Else You’re Feeling
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

5 Ways to Bring Feminism to Your Education
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

4 Myths About Virginity
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

Fantasy vs. Reality:
Lesbian Sex in Pornography
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

 

Lesbian and Bisexual Women in the
Media — Or the Lack Thereof
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

5 Efforts Toward Creating
a More Feminist Classroom
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

Your First Time: A Sexual Guide for Girls
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

Our Vulvas, Ourselves
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

 

Five Locker Room Myths
About Penises Debunked
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

5 Common Fears That Stop People
From Calling Themselves Feminists
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

How To Start Loving Your Vagina
— Melissa Fabello, Everyday Feminism

 

More than a year ago, describing the “queer feminism” that Melissa Fabello promotes at her site Everyday Feminism, I said this:

This exotic 21st-century rainbow of queer feminism is to sexuality what Baskin-Robbins is to ice cream, offering 31 flavors of abnormal perversion to those seeking escape from the gender binary and the heterosexual matrix that define oppression under patriarchy.
Now everybody is an oppressed victim, except normal people, because whatever feminists are, they are never normal people.

Selah.

Show of hands: Who voted to put
Anita Sarkeesian in charge of
"redefining our social value system"? #GamerGate pic.twitter.com/krPkwsFkcW

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) April 16, 2016

 

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Thanks to the many readers whose contributions have supported the Sex Trouble project. Your prayers are always deeply appreciated.

 

Yes, 'Gender' Is About Sex https://t.co/mEQGImnSrU

cc @voxday @deanesmay @instapundit #FeminismIsCancer pic.twitter.com/FZP87Ks29U

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) April 14, 2016

 

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